"Willow!”

Goku slammed open the door, an impressive feat when it slid instead of using hinges, shouting into the mostly empty club room.

The Principalia Fanclub was a club that, as far as Goku knew, only had one member. That did not stop Willow from having a mindbogglingly large collection of other-makaily junk, to the point that her small club room was more of a storage cupboard than an unused classroom.

“What is it Goku.”

“ ‘It’ is this!” The monkey demon uncrumpled the paper that had been crushed in her rush to get to this junk heap of a room. “You are going into the Library. I want in!”

Willow audibly sighed. “Why should I bring you? Veneralia forced me into doing the hard stuff for extra curriculars. I’m just happy that I got to do this one to help out a friend. You are a mischief maker and Raven, the expedition leader, doesn’t like unexpected company.”

“What if I promise I’ll be good? No, I’ll be on my best behaviour. I swear it on Dai-Sensei himself.”

“You don’t even deny it…”

“Okay, how about this: What if I told you that the DaiKami has recently come into position of some rumours related to Goddessly? It’s too flimsy and boring to print, but if a close friend happened to be interested in it, I would be happy to share the source.”

Willow’s eyes got that tunnel-vision look they only seemed to have when certain topics came up.

- - -

The group was all done visiting different sections of the Library. They had visited a lot of sections and Goku was starting to get sick of looking at books, but they still weren’t leaving the damn library.

“Beatrix, it slipped my mind to say earlier, but that’s a gorgeous dress. Where did you get it from?” Willow glanced back towards the others.

“I made it myself,” the Vampire puffed up a little at the compliment. She might be easy to play. “I rather like it myself, though it isn’t my best work. I’ve not yet mastered flow and so I had to make some compromises to achieve full freedom of movement.”

“We’ll I can’t tell at all,” Goku commented. “You could sell dresses like that in DaiMachi and market yourself just under the DaiSaiho.”

“Perhaps.” She was fiddling with her ribbons now. Touching them up to make sure each was in exactly the right place, Goku supposed, but clearly fidgeting.

“You know, I’ve been thinking of added a fashion column to the DaiKami. I know there’s interest, but it’s been surprisingly hard to find an experienced fashionista to write it.” It didn’t help that most of the Saiho avoided Goku like the plague.

“I can’t imagine why.”

Beatrix and Raven both suppressed laughs at Willow’s ‘humour’.

“Seriously though, I think you’re work would be a great addition to the DaiKami.”

“I must confess that I like the idea,” Beatrix replied, “But I’m somewhat concerned as well…”

“About what?”

Beatrix nodded half to herself. “I have an idea. If you will act as a model for me, I will write a column in your paper.”

“Wear fancy dresses? Sure. Sounds like fun.” Whatever the Vampire’s concerns, they seemed small enough to not matter. Getting another columnist and the chance to wear sweet dresses though? It sounded like a win-win to Goku.

“As long as we’re on the topic,” Beatrix continued, “Raven, you should really try and wear more fashionable clothes some time.”

“...Should I?” Raven seemed surprised to have been dragged into the conversation.

“Yes, Raven, you really should,” Willow agreed.

“Oh…,” Raven replied as the party rounded a corner.

“And on that note, we have arrived.”

The party stood before a massive, metallic door with this bars too close even for Goku to reach a hand through. The door had a variety of locks on it, as well as a horizontal slit at knee-level. Goku could just barely make out another door in the distance behind it, features rendered indistinct from the distance combined with the narrow view window.

“The Vault,” Willow began. “The restricted section of the Library. There are two ways in. The first is to have the key. I only know of one copy of that key and it’s on Veneralia’s keychain. The second method is to solve the door’s puzzle, and the puzzle for every other door that comes after it.”

"That’s a big ask.”

“So, if we can’t actually get inside, why did we come here again?” Goku eyed the upper reaches of the aisle. She didn’t fancy getting attacked by flying books again, but she was curious if it was possible to just go around the gate. This section also had space above it, but it was roofed with bars similar to the ones in the door. It was a first that Goku had seen in the place.

“That’s why we saved it for last. So we could make one attempt on our way out.”

“There’s a hole,” Raven remarked. “Is it like the slot outside the Library?”

"One way to find out.” Goku reached for a random book on the nearest shelf and tried to shove it through the gap. The metal closed shut like a mouth just before the paper reached it, blocking the hardback. When Goku pulled it away, it re-opened.

“That was obviously wrong.”

But Raven must have seen something that Goku hadn’t. She was furiously digging through her supplies until she dug up a half-finished journal. She unceremoniously tore several pages out of the binding and carefully pressed the slips into the space. The metal opening once again close down on the paper, but this time it did so while the pages were within it, very nearly snapping up Raven’s thumb and finger in the process.

After a moment, it released the pages. Each was riddled with small square holes. They obviously formed a pattern, but it was a meaningless one to Goku, and seemed equally meaningless to everyone else as well. Each page had distinct patterns, all made from the same squares.

“I think this is a clue for the lock,” Willow surmised.

“We can make a copy of it outside,” Raven replied. “Then you and I can both work on solving it.”