18 Apocalypse Avenue, Thursday Afternoon

[agentthepaper]

After fleeing the library, Yomiko dashed home and into her basement apartment...which had an inch of water and rising on the floor. "Oh, no" she moaned, hurrying to move a few stacks of books off the floor onto her bed. "Oh, I have to get them out of here." She ran back upstairs carrying an armload of books and called desperately, "Help! Oh, please help! Anyone?"

Comments

[jarodpretends.livejournal.com]

"Yomiko?" Jarod asked, hurrying down the stairs, "What's wrong?" And then he hit the floor with a splash. "Never mind. How can I help?"

[agentthepaper]

Yomiko flailed, which was kind of a dangerous movement as she was kind of still carrying her books. "Books! Save the books! Aiee!"

[jarodpretends.livejournal.com]

Jarod grabbed a large armful of books. "Okay, we'll put these in the living room, and then move on to the kitchen if there's not enough room there." He started climbing up the stairs.

[agentthepaper]

"Okay!" Yomiko called, and attempted to gather more books. Then she realized she couldn't see over the ones she already had, so this might not work.

[jarodpretends.livejournal.com]

"We'll make as many trips as necessary," he promised from the top of the stairs, "and I don't have anything to do until later. They'll be safe, Yomiko, I promise."

[agentthepaper]

Yomiko made a slightly strangled sound that might have been agreement, scurried up the stairs, put her burden down on the nearest flat surface that presented itself, then dashed back downstairs. "I knew I should have left them in storage!" Well, no, she'd known nothing of the time, but rational thought and Yomiko were miles apart.

[jarodpretends.livejournal.com]

Jarod set his books on the couch and headed back downstairs after Yomiko. "We didn't expect nearly this much rain," he said, picking up another load and carrying it upstairs, then clomping back downstairs to repeat the process, "otherwise I would have suggested sandbags."

[agentthepaper]

That gave Yomiko pause. "Is it too late for...no, books now, sand later." She could do a lot of things with paper, it was true, but she wasn't so good at making it waterproof. It was, after all, still paper.

[jarodpretends.livejournal.com]

"Yes, by all means, let's save the books," Jarod agreed. Books were important, and Yomiko seemed very attached to hers. He carried an extra large load up the stairs, then came back down for another load, and wondered idly if he'd be able to walk the next day, after all the upping and downing and carrying. It wasn't like the books were light, either. "Is there anything else in particular that you want saved?"

[agentthepaper]

"No, everything else I can replace," Yomiko said. "Some of these are. Well. Not replaceable."

[jarodpretends.livejournal.com]

"Which section?" Jarod asked, wanting to save those first.

[agentthepaper]

It was cute that Jarod thought Yomiko had organization. "Um."

[jarodpretends.livejournal.com]

"Uh...huh," Jarod went back to carrying large loads of books upstairs.

[agentthepaper]

"Yeah. Um. Don't hurt yourself!" Yomiko called after Jarod. Not everyone had as much experience carrying large amounts of books as she did.

[jarodpretends.livejournal.com]

Jarod did not, in fact, have experience carrying large amounts of books. However, he was a fit 19 year old guy and used to carrying boxes at Caritas and the Sin, so it wasn't so bad. "I'll be careful. You too, though."

[blossomsofice.livejournal.com]

In the living room, Sakura was busy tinkering with her Scope Shot when she heard the call for help. Briefly, she wondered if it was a real cause for alarm; people panicked so easily.

Following the voice, she found Yomiko with an armload of books. "Help with what?"

[agentthepaper]

"My books! The basement! It floods!" Yomiko was nothing like coherent at this moment. Panic did this to her. "They'll be ruined!"

[blossomsofice.livejournal.com]

"The basement is flooding?" Luckily Sakura had some experience in picking the sense out of incoherence, thanks to Natsuki. "You have rare books down there, don't you?"

[agentthepaper]

More flailing. "Yes! They'll be ruined!"

[blossomsofice.livejournal.com]

Rare books? That was all Sakura needed to hear. Boots and all, she went plunging down the stairs into the basement to retrieve an armload of books.

Floating up the stairs came the question, "Why is the water level getting so high?!?"

[agentthepaper]

Yomiko followed her back down for another load. "Because it's a basement? I don't know!"

[blossomsofice.livejournal.com]

"It isn't normal for this much rain to be falling here, is it?" asked Sakura, who'd retrieved a pair of SGS lockbox cards from her jacket pockets and had opened them up, loading books into them -- convenient technology, that enlarged to accommodate its contents, really. Privately, she thought that Yomiko could have at least taken the risk of flooding into consideration when electing to store valuable books in a basement, but that wasn't a productive thing to say aloud, so she kept loading books into the boxes.

