The Libarby

[Narrator]

Chase had stuck around to help Basil with re-sorting some of the books and making sure that nothing else was out of the ordinary. At some point some maintenance workers show up with some equipment that they seem woefully unfamiliar with, taking some readings and generally hmming and hrmming at the strange clone-stamped wood. Finally they take some measurements and take off again, leaving Basil and Chase to handle the confused trickle of students coming in. Most of the day passes without anything out of the ordinary happening. The two do find some more books that are where they're not supposed to be, adding to the normal workload, keeping them pretty busy.

Eventually they get ready to close up for the evening, Chase up on one of the ladders putting away some final books while Basil sorts things out behind the counter. As they're going about their business a tiny line, thinner than a strand of hair and only at all visible to the detached observer because it occasionally catches a bit of light, reflecting it with a metallic glint. The thin line slithers across the floor and splits in two, branching as one half moves towards the counter while the other disappears further into the library.

As Basil is scanning some last minute returns the metal strand reaches the counter and begins sliding up the vertical surface, then upside down when it reaches the lip of the countertop, following it until it sits on top.

At the same time the second strand has made it to the ladder Chase is balanced on top of and begins spiraling up one of the rails.

Both strands simultaneously begin to glow at one end, the light racing along it's length and gathering at the tip. Over and over spots of light travel up along it as it gathers in an increasingly bright droplet. And with each pulse the foremost of the strand of nanites surges in size. From speck to mote to actually identifiable as a little robot, more or less spherical in shape and holding a glowing orb in it's little manipulator arms. The light flickers with strange motes drifting off of it and collapsing back in, almost like bubbles in soda.

The little robots chirp strangely at Chase and Basil respectively. And then the bubbling light shoots out and spills over them, blinding them and accompanied by a strange sensation of falling lurching through their stomachs.


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And once the initial daze has worn off and mote no longer dance in their eyes Basil finds himself standing on a strange square space, surrounded by chasms with identical grey square mesas around him. Right underneath his foot is a thick black line that, after taking a step back, reveals itself to be a giant letter 'G'

Chase on the other hand finds the sensation of falling to persist for a moment until he reflexively catches himself on a wooden edge, fingers digging into the rough, cragged surface and finding decent grip while beneath him a series of plateaus disappear into the distance like steps on a giant's staircase.

[Basil Benson]

Basil swears out loud at being blinded as a Basil is wont to do, but when his eyes can focus again and he notices the giant G, his immediate reaction is to look left and right to see if it's a word, or just a letter alone.

[Chase Delacroix]

Chase pulled himself up onto the suspended wooden plateau and flopped onto his back until his startled heart stopped pounding.

"What the heck just happened?" he asked himself after he stood up and began piecing together his situation. He began walking towards a distant side rail to find a way down.

[Narrator]

It's hard to make out from the angle, but Basil thinks he can discern the mesas to his sides having the letter 'F' and 'H' respectively emblazoned on them.

Staring up for a moment to gather himself Chase can see the stretch of a gigantic bookshelf stretching up towards the distant ceiling. Looking for a way down leads Chase to the edge of the staircase-ladder thing made for sliding along the bookshelves. The railing itself is way above his head while the steep slope of the side-piece holding the stairs together is dotted with big columns that reach up to meet the hand-rail. It certainly looks like the fastest way down.

[Chase Delacroix]

Confident in his extreme ninja skills, Chase leaped onto the side-rail and began traversing the slope and columns in monkey-like fashion.

[Narrator]

There's not much swinging or traversing to do, really and it ends up being more of an exercise in dodging the huge columns that rise from the otherwise straightforward, if steep slope of the base-rail. There's over a dozen of them and passing them means sliding awfully close to the edge to slip past them on a ledge that's maybe a foot wide, accounting for Chase's new dimensions. But Chase's sense of balance serves him well, skirting the massive drop beneath him with relative ease. But it does take focus, focus that otherwise might have let him notice the large nanite skittering along the actual railing, high above Chase. It's keeping pace for a while until it curls up into more of a ball and starts rolling, passing by him and scaling down one of the upcoming columns in Chase's path. Momentum and slopes being what they are means Chase can't really stop his descent towards the waiting robot.

[Chase Delacroix]

Chase cried out and did his best to slow his descent and so to reduce the inevitable impact if his attempts to evade or parkour off of the thing failed. Breaking his neck against a tiny robot was not his idea of an honorable death.

