"Report from survey team 8, they report a cliche spoted in section TEGAS-139231, another one in section TEGAB-139301, and a thesauri nest in section TAACA-159390."
Taking a pair of red cliche stickers and a green thesaurus sticker, I pined them onto the gigantic map currently covering the floor in the appropriate areas as mentioned in the report. Standing up, I surveyed the seemingly random mass of colors on the map.
"What's going on?" I muttered to myself. The thesauri population concentration and spreads are a bit high near the areas of L-space close to the TFF Archive, but it's nothing to be alarmed about. The cliche population on the other hand...
"Is it normal for that part to look like a Christmas decoration?" Another voice spoke up.
"No, it's very much not normal, that's the problem," I responded before registering the familiar voice. I raised my head. "Patchy?"
And saw double. Two Patchoulis? Does she have a twin that she never told me about? I rubbed my eyes and blinked away the fog that seemed to be in my eyes. No, wait, that's just Ayase. Why did I think she was Patchy anyways? Must be the hair...
"Wait, what are you doing here Patchy? Shouldn't you be guarding your library from that Black-White rat you've been talking about?"
"I chased Marisa off just last night, so she's probably not going to be coming back for a week or so at least. Since she's pretty much the only rat that sneaks in regularly, it's fine if I just leave Koakuma to clean up. Plus, Flandre's loose again, so I'm visiting you for a bit."
"In any case," interrupted Ayase, "I believe you were talking about the mass of red on the map."
"Ah, yes," I responded, shifting into what I call lecture mode, "The red stickers you see represent cliches, and the green are thesauri nests. As seasoned librarians, both of you should be quite familiar with both."
"Now, the green spread isn't too worrying. Thesauri are naturally attracted to the high word variation and lack of repetition that most high quality works contain, and the TFF archives contains quite a bit of that. It's something we've been dealing with since long before the war, nothing to worry about."
"The cliches though, those are worrisome. With the usual high quality that TFF is known for, cliches really don't have much of a chance to spawn within a thousand or so shelves of the Archive, so usually we might see a dozen or so at most within any one week period, and they usually either die out or move on to areas of lower quality like FF.net within a month at most. But this, it almost looks like they've been moved here..."
Ayase blinked, "the YAOI perhaps? I remember them setting cliches, bookworms, and other creatures of L-space against us before. Maybe they're just doing it on a higher level now?"
"That's not very likely though," I shook my head, "the YAOI were never able to control them. What they did was sending dozens of their's to act as living bait to lure a creature to our location. The last time they sent a cliche against us took the sacrifice of hundreds of their librarians. For there to be this many cliches, I doubt even the YAOI have that much bodies to spare."
Indeed, it's a well documented fact that the quantity and quality of a library's archives directly correlates with that of it's librarians. Thus, the YAOI libraries can churn out L-space worthy librarians like they do the sludge they fill their libraries with. Thankfully, the quality of those librarians are never much better than sludge either, so they've never posed much of a threat against a well-trained TFF librarian nowadays. The only real power the YAOI have in L-space are the various dangerous creatures of L-space that they've lured into the paths of unsuspecting TFF librarians and the TFF librarians that they've managed to turn...
"Sir, urgent message from T&I!" A new arrival, a messenger, spoke, quietly of course. "It's a transcript detailing intelligence from prisoner SH-14512."
Well, speak of the devil... A quick glance told me that it had gotten Ayase's attention too. SH-14512: Saotome, Haruna. She, along with Miyazaki and Ayase, was one of the new recruits brought in and mentored by Albireo Imma after the initial attack from the YAOI librarians. The three of them were inseparable friends and comrades, and were slated to become one of the top research and survey teams in the force. Unfortunately, barely a month after they were officially recognized as an independent research and survey team, Saotome became one of the first to encounter the surprise YAOI novel traps. She switched sides only a few days after the incident, and was a consistant danger to various teams spread across L-space for years. Then, a month ago, we managed to trap her between three separate teams through complete accident, and after a long and arduous battle that sent over a dozen of the best librarians on our side to therapy, we had finally managed to capture her.
Grasping the folded message with my hand, I snapped it open with a practiced twitch of my wrist, and begun speed reading through it, Readman style. I breathed in sharply at the news, so that's why... Quickly folding it back up with yet another practiced twitch of the wrist, I put it into one of the many subspace pockets that all librarians have before Ayase or Patchy could see the contents of the message, and started folding up the map, struggling all the while to keep my face neutral.
"Bad?"
Heh, that's Patchy I guess. As usual, she saw right through me.
I sighed. "Ayase, go get Imma. Patchy, we're going to see The Librarian. I'm calling a general meeting."
