Ready Player: START (Parzival x Reader)

Running Down to the Riptide

"IOI already cracked the clue?" you screeched when you read the headline, "but we just got it!" you leapt out of your desk and towards your gear in the corner of the room, you gazed longingly at your computer, hoping it would show a message from Wade; that'd he'd magically show up even though it's been days. "Ugh!" you shouted in annoyance before pulling on your gear.

You logged into the game and saw that once again, all of your friends were online. "Locate Parzival," you commanded before teleporting to his location. "Oh," you gaped as him, Aech, Daito, and Sho were frantically putting together some sort of rig. "I missed something, didn't I."

"Didn't you get Samantha's message?" Sho questioned.

"Who?"

"Art3mis."

You felt your eye twitch, "no."

"Oh."

There was a pause and Sho went back to work, "you're not going to tell me?"

"There was probably a reason why she didn't include you in the message. It contained some personal information."

"But she told you, okay, that's fine. Everything's totally fine." You agreed sarcastically.

"Did your friend ever respond to you?" Aech asked over the hamster ball he was putting together.

You sighed, "no. It's been days, so...he probably was killed. It was a pretty huge explosion."

"Dang, I'm so sorry."

"I'll mourn later, there's clearly something important going on. Care to fill me in?"

"We're building Sorrento's setup. We're going to hack him to get back Art3mis." Parzival explained.

"Going after the key isn't important?" you questioned slowly and somewhat sarcastically.

"We need to save her. She's in a loyalty center."

You let out a long suffering groan, "all right. What do you need me to do?"

✧✧✧

"He's in the game guys!" you called out when you saw Sorrento's gamer ID show up in the log, "sector 14...is that where the next clue is?"

"We knew that already." Sho deadpanned.

"Gee, thanks for keeping me in the loop." You shouted angrily.

"Could you tone down the anger (g/l)?" Aech questioned from the rig he was frantically putting together, "you're kind of stressing me out, and we're all stressed to the max."

You grumbled angrily to yourself, you knew it was unfair to be taking your anger out on them when you were angry at Art3mis, or Samantha, or whatever the punk princess' name was, but you still needed to vent. "I need to head out." You announced before shoving yourself away from the computer screen.

"Wait!" there was a clang and a curse, "we need you to keep an eye on Sorrento!" Parzival protested as he rubbed the sore spot on his head.

"Just give me a minute!" you responded, but the sudden panic of letters that was showing up on the screen caused you to halt in your tracks, "oh no! Guys, that thing better be ready! He just activated the Orb of Osuvox!"

"He'll be preoccupied with that for a max of a minute," Parzival declared as he scrambled out from underneath the thing he was working on, "everyone in their positions!" him, Aech, and Sho darted out of the area, leaving Daito holding his hand out in front of him at the hamster ball chair like a gun was in his hands.

"Okay, cloaking Daito," you frantically typed in code into the computer setup that was thrown together, and his form rippled into a new one that was wearing a suit and actually had a gun in his hands.