“So if there really is a level-3 guy in the Wolf pack, he’s probably already doomed himself to stay Outside forever?” Akari asked.

  “Probably,” Ranger Michael said. “For you girls, the lesson is this: even if you somehow have the mana for it, don’t change your base level twice in one week. Two weeks is a slightly lower risk, but still a bad idea. A month is a relatively safe bet, if you have the need and the option for a rapid level-up. If you’re in danger of double-leveling, its safest to point your absorption to you Class for a while. If your Class is already maxed, take a new one. And don’t be afraid to ask the System for a new Career! Careers help you respond to mana bursts by providing new channels for undirected mana – that’s why you get new Career Skills first when mana bursts hit. Your active Career will go first, then inactive Careers, then recently used Traits and sometimes Skills.” He gave Danielle a significant look.

  “What about Classes?” Akari asked again.

  “Classes don’t work the same way; they only give us Skills or Traits when we choose them. They let us add abilities we can’t easily act out our need for, but they don’t grow on their own like Careers. They’re one of the things humans get that most animals don’t – without a language-based interface, you can’t have Classes.” Ranger Michael shrugged. “We’re not completely sure we humans didn’t teach the System to make Classes when we were using games to train it in vocabulary, back in the early days. Careers are what the System had from the first.”

  “You said, ask the System for a new Career,” Danielle said. “Suppose I knew a Lost Girl or Boy who wanted to switch. How would they ask?”

  “I would recommend they read that Treatise on Finding Oneself from the bookshelves,” Ranger Michael said. “It’s got a pretentious title, but it was written by a Returned who started off as a Lost Boy, and it’s got some good advice. After that, though? You decide what kind of Career you want, and arrange things so you can do a lot of it for the next week or two, then bring up your status and ask it to ‘re-evaluate my Career.’ It’ll usually say something like ‘Processing request,’ and then nothing happens for a week or two, but if you do a lot of one thing and not much of whatever your existing System Careers are about, usually it’ll pop up a new Career for you.”

  “Even if you don’t ask, if you’re not doing much with your existing Careers and you are doing a lot of one other thing, you’ll eventually get a Career added,” Ranger Flo said. “A lot of Sent who get Lost Boy on Decision Day end up coming to the Fall Fair with Career: Fishery, for example.”

  “I bet those Lost Boys found fishing line at their Necessities Stores,” Cassy said grumpily.

  “Oh, yeah, for sure. That particular travesty might be something the Authority can actually do something about due to all the public outrage going around,” Ranger Flo said.

  “What? What do you mean?” Akari asked.

  “Can’t tell you yet, but the Sending Authority is aware that there wasn’t nearly enough fishing line to go around, even though that’s usually an item they make sure everyone can get – like the first aid kits, or real-crystal jewelry,” Ranger Flo said.

  “Wait – did they know that in advance?” Cassy asked. “Did they take away what was there, just because there wasn’t enough for everyone?!”

  “If they did, you didn’t hear it from me,” Ranger Flo said primly.

  “No, we heard it from everyone else in the Sending,” Danielle said. “Everyone keeps saying their store was out – if it was just low, we’d eventually find someone who had some.”

  “Will it be in the catalog then?” Sadie asked. “Is that why they decided to do the catalog?”

  “No comment,” said Ranger Flo.

  “The catalog thing is because of all the teachers and parents screaming about how they train high-schoolers on how to prepare for this stuff, but middle-schoolers haven’t gotten any of the training,” Ranger Michael said. “The idea is that now that you’re out here, you’ll be catching on to what you need that you didn’t think of Inside, or maybe dropped on the road before you realized how critical it could be. That’d be happening even without the fishing line debacle also happening.”

  “Please don’t talk about that outside your org, here,” Ranger Flo said.

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  “It’s OK to talk about how to get new Careers, though, right?” Danielle asked.

  “Oh, yeah, I just meant the politics stuff. You can share around the info on Careers, the fact that the real ticket inside is Aura Control not just the level, the problem with getting mutations and how to avoid it, the problem with leaving traps unattended too long and how to avoid that, all that’s fair game,” the Ranger assured them. “That said, we should get going.”

  “After the Medic here re-points her absorption,” Ranger Michael said. “Unless your mana-to-level is actually low enough that you could take another mana burst like tonight without leveling?”

  “I, uh – well, no, not like tonight’s,” Danielle said.

  “What about, like Sunday’s?” Ranger Flo asked. “Say, if this Wolf-boy came at you, and he went down the same as Arny did?”

