I may have lied when I said that other chapters will be shorter. Sowwy.
So FINALLY I got the title pic up! *pats self on back* I attempted to draw Grimmjow in Fairy Tail style, but the eyes came out so weird I just used the lower halves of the characters only, and now it looks decent. A word to the wise; styluses (I think that's right) for iPads are absolute garbage. I could barely finish Laxus with the one I had. If you actually know anything about decent drawing styluses for iPads, please please please lemme know.
Oh yeah, that's right. This is a fanfiction. Well, chapter two is here! I hope you like it. Because I've been writing it nonstop, legit. Please review, all criticism and new ideas are greatly appreciated!
DISCLAIMER: I don't own either Bleach or Fairy Tail, although I wish I was that lucky. No OC's this time.
WARNING: SPOILERS FOR ALL OF BLEACH AND MOST OF FAIRY TAIL! READ AT YOUR DISCRETION...
Chapter Two: Trespass S-Class
...
Laxus
...
I'm just not even gonna bother with what happened before he appeared. Let's just say that Fairy Tail members aren't very nice. Then again, I'm not one to judge.
I think it's best to start this story when...he appeared.
Date? Who cares. X7-something or other. I could do the math but I'm not in the mood.
Time? Early evening, I think. It was dark enough to see the moon if you looked outside, which was full tonight. Of course, I was inside, so I was relying on the clock instead of an eyewitness account. But I knew it was full because Gramps was commenting on how nice and peaceful the moon looked. I laughed.
Setting? S-Class floor of the Fairy Tail guild hall, which is right in the center of Magnolia, a city in the country of Fiore, in the world called Earthland. There's an organizational chart for you.
Characters...? Ay. Let's see... There's me, Laxus Dreyar, a Dragon Slayer magician. An orange-eyed blonde—yeah, yeah, make fun and I'll fry you. I've got a nasty scar over my right eye shaped like a lightning bolt. Aptly acquired, I guess. Matches my ability.
Then there's Mirajane Strauss, and I honestly don't care what magic she uses because she hasn't used it publicly in forever. I'm sure I'd have remembered if I wanted to. A white-haired airhead bartender, too nice in my opinion. Maybe if she had a nicer body, I'd care more.
Gramps is another. Makarov Dreyar, my midget of a grandfather and the guild master of Fairy Tail. He kicked my dad, his own son, from the guild. So I hate him. A lot. Nuff said.
...And then there's Erza Scarlet. My hatred for Gramps looks like a love affair in comparison to my relationship with her. I hate her snobby and righteous attitude, she hates my guts, so I guess we could be friends out of mutual disrespect. A redhead who wears armor all the time and uses Requip magic to change her weaponry and armor. Better body than Mira, but still not optimal.
All of the above characters in my story are S-Class. Me, Mira, Erza, and Gramps are all some of Fairy Tail's strongest. I hate 'em all.
I also have the Raijinshuu. I guess calling them my lackeys is generous at best. Evergreen, the one with boobs; Freid, the rune writer and swordsman; and Bixlow, the wtf inducer. I think they care about me a whole lot more than it's returned, but oh well. They're useful, and fairly powerful. Not S-Class, but still.
...There. Pretty sure that's all the people I care about in Fairy Tail. I'll let you know if others pop into my head.
Location of main character? Leaning back against the wall in my chair, feet propped up on the table despite the fact that Mira gets pissed when she has to clean up after me.
Attire? Please. You know you're just wondering about it so you can imagine me taking it off.
...Ah, who am I kidding? I don't mind. Over-the-ears headset with a single silver spike coming out from each side. Leopard print button-down shirt, red dress pants, gray coat with whitish fur lining and draped off my shoulders. Enjoy. But write any lemons and see where that gets you.
Okay. Now that the scene has been established, we can get to the real deal. It went something like this.
One second, I was listening to music with my headphones on. Nothing very interesting, just the classic rock I've always liked since...pretty much always. I was dozing off too, to the point where I almost thought I saw a little blue cat fly up and snatch a poster from the S-Class request board. Might have been real—but then again, might not.
The next moment, an unconscious half-dressed teen with multiple wounds all over his body and a circular gaping hole in his torso appeared at table level and slammed down on the floor with enough force to crack the wood and leave a crater around him.
That one, however, was real.
The noise of the crash even penetrated through my soundproof magic headset, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway if it hadn't. I had been, ironically, staring at the exact spot where he had appeared for the past ten minutes, half-asleep until the crash startled me into realizing what had just happened.
