"Indeed. Though it probably helps that we're small and lovable."

"Yeah, probably. I'm fine with leveraging that."

"We should plan for any dastardly schemes to happen soon then, to take maximal advantage."

"Ooh, yeah."

Ariel thinks for a bit. "The only scheme that I can think of right now is 'become a magical girl'. Which seems to already be pretty well on track."

"That's more like a thing to be than a thing to do."

"Yeah, but like... we're in this new place, so surrounded by new stuff that we didn't even know if the food was for real, right? I don't know what I'd be scheming for yet. There's nothing to covet."

"No schemes just for their own sake? Unpointed schemes, soft and squishable?"

She shakes her head. "What about you?"

"One or two, perhaps." She puts a finger to her lips. "But I fear that to divulge too much, too soon would squish them beyond recognition. It is a very nice data system they have over at the office."

"...I should've thought about that, damn."

She looks solemnly at a table. "We are innocent schoolgirls," she instructs a counterfactual hidden camera. "You heard nothing."

Nira giggles. A red herring well dangled, it seems.

"The most innocent. Soft. Paragons of the Compact."

Ariel peers at Nira.

"You were fucking with me," she diagnoses eventually.

"Just a bit."

"Fair enough."

She drums on the table. "Uh... we explored most of the campus, we ate food, we secured a room... ooh! Let's go to the library!"

"Yeah! I was gonna suggest that if you didn't."

Ariel taps her left temple. "In sync."

Then she hops to her feet and sets off librarywards. Libraries are good places. They contain knowledge.

This one more than most. It's only two stories tall from the outside, but on the inside the true depth is revealed. The ground floor is a ring of desks and chairs and sofas surrounding a plunging hole. There are floors upon floors below the surface, all looking positively full of bookshelves. The domed glass roof provides plenty of illumination all the way to the bottom.

"Wow."

"Holy shit."

Ariel cannot fly yet and should not jump down the hole. Ariel cannot fly yet, and thus, should not jump down the hole. Ariel should not jump down the hole, because she cannot fly yet.

Ariel wrenches her eyes away from the hole and turns to the books. Books books books.

Also there's a railing. You would have to be a special kind of stupid to not put in a railing around such an obvious safety hazard.

There are relatively fewer books on this level. A stair carves down around the outside perimeter, guarded by elevator shafts. Nira heads over to check out the catalog display.

If the architects of this place think a railing is going to stop Ariel from - bad train of thought, books books books.

Ariel will take a look at the catalog as well. See if there's any good fiction. Or, ideally, entertainingly bad fiction.

There is so much of both. At times like this, one is reminded just how long galactic civilization has been around.

If she wants to browse the shelves, she can start with floors four through eight, or she can download a particular title here or request a hardcopy to be picked up at Circulation.

Ooh, there's one that looks promising on level 5.

"I'm heading down to check out this really silly-looking romance," she informs Nira.

Nira seems to be paging through the entirety of the catalog. "-huh? Oh, okay. Have fun."

"You... too?" Ariel says dubiously.

Then she shrugs and hops down the stairs two at a time to find her indescribably stupid romance novel.

It is, in fact, indescribably stupid. She is enthralled.

Knowledge is power, and Nira intends to acquire knowledge of how exactly this library works. Not that she'll be able to remember where everything is, but when's she's looking for something later, she'll have an idea of where to start.

When she finishes, she checks the time. It's been- whoops, two hours. Longer than she was expecting. She goes to find Ariel.