“That’s a pretty bold statement,” Danielle told Cassy, “saying you want to join our org. You don’t know anything about our rules or – pretty much anything, do you?”

  “I know a little,” Cassy said. “My roommates and yours got to talking after you two left with the Ranger last night, because Bethany wanted to know what her Healer skills were, and when Akari told her that she couldn’t give out other people’s information without permission because of the Party rules, Adrian started trying to rules-lawyer around it somehow, and then Candice got interested in what she was hearing and they ended up talking about org rules in general for a while.

  “They said members of your party aren't allowed to attack each other except when they both agree to sparring, and they have to protect each other; that they have to keep secrets that are agreed on by the org; and that the org is set up to automatically demote or eject people who break rules. I know there's also rules in place for adding new people, promoting them, and adding more rules; which is good, because a lot of the other people I talked to today said their orgs don't have rules for adding, and used that as an excuse to not even consider letting me work with them. Don't get me wrong, I'm still willing to work with a group even if they don't want to add me to a System club, that's not what this is really about; but right now, nobody seems to be able to trust anyone unless they have the System as their witness, and I'm not against that either.

  “You four have an org with rules that make sense and cover all the basics; you’re not acting stupidly na?ve or being so paranoid you can’t bring yourselves to help anyone else; and you don’t talk like you think you’re God’s gift to woodcraft but you do get out there and actually find food. That’s the kind of group I want to be part of, OK? I’m not stupid either, I know trying to go it alone out here is asking for trouble. I chose my Skills at the Dome of Decision with groups in mind – you know, with the idea of making myself useful to a group, maybe filling in some gaps that most people wouldn’t think of.

  “So like I said, my roommates and I talked last night, and we’ve come to an understanding, but they’re pretty serious that they don’t want to add me to their hunting party.” Cassy paused and took a hard breath, impatiently wiping a frustrated tear from the corner of one eye. “I have been out all day, alternating between looking out for you to come back, and talking to other groups, and there are some groups who seem to have it together as well as you do, but they’re all made of people who knew each other before, and they’re real closed to the idea of adding people to their group. There are also a lot more groups who are just as closed and not nearly as good, and a few kinda scary ones that are recruiting a little too enthusiastically. I don’t know if you’ll find this hard or easy to believe, but after talking to everyone who would talk to me, from practically the moment I woke up until now, you guys are easily the best option I’ve seen for a group to join – and I know you haven’t actually said you’re open to considering that or anything, but just the fact that you haven’t already run me off is a better welcome than I’ve gotten with a lot of people.”

  Cassy stopped, breathing a bit unevenly. Danielle suspected she was suppressing either a panic attack or a crying fit, or both.

  “Um, wow,” Akari said. “That’s – um, would you be OK with us going in and having a short chat before we continue this?”

  “And I should get out the written copy of our org charter so you can read the whole thing, before you decide to sign on,” Danielle added.

  “Yeah, yes, that’s completely fair,” Cassy said. “I’ll just wait here. Um, for the record though, if communal dinners are a thing with you guys, I want you to know that I can and will contribute. I managed to get a bagful of wild onions today, even though I was sticking close to camp and talking to tons of people. They’re not much by themselves, but they’ll add flavor and volume and calories to anything else, right? So, uh, if that’s a thing you’ll be talking about, I wanted to get that out there. I’ll wait here by the door, I guess.”

  “OK. We’ll try not to leave you hanging too long,” Akari said, and opened the door. The four of them filed past Cassy into the room and let it close behind them.

  “Danielle, could you use that Skill again?” Sadie asked. “You know, the one you were trying out a minute ago?”

  “That’s a good idea, but let’s move in a little further and set our bags down first,” Akari said.

  They moved past the bathroom and started unloading their bags. The more water (and tomato juice) resistant bags of tomatoes had been resting inside their satchels, but now they lined them up on the counter, and set the bag of fish and rabbit meat down across from them. The satchels with their water bottles (now mostly empty) were tossed onto beds, and everyone took a quick turn in the restroom.

  When they had all regathered in the kitchen, Danielle activated Bubble of Silence again. The bubble promptly filled the kitchen, conforming to the shape of the counters, the nearest walls, the ceiling and floor, and the walls of the hallway. It stopped short of the bathroom door, and also didn’t reach the back wall of the room, simply forming curved walls in each of those directions.

  Danielle didn’t have much time to appreciate the Skill’s odd feedback, though; this time everyone was inside and there was business to be done.