I leapt out of my seat, heart pounding from the surprise, and swore loudly as I took another look at the crater and its occupant. A thick cloud of sawdust had kicked up at the impact, which easily explains why my lungs suddenly felt like sandpaper. "What the hell?!" I said, attempting to hold in a cough and failing.
From downstairs at the bar counter, Mira yelled back to me, more annoyed than anything else. Of course. She couldn't see this. "Laxus, what did you do now—"
"Get up here, now!" I roared in reply.
"What? Why—?"
"And bring the med kit with you!"
That must have scared the crap out of her, along with whoever was downstairs. Usually, when someone gets in my way, you find their semi-conscious body a mile away in a dark alleyway chosen specifically by the Raijinshuu. The fact that I was telling Mira to get a medical supply kit was so unlike me, it probably had her on the verge of hysteria.
She didn't waste a second—within a few moments I already heard her feet pounding on the staircase.
Below me, I could hear other Fairy Tail members—specifically, Erza and Gramps—murmuring about what had just happened, which was kinda stupid seeing as they should have been up on the S-Class floor to see it for themselves.
"Master, are you absolutely sure I shouldn't go up there?"
"...Eh, I'm sure Mira can take care of it."
"But if Laxus—"
"Like I said, I'm sure Mira can take care of it. Explosions happen in Fairy Tail."
"Not where us S-Class wizards are concerned! The S-Class floor shouldn't be demolished, because it symbolizes the strength and power of our guild. A Fairy Tail without a second floor will lose all respect in Magnolia!"
"Pah. We're a guild, not a status symbol. Who needs the floor upstairs when we've got liquor and job requests right down here?"
"Amen!" yelled Cana Alberona heartily, before the clamor of the guild was shut out by the sound of her pouring a full barrel of booze down her throat.
"See, Erza? Cana gets it."
Some guild master Gramps is.
Enough. Forget about them and worry about the guy here. If anything happens up here, no matter what, everyone will think I did it. I had to ignore them and focus on him. I honestly don't know why I felt like I had to help this guy. Something about the fact that he was on the S-Class floor just rang for me. I dunno, I guess it's because I had to fight to get up here, and this guy definitely looked like he did too.
Against all my instincts to shirk off and let Mira take care of everything, I slid off my coat and headphones and worked my way across the floor to him. The floorboards were creaking under my feet; seriously, renovation was needed badly where the guild hall was concerned.
This is not like me. In case you haven't realized yet.
"Cana, I keep a small glass bottle of water behind the bar, next to the rubbing alcohol—Porlyusica treated it with a disinfecting agent for me. You know your way around the bar well; grab it and come upstairs with me," Mira called.
Cana? She wasn't allowed up here. She's failed her S-Class entrance exam too many times to count, one of those being a loss to me. Why was she helping? I mean, no real complaints here—besides the new chick, Lucy, Cana's the best body Fairy Tail's got. But why?
The concept of any type of alcohol was too strong for the drunkard to deny. "Me? Upstairs!? Sure! Gimme a second."
As the two of them gathered supplies, I got as close to the guy as I dared and sat down, staring right at the first thing that caught my eyes. The hole in his chest. That was quite possibly the only part of him that didn't look badly injured. It was a perfect circle, carved all the way through the center of his torso where his stomach should be; but instead of being scarred like the rest of his body there was only shadow on the skin around the hole, and I could see clear through to the wood below. It was eerie to look at.
Behind me, Mira and Cana finished scaling the stairs, Cana taking the lead and getting up behind me while swinging the aforementioned glass bottle in her hands. "Alright, we're here. What exactly—"
Without looking at her, I pointed to the hole in his chest, and the bottle slipped from her hands. A shard of rounded glass sliced past my cheek, just narrowly missing the scar over my eye. "Holy shit, Laxus," she breathed, and took a step back, her flip-flops crunching on broken glass. "What the f**k did you do?"
"I didn't do anything," I snapped, wiping the blood away with the back of my hand.
That was about the same moment that Mira's eyes fell on him. She shrieked and put a hand over her mouth when she saw the hole, but after a moment she got over it and kneeled down on his right side, opening the small kit next to her. "Cana," she said firmly, "there's another bottle in the cabinet next to the request board, larger than the one before. It's locked. The key is under the flowerpot on the terrace."
"That's it!" Erza declared, the sound of clanking armor finally nearing the stairwell. "I'm going up, Master!"
"Erza, wait!"
