unfinishedlibrary | for all the world's a stage

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for all the world's a stage - LIBRARY LOG

Who: The Editors
What: The Library changes once again...
When: January 9- January 22
Where: The Library
Content warnings: Please put them in the comment headers!

The Assistants have vanished into their backroom once again, leaving only the increasingly unbelievable “Back In 5” sign on the Help Desk, but at least they have attempted to impart some knowledge on the Editors before departing (or… attempted to do anything but, depending who you ask). The customary tea cart with drinks and increasingly stale biscuits is parked in its usual spot, though it seems that the quality of the tea at least has improved some. (Still waiting on coffee improvement.)

There’s a new crafting setup in the Maker Space, a table with an iron and machine for making vinyl designs, along with the instructions on how to use it, and a stack of t-shirts in various sizes. Usually there’s something in the correct size, but, well, mistakes happen. While this addition to clothing is a boon, there is the problem that the t-shirts can’t be taken out of the room until some sort of design is put on them. Get creative! Show off your style! Or maybe just steal one of the shirts that are there for display purposes. It’s fine, the Library can make more.

In the second week as the Library begins to change once more, the Lobby’s wooden floor shines with extra polish. The walls make an odd creaking sound as they shift, warping into brick covered with velvet drapings in a rich, dark red. Gold thread twinkles in the stitches, a sense of opulence woven through. The sound of ballroom music drifts by and, while in the Lobby, characters will be taken by the unusual impulse to dance.

Outside, in the Garden, the day/night cycle has paused firmly on a cloudless night. A full moon hangs in the air - literally. About the size of a basketball, it follows the first person who enters the Garden; hovering a couple of meters above their head. A white aura spreads from them, powered by the moon, and those who are caught in its light will find themselves unable to speak anything but the truth.

When the person to whom the moon is attached leaves the garden, the moon and its aura will leave them; and the moon will attach to the next person to enter instead.

On the circulation desk, there is a sign: “This Week’s Recommended Reading: Twilight!” The accompanying sign up sheet waits next to it for those wishing to check it out- though some will receive the movie instead of the book, with no particular rhyme or reason to it. Periodically someone might also receive something else entirely. Whoops? The Assistants at least will fix that quickly. ~~Richard will be embarrassed, while Phillip will be trying not to cackle.~~

While not advertised, various iterations of different stories will be available throughout the Library. In particular, someone seems to have left the projector in one of the meeting rooms running, with a variety of different recorded plays. These range from professional productions, to parodies, to what appear to be high schoolers (of which one production features a sixteen year old version of Phillip running around being an absolutely nuisance.

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There's no universe where Sonic actually thought he'd get the pen instead of Shadow's elbow in his face, right? Because Shadow's elbow flies up rapidly, guarding the pen in his hand, and the look he shoots Sonic is positively cutting.

Sonic's already on a hair-thin line with Shadow's patience on a normal day. Compounding that is still the fresh wound of Sonic having destroyed their home, Shadow being unable to enter the Shatterspaces, and Sonic now having the gall to get stuck here instead of doing his job and putting their reality back together.

Of course he hasn't said any of that to Sonic. But the tension in the air is ticking over to 'murderous' a touch earlier than usual.

"Then how about I pick a fight with someone who does."

This is about to go south very quickly. As in, that sure is a twist of Shadow's hips as his foot comes flying around, aimed directly at Sonic.

He sees the foot coming, and so snaps backwards away from the board in a quick blue blur with an annoyed "Hey!" that makes Shadow's strike whiff completely.

"What did I do to deserve it? I haven't even done anything yet!"

Sonic's getting his wish - Shadow is no longer defacing someone else's post. But it's at the cost of him following through with that missed kick, smoothly turning with the momentum to plant both feet on the ground, now facing the other hedgehog instead of the board. Notably, his weight is shifted in this stance; leaning ever so slightly forward, which is an obvious telegraph for anyone who knows how he fights.

The pen's casing cracks ominously in his hand, echoing the grit of Shadow's teeth.

"Of course you haven't," he bites back. And that, Sonic, is entirely the problem. Not that Shadow's going to give him long to dwell on it - because he talks better with his fists, anyway, one of which is rapidly flying towards the blue hedgehog. "If you had, we wouldn't be here."

"Hey!" He swivels sideways to dodge the punch, and flips backwards to avoid the inevitable follow-up kick. "It's not my fault we're stuck here! And you know what?"

With the blessing of a few feet of range, he turns his butt towards Shadow and smacks it a few times. "I'm not gonna fight you about it, 'cos I'm the bigger person. Later, Shadow!"

Oh he's gonna kill him --

The plastic casing of the pen shatters, much like their reality did, blue ink splattering across his white glove.

