Hello and welcome to my first Fairy Tail fan fiction :)
I wrote this for a little contest, at least the first half
The second half kind of turned out a little.. nerdy..^^
I hope you enjoy it anyway :D
Disclaimer: Fairy Tail belongs to Hiro Mashima
Prologue
Dreamily, I stared out of the windows of the train at the foreign landscape rushing by. It was so strange. Ever since I first stepped foot on the land of Fiore, it was like stepping into a completely new world.
It seemed like the grass was greener, the air was fresh and clean, the sea was deep blue, the houses, the animals and even the people were looking differently, so colorful and friendly. The land felt like it was overflowing with life and power I didn't know, it was soaked in magic.
Only thinking about this new world, where I could learn so many things, made my skin tickle with excitement and my heart beat faster when I finally saw the beautiful houses rising in the distance.
A loud voice ran through the train and took my breath away: "Next Stop: Magnolia!"
On a magic study trip
So here I finally was, in Magnolia. No city were tourists visit often. It wasn't really big, there were no remarkable sights or things to do. Yet I heard stories about it, about the Magnolia seven years ago. It had been infamous, known in whole Fiore, and thousands of visitors came here every year to see the huge festival Fantasia held by the resident magician guild, once known as the strongest. Fairy Tail.
That's what stood in old shabby wooden letters on the run down building at the edge of the city.
In Halijon I told some people I wanted to learn something about magic and they proposed me almost hysterically all the great guilds I could visit. They told me about Lamia Scale, Blue Pegasus and Sabertooth, but when I asked about Fairy Tail their smiles faded and they shook their heads.
For someone who wants to learn about great magic and meet strong wizards, that's the least place to go to. But I couldn't believe it. I didn't want to. How could a guild which was once loved and feared both like none other fall so deep and almost disappear?
But there was the proof, right before my eyes. Usually, a run down building is a sign for a just as run down guild. As I was already thinking about heading back to search for a hotel, I heard some noise coming from inside the guild. People were screaming and shouting at each other, there seamed to be a fight.
Every normal person would have left immediately before being dragged in, but I was too curious unfortunately, so I peeped inside and forgot to breathe. There were tables and chairs flying around, a totally drunken, half naked woman threw empty sake barrels around, in a frozen corner a stark naked guy was running after a silver haired muscleman waving with boxers and somewhere else an enchained pink haired guy seemed to be caught in some SM scenario with a red haired dominatrix.
All in all, I was feeling like I totally didn't belong here. Now would have been the time to sneak away solemnly, but it was already too late. I've already been sighted.
"Who are you?"
Before I realized it, a beautiful woman with silver hair and a long red dress was standing in front of me and smiled.
"Uhm.. I'm just a tourist coming by.."
The girl didn't stop smiling.
"Oh, nice, why don't you come in for a drink?"
I was looking at the scenery and wondered whether it was more a battlefield or a real weird porn.
"Uhm.. I don't.."
Before I could finish my not existing excuse, the girl's head was hit by a barrel and she fell to the ground.
"Oh my god! Are you okay?!"
I bowed down without knowing what to do. She was actually still smiling. This was all just too weird.
"Oh I'm fine, I'm fine."
I helped her up dumbfounded. On her head was a huge lump, but she didn't seem to care and smiled on.
"What.. what's going on here?"
"Oh nothing. Natsu just ate Erza's strawberry cake and it kind of escalated again."
My jaw flapped open. All this just because of a strawberry cake?!
"But it's fun, don't you agree?"
Fun? Ok, now I slowly was understanding why people warned me to go here.
"If you say so."
Seeing that I had no chance to slip out and also being slightly captivated by interest in this bunch of weirdos, I followed the girl by the name Mirajane to the bar.
There I found two other girls, a blond and a blue haired, looking pretty stressed out.
"How could he be so stupid and eat Erza's cake? Lu-chan, you really should keep a closer eye on him!", the blue haired scolded the blond.
She sighed and shrugged.
"I don't think you're in the position to say that, Levy, when I look at Gajeel nibbling the pipelines."
The blue haired girl, apparently going by the name Levy, startled, looked around panicking and then ran to some black haired guy, over and over littered with piercings, who was really having some iron pipes between his teeth.