  “We’re telling her no, right?” Sadie asked almost immediately.

  “What, just like that?" Akari asked. “I thought it would be worth at least asking a few more questions.”

  “Akari, we can’t take on a freeloader!” Sadie objected.

  “Well, um, she did kind of promise not to be that,” Heather said nervously. “The onions and all.”

  “That’s an important point, if you ask me,” Danielle said. “She’s talking about teamwork and complementary Skills and making sure she can contribute. I would think that’s the kind of member we would want, right?”

  “But if we let her join the Party, then we have to protect her, remember?” Sadie said.

  “Reasonable efforts, that don’t put our own lives at risk,” Danielle said, half confirming and half correcting. “Honestly, Sadie, I’d do that for practically anyone that wasn’t actively attacking me. It’s not like she has to move into our room, or eat our emergency rations or anything. We should at least ask about these group Skills of hers, and see if they really would fill in gaps or something.”

  “Plus, that thing about asking around and coming back here is a good sign for her future loyalty,” Akari said. “If she feels like we’re the ones who took her in when nobody else would even consider it, then we can probably count on her to do her best to stay on our good side, follow the rule about protecting us if she reasonably can, and so on.”

  “And keep our secrets?” Heather asked. “I’m a little worried about that. Especially if her roommates were trying to grill you about my Skills.”

  “They didn’t grill us, they just asked,” Akari said. “Well, and Adrian might be the kind of person that looks for rules loopholes for the fun of finding loopholes, but honestly, they were just curious about what healing you could do. I doubt they’re so obsessed they’d ask Cassy to spy for them.”

  “She’ll have to tell us about her Skills to prove she’s got useful abilities to offer us, anyway,” Danielle said. “It’ll be mutual secret keeping, just like between the four of us.”

  “Except we already know we’re all trustworthy!” Sadie said.

  “Look, we’re definitely not making her a member of the SHAD Party council,” Danielle said. “We don’t even have to make her Trusted right away. But we can consider making her a Welcome member; that’s why we made that level of membership a thing. Having more people contributing to our whole survival scheme is almost certainly a good thing – I mean, we might not want half the camp in the org, but we could definitely benefit by joining in with a couple more rooms' worth of people. You want to focus on crafting? If we can get a larger group and take turns checking trap lines, you could have whole crafting days, Sadie. We could get some people with the actual Basic Hunter class – we know there are some out there, think how useful that would be!”

  “Ok, that would be nice, but you don’t honestly think Cassy is a hunter, do you?” Sadie asked.

  “She’d be bringing something she hunted, if she was,” Heather said. “If she found wild onions close enough to camp that she still had time to spend most of the day talking to different groups, though, she might have some Skill to help with finding food in general.”

  “So do you, Heather; Find Edible Plants, right?” Sadie said. “What if she has the exact same Skill, and it’s completely redundant?”

  “Then we’re one person closer to being able to split up into two groups,” Akari said.

  “And Heather can save more of her mana for healing,” Danielle added.

  “Well, she probably still needs to practice the Skill sometimes,” Akari said, “but that’s still a good point. Also, I activated my Hostility Sense out there, and she’s definitely not hostile, so that helps. Let’s hear her out.”

  “If we’re going to invite her inside, we might want to hide all the stuff in the kitchen, though,” Heather said. “She’d notice all those extra bags, and stuff. The Rangers definitely did.”

  “The Rangers were looking for it, but that’s still a good point. I guess we could pull the stools up to the end of the hallway, though, and – oh, my Skill is ending,” Danielle said, interrupting herself as the Bubble of Silence started to feel thin and rapidly weakened, then popped.

  “So we’re in agreement, to at least ask a few more questions, while asking her to stay in the entryway?” Akari asked.

  “Fine, we’ll move the stools and let her come in far enough for your Skill to cover her,” Sadie said.

  “Let’s hang up our wet ponchos, too,” Danielle said. “Maybe spread them out over the counters to dry on both sides, since we took them off while it was still raining?”

  “Oh, that’s a good idea,” Sadie agreed. “You go ahead and get her, I’ll spread the ponchos, Heather and Akari can move the stools.”

  “That works for me,” Danielle said.

  “I’ll get the stools, Heather’s ready to keel over already,” Akari said, already reaching for one.

  “Put mine next to the wall so I can lean, OK?” Heather asked.

