Data Dragon Danika

Ryuske waited until her call with Shinichi ended, but while Danika cooked, he made ridiculous suggestions.

"What if we made it so that the floor raised up when your chair was on it?" he suggested next.

Danika laughed and replied, "It sounds hazardous to all of us! If you're going to go wild, why not lower the counter instead, so that no one gets unbalanced?"

"We could do that instead," Ryuske agreed cheerfully.

Danika rolled her eyes and told him a little more seriously, "Or I could upgrade my chair to one that could lift me, or we could modify just one work surface to a standard desk height and inset, so that I could do most things at it. There's no need to make a huge expensive change!"

"I'm just trying to get you to tell me what would be fantastic instead of just workable," Ryuske replied with equal seriousness, but a gentle smile.

--

Her VR-medi pod was set up in the room that had been acting as their store room before, and Shinichi had told her that they'd sorted it and put what they'd kept into actual storage.

The dragon futon and some of her other dragons decorated the room, but one wall was covered in a wallpaper that Shinichi had obviously chosen for her. Dozens of charming, colorful little dragons tumbled across it in various cute poses. Apart from a sneaking suspicion that it was designed for small children, she loved it.

He had to have been preparing things like this before she'd actually agreed to move in, or else a small fortune had been spent, because there simply hadn't been enough time for extra touches like this.

When she connected to 'Living Jade Empire', she felt disoriented at first. The tangle of poisonous vines was gone, and a new field of clover had replaced it. The guild hall tree was also now big enough that someone ZipZing's size could wander its rooms freely.

Kit's messenger appeared within moments of her arrival, and Danika felt a little guilty about sleeping in so late. Kit said: "Can you come to where I am? I can't leave without forfeiting my weird Empress quest, and I'd like you to see it. It's not weird enough to make me file a bug report, but I don't really understand it."

Danika immediately abandoned her examination of the guild hall plot and headed for the portals in the center of Fogton. Kit was in the south, near Emberton, but Danika had let the Mark she'd had on her during her climb to empress expire, and had to make her way there by conventional means.

When she arrived at the small river's bank, Kit motioned her down and pointed a little southward, to where a basket was trapped by the branches on a fallen tree. As the water tugged and bounced the basket, fragments of the weaving came loose. Kit frowned in concentration and sent a skill out of her menus toward the basket, which bobbed higher again.

When Danika started to move toward it, Kit reached out and stopped her. "I can't interfere with it in any way except by mending it. And I'm not supposed to let anyone who isn't on my friend list recognize me."

"Um, what?" Danika asked blankly. "And aren't you usually at work at this time of day?"

"It's my day off, but I would probably be taking a nap if I hadn't started this," Kit explained quietly. "There's a baby in that basket, and I really don't understand the conditions of this quest! And this mending skill? What kind of Empress does her own mending?"

A baby being watched over in a basket on a river sounded oddly familiar to Danika and she asked, "I don't know about the mending, but doesn't this seem like a story? I can't quite remember though… a grandmother, or maybe a fairy godmother, watching over it until it gets picked up and adopted? Something like that?"

"Magical mending would fit right in with a fairy godmother's skills," Kit commented. After a moment she protested, "Wait, does that mean I'm playing the fairy godmother in this kid's story!?"

Danika shrugged, turned invisible, and maneuvered herself to get a good look into the basket. It looked like a human NPC, and its level and description didn't reveal anything obviously unusual about it. "A healthy baby girl, is all it says for me," she reported.

A soft sob made her look back at Kit suddenly. The Jade Empress wept, and Danika asked worriedly, "Are you okay? Your title is showing…"

Kit's title vanished and her appearance aged twenty years. It was unsettling and Danika worried that the tears were because she thought that the game was calling her old.

Kit laughed through her tears, and replied, "I am okay, I just have to keep up the pattern to maintain the disguise." She looked upward, though not quite at ZipZing, and insisted, "I mean it! I'm really okay, oh my god!"

Danika zipped down and reappeared in front of her. "Alright? I wasn't trying to say that you have to look like a grandmother?"

Kit sent another repair toward the basket and asked, "I'm really powerful now aren't I?"

"Yes," Danika agreed warily. "The most powerful woman in the world maybe?"

Kit laughed again, even though her tears hadn't completely stopped. She sniffed deeply and repeated, "I'm powerful." Danika didn't know what to say, but Kit continued, "I think I'm actually ready to see myself that way."

Danika wished that Shrubbery, or Ryullusion, or anyone else was there to think of the right thing to say. "It's a good thing, right?" she replied hesitantly.

"I always saw myself as the Cinderella of the stories. Even when other people saw me as powerful, I still saw myself as subservient, helpless, powerless and in need of rescue, I could never see myself as powerful before," Kit explained with relief. "But this game is teaching me, I think it's been trying to teach me this ever since I started. Boundaries are powerful, and I can control them. When I need something that's beyond my reach, there are people who will help me. And I am powerful enough to help others now too."

Danika glanced between Kit and the basket in confusion. She didn't think that anything Kit had said was wrong, but she didn't understand why it was making her cry.

Kit grinned at her and said, "Your expression. Zip, I'm okay, I just realized that I'm finally okay. I'm better than okay, I'm great!"

A man dressed in hunting leathers pushed through the underbrush on the far bank, and stared at the basket in surprise. He looked around warily, and called out, "Hello? Do you need help?"

Kit froze and bent lower, with both hands pressed against her mouth. Danika hovered worriedly, but after a moment she realized that Kit was trying to muffle her giggle.

The NPC looked at the basket again and said sharply, "Well, let's get you out of the river little one, and hope that your mama has safely washed ashore downstream." His grim expression said that he doubted that happy outcome.

He walked out along the fallen tree, with the grace of an elven ranger, and fished the basket up. When he arrived on the shore, he deftly removed the handle, threaded straps through the holes, and turned the basket into an impromptu baby carrier with the ease of someone who had practice with such things.

The baby giggled happily and chewed on the tail end of one of the ties, as though it was already in familiar hands.

"My quest is completed successfully," Kit announced after they were gone. "Thanks Zip."

"I didn't do anything!" Danika protested helplessly.

Kit laughed and asked, "Didn't you take one look at the situation, and explain my place in the story?"