I apologize in advance if there are some errors in the last part, it's 11:30 PM and I don't know what I'm doing anymore.
That said, this was a fun chapter to write, hope it's also a fun one to read~
Enjoy~
- Episode 4 Another: Cool Ace -
(
BGM - A fairy fine Morning)
There was a certain sound that could only be heard once a day in the Library.
One could never be sure where the sound would occur, or when, only that it occurred at all was a certainty.
If anyone had been in the cooking book section right now, between the second and third rows of shelves, around where the compendium of baking-books could be found, they would have heard the sound.
It went like this:
*briiiinsmashshufflafwomp*
It was a sound that consisted of five parts, and it was produced by a peculiar little creature, hidden in a small fort made of books on one of the shelves.
First,
*briiiing*, the sound of an alarm clock, cut short by the impact of a small fist,
*smash*. Then one of the books was moved aside like a sliding door and the inhabitant of the fort came crawling out half-asleep,
*shuffle*, only to fall off the edge of the shelf immediately.
The creature flapped its wings frantically to break the fall,
*flap*, but too late. With a final
*fwomp* it crashed onto the floor of the Library.
A small girl with long blue hair lay sprawled out on the floor, frosty wings sprouting from her back. The girl was an elemental fairy, and one of the inhabitants of the Library.
No one knew exactly where she came from, and how long she had already been living in the Library. There was speculation that she had lived in the catacombs below PSL before the current Library was even built, a dangerous place infested with papergators and other creatures right out of literary nightmares. Ruro meanwhile suspected that the girl had been one of the many fairies that had built the Library under her order some years ago, and that she simply had taken a liking to the place and decided to stay.
The fairy herself refused to answer which story was the truth, just as she refused to tell anything about her past at all. The only thing she gave the Librarians when they found her for the first time was a name: Iced Fairy.
Since then Iced had turned out to be an enthusiastic reader, bordering on the fanatic at times. She would spend the days wandering around the halls, gathering books left and right and carry them with her. Once she couldn?t hold any more books, she would choose a shelf and start building a book-fort, in which she then spent the rest of the day reading all the books she had brought with her, until she fell asleep. She repeated this procedure every single day, always starting from the *briiiinsmashshufflafwomp*. In doing so she also kept the Librarians busy, who had to search out all the books Iced moved around, and put them on the right shelves again once the little fairy was done reading.
Iced groaned as she picked herself off the floor. She adjusted her clothes and hair, then suddenly stopped right in the middle of binding her hair into a ponytail.
?It?s quiet, too quiet!? the fairy mumbled.
A library is, of course, supposed to be a quiet place, and this held true even for PSL. But what Iced experienced right now was another kind of silence.
Usually silence in the Library meant the absence of loud talking. There were still the sounds of people walking around, the rustling of paper as books were picked up and looked through, and occasionally the shrieks of the Librarians as Ruro went around flipping their skirts.
None of those sounds were present now though. The only thing Iced could hear was the wind, and as she moved from her position she found the source: A large hole in the ceiling, and beneath it on the ground an open book freed from its chains, all of its pages ripped out.
?Ruro?? Iced shouted.
No response.
?Roukan? Esifex? Anyone??
Without waiting for an answer, the fairy flapped her wings and soared off towards the front of the Library, skillfully weaving her way through the shelves. As she reached the lobby at the entrance of PSL, she made a sharp turn to the left and aimed for an inconspicuous door located there: the door to the Librarian?s living quarters.
Not bothering with such trivial things like doorknobs Iced used the full air-velocity of an unladen fairy and smashed through the door. She and the now unhinged door flew into the Library?s kitchen with a loud crash. Flapping her wings rapidly the fairy managed to stop herself and take a look at the room. There were remains of breakfast on the table, so the Librarians must at least have been here not too long ago.
Iced was about to go and search the private rooms adjacent to the kitchen, when she noticed something. In the middle of the table laid something unusual.
?A page?? Iced thought to herself.
?No, a letter!?She flew closer to examine the mysterious notice, only to find out it was, in fact, addressed to her.
?Dear Iced,? she read.
?since I could not find you in time, and we have to leave right away, I leave you this message. I know you will come here and find it eventually, don?t think I didn?t notice the missing food in the freezer.?Iced twitched as if someone had hit her. Plans to pin the crimes she was accused of on someone else were starting to form inside her head. Where were the murder mystery books located again?
?More importantly though, I have an order for you. We are on an important mission to rescue the lovely sugary Donut from the hands gnarly claws of the evil Moerin. I, Magical★Samurai Ruro-tan, shall lead the Magical★Librarian Squad into this fight! And you, dear Iced, shall be part of this great quest!?Iced noticed that the handwriting was getting more erratic, Ruro had either been in a hurry, or extremely excited, when she had written this part.
?There is a formidable foe for you in Moerin?s forces: When Donut was kidnapped this girl commanded a wooden robot. I have no doubts that I could take it down with my blades alone, of course, but a just leader shares with her subordinates! So I shall give to you our ultimate weapon, I know you will be able to make excellent use of it given your ability. Once you are ready, take the sword I have left you. It is one of mine, and it shall point you the way to its master, to me.?The fairy turned her gaze to the side, where she found a sheathed sword hanging neatly from one of the chairs.
