“It started with what Akari said about storing stuff for winter,” Danielle said. “I got to thinking about what the guide said about the rooms being survivable warm, but not comfortable warm; and I got to thinking about Geardump Hill, and wondering if anyone had dumped their cloak there.”
“Whoah. Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Sadie asked.
“Do you think I’m saying, we should walk back to Geardump Hill and see if there’s anything good there?” Danielle asked back.
“I’m shocked at you, and I love it,” Sadie said.
“Agreed,” Akari added. “Are we actually allowed to go back east, though? I kind of thought we were only supposed to go west from here.”
“I thought so too,” Heather said. “And besides, isn’t any gear dropped there supposed to be forfeit?”
“To the person that dropped it, yeah, but we didn’t drop anything there. Akari lent us her strength, and we got everything we brought all the way to the room,” Danielle reminded them. “And I don’t think we’re forbidden to go east at all, we just can’t go back inside the fancy fence. That’s fine – the hill was a little over halfway, right? So we’ll only be going halfway back. Better yet, we can set our snares out there, and if we’re real lucky, maybe everyone else will be thinking like what Heather just said, and we won’t have a ton of competition out there. If everyone’s trying to go west and south and set snares close to town, there’ll be fights about it; but if we’re off in a completely different direction, and our snares are almost an hour away (maybe two hours at the speed I’ll be limping along with all these blisters), well, we won’t be in any of the fights.”
“OK, but our snares will be a whole hour or two away, though,” Sadie said.
“Which means our 1200 neighbors won’t be scaring the wildlife out there,” Akari said.
“Exactly! And we can look for edible and useful plants on the way there and back, too,” Danielle added. “If we dump out all our bags, and go out wearing them empty, then we come back with them full of either dropped stuff or else grass for Sadie to make twine with, right? Or whatever you figure is best from all the stuff you read last night.”
“I do have a list,” Sadie said speculatively.
“Me too,” said Heather.
“Let’s do it,” said Akari, upending her Decision Day satchel, then bringing out an armful of packaged items from her footlocker. “Here, help me get this stuff out of the packages?”
“I can,” Danielle said. “I hardly brought any trash plastic, and I want to keep a few pieces in case it’s useful, so I only have a few bits to add – can I put them in with yours?”
Akari nodded and held open her school satchel, already empty from unpacking before breakfast. Danielle helped her get the plastic off of some of her gear, reminding her to keep the cardboard parts of the packaging for fire-starting. The other two finished quickly, and spent a few minutes getting their swords and hatchets on the same belt, emptying their Decision Day satchels, and otherwise getting ready for the hike.
“Part of me thinks I’m crazy for going back up and down that hill voluntarily,” Heather joked nervously.
“Don’t worry,” Sadie said, “We’ll let you carry all the grass and stuff, and we’ll carry anything heavy we find. Right, ladies? We divvy up what gets back to the room evenly, not according to Body stat?”
“Definitely,” Akari agreed.
“Yeah, and we might even let some stuff belong to the SHAD Party,” Danielle added. “That’s one of the benefits of being an organization, right? The org can own stuff, we don’t have to divvy things that are better off shared.”
“Like the healing mana supply!” Sadie said. “That mana token I made this morning belongs to the party. You’ll all contribute to the supply eventually, but we don’t have to keep track of my healing mana supply and Danielle’s healing mana supply and so on. It’s the Party’s healing mana supply.”
“I promise I’ll be responsible with it,” Heather said seriously.
“I know you will be,” Sadie told her. “Haha, it’s Danielle we have to keep an eye on. How’s your mana, Danielle?”
“It’s at eight,” Danielle said, bringing up her interface. “Wait, it’s at six!”
“Hah, oh man, you just had to Focus on the city charter, huh?” Akari teased.
“I did not! Oh wait – I spent a point trying out Sense Mana Source, and then the town thing, that was an organization. The Rangers just suckered us all into spending a point of mana to charter the town today! Drat it all, I agree we need some rules, but could they have waited until evening if they were going to do something that would grab mana?”
