Aw man! I've always wanted to write an E.N.D fic! Welp, looks like I'm not doing that anytime soon...
It looks like since some manga translators can't make up their mind on some names I'll put this list here.
Azir = Ajeel
Bradman = Bloodman
Invel = Imber
Eileen = Irene
Rahkeid = Larcade
I'm pretty sure those are all the names that have been translated differently by different translators...
I'll be using the translated names from Manga Stream (The names on the left).
Uh... Yeah, catch up to the manga if you wanna understand this chapter at all.
Chapter One
Desire to be Free
"What? Zeref is out traveling... Again?" A spiky pink haired boy exclaimed in his king sized bed. The sun had just risen up. A blue cat was sitting on top of the bed with a sleepy look. "He didn't even arrive back from his previous travels."
"Aye Natsu. I heard it from one of the shields!"
"Oh no!" the boy named Natsu panicked as he jumped out of his bed and tried to quickly put on his clothes. "Then we have to get out of here, quick."
"Aye sir!" the blue cat smiled with enthusiasm. "But it won't be as easy to escape here as your previous attempt, or your attempt before that. Not like you succeeded on those attempts anyway."
"Arrgh Happy, this time for sure we'll get out!"
"I think I'm getting a déjà vu moment."
When Natsu finally finished changing his clothes, he grabbed his room door knob. He didn't open it. "This magical presence…" Natsu took a deep breath, fake comical tears already streaming down his face. "August is already on to my plan?"
"Looks like our escape plan already failed. Can we go fishing now?" Happy's stomach growled.
Natsu nodded sadly. He opened the door to confront August.
"Good morning…" he yawned.
"Your highness, I assume you know the emperor has gone traveling."
"Yeah…"
"Good, it's time for you to fulfill the emperor's duties in the emperor's place. I hope you are not planning to escape… again."
Natsu nodded and started walking sluggishly, "I'm off… August, do me a favor and tell Brandish to go fishing with Happy later. Happy always seems excited when the she uses her magic on the fish."
"Understood."
Natsu walked through the large halls, each footstep of his landed on the soft cushion of a marvelously patterned red carpet. He sighed again, even though he lived in such luxury and wealth. He could get almost anything and everything, but he was not satisfied.
His brother, Zeref, was the emperor of the huge empire of Alvarez. That made Natsu royalty, a prince, something he never really liked since he was raised in rags by a dragon. In Natsu's early years, Zeref left him in the care of the fire dragon king Igneel where he learned how to use Fire Dragon Slayer Magic. The day Igneel 'suddenly disappeared' in Year x784, Natsu was then reunited with Zeref. Zeref then revealed to Natsu that they were going to live in Alvarez and Zeref was currently the emperor of that kingdom. So basically Natsu lived as a hobo with a dragon and then his life transitioned into being the prince of a great, prosperous empire. He was still not used to the change after all these years.
Natsu's feet had stopped in front of two large doors where Invel was waiting.
"Your Highness," Invel bowed.
Natsu sighed, "I thought I told you to just call me 'Natsu.'"
"I apologize, your highness," The Winter General smirked.
"Are you trying to get on my nerves?" Natsu sweat dropped.
"No. I was testing your mood. It may very well determine the outcome of this meeting."
"What does that mean?" He asked as he opened the large doors. The scene that lay before him told him everything.
The inside was a hurricane, literally. Just raw magical power flooded out the open windows and doors of the meeting room. The structure of the room itself was already crumbling madly like it was getting disintegrated. The large meeting table was broken and cracked into multiple pieces. It was also insanely dark in the room despite all the open windows in the morning, it was like the sun was hiding from this monstrosity.
This monstrosity? It was just caused by five people. And it seemed like only four of them were intimately fighting, the other one was just sitting there like she had nothing else to do. The two of them who seemed to be one foot away from releasing their magical power were Azir and (God) Serena.
"What? You're having doubts about me joining the shields?" Serena yelled, his arms were firmly down on one of the pieces of the broken table.
"Of course I do! Who wouldn't suspect a man defecting from his own country to join the army of another country? And you joined the ranks of the shields so quickly! Something is definitely fishy!" Azir shouted back.
"Of course I'd get into the ranks of the shields quickly, it's a piece of cake from me who was the strongest wizard in Fiore. Climbing up the ranks in terms of power is easy!" God Serena bragged, a spotlight suddenly flashed on him and he struck a pose.
