Chapter 399: 42: Sweet Music

The Sugar Wings all watched with interest as Danika removed the outfits from her tail ring. They all looked the same to her, but Quicksilver distributed one to each girl as though they were very specific.

'Living Jade Empire' had a clothing system very like an older RPG, in that most things were racially sized, so the only differences should be in the design. When Aishin had given ZipZing his boots, they had fit her well as a human, despite the difference in size and shape between their characters.

"Woah, these are so comfortable. I wish we could export these to real life!" one of the girls exclaimed.

"The makeup too," another added. I can't even feel it.

"I told you, it's not makeup," Penname replied with a hint of exasperation that made her mother give her a sharp look. "It's a design modification to your character."

Since Danika had also been thinking of it as makeup, she was glad that she hadn't spoken up to agree.

Quicksilver asked brightly, "Everyone comfortable? Ready to perform?"

"Yes," and "Yeah," and "I think I'm good," overlapped as they replied.

"Maple?" Quicksilver prompted.

"I'm ready," the last girl agreed.

"Alright, let's do the warm up then!" Quicksilver announced with a clap of her little hands.

"Can I watch?" Danika asked curiously.

"Whatever," one of the girls replied when Quicksilver hesitated.

"Let's just watch the actual show Captain," Penname instructed. "Warm ups are boring, they almost never play a whole song."

"She's right," Quicksilver agreed promptly.

Danika didn't protest.

--

Penname asked ZipZing to visit the shops in the outer ring while they waited.

Danika suspected that she was being used as an evasion of some rule that Quicksilver had given her daughter, but she didn't really mind. She was almost as interested as Penname seemed to be. There were at least three times as many merchants as there had been when she'd come before.

When they entered the audience area, Penname complained, "You're lucky you have wings, you'll never get a bad spot."

Danika looked around and suggested, "We could move to the edge and go up?"

The original sandy flat space at the bottom of the shallow dish in the desert had been modified into a fairly traditional enclosed ⅔ circle amphitheatre. There was what Danika would have called a dance floor, a flat space in front of the stage. The private viewing spaces were stacked vertically on either side of the third of the circle behind the stage, with a third stack dividing the raised seating into two sections. The main entrance was behind the center column of viewing rooms, but there was an exit to the outer ring behind each of the others.

There was a pretty good crowd, several hundred characters, but there were plenty of places left to move to and get a better view.

Penname seemed to choose a tier at random. She plopped down on the stone, and announced, "This is good!"

Danika zipped upward, and then turned to check that she wasn't hovering in someone else's way. When Ryullusion walked out onto the stage and the lights came up, she gulped.

The beautiful elven bard was always stunning, but his casual confident stride onto the stage into the light was attention grabbing all by itself. Danika tried a cantrip just to make sure his bardic skills weren't reaching the audience when he began to play.

It wasn't just her, the entire audience settled into silence within a few minutes. After a bit she realized that it was partly because the game characters mostly weren't subject to the small bodily impulses that made people cough and move around.

Ryullusion played something light and modern on his formerly haunted harp. Danika was used to the contrast, but she wondered how it seemed to other people, and looked around with interest. A surprising number of people were busy holding up their hands in the screenshot capture pose.

He played three songs, the first bounced for attention, the second whispered, and the third lifted into a crescendo that shouted, "Next!"

People cheered when the Sugar Wings flew out and circled the dark haired elf as though they were dancing around a fairy ring. A shower of sparks flew up like a curtain, and when it fell Ryullusion was gone and the girls stood at the front of the stage with their arms raised. A second later, they burst into song.

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Danika was impressed by their energy. She thought that it was better than the few concerts she'd attended in person, and amazed by how well MatchlessMinion and Quicksilver had replicated such a realistic concert going experience. She was bewildered by the depressed face Quicksilver showed after it was all over and the SugarWings had logged off.

She looked at MatchlessMinion for help, but he was frowning at his own menu screens. "What's wrong?" she asked.

Penname shrugged, but she didn't seem worried.

Quicksilver flashed a smile and said, "Maybe we should have waited until after Underneath's concert next weekend."

MatchlessMinion replied quickly, "This was totally worth it. We have discovered problems with practically everything!"

"That… sounds ominous?" Danika commented.

Quicksilver laughed, and said cheerfully, "I was totally expecting that! He's right, we discovered a lot of places that we can improve the venue." She glanced at her own screen and her smile faded as she added, "But with reactions like this, I don't know if it's going to be worth it."

"Reactions like what?" Danika asked with confusion.

Quicksilver tapped several things and then gestured at the channel of water bordering the corridor. A small wall of water rose up and splashed against the wall, leaving words behind. After a moment Danika realized that they were a selection of comments about the Sugar Wings VR concert.

"It was ordinary."

"They are just working a deal with the game. Their tickets cost half of the smallest package of game coin that you can buy, forcing you to spend time playing if you want to use the rest."

"It was as good as the live I saw in X city, but not better. VR has so many possibilities that they wasted!"

"I was really disappointed by the small array of ordinary stage effects. Our wizard can make illusions that would have been 300% more stunning!"

"They are bigger in real life, but I guess they are pretty cute as fairies."

"That one says it was good," Danika pointed out hopefully.

Quicksilver waved a hand dismissively, "There are lots of good comments, but there are too many of these. We didn't have a very large audience, and almost 20 percent of the commenters so far were disappointed. I think we did too well at making everything similar to a real concert venue, when maybe the audience was hoping for something like a grassy field under a sky full of rainbows."

"It would be almost impossible to have a ticketed audience," MatchlessMinion objected. "I mean, I guess you could have a fortified city wall and defenses around it, but there's no way we could afford that!"

Quicksilver laughed and agreed, "True, but this," she waved at the damp comments on the wall and the water ran down the wall and back into the channel, "is not promising. The VR feelies were popular for awhile, but people complained that the scripted feeling made it seem like a cardboard cutout, and no different from meeting talking dolls. I was hoping that having the girls performing live, even if it was through VR, would give people more of a connected feeling."

"Feelies?" Danika asked.

"Creepy meet-your-idol-and-touch-them VR app," Penname volunteered.

"Nobody said the concert was creepy in any of those comments," Danika pointed out hopefully.

Quicksilver grinned at her, and then gasped as she suddenly twirled gracefully in time to the music that swept through the corridor like a breeze that could only lift people.

Danika couldn't help laughing as ZipZing danced in the air without her input and Rullusion followed his song into view. "You learned that harp's curse!" she accused.

He let the song fade away and grinned at her. "Not exactly, but I am improving my game skills, and now I have a skill with similar effects. I can't make you dance until you die yet," he explained with a wink.

"They wanted this kind of magic," Quicksilver said with a sigh. "I chose the wrong approach."

He put away his instrument and then told Quicksilver, "Don't be so quick to doubt yourself. I think it won't take people too long to realize the value of the unaugmented experience that you've built. You just need to wait until a few competitors try to do everything that you avoided doing. But if you'll take advice from an old man, I think you should just wait. Don't change things here too much yet."

"Says the master bard?" Danika asked teasingly.

"Yeah," he agreed laughingly.

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