The shards don't have time to hit the ground before he's off, heat pushing through the vents on his shoes - an orange streak trailing furiously behind him as he follows Sonic in dogged, murderous pursuit.

Sonic is already off in a blur when Shadow comes after him, legs just a figure-eight blur of red. He grabs the corner of a shelf stack to help him swing around a corner every now and then, but he knows, instinctively and through far too much experience, that he's not going to lose Shadow.

(And to anyone in the aisles that they might pass by, or any errant drones on watch - well, Sonic is polite enough to give a loud "'scuse me!" or "Coming through!" as the hedgehogs pass by.)

So he takes a hard turn, running up the front of a stack to get some airtime and a good view, before he spin-dashes towards the nearest doorway and kicks it open to rush inside, barely paying attention to the roughly-bisected moon as it whips after him in an attempt to continue being above the blue blur, but not quite keeping up, so the spotlight trails behind him by a few metres.

Shadow is so, so careful to not actually damage anything during his pursuit. Because the second he does, the moment the heat from his shoes turns to fire and touches a book, it's game over. He can't commit a murder if he's stuck in time out.

Because he's unwilling to kick off of any shelves or even use his shoes at full power, Sonic gains an unusual lead. And then the idiot makes the worst decision he possibly could have: he leads them outside.

There is something vicious in the way that Shadow's airshoes immediately burst jets of flame the second he crosses the threshold away from the books, making a furious beeline right for the blue blur; closing in rapidly on that lead. Sonic's not going to stay ahead for too long if he keeps showboating like that.

Sonic doesn't know about the 'don't damage the library' rule, but he's never needed to go sonic speed to outpace Shadow anyway, so the potential for overkill is moot.

Until he looks back at the smell of burning rubber and sees Shadow very abruptly catching up to him, and he gives a grunt as he puts more speed into his legs to make up the rapidly disappearing gap.

"God, what is your problem, Shadow?" he yells back, ears flicked in annoyance.

Sonic's going to have little choice except to go up soon, and Shadow's counting on it. In terms of vertical velocity - he's got a distinct advantage.

For now he's close enough that the moon lagging behind Sonic is perfectly mid-way between the two of them. Not that he pays it any attention, laser-focused on tracking the other hedgehog. If Sonic decides to double back instead of going up, Shadow's going to be ready to snap out in that same direction.

And Sonic should know better than to ask him a question like that.

"You are," he snarls out - so fixated that he doesn't notice how the words bypass his filter. (But that's not uncommon anyway, when he's this worked up.) "You shouldn't even be here. You should be out there, fixing the mess that you made."

"What?!" He doesn't stop to glare back at Shadow, but the tone of audacity in his voice certainly suggests it was a temptation that crossed his mind. "Correct me if I'm wrong, Shadow, but aren't you the one that threw me out of the Shatterspace?" That's how I wound up here!"

He's running very quickly out of forward space to run even as he yells back, so he has half a second to look forwards and spot the wall, and decide - yeah, screw it, vertical it is.

Yeah, yeah, the chrono issue. That's old news, and Shadow already decided that Sonic doesn't need to know the details of it. Which is remarkably incongruent with what's about to come out of his mouth.

"It wasn't me," he snaps. The moment Sonic goes vertical, Shadow's shoes begin to hum in preparation - and as Shadow nears the fence, he kicks off the corner where fence meets ground; boosting flames streaming from his shoes as he reaches the apex of the jump. That boost means he's closing the gap rapidly now, the crumbling moon just above his head. "Not this me. I left you in Ghost Hill, but apparently you somehow still get out."

"Yeah, because I'm the fastest thing alive and ran my way out?" He gives a loud groan. "We already did this, Shadow! It's not the tech, it's me! You almost got sucked into the black hole because of it! I cradled you in my arms!"

It's a risky game going vertical; sure he's got the momentum and the angle to keep himself going, but one slip and Shadow's got him, and there's no other angles to turn to because Shadow's gonna have the inside lane regardless.

"Of course it's you! It's always you."

There's a threat clear in the words, especially if Sonic dares to mention something again that insinuates Shadow's ever needed his help. And Shadow changes angle a bit - aiming now not to catch Sonic from behind, but to overtake him. Changing angle bumps him against the moon, but the impact is negligible - the bright thing bounces out of the way, leaving a faint shimmer on his fur where he'd touched it.

"Every time something goes wrong, you're at the centre of it. The rest of us don't even get a choice. The best we can do is sit around and hope that eventually, you'll 'figure it out'."

--still so angry that the words are just flying out faster than he can think them. And they're true. Not that Shadow's much of a liar, but it's definitely more than he'd usually let on.

