Chapter 95: The Librarians
Chapter 95: The Librarians
Nojiko felt a little wrong, heading off with Robin, Kaya, and Vivi on what felt like it could be a wild goose chase. Yet, she hadn’t been able to argue Hina’s logic when she split the group up. Some of them staying with the Marines, entirely too many of whom were visibly twitchy, was necessary. The Marines needed to be kept honest, so that they didn’t get bright ideas. Like, absent their apparently-reasonable boss, trying to stab Zoro, Kuina, Luffy and Yamato in the back while they were fighting a giant lizard. Moreover, those who stayed behind needed to be strong enough in their own right to take care of the Marines if they got the same idea about whoever remained. Hina, Sanji, Brook and Usopp made a solid core for doing that, and none of them had skills particularly useful for their potential wild goose chase.
Robin, despite having the most crowd suppression ability out of any of those not fighting aforementioned giant lizard, absolutely couldn’t stay. Not only would she be more useful on the investigation team, given her familiarity with the island and her knowledge of history, but she was also just too tempting of a target for the twitchier of those Marines. She had, very literally, been wanted with a major bounty since before several of the younger crew had even been born.
The other two members of their little investigation group were equally logical. There was potential spiritual fuckery afoot on the island, so Kaya coming along was a must. Vivi, of course, was their ride both back to town and rapid movement around the island if it was required. Which left only Nojiko herself as the outlier. Aside from possibly helping Vivi and Robin with the drone trick, she didn’t really have specific skills for this, in her Captain’s occasionally odd terminology, ‘side quest.’ No, Nojiko had come along purely because the group needed a powerhouse in case they encountered a second unfriendly dragon/drake. In that worst of cases, Nojiko could defend them long enough for Vivi to make an Air Door back to the rest of the crew.
Where, presumably, they would all retreat to the Discovery and let Dis just blow the hell out of the island and hope for the best.
All of which made the fact she’d somehow ended up leading them in the effort to find the group of local librarians really fucking weird to her.
All three of her companions were more personable and diplomatic than her! Except that, well…Vivi only took leadership when it came to things like negotiations. Despite being a princess, the fact she was the second youngest member of the crew, with only Chopper being younger, was often fairly obvious. She could lead, and lead well, but she almost never moved to take a leadership role on her own, clearly not feeling overly confident in doing so outside her specific areas of training. Kaya just flat out wasn’t a leader, period, unless someone was dying and she was in charge of medical treatment. Robin, by far the most experienced of them, had a tendency to observe, rather than lead. She’d spent too much of her life carefully analyzing from the sidelines, rather than taking action, and was by far the most ‘lone wolf’ oriented member of the entire crew.
So Hina had put Nojiko in charge.
Which just felt weird. But, okay. She could deal.
“There’s the inn that the Marines said these librarians are staying at. Robin, can you try to find out if they are still here?”
The older woman nodded, twitching as she presumably flooded the building with her eyes and ears. It only took her seconds to report back.
“They are. I recognize two of them from previous visits to the island, and they are all huddled in a single suite on the third floor. One that has a view out over the wall and toward the battle.”
Yeah. That was another kink in things. The locals were all running around in a panic, since the fight was at least somewhat visible from the town. Even if not in detail. Something which was making moving through the streets more annoying. Best to get inside before someone in the various Marines detachments, which were out in force trying to calm the locals, recognized them.
“Lead us to them, then. Hopefully if we act like we belong no one will think to question us until after we’re already long gone.”
Robin’s lips twitched at the simple plan, but she also nodded along. Within less than two minutes they’d all crossed the street and were following her as she casually headed up a set of stairs. Thankfully, true to Nojiko’s thoughts, no one seemed to think anything of it. If anyone bothered to notice them at all, they likely assumed they were simply occupants of other rooms at the inn. They reached the third floor and the room in question unmolested, and Nojiko reached out to firmly knock.
There was an abrupt silence where there had previously been low voices leaking past the door. Already picturing a bunch of stuffy librarians frozen in shock, she rolled her eyes and knocked firmly again. This time there was a response of moving feet and the door abruptly swung open…causing Nojiko to blink as she found herself looking at the extremely muscular chest of a man nearly as tall as Yamato. Craning her neck to look up, she found a serious face on a bald fellow, with an admittedly fantastic beard, perched on top of the hulk of muscles.
She could practically feel Robin radiating amusement. Damn it woman, warn a girl!
“Pardon, but who are you four?”
