Usually, Natsu was more than eager to fight. Usually. For whatever reason, as he looked into the arena, he found himself feeling anxious. Even a little queasy, as if the whole building they were fighting in was on wheels. Something about the whole situation was off, but he couldn't even begin to say what. Nothing looked suspicious. There were no unusual smells. No one acted out of the ordinary. For no reason he could discern, Natsu simply felt something was wrong.

He glanced at Gray, waiting beside him at the arena's edge. The two of them had agreed to join the tournament last minute to pay off the fines they'd incurred destroying a pier. It was a small scale event with a modest reward for the victor, but they didn't need that much to pay the town back. Natsu had enough at home to pay his fines immediately. But Gray had claimed to be broke after having paid his rent earlier in the week, and the tournament was a team event. And paying for the damages with money from a quick, easy few rounds of purely for-fun fighting meant that his saving could be spent on food instead,

Gray glanced back at Natsu with a conspiratorial grin. They'd blown through the first three rounds of the tournament that morning, and lucked into the first match of round four. Whoever won the second match would have a much shorter resting time before fighting the two of them in the finals, giving them a good advantage. He looked confident. How annoying. Natsu was so certain that someone was wrong, but when Gray wore that smug grin, it seemed like he thought everything was smooth sailing.

"It looks like the twins are going to win," Gray said. "Whatever magic they're using, it clearly works better when they're in contact. We'll want to keep them on separate sides of the arena. You take the one in red spandex. I'll fight the one in blue. That way, we don't have to worry about our magic clashing with one another either."

"Sounds like a plan."

"Geeze. Coming to a fight like this in spandex. What weirdoes."

Gray had lost his shirt during the first round, and his pants in round three. Both were somewhere in the room, grabbed by some audience member or another. He wouldn't be able to get them back.

"You're not one to talk."

Gray put his hands down over his crotch to feel for his boxers and, should they be gone, protect his modesty. To his relief, he felt fabric.

"Well, anyway, I'm giving you the easier of the two to deal with. Don't screw this up."

"As if."

Natsu returned Gray's grin, even though his stomach twisted as he said it. Something was wrong. Something was really, really wrong and he had no idea what.

He still hadn't identified it when the match ended. The twins, as Gray predicted, had won. They were allowed a five minute break before their next match, and while the two of them drank and stretched and waved to the audience, Natsu and Gray climbed into the arena.

Gray grabbed the corner nearest where they sat and held on tight, signaling that he planned to keep his opponent on that side of the arena. Natsu nodded in understanding and leaned back, waiting for the twins break time to end so the fight could get underway. He wanted the match over with. Some primal instinct was making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and he wanted to run home and crawl under the covers and hide until whatever was bothering him vanished.

The twin's time ran out. The referee ushered them back up on stage, and the two settled into the corner opposite Natsu and Gray. They were, Natsu noticed, already holding hands. But their magic was short ranged. They would need to cross the arena to land a blow.

"Stay put," Natsu muttered. "I'll separate them when they charge at us and send the blue one your way."

"Alright."

The referee raised his hand. The match would begin in seconds. Natsu tensed, readied himself to spring…

And froze.

The referee swung his hand down, signaling the start of the match, and the twins charged at them.

Cursing, Natsu bolted forward. He wouldn't meet them right in the middle like he'd hoped. Something about his stance hadn't felt right, and his kick off into a dash wasn't as powerful as he wanted it to be, but he could worry about that later. For now, he just wanted the fight to be over with fast.

He kicked Red's arm up, then whirled around and slammed the same foot into Blue's back while, at the same time, grabbing Red and shoving him away. Their grip broke easily. From the sudden chill behind him, Gray created some manner if ice barrier to keep them apart. Natsu trusted him to handle the blue twin, and jumped after the red without a single glance back.

His next punch missed, as did the third. Red dodged his blows with a casual air that only made Natsu all the more frustrated with his inability to land another hit. The man was hardly taking a step back with each swing Natsu took.

"Did you really beat all the other competitors?" Red asked.

"Sure did. I'll beat you too."

"You couldn't beat a plywood wall, with that aim."

