Author's Note:

A resurrection of an old story of mine.

Main story begins at Tenrou Island arc. Will contain both homo/heterosexual relationships with OC.

Chapter 1: The Sixth S-Class Mage of Fairy Tail

Spell - a set of words or sort of demand, spoken or unspoken, meant to invoke some magical effect.

Thief - someone who takes another person's possession without his or her consent, and with the intent to deprive its rightful owner of it.

Spellthief - a thief of magic. A forbidden title. Ancient Magic.

Lucy

There was a collision of two trays of food followed by two simultaneous, equally exasperated growls. Lucy rolled her eyes even before she heard Gray's annoyed voice shout:

"Oi! Watch where you're going, numb-skull!"

"Don't blame this on me, you droopy-eyed idiot! Why'd ya just spin around like that?"

Here we go again, thought Lucy as Gray and Natsu began fighting, their loud, undignified insults quickly blending into a joint, ambient noise. She heaved a sigh and stretched out over the bar counter she was seated by, face aimed downwards. Abruptly, she realized how fast she had become immune and well-too accustomed to the two's frequent bickering. She could practically foresee them ten minutes in advance by now and plan their occurrences thenceforth.

"Ugh," Lucy breathed against the smooth, polished wooden counter and rubbed the nape of her neck. She mercifully allowed her eyelids to slid shut and hoped to unwind her tense muscles with some massage. Faintly, she felt the air split above her, a soft breeze pushing down lightly on her exposed shoulders, and guessed that a poor chair had been thrown across the guild hall. Her suspicions were soon confirmed when she heard wood ungracefully slam into wood and attract another angry pair of voices into the quarrel.

I can't believe how those two still have enough energy to fight after all that, she dryly commented. Lucy hadn't slept all too good that night, or at least not according to her body, and she surmised that she was yet suffering from the aftermath of what had happened at the Tower of Heaven and the guild war against Phantom Lord. That clearly wasn't the case with her teammates and she was both annoyed and relieved with the prospect that she was weaker than them. Obviously, her own weakness was something of an eyesore, but now she knew that she could at least trust the guys and Erza when the situation called for it. Speaking of Erza...

"Where's Erza when you need her?" Lucy muttered as the volume from the brawl increased. The number of fighters had most likely increased from the original two.

"Is everything alright, Lucy?"

Lucy hastily raised her chin and stiffly nodded. "Uh, yeah," she answered and mustered a weak smile. "I'm fine. Thank you, Mirajane."

The white-haired woman gave Lucy a warm, genuine smile in reply. "You'd think Natsu and Gray would run out of reasons to argue sometime."

"My wish," grumbled Lucy in dismay, although she couldn't stop herself from grinning. Even though the Ice-Make Mage and the Fire Dragon Slayer fought over the most juvenile of things, she had eventually come to realize that it was their way of brotherly bonding.

Lucy glanced over her shoulder, a smile yet lingering on her lips, but she immediately shrieked and ducked as a plate flew her way. The dirty dish hit the wall with a clatter and smashed into a dozen pieces that scattered as they fell to the floorboards. A half-eaten, now mashed potato stuck stubbornly to the wall and Mirajane, patiently and ever smiling, began cleaning up the artwork with a clean towel that she acquired from beneath a counter.

"Hey!" Lucy roared over the commotion and stomped her right foot into the floor, her hands curling into small, angry fists at her sides. "I'm trying to relax here!"

"Indeed," agreed Cana from the other side of the spacious hall, a large wine cask cradled in her arms as if it were her dearest and most prized possession. "Hard to do with all this noise."

"Are you already getting drunk?" exclaimed Lucy and resisted the urge to slap herself in the forehead. "Don't you have any self-restraints?" she added, a little quieter of course, and mostly for herself. "It's barely midday."

"I heard that!"

Lucy blushed in embarrassment but before she could make amends, Natsu's voice pierced through the chaos.

"Wait, is it already twelve o'clock?"

