As trees started to thin out and reveal the lights of Taft in the distance, Camilla and I began to relax, the silence that had held while we passed through an area where it was possible mobs had respawned lifting and returning our conversation to the unexpected conflict with the three inept bandits.

"Why did you tell them we usually played ten floors above this one? Our usual stomping grounds are 16 and 17."

Camilla gave me that look that usually meant I'd asked a fairly dense question. "What's scarier to you: facing down a player who's usually ten floors above you, or one who's usually only five or six floors above?"

"Oh." It had been a dumb question. In truth, we probably could've been grinding on the 21st floor at our level, if we'd been in a strong party—but as a duo we typically stuck with the relatively easy quests and field mobs on lower floors. We didn't dare come anywhere near the front lines except to visit the towns when the warp gates first opened.

What she had been completely truthful about was our purpose for being here on the 11th floor: upgrade materials. While we walked I checked our shared inventory; as a married couple in-game we didn't have separate item storage. "Almost a full stack of Foothills Badger Teeth. You sure you don't want to stay out just a little longer?"

Camilla nodded. "Home, please. And food. If I have to look at one more Foothills Badger today, I'm going to…" She trailed off as if she'd been trying to come up with some witty way to end that sentence but just couldn't muster even that much enthusiasm. It was hard to blame her; we'd been doing nothing but pulling badgers and waiting for repops since sun-up. Getting mugged had almost been a welcome distraction.

"So what you are saying," I ventured carefully in English after a moment to think over the wording, "is that you do not need no more stinking—"

"Don't make me hurt you." It would've been a more credible threat if she hadn't been trying to stop herself from laughing while she bumped me with her hip. Yielding to her desire to call it a day, we walked the rest of the way home arm in arm.

Home, in this case, was currently one of the inns in Taft, a smallish city on the 11th floor that was more like a large town. Despite its size, it had a warp gate and at least one of every type of NPC vendor; it was a popular place for lower-level players to settle. Having no permanent home, we tended to rent rooms wherever we happened to be hunting, although we'd been scouring the 16th floor for so long that we actually kept a rented room on the second floor above a bakery there, even after we leveled up enough to start venturing into 17.

We got a few curious stares as we entered the small pub next to the inn where we were renting an upstairs room. After four days in Taft, we were used to getting looks from the players who made this their primary home, although it still made me a little uncomfortable.

"You really should unequip your shield and pauldrons once we hit town," I remarked quietly to her as we found a seat. "It's really obvious that they're rare drops from a higher floor, and they draw attention."

"So?" asked Camilla, raising a hand to signal for the waitress—an actual player waitress who must've either invested money or done some kind of crafting quest to get the job. It still never ceased to amaze me when I met a player with a non-combat profession, even though Camilla and I had once spent almost a week playing at being "civilians" ourselves.

"I'm okay with being marked as someone from a higher floor," my wife went on. "Especially if it makes people take us more seriously. If those bandits from earlier had had more than two brain cells to share between the three of them, we might not have had to fight them off."

"Welcome back," said the waitress as she approached our table with a customer service smile that might have even been genuine. She opened a note-taking window in the air in front of her and pushed a few locks of light purple hair out of her face. "What can I get you two tonight?"

It was nice being remembered—NPCs had no memory unless they were part of a quest you were on, and would utter the same set of rote phrases every time you did business with them. Camilla spoke first. "You still got coffee here?"

"Darn right we do," said the girl with a wink, scratching a note in her window. "Only coffee for two floors in either direction; my friend Parida has high-level Cooking and makes it herself."

"Outstanding," my wife said, stretching both arms out high above her head in a very catlike way. It was delightful to watch. "I can see why people like to live here. Cup of that, plus whatever soup you've got today."

"You got it hon," the waitress replied. "What about you, sir?"

"That green tea you had last night—still available?"

The waitress bowed in apology. "I'm sorry sir; that batch took the last of the ingredients and we don't have any more."

"Now I know why it was so expensive," I remarked in good humor. "Water's fine for me then, plus I guess I'll take the soup too."

"Coming right up!" the girl said once we paid for our order, sweeping her notes window closed and twirling her frilly green skirt as she turned to go. "Parida!" she called out as she opened the door to the kitchen. "Coffee and two soups!"

I chuckled, prodding Camilla in the shin under the table with the toe of my boot. "You and your coffee."

"I keep telling you, Kadyn," she said, chin resting in the palm of one hand with her elbow propped up on the table. She fluttered her eyelashes theatrically, fooling no one. "I would love you forever if you took Cooking and leveled it up."

"You love me forever anyway."

"Yes, but I'd love you more."

"Not if I figured out a way to make nattou."