  Danielle chuckled and handed Sadie her poncho. Sadie was draping it to hang across the kitchen opening, blocking the view, as Danielle turned toward the door.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Stepping outside, she found the light was rapidly fading, and it was getting quite dark in the walkway, especially. Cassy was crouched in the shadows between the door of their room and the corner of the building, and for a moment Danielle wondered if she was hiding from something. Then she noticed that Cassy was sitting back on her heels with her back resting against the wall, with her head bowed forward; a resting position, more than a sneaking position. As her eyes adjusted further, she realized that Cassy’s hands were folded in front of her, and it dawned on her that the other girl was praying.

  “We’re ready to bring you back into the conversation,” Danielle said quietly. “Um, whenever you are.”

  “I’m ready,” Cassy said, looking up, then standing up from her crouch.

  “OK. Um, fair warning, I know we mentioned the party supplies to you yesterday, but we aren’t ready to show off our setup unless and until you actually promise to keep our secrets, so we’re not going very far in just now,” Danielle told her. “Please don’t take offense or anything. We’re just going to get some privacy and talk about it. I’m sure you understand that it feels like a big decision.”

  “Yeah,” Cassy agreed seriously.

  “OK. Come on in, then,” Danielle said, and opened the door for her.

  The kitchen stools were arrayed across the end of the hall, now, and although the light over the sink had been turned on to spill extra light out into the hallway, the other girls were mostly backlit by the room’s main light, between the beds. Heather was sitting on one end of the line of stools, leaning against the wall of the hallway as she had said. Akari and Sadie were in the middle, and just a little set back. Danielle saw that was because four stools didn’t quite fit in a straight line across the hallway. The stool reserved for her was against the other wall, and set a little forward, like Heather’s.

  Danielle thought it looked entirely too much like some kind of inquisition, with the inquisitors on the high stools, and Cassy called on the carpet below them. Instead of joining them, she took her stool and moved it in front of the archway to the sink area, where Cassy would be well lit, then went to stand where it had been.

  “I’m doing penance for making everyone hike way too far again today,” Danielle said, leaning against the wall, “so you get the fourth stool. I’ll also be activating a non-hostile Skill; dunno if you’ll feel it or anything, but don’t worry if you do.”

  Cassy looked faintly relieved as she climbed up on the stool, which told Danielle she had made the right call. Sadie was giving her a slight frown, but Heather was giving her a look of respect which told her she’d scored some kind of point there – with her claim to be doing penance, she thought, rather than by being kind to Cassy. Danielle supposed she should probably do something nice for Heather on purpose, since she really seemed to be feeling put upon over all the walking.

  “Are you going, Danielle?” Akari asked her.

  “Oh – one second.” Danielle activated her Skill. “OK, we’re good. So! Cassy. The first thing we want to know is basically all about your Skill choices, and how you expect them to support a team (and specifically our team). I think we can agree to keep that information a Party secret, whether you end up joining the org or not?” She looked to the others for agreement.

  “Agreed,” Akari said easily.

  “That’s fair, agreed,” Heather said.

  “OK, agreed,” Sadie said, a bit more reluctantly.

  “I really appreciate that,” Cassy said. “So if you’re keeping my secrets, the first thing I want to tell you is part of the secrets, even though it’s not technically part of my System status – is that OK?” Everyone nodded, so she continued, “OK. My parents were both Sent. I mean, before they had me, obviously. They put me in home tutoring because they didn’t want this to ever happen to me, but when it somehow did anyway, they said ‘we can’t give you physical stuff to take with you, but we can tell you some stuff you need to know that we aren’t allowed to spread around Inside. It’s technically breaking the rules, but so is Sending you.’ So: the first thing I bring to a hunting party or System org is that knowledge. I know what some of the big Skills they want Inside are, and how to unlock them. Mom made me promise not to say anything until after the town rules discussion, because once I was part of the town, I was officially allowed to know, and the Rangers would be allowed to tell me if it came up. Oh, and I know some stuff about the stupid rules the Rangers have about us. Stuff like that.”

  “Oh – wow, OK,” Sadie said. “That’s big.”

  “Yeah,” Cassy said with a nod. “Now for Careers, I came with Cloistered Scholar and Musician, which are both boring youth careers; and I got Camper in the Dome which is kind of embarrassing considering how much my parents tried to help me get something else, but it is what it is; I’m pretty sure I know how to work it to get good stuff out of it. I took Basic Mana Caster as my Class, which might be considered risky, but I have two advantages that help: one, I already knew more than most people about how the Class works, and I picked some stuff in the Necessities Store that can help. Two, I turned out to have a hidden trait called Mana Improvement, which – ”

  “Triples your mana pool and doubles your generation?!” Danielle exclaimed.

