Happy Friday! I appreciate all the reviews, guys! I love getting to hear from you. :) Some of you guys are really challenging me to think, and I appreciate that.

A few of you mentioned the word soulmates. Interestingly enough, I actually do use that word... I'll have to do some soul searching (lol) to figure out why my brain thinks it's different from this finding the other half of your OTP idea. It'll probably be the topic of another Relationship Rant in a few weeks. XD.

As a disclaimer, I am not an archer. Anything you see here is a product of my imagination and a lot of Googling, so hopefully it's mostly legit.

darling spider: I'm glad Erza makes sense to you here...my beta didn't think it made sense to him. So that makes me feel better that I'm not the only one who sees her this way. :) Thanks!

guest: Nice save, Erza, right? By the way, those are awesome words: balance, patience, forgiveness. Those are ones that I usually forget about when I'm writing my rants. Balance, especially, is a hard one in fiction, but it's super important IRL. Anyways, I appreciate the support!

strongasdiamond: These two are a boatload of sexual tension for sure! I had a lot of fun with them here. That's an interesting headcanon. That's a very Gray thing to do. Do you think he would have tailored his style to complement hers? Anywho, if you're looking for more fics like this one, I've got a couple more on my profile that might be worth checking out. Thanks! :)

- K. Chandler

Erza followed as Gray led her into the forest. Growing up, she and the other Fairy Tail kids spent as much time playing hide and seek here as they did sparring. It certainly brought back fond memories!

But it seemed an odd place for archery lessons.

"What is this, Gray?" asked Erza.

"The forest?" he asked dryly.

"No, I meant why are we here?" she clarified.

"This is where I learned how to shoot," he said.

"I thought Ur taught you."

Gray shook his head. "Master Ur taught me everything I know about Ice-Make magic. But I learned my weaponry skills on my own," he said, his eyes glinting with something that resembled pride.

Gray motioned for Erza to stop.

"This is a good spot," he said. Raising his hands, Gray pulled his arms back, molding a thick disc of ice. He positioned it against the trees in the distance. "We'll be shooting toward the tree line," he said. "That's the target."

With a flourish, Gray's shirt flew through the air.

"Gray! What are you doing?" squeaked Erza.

"Getting serious," he said.

Erza's eyes landed on his – was that an eight-pack? She'd never noticed before. She felt her face grow warm.

"Put your clothes back on!"

"Nope."

Stupid, perverted exhibitionist! Erza should have been used to Gray's stripping habit. How many times had she given him an earful over it? But today the urge to rant was replaced by the knotted feeling in her stomach. She had never paid such close attention to Gray. Not this sort of attention, at any rate. Why now?

"You should probably ditch the armor too," said Gray.

Heat surged to her face. "What?!" Erza crossed her arms defensively. There was no way she was going to do that!

Gray blinked at her. "Easy! I'm not asking for anything crazy. You can wear whatever you normally do."

"I normally wear armor," she insisted. She clenched her jaw, trying to keep from flushing.

Gray huffed, shaking his head and fixing Erza with a knowing look. "Suit yourself," he said with a shrug.

"So where do I start?" she asked, her bow in front of her.

"Watch me first," said Gray. He turned away from both Erza and the target, planting his feet and squaring his strong shoulders. With a flutter of his hands, an ice bow appeared firm in his grasp. Erza could see the pull of muscles in his arms and back as Gray drew the bowstring and let an arrow fly in one fluid motion.

Dead center.

Erza's breath hitched, her mouth dry. He made it look so effortless.

"The foundation of archery is balance and a strong stance," Gray said.

Thwap. Another ice arrow met its mark.

"If you aren't grounded, then you can't expect to hit anything." Thwap. "But if you can hold your bow steady…" Thwap. "And follow through…" Thwap. "Then you'll be able to hit the target…" Thwap. "And you won't even have to think about it." Thwap. "It's just muscle memory."

Erza could feel her eyes widen. Her guildmate had driven half-a-dozen arrows into the bullseye without so much as a pause.

"That's all there is to it." Gray turned back toward her with that self-assured grin of his. "Do you want to give it a shot?"

"Sure." Erza tried to wipe the dumbstruck look from her face, hoping he hadn't noticed it. Taking her place at the shooting line, she imitated Gray's stance. "Like this?"

Gray looked her over slowly with sharp eyes. Erza could feel her cheeks burning at his scrutiny.

"Turn your toes in," he muttered, nudging her foot with his own. "Better." He cleared his throat. "Okay, whenever you're ready."

Carefully, Erza notched an arrow, balancing it between gauntleted fingers. Taking a deep breath, she drew the bowstring. Twang. Erza watched as her arrow soared before embedding itself into the ground. She hadn't even covered half the distance that Gray had.

Twang. Twang. Twang. One after the other, Erza's arrows peppered themselves across the range. None of them were even close to reaching the target, never mind hitting it!

"What am I doing wrong?" she moaned.

The Ice-Make mage smirked. "Maybe I'm just that much stronger than you?" he suggested wryly.

