Disclaimer- The author owes neither the rights to the Manga nor the Anime Fairy Tail nor the affiliated characters, plots, and ... stuff... There's a shitload of other things this author doesn't own but given the context hopefully the necessaries have been covered.
1. Rude Reminders
"I think now's the time we settle the dispute, once and for all." the view of the bazaar baking in the arid afternoon of a sandy town aptly named Sandy was suddenly obscured by a blue eye that filled the scope of Gray's sniper.
"Son of a -!"Gray exclaimed and tore his face back away from the scope, pulling the trigger accidently.
Schoop. Tattled the gun through the silencer.
About 600 hundred yards from where Gray lay on his gut over the dune of scalding sand covered in camouflage sheets down in the bazzar the fired shot hit a vegetable vendor square in the forehead toppling him over like a bowling pin. The Vendor's buyer screamed and tore off in a random direction, heads turned, minds worked and soon there was a panicked crowd stampeding itself right into the very thing it meant to avoid- the Danger Zone .
"ASSHOLE!" Gray burst out, incensed. His sniper laid before him, resting on the stand, its muzzle pointing at the azure skies..
"Right? I mean who screams and runs off like that? Hello, causes panic. Jeez, whatever happened to civil responsibility." Lyon observed from Gray's side with studied disdain. He was watching the chaos he helped trigger with the curious apathy of an adult surveying a toddler's playhouse.
"Fuck! You!" Gray had jumped to his feet.
"Oh don't get bent out of shape, you couldn't have made that shot anyway. Always a shitty shot, you were." Leon said dismissively.
"I could've because I was a shitty shot-"
"First step's admitting it." Leon encouraged.
"- but I improved because I did not spend 12 goddamn years of my life playing the sullen avenger!" Gray blared hotly.
"Wow." Leon said in a small voice, ashamed and hurt.
"I-I am sorry. I didn't mean it like that." Gray sighed, the ire deflating. It was below the belt and no matter what it was uncalled for.
"Yeah, me too." Leon offered sincerely, "I didn't mean to get the drop on you or anything, just didn't expect your situational awareness could deteriorate, anymore. "
Gray's brow twitched.
""Sure." Gray pulled a magnanimous smile that he did not feel, "And speaking of getting a drop on," He turned to his other side "How 'bout a goddamn warning THE NEXT TIME!" and kicked Natsu hard on the head , the only exposed part of his body, rest of it was buried under the sand.
There was a delirious wide grin carved on Natsu's face, tongue lolled out like a mutt's and not a drop of sweat on his face. And he was utterly, dead-to-the-world unconscious. The kick from Gray's boot rolled Natsu's head away but like a bobo doll it turned right back, still grinning that frozen, loon's grin.
"God, this guy's so baked I doubt he'd notice if a dragon farted in his face." Lyon said between chuckles. "What's his deal anyway? The heat?" he raised his brows enquiringly.
"It's the heat alright, but not the way you probably think it is." Gray hunkered down beside Natsu's head and extended a hand over his forehead. A moment later ice began crystallizing under Gray's palm and encased Natsu's head completly.
"What are you...?" Leon began.
Gray heaved himself up. "So what was it that you came here for? What score is it that you wish to settle right goddamn now?!"
"Well not right now, right now but..."
"Lyon, I had been sitting in this infernal heat for three hours, I have more sand in my lungs than I have air, all of which- and a shitload of other stuff during the past three weeks- I suffered to track a mark that you just spooked into god knows what other shit-hole. So when I ask you a question Answer it without any wise cracking."
Both faced the other in a standoff, Gray armed with his narrow eyed Do-you-get-it-or-do-you-need-extra-persuasion look and Lyon with hard eyed, crossarmed, haughty The-hell-do-you-think-you-are-talking-to-know-your-place-fuck-face look.
"Fine." Lyon finally relented.
And then there was silence...
Silence some more...
A little more...
And some more...
"What the fuck are you waiting for NOW?!Gray snapped feeling the blood rushing to his head.
"What?" Lyon asked bovinely. "You said when you ask a question." added with same innocence, his eyes, though, gleamed shrewdly.
"Lyon, I swear on my mother's grave!" Natsu's encased head had began twitching like a suspicious scorpion's tail.
"Alright, alright." There was a suppressed smirk in Lyon's words.
"What the hell is it that you wish to settle?!" thoroughly pissed, Gray hissed. "If it's about who's Ul's better apprentice-I bow out- it's you! Always been you!" Gray was breathing hard with exertion.
"A:" Lyon began calmly "that goes without saying" -Gray's eyes narrowed to deadly slits- "and B: No, that's not what I'm here for. What kind of idiot do you think I am?" Lyon scoffed ("The worst kind: a live idiot." Gray muttered.) "No, it's about something much more important." Lyon's face acquired a sagacious sort of sobriety which, despite himself, drew Gray to hear what Lyon had to spout. "Something that binds our fates together, something -"
"Hang on." Gray interrupted raising a stalling hand.
Down on the sand Natsu's head was thrashing now, aptly, like a fish in desert. His hands sprouted out of sand like spindles of a mantis and clawed viciously at the ice shell.
Gray pulled up his sniper and struck the shell with its butt end. The ice fell apart in great crooked shards and Natsu, purple faced, gasped out for oxygen. His thrashing had liberated him half from the sandy grave. Wheezing he turned murderous eyes at Gray who regarded him evenly.
"Gray, you ass-sucking-m*****f****g-son-of-a-w****- **%*-**&*#*-*!# $*-*^%*&**-** !#*-*#$*-** !&^$-****-" Natsu's string of expletives ran a few seconds long till he was once again gasping for breath.
