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Empty Vessels Make The Loudest Sound; [open]
Topic Started: Apr 20 2012, 09:01 PM (783 Views)
Czernobog
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Best Influence.
Conan hated free periods, especially because the library's repairs weren't yet complete.

Translucent plastic hung from the ceiling blocking off the former computer lab. Given that much of it was still functional, and the structure was still about as sound as it had been, the library was still open, and operating at roughly 60% capacity.

The real problem was listening to the students.

Ever since the incident in the park, they had all been talking to one another about the supposed "magic people" among them. Freakish individuals with amazing powers. Many of these freakish individuals passed through his library every day. But Conan only saw two when he last glanced up -- the Gonzo Journalist, who was thumbing through a large dictionary, presumably looking up foreign cursewords, and the mumbling blacksmith, who was sketching something in a notebook -- though there were doubtless others in the room.

Conan sat at his desk, thumbing through a notebook he had found wedged behind a drawer, apparently left by his predecessor, but his mind just slid over the words:

"Day seven hundred and eight. Still no sign of golden bug. I see the Metal Peacock God in my dreams. Buy more toilet paper. Finer ply than current brand necessary. All glory to the self-consuming fire. Double check the William Blake. Something there."

It was all gibberish and grocery lists. More than two thousand days of it from the look of things. Strange enough that Conan's mind turned it to white noise and focused instead on the chatter of the students, those little monsters that were so adept at disorganizing his library.

"So I heard that it was some kind of accident. A movie was being filmed, but the permits were done wrong, so people weren't cleared away before the special effects started..."

"Bullshit. It was aliens."

"Aliens?"

"Yeah, there were flying machines involved, weren't there?"

"Uh....helicopters, dude. Not UFOs."

"Okay, so you're saying categorically that it wasn't aliens?"

"N...no? I mean, that's not, like, the first option. That's tenth or eleventh on the list."

"So you're saying it could be aliens."

"I hate you."

A third voice, a girl's, joined the two, "No, no. It was done by people. They turned into monsters...one of them was a girl in my homeroom. I talked to someone who was there...and she said that there were other people who showed up later. All of them students at this school."

"Bullshit," the xenophile said, "there's no way that so many of the students here could be aliens."

"Shut up, Kenji," the skeptic said, "Seriously, you're like a broken goddamn record."

"What? Is that any stranger than any of the things we've seen lately?"
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RickenbackersAllTheWay
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birb was here scruffs is a loser
Torako walked into the library, popping the last truffle from her box into her mouth. She chucked the box into a nearby garbage can, and stepped over to Conan.

"Those kids get the craziest ideas, huh? What with the aliens blowing parks now."
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Czernobog
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Best Influence.
"Nothing but bullshitting high school students," Conan said, glancing up from the notebook, "who knows what really happened. Those three theories -- magic people, special effects accident, and...'other' -- are what most people are talking about."

Conan flipped a page.

"Day eight hundred and eleven," he read aloud, "woke up at four in the morning to sit on the roof of apartment building. Receiving important radio signals from Saturn. Kilometers-long corpse floating in the atmosphere of ringed gas giant...this...this is the diary of a crazy person."

He closed up the notebook, and glanced up at the girl.

"Need help with something? Or have you been listening in on odd rumors, too?"

"It was hallucinogens in the water supply!" a new voice claimed emphatically, a newcomer to the group of gossips, "I saw a barrel with a warning label on it fall out of a Nanjo Heavy Industries truck."
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UserShadow7989
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"The cause doesn't matter, just so long as the one responsible owns up to it and the people who were hurt can get back to their lives." A blond girl approached the counter, face neutral and arms full of books. "I was hoping to read these here, but I can't concentrate on anything while they're going on and on like this." She smiled bitterly.

"Sure, I admit I'm curious, but all these theories are just circular at best and crazy at the worst. We'd need some real evidence before it's worth talking about." Noriko shook her head. "Sorry, now I'm going on about it, aren't I? How are you both doing?"
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Supnitle
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Monika Apologist

Kiyoko walked up to the counter, carrying a couple of books. If one looked closely, they appeared to be guides on how to persuade people to get therapy and other various manuals on family relations. She looked significantly less perky than usual, but still kept a smile on her face.

