Jade did not question Kit's evasion, but Danika noticed that she did not immediately choose to define their relationship.

Kit looked at ZipZing and said, "You don't have to stay in here. I understand the problem now, and why Silvam hovered around Jade all evening yesterday. It's okay, we'll help you cover for him if you want to keep him secret."

"Yeah, we can take care of Jade," Shrubbery agreed so cheerfully that if she'd been MatchlessMinion, Danika would have suspected the words contained a double meaning.

MatchlessMinion himself said thoughtfully, "I don't think the copy of an AI can be considered a child of it, unless it's like… a blank one? Otherwise it would be a clone, I think you're a clone Jade."

Danika privately thought that there were now more immediate concerns with the King of Cats, but she didn't want to give the cat any extra ideas, and he could obviously hear her anywhere within the game if he wanted to. She decided that she would message Lin Hao through her assistant on the new server after the concert.

She nodded and told Kit, "Alright. It's not that he's a secret exactly." After all, Lin Hao had apparently only wanted to keep Jade from distressing Kit. "I'll return to Shinichi for now, thanks."

She stuck her little clawed hand into the image of Underneath dancing, and chuckled. If the audience could have seen her claws swiping through the stage, there would have been screams.

Kit asked Jade, "Would you like me to describe what they are doing while they sing?"

When Danika reappeared beside Shinichi's hand, she was startled when he snatched the stone away from her. After a moment she realized that he had just been moving to the beat, and he stepped forward again and arched an eyebrow at her. She zipped up to his shoulder and whispered, "Current catastrophe averted, next one set into motion."

It was amazing how much the twitch of a jaw muscle could convey.

--

Lin Hao called Danika back after she sent her message through the new server, looking as though he'd just woken up. His hair was an impressively messy tangle, and Danika thought a little critically that maybe he ought to get it cut.

"I don't think the King of Cats can do that, but I'll pull up the logs of what Jade told him," Lin Hao said.

"Take possession of the messenger cat avatars or take over the Emperor?" Danika asked.

"Well, either actually. I've looked through the logs of how the merchant took the identity of the Jade Emperor, and I don't think the cat has any linked functions like that," he replied.

"But Jade said he took over the cat, to get access to systems he needed to be able to contact us for help, right? So maybe the King of Cats already has access to that section of the game?" Danika fretted.

Lin Hao admitted honestly, "I don't know for certain, since I don't have complete logs for every change Jade made while compressing the empire, but I'll look into those corners."

"Should we warn Josh?" Danika asked nervously.

Lin Hao shook his head, but then he eyed her thoughtfully for a long moment.

"What?" she asked nervously.

He glanced at something offscreen, and then back, before asking, "Can you tell me why you think the cat could take over the world?"

"Well, I mean, doesn't that seem like the whole point of the Way of the Cat quest dominance games? Every cat thinks it ought to be the King, so wouldn't the King think he ought to be the Emperor? I mean, that doesn't mean that he could… but Jade thinks it might be possible, and Jade used to be the King of Cats too?" she replied seriously.

"Good point, I'll warn Josh," Lin Hao replied just before the screen went blank.

"Jade couldn't cut him off right?" Danika asked her notification screen.

Her new assistant answered helpfully, since she hadn't shut it down again after messaging Lin Hao, "The Corcillum can access his phone through the NLJECD application, but can't end a phone call without permission."

Hearing the abbreviation for the New Living Jade Empire Celestial Dragon app made Danika wrinkle her nose. The first demo didn't have a name other than 'first demo' yet, but if they went on like that, wouldn't the next demo's assistant app be the New New application?

Lin Hao also seemed like the kind of person who might tell his assistant, "Stop asking me and just do it." She couldn't even swear that she hadn't said that kind of thing to one of her assistants.

Her slightly paranoid train of thought was interrupted by the assistant speaking up again to say, "The Corcillum says he did not cut off communication between you two, and that he only has access to his own phone, because Lin Hao has not installed an application for him."

"Thank you," Danika replied politely before carefully shutting down the application.

--

The second week after Underneath began filming, Danika went back to sleeping in the VR-medi pod. She wasn't sick or anything, she was just feeling lazy, and without Shinichi there didn't seem to be any reason to bother using the bed.

The King of Cats had made himself very scarce lately. Neither Lin Hao nor Josh Beagle seemed to be concerned though, so Danika had mostly stopped worrying about what would happen to the Emperor if the cat absorbed him instead.

Lin Hao did tell her, while in Jade's server, "I have figured out how the cat actually might be able to access the messenger avatars, I think, but he doesn't seem to have any idea what Jade was trying to tell him."

He obviously had no intention of interfering and gifting the King of Cats access to the avatars.

Jade's demo was ready to be abandoned on schedule, and the next copy loaded. Jade's demo wasn't finished, but it was mostly functional, and they had a very limited amount of time to spend on each game design. Jade wasn't shut down, as Danika had feared, instead he was turned over to the beta testing division that Devon Yu and Lin Hao had pushed for after the change in quest development in 'Living Jade Empire'.

Jade's character had failed to climb the Jade Path a dozen times now. Each time he tried, the party was plagued with such bad luck that Danika suspected his character had been cursed by either the Emperor or the King of Cats.

Kit promised that the Emperor wasn't trying to prevent Jade from reaching him, but she added a little grumpily, "He says he won't help though, because if Jade is who he claims to be, he will know how to find his own way."

"I know where I would put the way," Jade complained, "but I am not the same person as the Emperor anymore, and it is not there. I checked."