Data Dragon Danika

She created an itinerary that would let her reach the most quests with the least travel, because otherwise ZipZing would waste days trekking back and forth across the Empire.

--

Danika did not kiss the floor of her room when she got home, but she thought about it. Instead she turned on the heat, watered her house plants, and prepared her laundry so that all she"d have to do would be to carry it down for pick-up the next morning.

She ate a packet of ramen for dinner. Then she took a long bath, ordered fresh groceries, and pulled herself over the edge of her own familiar VR-medi pod with a sigh of relief. Her cute kitten and dragon sticker covered the warning labels, and there were the right smells. Not that she wanted to admit that her sleeping place smelled, or could even really describe how it smelled differently.

Even though it was pretty late, she logged in to "Living Jade Empire". She had received more new friend requests. She decided that most if not all of them were probably from more of her new co-workers in the sixth, and maybe the two from the seventh who"d attended the dinner, so she accepted them.

It had been two weeks since she"d visited her garden through VR, because she hadn"t spent time on it during the one evening that she"d scheduled VR play time. Hikaru followed her around curiously as she hopped from stone to stone and touched all her plants, and even pressed her ear up against her apple tree just in case she could hear it purring. It was good to be home.

Thinking of homes reminded her of the tree branch she"d claimed in Windbur and never returned to. She wondered if it still belonged to her. Everyone in her party was online, but no one had messaged. Danika frowned and checked the list again, it really did say that everyone in her party was online, but Kit wasn"t in the party.

Danika messaged Aishin, "You took Kit out of the party?"

The cute little version of the snow leopard cub bounded away with the message.

Aishin"s little bat returned a moment later, "Am I the only one who got the notice because I"m the party leader? She was automatically removed after one week. Also, welcome home! I"ll be done helping here in a few more minutes, and I can play for another half hour."

Danika sent a message to Kit a.s.suring her that they hadn"t meant to remove her from the party, for her to read when she finally returned. While she was writing that, MatchlessMinion"s cat arrived with a message that said simply: "Hope the trip home was ok."

Danika replied: "It felt long, but it went ok. What are you up to? Aishin says he"ll only have another half an hour, and I was considering returning to Windbur and collecting hair off of the golden orb spiders and silkmoths there."

She knew that he and Shrubbery weren"t in Shrubbery"s garden, because that"s where her pebble was at the moment. They also weren"t in the same direction that Aishin was.

His reply was delivered a minute later, "We"re hunting fireflies. Shrubbery wants to try to establish a colony in her garden. She was talking about how cute your pet was when you were hanging out together, and how it would be even better if there were a lot of them. I told her we should get her some, and this Xander guy even came to charm them for her so that they"ll be more likely to settle in her garden when we get them there. Did you know he has a walrus?"

Danika laughed and replied: "I know, but I haven"t seen it, unless it"s the same as his messenger animal."

The snow leopard cub gave her a reproving look as he carried off the message. Danika chuckled. He was probably grumpy because he was already quite familiar with both her garden and Shrubbery"s.

Aishin appeared beside her a moment later. He flashed her a quick smile and she felt a little disappointed that he was playing on his phone, but she was still really glad to see him. Even though it had only been a couple of days since they"d talked, and they"d still exchanged a few messages, she"d noticed the gap. She wondered if she were clingier than she"d have thought.

Aishin caught her out of the air and hugged her before releasing her again. She grinned at him. His clothes were shredded again and he pulled out a health potion and gulped it down.

"What were you helping with?" Danika asked nosily.

He flashed a grin at her and replied without really explaining, "Nao1 makes a surprising number of enemies as a girl."

She checked his PK flag, but it was at the usual green setting, so he hadn"t been fighting people who didn"t have a PK flag set. He had his character sit on one of the stone dragon print seats he"d gotten for her garden and held his hands out for her. Danika zipped over and landed on them without any hesitation.

She sat down like a cat so that she could feel the warmth of his palms even if he was only seeing her mobile avatar filling his screen. "It"s really nice to be home," she commented.

"Had enough adventure for now?" he asked.

"Actually," she admitted, "my extra two days off are so that I can go on an epic adventure and do as many of the repeatable quests as possible."

Aishin laughed and flashed another grin at her. "Too bad I can"t play with you. Are you getting paid for it?"

Danika shook her head and explained, "No, but I"ll get paid for the last week of training instead."

Aishin flashed a shocked look at her and asked, "You didn"t get paid for the first week?"

"No, but originally I wasn"t going to be paid for either week, though they did cover all the travel costs," she replied quickly.

"I know it"s none of my business and you seem really happy about getting this job, but are you going to be ok?" he questioned, and even in the flat tones that showed he was communicating by text, she could tell that he was worried that she was being taken advantage of.

"I"m really happy because not only does it seem like it"s going to be pretty fun a lot of the time, but it"s also a really good job! I"ll get a decent hourly wage and full benefits." She added, "And even though there aren"t any direct employee game account benefits and I can"t talk about unreleased things, I"m allowed to ask my a.s.sistant to look up information and come and use that information as ZipZing."

"You have an a.s.sistant?" Aishin asked curiously.

"Yeah, it"s a celestial dragon AI!" Danika exclaimed laughingly.

"Oh, I see," he replied, and flashed another grin.

--

After Aishin logged off for the night, Danika stayed up and traveled to Windbur without incident. She discovered that her tree branch still bore the color streaks that marked it as her own. And Hikaru seemed to be able to tell that it was her territory as well, because the little firefly landed on her branch and ignored the others.

Danika patted the tree with her little clawed hand and told it, "Thanks for waiting so patiently."

The tree didn"t respond, but Danika kind of thought that if it could respond to the ritual commands, it might be able to understand her anyway. She fell asleep a bit later in a cheerful mood after collecting another half dozen local animal essence materials.