fandomhigh | Fandom Library, Wednesday, September 3rd

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Fandom Library, Wednesday, September 3rd

It was still technically summer, so Arden was really confused by the creepy snow monster that had tried to attack her on the way to school today. She'd been alone, so she'd grabbed as many chords of magic as she could and shoved them at the monster - which had poofed into bitty snowflakes.

Which, in retrospect, might have been overkill. Especially since she was immediately hit by the exhaustion that came from using up most of her energy at once. She managed to drag herself the rest of the way to the library, but now was doing her best not to pass out at the counter.

She also wasn't moving from this chair, because if she did, she was pretty sure she'd end up falling over flat.

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The aide is not going to be very helpful.

Especially if you can explain to her why they were fighting snow creatures when it was eighty degrees outside.

After his class, Gray decided to swing by and see Arden before all the effort of fighting snow monsters on his way back to work. Work!

"Ardennnnnnn," he whined. "I have a job now!" A job.

Arden picked her head up off the desk and squinted at Gray. "A job? How'd you get a job? Why'd you get a job?"

Oh, was it naptime? Were they gonna have naptime before Gray went back to his job? He was totally down for that. "Raiden told me yesterday that I had to go to work at Over Easy today!" he complained. "And you know what? He's a teenager and doesn't remember that at all today! So obviously I've gotta make sure his brunch spot doesn't fall apart while he's busy--being a teenager!"

Okay, maybe should have led with teenage Raiden, Gray.

Oh, a nap sounded amazing. Why was using her powers so exhausting. (Because she didn't practice or learn fine control was why.)

"He's a what?" Arden didn't have Wednesday classes, so she'd missed seeing any adults at all today. "The freak?" Not the word she'd meant. "Why is he a teen? How is he a teen?"

A nice mirroring of her questions about Gray's job. Not that she'd noticed even a little bit.

"He's not a freak," Gray protested. Why would you say that, Arden? "He's a teenager. I went by before I came up to my class," to complain about making him work, "and he's...teenage Raiden. He's fine. I ordered him a whole bunch of takeout, so he's probably rediscovering pizza for the first time right now." And they were missing it. "...I probably should have stayed and recorded that."

"No, no, I wasn't calling him a freak! I meant to say freak." Wait what? "Freak. No, freak! Freak freak freak shoot darn what the freak?"

She looked to Gray. "Try to swear. Say something. I don't care. Pick a bad word."

HOW COULD YOU TAKE AWAY HER ABILITY TO CUSS, ISLAND? THOSE WERE HER EMOTIONAL SUPPORT CURSEWORDS.

"Uh, I don't really curse much," Gray protested. He said 'butthole' instead of 'asshole,' for crying out loud. "Um...shnikes? What the heck?"

"Yeah, so I wasn't trying to call Ray a freak, I was asking what the...fornication." That was a way to get around it, sure. "Wait, why aren't you a teenager again?"

"I don't know," Gray said, weirdly defensive. "Maybe it just skipped me." It definitely wasn't because his brothers, who had been there whenever he stopped aging, had been telling the truth about that happening early this whole time, okay? He just had a baby face! "Why aren't you a teenager again? Didn't you turn twenty? I seem to remember a party about that."

"Maybe I am," Arden snorted. "Maybe this is the me from last week."

Her hand fell to her chest and she grabbed for the familiar weight of her dad's pendant. "I mean, that date is just a guess about when my birthday is anyway. I don't really know."

"Maybe we're just both too cool," Gray suggested, and then yawned. Ah, here was Sloth to ruin another beautiful sibling moment.

Oh thank the goddess. Arden was having trouble keeping her eyes open. Stupid powers.

"That's probably it," she agreed, putting her head back down on her arms. "What else could it be?"

Oh, yeah. It was totally naptime. Where was his pillow? Was he gonna find it before he...nope. No, he was not.

That was fine, Arden could at least toss his blanket over him. And maybe steal some for herself.

That just seemed fair, right?

Totally fair! This was a team nap, after all.

Sleep now.

Yeah, yeah, Sloth, he was listening to you.

While they were napping, a punk-looking girl with bright pink hair was climbing the shelves as gross water full of zombie parts rose in the library. "Squall!" she exclaimed, and then she and the water faded away.