My brain was fighting with a weirdness overflow, this couldn't be real. I had to be dreaming. In this situation there was only one thing helping me out.
"Can I have some beer, please?"
Mirajane smiled at me frozen.
"We have no beer."
Noooo, it was getting worse with every second.
"Then wine..?"
She shook her head, without forgetting to smile of course.
"We only have Sake and Cana just drunk the last barrel."
My head crushed on the counter and I was thinking about crying. No beer, where did I end up?
Where I came from, this was a legit reason for suicide.
Suddenly I felt a hand patting my shoulder.
"Hey, cheer up."
The blond girl from before was smiling at me and held out her hand.
"I'm Lucy and who are you?"
I looked up to her and shook her hand.
"I'm Diana."
We exchanged instruction verbiage until she asked me what I was doing here.
"Well.. I actually came here.. to study magic."
She raised her eyebrows in surprise and started laughing.
"I see, and that's not quite what you expected a guild to be like, right?"
I shrugged and nodded looking around. The quarrels died down bit by bit, but the lobby looked like a bomb had exploded.
"Hm.. I have an idea! Why don't you come along on a job? I think you could learn a lot!"
I was wondering whether I should really take her offer. What kind of jobs would a guild like this take on? But as it would have been rude to decline I decided to tag along. What could I lose?
Back then I hadn't realized yet, that I've already been completely under Fairy Tail's spell.
The next day we were already heading out in a carriage. 'We' were me and Lucy, the SM pair from before who turned out to be the strawberry cake princess Erza and the glutton Natsu, the exhibitionist by the name Gray and a little blue haired girl called Wendy.
It was the weirdest mix-up of people I had ever seen.
Natsu had turned green the second we stepped into the carriage and looked like he'd throw up any moment. Gray was making fun of him, Wendy kept trying to keep him from that and apologized for something. Lucy and Erza were completely ignoring their pitiful fellow and concentrated on me.
"So where do you come from? And what do you do?"
I had actually come here to learn something about these people, but now I was the one asked out.
"Well.. I come from far away. The sacred land where beer and wine is flowing. And I do.. nothing too interesting."
Lucy and Erza stared at me dumbfounded as they realized that they wouldn't find out a lot about me.
"So.. what kind of magic do you use?" I figured this was the best question to start.
Lucy smiled broadly immediately and drew some weird looking keys from a little bag at her hip.
"I'm a celestial wizard", she explained, "I can summon magical spirits using these keys."
I took a closer look at the keys, there were golden and silver ones, the golden had signs of the zodiac on it.
"That's awesome! And what can you do without keys?"
The smile on her face had first gotten bigger and then suddenly faded away.
"Ehm.. nothing actually."
Nothing? That wasn't very much.
"And you, Erza-san?"
Erza, the scarlet haired beauty, who was always wearing an armor was the calmness in person. No one would believe that she could run berserk over a strawberry cake.
"Oh my magic is quite similar to Lucy's, but I can only summon armor and weapons end equip them. It's called 'The Knight'."
Lucy interrupted her. "Don't be so modest, Erza. You're magic is awesome!"
She turned towards me and added: "She's known all over Fiore as the great 'Titania'!"
Titania? Even I had heard this name before. She's known as the strongest female mage in Fairy Tail. But I knew this name also in a different context.
"Titania? That's funny. Do you know the drama 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'?"
Lucy and Erza exchanged asking glances and shook their heads.
"In this drama is a Titania, too. She's the queen of fairies."
Suddenly Erza's eyes got bigger. Queen of fairies.. she seemed to like the sound of these words. In her mind she was already imagining herself in a long dress with wings and a tiara on the head, it was almost too obvious.
"What happens to that Titania?" She asked me, her eyes were sparkling.
I sighed. "Well,.. she falls in love with a donkey."
Erza's jaw flapped open and the sparkles in her eyes disappeared.
As Lucy was trying to comfort her and Gray had to do his best to prevent himself from bursting into laughter, I realized that I might have said something wrong.
Before I was able to figure out what or to apologize, Gray was reaching his hand towards me, presenting me a little figurine of ice.
"I'm an Ice Make magician. I can form anything I want with ice."
I looked at him sceptically.
"Are you trying to hit on me?"
