While Danielle was chopping the vine-choked tree, Cassy had located some dead wood on the ground nearby and taken it over to Akari to build a fire, and when she came back, Heather went over to use her Firestarter Skill on it. When the tree came down, Sadie left the tomatoes to Akari and came over to claim the vines. Heather chopped for a while, then took a turn guarding the tomatoes while Sadie and Akari helped with the wood. Cassy focused on the smaller branches and kept chopping the whole time, even though she didn’t help with the trunk much. By the time they’d cut the tree up into logs and sticks and piled most of it next to the big rock outcropping (and a few logs around the fire to dry out and hopefully catch) it was already 2pm.

  Danielle used Sense Mana Source to check the trap, and found what looked (from shore) like two or three fish in it. Akari declared that she’d gotten one already, so Sadie, Heather, and Cassy had to take their turns. The three of them armed themselves with frying pans and knives, and Sadie brought her sword to block the opening of the trap, and they waded out. Akari promptly told Danielle to guard the tomatoes and headed for the tree line with her spade, saying “we need a latrine!”

  It was hard to argue with that.

  Danielle stood over the tomatoes and waved her staff menacingly at any bird that got close, while Akari walked into the trees far enough not to be readily seen except with Detect Mana Source. The other three splashed and shouted; Danielle listened as hard as she could, and eventually gathered that there were four fish, and they were giving her friends some difficulty in spite of the trap.

  They got the fish ashore, and Danielle let herself be talked into gutting one of them without too much resistance. It turned out that Heather had killed the biggest fish and one of the smaller ones, for a total of 50 points of burst mana, while Cassy had gotten the other small fish for only 20, and Sadie had finished off the slightly larger and slightly more slippery fish for 25 points; conversation while gutting centered around the question of whether fish had five-point Traits or Skills, or whether it was just a more robust species of fish.

  Once the fish were cleaned and beheaded, Danielle washed her hands and opened the canister of salt, and they salted the two larger fish but skewered the two smaller ones on sticks and propped them over the fire to roast. Sadie had at some point put the tilt-logs into the river to soak, bundled together and anchored with cord spiked into the bank using a tent peg. Now she pulled them up and arranged them near the base of the fire. She used Purify Food on the salted fish, which then went on the tilt-logs to dry, hopefully without setting anything on fire. Danielle wasn’t sure if drying on wet wood was likely to work properly, but she supposed that steaming was a way of cooking meat also, so she kept her mouth shut.

  Once the fish were at the fire, (and another fish head had been delivered to the trap by Heather), Cassy finally started working on her sling. Danielle watched in fascination as she pulled out scissors, knife, a hole punch, a permanent marker, a ball of heavy cord, a hammer and a package of small nails, and a leather cosmetics case.

  “What’s the bag for?” Sadie asked. “Are you going to keep the sling in it?”

  “Nope! It’s here to become raw materials,” Cassy said cheerfully. “I chose this one because its tag made a big deal about being real leather, and because it was the right size – if I cut off the seams, the front and back panels will each be the right length already in the long dimension, and twice the length in the short dimension, so all I have to do is fold them and cut them in half. Then I can make two – one for me to use, and one for all of you to learn with – and still have supplies to make replacements later.”

  Danielle watched carefully, even activating Focus, as Cassy cut out the main pieces, then used folding to find the centers of each side, then the halfway points between the center and the corner on each side of the short ends, and sketched out an almost diamond-shaped pattern on each piece. Then she added a central notch on each end. She cut off the long triangles at each corner and the smaller triangles of the notches, and overlapped the two narrow bits on one end, then nailed two nails through them, in line with the centerline. Taking the nails out, she folded the leather in half the other way and put the nails back through each hole, copying them to the far side, before taking them out and putting them back into the package.

  The hammer and nails went back into Cassy’s Decision Day bag, and she held out the hole punch to Akari, who had come back from digging the latrine at some point while Danielle was focused on Cassy. “Can you use your sharpening Skill on this?” Cassy asked her.

  Akari took the punch and looked at it. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “Which part is even supposed to be sharp?”