Considering he was in the tournament in the first place for breaking a lot of far sturdier wood, the insult itself had little impact on Natsu. Missing again, however, drew a frustrated growl from his throat.

"Hold still!"

"You must be joking."

Natsu lunged once more, and Red kicked out, knocking Natsu's feet out from under him. His attempt to catch himself failed, and he threw his hands out to break his fall. His palm hit the arena floor, and slid out from under him. Crashing completely to the floor, Natsu had only a moment to recover from his faceplant before he had to roll out of the way of an attack. He'd never identified an element that the twins used. They seemed to simply shoot waves of magic from their hands.

"Looks like your aim isn't so great either."

"As it stands, I have fewer misses from—"

Natsu kicked Red's legs out from under him before the man could finish talking, which he would have found to be satisfying payback, except that Red managed to steady himself after only stumbling a few feet.

Jumping back to his own feet, Natsu grabbed Red before he could ready another spell, cloaked his hands in flame, and pulled his arm back to punch.

Something felt wrong.

He froze, flame dispersing. Dread seizing his stomach. Something felt horribly wrong.

"If you're done—"

He punched, and faulted the lack of fire for the attack having no effect other than to startle his opponent out of his sentence. No matter. Up close as they were, there was no dodging. Natsu took in a quick gasp of air and spat flames at the man in a half-baked fire breath attack, then tossed him aside.

It was a small scale contest. All of the opponents had been small fry. When he glanced over at Gray, much to his annoyance, he was that his teammate was already finished with Blue.

"You took your sweet time."

"You took the easy one."

Gray raised an eyebrow, and Natsu remembered him saying that Red was weaker. Whatever. Red hadn't given him any challenge anyway.

They collected the prize money, split it, and counted out how much would go to paying for the damages for the job they'd finished the day before. Natsu gave his portion of the payment to Gray, who hopped on a train back to the port town to pay off their debt. With a bit of what was left, he stopped at a vendor's booth near the train station, buying meatballs for himself and Happy. The ride back to Magnolia would make him sick, but he'd missed lunch, and he felt tired. Whatever was still nagging at the back of his conscious, telling him something wasn't right, he thought that eating might make him feel better.

It didn't. It made him feel worse riding the train back, and at one point he had to open the window and stick his head out to vomit.

Just as he'd hoped, when he got back to Magnolia, he went straight home. Having lost the meatballs, he was hungry again, and cooked himself a fast dinner before washing off, crawling into bed, and falling asleep immediately.

-o-

When Natsu woke up the next morning, he felt fine. Everything felt fine. The horribly wrong feeling, whatever it was, had gone away.

He still had a little of the prize money. He decided he would buy takoyaki. Maybe, if Gray was back from repaying the town for the damage they'd done, he'd rub it in Gray's face that he had takoyaki and Gray didn't. It was going to be a good day. He could feel it, he was sure.

He could no longer feel anything off. It would be a while before he noticed anything was wrong again, and far too late before he realized that it was something wrong with himself.

-x-

STA: I guess Inhuman kind of gave Natsu a fair deal of attention, but other than that, I don't think I've really written a fic focusing on him before. I've only ever written fics giving heavy inclusion to any manner of manga protagonist before because when I want to write about Lucia, it's hard not to match him with Haru. I'm not sure why exactly, because this premise was originally going to be for a Stingue fic (based off a drawing I saw on pixiv of Sting crying, which I'd thought was an ideal size for a cover and came up with a premise that such an image would be a good match for, although I would never have screwed up the nerve to ask to use it). I decided on a whim to make it revolve around Natsu, and while it was going to be Nalu at that point, at the key moment where things were set in place for Nalu to be end game, I ended up writing in Gray's name instead. So... that happened. I've never really read Gratsu fics before and only started looking at art for it since starting this project. Hopefully that I don't have anyone to unconsciously mimic in how these two would interact romantically will help make this a fresh read.

Chapter one borders on being a prologue, so I'll have two up shortly. After that, updates will be at random. I have something other than an update schedule pushing me to keep writing, and I really don't like the time constraints of a schedule, so having a self imposed one seems a little silly. I'll try not to make anyone wait to long for an update, though.