“Don’t be mad, Danielle,” Heather said. “They might have saved lives by making the rule first, instead of waiting all day and then doing it.”
“Ah, right. I hate to admit it, but you’re probably dea – er, spot on. Is that the last of it, Akari?” Danielle gestured to Akari’s school satchel, half-full of plastic packaging.
“Yeah,” Akari agreed. “Let me fix my belt like they did, and we can go get Cassy’s trash, and get moving.”
Danielle nodded and went to move her knife and hatchet sheaths to the same belt as her scabbard. Then she put it on, and put the hatchet back in its sheath. She put on her crossed satchels, just like when they had set out to hike to the Rooms, then her quiver, and the backpack over that. Finally, she picked up her staff, and looked around to see the rest of SHAD all decked out in all their weapons and all their bags just like her.
“It’s so deceptively light when it’s all empty,” Heather joked.
“Yeah, and we’re gonna be beyond sore if we come back loaded down heavy,” Sadie said, a bit more seriously.
“It’ll be worth it, though. Let’s get moving.” Akari suited actions to words, and approached the door. “I’ll get the hostility check this time, Heather, save your mana in case we need it for healing.”
Akari gave the all clear, and the four of them left the room and headed down the walkway, Heather rattling the door to make sure it was closed behind them. They got back to room 6006 without Cassy putting in an appearance, so they knocked.
They heard footsteps at the door, then a long pause before Cassy opened the door. “I told you I’d bring my trash down when I was ready,” she complained. “What are you all doing, anyway? You look like you’re ready to go to war.”
Cassy had taken off her denim jacket, leaving her dressed in jeans and a plain T-shirt. She held a school satchel full of trash.
“We’re going foraging for useful plants, and setting some snares,” Akari said. “But if we run across anything to hunt we’ll probably try for it, and of course, if anybody attacks us, we want to be able to defend ourselves. After the way the rules discussion went, it just seems like a bad idea to be outside the base without my sword. Anyway, we want to get going; are you almost done with your trash? You can dump it into my bags. We’re hoping to find a lot of good fiber for cord-making, but right now all we’ve got is space.”
“Right, right, you said you were in a hurry.” Cassy sighed. “I’m about done – here, go ahead and pour my bag into yours while I get the rest.” She handed Akari her school satchel and moved back into the room, towards the beds.
The SHAD Party stayed near the door as Akari moved the trash from Cassy’s bag to her own. Danielle tried to think of something to talk about with her, but all she could think of was asking what home studies had been like, and that seemed like it might be a painful subject.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“Here’s the last of my trash,” Cassy said a few minutes later, presenting a large armful of rubbish to Akari. Akari held open her leather satchel to receive it. “Thanks again,” Cassy said, stuffing it all in.
“What are you planning to do, today?” Heather asked. Sadie immediately frowned at her, but she ignored it.
“I’m planning on resting my aching legs and reading some of those books they provided with the room,” Cassy said, either not seeing Sadie’s frown or ignoring it as well. “Frankly, the hike kind of did me in, and well, it’s like you said. I don’t want to be out there today if I can’t defend myself properly. I didn’t take a weapon Skill at the Dome, and now I’m regretting that a lot, and I haven’t gotten together a proper plan for getting around that and staying alive, yet.”
“I started the Firmitatem Ranger’s Guide to the Outside last night,” Danielle said. “I recommend it – it has a lot of interesting stuff, including how to fish if you don’t have normal fishing line and a manufactured rod and reel.”
“And the Guide to Edible Wildlife has a lot of hints for trapping and snaring, too,” Heather added, “as well as a lot of edible plants to look out for. After reading that, it’s pretty obvious that they don’t Send people this time of year just because school’s out – it’s also a great time to find food for those of us who are just starting out.”
“You guys must have gotten here earlier than we did, last night,” Cassy said. “It was so late we all pretty much crashed. I don’t think anyone even looked at the boxed dinners – we ate dinner on the fields.”