Mira ran over to the bathroom and filled up a wooden basin half-full with water from the tap.
Cana said nothing. She was frozen, trembling. So I looked over my shoulder and locked eyes with her. "What are you staring at? He's gonna have more than a hole in his stomach if we don't do anything."
She pointed a trembling finger at me. A threat. "He's just a kid! Laxus, you don't ever hurt a non-aggressor on Fairy Tail grounds. If he had a gun to your head, well, I can understand this. But if he didn't do anything to harm you..."
Cana left the words hanging in the air and stormed to the terrace to fetch the keys. I decided that she wasn't even worth my attention right now and looked back at the guy as Mira searched the kit for a clean cloth.
"Laxus, even for you," Mira said, dragging the basin closer, "this is excessive."
"I keep telling you, I didn't do this! He just—"
I was cut off by yet another accuser, Erza, who had finally made it up here and had her sword pointed at my head. "Just what?" she demanded, casting a glance at him and then turning her gaze back to me. "He just appeared?!"
"YES!"
Cana returned from the terrace and, since storming out would have been bad conduct, stormed up to the cabinet with the bottle and started to open the lock. "Laxus, you sick bastard—"
"BEFORE ANY MORE OF YOU SAY A GODDAMN THING," Mira suddenly roared, surprising me and freaking us all out, "LET'S HEAR WHAT HE HAS TO SAY!"
Ah, that's right. See, I knew I'd remember. She uses Satan Soul magic. Take a guess what it does.
A flustered Erza walked to the railing overlooking the lobby floor and braced herself on the wooden beam. "Fine. I guess we're being a little judgmental."
"A little?!"
"Yes. We're talking about you. Remember?"
She couldn't be serious. It was hard to reign in my annoyance with her as I appealed my position. "Look. I was just sitting here and listening to my music, and he literally just appeared right in front of me. No joke."
"Understand that that's really hard for us to believe, Laxus," Cana snapped. Mira shook her head, and at last Cana calmed down.
Erza took a deep breath and said, "It's truly a pity we don't have any healers in the guild. Ah well. I can't help when I'm wearing this armor." Within an instant, she had requipped her armor into a white blouse with a bow around the neck and a blue skirt. "How is he?"
"Don't ask me," Mira replied nervously.
Besides the hole, he was in very, very bad shape, which was saying something. Mainly, three long slashes were cut across his chest—the largest one looping around the left side of his neck and down to the hole. Jeez, what crackpot weapon gave him that? Not even counting those, though, he was covered in fairly-serious scratches and bruises from head to toe. Thick crimson blood was dripping down his sides and through the hole to color the wood below him, which I had to admit was pretty graphic even for our standards.
Was he dead? Hope not—something told me that Mira and the others would blame me for it, since I was always upstairs when nobody else was and speaking softly isn't my forte. Hell, Cana and Erza already did.
Turns out I was wrong the first time I saw him. He actually appeared to be older than a teen, but not by much. Maybe a year younger than me at best, probably twenty or so. That warranted calling him a kid in my book... I am saying this as a guy, so don't take this wrong—for a kid in his early twenties, he had a killer physique. I didn't even know someone so young could have that many muscles and yet still be so slim. He was surprisingly pale, probably owed to his comatose state, with a jumble of light blue hair that looked too natural on him to be dyed. Similarly colored tattoos were under his eyes, which were scrunched so tight that I think it'd be a miracle if they ever opened. His hands were clenched but not closed, like he was about to claw someone's eyes out. A ripped white jacket that didn't extend down to his hole was on him, with the collar and sleeves turned out to reveal the black inside. His pants were long and flowy, and were white and in tatters like the jacket. One of his feet was bare; the other one had a black boot-like shoe with white markings on it. All of his clothing was ripped extensively, as if he had been fighting off a wild tiger barehanded.
Oh, and get this. A sword was slid through his belt. A simple katana with a light blue sheath and a handle wrapped with deep blue cloth. What was a kid like this doing with a weapon?
For once, Erza had the same opinion as I did. Erza kneeled down next to Mira and motioned for Cana to sit next to me. "Mira, I'm going to take his weapon in case he's hostile."
A nod from Mira. Erza reached over the kid's mangled body and slid the sheath and blade out through his belt, running her fingers over the hilt. "How the hell did he get a weapon like this?"
"What's so surprising?" I asked.
"It's a high quality authentic katana, better than even mine. And there's a strange engraving on the sheath..." She narrowed her eyes, but after a few seconds she gave up and requipped the blade into the dimension where she kept all her armor and weapons. "But I can't read it. I'll ask Levy to decipher it later."
