Closed RP Between the Lions

This RP is currently closed.


“The movies, huh?” Adelyn’s voice is thoughtful, if a little confused. She doesn’t really know what Eli means by ‘go to the movies’ - aren’t they already on the tapes that you load into the television? Maybe she meant to say they should go to her house? - but she nods anyways, figuring that she doesn’t really mind either way it shakes out. “I’d like that! Is there one in particular you wanna see?”

She doesn’t really remember what all is in her grandparents’ collection, but she can always check later. There’s sure to be something that isn’t too terrible to sit through, right? Oh dear, she isn’t sure. Maybe she should try to pick something up while she’s here at the library. She’s sure she saw a section for DVDs somewhere in here…

A casual glance around reveals that it is still very dark, and further scrutiny only proves that she doesn’t remember where that section is at all. She gives up on looking so she can focus on not tripping, and, luckily, they make it to the circulation desk without her having to add any more bruises to her collection.

It’s only once they reach the desk that Adelyn realizes another big, glaring flaw in her plan. You see, the desk is unmanned. There are, in fact, no men or women in sight, and especially no nice old ladies who can take her big pile of books and run it through the beepy scanner thingy so that the library knows where their books went when everyone wakes up in the morning. “Oh, drat.”

Defeated, she stops at the counter, sighing heavily before getting up on her tip-toes to place her books on the surface. The stack wobbles dangerously, but she steadies it and scoots the whole thing away from the edge before stepping back. It’s nice getting to drop the weight for a minute, and she takes the opportunity to rub some feeling back into her arms while puzzling through the latest dilemma.

The light from the little windows in and around the doors is finally strong enough to see by, so she turns to Eli when she poses her question, smiling automatically at the sight of her friend. “How do you suppose we tell ‘em we took the books?”

 
“Oh, I guess we should see what theater is closest for both of us.” Eli said, as she shuffled alongside Adelyn. It would be really embarrassing if she stubbed her toe this far in, or like tripped and spilled all of her books, or bumped her hip against a shelf and it made a really loud noise. Instead of any of those dire fates, Eli instead stuck close to Adelyn and sometimes bumped into her, which was better. “Well, uh, we could go see the new Zootopia?” Wait, was offering to take the meta who could make themselves have animal parts to go see a movie about animals, rude? Oh no, she really hoped that wasn’t rude.

This new worry saw her all the way back to the circulation desk, which wasn’t really good but it did keep her preoccupied. The ‘oh drat’ did free her from her current downward spiral, though it did give her a startled jolt that one of the nice librarians might have shown up for their job really early which would have been bad. That wasn’t the problem thankfully, instead it was that there wasn’t someone showing up for work really really early.

“Oh, right. Uh, hang on.” Eli said, placing down her little armful of books before she slipped behind the counter. Was there a generic system password or would there be individual logins? Well probably individual for this desk, but maybe there were self checkout machines? If she had Wren’s power then—

Eliana entirely froze at the half formed thought, all the color finding somewhere else to be that wasn’t her face as her eyes flicked across the empty space as if just thinking about his name would call him to her. This was not the case, but no one seemed to have bothered to let her heart know as it was doing its very best to not be inside of her chest anymore. After a moment Eli gulped down a lungful of air, because she just realized she had stopped trying to breathe, and with a chuckle that was entirely nerves trying to find their own way out of her body she knelt down.

“Well, uh, right, so.” Eli babbled out quickly, as if she could get ahead of any awkward questions if she just shoved enough words out into the air. She had at least figured out that whole breathing thing again, even if her heart was currently aware of her having done an exercise routine she didn’t remember doing. She looked up at Adelyn and tried out her best miscreant smile, which felt tight on her cheeks. “So, step one if you want to break into a computer, see if someone left you their password.” She slid her fingers around the handle of a drawer and gave it a tug. It probably would have been very cool if it had popped right open after that line, but it was instead locked.

“Right, uh, and step two is unlocking the drawer.” She said, her hand sliding back into her bag to retrieve her lock picking set.
 


Adelyn settles with both hands gently clutching the edge of the desk, leaning over and around to see Eli on the other side.

“Something wrong?” she starts to ask, noticing the way her friend has frozen, face pale and eyes darting, just a few steps into the librarians’ area. Eli jolts back into motion before she can get the question fully out, though, and she cuts herself off. She still gives the girl a worried look, turning to scan the area herself when no explanation follows the not-very-reassuring breathless laughter, but she can’t see anything that might’ve spooked her.

Maybe she’s just nervous about the number of books they have to check out? Adelyn eyes the stack she’s collected, and, with a shrug, begins the process of sorting it a bit better, picking up the one off the top and squinting at it before deciding if she’ll keep it or put it on the returns cart.

