A silver cat spoke up from where he'd silently entered the room, "King of Cats is not."
The Jade Emperor hesitated, like the traveling merchant when he was trying to answer something complex, and Danika gazed at them both with an expression of utter astonishment.
The King of Cats looked smug.
--
"Wait, what?" Devon Yu asked.
"Why are you surprised? You're the story specialist," Lin Hao pointed out. "Cats are exempt from most rules, especially ones involving royalty, since everyone knows 'a cat may look at a King'."
"But you just said that the entire game is now under the merchant AI's control," Devon Yu pointed out dryly. "If he can create a new path to the celestial palace, change questlines, and monitor everything in the game, how are cats exempt?"
"Actually, as Danika discovered, he could monitor pretty much everything in the game even before he took over the emperor's role. But not all cats are, it's just that the snow leopard tribe was still using older libraries that hadn't been cleared." Lin Hao explained. "I think the King discovered that they were different, especially the guardian, and so he found a way to give himself access to those. When he rebuilt himself he imported the King's routines into the leopard's framework, instead of the other way around, so he's technically correct, he's quite literally somewhat independent of the core."
"No wonder you're obsessed with cats lately," Devon Yu said laughingly. "You're not fixing the leopards either, are you?"
Lin Hao rolled his eyes. "Not in a million years. The King's AI is our lucky one in a zillion chance. All of the cats are usually curious and active. But the King has been learning about things and changing itself, he's as close to alive as any AI ever written."
"People would think the Emperor is alive if they understood what he just did," Devon Yu pointed out.
"He's only reacting to player suggestions that align with the quest generation routines," Lin Hao said dismissively. "You can track his logic all the way from ZipZing asking if he were certain that he wasn't the Emperor, to Kit confirming that people can have different identities and still be the same person."
--
"To a certain extent that is true," the Jade Emperor agreed at last. "The King of Cats is not entirely under my rule."
The King of Cats narrowed his eyes, but he didn't argue, he casually walked over to where ZipZing hovered and looked up at Kit Tay.
"Um…" Kit said nervously.
"Hey, just because she married the Emperor, doesn't mean you can bully her for things," Danika said sharply.
The silver cat looked away, with an air that said, 'Of course not, I just happened to sit here for a moment.'
Danika zipped down to his level and asked, "What else do you want anyway? The messengers will have more choice," she added honestly, "if they can convince their player to pay for it."
He ignored her at first, but when she zipped upward to Kit's eye level he said, "Give messenger cats."
"What?" Danika asked blankly. "There are lots of messenger cats."
"You can't have mine," MatchlessMinion announced. "It really bugs my sister that a mouse type is using a cat as a messenger."
The King of cats narrowed his eyes at the chinchillamin. "Annoying," he stated calmly.
"Salty thinks so," Shrubbery agreed hesitantly.
Danika thought that the cat looked amused, and her own eyes narrowed. "What do you mean give messenger cats? Give them what? What could Kit give them?"
"Give messenger cats to me," the King of cats explained. He yawned and stretched, and turned to look at the Jade Emperor before admitting, "All other cats are mine."
"Kit can't give you the player messengers," Danika insisted, although she glanced at Logical Heart who nodded in agreement.
The Jade Emperor narrowed his eyes at the King of Cats. "ZipZing is correct, Kit can't give you those forms, even I can't touch them."
"Can if she requests," the cat argued. "Can take forms, like took Emperor for her."
Logical Heart looked very thoughtful as Danika asked, "Forms? Wait, you want to take over the messenger cat instances?"
The King of Cats ignored her, but the Jade Emperor agreed, "He does, but my ability to take the Emperor's identity is not created by Kit's request, and I have no control over that market, nor connection with its currency. I cannot even purchase anything that originated there."
Danika could see why ordinary people would assume that the traveling merchant had taken over the empire at Kit's request, if they ever found out. People might also think that she could suddenly do anything she wanted, since she'd become the Empress of the whole game. But she wasn't sure why the King of Cats would make such an assumption.
Kit spoke up suddenly, "I thought all of the messengers had a real counterpart? Isn't that what you guys said about the mouse messenger, and how the snow leopard cub was? And as soon as the snow leopard turned into the King of Cats, the messenger disappeared, right?"
"Messenger cats different!" the cat declared, and then added, "Not disappeared. Available when feel like it, am King." He glared up at ZipZing. "Slow dragon."
Danika laughed. "Sorry," she apologized with tears of laughter in her eyes as everyone except the Emperor turned and gazed at her questioningly. "He asked me to make it so that messengers could choose whether or not to deliver messages, and it'll be part of the next update, but it's still not in the game yet," she explained.
"Game developers are like that," MatchlessMinion told the King of Cats sympathetically. "They always leave the most obvious fixes until after the game has already been running for a year at least. Sometimes they never get to them."
"Emperor's court opens now," the cat stated with a huff. "Fix faster."
The Jade Emperor nodded. "Yes," he agreed. "Requests can be placed once a week when my court is open, and celestial servants will be assigned the tasks that meet with my approval."
Danika opened her mouth to object, and then stopped. She had no idea how her own task list was generated, apart from having seen evidence that Lin Hao could modify it. "Will Kit have a celestial dragon assistant?" she asked suddenly instead.
"Once she unlocks the skill to command them, of course she will," the Jade Emperor replied calmly.
That reminded Danika of how worried Kit had been about the dangers of the Gods now being subordinate to her. "Does she have to learn a skill to control the Gods?" she asked.
"Fat elementals owe favors," the King of Cats sneered.
"The Gods cannot be controlled, they have their own tasks," the Jade Emperor agreed. "However, the balance of favors does indeed require a skill to invoke." He gave ZipZing a sharp look and added, "Only the Empress and my children may learn it. It cannot be learned through Assimilation, nor gifted through Impartation."
Danika almost stuck her tongue out at the Emperor.