5 years ago:
The redhead sat at the desk and stared at the paper in front of her. She had NO FRICKIN CLUE WHAT TO DO. She'd neglected studying and opted for drawing on her walls instead. She tugged at the edges of her red skirt and sighed. She was dead meat. She'd have to accept defeat, the B+ she'd worked so very very hard to get all year was going to slip through her fingers. And Natsu's dad was going to have a meltdown. His dad acted as her dad because she didn't have her own parents.
She picked up the sparkly silver pencil again and blew air out of her nose. She glanced around the room and her eyes caught the mop of messy pink hair sitting next to her. He glanced up and smirked. She stuck her tongue out and focused her attention back on the math test in front of her. "Why the hell do I need to know math?!" she screamed inside her head over and over again. She started to tap the pencil impatiently on the desk until she caught a glare from the oh so frightening Erza Scarlet, Fairy Tail Academy's finest.
The boy with the mop of messy pink hair watched the redhead out of the corner of his eye. She'd obviously forgotten to study, or had just chosen not to, and she was freaking out. Natsu glanced up at the clock. She had over an hour to finish the test and he knew she could do decently. Suddenly there was a knock on the door, the redhead, Sophia, immediately looked up and glanced out the window. There was an arsenal of black cars outside of the school. The men wearing black suits with cold black eyes hidden behind reflective sunglasses unnerved the pair. They turned to look at each other in confusion as the teacher opened the door to the small middle school classroom. A man in a suit barged in. "We're here for Sophia Dragion and Natsu Dragneel."
"They're taking a test, is this urgent?" Mr. Alberona questioned the obvious government official. He didn't like this one bit, he was particularly fond of the two. Even if they were troublemakers, he even saw them as his children. Especially the fiery little redhead. She needed support. "I'm afraid it is. They'll be leaving with us immediately."
Sophia glanced out the window and saw something she knew she shouldn't've. She saw Natsu's dad, one of her father figures, being handcuffed by the scary men in black and pushed into the back seat of one of their uniform black cars. She stood up, an impulse she later regretted, and said "Why?" Natsu stood up behind her, his pencil still in hand and said "We're thirteen...What's Fiore's government want with us?"
The man stepped towards the two and snatched the pencil from Natsu's hand. "Hey!" yelled a raven haired boy from the back of the class. "What did they do? Natsu and Sophia aren't bad people." Sophia turned to look at Gray and grinned a mischievous smile that made the boy shiver with a feeling he couldn't place. "Okay, they're not terrible people but still, what the hell?" The man in black (see what I did there) chuckled at Gray's forwardness and said "Gray Fullbuster? We'd like you to come as well." Another man in uniform strode into the room and grabbed Gray's arm. He started to fight and the man dragged him into the hall. He threw him into the lockers and a small blue haired girl stood and yelled "GRAY-SAMA!"
"Juvia I'm fine!" The bluenette tugged at the ends of her fuzzy winter sweater and mumbled, "Be careful Gray-sama.."
Sophia and Natsu were having trouble processing what was happening. The man who had assaulted Natsu had been temporarily distracted by Gray's little moment of glory (and defeat) and Sophia had taken the chance to lean in and whisper "They just shoved some handcuffs on Igneel and put him in one of their cars." Natsu turned to look at his best friend and she had a deathly smile on her face. "Don't."
"Why not?"
"You could hurt people."
"That's kinda the point, Natsu."
"YOU KNOW I MEANT STUDENTS!" he hissed at the combatative cherry head. She rolled her eyes but didn't disagree. Natsu suddenly felt cold flesh against his own and was yanked forward as the first man in black dragged him out the door. Sophia felt a hand on her own and turned to look at the hand's owner. It was her blonde best friend. "Sophia don't die."
