When Danika logged out and went to find Shinichi, she discovered that he was sleeping again. He wasn't alone on the bed this time either. After observing them for a moment she decided not to wake them, but a pair of almondine eyes opened and regarded Danika warily.

She sighed and asked Tora quietly, "Won't Naoki get jealous?"

The little cat stretched and turned its back to her. Once it had finished communicating that it didn't care about her opinions, it turned around again and padded to the edge of the bed.

Tora dropped to the floor, and detoured around Danika. The cat paused in front of the door sensor just long enough for it to open, and then stepped out into the hall. Danika shook her head at the little cat's display of technology mastery, and turned to follow.

Tora stopped at the door at the top of the stairs, and turned to gaze at Danika expectantly. Danika made a face at the little cat and pulled out her new key. The door swung open on command, exactly like her old apartment door had.

That wasn't surprising, since it had the same system installed on it now, but Danika was tempted to ask Tora if she needed her own key. She didn't, because her heart suspected that the little cat might suddenly reply with words, like one of the cats from the game, and she preferred her current grasp on reality. The answer would obviously be yes.

Danika shut the door as Tora trotted away down the corridor, and went down to the kitchen to start something easy for supper. She finished up and found that she had logged in just in time to meet the youngest addition to Endless Song.

Shrubbery and MatchlessMinion had both sent messages to say that they had decided to return to Fogton, since SaltySiamese had reported that the guild that had attempted to take over the village had asked for an official truce. When ZipZing popped into existence next to Shrubbery's tree and gulped down her second to last health potion, a familiar little girl shouted, "Butterfly dragon! The chinchilla said that you can teach me to shapeshift!"

Danika blinked in surprise and looked Penname over with her analyze target active. Quicksilver's daughter turned out to be one of the children who'd been playing on the slide at Endless Song's entertainment venue. That wasn't too surprising, but somehow the fact that the little girl was using VR was. She had been the first time they'd met too, Danika just hadn't taken note of the fact.

It was only now that Danika realized how unusual it was for several children to have all been playing through VR. It made her suspect that some of them had been connecting through medical systems. 'Living Jade Empire' wasn't a bad game for kids, in her opinion, but she'd definitely seen more NPC children than real ones now that she thought about it.

Penname's accumulated level wasn't low either, she was already at the threshold of Master rank, and her path was listed as Aesthetician. Danika swiped over to the section of menus where she could look up what that meant, since she thought that it was unlikely that Penname was removing tattoos, while she replied, "I can, if you are patient enough to put the time and effort in whenever I can teach it. It actually requires two skills from the Druid path, and it's easier to level them if you learn a third one too."

The girl replied a bit rudely, "Don't look down on my patience just because I'm younger than you!"

Quicksilver snapped, "Manners!"

Danika flinched instinctively, but only MatchlessMinion seemed to notice and he just grinned at her.

Penname said grudgingly, "I mean, I would like to learn it even if you think it's difficult, guild Captain."

Danika shrugged and replied, "It's not that it's difficult exactly… And I think that most people, who are playing a crafting path character like you are, probably have quite a lot of patience. But there are limited opportunities to teach these, and there's no progress bar or anything, you just have to keep trying until you learn it?"

"Got it!" Penname insisted.

"Only when you have time to spare," Quicksilver cautioned.

Danika wasn't certain if that was directed towards her or towards Penname, but she agreed, "Yeah, there's no session bonus, so whenever we both have an opportunity we can work on it."

"You can make temporary tattoos right?" MatchlessMinion asked Penname with what Danika considered to be a rather devious expression.

"Why bother with temporary?" the girl asked critically. "I can apply and remove permanent ones with less trouble."

MatchlessMinion beckoned to her and hopped lightly out of easy hearing range. The girl followed him curiously.

Danika was curious too, but Quicksilver held her back by asking with quiet amusement, "It's hard for me to believe that he's as young as you think he is?"

"I've known him for a few years now," Danika objected. "He's SaltySiamese's younger brother, so it's not like it's just something he told me."

Quicksilver waved a hand and said quickly, "No, that's not what I meant! I mean, he's so efficient at managing such a big project, even if it is only in a game, that it's hard to believe that he's only a few years older than Penny. It makes me want to ask him what career he's studying for."

Danika blinked and suggested, "So ask? He seemed pretty impressed by your skills too? I'm not sure what you do exactly, but maybe he'd be interested in a similar career?"

The little nadia gazed up at her with a startled expression, and Danika belatedly dropped to the ground so that she didn't have to look upward. After a moment Quicksilver said, "Oh no, I wouldn't wish this kind of career on anybody. It's a really exhausting lifestyle. It's just something that you kind of fall into."

Shrubbery stepped out of her tree and said awkwardly, "I didn't know when I should come out, or if you realized that I'm still here…"

The fairy dragon and the nadia both gazed upward at the tall dryad. "I knew you were there," Danika assured her quickly.

Quicksilver added, "I wasn't trying to be secretive."

Danika and Shrubbery both looked at her a little doubtfully, and then Shrubbery smiled and said, "Well, he plans on becoming a lawyer."

Danika turned and gazed at where the little chinchillamin was still whispering and gesturing as he explained his decorative plot to the human girl who already towered over him. Somehow if Shrubbery had announced that he intended to become a master criminal it would have felt more believable. On the other hand, he was really efficient about things, and like healthcare professionals, lawyers definitely weren't going to run out of employment opportunities in this century.

--

When MatchlessMinion and Penname rejoined them, they both had wide grins on their cute faces. Penname announced that their guild hall tree was "sparkling", when her mother asked her if she liked having a literal treehouse.

Sparkling didn't seem to mean sparkly, which the tree wasn't. And Danika decided that even a translation system that could connect speakers from all over the world couldn't entirely cross the generation gaps. Although there were only about four years between MatchlessMinion and Penname, so maybe it was a culture gap rather than an age gap, she wasn't really sure.

ShinZing popped in just long enough to tell Danika that he was going to have dinner with his bandmates. When he saw her disappointed expression, he asked, "You already cooked something?"

"It'll store okay," she replied quickly.

He flashed a grimace at her and flew over to kiss her nose. "We'll have dinner together for the rest of the week," he promised quickly.

He logged out before she could reply. After a moment she shrugged. It would be kind of nice to see him every evening for four days in a row.

Danika arranged to meet up with Penname on the weekend when the moon would be full, so that she could start trying to teach her moonlight weaving, and then used up her transformations trying to impart the shapeshifting skill itself. Penname didn't learn it right away, but she seemed more determined than disappointed.

When Kit logged in, Danika left the guild hall with her, and they joined SaltySiamese to work on the King's quest for awhile.

When she was logging off for the night, she had the amusing thought that Jade might enjoy the kind of world that a children's game could develop into. The King of Cats almost certainly would.