Drip, drip, drop…
Drip, drip, drop…
Drip, drip, drop…
As Gray Fullbuster lay completely naked on top of his bed, he stared up at the ceiling and listened to the rain outside. Normally, he found rain peaceful and had no issues sleeping through it. A growing sense of concern kept him from sleeping though, because it wasn't normal rain. It was hers. Gray wasn't sure what it was, but the longer he knew Juvia, the easier he could tell the difference between precipitation caused by weather and precipitation caused by Juvia.
He turned on the light and sat up, dangling his legs over the edge of the bed, and tried to think about what reasons the rain mage might have for being upset. Juvia normally only lost the ability to control the rain when she had some kind of acute emotion, like sadness or loneliness or even happiness.
The rain suddenly started to fall harder, and Gray felt a sense of alarm because it was falling so hard that Magnolia would undoubtedly flash flood, which put citizens and structures in danger since Magnolia's climate was mild enough that the city wasn't really built for the rain that was happening.
Most importantly, he knew something must have been wrong with Juvia. Gray decided that the only thing he could do was go out and look for Juvia to find out why she was upset and then try to calm her down. All he could remember was that she'd taken a really easy job the week before, but he didn't even know she was back in town until the rain started.
He grabbed an umbrella as he stepped out of his apartment and found it was raining so hard that he could barely see as far as the next few steps, and since the moon and stars were blocked out by thick storm clouds and a curtain of water all around him, it was extremely dark.
Gray just hoped she was in her room at the girls' dorms, because if she wasn't, he really didn't know where to look and visibility made a search near-impossible. Yet, as soon as he was a block away from his house, the rain dropped down to a light mist. He took a step back, and it poured again, making him believe that his apartment was in the middle of the torrential part of the downpour.
And then, a scream.
"Juvia!" he shouted as he ran back toward his apartment.
He found her not far from the steps that led to his apartment, laid out in the middle of the street as she held her midsection and cried as if very seriously wounded. Gray dove down next to her and dropped his umbrella before scooping her up and nearly shivering at the weird sensation he felt. It almost felt like he was close to something evil, like when Acnologia landed on Tenrou Island.
Instinct told him to drop Juvia and ran far and fast, but it was Juvia. Those weren't feelings he'd ever felt around her before, and was so confused.
When she screamed in pain, he dashed upstairs to his apartment and brought her into his home for the first time.
Juvia was crumpled up and in pain, and expecting horrible injuries, he carried her to his couch and put her down. "Gray-sama…" she managed to cry, "please h-help Juvia. Help me p-please…"
"What happened?" he asked as he looked for blood or bruises.
The skin that he could see wasn't at all blemished, but her eyes were dark – almost black – rather than being their normal shade of blue. She screamed and put her hands on her stomach and he tugged her shirt upward, expecting to find an injury there.
Instead, there was a strange black magic symbol on her body, and under it, he could see something moving under her skin. Her entire body swelled and something protruded outward over a foot, causing her to arch her back and wail in agony.
"What happened?!"
For over a minute, she seemed completely lost in the struggle against whatever was in there, and then suddenly became quiet and still. While he was certain that she wasn't dead, she looked so weak and pale, like the struggle was killing her.
Gray felt encouraged by the fact that whatever it was had ceased torturing her and hoped it either died or the spell wore off or the problem had somehow been resolved, although there was no avoiding a 2AM trip to the guild to wake up Makarov at that point as far as he was concerned. "Juvia, what happened to you?"
"Juvia's last job was a trap. Juvia can't talk about it," she whimpered in a voice that warned the subject was going to cause tears if he pushed her. "Gray-sama, Juvia is thirsty…"
"You just stay here. I'll be right back with some water, okay?"
In the time it took him to fill a glass with water and form several ice cubes using ice-make magic, Juvia stood up from his couch and wandered aimlessly to the window. She managed to stop the rain, but when her eyes drifted around the rest of the room, they became fixed on a letter opener that was left on his desk next to a pile of mail.
Her fingers gripped the curtains on the window when she felt the monster inside of her surge forth again and she stumbled over to the desk and grabbed the letter opener. She turned it inward and plunged it into the bulging protrusion, refusing to use water magic to negate the effects. The blade sank into her torso and it hurt so much that she couldn't even scream.
She just sank to the floor just as the sound of someone calling her name and a shattering glass were heard.
"Juvia! Juvia, what are you doing?"
The blood that was oozing out of the wound had ribbons of midnight blue mixed with red, but the creature inside of her pushed the letter opener out and the darker blood ceased to pour from the wound while Gray ripped his shirt off and pressed it against the wound.
He felt overwhelmed and completely unsure of what to do.
