The rest of the week passed quietly, but busily. Danika was immersed in the design details of the new game, and Shinichi and the other members of Underneath were kept busy with the orientation phase of their movie production. Even though they had been given an outline of the story, no one had been given access to the scripts until they were onsite.
Jade's character advanced steadily, but the Jade Path reset, to his utter surprise. To Danika it was a reminder that while Jade had started out as a copy, he was constantly diverging from the original. He almost didn't seem to believe her explanation at first, when she told him, "The Emperor started resetting the position of the steps at dawn on the day after the court closes."
"Why? Are you sure that the Emperor decided that?" Jade asked petulantly.
"Yes. At first people were building islands off of the steps to make it easier to climb, but then they started trying to control who could climb, so the Emperor moved the steps," she explained. "When the piece of jade is removed, most of the islands crumble, because that was all that was holding them up."
He complained to Lin Hao, "I would not change the path to destroy what people had built, I would just lower the luck of those who tried to place restrictions on who could climb."
Lin Hao was busy and replied simply, "You are not the Emperor."
But Danika noticed that later he had Jade answer a series of questions similar to the ones he'd had her ask the cats in Living Jade Empire. It made her wonder what those questions were testing and what the Emperor or the King of Cats would answer instead.
The Saturday concert within 'Living Jade Empire' in Tianxia had a much smaller audience than either the Sugar Wings or the bards of Endless Song. Fortunately Icieth, Tundo, Melodious, and Tacet weren't as disappointed by that as Danika had feared.
The string quartet had obtained instruments that were as similar in feel to their real ones as possible. It hadn't been easy, especially for Icieth who was playing as an ottermin. They had also chosen not to use any of the game's skills in their performance from the start. This meant that they all needed access to full VR, both during the performance and for several practice sessions. The expense wasn't inconsequential for them, but they had managed it.
The small audience seemed more appreciative of the simple presentation than the previous concert goers. The people who had joined the game to see the Sugar Wings and Kobayashi Ryuske live, had been focused on who was performing. This audience seemed to be focused on the music. From the whispered comments that Danika overheard between songs, most of them had expected it to sound like a recording, and the ones who were playing on VR systems seemed to be amazed by the quality of the sound.
Jade watched, or rather listened with inhuman silence, and Danika couldn't guess what he thought of the music. She found it pleasant, but music without words felt like background music to her, and a lot of her attention was focused on the reactions of others. Logical Heart and MatchlessMinion both gloated over the reactions of the human players after the session ended.
The little gnome exchanged a high five with the chinchillamin, and then explained for Danika, "Sound waves are calculated fairly realistically here, so the design of the interior of the theatre actually does matter. This kind of crowd pays attention to that kind of thing, so it's good to see that our efforts were successful!"
Icieth protested, "They liked our playing. If we'd played badly the building's shape wouldn't matter!"
"Are you insulted by having Logical Heart assume that you played perfectly?" Danika questioned laughingly.
The ottermin's round eyed gaze seemed to be filled with amazement, when her head turned back and forth between ZipZing and Logical Heart. "No?" she replied a little uncertainly.
"Ah, yes, I do think you played very well," the little gnome added quickly.
"Yeah! You were a lot better than I expected!" MatchlessMinion agreed cheerfully.
His well-meant comment set Icieth off. The ottermin professed to be highly insulted and the two small furry characters bounced around the room alternately shouting insults and laughing.
"Nao1 didn't make it," Tundo complained with a sigh.
Danika looked around and then checked her menus. "She was here earlier," she insisted. Shinichi had warned her that he wouldn't have time to play again until the half day scheduled in the middle of the week, but Naoki and Saaki had both logged in at the beginning of the quartet's performance.
Tundo shook his head and said, "Not really. She, he… whatever, said that she'd log in on her phone so that her character can ask the Sandman to replay it later, but wouldn't have time to watch."
"Oh," Danika replied. She wasn't sure what else to say.
Logical Heart pointed out, "Since this place belongs to the guild, you can perform here again pretty much whenever you want to."
"Once a month," Melodious announced.
"Yeah," Tundo agreed. "We already worked out a schedule. It's too bad we can't get real money out of it, like Underneath will."
"That's because they are famous enough to make a deal directly with Starcraft Technologies," Icieth chirped as she came to a halt beside Melodious.
"Are they going to make real money from it?" Tundo asked doubtfully. "Aren't the concert tickets being handled by us?"
"Nope," MatchlessMinion replied.
"Kind of," Logical Heart corrected.
"A limited shop item was created just for their concert. Song and our other NPCs can sell them within the game too, but Underneath's concert tickets are different than the ones the rest of the performances use. I'm not sure if they only get a percentage from the ones directly purchased from the shop for real money, or not," Danika explained.
"I guess that would make sense. Nao1 told me that they won't have to use their own characters when performing during the concert either, they get to use their commercial avatars," Tundo said with another sigh.
"A character's appearance doesn't change their ability to sing," Jade questioned suddenly, "so why would that matter?"
Danika waved her little clawed hands, but couldn't come up with a quick explanation. MatchlessMinion rescued her by saying authoritatively, "Packaging counts, and species and gender do alter your sound a little. Plus, I'm positive that the translation function changes the tones of words in different languages, and that Nao1 bought voice modulation for her character."
"I think my hearing may actually be similar to my vision," Jade speculated. "I can understand many words, and ways of speaking, but many popular songs do not seem to make sense, and I cannot understand many of the comments players made about the performance."
Tundo grumbled, "Most pop songs contain very little sense, but music should convey feeling without needing to rely on words. And don't worry about understanding the comments Jade, some of the people who were making them don't understand what they were saying either, they just wanted to sound cool."
"What did you think of the music tonight," Danika asked Jade curiously.
"The songs that I could identify were played very accurately, but there were many that I could not identify," Jade replied promptly. "They did contain some recognizable patterns.
"… You might be right about your hearing being like your vision," Danika agreed. "We um, enjoy these patterns, I guess?"
Logical Heart looked at her, and Danika would swear that the little gnome snickered.