?Now go, Iced, and fight with us, for Justice!?Iced read the rest of the latter. It contained a set of short, explanations and instructions regarding the ?ultimate weapon? Ruro had mentioned.
And there, written in another handwriting, was a small note scribbled in the bottom corner of the page:
?Also, bring that damn book so we can grab the pages and end this madness! ? Chaore?Iced frowned at this line.
Book? Which one?
There were a lot of books in the Library, that was its purpose after all.
She stared at the note in silence for a while, then something clicked in her mind: She remembered the empty book she had passed on the way here.
Iced contemplated her situation.
She enjoyed her calm days of reading one book after another, fighting was not her area of expertise. But it seemed like her intervention was inevitable this time, if she wanted things to go back to normal.
The fairy let out a small sigh, then she grabbed the sword Ruro had left her, as well as the letter, and flew out into the lobby again. She made her way back to the open book and slowly reached out to it.
Iced closed her eyes in anticipation as she touched the book, but nothing happened.
?Huh?? she let out a sound of surprise. ?Must be because the pages are missing??
With those words, she grabbed the empty cover and stuffed it into her skirt, which she had personally modified to be capable of holding numerous books.
Iced pulled out the letter again, checking the instructions Ruro had written down for her.
?1. Pull the lever under the reception desk?Without hesitation the fairy fluttered over to the reception desk in the lobby, and crawled under it. It took her a bit of searching to find a loose wooden panel hidden in the dark under the desk. Under it was a lever that the small girl pulled down with all her might.
Behind her she heard mechanical sounds and she turned around just in time to catch the wall behind the desk sliding to the side and exposing a stairway downwards.
Iced looked at the stairs skeptically. The Library did not have a basement, so those stairs could only lead to the catacombs. Iced was not keen on any encounters with papergators or doberpoems, who considered fairies to be an excellent meal at any time of the day, so she was extremely cautious as she set foot on the stairs.
However, she soon noticed she would have to correct some of her assumptions about the Library.
The stairs she was climbing down right now were new and shiny, not old like the ones that led to the catacombs. The same was true for the walls around her, which seemed to have been constructed around the same time as the Library itself.
In other words: The Library did in fact have a basement, only that no one knew about it, except Ruro.
As soon as she reached the end of the stairs and opened the door she found there, she also understood why. Iced looked at the second point of the instructions again:
?2. Go to the Command Center?There was no word more fitting for the room the fairy had entered. She stood in a round room equipped with numerous mechanisms that she did not know the purpose of. It was almost like something she would read about in a science fiction book, were it not for the lack of fancy modern electronics. Instead, Iced saw pumps and pipes, copper cogs, iron levers with wooden knobs on them, all arranged around a big, comfortable-looking armchair in the middle of the room. And there, on the wall in front of the chair, was the biggest book Iced had ever seen.
Her eyes sparkled as she noticed it, she had often dreamt about books of such enormous size. The book was mounted on the wall, opened right in the middle so that one could look directly at the large pages when sitting in the chair. However, to Iced?s surprise, the pages were completely empty.
Would she have to use those mechanisms to read it? She glanced at the letter again.
?3. Grab the Origami-Hammer and the keys, fetch a Sealed Book
4. Put the book in the Magic Converter?Iced looked around the room, and spotted what could only be the Converter Ruro was talking about.
Behind the chair stood a large metal sphere held in place by numerous pipes that led into the ground underneath it. It almost looked like a metallic spider, with a hatch on its front, and next to the hatch, a small hammer and a key-ring.
Iced grabbed the hammer, which she assumed was the Origami-Hammer. Inspecting it closely she noticed it was skillfully folded out of a single sheet of paper. She also felt a strong magic infused in the hammer.
Now the girl had to find a Sealed Book. She remembered there had been some commotion recently surrounding one of those highly dangerous works of literature, somewhere in the so-called NSFW-section of the Library. The ruckus the Librarians had made back then had ruined her day of reading gardening-books.
Iced grabbed the keys and flew off towards the NSFW-section, and using her fairy-senses she quickly found a large concentration of magic within the area. As she closed in on it she could already hear the rattling of the chains that the book was bound with.
?Hiyaaa!?
Without stopping once Iced flew around the corner and dashed towards the book, the hammer raised high above her head. As soon as she reached the Sealed Book, she swung the hammer down.
*Bonk*Silence. The book that had been struggling until a moment ago was now completely still, giving the impression of a perfectly normal, albeit rather large, almanac.
?I just knocked out a book?? Iced thought to herself.
There was no time to waste, so the fairy pulled out the keys and opened the chains that confined the book to its pedestal, while leaving those locked that kept the book itself from opening. Once she was done, she grabbed the book by the chains and carried it off back towards the Command Center.
Once there, Iced opened the hatch on the Converter and threw the Sealed Book into its depths with a groan.