"Cana, give me the bottle." Mira held out one hand and held in her other a clean towel. "If I don't clean his wounds, he could die."
"We don't even know if he's alive," I said. How had the rest of them overlooked this?
"Look at his chest," she said. "It's moving, just barely. He's unconscious, almost dead, but not quite. Cana, the bottle."
Cana nodded and handed her the treated water, which she poured into the basin with a tense breath. A moment later, she dipped the end of the towel into the water and wrung out as much as she could.
"Erza, tell Master to contact Porlyusica and see if she's willing to come. I'm not experienced with fatal injuries like this."
"Got it." Erza leapt over the railing down to the lobby floor and began to negotiate with Gramps.
"Alright. Cana, Laxus; I need you guys to stay here, in case he wakes up. Because this is really gonna hurt."
Cana scooted around so she was next to Mira and across from me. "If he attacks, what do we do?"
"Hold him down tighter."
Erza called up to us, "We can't reach her! She must be out."
Cana and I exchanged a glance. "This is a bad idea."
"It's this or he dies before we can get him to Porlyusica." And with that she lowered the towel and started cleaning out the largest of the wounds on his chest.
The effect was instantaneous. The second the rag came into contact with his skin, his eyes shot open, and he let out a horrible pained scream. His whole body arched violently upwards, and his hands clenched even tighter as he began to struggle against Mira.
"Cana, Laxus, now!"
I grabbed his left arm and pushed down, hard enough to move the splintered floorboard beneath him, while Cana grabbed his right arm in one hand and laced her free hand with his and squeezed.
I raised an eyebrow.
If she noticed, she didn't say anything. "Come on, man," she said, his fingers squeezing hers tightly as he screamed again and shut his eyes. This time, it was a little quieter, but he was struggling harder now, gaining strength back. It was difficult to hold him down now, really difficult, without hurting him. "Hang in there."
"Shouldn't we be doing this somewhere a little more sanitary?" I asked, noticing that as of this moment we were practically sitting on broken glass and splinters.
"You want to move him?" Mira asked, her eyes locking with mine. God, her eyes scared me. When was the last time she had given me that look?
A sweatdrop rolled down my cheek, and I shook my head.
The kid let out another cry and turned over on one side, towards Cana. And then, finally, he yelled something. "Stop!"
"Hey, he can talk," Mira gritted, wringing out the towel into a basin that was by her side and returning to her healing. The water that came out was a bright liquidy red. "That means he's conscious. That's an improvement."
"Sorry," Cana apologized firmly, the arm restraining him not letting up in the slightest. Her hand holding his didn't move either. "You just need to bear with us."
When he cried out again, Mira shook her head. "This isn't really working. It's probably hurting more than helping—I'm going to leave that one alone for a little."
Mira moved away from the worst of his cuts and to one of the less life-threatening ones, and immediately he started showing little signs of improvement. His ragged breathing slowed and steadied a little bit, and he stopped struggling quite so hard. His body was still trembling though, sweat dripping down his face and neck.
His grip on Cana's hand released slightly, earning a strained smile from the sultry wizard. "There. I told you to hang in there."
Slowly, really slowly, he cracked one eye open, gritting his teeth. The edges of his canines were jagged, like a panther's fangs. Disturbing. His eyes were a deep blue, yet another addition to his addiction to the monochromatic.
"Ggh...Where...is this...?" he rasped, his weakness and exhaustion clearly showing.
I was about to speak, but Cana beat me to it. I suppose it was a good thing though—like I said, I tend not to speak softly.
"You're in the Fairy Tail guild hall. You're safe, but you're wounded, badly. We're attempting to treat you."
"Fairy...Tail?" His eyes narrowed again, but from confusion instead of pain. "What a stupid name."
"Then ignore the name and lie still," Mira commented snappily. I think she purposely moved to another one of the worse cuts then, and he let out a pained cry.
"Stop that! I don't...need...your pity." With a grunt, he tried to stand, but without trying Cana and I were able to hold him down.
"Yes, you do. Let us help." Cana leaned out over him a little further.
"I told you...I don't—argh!"
All of a sudden, he winced and cried out again. That just happed to coincide with the fact that the ends of Mira's hair had fallen out of their tie and brushed over one of his serious wounds a little more than gently. "Would you stop that?!"
"Sorry, sorry," Mira mumbled blankly, moving to another cut and fixing her hair with her free hand.