“Same as lunch, pretty much, right?” Heather said. “You should check out the boxed dinner – there are a whole bunch of seeds in the bottom. We’re not sure if we’ll be able to use them before next year, but I’m definitely going to be working on making sure that when next spring comes, I’ll have whatever I need to use them right!”
“Heh, listen to you, talking about next spring like it’s a foregone conclusion that you’ll still be here,” Cassy said, smiling a bit wanly. “I’ll check it out, and make sure I put my seeds somewhere safe, too. Here’s hoping we all live to argue about who gets to plant seeds where, like that one person was saying after breakfast.”
“Here’s hoping!” Heather agreed. “Anyway, happy reading. Who knows, maybe switching back to your scholar Career for the day will actually be helpful. You still get a school Career if you do home tutoring, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” Cassy said. “My parents actually gave me two Careers. I used to switch back and forth every day.”
“You can do that?” Sadie asked, suddenly interested.
“Oh – yeah, Careers will let you switch every four hours. My parents say most adults have one for work and one for home,” Cassy said. “They also say switching doesn’t do as much as people think, but I say, if that many people do it that often, there must be some reason, even if it’s more subtle than they make it out to be.”
“That’s good info – thanks,” Sadie said. “I think maybe I’ll make mine, one for day and one for night – Survivor for hunting, and Scholar for reading up in the reference books.”
“That’s a good idea, actually,” Cassy said. “Thank you all for your suggestions, too, guys. I appreciate it. You have no idea.”
“No problem,” Danielle said. “There may be crazies in the neighborhood, but some of us want to be good neighbors! Anyway, we do need to get moving if we’re going to find all the stuff we’re looking for. Catch you tomorrow – if you want to do the prayer meeting thing, we should be around. Probably won’t be a sunrise service, getting up at the crack of dawn once per weekend is enough! See you later either way, though.”
“See you,” Cassy said, closing the door as the other girls moved off toward the end of the walkway.
Coming around the corner, they looked down the front-side walkway, and saw that there were a knot of girls at the stairs, having some kind of noisy argument. They couldn’t hear the details from where they were, but Danielle didn’t like their chances of getting up the stairs without getting involved in the argument.
“What now,” Heather said, more a complaint than a question.
“Now, this,” Sadie answered, and promptly climbed the half-wall and crawled out onto the grass. “Need a hand?” she asked, turning back and reaching down to Heather.
“Yeah, probably,” Heather said, and let Sadie pull her up the chest-high wall, while Akari climbed out herself.
Danielle handed up a few pieces of trash that escaped during Akari’s climb, then clambered up and out. The argument continued unabated near the stairs, blocking both the way down and the way up. No one had swords out, but several girls were holding staves, and using them to gesture towards the other girls and the woods to the south of the camp.
“Looks bad, but not crazy,” Akari commented. “Let’s stick to our plan, and not get involved with arguments. As long as they’re only using words, it’s not the end of the world, right?”
“Right,” Heather said. “There’s no point in getting into it. Let’s just get out of town and get something constructive done, right?”
The four of them walked back between buildings one and five again. The Rangers had disappeared the crates from earlier somehow, and the square of tables had been entirely replaced with a square of trash bins in alternating colors. The familiar color codes for recyclable, compostable, and general rubbish looked uncanny and out of place, set up in a square in the middle of a road at the edge of a ruined city (well, a ruined town). A few Rangers stood around the square.
They approached the square all the same, and Akari shook out her bags over the appropriate bins.
“Nothing from the rest of you?” one of the Rangers asked curiously.
“We gathered it all in one bag for each type,” Danielle answered. “That was for our whole room. We took off most of our packaging before we left the dorms anyway.”
“That was smart of you,” the Ranger said with a nod. “I still cringe when I think of how much worthless plastic I carted up Geardump hill when I was Sent. The weight would’ve been better used for – well, practically anything else!”
