Arny himself, meanwhile, had lunged to his feet and staggered forward. Ranger Juliette stepped forward and planted her staff between Arny and Tom, taking a strike from the sword on it. Although the staff looked wooden, lacking even the metal caps of the Decision Day staves, when the sword hit, it rang as if against something metal and the staff gave off a subtle flash at the impact point. It was a power move; she wasn’t holding it like a weapon, but more like a barrier, and it was clearly reacting to the hit with some enhancement or Skill effect.
Whether from blind fury, blood loss and shock, or sheer stupidity, Arny didn’t get the message, and tried to get around her and attack Tom again. The Ranger simply started using her staff properly, if rather conservatively; she was mostly defending and not taking advantage of Arny’s terrible stance and wild blows. Arny wasn’t exactly fighting at a high level, though; Danielle found herself thinking that her gym teacher would give him a D for his lousy form, and then wondering what was wrong with her that she was thinking of gym class at a moment like this.
Arny fought around towards the left, trying to get around the Ranger to Tom, who was still shouting; they were both still shouting; Danielle wasn’t processing what they were saying, though. She scrambled to get her staff, in case Arny directed another blow at her. It had rolled under the bed he’d been sitting against, back towards where his sword had been. Had he been deliberately hiding it, or had it fallen there and been kicked under by one of the other boys? Even as she emerged from under the bed, he threw another wild swing at Tom, now trying to get in from Ranger Juliette’s right, unwilling to continue circling left into the pool of blood. Her staff intercepted his swing without taking so much as a scratch on the wood, yet again.
Danielle realized that her Skill was still active, and it was telling her that Arny was doing himself harm. He had pulled the bandages out of alignment, and they were now more like packing in the wound than covering for it. That might not be all bad, the Skill suggested, but his wild movements were probably tearing the ends of the slash wider. He was bleeding more severely, and his breathing was poor. And – Danielle’s heart skipped a beat – he was looking at Heather all of a sudden, rather than Tom. He was going to attack Heather.
Danielle didn’t know quite how she knew that – it was hardly medical information, but the Skill was drawing her to pay attention to small details of Arny’s movements and reactions and there was something about his stance; something about his expression; something about the fact that Ranger Juliette was in a position to defend Tom, but had been drawn too far to Danielle and Arny’s left to cover Heather properly. Worse, Danielle didn’t think the Ranger had noticed Arny’s shift in focus.
Danielle activated Staff Apprentice.
It wasn’t exactly as if time slowed down, but somehow Danielle seemed to be having a lot of thoughts in a series of fractured seconds that didn’t seem, afterward, to be long enough for all the content that went through them. Arny’s position; Juliette’s position; Heather’s position; Heather’s staff, far too far out of position, not even within her reach; Danielle’s own position, her staff, some quick angle calculations that would have impressed her math teacher no end if she’d been able to express the numbers, but there were no numbers; Arny’s sword, hurtling down towards Heather with all the speed and weight he could put behind it; Danielle’s staff, hurtling along parallel to the floor with all the speed and weight she could put behind it; Ranger Juliette’s face as she finally realized Arny had switched targets – too late, far too late, at least three quarters of a second too late – and then there was Danielle’s staff impacting Arny’s ankles –
– He was standing in a drunken-looking approximation of a halfway decent stance for the thrust he would have gone for next if he’d continued trying to get to Tom, one foot forward and the other back, but he was actually twisted at the waist (that must have been excruciatingly painful!) (adrenal response reducing pain recognition, her Skill whispered) and swinging to one side, while the angles were odd between him and Danielle, splayed as she still was on the floor with her feet under his bed, and her staff hit both ankles almost at the same time; they were in line with her head –
– and Arny’s feet went out from under him, and he fell backwards as Danielle’s staff finished its sweep and Arny’s sword came down just short of Heather’s position on the edge of Tom’s bed –
– severe bruising to both ankles, her diagnostics Skill told her. Fractures unlikely –
– and Arny fell on his back, in a way almost like she had a moment ago, except that he did not get a hand behind him, and his head hit the floor hard with a sickening crack –
– now that one was quite possibly a fracture, her Skill pointed out. Also, strong chance of concussion. Examine the patient’s eyes for uneven pupil response –
– and he stopped moving. Was he even breathing? Had he broken his neck? Had –
– low chance of neck injury, the Skill whispered, avoid moving the patient until additional information can be gathered. High chance the wind has been knocked out of him. Check breathing again in ten seconds -
– and suddenly Danielle felt the most intense sense of mana in action she had ever felt, and a rapidly flashing minimized-message indicator made itself known in the corner of her vision.
