DISCLAIMER: CHARACTERS AND MOST CONTENT NOT MINE. All characters except OC belong to Hiro Mashima.
The window was open and crickets chirped merrily outside it in the warm night air. A breeze gently shook the branches, the noise calming to the girl that lay on the bed. Her eyes were closed halfway as she lazily stared up at her ceiling in the darkness of her bedroom. She wished for sleep, prayed for it even. But like most nights, it wasn't easy for her to come by, if even found at all.
For Willow, insomnia was an everyday occurrence. Sleep was a commodity more precious than money in her world. She rolled over to look at her alarm clock, squinting at the red numbers that hurt her darkness accustomed eyes. 2:35 am. She sighed and rolled back over to face away from the clock, tucking her arm under her pillow and head, enjoying the cold that she found there as her eyelids slid closed.
In her mind, images took shape of her favorite anime, Fairy Tail. She replayed the events of the latest manga over and over in her head, trying to catch the little clues that Hiro Mashima had littered the story with. She'd felt like an absolute idiot when she didn't figure out "E.N.D." was Natsu sooner. She usually prided herself on seeing things like that long before the author revealed them. Mentally she shook her head at herself. You're losing your edge, she thought. She squeezed her eyes closed once more and curled into more of a fetal position, feeling the beginnings of drowsiness in her limbs. She silently thanked whoever had been listening to her that night and relaxed a little, knowing sleep was on its way.
It seemed like only seconds before her body was claimed by glorious sleep. The next thing she knew something was poking at her arm. Painfully so. She brushed groggily at her arm, wondering if she'd fallen asleep on her phone or something. And where were her covers? She shivered as she reached down for the comforter, thinking she'd maybe kicked it off in her sleep. She didn't feel her sheets though. In fact, what she was laying on was spikey and poked her. And whatever was poking her was poking her arm that was exposed, so it wasn't her phone. She opened her eyes slightly, trying to distinguish what she was looking at before pushing her glasses back onto her nose, glad that she usually fell asleep with them on.
Green. Tons and tons of green. She blinked slowly. Her sheets were light blue, so why was she seeing bright green? She pushed herself up bit and looked down at what she was lying on. Grass. She was outside? How did she get outside? She had been in her bed, in her room, in her house.
She looked around a little more, finally noticing she wasn't alone. There were, in fact four people standing near her. With her sleep fogged eyes she only saw blobs for the moment. One was mostly red, one mostly blue, one mostly green and the other mostly dark with bright yellow hair. She pushed her glasses up onto her head for a moment and rubbed her eyes to clear away the crusties and hopefully refocus. When her glasses were firmly back on her nose she looked back up, seeing that person who was mostly dressed in dark blue had a stick in his hand and as she watched he poked her arm with it once more.
"OW! Hey, quit that!" she said, swiping angrily at the stick and glaring up at him. Why did he look familiar? She looked closer at him. Pinstriped shirt and a light blue skirt covering pants with a helmet and visor covering his face and head. Her eyes widened slightly and her eyes went to the belt buckle, looking for the mark that she knew would be there. The Fairy Tail guild mark. She smiled a bit as she recognized that this guy was cosplaying. "Nice cosplay," she said absentmindedly.
"Huh? Cosplay? Me? Nah not my thing. But there's a girl back at the guild that's really into it if that's your thing, toots," the man said, his tongue lolling out of his mouth as a huge grin split his face.
Damn the guy was good, he even had the tattoo on his tongue. She looked at the others, recognizing the rest of them almost instantly. All of their cosplay was really on point.
"Yea, sure, 'Bickslow'," she said with a snort.
Bickslow crouched and titled his head to the side as he pushed his visor up to get a better look at her. "How did you know my name?" he asked curiously.
Willow snorted again, "Oh come on. Fairy Tail is a very popular manga and anime. You can't honestly be surprised that someone recognized you?"
One of the other figures shifted in the corner of her vision and she looked up, focusing on the bright yellow of his hair and the scar that ran down the side of his face. He crossed his arms over his broad chest as he glared down at her, almost as if he hated her presence.
"What the hell is a 'manga'? Or an 'anime'? And why are you sleeping in the middle of our guilds training area?" Laxus asked her.
Willow looked around her, noticing for the first time that she was in fact in a field with training equipment. Her eyebrows drew together in confusion as she wondered yet again how she got here.
"Yo, toots! Focus would you?" Bickslow said, waving his hand in front of her face.
Willow pushed his hand away and looked back at the group, noticing that Freed and Evergreen were there as well. "How did I get here?" she asked quietly, fear rising inside her at the thought of having possibly been kidnapped. But why would these cosplayers kidnap her? It just didn't make sense.