Gray seemed pretty shocked and confused about the assumption. "What? No!"
I raised an eyebrow.
"Then why did you strip..?"
He looked down at him and really seemed to be surprised that he was sitting in the carriage in boxers for a while now. He was panicking and tried to find his clothes while I sighed again and looked at the two remaining: The guy with transportation sickness and the little girl.
Of course the magic I had heard of now was amazing and beyond beliefs in my country. But still I wasn't feeling satisfied. I wanted to hear about something even greater. And I wasn't very convinced that these two could give me that.
"And what about you two?"
Wendy looked worrying at the half dead Natsu and then at me.
"We're both Dragon Slayers."
Now I felt the interest dwelling up inside me. Dragon Slayers? That had a ring to it.
"Dragon Slayers? Like.. you're actually.. slaying dragons?"
Wendy shook her head vehemently.
"Oh no! We've never hurt a dragon before! We've been raised by dragons and they taught us Dragon Slayer magic."
Raised by dragons? Real dragons? THAT was awesome!
"Dragon's taught you how to slay dragon's? That's strange.. so it's not like in the tale of Siegfried?"
The group was staring at me confused.
"Tale of.. what?" Erza seemed to have recovered of.. whatever she had.
"Siegfried. It's a well known old legend in my country. It's about a hero who kills a dragon and bathes in his blood to gain invulnerability."
No one said a single word about it. I was feeling awkward and suddenly felt a glare resting on my face. Natsu had pulled himself together and wasn't looking very pleased, not only because he was still green in the face.
"How can you call someone a hero who kills a dragon? That's just as dirty as killing a human."
I had never seen it this way. Putting dragons on the same level as humans? It was an interesting way of thinking, I never would have done that. But I never had met a dragon before and even less been raised by one of course, so what did I know about them?
I wanted to say something to justify myself, after all I was only talking about an old fairy tale, but I've been interrupted.
The carriage stopped abruptly and we all were jerked around. Still in shock and confusion, I felt cold hands reaching for me, grabbing my limbs and my throat. I wanted to scream, but I couldn't, and slowly everything around me turned gray. The last thing I saw was Lucy's hand reaching for me, I heard her dull scream. And then my sight went black as I was dragged into the darkness.
When I came back to my senses, I found myself in a dark, damp place. It was pretty cold even though it was midsummer and there was no trace of sunlight at all.
I remembered what had happened bit by bit. The darkness swallowing me, a rough touch, someone throwing me in this place mercilessly and a taunting female voice saying "That's where you belong!"
Finally my eyes got used to the darkness and I figured that I've been caught in a cellar with nothing but a desk and a chair in it. 'That's where you belong!'
I gulped. A really bad misgiving started to dwell up inside of me.
But before I could think about it more, I heard steps from outside the door. Someone was coming down the stairs. Someone who sounded really small and light by his footsteps.
I heard the door opening and squinted my eyes to make something out.
But it had no use. The door was open ajar and there was no one to be seen. This was getting really spooky.
Suddenly, without warning, without a word of excuse, without anything at all, the lights were switched on and the little cellar room was flooded with nasty neon lights in an instant.
I screamed in pain and sheltered my poor eyes with my hands while slowly withdrawing in an edge of the room.
"Fro has heard you'd hate light, but Fro didn't think it was so bad."
I squinted and tried to open my eyes even though it was really painful, but I wanted to know where this cute, child voice was coming from.
In the door, there was actually standing a green cat on two feet and was staring at me with huge eyes. A talking cat. Luckily I had seen those before when I've been to Fairy Tail, otherwise I would have fainted now again. They were magical cats called Exceed who came from another world and they had the ability to talk and even to grow wings and fly.
I still knew only little about them, but I've understood that much: They're nothing to be afraid of.
I felt delighted and my fear slowly faded.
"Who are you? Where am I? What's the meaning of this?"
The cat grinned at me a bit dumbly, if I may say so, and answered.
"Fro is a great mage of Sabertooth, the strongest Guild in Fiore! That's were you are! And you're honored that we allow you to work for us."
Sabertooth?! I didn't understand a thing anymore. Why would Sabertooth kidnap me? Why would they lock me in a cellar? And what kind of work was that cat talking about?
"Fro? Is that your name?"