  “Yeah – how did you know?” Cassy asked.

  “Promise to keep the secret?” Danielle asked back.

  “Yeah, of course. Wait! Does one of you have it too?! If so, I’ll take it to my grave, believe me, I know how bad it could be if that got out to the wrong people,” Cassy said.

  “Yeah, good, because I’m the one that has it,” Danielle said. “And I considered Mana Caster too, because it sounds kind of awesome, but I didn’t know anything real about it in advance like you did, so – well, I took something else, but I’d love to learn more about it now.”

  “I’d be glad to share, if you actually let me in the org with that secret keeping rule and all,” Cassy said. “But for now, I’m guessing we’re on a time limit with your Skill, so not to waste mana I’ll keep going. Short version on that is, I can cast more than someone without Mana Improvement. Um, I have Body 2 and Mind 3, nothing special there.

  “My youth Trait – you have to understand, with being a home studies student, I spent a lot of time hanging out around adults, trying to figure out what was going on without annoying them, and being quiet while they worked and so on, and kind of spending a lot of time feeling shuffled off to the side and left out,” Cassy explained rapidly, her face reddening in embarrassment. “So my youth abilities are a little, um, spy flavored. It’s Skill: Peephole, and Trait: Improved Hearing, and yes, with my parents being former Sent, I do know several adults that have high level Improved Hearing as either a Trait or a Skill, and they hear everything, you don’t even know what it’s like living with them. I’m not that good yet, but it’s good enough that I knew you were using a privacy Skill of some kind when everything went silent in here – I couldn’t tell what you were actually saying before, but I could tell people were talking in here, and then very suddenly cut off.”

  “Um, so that’s youth; I got the Literate trait, Memorize Skill, and a Skill called Seen And Not Heard from Cloistered Scholar; and from Musician a Trait called Tempo Sense (kinda worthless for now) and a Skill called Breath Support.”

  “I have that too,” Heather said. “That was my youth Skill. You sing?”

  “Oh, um, a little – enough to know how it helps – but my second youth Career was focused on flute. Breath Support works with pretty much all wind instruments, too. I thought that one would also be useless out here, but Mom says it also helps with yelling, and even running if you level it a little and use it right. So I’ll share what she told me about that, and we’ll see,” Cassy replied. “Seen And Not Heard is a privacy Skill, so that has possibilities, and it’ll probably level the moment I get my base level up so it can, because I’ve used it a lot.

  “So that brings me up to Dome stuff. The Basic Mana Caster Class has a lot of different ways you can go with it, like most ‘basic’ Classes do, but I’m spec’d for scroll casting. I have Mana Sight as a Trait – that’s been weird, but I’m getting used to it – and Mana Shaper, which is pretty much the Trait that actually makes you a Mana Caster; and then my Class Skills are Scroll Imbuement and Scroll Casting. We can talk more about why and what that means when we’re not rushing under a Skill deadline.”

  “About that – I need to refresh the Skill momentarily,” Danielle said.

  “Ah sorry,” Cassy said. “I was hoping to – ooh, there it goes.”

  “You can tell?” Akari asked.

  “Can we have it back before I answer?” Cassy asked.

  Danielle nodded and reactivated Bubble of Silence.

  “Thanks,” Cassy said immediately. “Basically, it’s mana, so I can see it. It’s a funny looking Skill – very different form than my own privacy Skill, which means they’re probably better for different situations. The whole thing where I can see pretty much every Skill everyone uses, though? Not something I want to rub in to just anyone. Definitely part of the secrets, OK?”

  “Ooh, yeah,” Heather said. “I can see how some people might get worked up over that.”

  “I might be one of them, honestly,” Danielle said. “I went to a lot of trouble to learn how to keep my Skill activations subtle, so hostile parties wouldn’t notice them. It’s good to know but bad that it’s a thing, that any mana sensing System ability might make all that effort worthless.”

  “Well, if it’s a Skill, they have to have it activated and be looking,” Cassy reminded her. “But you should be aware that it’ll probably become a common thing after a year or three. It’s considered a high-value Skill and even more valuable as a Trait. It’s one of the ones my parents taught me to unlock, but it has a lot of paths. Basic Mana Caster is the fastest, though, since you can get it at level 1 through the Class.”

