Heather’s grip on her staff was white-knuckled again as she faced the Ranger that had come looking for a Healer, but she still stood up. “I’ll come, if you’ll be there to protect me.”

  “I’ll come too,” Danielle said. “I only have Medic’s Diagnostics, but I might be able to help, and if nothing else I can provide moral support for Heather.”

  “Glad to have you,” said Ranger Juliette. “Come on, let’s move. I doubt it’s down to seconds, but minutes definitely matter here. In fact, just head for building one, I need to knock on 6024 here, but then I’ll hit the stairs and catch up to you quick.”

  “We’re from 6024,” Danielle said. “Why are you coming to our door?”

  “Oh – because I heard from another Ranger that you guys had a Healer,” the Ranger explained. “I guess I found her. Meet you around front!”

  “I think study time’s over,” Danielle told Heather. Heather nodded in agreement, and they got moving, taking their gear with them almost without thinking about it.

  Danielle and Heather went around the end of building six and started across the paved area between buildings. True to her word, Ranger Juliette was at their side in less than a minute. Danielle wondered why she’d bothered going around to the stairs, but she supposed it didn’t matter. They crossed the pavement between buildings, at first aiming for the gap between one and five where they’d gone through for the breakfast and discussion. Ranger Juliette angled further north, though, toward the back set of stairs to building one.

  “This way,” she said, leading them down into building one’s sunken walkway and around the end. “It’s 1019 – one of the rooms that only got three people to begin with. Your patient’s name is Tom. There’s a lot of blood, but try to keep it cool. The instigator is Arny. I don’t know if he’ll still be conscious, but if he is, just avoid unnecessary interactions, all right? Here we are.” The Ranger put her hand on the door handle and intoned, “By my authority as a duly commissioned Ranger of Firmitatem, I claim entry at this door in order to pursue my duties.” She activated a Skill alongside the statement, and when she finished speaking, the handle clicked and turned.

  The three of them stepped inside, and as they came past the bathroom (which was on the left instead of the right, giving the room a mirrored layout compared to her own) Danielle rapidly scanned the room, taking in the basic situation. To her right, a boy she wasn’t familiar with sat on the bed closest to the opening past the ‘kitchen’ area. He seemed to have a naturally tanned complexion, but with an unhealthy pallor underneath. His sword was across his lap, but he was using his right hand to press a bloody rag of some sort against his left arm. He glanced up when they entered, but then returned his attention to his arm. A male Ranger stood beside him, staff in a relaxed guard position. Behind the Ranger, a body was laid out on the floor in a pool of blood so big Danielle could hardly process it. Was that boy really still alive?

  Across from the boy on the bed, another boy sat on the floor, leaning back against the opposite bed. Danielle thought he might be from Akari’s class at their school, but she didn’t really know him – not even his name. He was holding his stomach with his left arm, slightly hunched over, but his right hand gripped a knife. At first Danielle thought he must be unconscious, but as they came up to the beds, he looked up and gave Ranger Juliette a defiant glare.

  “Any trouble, Richard?” Juliette asked the other Ranger, ignoring all the Sent boys for the moment.

  “Just some more trash talk, really,” the other Ranger replied. “They’re both too busy trying to keep their insides in to do much else.”

  “All right. You take the kitchen, then, and we’ll get these two to work. Listen up, boys! Nobody wanted to come out except these two. I got one Medic and one Healer. Tom has dibs, because instigators get healed last, and if you’re not polite they’re allowed to walk out. You will compensate them for their assistance. If the Ranger Healer gets here before we’re all done, he or she will also render assistance, but frankly, if these two can’t provide real help, you won’t last long enough to discuss payment with the Rangers. Healer, care to introduce yourself?”

  “You can call me, um, Healer Orellana,” Heather said.

  “I guess if we’re going formal, I’m medic Falconer,” Danielle said.

  “I don’t see a falcon on you,” the boy sitting on the floor scoffed.