[agentthepaper]

"No, I don't think so. And I thought the house was high enough it wouldn't flood, but I'm not an engineer or whatever. Oooh, what are those?" They looked like they could come in really handy.

[blossomsofice.livejournal.com]

"Secure collection boxes," explained Sakura, quite unmindful of the water lapping up around her boots as she started in on the second box -- the first was on the verge of being too heavy to carry. "Useful in my line of work, for any artifacts we retrieve."

[agentthepaper]

"Really?" Yomiko gathered up another armload of tomes as she talked. "I do some, er, side work in rare book retrieval. Sometimes we have...problems." Like clones trying to steal her book to cause mass suicides. "Something like that would come in handy."

[blossomsofice.livejournal.com]

Sakura nodded sagely; she was very familiar with the kind of problems that came with retrieving certain objects. "They are very useful," she agreed, filling the second box as quickly but neatly as she could. "Especially the way they change size. They're like anthropological Pokeballs!"

[agentthepaper]

"Who makes them? My employers might be interested." Yes, but can I take them on archaeologial adventures?

[blossomsofice.livejournal.com]

"The foundation I work for, Search Guard Successor. Andrew Hartford was totally buying equipment from us." Sakura examined one of the more valuable-looking volumes in her hands OMG I is evil bookmodder for a moment, then put it into the box. "If you work with rare books, it's possible they might be accommodating."

[agentthepaper]

Yomiko started up the stairs, calling over her shoulder, "What kind of containment do they have?"

[blossomsofice.livejournal.com]

"Enough to transport an enchanted crossbow capable of leveling skyscrapers without a risk factor of more than 1.4 percent," Sakura said, following her up with the first of the two boxes. "I calculated that myself."

[agentthepaper]

Yomiko paused for breath in the living room. "What about...what about keeping people out?"

[blossomsofice.livejournal.com]

Sakura put the box down and immediately turned to go back for the second one. "They can be keyed to specific people's fingerprints, if that's what you're wondering," she called up the stairs.

[agentthepaper]

"Not exactly," Yomiko muttered before following Sakura back down the stairs.

[blossomsofice.livejournal.com]

Sakura felt around in her pocket when she got to the bottom of the stairs, but she only had one more of the lockbox cards on her. "I think the water level may be rising a little faster."

[agentthepaper]

"I think it'll only take a few more trips," Yomiko told her as she splashed across the floor to gather up another load of books. "Let's say, hypothetically, someone could move through solid matter." A shadow briefly crossed her expression at the thought of Nancy.

[blossomsofice.livejournal.com]

Sakura did have to stop to think about that one. "I've never had to deal with that situation before," she admitted, and suddenly her risk-factor analysis of the lockboxes underwent a dramatic shift. "It's possible they could be adapted, though."

[agentthepaper]

"Yeah, see, I have problems like that," Yomiko told her.

[outofbrooklyn.livejournal.com]

There was yelling. Yelling generally warranted investigation, so Aiden went downstairs to see what was going on.

"You okay down here?" Then she saw the water covering the floor. "Ah, that goddamn water again," she muttered.

[agentthepaper]

"The books!" Yomiko flailed.

[outofbrooklyn.livejournal.com]

"Books, plus water equals bad. Got it," Aiden nodded immediately heading to a low level bookshelf, figuring those should be the first to be moved.

"Got any preference as t' where you want 'em?" she asked, piling them on her arm.

[agentthepaper]

"Just, anywhere dry. And I guess where they won't be in the way."

[outofbrooklyn.livejournal.com]

"Anywhere, it is," Aiden agreed balancing one last book on the top of her pile. "Had t' do this sorta thing with all mine in the office this mornin'. Freak weather better get itself sorted out soon."

[agentthepaper]

"Yeah," Yomiko agreed, "but then when the basement dries out I have to move them all back down there." At least she could do so in a more leisurely fashion.

[outofbrooklyn.livejournal.com]

"I'd be happy t' help you with that, when the time comes," Aiden offered as she started lumping the stack of books up the flight of stairs. "Jus' ask."

[visor-laforge.livejournal.com]

Geordi heard someone calling for help and 'he' came down, "how can I help?" he asked.

[agentthepaper]

"Who are you?" Yomiko asked, and then she shook herself. "Doesn't matter. Grab some books, take them upstairs. Thank you!"

[visor-laforge.livejournal.com]

"I'm Geordi LaForge," Geordi said as he started moving books to somewhere dry, "I'm normally a man though," he added.

[agentthepaper]

"...okay," Yomiko said, because she really didn't care right now. It wasn't the strangest thing she'd seen, and she could always freak out later.