"Wow, you Fairy guys have quite a vocabulary." Lyon acknowledged with a sordid wonderment. "I don't think I ever even heard those last four before."
"Alright, fire freak," Gray took no note of Lyon and addressed Natsu instead "if you're done choking on your tongue it's time to make yourself useful. The mark's escaped, go track him down." he issued the succinct order.
"Escaped? How the hell did he escape?!" Natsu croaked exhuming himself from the sand. "I practically served you the shitbag on a platter!"
"Never bother with the how, just figure out the 'where'. As in, where's the mark holed up." Gray tried to direct the dialogue along a productive channel. He was not at all in he mood to strike a row with Natsu, the heat and Lyon were all he strained to deal with.
"Fuck!" raged Natsu up on his feet now. He patted off the sand from his various cracks. "Your screw up cost me my vacation, Gray! You owe me big."
"Whatever." Gray grumbled.
"And speaking of shitbags on the loose, what's this one doing here?" Natsu jerked his chin at Lyon. He must not be terribly interested in the reply, for Natsu began cataloging items in his knapsack, shook the water canteen to hear the hollow, zipped the bag close and swung it over his shoulder.
"Nothing that concerns you, now off after the mark and contact me as soon as you-"
"I did it once flawlessly I can make that twice," Natsu stated with simple confidence looking at Gray with something akin to disappointment in his eyes. He was dressed in a grey vest and voluminous pants, with feet clad in simple sandals, Dressed unlike common folk to take refuge from elements but rather to welcome it. His odd attire and wild aura pinned an inexplicable intimidation to his countenance. " but you better keep your act together when I do because Fairy Tail's reputation on the line or not, you blow it again and I walk out. Later, bitches" And with that heartfelt farewell Natsu shot off towards the town without so much as disturbing a single grain of the sand; He was a tracker in a class of his own.
"Now with that interference sorted let's-"
"Of all the people on God's green Earth I was told off by the one guy who believes that the Earth is flat as a zombie's lifeline." Gray lamented hollowly.
"Yeah, yeah, I get that, I'm sorry you've-" Lyon was getting irritated being cut off.
"Not as sorry as you'd be if I figured my reputation was tainted for some machismo bullshit."
"Wha...? It's not machismo bullshit!" Lyon sounded affronted. "It's something that binds our fates, as I said before, something we should decide upon before the tide of time retreats leaving us on shore of misery- old men filled with regret." Lyon was just a syllable away from breaking into poetry.
Despite Lyon's verbose elucidation, Gray was genuinely baffled and he articulated his sentiments hence, "What the fuck are you on about?"
"Love, my good friend, the thrill that makes life an adventure; a high that never wavers; the privilege envied by the gods, for when eternity wears off and the buzzer on the timeless goes off, love will endure; the truth ; the wonder; the-"
"You mean this is about...?" Gray was feeling a little dazed.
"Juvia, yes" Lyon confirmed solemnly.
"...Juvia..." the word escaped Gray's lips as the incredulity of the whole thing hit him like a punch in the gut, knocking out the word.
"Yes, and in the light of past events and the sinister shadows cast by the uncertain future the picture of present we are presented is not promising, not promising at all..."
Lyon's words were shorn off by the high pitched whining that lanced through Gray's ear. The lightheaded feeling was swept away as his heart blasted blood into his head like a geyser. Outwardly, Gray gave no sign of the inner turmoil wrecking him.
"...and she is clearly tormented by the dilemma that prevents her from following her heart, which desires me, shackled by her loyalty to the Guild and you." Lyon was still at it, expatiating in most excruciating detail whatever he was expatiating. "So for her sake, and I must admit ours, we must decide among ourselves who should back away and who gets rescues her from the agony of choosing. Gray you with me?"
"Right here, buddy." Gray replied with a hideously satirical genial smile.
"Gray... are you... Did you understand what I said ?" For the first time since he began speaking Lyon seemed off-balance, less than confident and assertive.
"Ten four, good buddy." Gray replied.
Schoop. Schoop. Schoop.
"Ten goddamn four." The muzzle of Gray's sniper drooped down back into the sand from the low angle Gray raised it to shoot Lyon in the thigh. Lyon Instantly dropped like a sack of potatoes and rolled down the dune like a can of cola. And Gray watched it with quiet contentment.
The sun was a gaping hole in the azure sky, from beyond which the Light of His kingdom flooded in, and below which the sinful world singed at the Light's unblemished touch.
Burned, both in body and mind, and half-crazy with anger, Gray turned to look in the direction of the city to see the flashing sirens rolling his way. And then down back at Lyon, lying rolled up in his ridiculous blue cape and grey-silver apparel. He was already in the process of being assimilated into desert by the tireless wind trailing desert in its wake.
The temptation to let the sea of sand swallow his worries was sickly sweet but Gray abstained, more on instinct than any form of moral dilemma.
As Gray half-tumbled, half-skipped down the dune, muttering heavy expletives in hopes of diffusing his anger. he felt like a helpless peasant offering prayers of expletives to the Anger god in possession of his mind begging to reinstate the blessing of rational thought.
By the time screaming sires grew ardent Lyon was heaped on Gray's shoulder who waded through the desert. The wind had picked up impulsively, there was a sand storm on the horizon.
In the far corner of his mind a small, ancient part started as it registered the chain of circumstances something other than stupid and aggravating but as a rude reminder. Reminder of a truth he had lived and survived, But Gray was in no shape to consider and expound upon something that he felt as a small shiver down the spine, a soft echo in his mind.