Data Dragon Danika

When she logged in, Aishin was waiting. He scooped her out of the air and cuddled her for a minute. "You"re warm," he told her with surprise. "I was kind of afraid you"d really feel like a little lizard."

"You got the VR set up?" she questioned.

"You"re not even going to use voice as usual?" he asked in return.

"I don"t want to go over my data limit, so I"m saving it for the skirmish tonight when everyone"s on and we need to be able to communicate more quickly," she explained.

"Oh, ok," he replied. "And yeah, and I can see why everyone gets so excited about playing through VR now, and why it"s difficult to explain."

"How long have you been playing?" she asked and sent a laughing emote.

His little avatar narrowed its eyes, and because of the black cloth covering his face it took her a moment to realize that it was because he"d grinned. "I"ve been playing for a couple of hours already," he admitted.

Watching Aishin play with VR was amusing. He kept stopping to touch everything, and he often caught ZipZing and petted her. Danika regretted that she didn"t have VR for the day, but she couldn"t quite bring herself to contact HR and ask if she could use the VR-medi pod outside of her scheduled hours.

They spent the end of the first "day" while they were still alone together picking up a few more animal essence items and a lot of fresh foods. They traveled to the south where the growing season was already well begun and gathered enough fresh fruits, honeys, and cheeses to fill all the s.p.a.ce inside her garden that wasn"t occupied by a plant.

This was part of the "knock the skirmish parties out and mark where the border actually is" campaign. They were going to pile equal gifts of food on each side of the border.

Aishin also told her about the new s.p.a.ce he"d ordered, and the exorbitant price it was going to cost, since Logical Heart had turned the pricing over to his merchant guildmate. "It"ll be worth it though," he said, "it will have "windows" of vision around itself, and will have a distinct pattern on it, and it will be "cursed" so that it can never be put in someone else"s inventory even if it"s empty."

"Why only windows? Why not all around itself?" she questioned.

Aishin"s cute little avatar scrunched its face up and explained, "Only precious gems could support that enchantment, and even if they can"t put it in their inventory anyone who happened to find it would probably pick it up."

They took a lunch break and talked on the phone the whole time. It wasn"t that they talked about anything significant or anything, especially since there were lots of pauses for eating bites and such, but the very casual comfortableness of it made Danika weirdly happy.

The second "day" they made their way back to the location the skirmish was expected to happen. When Shrubbery and MatchlessMinion joined them, Danika asked, "Isn"t it kind of weird that it feels like events in this world are conveniently waiting on our schedules to occur?"

MatchlessMinion shrugged and opinioned, "Isn"t that what a dynamic quest system ought to specialize in?"

Shrubbery said, "I have gotten to play at more off-peak hours than Match, and I think maybe it"s less that this skirmish is lined up with our schedules in particular and more that a lot more seems to be going on in general during the peak play times?"

Danika suggested, "I can ask about it this week."

Aishin asked, "But will you be able to tell us? Aren"t there rules about that? Even my band has to deal with rules about what we can do and talk about anytime it might be a.s.sociated with our public ident.i.ty."

Danika gazed at his avatar with surprise and said doubtfully, "All I remember was that I can"t leak information about upcoming events and things, but I"ll check that too."

MatchlessMinion said dryly, "I love how you just a.s.sume I already know everything that Shrubbery knows about you."

Aishin grinned and asked him, "Don"t you?"

Shrubbery"s avatar had much pinker cheeks than the dryad ever displayed through VR as she protested, "I didn"t say anything, he read the shipping receipts and guessed!"

They waited in the traditional safe adventurer"s environment of the inn closest to the border area. When Kit arrived, she was already in tears, and crying too hard to talk.

Shrubbery"s avatar hugged hers and Danika asked worriedly, "What"s wrong?" Their plan relied on Kit"s boundary detection skill.

Kit finally managed to sob, "They just told me I"m being released, today is my last day for a long time."

As usual, Danika"s mind threw out wild interpretations of Kit"s dramatic reactions. Like, she was being released from prison, or captivity or something.

Shrubbery asked quietly, "Being released? Have you completed your treatment?"

Kit nodded, and tears continued to stream down her chibified avatars face like a waterfall.

"Good for you!" Shrubbery said firmly. Kit pulled away from her hug and stared at her. "It means you"re doing much better these days right? I"ve thought so at least?" Shrubbery added a little more hesitantly.

"Yeah!" Kit agreed with a painfully choked laugh. "I am, but…"

Danika made a guess and pointed out, "Even without VR you can still talk to your husband, just like I"m playing on my phone today."

Kit scrubbed at her face and wailed, "I won"t be able to afford it for awhile! I just got the bill! I"m going to lose him." A moment later she ran out the door.

In one of those coincidences that almost certainly wasn"t a real coincidence in this game, they found that she had run into the travelling merchant"s arms a few dozen meters away from the inn when the party followed her out. His slightly plump chibified form hugged that of his wife in the most full body contact that Danika had ever seen between them.

Kit was sobbing about her upcoming absence to the merchant when he said gently, "Kit my love, if that is what you need from me, then I swear to you that my affection for you will never change from what it is right now."

"But, you won"t be able to help it," Kit protested, showing that she really was aware in the end that he was just an NPC.

Danika discovered that she"d started to cry in sympathy.

The travelling merchant reached out and cupped her face in his hand and kissed her gently. "I will love you just as much when you return. It is as true as that the sun will rise tomorrow my love. Peace to your heart my dearest one. Save your strength for the adventures ahead of you."

Danika wiped away her tears and stared at the screen in her hand. In all her experience so far, the merchant never lied. Like one of the fae folk of legend he never told all the truth he knew, but he never lied and he often offered obscure warnings. Aishin had caught ZipZing out of the air again and was hugging her, so she couldn"t just zip over to Kit.

Kit was gazing into the merchant"s face with such an anguished expression that it was painful to watch. It was obvious that she wanted to believe him, and that she was afraid to. Danika couldn"t bear it anymore and launched herself out of Aishin"s grasp and flew a more erratic course than usual right up to the merchant and demanded, "Can you lie?"

"I have never lied to anyone," the merchant replied with his usual oblique truth.

Kit froze, like her processing had overloaded, and the thought made Danika giggle. The AI had responded to emotion and the human had glitched. After a long moment Kit drew in a shuddering breath that Danika could hear, but not see represented in her avatar.

"You promise it"ll be ok?" Kit asked her husband.

"I promise," he replied simply.

"I love you," she told him fervently.

Danika blushed and quickly maneuvered ZipZing away from the couple. Aishin held his hands out for her, but she missed the landing and he had to catch her. "Let"s give them a little time," she mumbled. "We don"t have to have Kit until we"ve managed to put all the skirmishers to sleep anyway," she declared more firmly.

"Got it captain," MatchlessMinion said slyly.