"I think it's a shame that you were considered number one. Must mean your country is full of weaklings."
"Ha! You think I'd be offended by that? What matters is that I'm the strongest."
"Do you still think you can uphold your title here? We're in Alvarez now!"
"Yeah, you'll get the pleasure of being beat up by Godly me!"
"Is that a challenge I hear? Sweet!" Azir pummeled his fists together, ready for a fight.
At that, Natsu turned away his attention from the two acting like kids. He focused on the other pair fighting. Two girls, Brandish and Dimaria, were verbally abusing each other in their half broken seats.
"Annoying. Quit talking to me," Brandish said in her most lethargic voice.
"You should tell that to yourself, sadist," Dimaria groaned, her eyes full of uninterest.
"Says the one who strips the clothes of every enemy in her path."
"I'm not the one keeping a slave here."
"Annoying."
"Sadist."
"Perv."
"Slaver."
Natsu then averted his eyes to the last member in the room: Eileen. She forked a piece of cake into her mouth. Whether she liked it or disliked it was unknown for her face showed no expression.
And this wasn't even half of the current Spriggans, unless Invel counted.
And Natsu's duty here was to get all these Spriggan under control, meaning: don't let these monsters fight one another. An impossible task for one such as Natsu since he himself liked getting into fights.
It wasn't like the shields couldn't get along, they always play fought like the best of friends. Although, due to certain recent events, the shields have been on the edge lately. One reason being that they're all suspicious of the new member: God Serena. Another reason was that they were getting tired of the countless attempts of Natsu's escapes. The third reason was better left unknown for now.
"Invel, do you think you can handle this?" Natsu whispered as he tried to restrain himself from joining in the fights.
"If it is an order from you, yes. But I am curious, it is rather odd of you to ask me for help."
"I'm not in the mood-"
"Yes but even then, in your bad mood you would destroy the entire room, getting everyone to be quiet. In your good mood, you would 'talk' to them which would usually work. If not, then you would destroy the entire room which would get everyone to be quiet.."
"Yeah, I know. Everyone respects my brother and would hate to see him or his younger brother mad."
"That's not true, we respect you too. But since you're still acting like a child then we have no choice but to treat you like a kid."
"You think I should act more like an adult?"
"I would advise you to do so in these kinds of situations, your highness."
"Knock it off with the 'your highness' already," Natsu muttered.
"Yes your highness."
Natsu sighed again. He had been sighing a lot lately. What would Zeref do at a time like this? He thought hard until he reached a conclusion.
He turned around and walked out of the room, softly closing the doors behind him. Invel followed him.
"What is your plan?"
"We're changing meeting rooms. There's no way we can have an effective meeting in a broken room like that. Tell the others to come if they don't want to deal with me trying to escape. I'm sure they're all sick of acting like my babysitter."
Invel was shocked. "Your highness, is it me or has your attitude changed in the last 10 seconds?"
"Not really. I guess I just realized I had to act like this in order to get out of here." Natsu smiled.
~Five Minutes Later~~~
The present shields and Natsu had moved to a new room to begin their meeting. Due to the fact the meeting room usually got destroyed, the palace carpenters had decided to build more rooms identical to that of the board room.
"So what's the first issue on the agenda?" Natsu asked.
All eyes shifted to God Serena. If not to make it even more obvious, Azir pointed out the person and called out, "That sweet thing right there."
A few veins showed on Serena's forehead but he took no action. After all, he was in front of the monarch who accepted him.
Right, Natsu needed to figure out how to get Serena to look less suspicious. The shields didn't need to trust him but they did need to accept him as a fellow Shield. This was mainly Natsu's responsibility because he was the first one to give Serena the stamp of approval, which led to Serena becoming one of the shields. But it appeared that Natsu's initial reason for accepting God Serena into Alvarez's army was that Serena had brought a certain mini tree as a peace offering. Natsu was easily amazed at this miniature 'sakura tree.' Its leaves were said to burst into a variety of vibrant colors at a certain time of year. At that, Natsu approved God Serena's request to join the Shields and since Zeref was in a good mood, he allowed Serena's request to come true. And that was the story of how Serena joined the Shields.
