Strange Attractors

"Look, Miss Furore..."

Julia, the beglassed assiastant librarian standing at the door hesitates, arms full of various sorts of cheerful, wobbly slimes. "I- I think they are enough now. I don't- I don't need more for my collection."

"Don't mention it, Julia! And you can call me Uta", the Spriggan in front of her mumbles, "I can go and get you more, if I knew you were interested in starting a collection of slimes-"

"No, really. I'm set!", Julia replies with a whimper, as the armful of monsters slowly chips away at her HP. "T-this is enough." She barely holds back the tears, but this seems to have been the most surefire way to get Uta to leave her slimes outside the library.

"Fine then, just call me if you nee more!", she says, cheerful, and promptly makes a beeline for the interior of the building, without even bothering to bow or take proper leave. She is her usual disaster, plain menu-crafted peasant's dress torn, tattered, covered in goo and partly eaten away by slime acid. Her stomach grumbles, but at least, she doesn't smell /too/ offensively.

    June has discarded her fur and scale mail bikini. She's currently wearing the closest thing she could find to a t-shirt and a maxiskirt with sandals. A coat with too many pockets tops off the ensemble. She is currently seated in the library, surrounded by books. Books of spells, wave arts, literature, caligraphy, different languages or at least writing styles. In front of her she has a stack of expensive white rice paper. Each cut into strips any shinto would recognize. She has a rack of brushes and pens, and several kinds of ink. "Okay, so the squid ink without any changes does not work with water, next we mix in some seaweed dye to squid ink and we'll see if the basic summon water will work." she says as she starts blending ink.

Goldenblade has shown up to the library, a rare thing for her, but she sees the assistant librarian is in need of help. "Here," she says, "Come right this way." She knows a thing or three about Eas, having been intimately involved in the repair and reconstruction efforts, and she knows just the place where the librarian can safely stash a bunch of slimes without hurting herself further. All castles should have an Uta room, which is like a Panic Room, but when you have an idea that your panic will be related to slimes. There's a ceramic tub there where slimes can sit and not hurt things or ooze on the carpet or eat your HP.

Returning some minutes later to the library as if nothing is amiss, she smiles to Uta, and asks, "What brings you here today?" She sees June over there experimenting with inks and looks puzzled. But one mystery at a time is all she can handle.

"Research," Uta replies to Goldenblade, curt, as she marches on towards a bookcase. She runs her finger along the spines of the books, stops abruptly at one, flicks her menu open, materializes a key, and uses it to unlock the tome from the chains that prevent it from being stolen.

Perks of being the head librarian.

"I am this close to locating the Ultimate Treatise on Slimes. THIS CLOSE." She lowers her voice, and almost ominous, she utters, "The book. It calls...", before heading straight for the table where June is. Not even acknowledging June's own project. She just places the book down, opens it, and zigzag her eyeballs across the page, flipping them at a worrying speed.

    June looks up at Uta "Hello Uta." she says without the usuall flibity jibbiting about. She just gives a greeting. "Looking for something specific?" she asks as she keeps blending her ink. "Consistancy looks good, squid seems to be incoporating nicely." she says switching to Sindarin. "Could use a bit more of the green from the seaweed I think... maybe the salts... no lets stick with this to start." she takes one of the ofuda and in a very precise hand she uses one of the brushes to make a quite fancy seal that has severl key activation words for a basic water spell.

Goldenblade nods to Uta, peering as she takes down the book. Benefits of being the head librarian, indeed! "/Ultimate/ treatise, eh?" she asks. She'll follow Uta over to June's table, giving June an apologetic look and a lack of recognition at first. "Oh, I didn't recognize you with clothes on," she says when she realizes June is June. "How are you doing?" She looks back to Uta, checking to see that she is, at least, safely occupied with the reading? Back to June. "-What- are you doing?"

"Hi. Researching Hobus Rebou," Uta replies to June, "He wrote the only treatise on slimes I am aware of. Which automatically makes it the ultimate one," is what she tells Goldenblade. She has turned two pages already in the time span it took her to give those snappy answers. "Based on what I hear, I deduce you're working on that project about figuring out the Alv's system of writing-activated magic? I could use some information about that at some point. Everything Alv is dang weird, and the more we know about them, the better."

    June nods her head "I'm working on research, no reason to be a barbarian princess." she says with a shrug. "I'm working currently on basic elemental magic through writing, this I will be expanding on but currently create element is my focus." she says and lightly sands the ink then sets it aside. "It shouldn't need to be dry to work but I'll give it a minute to ensure that it's set."

