Chapter Fifteen: Our Next Step

Professor: Ok, I am so sorry about the long wait for this chapter. I was going through a lot of personal stuff surrounding my faith, my family, and my job. All of that combined made it very hard for me to write for months.

So, I apologize for not touching this account since July.

Hope you all enjoy this chapter though.

…

"What is your problem?!" Lucy screamed at him, "Sheik's done nothing but help me and you do everything short of physically attack him!"

"You shouldn't be blabbing our job to the first person you meet! Who knows who that guy works for?!" Gray countered.

"It's a game! He works according to his coding!" she hissed, "And besides, what I tell to the people I trust is my business! And Sheik's already a member of my party!"

Gray looked at her, flabbergasted, "Lucy! That's a one-time decision! You're stuck with him now!"

"That isn't a bad thing! I trust him!"

"Why?!" Gray exploded at her, "Why in the world do you trust him?! What exactly has he done?!"

"Well, for starters, he didn't kill me when he had the chance!"

"Oh!" Gray scoffed, "Well let's just get Jason down here to report how 'cool' of him that was! I'll nominate him for citizen of the year!"

"Oh drop the sarcasm!" she yelled, "You hate everyone who doesn't have guild mark, and even then you barely tolerate them!"

"That isn't true!" he protested.

She was the one who scoffed this time, "Oh really? Let's think; Natsu, you detest. Juvia, you spurn. Gajeel, you despise. You're more afraid of Erza than friends with her. You aren't even that close with Cana or Loke anymore! And Lyon?! That man is practically your brother and yet you've barely had one good conversation with him since we got back from Tenroujima!"

"Oh shove it, my anti-social lifestyle has nothing to do with this and you know it!"

"What does it have to do with then?!" Lucy yelled.

Gray fell silent, fumbling over his words for the right response.

Lucy gave one quick, emotionless "tch" as she rolled her eyes.

"Look, whatever, I'll be nice to him, ok? Let's just...catch up or something…" Gray sighed, avoided her gaze.

"Fine," Lucy huffed, content with any sort of truce, "So...you chose Zora?"

He shrugged, "Seemed the best choice."

"It is. And it looks good." she said, "It's what I thought you would choose anyway."

Gray felt his face heat up slightly at her compliment, "Y-You predicted my choice?"

If Lucy noticed his flustered response, she didn't say anything, "Sort of. I used the process of elimination. Zora was the best fit for you. Although I think I can officially say that this is the worst way we have ever planned for a job."
"What makes you say that?"

"Look around. We don't exactly have a whole lot going for us." she pointed out bluntly, "No clue where any of our friends are, if we all even chose a different race. For all we know, the rest of them are Hylians in an alleyway somewhere. What if we finish this job? How do we tell them? We don't know who the Hero is and we don't even have a map of this place. Worst of all, absolutely no way to contact the others. This has to be the most idiotic thing we've ever done."

"If we knew their usernames then we could message them…" Gray muttered, rubbing his neck.

Lucy gave him a blank stare before dropping her face into her hands, "I'm an idiot."

He grinned, "No you aren't. I've just played more games than you."

She rolled her eyes at him, "Ok, so how do we send a message?"

"Well, it's different from game to game. But you normally pull up a user screen and then click on their username or something."

She groaned, "Well, what are their usernames?"

"I don't know!" He said, "I came up with the idea, not how to carry it out!"

Lucy gave him a well deserved eye-roll, "Well then, how do we pull up this 'user screen'?"

"I...don't know," Gray admitted, "I haven't tried yet."

"Well that seems like a good place to start then," she sighed.

"Agreed."

The two set about doing whatever they could think of to get the screen to pull up, wanting to get it done while they were alone so Sheik wouldn't think they had lost their minds. While they did so, they kept chatting. Gray learned that Lucy had chosen Sheikah and what had happened to her. Gray told her that he had been shocked at what he had found, but said nothing of his new goal. Lucy mentioned everything that Sheik had told her which, while helpful on finding the Hero, Gray also found hilarious. Honestly, Lucy, a servant of a goddess?

They both then discussed the words that Mr. Dragmire had said as they logged into the game. Neither of them had heard what was being said, although Lucy reasoned that it was probably just some last minute advice for them.

But it wasn't until Lucy, in complete frustration, simply cried out, "Hey user screen, open up already!" that anything happened.

The screen suddenly popped up, somewhere between a foot and a foot and a half away from her face. It was a translucent blue square, blank at first, but with plenty of options listed to the side.

"Woah," Gray said, leaning over her shoulder to get a closer look.