Great, just great, dude had a stupidly-sexy deep rumbly voice too. Right. Get your act together Nojiko, you’re on a mission.
“Friends of the people fighting Thraaxxx right now. They have him contained, but are having trouble hurting him faster than he can regenerate. We’re looking for information. Such as where the sister he was complaining about might be.”
The big man blinked, twice, then sighed and stepped back. The room was an extremely spacious suite, only partially filled by four other ‘librarians.’ Thankfully, most of them actually looked like librarians. Only one of the others was as young as Sir Mountain of Muscle and Beard, and while all of them were decently fit, it was the sort of scrawny-fit you expected of someone constantly doing manual labor. You know, rather than the champion wrestler look of Mr. Muscles the Beardinator.
“You’d better come in. We’ll tell you what we know, but I don’t know if you’ll be able to get Sister Neethrax to help you. She might have put her brother in ‘time out’ in the first place. But that was mostly for messing with her library, rather than attacking the humans.”
Nojiko blinked at that as they all shuffled in, not quite certain what to say to the new information. Thankfully, she was saved by Robin making an observation.
“Ah, it may be quite easy then. Thraaxx destroyed a good chunk of the Frozen Library when he burst out of it. Even as tough as drakestone is, I imagine quite a few of the works were damaged or destroyed, and the library itself is now missing much of its roof.”
The comment got numerous distressed noises from the gathered librarians, and all of them paled a bit too. Mr. Muscles grimaced, but it was the eldest-looking of the group, a woman with white hair and laugh lines, who snorted and spoke.
“Well, that’s alright then. Thraaxx is probably a dead drake for that, assuming you can reach Neethrax to tell her. She’s been sulking, napping away years at a time between catching up on new works we bring her, ever since the World Government wrecked part of the library dealing with the Void Century. She’s still extremely annoyed that she wasn’t able to eat all of them, and had to cut a deal not to share what she knew in exchange for them leaving the rest of the library alone.”
Robin’s body language had abruptly laser focused, causing Nojiko to inwardly groan. Well, there went any chance they weren’t going to immediately seek out this Neethrax. Which, if she wasn’t any more concerned about humans than her brother, didn’t strike Nojiko as necessarily the best move. Well, nothing for it but to push on.
“What is the difficulty with reaching this Neethrax? I assume, since you haven’t already done so when you clearly knew something was wrong, that there’s an issue?”
The elder snorted.
“You could say that, yes. The only access to Sister Neethrax is through Drakestone Mine. The mine is, in fact, actually a cleanup project from back when Neethrax entered her final stage and shed her drake form for her full dragon body. The remnants of her drake self are what is ‘mined’ for drakestone. She doesn’t care what we do with it, so long as we’re slowly getting rid of it for her. Though she admittedly was impressed enough with how our order figured out working with her scales, at least, to make the Frozen Library. She’s a collector of knowledge, all knowledge, and greatly approved of the Library. She believes knowledge is meant to be shared as well as collected, and the original works were all copies of her own collection. She considers the Frozen Library an extension of her collection as a result, which is why she punished her little brother for messing with it.”
Nojiko blinked, processing all of that, before discarding most of it as background that would only be relevant if damaging the library outright wasn’t enough to make this other dragon intervene. She frowned as she focused on the relevant bit.
“That’s all? But the mine belongs to the locals, doesn’t it? Why wouldn’t they let you in?”
It wasn’t the elder that explained. Instead, it was the deep, rich baritone of Mr. Muscles of the Fantastic Beard.
“It did belong to the locals and still technically does. But when the World Government decided that they were going to take all the drakestone that got mined and refined, the Marines put guards in the mine, to prevent anyone from getting any ideas about smuggling some. Only the workers can go in now, and the guards know every worker’s face. They check them carefully going both in and out.”
Nojiko grimaced. Right, there was the complication. Though…was it actually that much of a complication? Strawberry had to have spotted them somehow, or he wouldn’t have been out there with all those Marines. Which, given who they were and the Marine numbers, had to mean that those had been virtually all the truly high-level Marines on the island or within the fleet. She’d caught a fair bit of the Marines’ fight with their two Masked Cultists, and they’d only done so well against them because they’d brought a good thirty-five Marines against the pair. Every single one of which had been using at least one of the Six Powers and several of them had looked and felt like Haki users. Given the Marines losses at Marineford, that had to be the vast bulk of the serious fighters stationed here, didn’t it?
“Most of the high-level Marines are out at the Library. They helped mop up the cultist and their Vice-Admiral is fighting alongside our Captain and a few of our crew to contain Thraaxx. Do you think they would have weakened the guard on the mine for that?”
