A/N: I wanted to come back to writing Fan Fiction for a while, and since I recently began watching Fairy Tail, I have found the inspiration to start writing again. Now, I feel I am a little bit rusty when it comes to writing, so please forgive any inconsistencies, grammatical errors, and poor dialogue, it's been a while for me.

There are just a couple more things I wanted to discuss. First off, this story takes place before the Oracion Seis story arc. The reason I chose this moment is because that's how far I am currently am in the series, so any characters, events, or abilities, during or after this arc, will not be included. Secondly, this story will contain an OC x Canon pairing. * Audience Gasp *. I'm not going to argue with you, or try to defend my pairing, I'm just going to do my best with writing out a romance, which I'm fairly new with as well. This story will also contain other original characters and even an original guild known as the Twisted Alley Guild.

If anyone would like me to work on character bio's and backgrounds for my OC's, feel free to leave me a comment with your interest. If not, I will just leave as much information as the original creator would, which is usually just enough for you to love or hate them.

Anyway, enjoy the story!


It was another morning at the Fairy Tail guild. The member wizards sat around, slightly scattered around the great hall. Chatting and drinking, overall having a pretty good time on this lazy day. Well, everyone except Lucy, who once again was at the end of her rope when it came to her bills.

"Waaaaah," groaned the celestial wizard, "what am I going to do to pay my rent?"

Mirajane only responded with a sweet smile and refilled Lucy's drink. While it would be in her usual demeanor to offer Lucy some work, Lucy should know by now that that's how to handle this sort of situation. By doing your job. But, it became routine for her to wait this long before actually doing something about it.

"What are you complaining about?"

Lucy perked up to see the Ice Wizard Gray, stepping his foot onto the stool next to her and leaning against it.

"You do this every month," he spoke bitterly, "you wait until the last moment to actually pay your rent and then complain because you did nothing to actually pay for it."

Disappointment poured over Lucy. He was right. It wasn't uncommon of her to forget her bills. Maybe she was avoiding them. Maybe she had better things to spend her money on. Probably the first one. But it's not like, for the first half of the month, that she isn't aware of the incoming bills.

"You're right," she whined, "I should take a job just to pay for it."

"See, I told you."

"And you should put on some clothes," Lucy whined louder.

The bashful shriek of Juvia is heard from the background as Gray leaped off the stool to find his missing clothes, another common occurrence here. After the threat of the Thunder Palace, everyone began to get set into their own motions. Life for them became, once again, calm and predictable.

But, of course, that wouldn't last very long.

"Don't worry Lucy," Happy said, somehow appearing on the bar next to her.

"Yeah, we'll do what we always do," followed Natsu, sitting on her right, "we'll take a nice easy job to get you the rent money."

"Like we always do," cheered Happy.

Lucy's pouting lips turned to a smile after seeing her friends so quick to help her.

"Count me in," a smooth female voice said from behind them.

They turned around to see the redheaded wizard, Erza Scarlet. She approached the bar and leaned against it on Lucy's left. Her gauntlets making a slight clank in contact with the wood. She smiled at her friends.

"Did you have any sort of mission in mind, Natsu?" She asked the Salamander.

"Yeah," Natsu nearly shouted, jumping up onto his stool, "there's a village on the outer edge of this cliff that says they're getting attacked by ghosts."

Chills shot up Lucy's and Happy's bodies.

"G-Ghosts?" They sniveled in unison.

"Yeah, it sounds wicked awesome," Natsu began to get more excited as he filled his team in on the details of the mission, even to the point of climbing onto the counter and speaking out to the rest of the great hall. Everyone looked to Natsu, some with intrigue, others with fear. As he spoke, it was hard to tell whether he was making any of it up. Natsu was going into so much detail of the so-called hauntings, you couldn't help but think he was making, at least, some of it up.

As Natsu continued to ramble on, Mira leaned over the bar, far enough to press her breasts to the wood.

She spoke softly to Erza, "something came for you today."

Erza blinked, surprised to receive anything other than payment for missions.

"What is it," she asked.

Mira giggled, looking into Erza's eyes. She looked like she was going to explode with expectation for the armored wizards surprise. She placed a small black box on the counter, sliding it slowly to her. Erza's eyes lowered to the box. It was a mostly blank black box, except for a silver circular logo on the top, with two dots like eyes but no mouth.

