Danika managed to wake up on time, but she underestimated how long it would take her to get ready. Just getting dressed took longer when she had to struggle with her chair and luggage. She wasn't late, and she managed to grab a muffin from the lobby and eat it on her way, but she didn't have time to check her messages apart from Aishin's usual morning text.

Even that much made her smile though, because he'd added: "You can do this!"

The first session in the morning was basically a lecture on the rights and responsibilities of a Starcraft Technologies employee, and required little to no feedback from the trainees. Which was fortunate, because Danika didn't think that she was the only one who wasn't a morning person. There were also more people than there had been the night before.

Danika flinched when another familiar face appeared when it was time to move to the VR interfaces. Chen Zing cut her off at the door as she followed the other trainees out. A faintly amused expression crossed his face, and Danika regarded him warily. Unlike Lin Hao, he looked almost exactly the same in person as he'd appeared in her interview.

"Danika Belova, your VR-medi pod is not located in the training room. Follow me," he instructed.

He didn't make any other comments as he led her to the elevators and took her up several floors to a small room with half a dozen VR-medi pods crammed into it. After a moment Danika realized that the room wasn't any smaller than the room the lecture had been held in, it was just that the pods took up so much space that it felt small.

Chen Zing pointed to the second pod nearest the door and said, "That is the device assigned to you for the duration of your visit. Someone else uses it during the night shift, so make sure to exit promptly after your last session each night. Do you understand?"

Danika nodded, but he seemed to be waiting for more so she said, "I understand, and this is room 47 on the fifth floor."

Chen Zing looked faintly surprised, but replied simply, "Good." He turned and walked away.

After the door closed behind him, Danika told the VR-medi pod to open, and locked her chair beside it. She heaved herself over the side a moment later, and then initiated the profile setup, which walked her through the familiar hookups as each one completed its short cleaning cycle.

She was a little worried that she'd be late to the next virtual class, but instead discovered that there was only one person waiting in the empty room. It was the woman who'd stopped to ask if she wanted to go drinking with the other trainees the night before.

Sara Thomas looked her over and said sourly, "You would go for the celestial avatar I suppose."

Danika blinked at her and then looked down at herself. She was in her own human form, except that she appeared to be wearing a much simpler variant of the outfit Lin Hao's avatar had worn, with the addition of a long scarf-like decoration that swirled around her, and her bare toes didn't quite touch the floor. She hadn't really noticed, because the movement controls were the same as ZipZing's wings.

Sara was wearing the same outfit minus the floating and the scarf, and Danika asked, "It gave you a choice?"

A man appeared in the room between them a moment later. Instead of robes he wore a short tunic that wrapped in the same fashion as the robes and puffy pants that were wrapped at the bottom by the ribbon laces of his shoes. "Why is there only one option that isn't a dress?" he complained.

"I missed the selection option," Danika admitted, "so I must be wearing the default."

The man turned and looked at her. "That was the second option on mine, but it might be randomized if you don't pick anything. It looks fine on you since you're a girl though." He gave her a thumbs up gesture.

He turned and asked Sara, "How did you finish the setup so fast? I thought I was pretty fast."

Sara sniffed and replied, "It was completely standard apart from the outfits. It's more strange that it's taking everyone else so long."

As soon as she'd finished saying that, more people began appearing in the room. When all the trainees had finally appeared a woman in much more elaborate robes appeared. Over her head floated the label: "Celestial Servant Miyazaki Yukari"

Miyazaki said, "Welcome to the start of your training as celestial servants serving the Jade Emperor. And yes, celestial servant will be your actual job title. Most of you will be third class, in other words, members of the third department of our division of Starcraft Technologies, providing customer service and technical support.

She turned and used a spell to fling back the big double doors that made up one wall of the room. Most of the trainees gasped. The room was on a floating island, amid a cluster of picturesque floating islands. Each of the islands carried what appeared to be oriental temples, pavilions, and gardens of various sorts.

Danika surreptitiously pulled up her menu screens. There were new things among them, but the familiar menu lens was available. Through the lens the islands each had labels with department numbers and other identifiers. The woman who was teaching them had more details available when Danika tapped on her label, she was an honorable celestial servant of the first class, seventh among her rank.

One of the other trainees raised her hand like a school child and waited until Miyazaki asked, "Anne Fields, you have a question?"

"Is there actually someone with the title Jade Emperor? I thought that was just the name of the character creation NPC?" Fields questioned.

A lot of the other trainees immediately nodded, but Danika suspected that the answer was more complicated than that, given the Black Turtle's description of the Jade Emperor.

"There is not a human person with that title," agreed Miyazaki. "It is indeed the identity of the first NPC you meet upon entering the game, however it is also the identity which all official events and game rules are distributed under. You can think of it as the company's identity."

Miyazaki began the training by introducing them to their new tools. Danika wasn't certain, but she didn't think that all of the options and layers had been available in her interview session.

Sara Thomas complained after the first hour, "Do I really need to waste time on all of these? Why do I need to learn to navigate the technical support menus when I'll be working in accounting?"

Miyazaki calmly looked her in the eye and asked, "Can you tell me how many appearance mods I've paid for? And how much the total I've spent is?"

Danika had already completed the current exercise, so out of curiosity she checked to see if she had access to the information. Their teacher had only modified her hair and her eyes, but the total cost given seemed like it must have been a bug. Even at full price Danika was fairly certain that they should have been in the tens not the thousands.