As much as Sonic acts dumb, they both know he's not actually. He can keep up with Tails's tech talk better than anyone else, even if he can't execute it - but moreover, he knows his friends, and so far he hasn't lost any even to his own recklessness, on any front.

So he notices, when Shadow's story changes, and he looks back at Shadow with a confused squint.

"So, which one is it? Are you mad because I'm breaking things or mad that I'm fixing them?"

But he can see Shadow trying to overtake him as well, which means he can give himself an outside lane now, and he veers in the opposite direction to Shadow to try and get some clearance.

"Both," is the snarled response - Shadow's trajectory changing on a dime. The poor moon is left struggling again, bouncing off Shadow's head with the change of Sonic's direction. Remarkably, that does not improve Shadow's mood.

"You broke our home and now you're the only one with the power to fix it." Alongside the obvious anger in his voice, there's an edge of frustration. It's sharp and cutting, but has more of an inward direction. He's still going to make it Sonic's problem, the moon's light sparkling off the traces of dust left from his collisions with it. "Our friends don't even know they're counting on you, and you're too busy fraternising with their replacements to focus on what you should be doing."

------nope, he's still too preoccupied to notice that there are a lot of words there that would normally never leave his mouth.

"Hey." That's a warning, surprisingly, a stern turn of tone at Shadow's attitude about his new allies. "They're still our friends, even if they're from different universes. They're still helping us!"

It takes a few moments for his brain to catch up with his mouth, though. He calls them 'our' friends all the time, including Shadow whether he likes it or not.

Shadow doesn't say 'our'.

"Wait-" not that he stops running, but he's definitely running backwards so he can face Shadow. "Since when did you call them our friends?"

Sonic is going to have to stop being surprised about Shadow's attitude towards the Shatterspace AUs at some point. He's really made no secret of his thoughts about them.

Sonic running backwards also is not doing any favours for Shadow's mood - now Sonic will definitely see the red in Shadow's glare, the moondust glittering on his quills, and the way he's steadily gaining on Sonic. Less than a metre away. Any moment now he's going to be able to reach out and seize an ankle.

Sonic's absolutely full of it, suggesting Shadow would ever refer to them as his friends. And the curl of Shadow's muzzle is clear as day, that that particular piece of bait is pathetic and--

"Since now," he growls out, and. hold the fuck up. (That curl of his muzzle twists - almost like he's going to sneeze - in a moment that absolutely screams what the hell was that.)

"Hah!" He points dramatically at Shadow with a fiendish grin, even as he's still running backwards away from him and desperately losing ground. "You do care about them!"

"Obviously."

oh. he's definitely hearing the words coming out of his mouth now, cutting into a distinctly pissed-off growl.

"I'm going to make this hurt," he promises flatly, with the edge of a sneer. It's as truthful and honest as everything else the moon has compelled him to say. And that's his hand moving in a flash, aiming to seize Sonic's rapidly pedalling leg around its ankle.

It's not easy, but frankly Shadow just has practice, and so he does manage to snag Sonic's ankle - not without a few attempts, but even Sonic can't quite get out of the way fast enough.

And his eyes go wide, with alarm and recognition and a resigned little, "Oh, no."

Sonic is ripped off the wall in short order. Shadow continues through with that momentum; spinning rapidly in the air, using Sonic as a counterweight to keep the propulsion going.

"The Library doesn't want me to hit you." Those snarled words are still the moon's doing, working his mouth without his permission. ~~It's annoying - this might be the most he's spoken in any conversation.~~ The world is a blur of colours, a slipstream of orange energy kicking up. "It's going to act as soon as it thinks you're in danger. The only way I'm going to pull this off is by hitting you before it realises."

what do you think, sonic. do you think chatterbox here can hit you fast enough once he lets go.

"No offence, Shadow-" and he means that sincerely, even if he knows Shadow will only take it at maximum offense "-but I don't think we're faster than magic."

That being said, he will try and plant his feet in Shadow's chest to try and kick off of him, aiming just to propel them apart rather than crack a rib.

Truly, it says something about Shadow's lack of drive to do actual harm that he doesn't just take advantage of the leg that he's already got a grip on.

"Let's find out," he sneers. Sonic can push him away. It's hard to hit someone's face when you're holding their ankle anyway, and they're still mid-air besides. There's nowhere for the hedgehog to go but Down, and Shadow is happy to oblige; releasing Sonic from the localised whirlwind to send him hurtling in the direction that gravity is so politely requesting.

He's hot on its heels of course; heated air slipping past his burning shoes. For his next move, he'll be aiming to land a hand on Sonic's chest; forcefully propelling him down with all the speed of rocket-powered shoes, fist already lined up for the inevitable punch.

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for all the world's a stage - LIBRARY LOG

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