  “I think it’s the round part,” Cassy said. “Um, the round part that would go through the paper. I think its edge is supposed to be the sharp part, and the rest is just to hold the paper so it can’t bend away when the sharp part hits it.”

  “Oh, like the vines!” Sadie said.

  “What?” Cassy looked over to her, startled.

  “The vine monster was hard to cut until we started grabbing its vines so they would snap instead of just bending back when we hit them,” Sadie explained.

  “That makes sense,” Akari agreed. “I never thought about that being part of how a hole punch works, but it makes a lot of sense now that you bring it up. Anyway, let me see if I can use Sharpen on it.”

  Akari held up the hold punch and focused on the punch part of it, and everyone waited expectantly. Danielle watched for Akari’s System tells, and thought she had tried twice, before she muttered, “Oh come on, stop telling me it’s not a blade. It’s an edged metal object made for cutting things, it’s a blade – a round blade for cutting paper. Activate already.” A moment later, she grinned triumphantly and handed it back to Cassy. “Your shape-specific paper slicer is ready,” she announced.

  “Excellent,” Cassy said. “Thank you so much – now we just have to see if I have the grip strength to make it work on leather eight times.”

  Cassy carefully lined up one of the nail holes in the center of the paper punch, then squeezed as hard as she could with both hands. Danielle caught herself holding her breath until the punch went through with a sharp pop. “Yes!” Cassy cheered. “It’s going to work! This will last so much better with round holes instead of pointy slits. OK, one down, seven more to go!”

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  “Let’s get the vines untangled and rolled up while she works on the rest of those,” Danielle suggested, and went to the spot next to the piled wood where they’d left an unruly mass of vines. Sadie joined her, and they untangled and coiled them while Cassy struggled with the hole punch. Cassy told them how she’d recognized the plant while they worked, and shared what her parents had taught her about its use.

  When she was done punching the holes on the first piece of leather, they took a break to eat the roasted fish. It was still challenging dividing four fish fillets between five people, and ended up as a sort of awkward imitation of fish sticks again. Still, it was food in the stomach. Afterward, Cassy asked Akari to sharpen the hole punch again. Then she extended her hole-punching break to teach them how to make clematis baskets her parents’ way, and get them started – and rest her aching hands some more. It turned out to be simple enough, and Sadie knew the basics too, so she helped. Once everyone was well started, Cassy went back to her sling project, cutting out the not-quite-diamond shape from the other piece of leather she’d prepared, then marking and punching its holes.

  By 4 pm, everyone but Cassy had made a shallow, low-quality basket; in spite of the fact that they’d started with four plants that had almost been smothering the small tree, they ran out of materials. Still, as Akari pointed out, they’d be great for straining fish out of the trap and bringing them ashore to kill where they couldn’t slip away.

  That reminded Danielle to check the fish trap again, and she again found fish. Danielle lent Cassy her basket, and guarded the tomatoes while everyone else waded out to chase fish again. Akari turned out to be at least partly right; the fish were still challenging to get caught in the baskets in the first place, and quite determined to flip back out, but the whole process went quite a bit faster overall. There were two more of the larger fish this time, and one more medium sized one. The conversation was a bit less loud and excited, but Danielle thought they ended up comparing their mana remaining to level and assigning fish based on size. It made her smile. This was how being Sent should work, she thought; everyone helping everyone else level, get food, and generally stay alive and make progress towards getting back Inside.

  Danielle was assigned to gut Sadie’s fish this time, which she accepted with rolled eyes; but Sadie made good use of the time to actually make some cord using the woody bark they’d taken off some of the vines, and two uses of her Fiber Twisting Skill. Danielle joked about unlocking a gutting Skill, and Sadie joked back that it was obviously just a leveled-up version of Purify Food, which she already had, so she was just helping Danielle unlock a useful Skill! Danielle appreciated the banter more than the fish guts, but she was prepared to admit that cleaning fresh meat was a useful non-System skill that every Sent probably needed to practice, so she bit back the urge to complain further.

