An AU story starring Natsu and Lucy with other familiar characters out of the FT universe making guest appearances, no magic, no dragons, thriller

When every day is a struggle to survive and all you have ever known is running and hiding, the one thing you cannot stop dreaming about is for the hunt to end, one way or the other.

Born through fire

intro

If Igneel Dragneel had to be honest he had to admit pulling the note down from the noticeboard that faithful day all those years ago was the dumbest thing he could ever have done. But when you are a poor 19-year-old college student who has the world ahead of you and are not used to spending a second thought on your own immortality… Well, then 500 bucks a week for letting some white collars' inject you with a trial run for a performance-enhancing drug did not sound too bad. It meant that he could stop his night job at the bakery and still pay rent. Hell it might even help his studies if he were lucky.

The project went on during one whole semester and if he had been left in charge it would have kept on going during his whole degree, all he had to do was to head to the address written on the black-board note once a week, offer his right arm for the needle injecting and answer a few, in his thought weird questions, such as trying to guess what card his interviewer was holding up and what he was thinking. At first Igneel was convinced they were messing with him but hey, 500 dollars was a smaller fortune and if they were happy giving him that kind of money for lending them his arm and an hour a week of his time he was not going to complain about it.

At the end of that semester however, something happened that made him wonder what chemical formula the transparent liquid they kept injecting him with actually consisted of. When he was once again asked to figure out what the man in front of him was thinking, the idea of ice-cream suddenly popped into his head and once he had caught that first hint more sensations and images started flooding his mind. He could taste the soft vanilla flavour and he could feel the sun burning on his bare skin, he was lying down on the beach and a young girl entered his mind, she was dressed in an older style white blouse and a matching skirt and even though her facial features remained clouded he could see golden shimmering blond hair glitter in the sunlight. He could feel himself smiling and asking the girl where she had been.

Naturally, Igneel freaked out, he jumped out of the chair he had sat on and rubbed his palms against his eyes, reversing away from the smiling man in front of him. The man left his own chair and moved towards Igneel but the younger man pushed him away, growling at the well-groomed man in the black suit to stay away from him, clawing his eyes to make the disturbing images go away: this was impossible; telepathy did not exist for heaven's sake. This could not be happening to him. He got up on his feet and ran. He ran and he did not stop running until he stood in front of his old studio flat. The young man with the flamingly red hair and rather lanky physique unlocked his apartment with shaky hands and headed straight for the bathroom, suddenly extremely nauseous. He fell on his knees, obeying his protesting stomach in its demanding desire to turn itself inside out and passed out: lying in the middle of his own vomit he stayed that way through the whole day.

A/N: So this was a small appetizer to set the scene, from the next chapter the story will follow Natsu and Lucy so bear with me until then. In the meantime, let me know what you think?

Once again, lots of thanks to The Evil Stick for helping me proof read my material and rid my stories of the worst blunders before it goes out to you my read readers. Hm, come to think about it, what if the Evil Stick isn't so evil after all? (just don't tell 'it' that I wrote this, I will be forever cursed then...)

And as always: All the cred for creating the wonderful FT universe and all its inhabitants goes to Hiro Mashima, I own nothing and I am only doing this for fun.