“All right,” Danielle said, “if we’re doing this, let’s at least do it right. I’m going to go find some more leader-y types I trust, and as many of them as agree with you that we need another option, we’ll get them and their hunting parties together here and hash something out. Do you know the Lemonade hunting party? Lauren and her people?”

  “Yeah, we’ve met,” Candice said.

  “All right, please go invite her – tell her we have some firewood, but it sounds like we’re going to need more. You can invite anyone else you trust, too. I’ll take as many of my party as want to go and get the new members of our party, and maybe a few more people from yesterday’s trip. We’ll meet back here for a fireside discussion with eventual cookout. Um, we do have to go check our snares at some point, but we can cook something else for dinner as long as we’re done by – never mind, I think I’m still the only one I know with a watch – we’re not going all night, is the point.” Danielle turned to her party. “I’m going to try to get Peter and Lucas along with our guys, so we’ll be hitting buildings one and three; whoever stays here should help build the fire and tell Lauren the score. Who’s on team invitations?”

  “I’m with you,” Akari said. “Me too,” Sadie agreed.

  “I’ll stay here and get our room’s food in order,” Heather said.

  “I’ll get the fire built, as long as at least one of you guys stays with me,” Cassy volunteered, looking to her roommates. “Are you willing to help with that, Adrian?”

  “Sure, I can guard the fire,” Adrian said.

  “All right, we’ll be back as soon as we can get people together,” Danielle said.

  Sadie and Akari flanked her as Danielle speed-walked towards building one; she realized her leveled-up speed Trait was showing as the other two broke into a jog. They started with Tom’s room, for the simple and obvious reason that it was the only room number they actually knew. Fortunately, Tom knew the room number of the guys that regularly checked up on him, which included Gideon and Ezra, and led the girls to them. Danielle explained the situation to the four boys in that room, and invited all of them to join the discussion if they wanted (and weren’t already joining another party). The four of them went out to find some of their other friends (and more firewood, at Sadie’s request) and Tom attached himself to that group while Danielle continued to building three with Sadie, Akari, and Jordan, who had still been there with Tom.

  Danielle didn’t know what room Zephyr was in, but she knew which room Peter and Lucas were in, so she started there. Room 3311 was all the way up the stairs, but only one door away from the stairs once you got to the top floor. Danielle forced herself to straighten her back out of a weary slump, and march confidently up the stairs, not trudge. She knocked at the door, then stood back, reminding Jordan not to crowd the doorway.

  There was no answer, but Danielle activated Detect Mana Source and confirmed that there were people inside – all four roommates, it seemed. She knocked again; no one inside even moved. Well, if they’d had political party campaigners knocking, maybe that was to be expected. Danielle thought a moment, then stepped back and started very gently knocking with her staff, this time tapping out “Amazing Grace” name-that-tune style on the door. When the people inside didn’t move for the first verse, she started singing the words softly, and kept going.

  On the fourth verse, someone finally got up, came to the door, opened it just far enough to deactivate the wards without actually making a crack through which either side could see or speak, and yelled through, “I get what you’re doing, but we’ve already told you Theocratic Party people you’re going about it the wrong way, and we’re not interested!”

  “We’re not with them!” Danielle called back. “It’s Danielle, from Sunday; I’m here to invite Peter to a shared campfire thing.”

  “Saint Danielle?” the voice asked sarcastically. “No thank you – we don’t need any charlatans here!”

  “WHAT?!” Danielle shrieked, yelling in earnest this time, not just raising her voice to be heard through the door. “Who – how – Where on earth did that come from?!”

  A second mana source approached the door, and traded places with the first one. The door opened a crack and Peter looked out through the narrow gap. “The whole camp was buzzing about it yesterday. Apparently the Wolf Pack had a shouting match about how Vince was a lousy hunter if he couldn’t kill at least one of two ‘rabbits’ out alone in the woods, and Vince said he couldn’t help if it ‘the Pack assigned him to hunt a freaking miracle-using saint and how was he supposed to fight against a miracle.’ ”

  Danielle put her face in her hands. “You have got to be kidding me. The stinking Wolf told everyone? I didn’t think he was even still there when I said that.”

  “So you really claimed to be a saint?” Peter asked accusingly.

  “Well no, not in the sense of being able to do miracles,” Danielle said. “What I said was that I had an organizational status message with the word ‘saint’ in it, and I wanted to keep that status. It’s not like the saints some people pray to, it’s like in the Bible when they’re writing about the members of an early church, and they call them ‘all the saints who are there with you,’ or something.”

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  “Oh. That, um. Kind of makes sense,” Peter said dubiously. “I always heard the System rejected status messages like that when churches made sys-orgs though.”

  “Yeeeah, well. The org isn’t exactly my church back home, but that’s a much more complicated story,” Danielle said. “Anyway, I’m not here about any of that. Um, thanks for telling me, though, my own plan was to not stir people up by telling people outside my hunting party about it all, so I had no idea it was going around. I left early yesterday morning for an overnight camping trip to find the Access Point and stuff, and didn’t get back until after noon today. I’m here to ask if you want to join me and some other people that think the political party people going door-to-door are maybe too crazy to leave in charge of town politics. I’ve been asked to try and make a better party, and I don’t think that’s something I should really do all by myself, you know?”