  They got the new fish salted, and Sadie purified them all. Then they arranged them around the fire to dry out as much as they could in the time remaining. Sadie got four purple tomatoes, and continued with her fiber twisting. Cassy, meanwhile, got out her manufactured cordage, and finished the slings by stringing a cord up through one pair of holes, then down through the next, and tying a knot on the back of each end, so that the cord held the two halves of the end together in a way that cupped the leather. Then she went looking for ammunition in the river.

  Heather took some time to play with her Amplify Voice Skill, singing middle-grades choir songs loud enough to scare the birds across the river, then claimed four purple tomatoes for herself. Akari produced a copy of the Ranger’s Guide that Danielle hadn’t noticed her packing, and took it back over to the trees to compare plants to diagrams in its pages, muttering to the System; Danielle supposed she was trying to unlock a Skill. Danielle somewhat reluctantly borrowed Sadie’s bow for its enhancement, and shot a quiver-full of arrows with her new Bow Apprentice Skill active, to see if she could discern – or create! – an improvement over her performance in phys-ed class. Her theory was that the weapon apprentice Skills were basically lore Skills, and if she could figure out what kind of feedback they were offering, she would see faster improvement. She didn’t figure it out between gutting the fish and noticing that it was just after 5 o’clock, however.

  Instead, she claimed her own four purple tomatoes and offered some to Akari, who only took two. Then the group packed up to head back to the Rooms. They ended up using the baskets to transport the fish and a bundle of the less craftable-looking sticks for firewood. Cassy lined her bag with rocks to use later - “When we’re next somewhere that we’re sure is far from everyone else, because starting out with the sling can be a little dangerous, and we don’t have any tennis balls out here.” Cassy requested one purple tomato as well, and everyone agreed.

  Sadie and Danielle took the tomato drying racks again, and Akari didn’t wait for further discussion to lead off and set the pace, which made the hike back challenging for Heather and Cassy. When Heather asked for a slowdown, though, Cassy reminded her that the two of them needed to push things to unlock their own Speed Improvements. That kept Heather quiet for another mile, and when she spoke up again, Akari reminded her that she had Rapid Muscle Recovery now, and they’d had a proper lunch that day, and dinner was assured even if it was going to be late. “You won’t ask for a better day than this to build muscle!”

  To take her mind off of the pace, Danielle asked her to tell the group about her Breath Support Skill. Heather and Cassy ended up giving the group what amounted to a singing lesson on the road through the ruined town. Akari, Danielle, and Sadie even had enough breath to try it out a little, though the other two agreed that the exercises couldn’t really be done right while hiking. Regardless, it kept them focused on music instead of aching legs until they got close enough to the Rooms that they fell quiet to avoid notice.

  Danielle noticed that there was more smoke coming from the Rooms than she’d seen before, but it was evening on a sunny day, and it didn’t seem like enough smoke to imagine that one of the buildings could be on fire. When they got to the point where they would have liked to sneak out of the woods, they could see that every fire-spot on building 6 was in use, smoke rolling out and up the end of the building from each one. Akari motioned toward the south, then made a circling gesture. Danielle nodded, almost sure she understood; and indeed, Akari led them around so that they were coming out of the woods facing the end of the building instead of the side.

  They were still seen, to Danielle’s disgruntlement, but at least they weren’t seen coming from the north; all in all, she decided she probably didn’t have any good reason to be upset. Another group came out close to the odd little building between buildings five and six, and headed for the stairs to six. Danielle could see two rabbits between the four of them. The SHAD Party followed suit, arriving just before them and actually using the steps to get into the walkway for once; the party with the rabbits went upwards. From the walkway, Danielle glanced out at building five, and noticed that the corner braziers there were all in use as well.

  “Let’s knock on the Lemonade Party’s door,” Danielle suggested, “and see if they’d like to share a fire again. All the spots we can see are full, after all, and it’s convenient if we can share the firewood. Besides, we have information to pass on – the stuff about getting new Careers, and the warning about leveling too fast.”

  “I’ll get it,” Heather said, and backtracked to knock on the door of 6011.

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