  “I get it, fine, I’ll re-point it,” Danielle said irritably. Then, seeing that they were watching for her to do it then and there, she pulled up her status using verbal commands and set the absorption to Class: Basic Sneak, her face burning as she did.

  “Thank you,” Ranger Michael said. If he had an opinion of her Class, it didn’t show on his face or in his voice, which made Danielle feel a smidge better. “I feel a lot better,” he continued, unaware of the irony. “Remember, don’t level up until the end of the month, even if you can.”

  “Tell the catalog people we need calendars on the list, then,” Danielle said snappishly.

  The Rangers exchanged a look. “We’ll pass along the suggestion,” Ranger Michael said. “Just so you know, though, most Sent track this sort of thing by the moon.”

  “The moon?” Danielle gave him an uncomprehending look.

  “Have you learned about the phases of the moon in science class?” Ranger Flo asked.

  “Oh, yeah, I guess I remember that,” Danielle said, trying to recall what she’d learned about it, and not just the wall poster her teacher had put up during that unit.

  “Next time it’s a clear sky at night, go out and look for the moon,” Ranger Michael said. “It’s been a month when the shape has gone a full cycle and come back to where it is now.”

  “I see. I’d still rather have a calendar, but I’ll have a look at the moon anyway. It’s supposed to be beautiful, right? I haven’t really been out at night to find out for myself,” Danielle admitted.

  “Not tonight, seeing as it’s still raining, but you should have a chance tomorrow,” Ranger Michael said. “Hang in there – I promise it all gets easier once everyone starts getting their feet under them and settling into a routine.”

  “For the record, this is Wednesday, June 6th,” Ranger Flo said. “We’ll see you in a week or three – by which I mean, Saturday the 17th or Saturday July 1st. Unless, of course, we cross paths at any more emergency calls; and I just want to say thank you all again for coming when people call for help. I know it’s not fun to watch people die, but I appreciate that you try, and that you made sure it was only one this time.” She gave Heather in particular a respectful nod.

  With that, the two Rangers went out and closed the door, leaving the SHAD party alone in the room.

  “We learn a lot by talking to the Rangers,” Danielle said. “As annoying as it was, having them tell me to set a change in my System and then staring me down like my parents until I did it? They had a point about that Wolf guy and not leveling by accident, and I’m really glad I’m safe from learning about that the hard way.”

  She walked back to the beds and tossed the scabbard on top of her footlocker. The knife, she slid into her bag. “I think in the future, I’m gonna keep my weapons and first aid kit outside the footlocker, so I can have one of you grab them at times like tonight,” Danielle said. She set her bag down and flopped backward on the bed. “I’m so tired,” she said. “Is the meat safe in the cold box? Do you guys wanna just have tomatoes and jerky for dinner and cook the thing in the morning?”

  “I could live with that,” Sadie said.

  “I’ll cut some pemmican, and pour everyone a mug of tomatoes,” Akari proposed, standing.

  “Thanks Akari,” Heather said.

  “Oh, how’s your mana, Heather?” Danielle asked. “I bottled up some purple tomatoes in case you needed a boost, but you didn’t end up running out, so I never brought it up.”

  “I could use two, maybe,” Heather said.

  Danielle sat up and got out the canteen full of purple tomatoes. She poured out two for Heather, then took the bottle to the cold box and stuck it in whole. Akari handed her two mugs of red tomatoes with a thick slice of pemmican sitting on top of each – Danielle’s and Heather’s mugs. Danielle nodded, and took them back to the beds while Akari filled her own mug and Sadie’s. Cassy got a share too, served in one of the extra mugs. Everyone munched quietly on their food for a few minutes.

  “So,” Cassy finally said, “What’s the plan for tomorrow?”

  “If it rains, you make a sling,” Danielle said. “If it doesn’t rain, we take the tomato raisins out to the rock by the fish trap, we try to trap fish, and you make a sling out there. Unless the stuff’s too big to carry?”

  “Nah, it’ll fit in my bag easily,” Cassy said. “I can even show you guys how to make them, maybe make one for me and one for you all to train with. If that’s a thing you think you’d like to learn.”

  “Seems like a good idea,” Akari said. “Slings are supposed to be deceptively powerful for how simple they are.”

  “That’s the plan,” Danielle said. “That, and we cook my whatzit meat like we were planning to do tonight. Ugh, we need more firewood for that, though. OK, firewood, fishing, cooking, and sling crafting. That’s the plan.”

  Everyone was quiet for another few minutes. Danielle finished her tomatoes, and got up to wash the mug. When she came back, she got into her footlocker and came out with the journal she had intended to use for a diary.

  “Um, does anyone want to talk about what they got from the mana burst?” Heather asked.

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