Sometimes Danika wondered if Shinichi was disappointed that she never greeted him as enthusiastically as he would greet her after being away for awhile, but attempting to be more effusive felt too awkward. He looked happy enough as they exchanged one last kiss, and then separated to log into 'Living Jade Empire'. He'd asked if they should move the full motion console into the same room as the VR-medi pod, but she couldn't see any reason to, so they'd decided not to worry about it.

Endless Song's guild hall tree was now large enough for humans to enter, although the rooms were still small for them, and their two NPCs had already moved into it. Logical Heart and Shrubbery had combined their skills to begin adding enchanted spaces here and there too, so there was more room available inside than it appeared.

ZipZing darted out of a small window at the top of the tree. The little room wasn't exactly a protected area, but it was a reasonably safe place to leave her stone space when she logged out. From there her pet firefly, Hikaru, could come and go as it pleased between her garden and Shrubbery's, and if anyone else had logged out from inside the stone space, the guild property in the human capital was familiar territory.

She zipped down to the biggest room on the ground floor, where ShinZing already hovered in front of Song Solvin.

The guild NPC was saying, "…I recommend having at least three guild members in the party."

Shinichi's pixie made the little half human, half parrot, sittamin girl look quite large. Next to him, Danika's fairy dragon looked almost as big as a horse, and even though it had been weeks since his reincarnation, there were still moments when it felt a little strange to see him looking so small. She had spent so much time sitting on the palms of his hands when he'd been a human assassin.

"Should we wait for someone else, or ask your dad to log on?" Danika asked. "What kind of quest is it?"

"The Witch wants two thousand gold, silver, and copper wings from large jewel scarab beetles of no less than 3 centimeters in size," Song Solvin replied.

"The witch in Oliva?" Danika asked with interest.

Song shook her head in negation, making her shiny green feathers seem to flick brightly as they caught the light. "The Witch is in the delta at the edge of the southeastern sea, in the City of Cyan."

"That's still quite a ways from the desert," ShinZing said thoughtfully.

The little NPC looked at him with a confused expression. "The desert?" Song asked.

"Where do we find the scarab beetles?" Danika asked quickly in reply.

"They are most common in the pine forests in the hills around the City of Cyan, and the juniper forests of the southern mountains, or you can purchase them from collectors," Song suggested cheerfully. "Also, since only the two of you are currently online, may I suggest adding one of the new applicants to the guild?"

Danika assumed the silly pose required to pull up her menus in VR and swiped over to the guild pages. They had only just added two more members over the weekend: Another elven bard, an elegant woman with sungold hair and leaf green eyes, who carried a guqin. And a silky brown selkie swordsman, who Danika suspected took a lot of piratical quests, with a dual cutlass sword style.

There were three new applications waiting, and Danika frowned as she looked them over.

ShinZing pulled up his own nearly invisible menu screens and commented, "All assassins. We should take NightOwl."

Danika examined his information, he was a human and a master assassin with an accumulated level of 187. Other than his level, she didn't see anything to distinguish him from the nadia or the werewolf. She was actually a little interested in the nadia. Pixies like ShinZing were the empire's air elementals, and nadia were the water elementals. She wondered if the nadia specialized in liquid poisons which it would have racial methods of control over.

"Because he's already a master?" Danika asked.

"Because I know him pretty well," ShinZing replied. "He was in Blood Hunters, with SilentSky and I. He's reliable, and has a reputation for always being able to avoid harming anyone except his target."

Danika glanced at ShinZing. As Aishin, he had killed every member of an entire guild once. He'd never been reluctant to harm anything that approached him when they'd been traveling either. As a pixie following a magic path, he was not really any less inclined to kill first and skip the questions, but he sounded respectful when speaking of NightOwl's restraint.

"Alright, let's talk to him first," she agreed. "Then the nadia if she's still online. And whoever is free when the werewolf logs on can take him."

"You plan on considering them all?" ShinZing asked with surprise.

Danika shrugged, making ZipZing's wings beat harder for a moment. "More than half of my skills were learned from an assassin, so how can I act biased against them? With Edwardian advancing his path to minstrel, we already have four bards, so we can't really claim it's too many people from one path either?"

"I guess that's true," he agreed. "We could use more people from crafting paths though."

Danika grinned at him. "Most guilds don't have an even balance anyway," she pointed out.

--

Song Solvin flew back into the guild hall almost as soon as ZipZing and ShinZing confirmed NightOwl's application. NightOwl logged off to sleep as soon as his application was approved, and Danika still didn't know much about him, except that he apparently lived within the next time zone over from Kit Tay.

The sittamin had gone to inform the nadia that they would interview her next, but evidently the assassin had been close by, since Song carried the little nadia back with her within a few minutes.

The small assassin, named Quicksilver, looked around the room and frowned. She leapt off of Song's shoulder and then looked up at the pixie and the fairy dragon.

Danika quickly landed so that the little nadia wasn't forced to look up at her, and said, "Hi!"

"Is this guild actually penniless?" Quicksilver asked doubtfully. Her androgynous form was a silvery blue where her skin showed, but unlike the nadias Danika had seen in their capital city, she wore a full set of clothes. The fabric of her outfit matched her name, Quicksilver, and it looked like it was formed from liquid silver.

ShinZing landed beside ZipZing and asked with interest, "If it is, will you cancel your application?" His wings sparkled brightly and his teeth showed in his smile.