  “It’s my family name,” Danielle said shortly.

  “Healer Orellana, please have a look at this arm wound,” Ranger Juliette said, gesturing to Tom.

  “I want the sword out of reach,” Heather said with a frown.

  “Ah, right. May I, Tom?” Ranger Juliette asked, reaching toward the sword. She didn’t actually grab it until he gave her a nod. She lifted the sword – bloody, Danielle noticed with a shudder – and passed it over the counter to her partner.

  Heather came the rest of the way up to the bed, her eyes darting to all the blood on the floor and then refocusing on Tom. “I need to see it,” she told him.

  Tom nodded again and lifted the rag he was using away from his arm. Danielle winced as she saw the slash across his inner arm, near the elbow. Heather paled, but otherwise kept her composure and reached out to touch his arm near the wound.

  Danielle stepped into the bedroom area and stood against the half-wall backing the kitchen counters, while Ranger Richard retreated into the kitchen a few steps to be out of the way. She heard him set down the sword on the floor under a counter.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Heather said, “Um, Danielle, I might need a Party ruling on this.”

  “What do you mean?” Danielle asked with a faint frown.

  “Well, if he has enough mana to make a token, and if I use all our party reserve, and you still have that five-mana token on you and we include that in the party reserve, then I can just barely do this,” Heather explained. “But it will use the entire party reserve, and I’ll be out of personal mana.”

  “Do it,” Danielle said. “Helping rebuild the reserve can be part of his payment.”

  “What if we need it before that, though?” Heather fretted.

  “I’ll pay it back super fast,” Tom promised urgently. “I’ll give you a five mana token every day until it’s paid back.”

  “You’ll give her more than that,” Ranger Juliette said firmly.

  “OK, and one token after that,” Tom added, then intercepted an unimpressed look from the Ranger behind Heather’s back and added, “And any tokens I inherit from Harv and Arny! And anything else you want from their stuff. Even the food!”

  “Excuse me?!” Arny protested from the floor. “Who says you get his stuff? I took him out, I get his loot!”

  “That is not how this works,” growled Ranger Richard from the kitchen.

  “Well he definitely can’t promise my stuff!” Arny insisted stridently. “I’m not dead and I’m not gonna be dead! I’m gonna live and get back before either of those suckers!”

  “You’re gonna die and your stuff is gonna be in my room,” Tom argued back. “I can do what I want with it after you’re gone!”

  “Technically, neither of them is gone yet,” Ranger Juliette interrupted cooly, “which means you can’t promise any of their stuff yet, even if it was going to be yours to promise.”

  “Well what do you want from me?!” he exclaimed. “All I’ve got is some Necessities store junk and the Decision Day stuff and my emergency rations!”

  “I get it. I’ll do the work for replacement mana plus five, and we’ll just agree you owe me a big one,” Heather said.

  Ranger Juilette made a disapproving sound, but didn’t interfere as Heather pulled the ten-mana token out of her belt. “You can make at least a five-mana token right now, right? I need you to do that before I can start,” Heather reminded him. “That’s not about payment, I literally can’t do it unless you can contribute at least five mana.”

  “I can. Just – just a second – here,” Tom set aside the bloody rag and held out a trembling hand for the token to form in.

  “Medic Falconer?” Heather prompted, pointedly.

  “Oh, right – here,” Danielle dug the five-mana token out of her pocket and handed it over. “You have no idea how lucky you are,” she told Tom. “I meant to put it in my footlocker this morning, but I totally forgot about it.”

  “I’m starting,” Heather announced. “First Skill. Second Skill – oh come on – um, I guess it’s going to take a few minutes. Sit as still as you can, and let me concentrate, OK?”

  Danielle couldn’t see what Heather was doing; Heather herself was blocking the view, though Ranger Juliette was watching from a different angle and looking faintly impressed. She turned to see how Arny was responding, and caught him bending over his stomach again, grimacing in pain. She realized that blood was seeping out between his fingers; evidently he’d taken some sort of gut wound.