"Not possible," said Erza through clenched teeth.

Gray chuckled, raising his hands. "I was just kidding. Geez!"

"Not funny, Gray!" Erza pouted, stomping her foot. But that just made him laugh harder.

"Why don't we try it without the armor?" he chuckled.

"I told you—"

"Or you can keep it on and keep shooting at the ground. Your choice."

Erza glowered, Requipping into her school-girl outfit. Then, she adjusted her stance, like Gray had done. Swiftly, she drew her arrow, letting it slip from her fingers as she reached the apex of her range of motion.

With a twang, the arrow flew, sailing right past the target.

"I did it!" Erza could hear the amazement coloring her voice.

"What did I tell ya?" Gray looked far too pleased with himself. "Archery requires a pretty wide range of motion, especially in the arms and shoulders. Armor only gets in the way."

Erza was far too happy to pay him any mind. She'd let his smugness slide…this time.

Twang. Twang. Twang.

Erza let her arrows fly in rapid succession. One of them embedded itself in a distant tree.

Gray gave a low whistle. "That's some good power on your shots."

"But they aren't supposed to be all over the place, are they?"

"No…" Steel-colored eyes searched her face. Then Gray shrugged, moving to stand behind her. "When your bow string's drawn, you'll want your elbow up." He adjusted her arm, fingers lingering on her skin. The warmth of his touch made her stomach flutter. "Just like this," he said, his breath tickling her ear. Gray reached forward, his left hand closing over hers, reinforcing her grip on her bow.

She could feel the muscles in his chest against her shoulder blades. He was so close that he could probably feel the way her heart hammered. Erza wondered if the tips of her ears were red. How did he manage to fluster her so much?

Gray laced his fingers through hers, guiding her right hand towards the bowstring. He helped her notch an arrow and draw it back, deliberately letting the side of his hand come to rest against her jaw.

"That's your anchor point. Bring your hand right back here, every time. If you want consistency with your shots, you'll need a consistent anchor."

Erza could feel the rumbling of his chest as he explained, his voice low. She swallowed hard.

The arrow danced from their fingertips.

Bullseye.

Then, Gray jerked away, hands jammed in his pockets. There was a spark of something in his expression that Erza didn't recognize. "Well, I think that's enough instruction for today, don't you?"

"Yeah…" she said. She felt breathless and her head spun. "So…now…"

"Why don't you run through it again. Get some practice in," he muttered, eyes on the ground. He bent to pick up his shirt, tugging it back on with quick, jerky motions.

Erza nodded, drawing her bow like Gray had showed her. She missed.

"Maybe you could try aiming," suggested Gray seriously. "That might help." His lips pulled into a lazy grin.

"One more wisecrack and I swear, Gray, I'll shoot you myself," Erza hissed.

Gray laughed. "Good luck with that! Let me know if you actually manage to hit anything." His thumbs were latched in casually in his pockets. He raised a hand, waving without looking back.

Lol to Erza overreacting to everything (and Gray being completely chill about it).

This is one of the few Mazeverse multi-chapter stories that comes from only one perspective (the other is A Wingman for Christmas). I felt like this was a way to flip the classic love-potion story (or sometimes it's the character-gets-whacked-in-the-head story) formula. Often friends and family realizing that this individual is behaving out of character and they spend the rest of the episode trying to respond to this, basically until this person goes back to normal. I wanted to go the other way around, from inside Erza's head, where she doesn't think anything is wrong. This is just how she's processing information at the moment, so she thinks this is normal.

Normally, I like to give multiple perspectives to show each character's bias. In this case, I had wanted to bias you and let you go this journey of discovery along with Erza without giving you an outside perspective (from Gray) to calibrate on.

But you can still sort of see (through Gray's behavior) just how weird and uncomfortable this is for him. Remember, Mazeverse Gray gets overwhelmed by this sort of weirdness. The fact that it's Erza makes it even worse, because Gray knows perfectly well that this isn't normal for her. (Check out Snowbound if you're curious what Mazeverse Gray and Erza are like normally; it'll make this story doubly ironic.)

I can't speak for the guys, but I think a lot of us girls have experienced what Erza is going through... inexplicable feelings that make us act emotional and out of character. (Do you agree?) I find that when I'm weird and emotional, most of my guy friends don't know what to do. They pretty much take two giant steps backwards (and I can't tell if they don't quite know what to do with all that emotion or if they think they're doing us a favor by giving us space (you know, to hide in our Man-Cave and work things out...never occurs to them that us girls don't have Man-Caves...). There is the odd exception (guys who grew up with sisters) who will brave the storm and try to figure out why we're being weird about stuff. And I think Gray's still sort of on the edge between being Weirded-Out and trying to Figure-Things-Out. He's like: "Here, let me help. On second thought, never mind." XD

Next time, in [Mazeverse] The Problem with Ranged Weapons, Erza gets weirder and Gray starts to do some figuring: She was not doing this. Erza Scarlet did not ogle.

Stop back next Friday for the next installment, or just follow me, Karine of R011ingThunder.