"She did that on purpose," he said with an agonized hiss.
"Mm."
"Mira, stop being a jerk. It's a name. If he was insulting the guild itself, that'd be different. What's you're name, kid?" said Cana.
"...Kid...?"
"And why is there a hole in your chest?" I added.
He shuddered as Mira moved to another one of the more serious cuts and let out a strained groan. The look in his eyes clearly portrayed his unwillingness to answer. "Nrgh... Why should I tell you—"
"Okay, I have to move the cloth to one of the worse cuts now," Mira said softly. "It's gonna hurt, a lot. More than before. A lot more."
"Shit." His eyes narrowed.
"That's about right," Mira agreed with a solemn tone. "Cana, Laxus?"
"It's not like I've moved or anything," I deadpanned.
"Sorry," Cana apologized again.
"...The name," he started, meeting Cana's gaze with that narrow glare. "It's—"
Mira pressed the towel against the side of his neck.
One can only imagine what he was going to say. Any sound he was about to make was cut off by a strangled gasp, and after a moment, he cried out again and thrashed violently. I almost fell on top of him, he tugged against me so hard. Where the hell did all that newfound strength come from?!
Mira yelped and jumped away as his shoulder managed to worm its way out of my grip and almost bashed into her arm. The speed at which he had moved startled even me, but within another second I had gotten over it and grabbed his shoulder once again.
During his struggle, one of his feet came into contact with the ground, and the resulting impact created a crater as large as the one he was in. A sweatdrop slid down Mirajane's cheek as she called, "Holy shit. Erza, we need some help! And get the rest out of the building!"
"They're on their way out!" Like wildfire Erza came roaring up the stairs and practically slid across the ground to us, grabbing a leg in each hand and holding him down as best as she could. "Damn, he's strong!"
"St-stop it!" he yelled, his eyes wide and darting back and forth from me to Erza, then to Cana, then to Mira's hand on his skin, then back to me. And then his eyes locked on mine and lingered there, for just an instant longer than the others, and he closed them and bared his canines again. "...I said..."
"Mira!" I yelled. "Get back!"
Her head cocked to the side for an instant, proof of her unsuspecting innocence.
"Get OFF!"
And then he lashed out, and somehow ripped himself from my iron grip and sat up, and in a perfectly calculated move the back of his hand connected with Mira's head.
"MIRAJANE!" I roared.
Mira gave off a horrible cry as she shot back and crashed into the wall, her body as lifeless and still as a broken ragdoll. It wasn't like what you see in the movies, where a person gets up immediately after an attack like that—one of her arms was twisted at a weird angle, and her eyes were open from pure shock and horror. It was so impossibly real. So real. A thin trail of blood was leaking from her head, dying a streak of her hair a deep scarlet. And she wasn't moving.
But he wasn't even done. Twisting his body towards me, he tore his foot from Erza's restraints and slammed it into the side Cana's abdomen. She let out a strained gasp as he ripped his hand from her grip and tossed her aside like nothing.
Erza thought fast and requipped her standard blade and armor back into existence, just in time to block the rebound of his kick. Then, right when she was about to block, a glowing red light came from the sole of his shoe, and he swerved his foot around to face the residents of the first floor.
Before I could do anything, she leapt in between him and the rest of the guild, and took the entire brunt of the explosion herself.
"Aah!..." In that instant, blocking the explosion of energy with just her blade and body, I realized how overpowered she was. A surprised Erza couldn't protect the others alone.
When the smoke faded, the first floor was safe. But Erza was dangling over the edge of the S-Class floor, a single hand holding onto the already creaking wood tiles. Her armor and sword had turned back into her blouse and skirt, and burn marks were scattered all over her body. Right now, she was struggling just to pull herself back up.
Panting heavily as he pulled himself to his knees, the kid turned toward me and growled. "What part of 'get off' didn't you understand?"
That was the last straw. You don't hurt a member of Fairy Tail on my watch, and you definitely don't hurt three of them if I'm anywhere nearby. My anger with him blinded me, I could barely see anymore. No, all I saw was Mirajane flying back into the wall, and all I could hear was Cana's cry of pained surprise, all I could feel was Erza's gaze drilling into me, practically begging me to do something. And just because I hated all of them didn't mean that I would enjoy seeing guild members hurt by an outsider.
Outsider. Newcomer. Whatever. I hated him. Any connection I might have felt to him at the start was officially severed. It's not like I didn't feel a tiny bit similar, like I wouldn't hurt a woman. But hurting someone in battle and hurting three women who're trying to help you stay alive are two very different things.