[Narrator]

Just trying to adjust his stance or try to gain some traction doesn't seem to do much to slow his descent, but he does know how to work with the momentum he has. The robot maneuvers to try and block Chase from getting past the column it's clinging to, but jumping at the last moment Chase plants one foot on the nanites' shell and leaps off of it, sending him sailing past it and into the open air. Beneath him the slope only falls away further as he goes sailing but he's quick to note that he's falling slower than he normally would and after a stomach-lurching couple of seconds he manages to land back on the slope in a practiced roll and tumbling right back to his feet to slide down the remainder of the stairs. In comparison the final hop from where the slope ends to the wooden floor is marginal despite being several times Chase's height.

[Chase Delacroix]

Chase landed amongst the carpet trees with a ninja crouch and immediately rose to look back the way he had come. Had it followed him?

[Narrator]

No carpet here, the library is all nicely polished wood flooring but thankfully not waxed. The robot did indeed follow him, although 'follow' in this case means 'leaped off the railing and is currently plummeting towards Chase'.

[Basil Benson]

Another Basil from earlier in the timeline might have had a panic attack at this abrupt change of scenery, but this Basil was getting used to the weird happenstances of this place.

It seemed to him he was tiny for some reason now, and while that was definitely concerning, he was more concerned about where his buddy might have disappeared to.

What if he got stepped on or something?

A bit more gingerly than his hard-core parkour pal, Basil moved in a direction he *thought* he'd last seen Chase, but at this size it was hard to tell.

[Chase Delacroix]

Chase dived and rolled out of the way with mere moments to spare, springing back to his feet in preparation to flee. He couldn't very well kung-fu a robot without even a weapon.

[Narrator]

Chase makes a break for it as the robot awkwardly lands on the ground, tumbling and rolling onto it's side as it skids along the floor. Aside from it's climbing ability it actually seems rather clumsy.

Meanwhile Basil sets out to the general direction of the countertop looming above the desk space although the most immediate problem is the sizeable gap between the keyboard keys. It looks... jumpable. Maybe. Chase definitely could. But it still looks daunting and down below Basil can spot giant crumbs and god knows what kind of crud that someone probably should have cleared out. And is that a piece of a fingernail? Disgusting...

[Chase Delacroix]

As he went, he looked for anything he could use to defend himself: a needle, a button, some string, anything.

[Narrator]

Not many needles lieing around in a library, but he does spot something useful in a bit of dust at the bottom of one of the bookshelves. A pushpin that must have fallen off the bulletin board and gotten kicked around. It's pretty big compared to Chase, but he manages to heft it up by wrapping his arms around the plastic bit and holding it like a log. It's fortunately not quite as heavy as it's relative size implies.

[Basil Benson]

The sour expression Basil makes at the boardchow is as one expects.

But the bit of fingernail actually catches his eye.

Dangling his leg over the edge of the key, he stretches out his arms to see if he can reach and lift the item in question.

[Narrator]

Reaching down is a bit precarious but after a couple tries Basil manages to get his hand on the edge of the fingernail and tug on it. It's lighter than anticipated and Basil manages to drag it out of the pit.

[Basil Benson]

Once it's free, Basil moves said nail curvature side down towards the V key, his memory being that this would be the quickest way to the edge of the board.

Laying it between said two keys like a gang plank he tests his weight against it, and should it appear to hold he'd balance walk himself across it.

[Chase Delacroix]

Chase brandished the unwieldy weapon in the direction of his nanomechanical pursuer as he checked its progress.

[Narrator]

Basil manages to make a wobbly (and kind of disgusting) bridge and after some careful balancing makes it over to the 'V' key, followed by bridging the gap to the huge expanse of the space bar. From there it looks like he might have to jump if he wants to make it to the table.

Chase's pursuer meanwhile seems to have managed to right itself and hurry after him, seemingly undeterred by the weapon.

[Basil Benson]

Basil looks at his now predicament and pauses briefly.

Then he jumps straight up, hoping he has enough weight to use the space bar as a trampoline and leverage himself over the last little gap and the edge of the keyboard itself.

[Chase Delacroix]

He considered his course of action for a moment before deciding that continuing to run and hope to find a place to hide was the best option. But first, he needed to try and hobble it somehow. To that end, he charged back at it with every intention of stabbing it in the eye.

[Narrator]

Basil finds it hard to get the stupid button to depress properly but after a couple tries he manages to hit whatever threshold and the giant springboard underneath his feet gives in before catapulting him back up and over the edge of the keyboard, depositing him on the desk in a very undignified landing.

Chase meanwhile charges at the advancing nanite, pushpin held like a lance. The tip collides with the lens of it's eye but doesn't break it, instead the tip slips off the smooth surface and slips into the gap between eye and the thing's carapace, sinking in and making some satisfying crunching noises as it tears through whatever meachanism's inside, blowing out a couple of scarily huge sparks before the shine in the nanite's eye goes dark.