Danielle wanted to check that indicator, because it seemed very urgent, and she’d never seen it do that before, but she was rigid with shock and tingling almost-pain from the intense mana burst.
Patient deceased, her Skill whispered, and deactivated.
There was an endless/fractional second of pure, blessed silence.
It was broken by Tom’s anxious voice, far too loud. “What happened? Is he dead? The System is telling me I got 600 mana but I can’t see it!”
“Are you OK? Danielle? Is she OK?” Heather added anxiously.
“Give her a second, she’s probably processing a level up,” Ranger Juliette said.
“It looked like a rough one, too,” Ranger Richard said, leaning over the wall to stare down at her. “Have you accepted the level-up prompt yet, miss Medic?” he asked.
“I, uh,” Danielle stammered, unable to get out any more useful words and feeling like a fool.
“OK, she might be in shock a little,” Ranger Juliette corrected herself. “Did you take an injury, medic (uh, what’s the name,) Falconer?”
“N-no,” Danielle said, and pulled herself the rest of the way out from under the bed. “Well, bruises maybe. Does the mana burst count as an injury?”
“No, but I’ve killed enough big mana monsters to know why you might wonder that,” Ranger Juliette replied. “And I’m guessing if Tom here got 600 mana, and I got 240, then Arny there didn’t actually seat any of his newly acquired mana, and it basically all got passed on to us along with his, a double hit in one go – and you took the biggest bite of it. I assume you leveled up, too?”
“I, uh. Have a prompt,” Danielle said.
“Go seat the mana,” Ranger Richard said. “Big mana bursts try to change you, and your System tries to control the change, but anything that needs your OK isn’t actually settled until you do OK it, and in the meantime that mana’s trying to run wild in your body. You’ll feel better once it’s all in channels, and you’ll be less vulnerable, too – that thing Arny just did, where he passed on all his new mana to someone else? That only happens if it’s unseated mana. Resolve all the prompts, and half of it turns to System and disappears.”
“So you’re saying, less vulnerable to people trying to steal her mana. Mostly because she’ll have less,” Heather translated in tones of disbelief.
“That, and with big bursts there’s always a chance that there’ll be burst Traits or Skills that help you stay alive, too – especially if you have a Career that’s at all related, and considering you’re new Sent, I’m guessing there’s a pretty good chance you do.”
Danielle stood up, steadying herself with her staff, and focused on her Interface.
- > Mana burst detected. 20 mana has been added to your base level. Remaining cost to level, 1167 mana.
- > Career Skill: Computer Lore (T1) added at level 1.
- > Mana burst detected! You have reached base level 2! Do you wish to activate level 2 now?
- > Excess burst mana detected! Seeking additional mana reservoirs.
- > Career Skill: Combat Medic (T2) added at level 1.
- > Trait: Speed Improvement is ready to advance to level 2. Activate base level 2 to advance this trait.
- > Trait: Mana Deflector is ready to advance to level 2. Activate base level 2 to advance this trait.
- > A mana crystal in your possession has gained an enhancement! Details are available.
- > A mana crystal in your possession has gained an enhancement! Details are available.
Only one of the prompts was calling for an action, so Danielle focused on the prompt to activate level 2. The System responded promptly, almost over-quickly, though Danielle wasn’t sure how to quantify what was too quick about a response that had always felt instantaneous before.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
- > Select unlocked skill.
- > Select unlocked trait.
- > List unlocked skills and traits.
Danielle already knew what Skill she wanted, for certain, so she started there and selected Skill: Lesser Expand Volume from the Logistics Skill tree. In spite of her shock and horror, she couldn’t deny a shiver of excitement at unlocking the mana enhancement Skill that would allow her to make the bigger-on-the-inside bags (and presumably footlockers, and who knew what else).
Choosing a Trait was harder. She didn’t have that many Traits unlocked, compared to Skills, but she also had less idea of what they would do. After listing her unlocked Skills and Traits again, she found them the same as they had been at the Dome of Decision. For Traits, that meant there were the Planner Trait, the Mana Improvement Trait pool, and the Observation Trait pool. Most of the observation Traits promised to highlight something in her vision – animals, plants, people, weapons – the problem with all of them was, Traits didn’t turn off, and she didn’t know how distracting it was likely to be. It seemed like a dangerous time to potentially compromise her ability to focus on the right thing in an emergency. Her mana was already improved enough that she was afraid to let others know how much she had, so she didn’t even look into that Trait pool. That left Planner, but the description was a bit lacking; it just said “Use your system interface for planning and organization.” Still, the Interface was dismissible, and she couldn’t deny that it was bare hours since she had been filling up a notebook with planning information and wondering how long it would take them to run out of notebooks again.
