"Lucy."
Her partner.
"Team Natsu and I have agreed on something."
She knew what it was. She was a writer and she could use context clues.
"We're kicking you off the team."
That didn't make it any easier.
At this moment, the blonde was sitting at the bar, drinking a strawberry milkshake. When he talked to her, the whole guild went quiet in anticipation and she stopped drinking her milkshake.
"Okay! I'll just take a job, then!" She said in a cheerful tone which she knew was fake.
Natsu stood there in shock as she spun on the bar stool and went to the request board, flipping through the requests to find one she liked. After a while of flipping through requests, Lucy plucked one off the board and gave it to Fairy Tail's resident barmaid, Mira, to check it off.
The silvette looked at Lucy weirdly, but checked off the request and gave it back to the celestial Mage. "Thank you Mira!" Lucy shouted, waving as she left the guild hall.
Natsu just stood there with a weird face. "Huh."
Lucy was in the train, crying her heart out. It kind of surprised her that she still had tears left after the childhood she went through. After a few hours of nonstop crying, she reached her job destination.
The location was a small town, smaller than Magnolia, and there seemed to be no magic guilds, or any big enough to be seen from the train station.
The job request told her that there was a monster present in the forest, and they wanted it killed just in case.
She trekked to the thick forest and heard a rumbling. Her eyes widened at the thought that this might be the monster from the job request.
She broke into a run towards the rumbling, and didn't expect to find what she found.
In front of her, was a sleeping, golden dragon.
Lucy could feel its hot breath as it slowly awoke. She tried to run, but she was frozen in place. It peeked one green eye open, and then the other.
It raised its head with its long neck and stared at Lucy. (Who was still frozen in fear, no less!)
And then, it smiled.
It. Freaking. Smiled.
Lucy let out a small, "Meep!"
It giggled. "I won't hurt you! Actually I haven't seen a human in a very long time!" It started laughing hysterically for no reason.
"What brings you here?" It said, seriously this time.
"Oh!" Lucy said, not afraid anymore, "There was a job request at my guild and I took it, so now I'm here!" She smiled.
"Why are you here alone?" It asked, worried.
"I was kicked out of my team, I'm guessing because I'm weak." She replied. The dragon gave her a worried look. It brightened up almost immediately.
"Hm?" Lucy looked up at the now happy dragon.
It giggled again. "I'm Mentaru, the Insanity dragon! But, you can call me Papa, Pops, Dad, or whatever you wish." Lucy looked up at him with the brightest smile she smiled since joining Fairy Tail.
"So I'm going to be a dragon slayer?" Lucy asked.
"Yup!" The golden dragon said, laughing like the insane dragon he was.
"Like this?" Lucy asked Mentaru, who she now called Papa.
Right now Mentaru was teaching Lucy how to channel her power in a different way than she normally did, because since Celestial Magic was a holder magic, it worked in a different way than dragon magic.
"No, you gotta put your magic in your core, and channel it through every part of your body." Mentaru said.
This time, Lucy put her magic in her core, instead of her hands, and felt it running through her like a stream.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on the magic. Unknown to her, everything around her started doing weird things.
The trees bent in weird ways, the grass grew unnaturally tall, and other weird occurrences happened.
After a while, Lucy started to sweat. It was hard for her to put the magic that usually resided in her hands into her whole body.
It took a few minutes of rigorous training, but Lucy eventually got her magic to move from where it originally was, her hands, to where a dragon slayer's was, her core.
"Well!" Mentaru said, laughing hysterically as usual, "LUCY GO GET ME SOME COKE!"
She stared at him as a result of his sudden mood change.
"WHY COKE!?"
"BECAUSE I LIKE COKE!"
That was the start of Lucy's training with a psyco dragon.
At Fairy Tail,
1 week later,
Natsu was worried. Like, REALLY worried. Lucy had been gone for a week now, and after checking with Mira, the job should've been finished within three days.
It's not like he didn't like Lucy, really, he did, but being his clueless self, he didn't notice that his words hurt her.
As of now, the fire wizard had his face down on the bar. He even ignored Gray's insults. He kept telling himself 'it's your fault Lucy is dead!', firmly believing she was.
During the week since Lucy left, after he was convinced that she died of his own accord, he realized that he liked her. Not like he was with Happy, but more. A thousand times more.
He missed her smile, most of all.
But now, he was curious more than ever about the girl.
Like how her lips felt.
With Lucy and Mentaru,
Seven years later,
"LUCY RESTOCK MY COKE!"