"Yeah, how so?" Lucy asked bemusedly, her brows arching. Her brown eyes quickly scanned the messy hall until they found Natsu's dark orbs. They glittered with unadulterated excitement, something that instantly piqued her curiosity. He opened his mouth to speak but was brutally silenced as Gray took the opportunity to punch Natsu straight across the jaw.

"Don't go looking the other way in a fight, you cocky bastard," Gray triumphantly proclaimed as he smirked. As per usual, he sported nothing more than a set of hard abs and a pair of boxer shorts. He wasn't even wearing shoes.

"It's manly to look the other way!" Elfman decided and charged for the Ice-Make Mage who deftly sidestepped the much bulkier man's advance and launched a counterattack.

Natsu stumbled a couple of awkward steps in the direction of Gray's powerful strike but other than that, he didn't seem even the slightest fazed by the harsh collision of his face and Gray's hardened knuckles. The pink-haired mage simply straightened and found Lucy's gaze again, sending her a broad, mischievous grin. Lucy, on the other hand, could feel the force of the hit even as a mere observant and grimaced: were all the males in Fairy Tail nothing more than over-buffed morons?

"Master said Asher'd be back by today at midday!" Natsu cheerfully said and clamped his fists together, igniting an aura of fire around him. Something sinister yet playful glinted in his intense, dark eyes as he went on, "And when he comes, I'll beat his sorry ass and finally be able to prove to everyone that I'm an S-class Mage! Gah, I'm so fired up!"

Asher?

Natsu dove back into the fray without further ado. Lucy asked herself if she had heard the name before, but it sounded unfamiliar even as she whispered it aloud, albeit under her breath. It was an odd name and not very usual in Fiore; she wouldn't have been able to simply forget it, especially not if it belonged to an S-class Wizard of Fairy Tail.

Hmm, she pondered as she placed a manicured finger against her chin. Natsu is really strong. Maybe...

Her thoughtful expression was quickly replaced with a depressed look of resignation as she remembered Galuna Island and the S-class Quest that had brought her there. The assignment would have been impossible to complete without Erza's reluctant assistance, even though both Natsu and Gray had been there. A shiver ran down Lucy's spine as she tried to imagine how things would have progressed without one of Fairy Tail's best mages—not too well, she was ascertain.

Lucy shook her head and exhaled. No, she told herself as she watched Natsu fling Gray over his shoulder and wrestle with him on the ground. Both grunted with pain and exertion. Even though he's powerful—he took that hit without even blinking!—he won't be able to beat an S-class Mage. No matter who this "Asher" guy is. And considering how scary and crazy strong Erza is, I bet Asher is just as monstrously terrifying.

The vague, tiny silhouette of a person gradually grew larger as it slowly approached the wide open doorway. At first, Lucy took no special note of the figure, the blurry presence merely apparent in her peripheral vision, but as Natsu suddenly froze mid-swing, sniffed the air and turned towards the entrance of Fairy Tail's recently renovated guild house, Lucy followed her rowdy, pink-haired friend's line of sight and focused on the nearing stranger as well. To her surprise, the rest of the guild members ceased their quarreling and even Cana lazily turned to face the door. The atmosphere was quivering with eager anticipation and for the first time since Lucy's initial arrival, Fairy Tail plunged into a rare and gravely uncharacteristic state of quietude and calm.

They're all waiting, noted Lucy in anxiousness. How horrifying can Asher be?

Her imagination conjured up at least a thousand different faces, personalities and magic types, molding this unknown S-class Mage into everything from a man of cryptic personage—such as Mystogan—to someone as eccentric and ferocious as Erza, until she was brought out of her brooding by Natsu's enthusiastic tone.

"He's here."

When the person finally arrived, he appeared an extremely slim, almost gaunt man of average height with a silvery crown of short, disheveled hair that embraced his skull. His long, fragile legs were wrapped in black, fitted jeans and his sure to be even scrawnier torso looked like it was being swallowed by a beige, oversized cardigan with sleeves far too extended for fashion. Beneath his cardigan, he wore a very wrinkly, crispy white button shirt with a burgundy necktie fastened loosely around his thin neck. His feet were adorned by a simple pair of black, well-worn combat boots.