[Basil Benson]

After a moment of the headswims, Basil peels his face from the desk surface and stands upright to dust himself off.

He had decided already being small was a worse mutation than spotty invisibility.

Basil knew that the next step, getting down from the desk to the floor, was going to be much harder. He began searching the desk to see if anything could be used as a rope, such as the Head Librarian's stashed knitting.

[Chase Delacroix]

Chase jumped back before it could retaliate and regarded his handiwork.

"Try following me now Sparky," he said with a small smirk before turning to run once more.

[Narrator]

Fortunately for Basil, the head librarian is terrible about putting her things away and thus it's only a brief jog over to a veritable mountain of yarn with 'rope' as thick as his arm.

The nanite does not appear to be getting up again as Chase hurries across the library floor.

[Basil Benson]

Due to his lightweight nature, Basil didn't even consider weighting down the pile of yarn. He simply pulled loose how much he'd thought he'd need, then threw it over the edge of the table to climb down.

[Narrator]

And indeed the bulk of the ball of yarn is plenty of weight to hold Basil as he rappels down from the desk. As he does he spots Chase making his way across the library floor towards him, but then the yarn he's hanging on untwists a little, turning him towards the underside of the desk and the gigantic spider clinging to it, it's eight eyes fixed on the tasty bit of librarian dangling on a string.

[Basil Benson]

Yes, small was worse.

Luckily, though his invisibility may be shit, his memory and reading comprehension aren't. And from his normal day to day bullshit reading, Basil knew that spiders had terrible vision, relying on touch and movement to 'see'.

So instead of scurrying for safety and setting off his would be predator, Basil froze and stared at it back, waiting for it to make the next move. Gunning down the yarn for it would only give it more reason to pounce.

[Chase Delacroix]

Chase couldn't see the shadowed spider from his vantage point, so the reason his friend froze was a mystery.

"You just gonna hang there all day Basil?" he called as he approached the end of the yarn.

It was then he finally made out the arachnid.

"Oh shit! That thing's huge!"

Some stealthy ninja he is.

[Narrator]

The huge arachnid slowly moves, legs reaching out and feeling around until it reaches the yarn and climbs onto it barely a (real, not relative) foot above Basil's head. The yarn sways ever so slightly as the spider begins climbing down towards him.

[Basil Benson]

Basil swallowed at the hard lump in his throat. His friend narrating his imminent demise was not helping.

Having to think quickly, there was no way he was going to make it to the end of the yarn before something designed to scale sideways would.

Basil closed his eyes, and thought of Colette.

And then he let go. Halfway down the freefall, his body went invisible.

Chase would hear a thump near him as Basil hit the floor, unseen.

[Chase Delacroix]

"Basil!" Chase shouted as he raced to check on his friend. He hadn't been fast enough to catch him and was already blaming himself.

"How hurt are you? Can you hear me?" he pleaded as he felt for a pulse. Either way, he would next drag the end of the yarn away from his friend.

[Basil Benson]

Basil gave off a pulse, so he was definitely alive.

"Ow...." He replied, half a murmur and half a wince. After a moment or two, Chase would feel the 'taller' boy shuffle about, and then the sound of two different feet hit the floor without subsequent exclamations of pain.

He was trying to be as silent as possible, not wanting to alert their 'friend'.

[Narrator]

The spider seems to have at least briefly lost track of them, but is still climbing down the rope towards them.

[Chase Delacroix]

Chase slowly relaxed the yarn and stepped back.

"Get back. If we have to fight, it's best you are well out of the way," he whispered.

[Basil Benson]

Basil didn't respond to his friend, he was too busy removing his tiny dress shoes so he didn't make any other sounds to attract their new friend.

He'd take the other boy down a peg for it later.

[Narrator]

With the yarn-rope going ever so slightly more slack the spider seems to perk up and suddenly rushes down the yarn and right for Chase!

[Basil Benson]

As the spider went at Chase, so did the invisible boy.

Even at only 155 pounds, Basil would disorient Chase when he invisibly body checked the other young man to knock the both of them clear of the spider's original path, the pair of them going completely invisible to the naked eye.

His friend pinned under his weight, Chase could now see Basil as he clapped his hand over the other boy's mouth to keep him still. He was watching the spider in it's spot to see how it would respond.

[Narrator]

The spider reaches the ground and stops. It's legs twitch occasionally as it adjusts it's position, eyes roaming across the ground as legs skitter around as it turns. A couple of times the spindly leg comes dangerously close to brushing up against the invisible boys but after a minute that feels significantly longer, the spider seems to come to the conclusion it's prey escaped and begins scaling the rope again.