"Juvia can't fight anymore," she whispered in defeat as she slumped forward against his chest. "It's too strong. It's evil, and so powerful. Gray-sama, will you do something for Juvia?"
"Anything. Just tell me what I need to do. We'll go see Master. He'll know what to do."
The water mage who had fallen from him the first moment she met him said, "If you turn me to ice, it'll die."
Gray instantly rejected the idea. "If I turn your body into ice, you'll die too. I'm not going to do that."
Juvia reached up and put a bloody hand on his face. "You have to protect everyone from that thing. It will use Juvia's body to protect itself. Most magic can't hurt Juvia. Yours could kill with a single touch."
"I'm not doing it, Juvia," he indignantly said as he put his hand over her wound and froze it over to stop the bleeding. "We're going to the guild right now, okay?"
She looked up at him and he felt the creeping sense of power and malice again as her eyes went from being their natural shade of blue back to being black. "Juvia is sorry…"
Then Juvia went completely limp, slumping over into his arms, which cracked the ice over her wound. Since her body was different, he was scared to try and freeze the area more solid, so he took her back to the couch and ran to his bathroom for gauze and bandages.
A creak from the couch reached Gray's ears and he looked out the bathroom door to see Juvia stand up straight and examine her arms and hands, then her feet and clothing. She moved awkwardly, and tripped forward, all without blood dripping on the floor, as if the wound had closed on its own.
Then, there was this low, loud, and utterly terrifying growl that resonated from her for a split second before she cleared her throat.
A deceptively innocent, normal voice called, "Gray? Where are you?"
He stepped out with the gauze and bandages. "I just wanted to dress your wound a little better. Then we'll go see Makarov."
She smiled at him and said, "That won't be necessary. I feel quite well now. I guess I overpowered it, which is a relief. That was frightening."
The distinct lack of a '-sama' and proper implementation of first person communicated everything to Gray that Juvia couldn't at that point. The person before him looked like Juvia. Even her eyes were the right color and her slight smile was all Juvia. The voice was right and the facial expression even matched to some extent, but he knew.
The monster inside of Juvia's body had taken complete control of her.
There was a part of him that wanted to lash out and attack, but ultimately, he couldn't do anything to the monster without hurting Juvia. Stories about real possession were very rare even in a world filled with magic, and what he'd sensed made him feel like whatever had possessed Juvia was extremely powerful and extremely evil.
Juvia, who had all the faith in the world in Fairy Tail and in him, didn't believe he could fight and save her from it, and even said that he had to kill her to protect the guild. Those words gave him pause.
After taking the minute he had to make a choice, he chose to play along and not make any move at all until he'd spoken to Makarov about everything that he had seen that night. Gray was enough of a pragmatist to respect the fact that if he challenged whatever was in Juvia's body and lost, it would probably kill him and he had no idea how long it would take other people to realize Juvia wasn't Juvia anymore.
He was still standing there when 'Juvia' took her long gloves off and started to unbutton her shirt.
"Juvia?"
The shirt fell to the floor, exposing a smooth, bare back that was only interrupted by her bra strap.
Any doubts he had about whether or not Juvia was in control were laid to rest when that happened. Juvia was modest, shy, and the monster inside clearly didn't understand this side of her at all.
It had very, very wrongly assumed that Juvia's choice to go to Gray over everyone else and her words and love for him meant something that it did not. So when she turned and shot him seductive eyes, all he could think about how wrong and horrible it was. Because Juvia was like she was, Gray knew he couldn't go along with whatever the imposter planned on doing.
"You know I'm not interested, Juvia," he said, although he hoped Juvia – if she was still in there – couldn't hear him. They'd never had a conversation about their relationship and he honestly didn't know whether or not he was. But for that moment, it would keep whatever had possessed her of doing something that would only hurt Juvia more, so that was what he said.
His eyes drifted over her bra and then her flat stomach, where there was no magic symbol, no stab wound, and nothing but smooth, warm skin. Juvia didn't seem to have the ability of instantaneous healing on the rare occasions that her body was wounded, so this only gave him more reason to believe that Juvia wasn't Juvia.
"My shirt was bloody."
Gray replied, "I'll let you borrow one of mine. Are you sure you're all right?"
"I'm tired, but I'm okay now. I don't want Master to know that I got distracted on the way home and got into all this trouble. You see, I got off the train and went to see a traveling mage – you probably won't be able to find him – but he did this to me. I must have beaten the spell by resisting for so long," she answered, subtly rewriting the story that Juvia had told Gray.
Whatever happened to her happened during her last job, and considering that whatever it was tried to glaze over that fact, Gray knew that it was probably the only place he might find answers.
After 'Juvia' reassured him that she was fine and he promised not to tell anyone about anything he witnessed, he walked her back to the dorms and then went straight to the guild.