She glanced at the group loudly discussing the incident in the park. It worried her too, but they were in a library! They could at least have the decency to stay quiet. She turned to see Conan, a relatively familiar face. She looked at the other two girls at the counter, nodding in agreement. "At the very least, they could discuss this elsewhere. They're kind of in a library."

Kiyoko turned back to Conan. "... Couldn't you do something? I thought it was against the rules to be too loud."
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Icarael
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Robespierre Did Nothing Wrong
"I heard about the accident." Masahiro approached the librarian, putting down a clear plastic folder and a couple of books on the counter. "Most unfortunate, that." The names of Herbert Spencer and Aleister Crowley stood out among the books he'd selected: the library at Taiyoutono was surprisingly well-stocked in occult lore and sociology texts.

In the background, the students' discussion continued. He would have dismissed most of the theories he overheard as silly gossip, but a few of them mentioned "magic beings" of some sort-- whether they were aliens or not seemed to be a point of contention-- and they lined up very neatly with the whole "Power" he'd heard being invoked the other day at the bank robbery.

He rubbed at the bruise on his cheek, wincing at the pain. Three days later, it had puffed half his face up and turned a very bright shade of purple. A lot of his students had noticed it, though few dared to say anything. Ah, the trouble of finding out the truth.

"The authorities say it was a gas leak," Soichiro continued. He sounded as if he himself didn't quite buy what he was saying. "It would have been a big one, to hurt that many people."
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RickenbackersAllTheWay
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birb was here scruffs is a loser
"Well, better than nothing, I suppose. At least they aren't acting on it. Although, I do agree on shushing them." stated Torako. "We really don't know what the cause was, yeah."

"Maybe I do... I really have no idea. This is all confusing. Rumors of some sort of fight have flown around... Some about people who look like others I know..."
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Czernobog
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Best Influence.
Conan didn't address the issue of the rumor-mongers first hand. Instead, he began to check out the books that Kiyoko, Masahiro, and Noriko brought up to him.

"Dude, we're going to get kicked out," the skeptic said.

"It's a conspiracy. The possessed have penetrated every level of government," the girl said.

"It's just a school library," the skeptic said, a bit more loudly, his voice plaintive.

Conan set down Noriko's first, a perfectly square pile in front of the girl, a receipt with the due date on top.

"I don't see how aliens could possess someone. Now, maybe some kind of brain slug..."

As Conan worked through the pile that Kiyoko had brought up, he ground his teeth together.

"Do you think you could shut up, please?" he said, aiming his attention at the gossiping teenagers, "this is a library, so...maybe just shut the hell up?"

The three of them said nothing for a long moment, as Conan squared away Kiyoko's pile and began to print off the due slip.

"I think he's an ogre, or something," the girl said to the alien conspiracy theorist, "only explanation."
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UserShadow7989
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Noriko sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose. The rumors were piling on and becoming less and less sane all the while. Unable to stand it anymore, she glanced over her shoulder at the arguing students. "You realize if you talk somewhere else you won't have to worry about being kicked out, right?" She paused, raising an eyebrow. "Why did you pick the library to do this in the first place?"

The teen shook her head. "Anyways, when investigating, you need to consider the mundane first. Mundane causes are the most common, and easier to prove or disprove. Start with why it couldn't be a gas leak before going into how it could be aliens. Why it couldn't be that you're annoying a librarian by breaking the rules in his place of business before why he could be an ogre." She did her best to not sound condescending during the short bit of advice, but an amused grin wormed its way out at the last comment.

Deciding to end it there before she became a part of the problem, Noriko accepted her books with a quiet thanks. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made everything better. The teacher's comment got a shrug from the teen. "I don't think it was a gas leak. Something potent enough to do what it did would have affected more than just the park. The more likely scenario is some yakuza tried to settle a turf war using some chemical weapons and explosives."

Right after the words left her mouth the teen cringed, realizing she had instantly jumped into the subject despite her comments. "Cripes, I need a distraction from all this."
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Supnitle
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Monika Apologist

Kiyoko waited patiently for Conan to finish checking out the books and printing out the receipt. The cause of the park incident, she was almost completely sure, were persona users fighting, but Kiyoko didn't want to say it out loud, both due to hypocrisy and personal discomfort with the issue.

Instead, she decided to talk with conan. She looked up, way up, at the giant. "Are you doing okay, Conan-san?" She asked, whispering.
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