"Lucy I'll be fi-" she was cut off when a third man in black slapped a hand over her mouth and grabbed her bare upper arm. She bit his hand, hard, until she tasted blood. Her fang like teeth easily breaking through his skin. He yelped and she yanked herself away and ran out of the room, closely followed by the angry man with a bleeding hand. "RUN!"
"SAVE NATSU AND GRAY!"
"She can do it!"
"SOPHIA BE CAREFUL!" rang out of the room after her. They obviously knew she couldn't do it. At the time she had a little bit of hope.. That soon disappeared when she burst out the front doors of the private academy for grades 1-12 and came face to face with a small army of men in suits with beady black eyes and sunglasses. Natsu and Gray were held off to the side, handcuffs adorned their thin teenage wrists, but Sophia concluded that they were not normal. Thick bands of a metal that shone brightly in the pale sun wrapped around and around in twin coils. In between was a blue glowing piece of something. The two looked tired and she noticed a faint yellow light beginning to fill the blue bit of something around each of their wrists. Gray was slouched and most of his weight was being supported by the man holding his arm. Natsu wasn't much better. Sophia decided now was a good a time as any to say good bye. She closed her eyes and thought with a fury, "Levy! Read a lot of good books for me and save me all the manga you can. I think I have to go away for awhile. Take care of yourself. Gajeel, be nice to Levy and tell her you like her already. I'll be waiting to fight you when I get back. And don't worry, I won't tell them your secret. They obviously don't know. Erza! I'm gonna miss you, even though I was scared of you. Please, eat a slice of strawberry cake for me. Thanks. Cana? Uhm. Just don't do anything stupid. That's what I'm doing. Lisanna, Mira, Elfman? All of you better take care of each other! Loke and Juvia and all of my other friends, DON'T WORRY. Just be happy, that's all I ask. Oh and feed Happy. And Lucy, I know you told me to be careful but.. Uhm.. we all know that's not my strong point. Or Natsu's. Gray's O.K. Sorta. Okay not really. Just don't worry. And Lucy you should go into my room and you can have anything you want. All of you can, just take something that reminds you of me. I'll be back, okay? So no crying and no goodbyes." She opened her eyes and stared at the obvious head honcho. His sunglasses were tinted green and his suit tie was a matching emerald, instead of a grim black. "Sophia Dragion.. How nice to make your acquaintance."
"Sorry I can't say the same.."
.
.
.
The 7th graders crowded around the windows of their classroom to watch the scene below unfold. In turn, each person took a timeout from the show to listen to the all too familiar voice in their heads. Sophia's voice rang through, thanked them and told them to take something of hers to remind them of her. Oh and to feed her cat Happy. The scariest girl on campus, besides Sophia but she didn't really count anymore, shivered when she heard her friends voice ring through her skull. She noticed several of her other friends suffer the same reaction. She leaned over and tapped Loke on the shoulder. "Did you hear her?" he nodded a hard nod and tore his eyes off of the tense scene below. "I just wanna know how they found out. And why didn't they take Gajeel?"
"Why don't we find out? We can form a club for after school. I'll ask around. Who should we invite?"
"Gajeel, Levy, Lucy, Cana, Jellal-" Erza blushed at the mention of her best friend, and crushes, name, "Aries, Lisanna, Mira, Elfman, Juvia.." He stopped, at a loss of words, and continued, "That should be enough, right? People can join if they want to after we get it up and running." The scarlet haired girl nodded and smiled a melancholy smile and turned back to the window to see her three close friends dragged unconscious and weak into the back of a government issued black chevrolet.
Today.
The alarms blared and the armed officers ran around in a panic. The green haired man named Freed pulled a walkie talkie out of his back pocket and said in a voice muffled by the sound of chaos, "Hello, HQ? We have a break in.." He trailed off and turned to yell the encouragement over his shoulder, "WE CAN'T LET EITHER OF THEM GET AWAY!" His walkie talkie fizzled and cracked like bacon in a pan and he pulled it off his waistband and held it up to his face once more. "HQ responding, what's the break in?" Freed fidgeted with his much too heavy gun, readjusting it thoroughly before finding the courage to speak. "It's actually a break out." He took a deep breath and said, "Prisoner 0 and Prisoner 01." The voice on the other end of line went shrill and he heard the man call over a superior. He heard the muffled tones of hushed panic and caught the last direction at the end. "You can't let her escape. You can't let either of them escape."
