Don't Judge a Book by its Cover [Closed Training]

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~ 1933: Don't Judge a Book by its Cover ~
(Direct Continuation from Matter of Perspective)

Verlassen stepped through the black vortex of energy into the Library located in London's western reaches, he had come here a few times for the books here delighted him – they had a considerable section on medicine as well as botany, a subject of renewed interest to the Hollow who could create plants from seeds of gel. 'A library again?' Moaned the sneak thief Tony despondently.

Loki shrugged in response, 'I figure if we are going to the human realm it might as well be to a place that I enjoy and where we can learn something useful – even if our 'trick' doesn't work out.' No point making a wasted trip after all, while they were there Loki would do his best to examine any books about rocks and see just how much he had thought he had 'understood' was fact and how much was his own delusion.

For starters he decided to attempt to examine one of the small wooden tables upon which two large stacks of books were piled. As Loki placed his hand on it he allowed his reiatsu sense to seep into the pine surface, exposing the fine, soft grain which had been treated with a staining resin. The surface was exquisite, yet as his senses delved further, Loki located the leg struts, instead of being made from the same high quality pine, it seemed they were made of a more base product, an oak that was badly hewn and poorly sanded, one of the nails used stuck out of the wood in a way that could not be seen from above, but were you sitting at the table you might accidentally knock your leg on it.

Loki removed their gel hand to rub their eyes slightly, the new trick they were working on took a lot of strain on them, leaving a slight headache in it's place. As Loki looked to wait out the effects he picked up one of the books from the pile, as soon as he touched the cover Loki could feel the book, were he to guess just from looking at the side he would have said that it was around four hundred pages; yet after merely touching it, Loki realised that the pages were actually much thinner than they appeared and it was somewhere between five hundred and thirty to seventy pages, a moment later he knew it was between five hundred and fifty and sixty pages. Within three seconds of having touched the book, Loki could feel the width of each of the five hundred and fifty eight pages and knew that two had been folded, dog eared most likely by their previous reader to mark an important page. He sighed, people who treated books in such a manner were most annoying to him.

As he opened the book to fix the pages, Loki could feel the wealth of information from his reiatsu forming a sort of map or overview of how the book was put together, the glue binding the individual pages, the ink marking each page, the wooden cover covered in leather blue silk, a small tea stain on the three hundred and eighteenth page. Even as Loki fixed the second dog eared page he tsked, readying to turn to the stained page to see how bad the damage was, yet even as he did – Loki could feel the page in question – it was only a relatively small stain and it had dried with little discolouration, yet it was in the middle of the page, covering a quite interesting observation about the founding of Los Angeles. 'Incredible,' Jun the Shinto priest whispered.

There was a dull thudding sound as Loki dropped the book carelessly from their suddenly 'nerveless' gel fingers, it was an involuntary action but Loki picked the book up quickly to inspect it for damage, even as he did so he could feel that the wooden cover had absorbed most of the force and it was unharmed. Despite that however, Loki nervously opened the book to page three hundred and eighteen, it was a story about the American settlers and their difficulties while establishing a new township at Los Angeles. 'So it was real then,' Jun continued as Loki stared at the tea stain, 'Not just the pages of the book, but even the words on the page.'

'I thought I was going crazy for a moment there,' Loki whispered before closing the cover again and instead choosing to sit down against the windowsill, propping their back against the solid frame as they considered the book critically. 'However, the real test is not to be able to do that by accident,' Loki thought silently, were they able to read the book without opening it, then it would be a real achievement.

Hours passed and people came and went in the secluded library, Loki carefully stepped around the oblivious humans to ensure none stumbled over him. As he managed to find a nice place that no one would bother him – atop the sturdiest of the book shelves; Loki allowed his reiatsu to permeate the book ever so slowly, as he did so he could feel the information flow to him all at once. The book itself had no means by which it could tell what information was needed first, so it came to Loki as soon as it was available, a chaotic hodgepodge of numbers and individual characters, even the occasional word.

