The west side guards had seen a lot of things during their time with Jose, but they'd never seen it rain gold.
Sting snickered as the guards stared up at the sky, dumbstruck. It was all just an illusion, of course, which he was definitely known for making. He called himself the Spectrum King, after all. So making gold bars fall from the sky was child's play for the guy.
But the gold bars were only the first part, to catch their attention. He made some adjustments to his hologram projector, and created a completely real-looking copy of Romeo. The copy strolled toward the guards, and Sting smirked. This was going to be beautiful.
Let's go to the guards' point of view, shall we?
George the guard, who had better vision than the rest, was the first to see the Romeo look-alike.
"Hey!" he shouted, getting the attention of his fellow guards. "It's a kid!"
"After him!" another guard yelled. "He might be one of those kids the boss wants us to catch! Remember the reward he promised to us if we could catch one of them?!"
They all looked at each other. Then, without speaking, they all took off after the hologram, George in the lead.
They wanted that reward. And nobody was going to take it from them.
Except maybe Sting.
He sent the hologram into a room. Earlier, he, Wendy, and Romeo had checked it out and decided it was great for their purposes. It had no other exit beside the door, and the window was hardly big enough for a squirrel.
The guards all crammed themselves into the room, leering at the frightened-looking "Romeo". Then suddenly, he smirked - and vanished into thin air.
"What the-" a guard blinked. That's when the door slammed shut, effectively locking every single one of the west side guards in the room.
Oops.
xXx
"Hey, Erza." Sting's voice crackled over the walkie-talkie. "West side guards are out of business. And to be super sure, Romeo melted the lock. You guys cool?"
"Yes." Erza replied, looking worried. "But I just got a call from Lucy. She said something about needing all of us to get over to he holding cells. Should we do it?"
"Yeah, I mean, if Lucy needs us for something, why wouldn't we do it?"
"Because it could be a trap." Gray cut in. "Remember that Silver guy? If he's good enough to break through my firewalls, then chances are, he's good enough to set up a voice impersonation program. Actually, I take back my first sentence. This is definitely a trap."
"But what if Lucy actually really needs us?" Sting objected. "We could be sending our friends to their doom by not responding to their call."
"There's an easy way to find out." Wendy piped up. "Why don't you just call her back?"
Everyone was silent as the sheer obviousness of the solution hit them.
"Sweet cupcakes." Sting finally said faintly. "We are stupid."
"Hurry up and do it already!" Romeo urged.
Gray called Lucy.
xXx
At the current moment, Lucy was unable to answer the phone, as she was dangling off the side of the building, along with Yukino, Natsu, and Gajeel. This was not intentional. They'd accidentally activated a trap that blasted them out of a window. Thankfully, Gajeel had wisely thought to bring his grappling hook, saving them from an awfully squishy death by concrete.
"What do we do?" Yukino asked, strangely calm. Lucy had absolutely no idea, but was saved from answering when her walkie-talkie beeped, alerting her to the fact that someone was trying to call her. Unfortunately, as she was using both hands to cling to the rope, like everyone else, the call stayed unanswered.
"No worries." Gajeel said confidently. "The grappler's retractable."
He pressed a button. Nothing happened.
"Oh, great job." Natsu scoffed. "Now what do we do?"
Lucy let out a sigh. "This is embarrassing, isn't it? And we can't even call for help, either…"
The whole group was silent as they contemplated their options. Finally, Natsu spoke up.
"Gajeel, don't you have any climbing tool or something?"
"If I did, don't you think I would've used it already? Idiot."
While Natsu berated Gajeel for calling him an idiot, Lucy inspected the grappler. She caught sight of a switch and groaned.
"Gajeel. The grappler is set to non-retractable."
"What?!" everyone shrieked.
"Idiot!" Natsu yelled.
"No way!" Gajeel protested.
"Way." Lucy braced her feet against the building and reached up, flicking the blue switch to "retractable".
"Okay, guys." She turned and smiled at the rest of the group. "Let's get this show back on the road!"
xXx
Erza, Gray, and Sting were dumbfounded. Did no reply mean that Lucy was in trouble?
"I say we send one team to check it out." Gray said. "So if it is a trap, then not all of us will fall into it."
"That makes sense." Erza replied. "My group will go. Gray, you're busy with surveillance, and Sting will keep watch for new guards."
"No way!" Sting objected. "Better for my group to go. We can hide, and I can send out holograms to check it out. Plus, we're more suited for fighting, anyway."
"He's right, Erza." Gray told her. "It's better if Sting goes. You guys keep watch. I suggest you split up. Each one of you can take care or yourselves, and you can cover more distance that way."
"All right." Erza sighed.
"Perfect." Sting replied. "C'mon, you two! We've got places to be and people to see. Let's blow this popsicle stand!"
xXx
Meanwhile, Jose was staring at his computer when an email arrived in his inbox. Thinking that it was probably safe to open it, since, Silver kept out that Gray kid, he did. It was a file, with no label. He pondered what it could be for a minute, then decided that there was only one way to find out. He clicked "open".
Bad idea.
Because Gray's file, yes, the same file he'd sent last chapter, was one heck of a computer virus. He'd been cooking it up since last year, and it was designed to do one thing and one thing only: a major system meltdown. Since Jose's computer was the mainframe and all other computers in the company were therefore connected to it one way or another, it would effectively shut down all the computers in the company.
Jose watched, dumbfounded, as his computer screen went black, displaying a single message:
ERROR. CATASTROPHIC SYSTEM MELTDOWN.
And below it, in smaller print:
Courtesy of the Fairy Institute for Troublemakers and Law Breakers.
Okay, I don't know all that much about computers and stuff, so I really do hope that this is accurate. Anyway, nice job, Gray! Jose's probably dying of shock or whatever. Hahaha….
That's all I've got to say, so…
Water, out