Natsu faded in and out of consciousness he saw with blurry eyes how Lucy bent over him screaming something but he couldn't her what it was. He heard more yelling and felt a sharp pain in his head at the loud noises. He tried to sit up but his body wouldn't listen to him. He saw the rest of the team running towards them. Wendy was immediately at his side and activated her magic. He heard more muffled noises before everything faded to black.
Natsu woke up to the feeling of being on a vehicle but strangely it didn't seem to bother him. He saw Wendy running along her hands glowing with magic with a man clad in white on the other side.
How's it going?
I've managed to stop the bleeding for now but I can't do anything else and I'm running out of magic!
Understood can you hold until we get him to the operation table? We'll take it from there.
Natsu didn't hear anything else before his chest throbbed with pain and he felt himself falling back into the darkness.
It had been such a simple mission... exterminate the dark guild terrorizing the village of Vaizel. It had started out with him, Lucy, Erza, Droopy-eyes and Wendy heading out from the town after getting details from the mayor. The town of Byzel was a major trading-post for everything magic related so the dark guild often came there and wrecked havoc before taking anything valuable.
The dark guild always came from the east so the team had went there hoping to ambush them. It had ended up a failure as Gray had started yet another loud argument with him blowing their cover and they were the ones getting ambushed by the dark guild.
The team had quickly been separated and outnumbered as the dark guild obviously knew them from rumors.
Natsu had quickly finished the enemies that went for him when he heard Lucy scream!
Natsu didn't think but immediately ran in the direction of the scream only to find Taurus getting impaled by several spikes that shot out of the enemy's body.
Natsu could smell the stench of cheap cologne and wool which meant that Loke and Aries had already been defeated. Arrows laid scattered on the battlefield which meant Lucy had used Sagittarius too in vain. Natsu did not have time to think about it as the mage raised a spiked fist aimed for Lucy.
Natsu swiftly jumped in between them and kicked the dark mage away.
The dark mage didn't seem to think too much of his appearance and simply sent a wall of summoned spikes towards Natsu.
Natsu in response clad his hands in fire and punched them all out of the air before countering with his roar sending a storm of flames towards the enemy who merely summoned another wall of spikes which easily tore through the fire and managed to tear up Natsu's shoulder. Natsu winced at the pain but ignored it and dashed towards the enemy slugging him in the face.
What followed was one of the hardest battles Natsu had ever experienced. The dark mage had a ridiculous amount of magic being able to summon a seemingly infinite amount of spikes over and over again.
Natsu had difficulties inflicting any kind of lasting damage on him since he simply disperse all Natsu's fire with his spike barrages and when Natsu tried getting into close combat he would only gain scratches all over his body from the spikes.
At one point the spikes had come dangerously close to ripping one of his eyes out but Natsu narrowly dodged it and punched the man in the face with a fire cloaked fist.
Cracking his nose back in place the man summoned another magic circle, but this time lining a huge amount of smaller spikes up across his skin, covering his body until he looked more like a black, evil hedgehog if anything else.
As his armor easily dispelled a fire ball thrown by Natsu he began boasting in typical villain fashion. Calling melee-fighters such as Nastu pathetic and 'a dying race'
He was swiftly silenced however as Nastu buried his fist in his guts as he was boasting ignoring the spikes drilling into his knuckles.
Nastu then began a ferocious offense, punching and kicking whatever spots he could get his hands on, The black mage in response covered his head with his arms in an attempt to wear Natsu out.
At one point Lucy summoned Scorpio with the little magic left in her body in an attempt to aid the struggling Natsu.
The scorpion quickly understood the situation and fired a barrage of sand bullets at the dark mage when he wasn't looking causing him to drop his guard for a moment. Natsu saw the opening and landed a series of blows on him sending him flying backwards.
The man however was nowhere close to being defeated and sent a spike flying from his hand as he rose from the ground, piercing through Scorpio's chest sending him back to the Spirit World in a bright golden glitter.
The dark mage saw Natsu's fatigue and made a quick dash aiming for the kill.
His charge was stopped however when Natsu slammed his fist into his face, fire and lightning surrounding his body.
The dark mage quickly understood that if he was hit by that too many times he would lose, guard or no guard.
So rather than defending he instead made another dash towards Nastu, his spike-covered fists swinging, striking Natsu's arm, tearing it up.
Natsu responded with another blow to the enemy's face. The two exchanging blows no caring about their injuries.
Natsu's entire body burned in pain with every punch and kick but he didn't care.
Suddenly he got in a good hit which completely shattered the man's guard, leaving him wide-open.
The dark mage closed his eyes as Natsu broke what was left of his armor and proceeded to introduce him to a world of hurt. Spikes and blood flew all over the stage as Natsu's Crimson Lotus struck the enemy over and over before finally ending with a single fist to the stomach.
The Dark mage threw up an ridiculous amount of blood as something inside him broke, before he flew backwards through rocks and trees before landing as a bloody unrecognizable pile of flesh a good ten meters away.