I didn't expect a single answer to my questions from that cat, so I tried it with a different.
"For you it's Frosch!"
"Frosch?!", I repeated the name surprised and blinked twice.
"A cat called Frosch?!"
I actually didn't know what surprised me more: That this cat's name was in a language I only knew to well or that it was actually.. well.. Frosch!
"You've got a problem with his name?"
A woman with short light blue hair stepped into the room. She had a straight, emotionless face and wore a blue and white coat laced with feathers.
"Yukino!"
Frosch's face lightened up as he saw the girl. She, too, smiled a bit and caressed the cat's head.
"Good job, Frosch, I'll replace you now. You can go now and have lunch."
Lunch? It was only that late? In this place I've got the feeling that it was the middle of the night. Not that I wasn't used to this..
"Fro thinks so, too!", Frosch nodded and ran off happily.
Instantly the face of that blue haired girl went emotionless again and their cold eyes rested on me now.
"My name is Yukino Aguria, I'm a wizard of Sabertooth and have been ordered to watch over you."
I shook my head.
"That's nice to know, but why? Why the hell am I here?"
"This was Minerva-sama's idea. She suggested to kidnap you and she brought you here. Sabertooth needs you to do something for us."
I didn't understand a single word. Minerva like snake-haired-lady-turns-you-to-stone-Minerva?
Wasn't that.. Greek mythology? And where the hell was the connection to me?!
"The magic council of Fiore owns a huge database of information on all guilds and wizards here. With these data Sabertooth would be able to know and exploit all weaknesses and become a guild no one could ever hold a candle to. We want you to get us these data."
My mouth flapped open and I forgot to breath. This wasn't really happening, right?
"You.. you want me to hack into the magic council?! You can't be serious! I don't know who you think I am, but I am no hacker! And the system here is totally different from what I know, by the way. Everything is based on magic and I have no single clue about that stuff.."
Yukino didn't seem to care in the slightest.
"The database of the magic council has nothing to do with magic. In order to prevent wizards to hack into the system, they used some techniques no wizard here understands."
She dragged something from beneath her coat. It was black, flat and rectangular, it almost looked like a.. nooo that couldn't be.
"You should be able to access it using this. At least that's what Minerva-sama said."
She held the black thing towards me and I took it from her reluctantly. The moment I touched it, I knew I had been right. I was holding a notebook in my hand. She was serious.
"No, no, please understand me. Even if it is like you said and this database is similar to what I know, I can't do something like that. This is far beyond my abilities. I think this all is a huge misunderstanding!"
Her face stayed the same, her eyes didn't change. As if no single word I said was reaching her.
"Still, you're the person in Fiore who knows most about this. And you better do what Sabertooth wants you to do. No matter how tough it is, it's still the easiest way to get out of here."
I gulped. This was the blunt truth I've been waiting for.
Who would have thought that I'd end up in a cellar as computer science slave? They surely had no idea who I actually was and were building on some great misinformation.
I sighed, shrugged and put the notebook on the desk. It wouldn't kill to take a closer look on what they were giving me here. It seemed to be a usual laptop like the ones I was used to, but where the hell did they get that from?! I switched it on and was soon hit by another surprise.
A linux system. This was a joke right? I facepalmed. Now I was officially done for.
Yukino had taken a seat in front of the door, but wasn't paying me any attention. She stared pretty desperately, at least for her standards, on pink cloth holding a needle and threads.
"What are you trying to do?"
I asked her, just to distract myself from my work like always. She seemed to be a bit surprised that I did.
"I want to sew Frosch a costume. He likes to disguise himself. But I can't think of anything fitting him.."
I stared at her uncomprehending.
"A costume for Frosch, the cat?"
Her eyes darkened.
"Do you have a problem with that?"
I shook my head.
"May I give you a suggestion?"
Hours passed in the cellar deep below the Sabertooth HQ. I've never had a problem with killing time when I had a PC, but there came the point I decided that I was bored. It was time to get out of here.
"Yukino-san?"
Yukino looked up from her sewing. She was actually nearly done already.
"Do you wanna play a little game?"
She looked confused. Maybe she didn't think I've got time to spare for playing.
"What kind of game?"
"Oh a real fun game! I'll try to read your thoughts a bit, ok?"