It was dark inside, and he quietly made his way to the little apartment that Makarov moved into in order to help ensure the guild wasn't empty at night.
"What? Who is it?!" he croaked when Gray knocked on the door.
"Something happened. Can I speak with you?"
Groaning and complaining were heard on the other side of the door, and Makarov appeared in a pair of blue pajamas and a nightcap. "What is it? Did someone get injured?"
The old man shuffled ahead of him to the main room and flipped on the lights. "Well?"
"Something bad happened to Juvia. Something really bad and I don't even really know how to explain it," he started as he went behind the bar and started looking for a piece of paper and a pen. "I saw a magic symbol and I want to write it down before I forget what it looked like."
Makarov hopped on a barstool. "Where is Juvia?"
"At the dorms. But, I don't think it's Juvia."
"What do you mean?"
As Gray recounted everything he'd seen, heard, and felt over the course of the short period between when the rain woke him up and when he saw Juvia enter the dorms, the guild master became increasingly worried. There were too many things about the story that set off too many alarms, the biggest of which was the fact that Gray could sense the evil emanating from Juvia's body at various points up until the end.
Around the time he finished, he showed the symbol to Makarov. "Do you know what this is?"
When the old man saw it, he took a deep breath and mumbled, "So she was the one…"
"What?"
"A long time ago, the ten saint wizards convened because there were reports of a cult that was buying orphans and doing things to them with magic. We attacked and what we found was horrifying. There were children that had been liquefied, and so many bodies. This cult had been trying to create some kind of container they called 'the Vessel.'"
"A container?"
"Yes, something that could hold some other living thing. We found records showing that they succeeded, but the Vessel somehow escaped from them. We never found anything that described the Vessel or gave us any clues about finding it. The cult sprung up again, but they were always searching for the Vessel. The fact that they didn't simply attempt to make a new one suggested that perhaps there was something inside of the Vessel that made it impossible to create a second one," Makarov said.
Gray said, "Liquified, turned into liquid…"
Makarov nodded. "That symbol that you drew was in their temple. Juvia is around the same age as the children that were there, and her body is very unique. Humans are not born made from water, so something happened to her that caused her to become like she is. Yet, it happened when it was so young, she doesn't know. I have suspected Juvia might be related to that mess since I first heard of her. Master Jose had the same suspicion."
There was a protracted silence while Makarov considered their options and Gray tried to process the events of the evening and the information that was presented to him. "So is she being controlled by someone else?"
"It's not that simple. Mind-control magic is banned, but it's not usually very powerful and it works in a different way. Juvia has that expansive space inside of her body. I think whatever is controlling her is probably physically located inside of her - that's why you could see it move. Normal spells won't break that bond, and if it has significantly more power than she does, trying to force it out with attack would kill Juvia," the old man answered.
It was really a terrifying proposition. Some creature had been physically put inside of Juvia's body and taken complete control of her. Considering that there was some chance that she was specifically altered with magic to accommodate whatever monster it was, even Makarov knew to play his cards carefully.
Whatever it was hadn't killed Gray even when he had the biggest chance of outing it, so Makarov decided the monster had some reason for playing nice. At the same time, an investigation into what was going on would be conspicuous and Makarov didn't want to send more powerful people away than was necessary.
Considering the interest the Council had back when they attacked the cult, Makarov knew the threat of their involvement was a serious threat too, and the cult itself was nothing to dismiss. Every aspect of what was happening carried danger.
"What do we do?" Gray asked.
"I don't know yet. Let me think for a while…"
And as Makarov and Gray tried to hammer out a plan, Juvia – or whatever was in control – stepped onto the windowsill of her open window and turned into water that flowed down the side of the dorms into a gelatinous clear puddle that moved across the grass. These were not abilities that Juvia had on her own, but they allowed the monster to travel without being seen.
The smell of human blood beckoned it to an alley not far from a bar where a man was sitting with a beer, cursing under his breath about a fight that he'd lost when a beautiful woman with blue hair appeared right in front of him.
"Hey there, honey," he drunkenly slurred.
Juvia's head tilted to the side and a vacant yet somehow despondent expression formed on her face. "I am hungry."
"Yeah? I got something you can put in your mouth."
She came a little closer and pulled her shirt up just as an enormous midnight blue-claw erupted from the flesh with a splash of Juvia's blood. The drunk screamed as loudly as he could, but by the time the barkeeper heard the noise, he was being pulled into Juvia's body through her stomach by the huge claw.
When the bartender stepped out into the alley, a wave of water was washing down the alley, erasing the blood and the traces that Juvia had even been there.
AN: Yep. It's been months. Hi everybody.