"Er… I'm not entirely sure he actually needs that, Juvia…" Lisanna murmured. "He's breathing just fine, see?" she pointed to Gray's steadily rising and falling chest, the black Fairy Tail mark displayed proudly on his right side.
...
Juvia made a face that looked, somehow, like a cross between relief and disappointment, but she gently took Gray's shoulders and shook him ever so slightly. "Gray-sama… Gray-sama please open your eyes. Let Juvia know you're okay."
It took a couple more minutes before Gray finally did move and when he did, he awoke to the sight of both Juvia and Lisanna looking down at him with concern. He blinked several times before murmuring, "…What the heck happened?"
"That…" Lisanna observed. "Is a very good question."
"Gray-sama, Juvia is so glad you're alright…" Juvia sighed in relief. "Juvia was really worried about you."
"Well, I'm fine," Gray pushed himself into a sitting position and clicked his neck slightly, staring out at the trees around them. "Though how exactly I'm fine, I haven't the faintest idea. Does anyone else remember the big black dragon that was going to blow us to smithereens."
"All to well," Lisanna nodded.
"Juvia remembers as well," the Water Mage began to take in her surroundings for the first time. "One moment Juvia was standing there holding hands with Gray-sama and Lisanna-san and then… Juvia doesn't remember a thing after that. Not until waking up in the mud next to Gray-sama…" she blushed again at the thought.
"We're still alive then," Gray noted, pushing himself to his feet. "But where are the others?"
"We don't know. We only just woke up here ourselves," Lisanna replied. "Whatever questions you've got, you can bet we probably have the same ones as well."
Juvia stood up as well and moved to stand next to Gray. "Juvia doesn't recognise this place. It doesn't look like Tenrou Island."
"That's what I was thinking. Not least because if it was Tenrou Island, there'd be a bloody great big tree about a mile tall looming above us somewhere. That thing is pretty hard to miss," Gray pointed out.
Lisanna looked around her slightly before murmuring, "It… it doesn't look like Edolas either."
"Huh? Edolas?" Gray looked down at her. "Why would you bring Edolas up?"
"Because that's where I was the last time that I blacked out right after I was attacked and I woke up somewhere completely different," Lisanna remarked. "Back when Elf-niichan lost control of his Beast form and struck me the next thing I remembered after that was landing in a forest just like this. And that forest was in Edolas. But this doesn't look like any Edolas forest I'm familiar with so I don't think we've been transported there again."
"I doubt we could have been anymore. Not with Edolas losing all its magic like it did," Gray remarked.
"This place definitely has magic," Juvia agreed. "Juvia can feel it in the air. But if we're not on Tenrou Island anymore… what should we do, Gray-sama?"
"Heck if I know," Gray grumbled. "What did you do when you got lost in Edolas, Lisanna?"
"Nothing that could remotely be considered a plan," Lisanna answered. "It seemed the only option to me was to pick a direction and walk in it, calling for my brother and sister in the hope that they'd hear me. It took me two days before I found something, and I think it was a stroke of luck that that something was the Edolas Fairy Tail."
"Well…" Gray murmured. "I don't know if we've got much choice but to do that again. Just… start walking and see if we can find the others. Anyone else got a better plan?"
"Nope," Lisanna got to her feet, brushing dirt of her clothes.
"Juvia will go wherever Gray-sama leads," Juvia nodded devotedly.
"Uh-huh…" Gray murmured. "Shall we pick at random or…"
"Ooh now, isn't this interesting," said a slightly nasal voice that instantly had all of them of edge as it seemed to come out of nowhere. "Are they what was inside the baby golden egg thing, are they, are they? They all look like cripples with those bandages on, so they do."
"Who's there?" Gray demanded, placing his hands together in preparation to use his Ice Magic. "Where are you?"
"Oh, hark at his big turd, making demands of me. And he can't even see me either. Ha, he must be blind as an effing bat."
"Nobody says things like that to Gray-sama," Juvia flared up instantly, scowling at the surrounding bushes. "Show yourself."
"Aaw, how sickeningly cute, coming to her man's rescue, is she? What, is he so rubbish that he has to get his woman to pick his fights for him?"
"Gray-sama is far stronger than whoever you are!" Juvia flushed red.