The 17 year old grinned as she heard the hushed tones of fear coming from the man who had given her nightmares for years. Her acute sense of hearing caught most of his horrified words to the HeadQuarters that was too far away to send help. She turned to look at her pink haired counterpart. He reached up and brushed her blood red hair from her eyes and said, "Let's kick some ass." She shivered under his not so foreign touch and shoved her feelings down. She looked away from the chiseled biceps that tensed when he set his arm down. She wished he wasn't wearing a shirt. She really liked it when he did that. She thought of Gray, his subconscious stripping habit had made him a laughing stock among the horrible people here for years. They were going to come back for him. Plus he was pretty hot shirtless too. "Priorities Sophia, priorities!" She mumbled to herself. She turned away from Natsu and shook her head to clear it of the longing she held for her best friend.
Natsu watched the way her straight across bangs fell back into her eyes as she shook her head, ruining the minimal effort he had given not a moment earlier. He shrugged. She had some issues. She was weird. He liked weird. Scratch that, he loved weird. He didn't care that she talked to herself. She'd probably picked it up from a friend she'd made in the prison. Wade Wilson. He'd insisted they call him Deadpool, that being his prisoner name. He called Natsu Salamander and he called Sophia Komodo, their "superhero" names as one of the guards had mockingly pointed out. "You're freaks. You're the heroes we deemed unfit for hero work." Sophia and Wilson and Natsu had started laughing, very, very hard.
The redhead turned to look back at the pinkette and said "Okay I'm ready now. I really shouldn't have spent so much time with Wilson.." She trailed the end of her sentence off. She grinned and the boy grinned an evil grin back. The pair slowly crept around the corner and smiled at the thought of releasing hell.
.
.
.
Loke and Lucy had become extremely close (and by extremely close I mean the loooooove each other) after their two best friends had been taken. They were coming back from a particularly stressful meeting of the "Dragon Club" at the Fairy Tail Academy. Someone had suggested giving up on Natsu and Sophia and Gray and all hell broke lose. In the end he had been kicked out of the club. What was the point of the club they formed to take down the branch of the Fiore government that had taken their friends if they didn't do just that? If they didn't do that then it was just a bunch of 17 year old kids with compromising government information and no justification for its use. No, it wouldn't do. They were going to find them. Loke pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose and sighed. He really missed the cherry head. He'd had a crush on her since the fourth grade but she wasn't really into love at the time. In fact one of the reasons he liked her was because she was so oblivious to that kind of thing. She was all into destroying things, and yet she loved to create things by drawing. Loke sighed again and his girlfriend turned to look at him. "You can stop sighing, I know you're mad about what happened. He isn't just being a jerk. He's just out of hope. It's not the first time people have quit." Loke rolled his eyes at the blonde and said "He's not trying hard enough. We will find them." He paused and stopped walking. "Lucy what do you think they look like now?" He glanced down at himself. He hadn't changed too dramatically but he certainly wasn't the same either. His orange hair had grown longer and he'd gotten glasses. He'd grown out of his mild acne and had become surprisingly handsome. He even had a fan club (though he was unaware, he still had a pretty big ego.) "I bet Sophia's beautiful as the cherry blossoms and Natsu's handsome as hell." the blonde said sheepishly. She'd always been a little jealous of her redheaded friend's beauty. Sophia hadn't known it but most of the guy's had liked her, at some point or another. Sophia just didn't care, she wasn't looking for love. She'd fight a guy though, that was for sure. She'd gotten into some historic brawls with a choice few. Loke blushed and Lucy laughed. "But do you think they look different? I mean.. You look way different Luce." Lucy glanced down at herself and took in the curves of her figure. She had grown… fuller. Her bust was something to brag of, if you were into that, and her hips were the perfect match. She'd ditched her old style of clothing for a rather revealing preppy style that suited her perfectly. Green tank top with a pink undershirt and a cream mini skirt. She had on pink ballet flats to match her undershirt and her bright blonde hair was in a side ponytail. She shrugged and said "You never know. Their hair should be the same. That's something that I always thought was going to be a constant in my life.. Her blood red bob and his salmon pink spikes." Loke laughed, a real and full laugh. Their hair was iconic. One of the two beautiful human beings many defining features. They were both truly flawless. They weren't your basic super models though. They were very unique. Something the pair on Strawberry St. admired about the two.