It took time for Loki to slowly, ever so slowly adjust the flow of his reiatsu, to target one page first, to look at one side only, to look at one line, one character at a time. In time it became easier and he was able to put the characters together more easily, words flowed in instead of single letters, the words flowed out faster and faster from the pages. And the headache he had begun to get soon disappeared, replaced by an increasingly pleasurable sensation of accomplishment. It took nearly three hours to read the first chapter, a mere ten pages, yet the next chapter took but one hour. As the library descended into darkness, Loki was struck by the fact that at least he needed no lamp to read by.

By the following morning he had finished the book in it's entirety, it had been heavy going, the times where the ink had been blurred or there was discolouration were the hardest for reading, yet that was little difficult from if he had been reading it normally; indeed by the time he had finished reading the book he found he was now reading each page in almost the same time it took him to read them by turning the pages and using his own eyes, perhaps a little less.

As Loki finished the book he knew he had to get out of the library, to stretch his legs if nothing else. In the human realm he seldom experienced any problems with Shinigami and their like, mainly because he was quite adept at hiding his reiatsu; so he decided to talk a walk about town. As he did so he was drawn unerringly to one of the most notable landmarks in the city; Big Ben.

Looking up at the clock face Loki was struck by the idea of trying to see how it worked, in his youth clocks and watches were much rarer things – something that a family might keep as an heirloom for generations. Loki sent his reiatsu towards the clock, yet as he did so he felt only the vaguest response, nothing like the rock, the table or even the book, he could only really feel the outlines of the shape, that there was a great deal of metallic 'stuff' behind the clock face. Annoyed, Loki entered the building, quickly climbing the stairs he made his way to the clock-room after slipping past a couple of guards and creating a key made of gel for the locked door.

Opening it up he could see the intricate metal gears all turning in unison. For a moment Loki felt like a child all over again, the joy of discovery and wonder at the strange contraption. However as Loki sent his reiatsu towards it, he could begin to feel the information flow forth, individual cogs turned in conjunction with each other all to a set rhythm, as the seconds turned by they incrementally shifted over the minutes which incrementally shifted over the hours; all regulated by painstakingly wrought gears. He could feel the shaft running to the clock face and the hands attached as they moved ever so delicately. Nearly a minute had passed as he stood there transfixed and with every passing instant the information that came to him was more detailed than the moment before.

As Loki stood, transfixed by the sight before him, the door behind him opened to admit an elderly gentleman. At the sound, Loki spun, furiously with himself for allowing his attention to lapse he realised his attention had been solely devoted to the amazing mechanism before him and had allowed his perception of his surroundings to lapse as a result. Reiatsu sprung to Loki's hand as he began preparing a cero, before he realised that the man before him was no threat.

The old man limped slowly amongst the gears, paying no attention to Loki as he carefully checked the mechanism for any sign of problems; 'The Engineer responsible for maintaining the clock perhaps?' Loki wondered idly as he perched atop a beam, continuing his appraisal of the elaborate time piece.

As he resumed his vigil, he sent out his reaistu sense to permeate the complex and finely wrought moving parts that acted in unison to mark time for the London populace. It was truly a remarkable, mesmerising sight after all, the elderly engineer too seemed to be taking his time and as Loki surveyed the room he could not help but to look from time to time at the man.

The first time he did so he was barely aware of what was happening, yet the feeling was curious indeed; doing a double take, Loki looked at the old man again. Slowly Loki began to be able to make it out, it was difficult at first, indistinct as if there was some minute amount of interference that Loki had not encountered with either the book or clock. The man's structure was slowly resolved, he was indeed an old man and his bones had become brittle, his muscles had begun to waste from disuse and age, yet the man had once been impressive to behold, shrapnel wounds had taken their toll on his right calf however and the man had been unable to walk much ever since.

Within the man, Loki could feel an almost negligible amount of reiryoku, yet it was so insignificant and muted - Loki realised that must be the reason why the man exhibited no spiritual force, he simply had never accessed or developed that small force within. It was that very energy, Loki realised after a moment, that had been interfering with his attempts to examine the man, distorting the information he received, yet in time the view resolved itself and the man in all his glorious imperfection was as an open book.

Unbidden a tear came to the corner of their left eye, a creation of wonder indeed.