Part of her thought it seemed a very petty use of ‘blood money,’ but another part of her insisted that she wasn’t going to risk her own life just to honor the mana of a murderer. She decided the second part was the more rational, and selected Trait: Planner. The System immediately responded with a long string of messages.
- > You have achieved base level 2!
- > You have advanced Skill: Lesser Expand Volume at tier 1, level 1.
- > You have advanced Trait: Planner at tier 1, level 1.
- > Your mana pool will now hold 60 points of mana.
- > Your mana generation is now 24 points per day.
- > You have unlocked tier 2 skills in skill trees that are already open to you.
- > You have unlocked tier 2 traits in trait pools that are already open to you.
- > You have unlocked level 2 general access skills and traits.
- > Leveling readied skills and traits.
- > Special Trait: Body has advanced to level 3.
- > Special Trait: Mind has advanced to level 4.
- > Trait: Hear Data – Digital has advanced to tier 1, level 2.
- > Trait: Mana Deflector has advanced to tier 1, level 2.
- > Trait: Speed Improvement has advanced to tier 1, level 2.
- > Skill: Illusions has advanced to tier 1, level 2.
- > Skill: Focus has advanced to tier 1, level 2.
“Wow,” Danielle said. “That’s, um, that’s a lot. Do I need to worry about messages about mana crystals?”
“No,” Ranger Juliette said. “If you had any crystals that were working on enhancements, a mana burst can push them over the edge. You don’t even have to be getting anything from the mana burst in your actual Interface for that to happen – it’s more likely to happen if you were using the thing with the crystal, though. Probably your staff, in this case. Check it later, but it’s not urgent.”
“OK. I picked my Skill and Trait, so I think that’s everything that needed my OK?” Danielle reported uncertainly.
“Did you get the ‘You have achieved base level’ message?” Ranger Richard asked.
“Yeah.”
“You’re good to go, then,” he confirmed. “You can talk over the level-up with your friends later. For now, let’s finish up your business here, and let Juliette walk you home. Then we can get the body cart and some cleanup supplies for Tom here.”
“Can I just move to a different room?” Tom asked plaintively.
“Sorry kid,” Ranger Richard said sympathetically. “I sympathize, but Juliette and I only have authorization to open the ward doors, not to add or remove tenants on them.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll be cleaning up most of the blood and so on,” Juliette said. “We’re not going to hand you a rag and bucket and make you clean up everything yourself.”
“That’s, um. That’s something, I guess.” Tom said dubiously.
Ranger Juliette looked into Arny’s footlocker. “For the record, the footlockers that don’t have active tennants just stay locked – you can’t use them. I guess you might have figured that out from the empty one, already,” she said. “When we collect dead bodies, or when a room goes empty, we have to empty the footlockers using our Ranger authorization.”
“What do you do with the stuff, if you don’t give it to the roommates that survive?” Tom asked.
“Eh, sometimes we actually do. It’s at our discretion, to some extent. Obvious personal items are supposed to go back to the family Inside, though.” Ranger Juliette. She reached into Arny’s footlocker and pulled out a Decision Day bag. “Looks like he hasn’t even pulled most of his stuff out of the bag it came with,” she commented. “I seem to recall this being offered to the Healer?”
“I don’t want a dead guy’s stuff!” Heather exclaimed.
“Okay, then. I think you might feel differently once you’ve been out here a while longer, but you’re entitled to make your own mistakes,” Ranger Juliette said. “How about you, Medic? You’re the one who actually tried to help this guy anyway.”
“I don’t want to waste anything,” Danielle said. “The way it came to me might stink, but I’m sure we’ll find a use for everything. How do you decide what’s personal?”
“For a Sent guy this new, I guess I just look through it all and see if there’s anything that stands out. Hm, some kind of bracelet with crystals here – does this look like a necessities store thing to you?” the Ranger asked.
“That’s the same bracelet I got,” Danielle said. “It’s at least the third one in camp I know of.”
“Probably not personal, then,” the Ranger concluded. “Hm. Open jerky, sealed jerky, whiskey? That shouldn’t be here.” She pulled the bottle out of the footlocker and set it aside. “You could be working on the other one, Richard!”
“Right, right,” the other Ranger said, and walked back into the main part of the room. He edged around the large pool of blood to open the footlocker nearest the dead body of Harv.
“Huh. There’s nothing in here but the starter kit,” he said. “I mean, nothing at all.”
