“Can’t argue with that,” Danielle said. She allowed Ranger Flo to shepherd her back past the gate toward the staff line again. Once again, Ranger Flo got them access under a pair of staves, the shimmering mana flowing between them twisting like a ribbon as the staves went up. They came around behind the barrier and followed the pathway back between the fence and the trees to the headquarters building. “Did a Mana Caster make the staves?” Danielle asked curiously.
“That’s right. They’re a higher-level variant that other Classes can activate,” Ranger Flo said. “They’re also specially designed to work together this way. Wait until Fall Fair, and you’ll see them used in a different configuration.”
“Around the Fairgrounds?” Danielle asked.
Ranger Flo shook her head. “Nope. Across the entrance tunnel itself, and the road to the campgrounds. It makes some of the Insider vendors nervous; they feel very cut off with the barrier up. That causes less trouble than making healthy Sent with a few levels under their belts feel penned in, though.”
“I bet. Though it also makes a pretty bold ‘not welcome in here’ statement that seems like it’d be pretty bad for some people’s morale,” Danielle said.
“Less bad than the Rangers having to physically fight off incursion attempts, though,” Ranger Flo said. They fell silent for a few minutes. Danielle tried to keep her mind off all the people in her Sending who were still telling themselves they’d be going inside by Fall Fair. “Cheer up,” Ranger Flo finally said. “The Sending Authority has been studying how to help the most Sent survive, thrive, and Return, for well over a century. Your situation is weird – as a group, I mean, with the age thing – but they’ll still be using everything they’ve learned to help you out as much as they can. There’s a lot of ‘tough love’ involved, but it works out more than a lot of people realize.”
“Like how people think Lost Boys just die, but really they mostly get better Careers and no one remembers who they were,” Danielle said.
“Yes, exactly. Come on in, and let’s get you set up to make tokens,” Ranger Flo said, ushering her in the colorful doors.
A Sending Authority agent was lying in wait inside, and all but literally dragged Danielle into the book shop again. Agent Mike’s flattened boxes were stacked against the far wall, freeing the aisles. Near the counter, a folding table had been set up with two strong-boxes holding down the corners nearest the counter, and a large insulated jug in the center of that side. It was tall, rather than fat, and ostentatiously designed for rough use. It was painted flag green, the same color as the agent’s uniform, but it had shiny chromed-looking fittings, and Danielle was sure it could hold a two-liter bottle of soda – possibly bottle and all! In front of it sat two round cheese wheels in brown wax rinds, a paper carton of Bottled Sunshine brand citrus juice, and a bowl of familiar purple cherry tomatoes. Yet another unfamiliar Ranger lounged against the shop counter, but she came alert when Danielle walked in.
Danielle was more than a little uncomfortable with the intensity of the new Ranger’s scrutiny; she gave off the sense of absorbing and evaluating every detail. Danielle could hear/feel an active Skill around her, and the gentle prod of an under-powered Skill deflecting off her Trait. “That’s rude,” she said to the Ranger, who simply raised an eyebrow at her.
The Sending Authority agent, meanwhile, had taken one of the two chairs at the folding table, and gestured Danielle to the other. “Sit down, please, and let’s get started. I’ll be handling the minute-by-minute token exchanges here,” he said. “Ranger Gretel here has, ah, volunteered to represent the Rangers so Healer Flo can be free to come and go as she needs to.”
“Got voluntold?” Danielle asked the new ranger.
“I insisted, actually,” she said. “It’s not every day someone eats whole pounds of the mana-hoarding goat cheese in one sitting. I have to see what happens.”
“Oh yeah – mana cheese,” Danielle said putting a hand on the top cheese wheel, to see if she could feel/hear anything from it. There was definitely a faint hum, and then, to her surprise, she distinctly felt/heard a quiet bleat. She started chuckling, and a moment later, the sensation repeated.
“What’s funny?” the Sending Authority man asked.
“It bleats,” Danielle said.
“What? Bleeds?” he asked in alarm.
“No, no, it bleats,” Danielle corrected. “Like a goat. Just once in a while.”