Erza's eyes widened. She looked back to Mira, who just smiled even wider. This wasn't just a regular box with a regular logo. This box made Erza's heart speed up, she even began to sweat. She felt warm, a good kind of warm, from her chest to the rest of her body. She took the box from the counter and held it in her hands. Turning away from Mira, Erza stared at the logo.

She whispered to herself, a soft smile on her lips, "he's coming back."

Natsu roared as he finished describing the battle he was pretending to have with the ghosts. Lucy sat stiff, eyes closed, already regretting the mission she hasn't even been on yet.

"That sounds great, Natsu," the blonde lied.

She was snapped out of her brief paranoia to the box Erza held in her hands. Erza was trembling slightly. Lucy looked at her face then to the box.

What's in the box? She wondered.

Lucy had never seen Erza like this. It was a new and slightly uncomfortable experience to see the usually cold and scary wizard to be, what could only be described as, giddy. Erza stood up quickly, hastily moving toward the exit without removing her eyes from the box. Other wizards dived out of the way of the armored freight train moving towards the door.

Erza called back to her team, "sorry, can't go on the mission, something came up!"

She spoke quickly before bursting out the door of the great hall and running frantically through the streets of Magnolia. Her team sat, still at the bar, they all blinked.

"What was that about," Lucy asked out loud, to no one in particular.

"Guess you could say, she's got a date," Mira answered.

Lucy's eyes nearly burst from her head, she spun around to face the beauty behind the counter.

"What?" She screamed.

"Oh, I get it," Gray spoke, pulling his shirt down over his chest, a soft whine from Juvia was heard from behind, but it was ignored, "let me guess, it's Reece."

Mira nodded eagerly and giggled, "that's right. Reece is coming home to Fairy Tail."

"Who's Reece?" Lucy asked.

"Ah yeah!" Natsu shouted, flames shooting from the Dragon Slayers mouth, "I can finally fight him after three years. I'm already fired up."

Lucy's curiosity turned to quick, brief anger at the flame wizard, "What's with you and fighting everyone?"

She quickly calmed and paused, "wait, three years? He's been gone that long?"

Mira nodded, but Gray answered, "Yeah, he got sent on a reconnaissance mission. It was a long mission but paid big Jewel."

"Master said that three other wizards from the other guilds were also sent out on this mission," Mira continued, the other guilds being Blue Pegasus, Lamia Scale, and Cait Shelter.

Lucy was surprised. She never heard of a mission taking that long. A couple weeks, maybe. But three whole years? She wondered what kind of mission it was, what were they doing, who were they spying on? Also, how many months of rent would the pay cover?

She shook the thought out of her head. Three years was way too long to be away from her friends and Fairy Tail. This brought something else to her mind. If Reece was this important to Erza, why did he leave for three years?

Lucy came up with a better question, one asked but not answered, "Who's Reece?"

The guild filled her in. Many of them had their very own stories to tell about Reece; That he was an extremely gifted wizard in maker magic. That he was very close to Erza, some even saying that they used to date before he left. But one thing was consistent with all their stories. Not a single person in the guild has ever seen his face. He wasn't like Mystogan, most of them knew him personally. It was just that he always kept his face covered.

"We didn't know if it was something he wore," Gray said, "or if it was some kind of magic, but none of us know what he actually looks like."

"That's not true," Levy said, sitting with her team at a table. Also Gajeel.

She was smirking, in fact, a few of the women were. Levy, Cana, and Mira, even Bisca. Lucy's first thought wasn't the friendliest to the guy she's never met. Have only the women seen his face? Was he some kind of player? Luckily for Reece, the women quickly pushed that thought aside.

"Erza's definitely seen his face," Bisca said, smirking even more, "she blushed the entire time she was telling us."

"Took her a couple of drinks," Cana continued, "but us ladies finally got it out of her."

"Erza drinks?" asked Lucy.

Cana stopped mid-sip, "I meant drinks for me."

Learning this fact about Reece only gave more ground for Lucy's biggest question. Why did he leave? It would be incredibly hard for someone like Lucy to leave her friends behind, but knowing how close he was with Erza, even to the point of Erza being the only one to know what he looks like. It seemed extremely odd for him to just leave like that.

Then again, she was jumping to conclusions. She didn't even know the guy, and Erza was in such a hurry, there's no way he left on bad terms.

Still. It made her wonder.


Thank you for reading. I'll accept any comments and critiques but please don't flame me.