The librarians all blinked for a moment, before one of the ones that hadn’t spoken up yet, a middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper in his goatee, nodded slowly and spoke.
“That would make sense. They were quiet about it if they did, but they had to have been after you lot, not Thraaxx. We tried to warn the Marines about the Thraaxx ‘s cultists but they didn’t believe us. Not the low-level punks, anyway, and we didn’t have access to any high-ranking officers. I think they had a trio of Captains switching off shifts up at the mine. Even if Admiral Strawberry only pulled in the off-duty ones who were in town…”
If they’d done that, it would mean that, at most, there was a single Marine Captain up there. Troublesome for a regular crew, but Nojiko could easily handle that level of opponent alone. So could Kaya for that matter, if in a less direct way. He was unlikely to be alone, of course, but she wasn’t either. Robin, in particular, was excellent at crowd control, and their overall group was potent enough that even if all three Captains were still there…
“We can do it. We’ll need a guide to the mine, as well as someone to show us where Neethrax is.”
The librarians looked between Nojiko and each other, then the elder nodded and pointed a finger at one of the two that still hadn’t spoken. It was the only other woman of the group, the one who looked roughly around the age of Mr. Muscles. An aqua haired woman in her early twenties, perhaps.
“Apprentice Luxial, you’ll go with them and show them to Neethrax, should they succeed in making it past the Marines. Take them by the market storage first. The books there haven’t been properly classified, but going to Neethrax without any, after we’ve been overdue with the latest delivery for weeks, would be unwise.”
The young woman, perhaps around Nojiko’s own age if she had to guess, looked uncertain. After taking a deep breath, however, she nodded obedience.
“Yes, Grand Librarian. What should I tell her about the delay?”
The now titled Grand Librarian frowned, then shrugged.
“The truth, of course. That the World Government is meddling and taking all the drakestone, including what we need for the Library. I imagine she’ll have words to say about that, since it violates her agreement with them. At least it is if it’s the Government itself doing it, instead of the Marines overreaching like we thought.”
Luxial gulped, but nodded, and stood to exit the room with them…
… … …
Kaya was annoyed she’d had to leave Usopp in the presence of dubiously trustworthy Marines, even if she did understand the reasons. She was also at least grateful for the puzzle that was the librarians, as it was a nice distraction from her boyfriend being left near those unscrupulous elements. Unlike Nojiko or, she suspected, Vivi, Kaya had pinned the librarians immediately as more cultists.
Oh, not the same cultists they’d been fighting, of course. No, it was virtually certain that the group were servants of this ‘Neethrax,’ a comparable group but with a very different focus. She didn’t think it was at all accidental that there were five of the ‘Librarians,’ just as there had been the same number of Masked Cultists. Nor had she at all missed the fact that ‘Luxial’ was radiating a considerable amount of spiritual energy. More accurately, something under her robes was radiating the same feeling as the Lightning Mask had. Such had been the case for each of the other Librarians, though with different elements, of course.
She was quite certain Robin had worked it out, as well.
The older woman was certainly treating their guide with considerably more caution than Vivi or Nojiko were, and it had to be said that Robin very rarely missed such things. The result, presumably, of twenty years on the run, needing to be able to judge those she was dealing with in an instant. Both for how trustworthy they might be, as well as for how dangerous they might be. Which, in the case of Luxial possibly being dangerous, felt distinctly like the answer was probably ‘extremely so.’ Everything so far had implied that this Neethrax was significantly older and more powerful than her brother, and it made a certain amount of sense that her servants would be too. Which, of course, begged the question of why the five Librarians had not dealt with the Marines themselves.
Not worth the risk, perhaps? Or not worth potentially breaking their Mistress’s deal with the World Government at least, as they hadn’t seemed convinced the Marines actions had been following orders from higher up. This entire affair was proving to be more of a potential powder keg that she suspected Nojiko realized. Which, with Robin distracted by the mention of the Void Century, and Nojiko and Vivi appearing oblivious, meant it was up to Kaya to steer their direction a bit. Not her preferred task, but needs must when you broke the rule about splitting the party.
“So, Luxial…why has your group left the Marines uncontested? Won’t your mistress be upset about that?”
