“Yeah, we better get moving,” Ranger Juliette agreed. “I have to unload their payment, such as it is, from my boti bag, too. Do you have an extra blooding pin or two you can give them, though? It’ll qualify for compensation, they responded to an official Ranger request for medical assistance and ended up rendering assistance at hazard with compensation laughably below standard – mostly because the people they were trying to help didn’t have, well, anything.”

  “Yeah, I carry extra tier-one blooding pins when I respond to Sending calls,” Ranger Flo agreed, standing up. She pulled a small leather case out of a thigh pocket, opened it, and took out a blooding pin in a leather sheath. The red crystal at the top was nearly all of the pin itself that showed. She handed it to Danielle, who took it with a serious nod. She pulled it out to examine it, while Ranger Flo selected another and offered it to Heather. The pin appeared to be entirely identical to the one Ranger Juliette had lent them in Room 1019; perhaps they were standard equipment for Rangers, or at least, Ranger Healers.

  “No thank you,” Heather said, putting her hands behind her back rather than accept the second pin.

  Ranger Flo raised an eyebrow at her. “Is this a religious thing, or are you just so horrified at the idea of working on people who might die that you don’t want to even consider dealing with that again?”

  “I, I just don’t want to stick people who are already hurt with a pin!” Heather exclaimed. “And I don’t want any death-mana either.” She shuddered.

  “Ah. Well, you might still feel that way in six months, but just in case,” Ranger Flo said, and trailing off, handed the second pin to Danielle. “How about you hold onto this for her, and encourage her to use it when appropriate?”

  “I can do that,” Danielle said.

  “Danielle, I don’t want that thing!” Heather exclaimed.

  “And you don’t have it, either. It’ll be in the bottom corner of my footlocker or my bag or somewhere, and you won’t have to think about it unless you get into a situation where you do want it. As for me, though, my medical Skills work on lore rather than mana – at least, not the way yours work on mana – and that means I need tools. And this is a tool. There’s another name for it – it sounds like lance?” She looked to Ranger Flo for support.

  “Lancette?” Ranger Flo supplied, looking amused. “Sure. Used for draining infections, or drawing blood for some kinds of blood tests – the ones that only need a drop, not a vial.”

  “Right, or if I need to see someone’s blood for my Skill, which doesn’t seem like it would make sense right now, but as I level it and it gets a bit more magical, who knows? So I’m not turning down a properly made sterilizable medical instrument just because there’s a less desirable use for it,” Danielle concluded.

  “You don’t need the enhancement gem for that,” Heather said sullenly.

  “The enhancement is actually there to limit how much damage it does,” Ranger Juliette said. “At least, the one on my pin. It makes it sharper, but keeps you from using it as a proper weapon.”

  “Ah, well, the ones I give out are a different enhancement,” Ranger Flo said. “They just auto-sterilize themselves. Juliette’s enhancement is tier-4.”

  “That’s awesome for something I might end up using to drain infections, though!” Danielle said.

  “Danielle, is there anything you won’t use for five things other than what it was made for?” Heather asked, sounding mildly exasperated, but much less tense than a moment before.

  “I don’t know, maybe?” Danielle said. “I never really tried to think of a thing that doesn’t have any other possible uses.”

  “Hah! You must be a Survivor,” Ranger Flo said. “Career-wise I mean, not just literally.”

  “Yeah, the other Rangers said that too,” Danielle told her. “I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that Combat Medic is a Career Skill for Survivors.”

  “Naturally it is,” Ranger Flo said, “It can be used five different ways!”

  That drew a reluctant laugh out of Heather. “OK, OK, I get it. Give me the thing, I’ll put it in my first aid kit when we get back. And next time I go to heal someone, I’m bringing the kit – I need it for the alcohol or iodine or whatever’s in it.”

  “Good call,” Danielle said, handing it over.

  “Why do I let you talk me into this stuff?” Heather asked rhetorically.

  “Because you’ve realized how hard it would be to stew rabbits without a pot?” Danielle joked.

  Heather stuck the sheathed pin in a pocket and the four of them stepped out into the walkway of building two again. The Rangers quickly realized they would have to go back around to the more visible side to use the stairs, and elected to jump up the retaining wall and give the Sent girls a hand to pull them up, rather than risk drawing attention after all because they were ‘coming out of’ the empty building.