However, the other shields were not persuaded easily and no one could blame them. There had been a recent spy in Alvarez trading secret information with Fiore who had yet been able to be identified. The spy wasn't much of a threat but some of the Shields wanted the issue to be dealt with as quickly as possible since the work put on the shields had increased since then. It was reasonable to think Serena was the one responsible since the espionage began just as Serena joined the Shields.
"Any complaints or comments on this issue?" Natsu asked.
"Annoying," Brandish said just before laid her head on the table.
"Uninteresting and not a threat," Dimaria replied with a bored look.
"Untrustworthy," Azir snarled.
"..." Eileen gave no response.
Natsu looked over to Serena who seemed to be oddly confident. "What do you think, Invel?"
"I believe we get defects from other countries all the time. What is making all the Shields uncomfortable is that he was able to join us, in the ranks of Shield, in less than a day." Invel stated.
"Is that it..?" Natsu crossed his arms. Everyone nodded. "Okay then, my decision is that God Serena will undergo a Alvarez's normal training program for all soldiers for one year until he'll be officially declared a Shield. His instructor will be Azir. Is that sufficient for everyone?"
Dimaria and Brandish nodded in agreement for once.
The two boys, however, slammed their fists to the table and stood up, breaking the table in the process.
"Your highness, I think it's sweet that he has to train for a year until he can be an official Shield but you must reconsider his instructor! I can't stand that sh***y man!"
God Serena posed again. "It's fine, throw everything you got at me. I just have to listen to this man blabber for a year, sounds simple."
Eileen suddenly raised her hand, finally participating, "I am okay with your decision, your highness, but you are being too soft on the newbie. I propose a few adjustments to this decision."
"Let's hear it."
"Instead of a normal training program, he should undergo Alvarez's finest, rigorous regime. I believe he must overcome many obstacles and hardships like the rest of us Shields. His instructors will be Azir… and me."
Silence washed over everyone in the room, except God Serena who was somewhat confused to why everyone got silent.
"Sure, sounds interesting." Natsu smiled, with a sweatdrop. Everyone knew this wasn't going to end well. "Serena's training will begin… now."
"What?" Azir was paralyzed about what decision just came to be. "...with Eileen?"
"Let's go," Eileen said as she grabbed God Serena and started dragging him to the nearest exit.
"Right! See you in a year Serena! Good luck!" Natsu cheered.
The three of them, confident or nervous, left the room.
Natsu yawned, "Was that all for today?"
"No. It appears you have a series of paperwork dealing with the economy of this empire to do." Invel placed a few stacks of papers in front of Natsu.
"What happened to the people who usually deal with the economy?"
"They've been fired due to their incompetence."
"Seriously?" he groaned in annoyance.
"Dimaria and I shall handle hiring new economy advisors and officials."
"Okay, do it quick."
Dimaria and Invel left the room. Minutes later, August came by to take Brandish to go fishing with Happy. Natsu took the papers and went to his room.
Natsu didn't look like it or act like it, but he was actually pretty smart. When he trained with Igneel, he only learned on the basics of reading and writing because his sole focus was to get strong. When moving to the empire, Natsu was forced to learn the advanced levels of reading and writing, history, science, politics, and math. He wasn't one to listen to people, but when Zeref threatened that he would have Eileen personally teach him then Natsu actually worked his hardest in his studies. 'Anything but Eileen's teachings!' he would usually think when he was young. After a few years, Natsu became an expert in his studies, not as amazing as Zeref but still great. So it became law that whenever Zeref was busy or wasn't present and the few people in charge of dealing with economy and such were fired, Natsu had to fulfill those roles until they hired new people.
Despite his intellect, Natsu wanted to act dumb and childish for that was really his personality right now.
"Argh!" Natsu grew frustrated with the amount of paperwork he had to do, it was already into night and he still wasn't finished. This was one of the reasons he so badly desired to escape when he learned that Zeref wasn't around.
He laid back on his chair and analyzed his desk. There were a few newspapers stacked on the top right corner of the desk. They were newspapers of a variety of countries, Zeref had always told him to keep track of the news of other countries. On top of the stack was Alvarez. Natsu took the second newspaper in the stack. It was Fiore's news.