Yukino didn't seem to be too interested.
"And to make it even more fun, why don't we make a little bet?"
Now she was interested. Her face changed like a button had been pushed and her eyes were twice as big.
"We'll bet our lives?"
What the..?!
"Wow, wow, sister, not so hasty. What about: If I guess right, you'll let me out?"
She raised a brow.
"I can't do that.."
Just what was wrong with her?
"You can bet your life, but you can't take the risk and set me free?"
Where was the logic? There was none. I knew that I was stepping into a logic-less world when I came here and I thought I would have been prepared, but ok, maybe I had been wrong.
"Well then.. you won't make it anyway."
I denied myself my victory grin. Later, Diana, later.
"Very well! So let's start. Think of a number. Any number you want."
Yukino was reluctant, but she nodded.
"Now multiply it by three."
She flinched a bit, then nodded.
"Add six."
A short pause and she nodded again.
"Divide by three now."
Yukino seemed to have quite a hard time, but this was only making it easier for me.
"And now subtract the number you've thought of."
She took her time and nodded.
"Now I will read your thoughts! Let's see..."
I made a dramatic pause and closed my eyes.
"Your result is two!"
Her jaw hit the floor as she stared at me dumbfounded.
"H-how do you know that?!"
I shrugged like it wasn't a big deal at all.
"Like I said, I read your thoughts. Now to our bet.."
Yukino shook her head indignantly.
"That was just by chance! It doesn't count! I want a second round!"
Oh, look, there's someone fond of calculating, not to my pleasure.
"Ok, ok, once again. Think of another number."
And I played a similar game with her.
I let her double, add 9, sub 3, divide it by 2 and subtract the first number.
"So now your result is 3."
"Ha!", she smiled triumphant, "you're wrong!"
I shook my head slowly getting impatient.
"No, no, calculate again. Double it, add 9, sub 3, divide by 2 and subtract your number. Come on, it's not that hard."
She thought again for a while and finally her smile faded.
"You're right.."
"Course I am.. so bye, I'll be off then."
I turned to go and wanted to simply walk out the door, but Yukino threw herself before me.
"W-wait! You can't go!"
I looked at her mad. Now I was really getting impatient.
"What do you mean? Have you forgotten our bet?"
Yukino bit her lips.
"No.. but.. if you go out there the others will catch you and bring you back down here."
She sure had a point there.
"I don't care how you do it, as long as you keep your promise."
"It's not nice to break promises. People who do that have to be punished."
Ok, I didn't say that and Yukino neither. I looked to my left. There was a girl standing right next to me, with pink hair and a maid dress.
"Who are you?"
At first I was really worried there was another ward I had to trick, but that girl didn't even get a chance to introduce herself.
Suddenly someone screamed loudly, maybe it was more a roar, and the room was filled with smoke.
"Diana, over here!"
Lucy was looking out of a hole in the floor and reached her hand towards me, while Natsu was running berserk in the little room and set fire at everything.
"You came to save me?!"
I was absolutely confused. That was the least thing I had expected. And it meant that I could have saved all the trouble.
"Why? We don't even really know each other!"
Lucy smiled at me.
"But you came to Fairy Tail to learn something from us, so we are responsible for you."
Tears ran into my eyes. Maybe I was getting emotional, maybe it was just the smoke in my eyes.
I ran towards the hole, God knew where that had come from in the first place, and reached for her hand.
"Wait!", I heard Yukino's voice behind me.
"Just tell me what kind of magic you used earlier!"
Right, I remembered that there was still an issue to be purged here. I told Lucy to give me another second and walked back to Yukino to see her face.
"That was no magic."
I realized how my voice started to become more dramatic without me actually wanting it.
"This was maths! Remember this: I'm no computer scientist. I don't hack. I don't write programs. I don't build some database for you. I'm a mathematician. That's a difference. And we don't like to be confused with computer scientists! So tell this your Minerva or whatever. You don't just lock us into cellars with nothing but a laptop and tell us what to do for you. We won't do something like that and especially not.."
I took a deep breath of good old smoke and started to cough. I really loved dramatic pauses, but this was a fail. When the scraping in my throat became better, I wondered for a moment what I actually wanted to say and continued.
".. without money!"