Natsu turned around only to get met by a crying Lucy throwing herself in his arms. Lucy took one of his hands and saw the bloody mess it had become before hugging him again, not caring that the scratches and tears on his chest was bloodied down her hair
"Why!?" She asked through the tears and sobs "Why are you always so stupid!? Do you ever think about what would happen if Fairy Tail where to lose you!?... If... I was to lose you?"
Natsu looked down at the crying girl. His voice failing him from exhaustion.
"Natsu... I been meaning to say this for a while now b-but... I L-"
The meaning was cut short as Natsu recognized the sound of a magic circle being activated filling him with dread.
He didn't think as he pushed Lucy to the ground before feeling a searing pain in his chest.
Looking down he saw a pitch-black spike tip sticking out of the front. With great difficulty he turned his head to see the dark mage heaved up on his elbows with an evil grin on his mangled and broken face before throwing up more blood before falling to the ground.
Natsu heard Lucy shriek before falling to the ground. What was this feeling?... He was so... cold... He saw Lucy standing on her knees at his side tears streaming down her face. He tried to get out a word of reassurance but before he could get a single word out everything went black.
Beep-Beep-Beep
Natsu woke up to an extremely annoying beeping noise. As he looked around him trying to see where was he found himself lying in a completely white room.
The only real decorations being a drawer at the other side of the room and a few paintings of flowers. A couple of chairs stood around the bed he was resting in and it came to him that it might be a hospital room.
He tried to sit up but his body didn't respond to him at all.
He tried calling for help but he couldn't get a single sound out of his throat.
He tried to summon some magic but as he expected it was to no avail.
Finding that everything but his eyes had decided to go on full-on strike he couldn't do anything but to lie still in his bed.
After a good ten minutes of lying around in frustration he heard the door open and someone entering. A white-robed man walked up next to his bed and checked through his clipboard all doctor-y like humming and mumbling incoherent things.
"So mister Dragneel is it... several minor lacerations, left hand and both legs hold major lacerations and puncture wounds although impressively no major damage to the bone... Right hand is extremely lacerated and has taken extensive damage to the bone... other than blood loss from the impalement wound to the chest no internal organs were damaged. He was very lucky to have survived."
Only now did Natsu realize that the team had been standing on the other side of the bed looking worried all the time. They all looked like they had been through a rough fight and were all dressed in hospital clothes. Erza had a bandage covering her shoulder and a second one on the right side of her head. Gray seemed to have gotten out relatively unharmed aside from the bandage covering his midsection only seen thanks to his lack of clothing.
Wendy had plasters on her face and arms and a bandage on her leg. Lucy also had plasters from where the spike-mage had managed to struck her but other than that she looked a little pale from magic-depravation she was as beautiful as always.
Wait what?
Natsu were pulled out of his thoughts by Erza who had begun talking with the doctor.
"Was there really no other way!?" She asked her voice so thick with anger and worry that Natsu decided to listen to what could make her so upset.
"I'm afraid not miss Scarlet." The doctor said. "Mister Dragneel had taken extensive damage both physical and mentally. To avoid his body shutting down completely we had to put him into a near-comatose state to slow down his bodily functions while we performed the operation. He can neither move or speak and it's unknown if he's at all conscious."
"But why couldn't you just have put him to sleep with normal anesthesia!?" Erza raged on, grabbing the man by the collar.
"Trust me when I say that this was the only way! If had let him stay like that he would have died before we could stitch up the chest wound!" The man explained in a calm professional voice being used to people having a hard time taking bad news."By putting him in a medically induced coma while using our magical equipment designed to slow down the blood loss we were able to stop him from bleeding out."
"However it would seem as if it was too much on his body and so it decided to stay in the coma state to protect his mind."
At his words Erza let the man go and mumbled out an apology before taking a seat with her head in her hands.
Meanwhile Wendy had started crying and was being comforted by Gray who held her in a brotherly hug as she cried.
Lucy just stood there staring at Natsu before turning to the doctor. "For how long will he stay like this?" She asked the doctor who sighed before answering.
"You must understand that he has taken extensive damage in both mind and body miss Heartphilia. Even with patients who are put into comas like these with lesser injuries can stay like this for months or even years. This man is probably the worst case we've ever had in this hospital and so there's no real way to tell. It could be a week, a month or even ten years for all we know. The only thing we can be completely sure of that until his mind has healed he won't wake up."
At this point Lucy started crying and had to get Gray's help to a chair to calm down.
During this scene Natsu had desperately been trying to give them any kind of signal to tell them that he in fact was very much mentally awake to no avail.
And so he was stuck in bed, able to nothing as his teammates cried and cursed.
I finally got around to rewriting the parts i wasn't too happy about with this story. Hopefully it's better now.
Also i'm sorry if any medical facts in this chapter is wrong. All i know of science comes from BlackJack, Super Doctor K and Doctor House.