  They got on the boundary walkway again, and walked down past the end of building two and across the cracked alleyway between the pairs of buildings. Cassy’s pile of firewood had been moved, though there was still enough of the litter of chips and leaves and twigs to tell where it had been. The spot where the fire had been, further down, was marked by a sooty spot, but someone had somehow removed the wood and cinders. Danielle wasn’t sure what to think of that – surely it had been dangerous to move the hot wood, even if they’d somehow put the fire out?

  “Where are we going? Room-wise, I mean?” Ranger Flo asked.

  “Oh, we’re in 6024 – so all the way to the end, then we drop back into the walkway,” Danielle said.

  “Oh, you’re the famous 6024 girls?” Flo asked pleasantly. “Heh, nice to meet you.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “We’re famous now?” Heather asked skeptically.

  “Well, around Ranger Outpost One you are,” Flo said with a chuckle. “You interrupted the roadside cleanup, and your guide kept going on about how you soldiered through the first hike; and then the cleanup found so much missing this morning, everyone’s been debating whether you really kept the scavenging deal to yourselves, or whether you got someone else into it. Then the emergency call came in, and Miriam was all, ‘go knock on 6024, there’s a Basic Healer in that group,’ and sure enough, here you are, and here’s your friend with her less-effective healing but a very interesting pile of other Skills the Rangers and the government look out for among the Sent. It’s only day three, but already your legend is growing!”

  “Oh.” Heather reflected on that for a moment. “Tell them we’ve also got a better org charter than the stupid base town with its only-half-illegal-murder law.”

  Ranger Juliette snorted and jumped down into the walkway in front of their room. “Every two or three kids with a leftover System club from school have a better organization charter than that. It’s appalling.”

  “I dunno, how many of their charters explicitly forbid murder?” Ranger Flo said, joining her, and holding up a hand to steady Heather. “They’re mostly pretty inadequate to the situation, I’ll bet.”

  “Ours says we can’t attack each other physically or with Skills, or we get auto-ejected from the org,” Heather said proudly.

  “There’s an exception for sparring by consent,” Danielle said, jumping down last. “We had the advantage of actually making ours here, for the purpose of confirming everyone in the room is on the same page. Anyway, if anyone’s got bets on the scavenging thing, you’ll be able to settle them – come on in.”

  Danielle held open the door for the two Rangers who came in, looking around curiously. They almost immediately spotted the pile of extra bags cluttering the floor in the kitchen, of course. Ranger Juliette gave in impressed whistle. Sadie and Akari looked up from their positions on their beds, where they had apparently gone back to reading.

  “You really carried all this here by yourselves?” Ranger Juliette asked.

  “The four of us did,” Heather told her. “Some of us were pretty sore this morning.” She paused and looked down at herself, frowning. “Weird. I was still pretty sore when I came over to heal Tom, too, but now I’m feeling fine?”

  “Ah, that’s probably a sign that your Body trait absorbed enough mana to level,” Ranger Flo said. “It’ll show up when you raise your base level, or when you visit an Access Point – Body and Mind are both weird that way. They don’t necessarily wait to start having more effects, but the number doesn’t change until either something else big changes – like base level or Class level – or until the Access Point forces everything to update.”

  “Body can sometimes absorb mana when your base level is rejecting it, too,” Ranger Juliette said. “It’s more likely to happen if you’ve been pushing yourself physically anyway, and your System is pushing to catch up – which seems likely to be the case with you, considering your growing legend,” she teased.

  “Growing legend?” Sadie echoed curiously.

  “The Rangers have been talking about our scavenging mission,” Heather told her, “and about Akari helping us get all the way here without dropping anything, and now it sounds like they’ll be talking about how Danielle and I came to heal people and ended up in a fight. We’ll tell you the whole story later. For now, Ranger Juliette has some more stuff to dump in our pile, there.”