  “I’m not a Healer,” she said, “but if you have bandages in your stuff, I can use my medical lore Skill and a little good old fashioned first aid to bandage you up. It might help you hold out until the other Healer gets here.”

  “I can’t reach, but if you can get in the trunk, knock yourself out,” Arny said shortly.

  “Oh. Sorry, I didn’t mean to mock your situation,” Danielle said.

  “I can get in if you really want to go for that,” Ranger Juliette said. “You’re paying for services rendered, too, though.”

  “Yeah, fine, whatever,” Arny said. “I got a first aid kit in there. You have my permission to get out whatever’ll help. And if we’re allowed to give away dead guys’ things, you can have whatever’s in Harvey’s box.”

  “And 20 mana, if you live,” Ranger Juliette said.

  “Sure, fine, and 20 mana in tokens if I live to make ‘em. Ng.” He leaned into the wound again, pressing his left arm tighter into his gut.

  “You have to put your knife away, too,” Danielle said. “The fight’s over anyway.”

  “I don’t have my sheath on my belt,” he said. “I’ll just put it down.” He unwrapped his hand from the hilt of the knife, and pressed it to the floor tiles under his hand.

  Ranger Juliette walked over to his footlocker, and muttered another of the Rangers’ usual “by my authority as – ” formulas. The footlocker lid came up, and she reached out over the bed behind Arny, and came up with a Decision Day staff with which she propped the top open. “Further away than that, moron,” she told Arny, glancing over. “Then I’ll open the first aid stuff for you.”

  Arny huffed, then groaned, and slid the knife out from under his hand – just barely. Danielle frowned and reached over with her staff to knock it away. She caught it at a good angle, and flicked it all the way over against the half-wall where she’d originally been standing.

  “Better,” said the Ranger, coming over with the first aid kit. “Here’s the kit – your Skill tell you what to do yet, or just what the problem is?”

  “I honestly haven’t used it much,” Danielle said, “but it seems to be a little of both? At the very least, it tells me where to look and what to look for.” She crouched down by Arny, pulling the strap of her bag into a better position, so it settled more across her back and out of the way. She was hardly going to need her canteens here, she thought.

  “Sounds like the kind where you’ll want this all in sight, then,” Ranger Juliette said, putting down the first aid kit and spreading out the contents so they were all visible. Then she pulled something small out of her belt and offered it to Danielle. “Here, use this first.”

  “What is it?” Danielle asked, taking the thing and looking it over. It looked like a long pin with a fancy jewelry setting on the head, and a very sharp point. The crystal in the setting was blood red.

  “It’s called a blooding pin,” Ranger Juliette said solemnly. “It’s a tool Healers use to make sure they get paid for their services. You stick the patient with it somewhere non-vital before you start in on the serious work, just enough to draw one drop of blood. It makes the System recognize you as someone with an interest in whether this guy lives or dies.”

  “Huh. OK, I guess,” Danielle said. “Um. Arny, in the interests of not arguing about System stuff I don’t know much about, can I ask you to please prick a finger on this real quick?”

  “You have to be holding the crystal end,” Ranger Juliette interrupted. “You can’t just hand it to him.”

  “I get it,” Danielle said, holding the pin out, jeweled end between her fingers and point up. “It always hurts less to poke something like this yourself than to let someone else do it, though. Or at least, that’s what it seems like to me.”

  “Fine, I’m not afraid of a stick pin,” Arny said, reaching for it. He hesitated a moment, then tapped the point with his finger, and squeezed out a drop of blood before moving that hand back to the floor.

  “OK, activating my Skill now?” Danielle said tentatively, eyeing the Ranger for confirmation that she didn’t have anything else to put in first.

  She got back a somewhat worried-looking nod. “I won’t deny anyone the chance to try to heal,” Ranger Juliette said, holding out her hand for the blooding pin. “Or to practice a useful Skill for that matter. Just be careful.”

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