The man eyed the cheese wheels. “I’ll take your word for it. Have you had any Fever-Ace this evening?”
“Oh, um, no,” Danielle said. “I didn’t even take it after lunch – I forgot. My last dose was first thing this morning.”
The SA man gave Ranger Flo a significant look, and she nodded. “I can do that. I need to grab the fiber supplement, too. Keep a good eye on things, though, Gretel – she’s not on top of her game right now, but she’s not out of it enough to forget if we don’t treat her fairly.”
“Duly noted,” Ranger Gretel said with a nod. Ranger Flo nodded back and left to get the medications.
“All right, well. As long as you’re good to work on the Boost Recovery tokens, we can get started while she’s at it,” the SA man said. “Here’s the plan. I’m going to lay down ten – sorry, eight sets of mana tokens, as agreed between the Station Manager and the Ranger Healers.” He opened the strong box and pulled out two rolls of tokens while he spoke. “When you have used the 100-mana tokens to make eight copies of Boost Recovery, then you take four of the 200-mana profit tokens and put them in you new box; the other four come back to me, and I mark them off the account for tonight’s purchases, starting with the extra tokens for your hunting party.”
“Until that’s all paid off,” Danielle said.
The man nodded. “Correct. After that, you take all the profit tokens. Remember, we need you to make Boost Recovery, and nothing else.” He spread a line of eight 100-point mana tokens in front of her, then closer to him, basically on the centerline of the table, started arranging 200-point tokens to match them.
Danielle chuckled. “I’m not that out of it. Boost Recovery is the token shortage; everything else is the common sense shortage.”
The SA man and Ranger Gretel both chuckled. “So it is. Please lay out the Boost Recovery tokens on my side of the 200-mana line, label-side up.”
“All right,” Danielle agreed. She picked up the first 100-mana token and flicked her eyes to open her Interface. “Interface, stay visible until verbally dismissed,” she said, then used her trained eye cues to activate Manifest Token and select the Skill Token template and Boost Recovery for the Skill. She set the new token down on the SA side of the table and picked up another 100-mana token.
Seven repeats later, the line of 100-mana tokens was empty and the line of Boost Recovery tokens was full. As agreed, Danielle took 4 of the 200-mana tokens, and the SA man set a piece of ledger paper on the table and showed her the ‘account’ – 1350 for her party’s bonus tokens, 1200 for her own, 1950 for the five unrelated Skill tokens she’d bought to get up to the Healers’ magic number of new Skills, 500 for enhanced items, and 600 for a falconry mews kit and room permit. 5600 altogether; and for the first row of tokens, he credited her 800 mana. 4800 to go.
Ranger Flo came back while the agent was setting out four new 200-mana tokens and making a new line of 100-mana tokens for Danielle to work with. She brought a dose of Fever-Ace, a cannister of unflavored fiber drink powder, and a set of paper dishes – plate, bowl, and cup. Danielle used the cup to pour out some Bottled Sunshine to take the pills with, then started making the next set of Skill tokens. She moved through the line quickly, and the SA man noted her ‘payment’ and reset the lines just as quickly, sliding away the Boost Recovery tokens last of all while she started making the next batch.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
After the second set, he told her, “There, now you’ve paid off your party’s tokens and started in on your own set.” After the fifth round, he said, “Now you’ve paid off all your tier 1 tokens.”
Agent Bea returned, and came in with a box of fancy party crackers. She set the box down on top of the cheese wheels. “How are you feeling, Danielle?” she asked.
“Pretty good,” Danielle said. “I’ve done, uh, 40 tokens and my big pool is basically empty, so I need to change over my pool now. That means I’ll be working out of the small pool for the next hour, but we’ll be doing mana-cheese eight at a time, so it shouldn’t make much difference.”
Danielle set her Riverine mana pool to active and finished the sixth row of eight, then paid the ledger. “This next round will be the last one to pay off your purchases,” the other Agent told her, and set up the line for her again.
After the seventh round, a Ranger came in and took away most of the Boost Recovery tokens. “You know we need at least twice this much again,” he muttered to Agent Bea.
“She’s working on it,” Agent Bea murmured back. “You’re taking fifty?”