Fiore was a country on a continent thousands of miles away across the sea from Alvarez. On the headline was "A FAIRYTAIL COME TRUE!" It talked about a guild who lost its core members seven years ago and had finally made a comeback once its beloved members had returned. It showed how unbelievable it was for the bottom ranked guild to make an astonishing victory to first place in the latest Grand Magic Games. It featured interviews from a few members from Fairy Tail and a few other guilds. "Interesting," Natsu said as he put down the newspaper and went back to work.
The door abruptly opened and there was a loud thud noise. Natsu took no heed to it because he thought it was Happy tired after eating three whale sized fish. But this person who opened the door smelled clean, and Happy usually smelled like dirty fish after a fishing trip and plus Happy was already napping on Natsu's pink, spiky hair. How odd, if it wasn't Happy and if it didn't smell like anyone else from the palace, who could it be…
Natsu turned around and found a man heavily panting and coughing on the floor of his room. He had never seen this man before. Not to mention the man had worn odd clothes and had a foreign scent familiar to that of Serena's. But there was a distinct feature on the man's face that he noticed immediately. Something like a cross hatched scar on the man's left side of the face.
Natsu took notice that this man was extremely terrified but was strangely composed. The man tried to not show fear but was obviously fearing something.
Once the man noticed Natsu who was behind him, Natsu said slowly, "Hello? Do-You-Understand-What-I'm-Saying?"
The man exploded in more fear and started sweating bullets. "This magical power… it's insane!" he whispered to himself.
Since Natsu had enhanced hearing due to his dragon slayer abilities, he heard what the man said. "So you do speak my language!" he smiled. But that's strange, the man said something about extreme magical power but Natsu was sure that his current magical power presence right now was at a low stage. Maybe he should conceal more of his magical energy?
"Are you the new guy in charge of the economy? I'm glad, I was just about to use a break!" Natsu smiled, hoping that he decreased his magical presence enough so the man would calm down. "So, what's your name? Oh, sorry, I should introduce myself first. My name is Natsu."
"Natsu?" The man didn't seem to calm down, instead he couldn't even hide the fear in his face anymore. "As in the Prince of Alvarez!?" the man shouted in realization and disbelief.
"Yes, now what's your name?"
"..."
"Hey," Natsu narrowed his eyes and deepened his voice but did not remove his smile. "Could you be that spy that's been lurking around this palace for a while?"
The man stiffened, which meant Natsu was spot on.
"Look-" the man tried to explain but a voice from afar echoed.
"INTRUDER! THERE'S AN INTRUDER IN HIS HIGHNESS' CHAMBERS! INTRUDER!" shouted a maid.
The ground started shaking, magical energy flooded everywhere. Perhaps a nearby volcano was erupting and there was invisible water flooding the palace. Or maybe someone had incurred the wrath of a few Spriggan.
"Damn!" the man cursed loudly as he was preparing to perform some sort of magic.
"Hey wait!" Natsu grabbed the shoulder of the man.
His eyes suddenly couldn't see anything for a split second. The next second he was staring outside of a window, a wide field of bright grass was being tugged by a gentle breeze of wind. He was surprised, he hadn't seen such a long stretch of nature in a long time since he'd always been trapped in an Empire that had pretty much used all its land for industrialization. There was no other explanation for Natsu seeing such a sight other than teleportation or illusion magic. Natsu looked back at the man, Happy still sleeping above him, oblivious to their situation.
When he saw the man, he could only sweat drop and feel guilty for no reason.
For reasons unexplained, the man who had probably teleported them here was shaking in a corner while muttering out the words: "I accidentally kidnapped a prince…"
Natsu tilted his head, "Um… could you tell me your name now? And possibly where we are too?"
The man shakily turned his head to face Natsu. "M- My name is Mest Gryder…
"And w-we're in Fiore," he cried.
Natsu's eyes widened and so did his smirk.
"I'm finally free."
This story was inspired by Chapter 3 of "The What If Analogy" by snakeboy33. I thought I had to shout it out there.
If you liked or disliked this, don't follow this story XD
Um... if you were looking for a fanfiction that is mainly focused on the 12 shields... well you're not going to find much of it here.
The date that Igneel disappeared (or the date they got out of the Eclipse gate) is different because I wanted Natsu to be close to the age of the members of Fairy Tail, because I can't imagine an adult Natsu.
To be continued... whenever I write the next chapter...