Instinct got the better of me. I grabbed his left shoulder tightly and unleashed ten thousand volts of electricity into his body and kept going.
I have to give him credit as a living being—he didn't even scream. He just closed his eyes and took it with a shudder, his teeth still gritted.
The requip mage pulled herself back up just in time to see it. "What the hell! LAXUS!" cried an absolutely enraged Erza, who charged me from the front and requipped her blade.
That piece-of-crap little kid! Who did he think he was?! I was gonna teach him a lesson, and teach him good. The lightning magic was swirling around the two of us, exhilarating me and fueling my anger and hatred.
I raised my hand to her feet and let loose another bolt of lightning, still discharging my max capacity into him. A warning shot. "Don't get any closer, Titania, or I'll zap your head off!"
"You idiot! He thought it was self-defense!"
"Bullshit! You call that magic he aimed downstairs self defense?!"
"That wasn't magic!"
"Wasn't it? He was baiting you, Erza! He knew that someone here would risk their lives to protect the others!"
"Laxus, stop!" Cana cried, clutching the bare side of her chest.
"I will when he gets the message!" I answered with a yell, fuming. The entire S-Class floor was aglow with bright yellow lightning, the majority of which was coming from my hand and flowing into his bones. "The second he gives up, I stop!"
"You'll kill him!"
"Good! That's what I f**king want!"
The light from my magic illuminated Cana's hand, where he had been holding it, and I realized that her fingers were bruised and red from how tightly he had gripped them. That just made me madder.
"This is what you get when you hurt Fairy Tail, you bastard," I whispered roughly, searching his eyes for any sign of backing down.
"L-Laxus," Mira breathed, pained as she struggled to a sitting position, "stop this, please..."
And then, to quite a shock, the kid turned back to me and said, "...No. Let's see...if you can...do it."
Those eyes. That gaze.
I hated those goddamn eyes of his!
"Think I can't?" I whispered again, and doubled the dosage, using both hands at this point. He let out another strangled gasp but just barely stood his ground, attempting to stare me down and failing.
"Laxus, that is enough!" In a desperate attempt to stop me, Erza hurled her sword at my head. And as powerful as I am, swords still present a danger to my mortality. I stopped the lightning flowing and leaped out of the way as she pulled herself to her feet, but I wasn't fast enough to dodge the solid right hook she aimed at my chin.
I stumbled back a few steps, catching myself on the edge of the table. Erza, that bitch, now stood between me and the kid. He was on his hands and knees behind her, panting and coughing heavily and not daring to look me in the eye.
I didn't care, though. He had given up, at least in my eyes. The fact that he refused to look at me came across to me as a concession. But I still wanted to kill him.
Erza must have seen that murderous expression of mine, and acted quickly. Before I could do anything rash, Erza took the towel from the basin and pressed it lightly to the cut on my cheek. But it didn't matter how hard she pressed it—as soon as it touched my skin I thought someone had stabbed me with a foot-long iron knitting needle in the skull.
"Ahh!" I shoved her hand away, but it was too late to turn away from those angry little eyes of hers. They locked onto mine, and I was stuck. "You got a problem, Titania?"
"That was to a tiny glass cut on your cheek. We basically dumped a gallon of it onto his centimeter-deep body length wounds. Would you just sit still and let us put that much on you?" she asked.
Why should I answer when we all knew what I would say? I stayed silent and broke away from her gaze. There was no need to voice my doubt against her—she already knew it was there.
"Stop being a murderous bitch, Laxus." Erza retrieved her sword from in front of me and held it out to the side, where it dwindled into nothingness. Then the sheathed katana of his appeared in its place.
Me? She's calling me this. Hilarious to boot.
Kneeling down a few feet away from him, she held out the blade and said, "I think this is yours, kid."
He pulled his legs out from under him and leaned back, glancing at her once. Waited a few moments. Then, to my surprise, he reached out and snatched the weapon from her grip, clenching his hand tightly around it.
I watched without a sound as Cana got to her feet and helped Mira stand. And neither one of them looked me in the eye either as they walked to Erza's side.
So I returned to my chair, put my coat back over my shoulders with a shrug, and placed my headphones around my neck. And I watched as the three girls attempted to help him some more.