And with these words I turned my back to the stunned Yukino and walked to the distressed looking Lucy, took her hand and escaped with here through the hole.
Finally back to Fairy Tail I was surrounded by concerned guild members and Mirajane even had organized a beer for me. Only a 0.33l beer, but I decided to respect the good thought and forgive her this once.
Really everyone here had been worrying about me. They had asked Cana, the girl with tarot card magic and the alcohol problem, to find out my location and Lucy, Natsu, Erza, Grey and Wendy had immediately come to my rescue. While the latter three had been watching the location, Lucy had used her celestial spirit Virgo to dig a hole into the cellar to save me. And Natsu had shown me a beautiful fire show. Actually it had been really awesome. It made me kind of glad that I had been caught, because I've got to see the real strength of this guild.
It was their motivation, their devotion, when they felt they needed to protect something. Especially when it was something dear to them. In the few time I had spent here, I've totally fallen in love with this guild. They were so nice and so warm, it made me wanting to be a part of them. It made me wanting to stay. And I knew, if I just had uttered this wish, they would have made it possible.
But it wasn't. I was no magician. This was not my world, not my fate, and as I thought about it, I realized the homesickness dwelling up in me. The time had come to return.
And so I said good-bye. Everyone was really shocked. They asked me whether I wanted to stay for the Grand Magic Games in a few months, but I just couldn't. The time I had to spare was only limited, actually it hadn't even existed in the first place. And moreover I really had no trace of desire to meet up with Sabertooth again soon.
But of course I didn't leave without the promise to believe in their victory and to keep my fingers crossed for them.
Epilogue
So there I was sitting, back in the train, going in the opposite direction. Slowly I witnessed how the grass was losing it's fresh color, the houses became unfriendlier, branded by industry and the people's faces became dark and emotionless. We passed a river with golden water and huge, godlike whitecaps and the air smelled like hops. Finally, I was back home.
"You've already returned from the great land of magic?"
I flinched. A dumb grinning guy I only knew to well was taking the place next to me.
"Heeey! What are you doing in this train?"
The blond, gawky fellow student of mine shrugged.
"I don't know. I drank and that's all I remember."
I laughed. That was so like him. Maybe I should have brought Cana with me and tried to set them up.
"Have I ever told you..", he started, having his narrator expression in his face, "that I actually know someone there in Fiore?"
I raised my brows in surprise. "Really?" He nodded.
"Some chick called Minerva. I talked to her lately about what I do and that a fellow student was planning to visit their country. Suddenly, she was really interested. She even wanted to buy a laptop to study a bit. I sold her one for five times its worth."
He laughed at his own ingenuity. I didn't. I stared at him in a mix of heavy shock, absolute disbelief and wrath.
"You... YOU F**KING DUMBA**!"
I threw some more bad words at him for the following 15 minutes. When I was finished I breathed heavily and felt a lot better.
He looked at me a bit worried.
"I don't think I deserved that..?"
Then I told him the story of my little adventure, which was all thanks to him as I finally came to understand. And of course, he laughed and laughed and nearly fell from his chair as he did.
"They wanted you to hack into something? They wanted you to construct a database?"
He forgot to breath and started to cough.
"Hey, hey that's not funny! You seem to have forgotten to tell her that you study both maths and computer science! She totally thought I was a computer scientist!"
And he laughed and snorted and just couldn't get a grip of himself.
"You.. a computer scientist! That's the best story I've ever heard!"
Slowly I was feeling made fun of.
"Hey, it's not like I'm a total noob, ok?! I know the java basics!"
He just didn't stop laughing!
"The java basics..", he giggled.
Maybe I was only making matters worse. I decided to let him be and looked back out of the window.
Fiore, Magnolia.. even though I felt a little delighted that I finally was back to the world I knew, I already missed Fairy Tail a bit. I loved my friends here and really enjoyed spending time with them, but Lucy and Natsu and all the others.. they were so different. There still was a lot I could learn from them. I had to smile while thinking of them.
Maybe, but only maybe, there would come the time when I recovered from the shock of being mistaken for a computer scientist and returned to the magical world, where green cats wore pink frog costumes.
*All Non-Fairy Tail characters introduced here are absolutely fictional and any resemblances to real people are not intended and random.*