“Yeah. Here’s our current number needed,” he said, handing her a slip of paper.
She glanced at it. “It just keeps getting better,” she said sarcastically.
“Yeah. You know that 10/20/30/40 estimate they put in the training manual?” the Ranger asked.
Agent Bea sighed. “Let me guess. We’re on track to have the same ratios, but with the wrong Skills on each line.”
“Well, Detect Internal Temperature is the closest one to 10%, so that one’s not out of place at least,” the Ranger said.
“Carry on, Ranger,” Agent Bea said with a sigh. “We’re all doing our best.”
“All right, all your purchases are covered,” the Agent in charge of the mana announced, bringing Danielle’s attention back to the tokens in front of her. “From here forward, the profits are yours.”
After the eighth round, Danielle had to start in on the cheese and tomatoes. Ranger Gretel peeled back the rind with her knife and used a special tool to cut out 2-mana wedges for Danielle, served two at a time with four mana tomatoes and half a glass of Bottled Sunshine juice with a little fiber powder mixed in. Crackers were optional, but Ranger Flo pointed out that Danielle had a lot of tomatoes and cheese to eat, and recommended she go easy on unnecessary volume.
After three rounds of eating and then making tokens, Danielle was starting to feel seriously dizzy, and a little full. As she ate her fourth round of cheese and tomatoes, she reflected that she was going to have to slow down, or she’d make herself sick in an entirely different way from the problems she already had. She checked her mana pools as the SA man laid out another round of mana tokens for her; it would be the twelfth round of eight tokens. Two points had generated in the Oceanic pool, and even Riverine had one more. Danielle was about to ask Agent Bea if she could handle a slow-down, when her eyes dropped to the bottom of her interface and noticed the messages waiting light. “Oh! I have messages? It feels like messages keep sneaking up on me, this weekend,” she said.
She suddenly had all eyes on her. The expression on Agent Bea’s face in particular was unnerving; not hostile, but very intense, and Danielle had the impression she was expecting something in particular. It was with some trepidation that she brought up the messages under that scrutiny.
- ? Trait: Skill Sharer has advanced to Tier 1, Level 2.
- ? Skill: Token Manifestation has advanced to Tier 1, Level 2.
“Oh, it’s just my Token Manifestation leveling, and Skill Sharer – I guess I have made a lot of tokens the last few days, huh? I always heard it took thousands of activations to level Skills without adding mana, but I guess that was Inside?” Danielle said, giving Agent Bea a slightly anxious look.
Agent Bea’s face split with a delighted grin, with just a hint of predatory glee in it. “Take that, Karen,” she muttered under her breath, then explained aloud, “Skills that use token mana absorb just a sliver of that mana towards their level. It helps high-cost Skills level in a reasonable time frame, even though they are often rarely used because of those costs. Good news, though! Now that you have indeed leveled your Trait – like I told you she would – you can make four tokens during every activation!”
“Yes, fine, you called it,” Ranger Flo said.
Danielle looked between them. “I didn’t know it would do that,” she said.
“Yes indeed, it does that,” Agent Bea said. “It costs two mana per activation, but you get four tokens out of it. You still have to pay the Skill cost for each one, though – so what I need you to do is pick up four of these 100-mana tokens all at once, now.”
Danielle collected half the 100-mana tokens from the new line and stacked them up in her hand. “One for each of the tokens that is meant to come out?” she asked.
“Correct,” Agent Bea said with a nod. “Now activate your Skill as normal, but instead of holding your hand palm-up, hold it palm-down over the table.”
Danielle did as instructed, and the new Skill Tokens pushed her right hand up as they manifested in a stack, the same as the mana tokens disappearing from her left hand. She lay them out in a line on the SA side of the table, just as she’d been doing.
“Excellent,” Agent Bea said. “Now do that again, and you’ve made the whole eight tokens with only four mana!”
The man laid out another set, and Danielle completed it the same way. “OK, so, are we still doing eight tokens per row then? Or do you want to go ahead and set up for sixteen – a row of eight mana, instead of a row of eight tokens?” Danielle asked.