Camilla's eyelash fluttering ceased abruptly; she looked daggers at me across the table. "You wouldn't."

"I so would."

"I'm armed," she warned.

"So am I."

"Mine's bigger."

Having no way to respond to that, I pulled down my eyelid and stuck out my tongue just as the waitress came back—which caused her to embark on a valiant struggle not to laugh while carrying our food. Feeling ravenous, we both declared a truce on the subject of nattou and dug in. We knew, intellectually, that the hunger and thirst we felt had nothing to do with what our real bodies felt in the real world. But what we felt was quite real to us, and although we wouldn't die of thirst or hunger in this world, it got extremely uncomfortable after a while.

Besides, food was one of life's great pleasures, and most of the food in Aincrad that wasn't horrible was either very expensive, player-made, or both. Early on we'd gotten by with the godawful basic rations you could get for a few Col and occasionally splurged on really nice food at inns, but after a few months we'd started earning enough money to justify food as a luxury item rather than as basic sustenance.

"I should cut my hair," Camilla said suddenly after we finished our soups.

I blinked in surprise at the complete non sequitur, patting my mouth with a napkin. "What brought that on? It's not like it grows in here."

"No, but sometimes it really gets in the way during battle, even if I tie it. Once I even got a few strands caught in the joints of my armor, and that was… attention-getting."

"It's not like that could've hurt," I pointed out.

"No, but like I said: attention-getting." She drained the last of her coffee and gave me an expectant look.

"I like your long hair," I said after a moment. "I always have."

"I know. But things are different now. It's impractical. Besides, if I change my mind it's not like I have to spend a year growing it out again—I'll just go to an NPC stylist and reset my hairstyle to my avatar's default."

That wasn't a cheap option, especially if you wanted something fancy—but I had to admit, she was right about not having to grow it back out. "Up to you, Cami," I said finally.

"Yes, yes it is… but I wanted to talk to you about it first anyway." For all that we bantered sometimes about the little things, when it came right down to it we were a team—and we consulted each other, even on things like this. I appreciated it, and I smiled across the table to let her know that I did.

"Just please, no shorter than chin length?"

"Deal," she said, smiling as well.

"You guys all done here?" asked the waitress as she returned, gathering up our dishes when we nodded. Then as she was about to leave, she hesitated, a pensive look coming across her features. "Um, I apologize for eavesdropping, but I heard what you said earlier about fighting bandits. Is that true?"

It was a completely unexpected question. Camilla paused with her mouth half-open, taken aback. "It's true," I said. "Why wouldn't it be?"

The waitress set the dishes back down and folded her arms across her chest, looking more troubled. "Well it's just… the orange players around here are kind of strong. It's gotten to be a real problem."

Now Camilla and I exchanged a look of surprise. The bandits we'd driven off earlier had been remarkably weak—I would've been very surprised if they were much more than level 12 or so on average.

I suddenly made a connection and started laughing, half-expecting a glowing question mark to appear over the player's head. "Are you… are you offering us a quest?"

Both Camilla and the waitress laughed too, although the latter's laughter was a little forced. "Not really," she said, nervously tugging at a lock of her hair. "At least, nothing that'll show up in your quest log. But… I mentioned my friend Parida, right? She has to go gather the ingredients we need here, and although she's high enough to do that safely on this floor, she's been robbed by orange players twice now—the second time, they actually attacked her, and she's not the only one that's happened to."

We could understand the tone of horrified disbelief with which she disclosed that last fact. Despite our experience with those murderers in the first floor dungeon, actual player-killing was extremely rare, almost unheard of—or if it wasn't, it was at least being done discreetly enough that everyone assumed that the missing players died in PvM combat. Most orange players we'd come across were more or less like the ones we'd met earlier: thieves who didn't really have the stomach for murder, who relied on numbers and the threat of violence being enough to get what they wanted.

"What are you asking us to do?" I inquired.

"Well, you two are probably kinda high-level for this floor, right?" When we both nodded cautiously, not revealing our actual levels, the waitress sighed happily and gave us a deep bow. "If you would be willing, I ask you to accompany Parida while she goes out and gathers ingredients. We can pay you, I promise."

I turned to look at my wife. She groaned and palmed her face. "Kadyn, you know how much I hate escort quests."

"Yeah, but it's not like we're talking about an NPC with crappy AI or pathing that's going to draw aggro or fail the mission. It's a player who I'd hope has something resembling a sense of self-preservation. It'd be more like a pickup group."

"And you know how much I hate pickup groups."

She had me there—we both did. Partying with random players we didn't know had typically not ended well for us in SAO.

"I'm sorry to bother you," said the waitress, still bowed and sounding chastened. She straightened and started to gather the dishes. "Please forgive me for intruding on your meal."