.
.
.
The blonde kissed the ginger with glasses goodbye as he turned down the street to his house. Lucy dreamed of her bed as she strolled closer to her quaint cottage on Strawberry St. She passed the alley right next to her house and stopped in her tracks, a voice she had known but hadn't heard in years echoing through her head. She turned to face the alley. There. She saw it. The mop of messy pink hair she had dreamed of seeing for years. She ran into the alley and skidded to the ground next to the broken figure of Natsu Dragneel. "Natsu?! What happened?!"
"H-hhelpp.." he muttered. Lucy buried her questions and vowed to dig them up later. She wiped the tears forming in her eyes away and picked the broken boy up. He was halfway conscious as she walked him the last couple of feet to her front door. She quickly grabbed her keys and shoved them into lock. The pinkett's rough hands grazed her shoulders as he slid from her embrace and fell to the soft green couch. Lucy blinked. What. The. Hell. How was Natsu here?! She pinched herself. Once. Twice. Three times. He was still there. "I'm not dreaming?" She mumbled to herself as she sat down on the couch next to her friend. "I should clean you up.."
.
.
.
Lucy returned with as many gauze as she could carry, a bowl of warm water, a washcloth, scissors, and rubbing alcohol. His wounds looked deep and Lucy hoped she could treat them correctly. It's not like she could just take him to a hospital. She started to clean the sleeping boy's wounds. Well he wasn't really a boy now. He was 18. A year older than Lucy, his birthday being in August. Lucy couldn't help but glance down at his body. Whatever he'd been doing for the past 5 years had made him extremely fit. Like the jocks at school were toned, sure, but damn. It was like he was made out of stone or something. A thought occurred to Lucy. "Where's Sophia?" she asked the seemingly sorta conscious figure. "Got.. sseparated.." he mumbled. Lucy resolved to ask him more later, when he wasn't bleeding. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and dialed Loke's number. "Loke come over now."
"Wh-"
"JUST COME OVER NOW DAMMIT!"
"ALRIGHT ALRIGHT I'LL BE RIGHT OVER!"
The line went dead and Lucy tossed her phone onto the couch next to her and got to work cleaning her friend's wounds.
.
.
.