Luxial had been pulling and loosely sorting books form crates in a storage area near the boxes, condensing a disorganized mess in half a dozen crates into just the two largest. Kaya didn’t know the criteria she was using as she quickly and smoothly prepared the two larger crates for Vivi to bring with them as they Air Doored out of the city, but it was clear she was winnowing the books. So far, the only criteria that was clear was that only the highest quality copy among duplicates was making the cut. According to the little the woman had spoken so far, the whole reason they charged money for use of the Frozen Library was to enable the gathering of more books. Any unique work was sorted, categorized, and sent on to their mistress. The sorting and preparation steps were normally done at the Library itself, though, and she’d lamented that their offering was going to be lower quality than Neethrax would be used to.
As for the woman’s response to her question, one Kaya had made sure to ask only once she was properly distracted, it came in an absentminded voice.
“It’s not for us to anticipate the Sister’s will regarding a broken deal, and Neethrax is likely not even awake, despite us being a few weeks overdue for this year’s delivery. We were content to wait until we saw an opportunity to alert her. You’re simply providing such a chance earlier than we had anticipated. Unfortunate that it is because of those fools trying to get Thraaxx out of his just punishment.”
Ah, now Nojiko and Vivi were looking at the stranger among them more assessingly. Apparently, that comment had been enough for them to catch on.
“Not even when the Marines are disrupting your work with the Library?”
Luxial, still rapidly sorting, shook her head in denial of that comment.
“They were not. The Librarians use only Sister Neethrax’s scales for the stone-paper of the books at the Library. We don’t bother with the lesser drakestone made by the locals from the bones Eldest Sister outgrew.”
Okay. That was more than once that had been mentioned. Despite the fact she knew she should be probing for information first and foremost, the researcher in Kaya couldn’t help but derail and ask.
“That’s the second time something about outgrowing her bones. Is that part of a dragon’s lifecycle?”
Luxial nodded absentmindedly.
“Yes, of course. The bones needed by a Dragon are too different from those in their drake stage. During the decades of their transition from one stage to the next, they grow new bone and discard the old. Along with many, many scales, of course. It’s really quite a fascinat-“
The woman froze, finally seeming to realize just what she was saying. Or, more likely, to whom. Her head whipped around, her hands no longer sorting as she stared at Kaya. Kaya raised her hands in a gesture of peace.
“It was rather obvious that your ‘Order’ are Neethrax’s equivalent of those idiots that were serving Thraaxx. So long as you aren’t planning to attack us or harm the locals, it doesn’t really matter.”
Luxial stared, the air in the small storage area tense for long moments, before she nodded tightly and went back to sorting. Slower this time, though she looked to be almost done anyway.
“Yes. Though, Sister Neethrax only ever really bothered with a few of us, instead of her brother’s collection of ego-stroking rabble. She’s content with her collection. From what I’m told, she did have a larger number of lesser servants at one time, sending them out to seek knowledge for the collection, but it’s only been the Librarians since shortly after the Void Century. We knew Thraaxx’s fools were up to something, but didn’t realize what until it was too late, they used the Marines distracting us, when they cut off our access to the mine, to sneak around the Frozen Library.”
Nojiko apparently couldn’t help but poke at that.
“Why were they even allowed in the Library?”
Luxial paused as she was packing the second crate up and blinked in confusion at the question.
“Why would they not be? All are welcome in the Library, so long as they pay the entrance fee and do not cause trouble. That is the point of a Library.”
The woman shook her head, then gestured to the crates.
“Now, I am done. It is a meager offering, but Neethrax will hopefully understand when the situation is explained. Let us be off before her idiot brother kills your friends.”
Reminded that they were supposed to be hurrying, even if they weren’t too worried about Luffy actually losing anytime soon, Nojiko quickly grabbed up the large crates with a Crystal platform and Vivi opened an Air Door out of the city…
… … …
Since Vivi hadn’t exactly had a chance to explore the island, the group had been forced to step through an entire series of Air Doors, as she stuck to opening them line-of-sight after getting out of the area immediately around the port city. They’d done a quick check in with their Den Den Mushi to make sure the fight hadn’t escalated, and been told it was mostly stuck at the same sort of back and forth that it had been half an hour ago. Apparently, Hina and one of the Marine Captains had been able to alert those fighting Thraaxx that there was a plan in the works, and the fighters had focused on luring Thraaxx away from anything important as a result.
That wouldn’t, couldn’t last, so they rushed toward Drakestone Mine with all due haste…
... ... ... ... ... ... ...
A/N 1: I took this as a chance to get inside the heads of a couple of the less focused-on crew members. Which is, as I've stated before, part of the reason I'm covering the 'time skip' period. So that said characters can get more 'screen time' and development.