"And she's not my woman!" Gray agreed awkwardly, his hands growing cold as he began to call on his ice powers. "Get out here before I freeze your butt, you…"
He was stopped by Lisanna putting a hand on his arm. The youngest Strauss sibling shook her head, before turning and offering the vegetation a bright smile. "We're sorry if we're intruding or something but we could really use some help. Can you come out so we can see you? We'd be really grateful for it and we won't hurt you. Cross my heart."
There was a slight pause before the voice said, "Well this one's nice at least, even though she looks weird with that white hair." And suddenly a head popped out of the undergrowth not far away from them - a small pointed head with a snout ending in a big black nose, large ears perched atop it and black markings around the eyes that looked like some kind of mask. But it was definitely not the face of a human.
"So, were these three stashed away inside the small golden sphere thing after all? Thought it was the world's weirdest tent when I first saw it, I did." the creature said as it moved out into the open, revealing a long slender body with grey, brown and black fur and a long tail pointing out behind it.
"It's… a ferret…" Juvia blinked.
The creature, which did indeed look like a ferret but twice as big, hissed. "This wench clearly knows nothing. I'm not a ferret, no I'm not. I'm a Jarvey. Maybe you should keep an encyclopaedia of magical creatures tucked between those big boobs of yours!"
"Hey!" Juvia squeaked, immediately covering her chest with her arms, but also half hoping that this sentence would prompt Gray to try and take a glance at her. He didn't, but he did look angry at the creature's words.
"Never heard of a Jarvey before," he growled.
"Then someone's clearly been living with his head in the toilet for all his life. Explains why his head is full of crap."
Gray's snarl of irritation was cut off by Lisanna again, and the girl stepped forwards and crouched down in front of the Jarvey. "You know, there's really no need to be rude," she said. "We're just a group of mages who have lost our way. Can you tell us if we're still in Earthland?"
"Eh? I thought that you might actually be intelligent," scoffed the Jarvey. "Where do you think you are, Mars Land? Of course you're on Earth Land. Jeez, what's wrong with you people."
Gray and Juvia watched with wide eyes as Lisanna just smiled and continued as if she'd not been insulted at all. "That's good to know," she said. "But have you seen anyone else nearby recently? We were part of a big group but it seems we've been separated from them somehow. My sister and brother would be among them as well as…" she did a quick count on her fingers. "Eighteen of our other friends. Do you think you could have seen them?"
"Haven't seen any other damn human dorks around for a while," the Jarvey shrugged its small shoulders. "Just as well really - the forest always smells much better when there's no people clopping around and stinking it all to high heaven. Ugh."
Lisanna bit her lip. "Thank you for telling us," she said, looking back at Gray and Juvia, who looked at each other in turn. If there friends weren't nearby, then where the heck were they?
"Though of course there is the bigger golden egg thingie that showed up the same time as your little one. Nearly flattened me when it landed, it did."
"Bigger golden egg thingie?" Gray frowned. "What are you talking about anyway?"
"With every question he reveals more and more how stupid he is," the Jarvey rolled its eyes. "I'm talking about the whacking great glowing sphere thing that was there right where you three were when I saw you. Came falling out of the sky and nearly took my head off, thanks very much. That was two days ago? What were the three of you doing in that thing for two days? Getting frisky with each other I'll bet."
Juvia went redder than Erza's hair and made an incomprehensible squealing noise and Gray froze in place, eye twitching, looking as if he couldn't decide whether to attack the Jarvey or not. Even Lisanna blushed a little at this but she shook her head and said, "It's nothing like that - we must have been unconscious the whole time. We only just woke up here and we definitely weren't here before this. You say we were inside some large glowing sphere?"
"Now I'm wondering if she's deaf too. Yes, that's what I've been saying, dumbbell."
"And there's a bigger one of these same spheres nearby?"
"Duh!"
"Is there any chance that you can lead us to it so we can see it for ourselves."
"And why should I do that, hm, hm?" the Jarvey bobbed its head. "You humans are all the same. Clotpoles, the lot of you, running around thinking that you're in charge of everything. What douches."
"Alright, I've officially decided I don't like this guy," Gray huffed. "Let's just find this other sphere thing ourselves."
"We don't know where to look though," Juvia pointed out, still very red in the face.
"How hard can something like that be to find though?" Gray shrugged.
"You'd be surprised," Lisanna stated. "Just give me a second." She turned back to the Jarvey and said, "You'd have our immense gratitude if you could just show us the way to this other sphere thing. Please. It would mean so much to us."
...
if you want to support me or just to read ahead of the public release, you can join my p@treon :
p atreon/Moonhorse