The ginger haired teenager ran out his door, ignoring the yells from his older sister Aquarius. "Going to Lucy's! I'll be back late!" He called over his shoulder, and he was gone. Aquarius muttered to herself about how she should be the one going to visit her boyfriend instead of Loke going out to see his girlfriend. She wasn't overly fond of the blonde but as long as Loke was happy…
He knocked on Lucy's cream white door and waited as he heard her shuffling to get to the door. He heard Lucy's voice but no one answered her.. Maybe she was going crazy? Loke concluded as the door swung open and the cheery blonde stood in front of him. She grabbed his wrist and pulled him into her living room. "Lucy what the hell is going on?!" The blonde let go of his wrist and gestured behind Loke. The ginger glanced over his shoulder and did a double take, turning all the way around and running to the edge of the couch. "N-Natsu?" Loke poked the pink haired young man's face and Natsu grunted. He was fast asleep. Lucy came and sat down on the couch next to him. She began to bandage him up again, cutting off his strange clothes. He was wearing a one sleeved purple and white vest that zipped up the front, tightly hugging his toned stomach. He had on white gi pants that tied at the bottom and matching purple sandals. "Where'd you find him? Do you know what happened? Do you know anything?" The blonde glanced away from her work to look at the frantic orange head. "I found him the alley next to my house. He was sorta conscious, at least conscious enough to try and walk with me the couple of feet to my front door and he answered a couple of my questions randomly but he's really been out cold so I don't really know anything." She paused and her face scrunched into an angry frown. "But he did say that he and Sophia had gotten separated…" Loke's heart pounded and he was almost dizzy. He wasn't ready to actually find them.. He was having trouble taking it all in and he leaned back until he was laying on Lucy's soft cream carpet. "Shouldn't.. Shouldn't we call the others.." he trailed off, not really sure where he had been going with that train of thought. Lucy shook her head and said, "No. The more people know he's here the harder it'll be for him to hide from the Fairy Hunters." (Fairy Hunters is the nickname for the top secret organization that "collected" Sophia and Natsu all those years ago.) Loke nodded at her logic and took in a shaky breath. They needed to know what was going on before they could do anything remotely useful except make sure Natsu's wounds healed.
"Hey Loke, would you go make some dinner while I clean him up? I'm starving." Right on cue Loke's stomach growled in reply and he laughed and answered, "Yeah sure." He picked himself up off the floor and marched to the kitchen, blushing when his stomach growled yet again. Lucy chuckled at her friend's discomfort but stopped when her own stomach growled. "Can't be a hypocrite.." she thought to herself. She turned away from the sleeping beauty to grab another gauze but stopped dead in her tracks when a warm hand covered her mouth and she felt another hand wrap around the back of her neck. "Who are you and where am I?" he snarled. His voice had become deep and pleasent, but still rough and boyish at the same time, reminding Lucy of her friend when she knew him. His hand left her mouth, giving her the opportunity to answer and she said "I'm Lucy Heartfilia. You're in my home Natsu." The grip on the back of her neck fell away and he backed away from her, retreating to the other end of the couch. He scowled up at her and said "What did you just say? How do you know my name?" she made a face and the already uncomfortable Dragneel tensed. She looked familiar.. and that name.. "I said," the sarcastic tone clearly evident, "I'm Lucy Heartfilia and you're in my home Natsu Dragneel."
"L-lucy.. wait.. Lucy?! From, from before?" at that moment Loke came into the room to see what was happening. "GAH NATSU'S AWAKE!" Natsu narrowed his eyes again and said "Loke?" Lucy rolled her eyes and said "Yeah, do you know anyone else with orange hair like that?"
"Yes."
"Whatever." Natsu relaxed a bit and then made a face. "I- how did I get here?" Lucy piped up and said "I found you in the alley next to my house." Natsu stood up and sniffed the air. "Yeah, that's definitely you. You smell like… hmm.. vanilla and Plue."
"Uhm Natsu why are you smelling everything." The pinkette looked up and realized that he hadn't done that before he was brought in. "Oh. It's part of.. well that's a long story. I'll just say that I discovered that I have a very very acute sense of smell and sight, and outstanding hearing." Loke pushed his glasses back up and they glinted. "Show off." Natsu turned and laughed at Loke. "Oh yeah, so when did you get glasses?"
"About 2 years ago." Natsu nodded and turned to Lucy. "So when did you run away from home?" Lucy blushed hard and said "I'll tell you about it after you tell me what the hell happened, where you've been for 5 years, and where Sophia and Gray are."
The pink haired boy's smile melted off his face and a very serious expression clouded his face instead. "Sophia.." he mumbled under his breath. What had happened? He closed his eyes and retreated into his memories to try and piece together his night. He held up a finger to Lucy and Loke and they got the message. He needed a minute to sort things out.