  “Anyway! A benefit to having me in your group is, I can catch subtle Skill uses from people who are hostile to the group; so there’s that,” Cassy continued. “And my scrolls can mimic some useful Skills and also some more wild and crazy things, when I get better. So that’s my Class stuff. With my extra 400 mana, I took four Skills: Transcribe, which helps with the scroll thing, but also copying useful info out of the books, and eventually copying diagrams and maps; Notice Edible Plants, which highlights food-safe plants in my vision while it’s active, and helped with the wild onions today; Defer Sleep, which will let me stand watch and guarantee not to fall asleep if and when we end up camping outside the so-called town; and Notes on the Wind, which is some kind of Musician / Mana Caster two-prerequisite unlock that I am so stinking lucky I saw – if I hadn’t decided to do my whole Class thing before I let the Access Point look for unlocked Skills, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have seen it.

  “I need to make some kind of instrument to use with that Skill – a flute or recorder or whistle or pipes – I know how to make something basic if I can find materials, Mom went over that with me, and I used Memorize and Transcribe to get it down in my Necessities Store sketchbook. Once I’ve got that, though, it’s actually usable as a communication Skill. I play a tune on my instrument, and the Skill sends it to the ears of a specific recipient who can be a whole mile away. I think the distance will increase as it levels up, too. If the org really ends up with two groups going different directions, it’ll let us coordinate the two with a code based on what tune I send.”

  “Sadie, we have to take her on,” Heather said.

  “What? Where did ‘have to’ come from?” Sadie said.

  “Long distance communications? Insider information? A chance to get some music in this miserable concrete block?” Heather gestured to the utilitarian room around them.

  “You don’t need her to sing,” Sadie said.

  “She knows how to make instruments. Also, insider Skill info, hello? Remember how excited the Rangers were about Danielle?” Heather said. “Don’t you want them to be that excited about you, too?”

  Danielle shifted uncomfortably in place, where she stood leaning against the wall, but decided to keep her peace; Cassy had told them more than enough secrets of her own to ensure that she would also take everyone else’s secrets seriously.

  “It won’t hurt to have more food-finding Skills either,” Akari opined. “It’s like she said about her privacy Skill; it’s doing the same thing in general, but it works differently enough that it’ll be good for different things.”

  “It’s only good for plants, though,” Sadie said. “There’s no mana in plants.”

  “There was in the vine monster,” Akari said.

  “There was a little in the onions, too,” Cassy said. “Am I allowed to ask about the vine monster?”

  “Later,” Akari said. “How’s your mana? Are you saving up for the catalog, um, what did the Rangers call it? The Catalog Un-Fair?”

  Cassy snerked. “Oh wow, yeah, that’s Ranger humor for you. A lot of them are former Sent, so they don’t feel like they have to pretend it’s all nice and right and honor and glory and – whatever. They don’t do the Insider excuses thing, they tell it like it is.”

  “Do you know any of the Rangers?” Heather asked.

  “Only a couple at this station,” Cassy said. “I saw them in passing on Decision Day, but neither of them happened to be my room’s guide or anything.”

  “Mana savings?” Akari reminded her.

  “Oh. I have a token or two in my footlocker,” Cassy admitted.

  “We have a Party healing token supply,” Akari said. “When I add my token tonight, everyone will have donated five mana. Are you up for donating a token here and there to the cause of our Healer having enough mana on hand to manage something big if it comes up?”

  “Oh! That’s a good idea. Yeah, I have to watch my mana, because my scrolls are real mana hogs, but I can squeeze in an extra five-pointer here and there. I assume party members have first dibs on having that mana used on them?” Cassy asked.

  “I used some for someone else last night,” Heather admitted, “But I asked Danielle for a second opinion before I did, and he has to pay it back. If it had been one of us, she wouldn’t have to do that.”

  “Heather already paid back the Party out of the partial payment she already got, actually,” Danielle added. “So you might say, she used both her own mana and the Party Reserve mana, but the Party got paid back first, and she’s waiting on her own profit. Also, my Skill’s about to end.”

  “Do we need to put it back up?” Akari asked. “Or can we agree that Cassy has shown sufficient reason for us to believe that she can contribute to the good of the SHAD Party?”

  Everyone looked at Sadie, who twitched uncomfortably under the sudden attention. “I’m the only one who thinks this shouldn’t already be a done deal, aren’t I?” she asked rhetorically.

  https://discord.gg/u5dtzpShv2