  Ranger Juliette started pulling things out of her boti bag and setting them on the counter opposite from the section where the camp stove and mugs were still sitting against the wall. There were the two leather satchels, two canvas satchels, two staves, an unstrung bow and its quiver, six tubes of pemmican (one of which was open) and six tins of hardtack (all of which were still sealed), a miniature duffle bag with a cartoon character on the side, full of jerky of various brands and flavors, one open bag of jerky that got set down next to the mini-duffel, two of the small shovels that came in the footlockers, two footlocker mugs (one blue and one green), two tool belts that between them had two hatchets and two knife sheaths but only one knife, and last of all, she handed Danielle the unsheathed sword.

  “You might want to check this for mana enhancements,” the Ranger told Danielle. “You touch the gem, specifically, and tell your System to ‘analyze crystal.’ It won’t inform you on its own about enhancements except when it’s your System making a new one.”

  “Duly noted,” said Danielle. “Heather, since you don’t want to see how this stuff gets shuffled into the Party stuff, why don’t you take this opportunity to be first in the shower – get some privacy to sort out your thoughts, maybe do some laundry while you’re not pressed for time, whatever. The three of us will sort out the rest.”

  “That sounds good,” Heather said, going over to her footlocker. “Are we done, Rangers? Or do we need to give an official report or something now?”

  “No, that’s all on us,” Ranger Juliette said. “Listen, just be sure you brain enough fish or whatever that you level up by the end of summer, all right? I guess you’re probably not a fan of killing in general – people who pick Healer rarely are – and nobody wants you to have to get your mana from people if you can help it; but you need more Skills and mana pool and all that good stuff to be a really effective Healer. That means you have to take it out of your food. Take it seriously, OK?”

  “OK,” Heather said without looking, as she pulled out her first aid kit and slid the ‘self-sterilizing lancet’ inside. “I’m sure these guys will have me beheading rabbits and fish and squirrels and what-not soon enough. Probably tomorrow. Today was rest day, tomorrow it’s back to the snares and whatever else.”

  “Tomatoes,” Akari said.

  “What?” Heather asked, looking up.

  “I second the what?” Ranger Flo echoed.

  “Tomorrow we do snares and tomatoes,” Akari expanded. “We found a patch of wild cherry tomato plants. Sadie thinks we can kind of eat the seedy-pulpy part and dry the outsides for winter food, too, so we’ll be picking a lot of little tomatoes.”

  “And cutting them up, and scraping out the seeds,” Sadie added. “It’s gonna be messy and disgusting, but at least it’s plant-disgusting not animal-disgusting.”

  Heather started laughing, and leaned her head against the open lid of her footlocker. After a minute she calmed down and said, “That’s awesome, Sadie. I look forward to it. Honestly. I’m kind of out of it right now, though, so I’m going to do that shower and laundry thing, and you guys do the – that stuff, and maybe Danielle can tell you the story, OK? But yeah, tomorrow we can focus on tomatoes.”

  Heather took all the clothes she’d used since the Dome of Decision and went into the bathroom.

  “Keep an eye on her,” Ranger Flo told the other girls. “She had a bad scare, and I expect she’s working through some philosophical stuff she’d rather not have to think about, too. Give her a little extra leeway for a few days, if you can. Don’t worry if she freaks out a little at a bowl of red glop, either. That’d actually be pretty normal after what happened.”

  “Hah. She barely even saw Arnie’s wound,” Danielle said darkly.

  “Give yourself some extra leeway too,” Ranger Juliette said. “You’re the strong, practical type, so you’re holding it together for us and for her and because you weren’t back in your safe place yet. That’s good, that’s survival traits. Give yourself permission to have a little breakdown after this stuff is put away, though; cry a little, freak out a little, whatever helps you process the trauma safely. Try not to let it just build up inside until it breaks you.”

  “Thank you,” Danielle said. “I’ll wait to lose it until after I’ve at least explained to these two what happened, but I can’t make any promises for the middle of the night,” she half-joked with a matching half-smile.

  Ranger Juliette nodded. “We’ll leave you to it, then,” she said and moved toward the door.

  “Keep yourself safe, Combat Medic,” Ranger Flo said, and gave Danielle a sort of casual salute before she followed and the two stepped out the door.

  Danielle waved back in response to the salute, then turned to the others. “You aren’t going to believe half of this,” she said, “but I swear it’s true – or in the case of stuff the Rangers said, I swear it’s really what they told me.”

  calmer, right?

  https://discord.gg/u5dtzpShv2