Laxus raised an eyebrow, "You don't know how you got here? Seriously? You expect us to believe that you managed to get past all of the guilds defense lacrimas and you have no idea how you did it?"
Willow shook her head, her curly brown hair whipping gently at her face. "N-no," she said, a tremor in her voice from the fear and anxiety that was slowly making its way through her system. She noticed she was still in her night shirt that was, while huge on her, still barely made it to her mid-thigh. She squeaked gently and pulled the material farther down on her body, blushing hotly as she refused to meet their inquiring eyes.
Laxus sighed impatiently and grabbed her arm, dragging her to her feet and pulling her along after him. "I really don't care how you got here. I'll just let Gramps deal with you, we've got practice today," he growled as he stormed towards the huge building that loomed up in front of her.
"Ow, damn! Do you have to be so rough?" Willow whimpered as his hand squeezed tighter around her arm, all but bruising her. He was also a lot taller than she was so her arm was hoisted up at a weird angle.
"Might as well go along quietly," someone said from behind her and she turned her head to see that the rest of the Raijinshuu were following close behind. "He won't easy on you just because you're female," Freed continued, his eyes flat.
Willow looked to Evergreen, hoping maybe as a female she would take pity on her and say something to the big brute Laxus. But Evergreen had her fan up in front of her face and she was glaring at her as much as Laxus had been a few minutes before. Willow sighed and turned her head back to look up at the man, her pace almost a run to keep up with his long strides. He didn't even spare her a sideways glance as he continued into the guild.
She looked around her, taking in everything. Mirajane behind the counter. A pink haired Natsu fighting with Gray over near the other entrance. A red haired Erza eating cake at the counter as she talked with Lucy. Slowly, she was starting to realize, that maybe, just maybe, these weren't just cosplayers. This looked too realistic. Everyone was way too into their characters. Everyone looked too much like who they were supposed to be. And that's when it hit her. She was in Fiore. She was in the Fairy Tail guild hall and Laxus, THE Laxus was dragging her barely covered body up the stairs towards Master Makarov's office. She all but fainted.
Laxus pushed open the door to the Master's office and dragged her inside and all but threw her down in the chair in the corner of the room.
"Laxus! What is the meaning—Oh hello, and who might you be?" the short old man sitting on the desk popped up as his door had been thrown open.
"Master Makarov…" Willow said with some reverence. It was still slowly dawning on her that this was all very real. She gawked at the older man, her inner fangirl all but passed out from the happiness of where she was.
The Master looked at her quizzically before turning to his grandson and the Raijinshuu. "Laxus, do you care to explain why you decided to drag this poor young woman into my office in what seems to be her bed clothes?" the Master asked, his voice laced with a hard edge.
"I found her out in the training area, asleep. She won't tell me how she got past all the defenses we put up," Laxus stated as he crossed his arms over his chest, going back to glaring at her.
Willow yet again tugged at her too short nightshirt and stared at her very bare toes legs, unsure as to what answer she could give them.
"Master, even I could not detect what spell she used to let the lacrimas let her in," Freed stated as he followed the rest of the team in and shut the door quietly behind him.
Willow peaked up at the Rune mage from behind the curly brown shade that was her hair. She'd always found him handsome in the series and he was no less so in person. Unfortunately, he didn't even spare a glance her way.
"Even Freed couldn't detect your magic, eh?" Master Makarov asked quietly, turning back to look at her as he hopped down from his desk and walked closer to her. "Do you have anything to say for yourself young lady?"
Willow realized she'd not even tried to defend herself up until this point, her mind still in shock from waking up in a different place surrounded by characters from her favorite anime. "Master," she said timidly, "I'm sorry, but I'm just as shocked as you are to find myself where I am. When I went to sleep last night, I was in my own bed, I promise you. I have absolutely no idea how I got where I was. I can't even use magic so it's not like I used any on the lacrimas," she told him.
"That's a lie," Bickslow growled harshly, "I can see your soul, and I can see that you can use magic. Don't lie to the Master."
Willow flinched and recoiled back into her chair, shaking her head violently. "I promise you I can't. I wouldn't know how. There's no such thing as magic where I come from!" she denied vehemently.
"Where you come from? And just where is that exactly?" Master Makarov asked her gently, his hands behind his back as he stared at her curiously.
"A place called earth," Willow said staring at the wooden floor, "Earth is not the same thing as Earthland. Close, but not the same. It's. . .a different realm. There, Fairy Tail is just make believe, a fantasy dreamed up by somebody named Hiro Mashima. On Earth, that's reality. Magic doesn't exist along with Fairy Tail and everyone in it."