"Wait," I said quickly, holding up a hand. "We'd have to meet your friend before we agreed to do anything."

"Really?" said the purple-haired girl, her demeanor brightening once again. "I mean, you'll at least consider it?"

I gave me wife a look. The one she gave me in response said that we might well be having a private discussion about this later. "We'll listen," I said. "That's all we can promise. You yelled for her earlier—she's back in the kitchen, right? Send her out."

Parida turned out to be a tall, solidly-built woman perhaps a few years younger than us—maybe mid-20's or so. Her very long dark brown hair was kept in a series of elaborate decorative braids, and she was wearing a chef's apron over a short-sleeved tan blouse and an ankle-length dress the same color as her hair. Her bow was deeply respectful as she approached our table. "Hinami told me you'd consider going out with me to gather ingredients in case bandits came along. I can't thank you enough for even hearing me out."

"Please," Camilla said, her previous reluctance either concealed or gone. "Sit down and tell us what's going on."

"First of all," Parida said as she seated herself, "thank you both for your business as well. We've been struggling ever since the bandit problem got worse—I've been afraid to go out ever since the last attack, and our stock of ingredients is getting low."

"Even for the coffee?" Camilla asked in alarm.

"Camilla."

"Especially for the coffee," Parida replied, seeming to miss the significance of the byplay. "I have to buy the Cryfern Stems from someone on the 15th floor anyway, but I can only find Pillflower Seeds in Weilan's Marsh on the other side of the Foothills."

"Isn't there anyone else you can ask?" Camilla said. "Someone local, better known to you?"

Parida pursed her lips, brow wrinkling. "There's a small guild that eats here sometimes, but I don't know how strong they are and I'm afraid to ask—it's rude. Hinami said she overheard you talking about fighting off bandits around here. If you're strong enough to do that… I'd be willing to pay you to protect me."

"How much?" I asked.

Parida named a price. I saw my wife try not to react—it was a fair daily wage for what might well be an entirely uneventful escort task. Bandits who felt free to gang up on a single player might think twice about taking on an armed party of three.

As if hearing my thoughts, Parida added, "Just having you along might be enough to discourage them from trying anything."

"Can you fight?" Camilla asked. That was not a trivial question; discouraging bandits from attacking was one thing, but we couldn't be babysitters.

Parida nodded. "I'm no slouch—I can use a staff and I've got my own equipment. I still have to be able to fight the monsters around this area to go gather, and I'm high enough level to do that. I just can't stand up to a group of hostile players."

"So why not go out with a party?" my wife asked. I nodded. I'd been wondering the same thing.

Parida gave her a bitter smile. "If we went out as a party to farm monsters and level up, would you want to keep stopping all the time so I could gather ingredients?"

"No," both of us said at once. Parida spread her hands.

"So I need to hire someone. I humbly ask you to please consider my request."

Exchanging another look with me, Camilla drummed her fingers on the table. Then she suddenly got a big grin on her face as she looked at Parida.

"I don't suppose we could work out a deal that includes coffee…"

"Coffee?" I asked later as we unequipped all of our gear and got ready to turn in for an early night's sleep. "Really, Cami?"

"Coffee," she echoed, slipping beneath the covers and pulling them tightly around her. The nights on this floor were a little chilly.

"It's nice that we're still mostly getting paid in Col, but wouldn't it have been better to ask for a little more money—money that we could not only use to buy coffee, but maybe also something that benefits the both of us?"

"Coffee does benefit you," my wife protested while I turned on the fireplace and set it to a medium temperature. "It makes me not be a raging bitch in the mornings."

I had my doubts about that—whatever benefit she was getting had to be purely psychological; there was no actual caffeine reaching her brain when she drank this virtual coffee. I decided discretion was the better part of valor in this instance—or at the very least the better part of self-preservation.

"Besides," she said as she snuggled happily up against me. "I have ulterior motives. I had a thought earlier, that if we can establish a working relationship with this Parida person, it'd be really handy to have access to someone with a high-level Cooking skill. Maybe we could start eating a little better, buy food and drink directly from her."

It was actually a really good thought. And both Camilla and I preferred to patronize player merchants rather than NPCs if we had the opportunity; any money paid to NPCs just disappeared back into the game engine, whereas money paid to other players benefited a real person. "You may have something there," I allowed.

"Of course I do. Weren't you just telling me yesterday how nice it was to actually be eating player-made food again?"

My eyelids started to grow heavy and close. "Do you hear me arguing?"

"No. Which is good, because I much prefer cuddling and thinking about filling our inventory with yummy food."

As I began drifting off to sleep, my last conscious thought was: If only all arguments could be settled that way.