  “What are you going to call it, the Saint Bunny Rabbit Party?” the second person sneered.

  “It will not be named after me in any way, shape, or form, and we will not be dignifying the Wolf Pack practice of calling people animal names with either humorous or serious recognition. Jerk,” Danielle said sharply.

  The second boy sputtered at being called a jerk, but Peter ignored him and asked, “What are you calling it, then?”

  “It doesn’t have a name yet,” Danielle said. “It doesn’t exist yet! We’re just inviting people we think might be sane enough to actually come up with something helpful to come help us do it. Are you in another party yet?”

  “NO. The political party people are all head-cases, and the army people are worse head-cases,” Peter said.

  “Are you up for helping us come up with something better, then?” Danielle asked.

  Peter stared at her for a moment, then opened the door a little further to look around at the people with her. “Who are you?” he asked Jordan.

  “I’m the other guy the Wolf Pack called a rabbit,” Jordan said.

  “I thought you got duped into trying to kill Danielle or something?” Peter asked doubtfully.

  Jordan looked down. “Not my best hour,” he mumbled.

  “God preferred us both to live, so I decided to make friends instead of giving Vince a convenient Outlaw-tagged target,” Danielle said. “Can we stop talking about the Wolf Pack situation on an open balcony? You’re giving me the creeps, here.”

  “Is it safe to be around him?” Peter asked Danielle.

  “As long as you stay on the building side of me, it is,” Danielle said impatiently. “Look, if you don’t want to talk about politics, that’s fine. Do you know what room Zephyr McPherson is in?”

  “Um, yeah? He’s directly below us. Fights with his roommates half the time, and disappears while they fight with each other about him the other half. He’s a noise hazard,” the boy behind Peter said.

  “Why do you want to know about him?” Peter asked

  Danielle sighed. “He joined our hunting party yesterday, so he gets an invitation to the make-a-political-org party too,” she said. Under her breath, she added, “who knows, maybe he’ll make it epic.” Sadie and Akari, standing right next to her, caught the reference and burst out in poorly-suppressed snickering.

  “Zephyr McPherson. You’re inviting the mad McPherson to help you make a better political party,” Peter confirmed, disbelievingly.

  “Feel free to come tell us why anything he says is wrong,” Danielle told him in exasperation. “Or stay here and fret about whether or not the System knows the definition of ‘saint’ until the election’s over! Anyway, I’m not hanging around here all day, I have things to do. Catch up with us downstairs if you want to come.” She raised her voice to call into the room, “Invitation’s open to you too, Lucas!” Then she turned back toward the stairs without waiting for a reply.

  “So does this mean I’m allowed to tell people what really happened now?” Jordan asked.

  “No!” Danielle snapped immediately, then had second thoughts. “Wellll - maybe on a case-by-case basis, but not just any – look, we’ll talk about that after we’ve made sure the camp-town isn’t actually taken over by Wolf wannabes, illegal kiddy-military generals, and people who forgot their social studies lessons on why religious tolerance is important to a peaceful society, OK?” Danielle clattered down the stairs and knocked on the door of 3211.

  The residents of this room at least had the courtesy to tell her to leave right away, instead of pretending to be gone. The door again opened just a bare crack before being pulled back against something – the toe of the boy’s boot, maybe – and held mostly closed. “Go away!” someone shouted from within. “We already have a political party, and we’re not switching!”

  “That is mildly interesting but not directly relevant to me,” Danielle called back. “I’m looking for Zephyr. Seen him lately? In the last hour, say?”

  “No! But if you find him, tell him the elevated elements are looking for him!” the room resident shouted.

  “Is that message less than an hour old? Because last I saw him, he was on his way to see Lithios,” Danielle called in.

  “Check there, then! Leave us alone!” came the reply.

  “Fine, thanks for at least answering,” Danielle replied. “Wait, can you tell me where Lithios is?”

  “Danielle?” someone exclaimed from further down the balcony. “I thought we weren’t getting back together until after dinner!”

  Danielle looked right to see Zephyr jogging towards her. “Nevermind, found him,” she called into the room. To Zephyr she added, “That was before we realized we can’t rest on account of political campaigners, and everyone who’s trying to get into politics is apparently crazy.”

  “No kidding,” Zephyr said disgustedly. “I don’t suppose you’d like to try and make a better party, maybe show them all how it’s done?”

  “You’re not the first person to ask me that, which is why I’m getting a bunch of people together to discuss it,” Danielle said. “I figure the first step in doing it right is not trying to do it all by myself.”

  “I still can’t believe you’re inviting him,” Peter said, from the stairs. “You do know he’s a Systemist, right?”

  “Well yeah, but in case you missed it, there are more than just a few Systemists living in this town,” Danielle said. “Even if we want our party to work by Christian principles, we can’t do anything that makes the place unlivable for Systemists or we’ll end up fighting ‘holy wars.’ Besides, this is a town under the government of Firmitatem. Secular state government, secular town government. We need at least a few Systemists involved in defining the party platform, to give us feedback and stuff. Are you coming, by the way?”

  “Yeah, I’m coming. Lucas is right behind me, too,” Peter said, just in time for Lucas himself to come jogging down the stairs, calling “I’m here!”

  “All right, that’s everyone I know well enough to trust with this,” Danielle said. “Let’s go back and see who the ABCs and Lauren invited.”

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