“Oh, uh, that’s the fourth spot,” Tom said, jerking his gaze away from – the dead bodies? Danielle wasn’t completely sure. Maybe his System Interface.
“Oh – hah. I didn’t even think about what would happen to the fourth footlocker in rooms with three people,” Ranger Richard said. “There weren’t very many of those. This stuff I think we can agree is fair salvage for you, Tom. I’m just going to pull it out and put it on the bed here, OK?”
“Oh, uh, sure. Thanks,” Tom said awkwardly. The bed above the pool of blood collected three tubes of pemmican, three tins of hardtack, an orange mug, and a small shovel.
Ranger Richard moved across the room and opened up the last footlocker. “Here we go. Not much to speak of – we got a Decision Day bag, the usual stuff that goes in it, a pile of seed packets?”
“Those came from the boxed dinners,” Tom supplied. “Nobody else wanted them. Where are we gonna plant vegetables?”
“Huh. That’s a new one,” Ranger Juliette said. “You girls want seeds?”
“Yes, please,” Heather said quietly.
“Here’s the Necessities store jewelry – why do new Sent never wear this stuff?” Ranger Richard complained. “The whole point is to have a chance of attracting an enhancement.”
“Nobody tells new Sent anything, remember?” Ranger Juliette said. “I got some kind of diary here, but that’s the only thing that looks remotely personal. This guy didn’t even bother to pull his Necessities Store stuff out of the plastic after we reminded everyone yesterday.”
“That’s OK,” Danielle said. “I think I might have come up with a way to use a few packing bubbles, actually.”
The Rangers both laughed. “I know what career you got from the dome!” Ranger Juliette said.
“That’s a Survivor statement, through and through,” Ranger Richard agreed.
“I’m going to put this stuff from Arny in my boti bag to get it back to your room,” Ranger Juliette said. “What about Harv’s stuff? Are you divvying?”
“I don’t want any of their stuff, really,” said Tom. “I got three extra weeks of rations and I don’t have to worry about that nutjob attacking me in my sleep, the only thing I regret not being able to keep is that mana. Why didn’t it stick?”
“Oh, it’s there,” Ranger Richard assured him. “It hides in your base level, and makes the mana requirement to level go down. You said you got 600? You’re halfway there, then.”
“Huh. OK then. Well, like I said, I don’t want any of Harv or especially Arny’s stuff. I promised it to the Healer, and if her roommate wants to snag it on her behalf, that’s fine with me.” Tom sat back on his bed, looking tired.
“I don’t want it either,” Heather repeated. “Danielle, we don’t need it!”
“Heather, if you can give me a good answer to one question I’ll leave it, OK?” Danielle said, watching Ranger Juliette slide Arny’s entire Decision Day bag into her own, remarkably similar looking, satchel. It went in endwise, but still slid down and out of sight; and then a school bag followed it with no resistance. A sky-blue mug, identical to Danielle’s own footlocker mug, followed that.
“OK,” Heather replied warily.
“Supposing, come winter, you decide that you want to set up a clinic for people that get sick and need a place to quarantine so they don’t get their roommates sick,” Danielle began, “And suppose we save up for a Room to put this clinic in and stuff. The room will doubtless not come with sheets on the beds and mugs in the footlockers, since it was empty according to plan. What will you use to keep all those sick patients warm and fed, in light of the warning we got about winter Room temperatures, and the general difficulty of finding food?”
“That, uh. That’s a surprisingly specific question?” Heather said uncertainly. “And I don’t see how it relates to this anyway?”
“I’m seeing fur cloaks and rain ponchos and extra mugs and several more weeks of emergency rations going into Ranger Juliette’s magic bag here,” Danielle said. “And I’m asking you, as someone who wants to give away healing, why you don’t think you can use these things.”
Heather looked down thoughtfully. Ranger Juliette stuffed the whiskey bottle into an end pocket of her satchel, which didn’t seem to have the same space enhancement as the main pouch. She set the journal on the counter, and walked over to Ranger Richard, who was looking back at the three Sent.
“That’s a kind of awesome idea, though,” Heather said quietly.
“What – the clinic thing?” Danielle asked.
“Yeah. Fine. Take everything and slide it into the Party supplies when I’m not looking or something. I get what you’re saying, I just don’t want to have to – to deal with the whole – ” she choked off, and Danielle realized she was on the edge of tears.
“The dead people thing?” Ranger Juliette asked, bluntly but in a sympathetic tone of voice.
Heather nodded wordlessly.
https://discord.gg/u5dtzpShv2