Taking a pair of red cliche stickers and a green thesaurus sticker, I pined them onto the gigantic map currently covering the floor in the appropriate areas as mentioned in the report. Standing up, I surveyed the seemingly random mass of colors on the map.
"What's going on?" I muttered to myself. The thesauri population concentration and spreads are a bit high near the areas of L-space close to the TFF Archive, but it's nothing to be alarmed about. The cliche population on the other hand...
"Is it normal for that part to look like a Christmas decoration?" Another voice spoke up.
"No, it's very much not normal, that's the problem," I responded before registering the familiar voice. I raised my head. "Patchy?"
And saw double. Two Patchoulis? Does she have a twin that she never told me about? I rubbed my eyes and blinked away the fog that seemed to be in my eyes. No, wait, that's just Ayase. Why did I think she was Patchy anyways? Must be the hair...
"Wait, what are you doing here Patchy? Shouldn't you be guarding your library from that Black-White rat you've been talking about?"
"I chased Marisa off just last night, so she's probably not going to be coming back for a week or so at least. Since she's pretty much the only rat that sneaks in regularly, it's fine if I just leave Koakuma to clean up. Plus, Flandre's loose again, so I'm visiting you for a bit."
"In any case," interrupted Ayase, "I believe you were talking about the mass of red on the map."
"Ah, yes," I responded, shifting into what I call lecture mode, "The red stickers you see represent cliches, and the green are thesauri nests. As seasoned librarians, both of you should be quite familiar with both."
"Now, the green spread isn't too worrying. Thesauri are naturally attracted to the high word variation and lack of repetition that most high quality works contain, and the TFF archives contains quite a bit of that. It's something we've been dealing with since long before the war, nothing to worry about."
"The cliches though, those are worrisome. With the usual high quality that TFF is known for, cliches really don't have much of a chance to spawn within a thousand or so shelves of the Archive, so usually we might see a dozen or so at most within any one week period, and they usually either die out or move on to areas of lower quality like FF.net within a month at most. But this, it almost looks like they've been moved here..."
Ayase blinked, "the YAOI perhaps? I remember them setting cliches, bookworms, and other creatures of L-space against us before. Maybe they're just doing it on a higher level now?"
"That's not very likely though," I shook my head, "the YAOI were never able to control them. What they did was sending dozens of their's to act as living bait to lure a creature to our location. The last time they sent a cliche against us took the sacrifice of hundreds of their librarians. For there to be this many cliches, I doubt even the YAOI have that much bodies to spare."
Indeed, it's a well documented fact that the quantity and quality of a library's archives directly correlates with that of it's librarians. Thus, the YAOI libraries can churn out L-space worthy librarians like they do the sludge they fill their libraries with. Thankfully, the quality of those librarians are never much better than sludge either, so they've never posed much of a threat against a well-trained TFF librarian nowadays. The only real power the YAOI have in L-space are the various dangerous creatures of L-space that they've lured into the paths of unsuspecting TFF librarians and the TFF librarians that they've managed to turn...
"Sir, urgent message from T&I!" A new arrival, a messenger, spoke, quietly of course. "It's a transcript detailing intelligence from prisoner SH-14512."
Well, speak of the devil... A quick glance told me that it had gotten Ayase's attention too. SH-14512: Saotome, Haruna. She, along with Miyazaki and Ayase, was one of the new recruits brought in and mentored by Albireo Imma after the initial attack from the YAOI librarians. The three of them were inseparable friends and comrades, and were slated to become one of the top research and survey teams in the force. Unfortunately, barely a month after they were officially recognized as an independent research and survey team, Saotome became one of the first to encounter the surprise YAOI novel traps. She switched sides only a few days after the incident, and was a consistant danger to various teams spread across L-space for years. Then, a month ago, we managed to trap her between three separate teams through complete accident, and after a long and arduous battle that sent over a dozen of the best librarians on our side to therapy, we had finally managed to capture her.
Grasping the folded message with my hand, I snapped it open with a practiced twitch of my wrist, and begun speed reading through it, Readman style. I breathed in sharply at the news, so that's why... Quickly folding it back up with yet another practiced twitch of the wrist, I put it into one of the many subspace pockets that all librarians have before Ayase or Patchy could see the contents of the message, and started folding up the map, struggling all the while to keep my face neutral.
"Bad?"
Heh, that's Patchy I guess. As usual, she saw right through me.
I sighed. "Ayase, go get Imma. Patchy, we're going to see The Librarian. I'm calling a general meeting."
h43r: ) and commonly do so in Delta Green. The grimmest odds and most dangerous missions are our game.
