Hello! I never intended to post this, but here I am! Note: The plot is not my idea. This is an adaptation of locoanime's The Phoenix. I have her permission to write this. I would definitely recommend reading the original, since hers is way better and I swear I'm gonna mess something up and have to rewrite a chapter.
Oh, and for the prologue, I imagined the characters looking like they did before X791, but the characters are taken from... I guess the year X787 (So Asuka is not as old as she in the X791 arc.) And quite honestly, reading the prologue is completely optional, since it has very little to do with the actual story.
Warning: Alternate Universe. The prologue is Tragedy.
Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail or the plot of this fanfiction. The former belongs to Hiro Mashima, and the latter to locoanime.
Last edit: 2/11/15
Prologue
"Down!" Alzack yelled, just as the shell exploded. The blast lit up the night, blazing against the stars, before fading into billows of smoke.
Sharp-edged pieces of brick rained down on him. He waited a couple seconds before rising back to his post. Then he pulled another round of bullets off his belt and tried to snap it to his gun. He fumbled with it for a moment, before giving up and tugging off his heavy gloves. He wiped the sweat off his hands before clicking the case of ammunition into place. He then replaced the thick leather on his hands.
He lined up his rifle, tossing his head to keep his long strands of jet black hair out of his eyes.
"Bisca, you alright?" he called, eyes fixed ahead. He heard no response.
Don't look, Alzack. Don't you dare look.
The dark haired man turned his head over his left shoulder. Bisca's section of the wall had completely collapsed. The girl herself was sprawled a little way aways from the wrecked stone. Alzack caught a glimpse of her signature green hair, before snapping his eyes back to his weapon.
He lined the gun up with the man crossing the field, and pulled the trigger. His vision blurred with water as he fired again and again. None of the shots landed on his target, who was running across the field.
"Quit it, you're wasting ammo!" A girl yelled behind him.
He turned around angrily and looked at Laki. Her lavender hair was tied up with a red velvet ribbon, unbefitting to the situation or the girl's personality.
She grabbed the rifle from him and gave him a little push.
"We're changing shifts, remember? Now who're we fighting this time?" she snapped, but her expression was soft and pained. She replaced her spectacles for protective glasses, and mouthed, "I'm sorry."
Alzack looked over at the girl he loved. Bisca had cuts and scrapes running all across her pale skin. Her neck was a an odd angle, and she wasn't moving. Alzack closed his eyes to save his own sanity.
Eyes still closed, he informed Laki that they were fighting the Angel army, then stumbled back to the Safehouse.
The Safehouse was by no means actually safe. It was simply more secure than the area outside it. It was a large, underground, bunker-like room, with a few flickering bare bulbs scattered across the hard-packed dirt ceiling. There was a storeroom of rations, and numerous cots around the edges. Some broken armchairs and barstools dotted any empty floor space. Brick pillars lay at regular intervals, each with a frightening number of cracks in them. It was home to the survival guild called Fairy Tail.
Alzack lowered himself into the room, and hopped off the aluminum ladder.
"Welcome back!" Wakaba called, before Nab hissed at him to be quiet.
"Asuka? Where is she?" Alzack asked quietly, eyes searching the dimly lit room. He had to make sure she was alright.
Wakaba pointed to the corner, indicating a little girl on the cot. "Sleeping. Did something happen?"
The westerner didn't respond; he just walked over to his daughter, kneeling down next to her. He rested his calloused hand on her rounded pink cheek and ran his thumb along the length of her eyebrow His breathing was heavy and his throat felt too tight to speak.
Everyone in the room was quiet.
Makao cleared his throat and spoke quietly. "The fighting will go away. Maybe not for a while, but some day. And wherever she's at, she'll see it, with a smile on her face. She'll be able to laugh again and Romeo you are not sneaking out to fight!"
His sentiment was ended angrily as Romeo, one foot on the ladder, froze.
There was a time when he would reply to his father just as angrily, but the boy had tried so often that all he could do was wait for the next opportunity.
"Why do you keep doing that?" Alzack heard the older man snap. Romeo replied quietly, and Alzack slowly stood up, carrying himself across the room until he was right next to the ladder.
An argument started to form between Makao and his son, and Alzack could only hope that Asuka wouldn't try to fight when she got older.
"I just want to join the army! We're winning, anyway!" Romeo finally whined.