?Phew, that was heavy?, the fairy sighed. ?Now what next??
?5. Hit the Main Activation Switch?That was the kind of instruction Iced liked, in books something like this always promised entertaining results. She looked around and her gaze found a large button right below the giant book on the wall. The fairy squealed as she saw the button?s color: Red.
Her frosty wings fluttering happily, Iced ran over to the button and smashed her small fist down on it.
At once the Magic Converter awoke. It was filled with a blue light as the machine started sucking out the enormous amounts of magic that the Sealed Book was holding. Then one by one, the pipes all around the machine lit up as the light flowed through them. Pumps started to move and cogs started turning, and finally the ground beneath Iced?s feet began to shake violently.
The little fairy barely managed to stay on her feet and immediately flew to the safety of the chair in the middle of the room.
As she seated herself, Iced was caught by surprise again: The large book on the wall was glowing blue as well. As she watched expectantly, the glow faded and the pages were now completely black. However, that only lasted for a few moments, as the shaking grew stronger and suddenly the darkness on the pages got pushed away by bright colors. Iced let out a groan and shielded her eyes at the sudden light from the book. She squinted to see what was happening, only to gasp a second later.
What the book in front of the girl showed, was the world outside the Library. She had read about this in a book, the author had called it a ?screen? there, a device to monitor the outside without any windows.
After what felt like an eternity, the shaking stopped, and Iced wondered just what she was supposed to do now. She looked at the letter again.
?6. To the Rooftops!?Well, that was not really helpful. The fairy looked around the room again, trying to find anything that could give her a clue as to what exactly just happened. Then her eyes stopped on the screen-book in front of her.
?It may be a strange device, but it?s also a book, so?? she thought.
The girl quickly flew over to the large book and touched it without hesitation. Immediately a wave of thoughts and information washed through Iced?s mind. She swayed for a moment, but quickly regained her composure.
Now she knew why Ruro had given her of all people this mission: Iced had a special ability regarding books, one that allowed her alone to execute Ruro?s plans.
Words hold power, this was a universal truth, and books, as accumulations of words, consequently were compressed power, confined between leather covers. For most books the power they held was neglectable.
However, Iced was different. She only needed to touch a book to awaken its latent magical powers, which were always dependent on the content of the book. When Iced touched a book about cooking, her character would turn to that of a snobbish five-star cook, and she would be capable of preparing the most exquisite meals. When she touched a detective novel her mind grew a hundred times sharper and she developed a sudden craving for smoking a pipe. All of those changes disappeared the moment she let go off the book, while general knowledge about the content written in the book remained in her memory. She called this ability ?Speed-Reading?, though she preferred to experience books the traditional way, reading them at a normal pace.
This was the ability Iced had used just now when she had touched the large book. At once she had gained knowledge about the construction of the whole construction of the mechanism she had activated, and while she had forgotten most of the details again, she knew her general situation:
The ultimate weapon of PSL was not something she could take with her.
It was the Library itself.
When she had activated the Converter, it had begun to fuel a giant contraption, and the Library had taken on a new form. The parts of the building had shifted, transformed and rearranged themselves, until they had reached the current form: A giant robot.
The room where Iced was located, which had formerly been underground, was now the highest point of the robot, forming its head, with the book-screen serving as the eyes. The Library was standing on two legs and had grown two arms that ended in gigantic fists. And from its back, the robot sprouted four large wings, made from magically infused paper that would be capable of withstanding fire, water and most other forms of damage with ease.
Iced let herself sink into the command chair and took a deep breath. This was beyond everything she had expected when she had found Ruro?s letter earlier. But it was too late to go back now. She had awoken the sleeping giant, and there was only one way to go: Forward.
Not like she had any idea how to safely transform this thing back again anyway.
The fairy stood up again and flew out of the room. There was something she would have to do before leaving. She navigated her way through the Library, noticing in gravity inside the Library seemed to have changed as well, since not a single book had fallen from its place.
The girl checked around different sections of the library, occasionally grabbing a book and stuffing it away somewhere in her clothes.
Finally, Iced rushed over to the science fiction section, and towards one specific shelf. Sliding her finger along the spines of the books, she searched for something specific. When she finally found it and pulled it from the shelf, her ability immediately took effect. The fairy?s calm face changed into a wide grin, and her wings started flapping faster in excitement.
She had kept this one for last, since she had suspected that once the character-change took effect she would not have cared about gathering the other books anymore.
The title of the book was: ?Compendium of Mecha Pilots"
?I?m gonna beat those bastards up! They think they can stop me? Not as long as I have this machine!? Iced screamed through the empty Library as she made her way back to the Command Center.
Once there she swung herself into the chair and, without a moment of hesitation, grabbed the controls in front of her. One pull of a lever later the Library-turned-robot powerfully beat its wings, at first slowly, then faster and faster. At the same time it started running, the earth shaking under its feet. And then, with a final jump, the robot took to the air, gliding away towards the place where the Librarians were fighting against the forces of Moerin.
?Iced? no... Cool Ace, moving out! I?m coming to get you, suckers!?