"This thing has everything," Lucy shared his amazement, "Settings, profile, database, map, inventory, quests and progress, party members, messaging, spells, experience points and levels, logging out…"

"Well we don't need that one just yet," Gray said, "What's the experience stuff?"

Lucy reached out and pressed that option.

'Experience points and levels are based on the power and strength your character has. You can earn more by defeating enemies, casting spells, and interacting with the world around you. The higher leveled you are, the more powerful you are.

Currently level: 1

Experience points: 20

Points until the next level: 80'

"Cool!" Gray exclaimed, pulling up his own.

'Current level: 1

Experience points: 95

Points until the next level: 5'

"What?!" Lucy burst out while Gray started laughing, "How did you get so many more points than me already?!"

"Well I went through a dangerous ice cavern. All you've done is talk to people." He bragged, causing her face to redden.

"I'll catch up! Just you wait!"

"Sure you will." he laughed, patting her head consolingly.

She huffed and turned back to her own screen, "Whatever, let's check our maps."

Gray simply smiled and did as she asked, although they pulled up very different things.

"Do we have different maps?"

"No, look at the Ice Cavern, we both have that!"

"But that's the only thing in common."

"Which is...strange...I'll admit."

"Why does yours have a blinking light and mine doesn't?"

"How am I supposed to know? Yours has the domain and mine doesn't!"

"But yours also has a graveyard!"

"But I wasn't in a graveyard!" Lucy argued, "I was in this weird circular room with a bunch of torches and then I was here! I swear!"

Gray thought a moment before asking, "Could our maps only be showing us places we've been? Maybe that room was just in the graveyard and you never saw it."

Lucy mulled it over, "It's possible, but then what's the dot on mine?"

They both took a closer look at the purple blinking dot that was in a blank space below Lucy's yellow dot.

"Do you think...it's Sheik?"

"What?"

"Well, think about it," she said, "I have a party member. You don't. It would make sense that I'd be able to see my party members.

Gray shrugged. "Best guess that I've got."

"Well, let's test it." without anymore hesitation Lucy went into the 'search users' section and typed in 'Ice'. She found him rather quickly and in moments he had an invitation to join her party.

Shrugging again, he accepted.

'Ice has joined your party.' showed up in front of Lucy while Gray got his own messages.

'Celeste has joined your party.'

'Sheik has joined your party.'

It took all his power to keep his grimace to himself at that one.

"It worked!" Lucy yelled out, pointing to her map. Sure enough, there was another purple dot.

"Glad we got that figured out," he said, closing his screen. Lucy followed suit as he asked his next question, "So what's our next step? Where do we go?"

"Well...Sheik could lead us to the Hero…" Lucy said, "But if we do that portion first we'll have Sheik hunting us as we look for our friends…"

"So friends first, keep tabs on Hero boy, and when reunited, kill him then log out?"

"Best I got." she sighed.

"Sounds good to me."

A loud pop interrupted their conversation, Sheik returning when the light faded.

"I have news," he spoke before they could say anything in greeting.

"What is it?" Lucy asked.

"I met another friend of yours," he said, "Seems you lot are popping up everywhere today."

Lucy smiled, "Seems we are. I honestly didn't think it'd be this easy."

"Someone must be on your side."

Gray coughed, getting their attention, "So who was it?"

"A young girl. Her name is Sky. She's a Kokiri."

Lucy squealed in joy and Gray let out a grin. Exchanging a glance, they both thought the same thing.

'Wendy's ok!'

"She said she's fine, but hasn't found anyone yet."

Lucy's face fell only slightly. She had hoped Carla at least would be with her.

Sheik saw her disappointment through, attempting to cheer her up by saying, "She isn't alone though."

"She isn't?"

Sheik shook his head, "She's with Link, so no need to worry."

Both Gray and Lucy sighed in relief.

"Thank you Sheik." Lucy said, "This means a lot, really."

"You're welcome." he nodded his head towards her in respect.

"So let's go get her." Gray said, "Let's do your magical transport thing and find her."

Sheik shook his head, "Not so simple."

"What do you mean?"

"I would normally love to help you out, but there are things I must do first. Plus, I can only take one of you with me at a time with that spell. It's rather tiring. I don't think I could make another journey today."

"Well that's great," Gray huffed, "We know where one of our friends is and can't get to her."

"Calm down," Lucy said sternly, "We could just walk you know. It's not like we've never had to do that before."

He just huffed again and crossed his arms. Lucy rolled her eyes and turned back to Sheik, "What is it you need to do?"

"Well for starters, I'd like to unfreeze the Zora King. Tell me Ice, did you see the blue fire in the other room?"