(No, you just remembered you meant to do this.)

Edited 2025-09-04 19:10 (UTC)

Jon had woken up in a strange place that was definitely not Oxford. It looked more like France, honestly, though the person he'd asked for directions had sounded American. He was suspicious, and the fact things had been trying to kill him outside did not help any!

It was a very rumpled and wet Jon that finally made it to the library. Look, if there were answers, they would be in books, and he was good at research!

Also libraries were his comfort zone. Hush.

Arden pushed herself up again. The catnap she'd taken with Gray had helped some, but she was still pretty low energy. "Hello? Wait, no, I mean, hello. Welcome to the library. Can I help you with something?"

Please don't make it involve walking. Or really, movement at all.

Jon frowned. Falling asleep on the job was hardly professional!

"No, thank you," he said in his stiffest Oxford English. Then reluctantly asked, "Do you use Library of Congress or Dewey Decimal here?"

Sorry, Arden; teenaged Jon was a bit uptight...er.

Welcome to Fandom. 'Hardly professional' was pretty much their brand. "Dewey," she said, accentuating her drawl as much as she could to counter his Oxfordness. "Or as close to it as we can get, considering the books have a tendency to wander." Yes, she meant that literally. "Are you new...?"

Turned out Professor Sims was hard to recognize before all the trauma.

Edited 2025-09-03 23:47 (UTC)

"They wander?" That was alarming, and now Jon was eyeing them even more suspiciously and wishing he had a weapon. Well, he had his lighter? But maybe he'd keep it in his pocket for now.

"I don't know how I got here. Or where here is," he admitted. He suspected a book was responsible, but that sounded ridiculous, so he kept it to himself. Nobody ever believed in the supernatural.

Wait. Why would the girl who warned you about wandering books disbelieve in the supernatural?

"Here is Fandom Island, off the coast of Baltimore, Maryland," Arden said. "It's also September 3rd, 2025, in case you need to calibrate yourself. You're on a dimensional nexus, which means you might talk to people from many different worlds and times." She eyed him. "So...you didn't show up on a shuttle? Or arrive over the weekend?"

That would mean he was probably an adult normally...who was British amongst the faculty? Wait, was this Professor Sims? Huh.

"What kind of book are you looking for, sir?"

Edited 2025-09-04 00:05 (UTC)

Look, people rationalized all sorts of things beyond what was reasonable! *cough*

"What are you talking about?" None of what she had said made any kind of sense. It sounded more science fiction than supernatural. "Dimensional what? How...I was in Oxford yesterday!"

"And today you're here," Arden said calmly. "Don't worry, you'll probably be back in Oxford by Monday morning at the latest. And since you already traveled through time to get here, it's likely you won't miss any time at Oxford. Consider it a self-contained loop slightly to the left of your normal dimension."

"What do you mean time travel?" He'd sort of skimmed over the second "2" in that date earlier. "This is insane!" He clutched his hair in lieu of having anything else to hold on to.

He wasn't denying anything, mind, but it was mental.

"Not at all," Arden said. "Beyond the pale, sure, but hardly insane. Just expand your definitions of what's possible."

Imagine if she'd tried explaining that, actually, he was a temporarily de-aged version of himself who lived on the island full-time!

"You've briefly been transported to Fandom Island in 2025. In no more than a few days, you'll be transported back to your normal life and will be able to keep going as normal."

"Normal." Jon laughed shakily. "Normal sounds wonderful about now." Not that he was ever terribly normal, but a lack of...all this...would be an improvement.

"From your lips to the goddess's ears," Arden drawled. "But normal is in pretty short supply around here."

"I can handle oddities, as long as they're not trying to kill me!" Jon protested.

He very much could not. In his defense, there were Oxford-level oddities, and then there were Fandom-level oddities.

Arden couldn't mask her disbelief, but she did try to make it at least polite."

See, and this was how politeness was useful, because Jon felt free to just ignore that!

Or he didn't notice. Take your pick.

He probably knows about various inclement weather monsters.

So, canon calls it "chords of magic" and I honestly don't know if that means there's a musical component or she just misspelled cords a ton and it drives me bananas.

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