The man looked to Agent Bea, who checked the Rangers’ numbers and said, “Let’s go ahead and do three or four rounds at eight mana per run. Then we should be close enough to the demand to justify slowing down. Go ahead and use the larger denominations too, there’s no need to make her handle 100-mana tokens four at a time.”
Another Ranger came in to collect tokens, and he drew Agent Bea out of the Book Shop for a conversation. The agent laying out Danielle’s tokens started getting creative; sometimes Danielle would have two tokens in the supply pile, sometimes just one and it nonetheless left a remainder wedge in her hand. Danielle was feeling decidedly unwell, now, the room revolving around her in a slow and wobbling fashion. Ranger Flo helped her keep track of which mana to make Skills out of and which to put in her box, and made sure she drank her fiber with each round of cheese. Agent Bea came back in eventually, but Danielle’s world was narrowing to tokens, cheese and tomatoes, and the citrus juice that Ranger Flo kept putting in her hand.
At some point, Zephyr appeared, eating her crackers along with a bagged dinner. At some point, Danielle paused eating cheese because the bleating got suddenly loud, and she found that she’d received “Skill: Goat Husbandry (T1) at level 1.” Ranger Gretel seemed happy about that, though everyone else in the room seemed inclined to believe Danielle was hallucinating. “It’s the invisible Wolves problem all over again,” she muttered, but after the other agent confirmed three times that yes, she understood she was making Boost Recovery, she continued. Another Ranger came and went, taking the tokens out to be distributed and updating the numbers.
She didn’t know how many more rounds she had done when she was handed a single wedge of cheese instead of a plate of cheese and tomatoes. It was only enough to make four tokens, not a whole line, but Agent Bea had her make those four, then handed her two tomatoes. She did one set at a time until Agent Bea called a halt.
“That’s it!” she crowed. “We did it! You did it, Danielle! Haha, and with 20 mana to spare on your safe limit, too!”
“Hooray,” Danielle said tiredly, then added, “I’m dizzy.”
“Haha, no doubt, but you’re also done with the job they said was impossible for you,” Agent Bea told her with a grin.
“With God all things are possible,” Danielle said. “I’m getting kind of tired of being called impossible when things are just normal possible, though. Can I have more juice?”
“You can have the rest of the carton. I’m going to go deliver these – Flo, Percy, help her organize her strongbox please, and make sure it’s properly bound over to her before she leaves. Oh, and have an extra food and meds kit delivered for her, if we’re expecting a longer than usual convalescence,” Agent Bea ordered.
“We are, and that’s a good idea. She’ll need the extra nutrition, and I can slip in some more fiber supplements, in case she has issues,” Ranger Flo said. “I still can’t believe I just let a patient eat 2 pounds of cheese.”
“Me either,” Ranger Gretel said. “At least you were smart enough to feed her tomatoes and fiber-shakes along with it, though. The last fool I saw try to eat a whole wheel of cheese was just grandstanding about getting the ‘free’ Skill out of it.”
“How did he fare?” the agent asked, setting his strongbox on the ground, out of the way.
Ranger Gretel laughed. “He had to go to Flo for help with his digestive problems, and as far as I know, he never did get the Skill!”
“I still have goat mana in me,” Danielle said, looking down at herself. “My pools are super low, but I can feel the pattern that bleats floating around trying to say something.”
Danielle felt a Skill press through her Mana Deflector and echo through her body. “Hm. She’s doing OK on hydration, and her fever’s come down a bit, but we’ve definitely inflamed the disease. She’s probably wandering the line between ‘exhaustion-brain’ and literal delirium,” Ranger Flo said
“I hope you’re going to see her to her door, not drop her off on the road like you did to me,” Zephyr said.
“Zephyr! What are you doing here?” Danielle asked. How long had he been here? Danielle couldn’t recall, though on the other hand, she didn’t think he’d just arrived, either.
“My roommates ate my dinner when I didn’t get back to the room fast enough, so I packed up most of my important stuff in my fancy new green bag and made sure the rest was in my footlocker, and went to ask the Rangers for another one. They ended up bringing me back here to get it, and then I talked my way in here to watch the miracle happen while I ate.”
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