Goldenblade gives Uta a puzzled nod. This game world is so widely and finely detailed, it's pretty amazing, sometimes. She misses the simplicity of bricks and mortar, sometimes. But she's fine without the aches and pains of age, so ...anyhow, she hrms. "So, is that the book on slimes, then?" she wonders. June gets her own puzzled nod. She hasn't worked out magic yet. Why would you even need it when computers can do /this/? But she listens attentively. "Working on ..." She lost track after that. "Writing that needs to be dry? Well, that makes sense. You can't read if the ink has run, maybe the game needs to be able to read your rune clearly?"

"This one? No. This is a monograph on the history of Ninetails," Uta explains. Page turn. "Trying to figure out where-" lowered, reverent voice, "...The Book..." back to normal, "-could have ended up. Pinpointing a copy turns out to be nigh impossible. I don't get it! Copies should be everywhere! It's full of absolutely astounding, amazing (and alliterating) assistance about apprehending-" A short pause, followed by a guilty sounding, "...slimes."

Dang. Combo breaker.

"I had to, of course, test what little information I could glean from the fragments I have collected."

    June nods her head "Lost books are hard to locate, it's often books that either have little economic or religious impact that get lost. Pure information is't something many people consider to be something to preserve through the ages." she puts the ofuda into a bucket, and then tears the top edge off, watching the paper .. on a stack of similar papers in the bucket.

Goldenblade has to think about that. "A book on where you might find a book?" she asks. "I guess it makes sense." She considers why such a book might be hard to find, and she quickly suggests, "Obviously, they did not want such knowledge falling into the /wrong/ hands?" No saying who 'they' might be. "That would be terrible." She seems amused at June's much more likely interpretation. "I suppose that's possible," she allows. "But yes, the importance of bits of knowledge has changed through the ages."

"I don't know," Uta mumbles at Goldenblade. "But remember it's the Tower of Mages we're talking about. Those people are... hm. Let's say that the information they hold is... hm." She turns to June. "Some people also collect information for their own use and do not like to share. As you might have guessed by now, I am not one of those."

    June looks disapointed when nothing seems to happen "Okay we'll add the lead salts..." she says in Sindarin "Salt gives another tie to the ocean, lead gives us a darker stain." she gets out a mortar and pestle to crush up a small pinch of metalic salts from a pouch into a fine powder that she adds to her ink plate to start mixing. "Either of you come across any spell scrolls? Grimoires? Carvings or pages of magic?" she asks in Japanese as she keeps working.

Goldenblade peers at Uta, and asks, "So, you know this book is in this Tower of Mages? Or they know where it is? Can you not raid it? Or sneak in somehow?" She grew up with the commando raids of WW2 being the biggest thing in action/adventure. She hrms to June, thinks for a moment, checks her inventory. "Closest I have is this Mark of the Burning One," she explains, showing a disk of carved bvine with the image of a woman in heavy armor, her form hidden by flames. "Or this..." She holds up an Informational Pamphlet.

"Well, I know Kita has a spellbook, although I'm not sure if that one has embedded magic or it's just an inert collection of magic artes," Uta mentions, sill scanning the book. Page turn. "Then there was that Disturbing Page from the tomb mission for the Hunters' Guild..."

"...And then there's all those runes in the dungeons... I don't know if they count..."

"Sneaking into the Tower of Mages? HA! No, actually, Hobus is long dead. That's what makes things tricky, and calls for so much historical research. Some of his descendants are still around in Ninetails, the best course of action, at the moment, is trying to find leads to one of them..."

    June nods her head "Well come across any magical writings and I'll be happy to take it off your hands. I'll have to hunt through the tomb quests again haven't gotten anything like that yet so I'm sure it's still out there somewhere." she taps her lips and then writes out another ofuda. "I'll figure this out yet."

Goldenblade has no idea about Kita or spellbooks, but nods about the fellow being dead, which leads her instantly to, "Why don't you have Setsuna summon him up, then? He's all into the dead people business, right?" She says to June, "If come across anything, I'll let you know."

"...I'm not even sure one can do that? I'll have to ask. Besides-", Uta turns another page. Hyperspeed scanning resumes. Wait, she's read all those pages and hasn't taken a single note? "-anything undead, up to now, has tried to kill us, sooooo... uh... I might ask, but /very/ cautiously." To June, "If you don't find it, let me know, maybe we can arrange something."

    June nods and works meticulously wto get just the right strokes where they should be, paying attention to stroke order, direction. Each little detail is almost obsessed over, as seen by June not speaking or looking up, just working through the strokes she's writing.

Goldenblade has no idea about any of the undead business, though she admits, "In the movies, it always ends badly, too. So who knows?" She shrugs, peering over to June. The attention to detail is pretty intense. "That reminds me, I came to see if I could find anything on a certain sword form..."