Danielle nodded. “Not to mention the volume. Anyway, have a nice day.”
“You too,” the Ranger said.
As they moved away from the trash bins, the sounds of a shouted argument rose in the distance, much louder than the argument at the stairs of building six, and from a different direction. The Ranger pulled out a radio, but before he could say anything, someone else came on. “I have eyes on an altercation in the woods about 500 yards south of building seven,” the radio reported. “Fighting over snaring territory already – who had 8:45 in the betting pool?”
“Professionalism, please,” another voice said. “Any weapons in play right now?”
“Sorry, and no, no weapons,” the first voice responded. “Looks like it’s about to be a fistfight though. You want me to show uniform?”
“No,” answered the second voice. “You know the stupid rules for new Sent.”
“Know ‘em, hate ‘em,” the first voice said. “And there goes the first swing – good news is, they both ditched their swords to focus on punching.”
“Probably a good sign,” said the second voice. “Keep an eye on it. Captain clear.”
“Olson clear,” replied the first voice.
The shouting in the woods continued, but the Ranger put away his radio. The girls looked at each other, then started walking the other direction, up the road past building 1.
“We should probably shift off the road a ways,” Sadie said after a few minutes. “Stuff might be growing in the ruins, but it definitely won’t be on the road.”
“Good point. Show me what we’re looking for again?” Danielle asked.
They paused in front of a burned-out shell of some building, and Sadie and Heather got out their notes and showed their sketches to the group. They moved slower after that, keeping an eye out for useful greenery. They didn’t find much at first, but they did learn that the road the guide had brought them in on was notably better maintained than any of the other roads in town. As ancient as it seemed, it was in passable shape, while many of the others had been reduced almost to rubble-strewn greenways. They eventually found their way into what had once been a residential neighborhood, and found an old yard that had cherry tomatoes growing against every tall surface – the brick wall of the old house, the remains of a stone wall that had once probably walled in the garden, the shell of the next house over. The tomatoes themselves were mostly still green, but the location was easy enough to find again. Akari sketched a tiny map in the corner of Heather’s plant notes.
“We should probably figure out a less obvious way to leave the camp if we’re going to come here a lot,” Sadie commented. “There’s a lot here for the four of us, but not for the 1200 of us, if you know what I mean.”
“That’s a good point. Maybe we should head east directly from our building – forget the stairs, even, if we really want to be low visibility. Just climb the retaining wall and go into the woods until we can’t see the buildings, and then go north until we hit roads,” Akari suggested.
“Sounds workable. If we get out those paint markers and make a few subtle blazes, we should even be able to follow them back and not have to be sticking out on the roads in either direction,” Danielle said.
“Who knows, maybe we’ll even find useful plants on that route,” Heather said. “We didn’t find much sticking closer to the roads.”
“Until now!” Akari said, tossing a tomato into her mouth.
They harvested a few handfuls of the ripest tomatoes and kept moving, eating them as they went. The neighborhood had a few more patches, which they noted on the mini-map but otherwise left alone. Eventually, they got to the edge of town, and started angling more north, trying to find the road even as they took advantage of the woods to find a wider variety of plants. They paused to cut a few vines for Sadie’s crafts, which went into Heather’s bags since she was supposed to carry the low-density plants, and Akari chopped up a fallen tree branch into firewood and tied it in a bundle under her leather satchel, hung from the rings that were meant for the tent.
It took them longer than they expected to hit the road, but when they did, Akari put down the firewood to pick back up on the way back to the Rooms, and they paused to look for some good places nearby to try the snare techniques from the guidebook. Each of them eventually picked a spot within sight of the little pile of firewood, and they moved on, staying a bit south of the road, still looking for useful plants as they went, but also looking for dropped gear now.
don't want to go back Inside; but there are always a few who get used to living under a sky instead of a cavern ceiling, and decide they don't want to spend the rest of their lives in a box.
https://discord.gg/u5dtzpShv2