For the first fifteen minutes or so after he calmed down, he was completely uncooperative with the trio. He absolutely refused to let Mira even get near him with the towel, and eventually she gave up. He sat curled up in a corner of the room, his head between his knees, growling at the four of us in turn and mumbling the same words over and over to himself. Like a broken record—"The Kubo. The f**king Kubo. Working with Mashima, that..." And on and on he went. Dementia. When he wasn't mumbling, he was coughing into his hand, or squeezing the wounds on his shoulder and letting the redness slip through his fingers.
Who the hell was this Kubo, anyway? Sounded familiar. Mashima, even more so. But if anyone else recognized it, they didn't say. I didn't care much.
Cana seemed especially wary of him, and didn't say a word nor approach him. I stayed at the table somewhere around three meters from him, safe enough that I could electrocute him again before he could pull anything. And I tried to size him up. What was his deal? Despite the guild's weirdness, people don't just appear in Fairy Tail, and they definitely don't appear on the guild's S-Class floor. Why the hell would he be here, up where only a fraction of the members are allowed?
Well, there was one indication, besides his attack on the girls, which like idiots they seemed to have forgiven him for. I still hadn't. Erza, at some point during his mumbling, tried to approach him more closely than the others.
"Hey, are you okay?"
The second she laid a hand on his shoulder, well, things got interesting. Before any of us realized, he had taken up the katana of his from before, held it up to Erza's neck, wrapped his free hand around her hair, and whispered roughly, "Leave me alone."
She had slowly and nonchalantly backed away, fixing her hair once she was a safe distance behind me. And despite the completely inappropriate situation to find anything funny, I had laughed, really hard—how could I possibly not find that hilarious? I had been longing to see that for so long now. Somebody had held a sword to the great swordswoman Titania Erza's throat. The great and powerful Erza had been bested by a mental patient with a sharp piece of metal and a hole in his chest. It didn't even matter how pissed I was with him; I've wanted to see Erza bested for such a long time.
"Ahahahaha! Fantastic work, Erza. You're a real big girl."
"...Blondie. You got a problem?" the kid grumbled.
Blondie. A tick mark formed on my forehead—I thought I said that I don't like being made fun of. Instantly I remembered how furious I was with him, and the smile melted from my face. "Depends. If I've got a problem, what does that make you?"
The contact seemed like enough to snap him out of his dementia. His eyes met mine and narrowed. Hatred. Not even an ounce of thankfulness for saving his pathetic life. Although...I guess we had strayed from the "save him" path somewhere along the line.
He squeezed his shoulder where I had electrocuted him even tighter, and when his fingers moved I could see a jagged burn mark forming beneath them. "What kind of asshole electrocutes a half-dead guy?"
"What kind of jackass hits a woman?" I retorted, moving out of my seat and standing up, menace in every word.
"...Tch. They weren't trying to block. Their fault."
"They wouldn't have needed to block if you hadn't attacked them in the first place."
"I don't like pain," he hissed, before letting out a groan of—lo and behold—pain. His hands came away from his wounds red and bloodied, and already I could see his eyes were distant and cloudy. "Sh-shit..." he whispered, but he was already falling as he spoke.
As he slumped forward, he turned a little to the side so I could see his back, and I noticed a large black six tattooed onto the right side of his hole.
I think Erza noticed it at the same time as me, but didn't say anything. Instead, she motioned to Cana, who wordlessly moved closer to the once-again unconscious kid and put his right arm around her shoulders. Erza took his left side, and together the two of them managed to carry him to the chair across from me at the table and put him down.
Even in a comatose state, he still looked so disturbing and violent, like when he had fought us before. I put my feet up on the table in a way that blocked him from my view. "Well, he's dead. Can we go now?"
Erza took another look at his wounds and said, "We need to get him to Natsu."
That was a surprise. Of all the people to fix a guy with a hole in his chest, the volatile Fire Dragon Slayer certainly didn't come to mind. From the look on Cana's face, she felt the same.
"Why?" I deigned to ask.
"Think. Porlyusica can't be reached. None of us can heal, and at this time of night no doctors in Magnolia will be open. But Natsu has a fire ability. He can, at the very least, cauterize the wounds until the kid can fully recover."
"Pfft." I chuckled at that. So stupid, it might actually work. "Hey, have fun on your little dragon-hunting escapade, Titania."
It was somewhere at this point that Mirajane, who had been silent this entire time, suddenly realized that a poster was missing from the S-Class job request board.
Immediately, her gaze shifted to me. "The Cursed Island request is missing, Laxus," she said, a nervous yet serious tone in her voice.
I slowly followed her line of sight, and so did Cana and Erza, to see exactly what she had described—an empty gap between the already scattered high level requests.