“Do they usually leave a password?” she asks, pausing to look curiously down at Eli. The girl has pulled out the little metal tools she’d been using earlier, and Adelyn stands there just watching her pick the lock for a long moment before remembering what she was doing. With a final glance at the book currently in her hands, she sets it in the ‘return’ pile and picks up the last one she has yet to sort.

It’s the dinosaur book. With hardly a second glance, she sets it in the ‘keep’ pile, then leans over the counter again to check Eli’s progress. “What do we do if they didn’t?”

 
“No, uh, nothing.” Eli mumbled, shifting her weight from one knee to the other. Instead of elaborating, Eli slid her lockpick into the drawer’s simple lock. It wasn’t hard, but she could feel her fingers trembling and she couldn’t quite catch the pin. Breathe. Right, she just needed to breathe. That helped, the sound of Adelyn shuffling through her pile of books also helped. It was just the two of them, and she could feel her shoulders relax.

“They don’t always.” Eli said, looking up at Adelyn. Her eyes were very pretty when they caught the light, weren’t they? That thought made her quickly look back down for a very different reason. “But it works more often than you’d think it would.” She added, because talking helped her feel calm. There was a muted click from the lock as she finally got the pin in place and turned it with a flick of her wrist. She didn’t pull it open just yet and instead looked up at Adelyn.

“Well, another thing that happens a bunch is that the default system permissions are still in place.” Eli shifted to her left as she spoke, her fingers tapping a couple keys at random until the computer flashed awake. “The user name is something like ‘system’ or ‘admin’ or ’user’ and the password is something like ‘Password1234’ so if we try it…” She attempted system first which didn’t work, she was however a little caught off guard when user did work. She looked up at Adelyn and gave her a sheepish grin.

“Well, uh, so we just need to scan the books then.”
 


Adelyn has to lean halfway over the counter to see what Eli’s doing with the computer, squinting against the glow to watch the ‘Password’ box fill in with little five-point stars. The screen is angled all wrong, but it’s bright enough that it’s pretty unmissable in the dim light. This is good, because her feet aren’t on the floor anymore, and if she had to get any closer she might’ve just ended up crawling over the counter entirely.

“Huh. That was easy.” She returns the grin, brightly mischievous and dazzlingly sincere, and starts shimmying backwards, squirming off the counter and onto her own two feet once more. “Or maybe it just looked it, ‘cause you’re so smart. Either way, nice work!”

After hopping a couple times to get her claws comfortable in their differently-angled confinement, she settles and pushes the ‘keep’ pile forward. “Here, these’re the ones I wanna check out. Oh, and yours!”

Snagging Eli’s (much smaller) pile, she sets it on top of her own, then takes the rejects up in her arms and scurries around the counter to join her friend. “Can I do the beepy thingy?”

She doesn’t know which thingy she’s even looking for, but she runs her eyes over what she can see on the desk anyways as she shoves her armful of books onto a half-empty cart set against the back wall. It was something small, she thinks. Handheld. With a red light. Maybe that?

She nearly trips over herself in her rush to join Eli at the computer, catching herself by throwing her arms around the girl’s shoulders and leaning in on one side to look even closer at the mysterious, lightly-forbidden librarian tools arrayed before them. Picking up the mystery maybe-beepy-thingy, she holds it up, slightly breathless as she asks, “Is this it?”

 
Eli only got a little distracted as Adelyn leaned across the counter to watch what Eli was doing, which was fine because it was easy enough to find the library checkout thing. The barcode icon on the desktop seemed like it was a pretty big giveaway. Eli was slightly more distracted by the thought that if she turned her head their noses would touch which was certainly a weird thought why did she have that thought. The light also glittered very prettily in Adelyn’s eyes before she could go and do something very dumb like mumble “You’re pretty.” just under her breath.

Adelyn’s compliment did send a leap through Eli’s heart and colored her cheeks with a pink flush. “I’m happy to help.” Eli said with a grin as Adelyn scooped up her chosen books. Eli did all find her gaze following Adelyn’s hand as the girl hurried around the counter, as the hand didn’t seem to quite know if it wanted to be a fuzzy hand, a glove, a paw, or something human with pointed nails in the low light.

“They’re your books so the beeping is all yours.” Eli said, as Adelyn found the scanner. “Oh, and remember to run the spine of the book against the strip next to the beeper.” Eli added quickly, leaning forward herself to tap the magnetic strip. She wasn’t entirely sure what it was for, but she vaguely guessed it was to keep the scanner things by the door from alarming. Maybe.

A question came to Eli then, one which she probably should have asked earlier. “So, can you, like, use other animal parts if you read about them?” She asked, resting her elbows on the desktop.
 
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