Gate of the Golden Bull
*This is a story that I was writing a long while ago but never finished, with it just currently being revisited by me. I'll try to post a chapter every week or so, but no promises! Anyways, here's chapter one! ;)*
Chapter 1
Lucy, along with the rest of team Natsu, just recently arrived back to the guild from their latest job handling a group of thieves. They were called the Night Weasels and were terrorizing a small sea town, but with Team Natsu (especially Erza) on the scene, the request was a piece of cake.
"Did you see the way that guy screamed when I punched him into a wall? I thought Lucy was a cry baby, but man did he show me!" Natsu laughed and slapped the table excessively.
"Hey, I am not!" Lucy screamed while waving a fist. Everyone back from that job was laughing about the fun they had pulverizing the weak thieves, mostly Erza. "With a single blow you nearly wiped out most of their gang," Gray exclaimed, "you barely left any for us!"
"Not my fault they were that pathetic," Erza said, walking off to get a drink from the bar. Lucy herself didn't do as much damage to the thieves as Natsu and the others, but being the friendlier looking mage of the team, she received most of the praise from the townsfolk. "I still can't believe they threw us a big festival afterwards!" Lucy said, her eyes sparkling in remembrance of the party from yesterday. In gratitude of Fairy Tail's deeds, Team Natsu was thrown a big festival in the town square that lasted all night and was filled with fireworks, dancers, and most importantly (for Natsu), food! Everyone enjoyed themselves, even Happy with his all you can eat fish buffet provided to him.
"The best part of the whole party was the fish, Aye!" Happy yelled, "They had so many different kinds, I didn't know which to eat first!" He started to drool from just the thought of it.
Lucy smiled at Happy's silly behavior. Ever since joining Fairy Tail, Lucy commonly went on jobs with her new friends like Natsu or Gray, and she even recalled doing this one request with Erza where they had to take down a sea monster! She mostly distracted it by using Sagittarius and his arrows, while Erza and her Heaven's Wheel Sword attack dealt the final blow. Erza gave Lucy a scale from the monster as a memento of their job together. "So you can remember how much fun we had," Erza told her as she handed her the item and smiled. It glistened with a shiny, blue luster like the ocean and smelled slightly salty. "Thank you, this means a lot," Lucy replied with teary eyes. To this day she still keeps the scale in a little case at her apartment.
Thinking back, Lucy noticed how she really didn't do jobs on her own like other guild members. Yeah, it was fun hanging out with the gang, but if she really wanted to prove she was as capable as everyone else, she was going to have to do a solo request. "Sigh…I got to do this! If I keep clinging onto everyone, I'll start to look like I can't pull my own weight!" she stated and stomped over to the request board.
The thought was great sounding at first, but she slowly started to lose courage the more she inspected the tough jobs posted on the list. One job was to find an amulet in a mountainous part of Fiore that was known to have dangerous, if not deadly, monsters.
"I'll pass on that!" she sweat-dropped. Most of the other jobs were similarly as dangerous, but one that caught her eye was an S class job about a pet cat named Snuggles that was recently lost by a wealthy family in a forest. Lucy was debating it at first but one glance at the reward money changed her greedy mind.
"300,000 Jewels!? This must be my lucky day! With an easy job like this, I'll be rich in no time!" she giggled and ran off like lightning to her apartment to prepare. Natsu looked over at the dust trail she left behind and was confused as to what got her all riled up, but eventually shrugged it off. After packing everything Lucy decided on taking a hot bath to soothe the muscles, but unknown to her the bottom of the request poster she accepted back at the guild had a warning that read, "Please proceed with caution, this region is known for its frequent Wyvern attacks".