Everything about him was narrow, flat and dangerously undernourished. Lucy couldn't spot his guild tattoo no matter how hard she searched and reckoned it was hiding somewhere beneath his clothes. With his pale, unmarred complexion and sharp, boyish features, the newcomer looked younger even than her meager seventeen years, although Lucy was quick to assume he probably was of the same age.

As she finished with the survey of the man, her eyes widened in shock and she shuddered involuntarily. Lucy knew that she would never be able to forget the impression she received from Asher's mere appearance. And that wasn't solely because he looked and felt so... weak, both physically and judging by his magical aura, but primarily due to his strange, unnatural eyes.

She had never met someone with one eye so purely cerulean, and one eye so crimson it reminded her of blood.

The male halted just at the threshold of the guild and craned his neck to look upwards. Lucy perceived a low mutter from his throat before he lowered his gaze again. The dark crescents beneath his large eyes and the deep hollows in his cheeks made him look haggard and thoroughly exhausted although Lucy guessed it only was an effect of the man's severe skinniness.

The stranger strolled leisurely into the guild's main hall with his hands buried deep within his pockets and his odd pair of eyes continuously scanning his environment. He emitted an emotionless aura of serenity and maneuvered himself with an air of gracefulness, something that matched somewhat poorly with his thin, gangly arms and legs. And not too surprisingly, Natsu decided to stop the silver-haired guy halfway to the bar.

"Fight me, Ash," the Fire Dragon Slayer uttered in a, none too surprising, challenging tone. "Come on, I'll let you strike first."

Chapped, thin lips lined above a pointy chin tugged into a displeased frown. "No," the silver-haired male replied flatly and dismissed Natsu with a hand cloaked in fabric. "Where's Master?"

"Upstairs," chirped Mirajane as she gestured toward the staircase.

Lucy let out a breath of relief as Asher strode past the Fire Dragon Slayer, aiming his steps towards the staircase leading up. Even though the former was noticeably taller, she could barely hint a muscle on the stranger. Meanwhile, her loud friend brawled every other day and weighed at least twenty-five pounds more. Lucy was ascertain Asher would snap like a twig in a fight with the pink-haired madman and she did definitely not want to see such a gruesome spectacle.

"Come on!" taunted Natsu with a wide grin. "I'll show you how much stronger I've gotten since last we fought! I'm probably even strong enough to take you down!"

"Where's Happy?" wondered the silver-haired mage abruptly over his right shoulder, his voice remaining monotonous.

"Gone fishing," grunted the Fire Dragon Slayer and averted his gaze. Lucy giggled; she knew they had argued about something that morning.

Asher said nothing more but continued walking. Frustrated with the lack of response, Natsu balled his hands into fiery fists and lunged towards the S-Class Mage's back with a fierce roar and a lop-sided grin.

"Guess I'll punch you first then!"

"Don't!"

Lucy hadn't even realized the word came from her throat until it rang in her ears. But it mattered little; before Lucy had been able to shout at Natsu to abstain from harming the awfully delicate-looking, silver-haired wizard, the Fire Dragon Slayer's flames, a fire so hot it could burn anything, were extinguished without a sound. Natsu didn't seem to notice but continued his advance, raising his right fist in level with Asher's chin. Lucy feared to look, dreading that the worst would happen, and simply closed her eyes as she awaited the sound of a crunching jaw... only, it never occurred.

Peeling open her eyelids, Lucy saw Asher continue towards the stairs and Natsu lay sprawled across the floor with his eyes glazed over. The resemblance of a boot's heel was deeply imprinted into his left cheek and looked so comical, it brought a laughed out of her.

He might not be as scary-looking as Erza, Lucy thought with a smile as she watched Natsu regain consciousness and gingerly rub his cheek, but he sure is strong.

"Got what you were looking for?" she teased Natsu. "You won't be able to beat an S-Class Mage with nothing but your fists, you moron. What happened to your flames? Ran out of fuel?"

To her surprise, Natsu seemed deep in thought. His dark eyes carried an uncharacteristic glimmer of distress and he looked down at his hands as he rose.

"Yeah," he murmured, furrowing his brows. "Something like that."