"Laxus. Who took a poster from the board?"
Now that I thought about it, I had been too awake for that image of a flying blue cat to have been a dream. Happy, Natsu's best friend, had taken it, I was sure.
Well. Tonight just got a whole lot better.
"Laxus," Cana said softly. But the anger portrayed in that word was enough to get me to answer.
"Hey, look," I said uncaringly, "all I saw was a blue cat with wings—"
"You saw Happy and you didn't stop him?!" shrilled Mira.
"All I saw," I repeated, "was a blue cat with wings fly up and snatch a piece of paper off the board. How was I supposed to know it was him?"
"You know any other flying cats?" Erza said.
Troubled, Cana walked to the railing and scouted out the lobby floor, which had filled up once more with Fairy Tail members who had already forgotten that their lives had been in danger. Idiots. Scanning the members, she eventually said, "Natsu's not down there, and neither is Happy."
Called it.
Mira let out a shriek and ran downstairs to tell Gramps, almost tripping over her long red dress as she did so. "Master! Master! Natsu stole an S-Class quest!"
"Whaaaaaa?!" roared Gramps.
I put on my headphones then and drowned them all out, humming to myself as Erza and Cana began to talk, and I moved my foot so I could just barely see him. And I couldn't stop wondering what that six on his back stood for. Six murders? Six years? A name? One of six? Or something more?
"I'm calling him Six from now on," I said suddenly.
If Six disagreed, he didn't say a thing.
"Why not? We need something besides 'kid' to call him anyway." Erza shrugged.
At this point, Mira came back upstairs and said airily, "We heard that the duo was gonna ask Lucy to come on the quest, so Master sent Gray Fullbuster to get them."
Gray, the Ice-Make Magic user. Chasing after a Fire Dragon Slayer. Well, wasn't that likely to blow up in our faces.
All the color drained from Erza's face as she pieced together what I'd already realized. "Oh boy. I'll go after them," she said as her outfit requipped back into her normal Heart Kreuz armor and skirt. "And while I'm at it, I may as well take Six, and kill two birds with one stone."
"Six?" Mira asked, then fell silent as she caught sight of the tattoo. "Oh."
"Have fun," I quipped.
Erza said nothing, just gave me a death glare as she walked to Six's side and hoisted him onto her shoulders with Mira's help.
"Got him?"
"No worries, Mira." Once the two were at the stairs, Mira let Erza take the entire weight of Six, which wasn't very difficult for her to handle, and began walking down the stairs.
"Is this going to work?" Mira murmured, her eyes following the duo down the stairs.
Hope not.
Then to my surprise, the sullen Cana said, "Of course it's gonna work. Erza's smart, she wouldn't do something like that if it wouldn't do any good." The tone of voice she used made it seem like she was trying to convince herself.
Mira nodded and started to pack up the first aid kit, following Erza downstairs once she was finished.
Cana sighed deeply and grabbed a stray bottle of beer that was on the table next to mine, flipping the top off with a wince as her wounded hand felt the strain, and then downed the whole thing before she was halfway back to the bar.
"Oi, Erza, who's that?" called Gramps nervously.
"Six. That's what we're calling him."
"...How...?"
"I'll explain later, Master. When we're back, I'll make him tell me what he's doing here."
And as Erza and Six exited out the front door into the city of Magnolia, I blasted the volume as high as it could go and went about as if nothing had happened.
...
Heyo! Oh wow, I say that so much it was instantly added to autocorrect. SUCCESS.
I really, really, REALLY apologize for screwing with Grimmjow's tough bravado here; but to be fair, the wounds he sustained from Nnoitra and Ichigo would kill anybody else. I think he has the right to lose the hierro for a bit.
Judging from what I've seen so far, I've officially decided that this will be posted every other week now, alternating with AFLCH. On a side note for future chapters, I would like to ask the readers a favor. I was thinking of having Grimmjow develop a Segunda Etapa, just like Ulquiorra did. Unfortunately, I'm all out of ideas in that sense. So if you have one, lemme know in as much detail as possible and if I use it I'll give the credit to you for it.
Next chapter! Grimmjow and Erza find themselves on their way to Galuna Island, one searching for renegade wizards, and one with no idea what the hell he's doing there. See you then!
p.s. OMG RUKIAS HAKKA NO TOGAME IF YOURE READING THIS FOR BLEACH THEN READ CHAPTER 570 OHHHHH MYYYYYYY GODDDDDDDDDDD FINALLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!