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?"

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[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.