.
.
.
The green haired man named Freed messed with his tie as he stared at the broken looking girl in front of him on the operating table. She was going to be fine, they assured him, and they had been given orders from headquarters to give her the "full treatment". The full treatment was how they referred to punishment of the greatest caliber to unruly inmates. He smiled. He'd done a good job under the circumstances. They'd caught the more powerful of the two mutants. The boy had escaped but they all crossed their fingers and hoped that he would die of his injuries. In the meantime they needed to focus on repairs. Of the building and of Prisoner 0's attitude. Freed stood as he was ushered out by a nurse wearing light blue scrubs. The heavy door slammed shut behind him.
The nurse turned away from the heavy door and looked at the head doctor. They had been given special reign to do whatever they pleased with the girl, as long as it didn't kill her. They had time to prepare the experiment while she slept. Doctor Hades wanted to wait until she was awake to begin. Dr. Hades smiled at the sight before him. The girl really was a beautiful specimen, the advanced healing technology he'd created making her already faint scars disappear. The girl blinked, a groggy expression crossed her face.
Sophia stared up at the menacing surgical light above her head and panicked. The shackles holding her to the table began to glow with energy as she overloaded their systems with power. They started to short circuit and she started to struggle, hoping that her inhuman strength could rip them off. She still wouldn't be able to use her powers, but she wouldn't be strapped down to a table. Suddenly a dome started to descend from the ceiling. She ripped and tugged at the bonds but it was no use. The dome was sucking up all of her energy and storing it. She knew what was coming as the 4 people in light blue scrubs exited the room hurriedly and went to watch through the window. They were going to reflect her own power back at her… "Can I eat it?" she thought to herself. She couldn't eat her own flames but maybe because they were altered? Aw screw it. She knew it wouldn't work. The dome was essentially a giant mirror. They were still her flames. She prepared herself for the blow. When it came she screamed in pure agony. Dark spots danced in front of her eyes and she truly knew how it felt to be burned. She hadn't ever really had a sensation of heat before.. Fire didn't work on her. She lay on the table, breathing hard, as the door opened and the 4 surgeons arranged themselves around the table once more, the dome rising back up into the ceiling. "Ah good. You're awake." a man with a long gray beard said in a malicious tone. Sophia ignored him until he stuck a clamp on her nose, causing her to open her mouth to breath the long breaths she desperately needed. "We'll be studying the canines before we begin." he said to his 3 associates. A large metal spacer was placed in her mouth to hold it open and Dr. Hades leaned in and began to jab at her fang like teeth. "Extraordinary…" he mumbled to himself as he attached a metal ring to each fang. He hummed as he worked, attaching a thick wire to each metal ring. He smiled at Sophia as he placed each wire above the teeth, on the gum. "It'll be over quickly." he promised. He picked up a small dentistry drill and Sophia closed her eyes and tried to slam her mouth shut. The metal spacer gave out but Dr. Hades stuck his hand in before her jaws clamped shut and held it open, resting his hand across her face, getting a hiss from her. "Bixlow, hold her mouth open." the nurse stepped forward and grasped the girl's upper and lower gums, extending her jaw to the breaking point. Dr. Hades picked up where he had left off and began to drill two holes above each of her canines. Several shrieks closely followed. He attached the wires to the top and said "Let's see if she'll be able to bite after that." He smiled smugly to himself, remembering his first encounter with the girl. She'd bit his hand and he had almost lost a finger because of it. She had had no idea of what she was capable. "Now for the tracking device."
.
.
.
Sophia panted as the metallic taste of blood filled her mouth from her new "braces". The nurse called Bixlow flipped the redhead's arm over, so the even paler underside glared against the stark white medical light. Sophia had always wondered how Natsu was always so tan, even without seeing sunlight in years. Sophia was like a vampire. She closed her eyes as the needle was slowly and painfully pushed into her skin.