"That's a lie." Alzack said, his voice barely above a whisper. The other adults in the room looked at him, either surprised or angry, but he wasn't finished. "There's no grand army like your father's been telling you. It's a wasteland up there. We have an alliance with armies and survival guilds all across Fiore, and we have just over a hundred people. The only Fairy Tail members fighting up there are Laki and Max and Droy. And the sad part is, the war is evenly matched. The six armies or Oración Seis are just as depleted as we are. And the two sides will just keep on fighting each other until everyone is dead."
In the dim light, Alzack could see the boy's wide, glistening eyes. He felt a bit ashamed. He knew that his speech was a bit excessive, but he couldn't let the boy think otherwise. It would get him killed.
Kinana pressed a small glass in his hand. It felt cool against his palm, and was filled with amber liquid. "You look like you need this." She whispered gently. She tossed a dry cookie to Romeo, and quietly walked back to the rations cupboard.
Alzack looked at the glass. The drink had little ripples on the surface from his shaking hand. He murmured an apology to Romeo, and sat down on the nearest makeshift bed. After a moment's hesitation, he took a sip of the drink.
Kinana muttered something unintelligible.
"Little louder?" Wakaba prompted.
The violet haired woman shifted her weight from one foot to the other, then back again, as if she couldn't decide. She cleared her throat. "Well, Master, you could use the book." She looked around, silently asking permission to continue. "If it really is as bad as Alzack says, I don't see why not. We're almost out of food, anyway."
Under different circumstances, Alzack might have laughed at the mock-betrayed look on Wakaba's face. "You told the amnesiac girl about a secret book but didn't tell me?"
Makao chuckled. "Had to get her to trust me somehow." he took a deep breath, "There's a spell. I'm not exactly sure how to do it, but in a nutshell, it fixes the world."
"You're trying to say magic is real?" Nab asked.
"I guess I am. The spell will basically recreate the world. It'll be pretty damn close to perfect for a while, but it's temporary. Not sure how long it'll last, and I really have no idea what'll happen." Makao explained. "Everyone will have to be above ground, though. Otherwise it'll collapse on us."
"It's a sorta renewal program. A backup." Kinana added helpfully.
It sounded like the ideal solution. Just say a few words and everything gets fixed.
"Good idea." Romeo said, nodding his head in approval.
Makao cracked a small smile. "I'm not doing it unless it's unanimous."
The other people in the room slowly agreed. Nab was a bit skeptical, but hopeful. Jet wanted to end the fighting before something happened to his best friend, who was fighting just outside. Reedus was all for it. An optimistic Wakaba joked around, saying that even if it didn't work, he would get a kick out of seeing Makao try to do a spell. (Much to the Master's chagrin, Wakaba revealed that Makao had once ended up drenched, covered with feathers, and had egg in his hair in an attempt to complete a magic show.)
The members of Fairy Tail turned to look at Alzack. He had finished half his drink, and was in a slightly better mood. Maybe it was his peers' hope rubbing off on him. "We'd better get out there before there's nothing to fix."
Everyone cheered, albeit some halfheartedly. Kinana grabbed a dusty tome from the storage, and filed out of the Safehouse.
Alzack carried his daughter up the shaky ladder. The group had to stay low to keep from getting hurt. They carefully crouched behind a charred half-wall. Even so, a bullet cut a shallow line into Jet's shoulder. A gunshot woke up Asuka.
"Papa? Where's Mama? Where are we?" she asked, rubbing her eyes with tiny fists.
"We're outside," Alzack replied, "You've never been out here before." He intentionally ignored her previous question.
Makao flipped the book to the right page. He took a deep breath, then faltered.
"This is the end of an age, isn't it?" Romeo asked, looking around. He was terrified; the world wasn't like he'd thought it was. Alzack knew that Makao's son was younger than Asuka when he'd gone into the Safehouse, and hadn't come out since.
Kinana laughed, a sound lacking the mirth it usually carried. "I can't even remember much of it. What's the point in seeing the turn of an age if you can't remember the old one?"
Asuka laid a tiny hand on the older girl's slender palm. The violet haired woman sighed, and thanked the two-year-old.
"I guess this is it." Even Wakaba was apprehensive.
Fairy Tail prepared for the best and the worst, as Makao began to chant.
So, what do you think? If it wasn't clear, this is very AU. Fairy Tail is not a magic guild, it's a group of people trying to survive a war.
Like? Hate? Please review, and I'll get back to you with the next chapter. ;)