Lucy's cheeks were flushed pink and she panted, soft breaths puffing between parted lips. She'd had a good lead on Natsu for their race to the client's research laboratory, but she knew he would overtake her easily.
Only, he was still lagging behind. She grinned proudly to herself and picked up the pace. Her time with the guild had built up not just her strength, but her speed and stamina as well. It seems she had improved, where Natsu had plateaued.
Or, so she would believe.
Natsu's pace was brisk, yes. When she'd cheated him out of the lead, at first he was playfully annoyed. But as he pursued her, he got a full view of Lucy Heartfilia's beautiful ass while she sprinted away. Something primal in him stirred, and when her back was to him, he smiled predatorily. He would catch up soon enough. For now, he enjoyed the view, and the sounds his sharp ears picked up coming from his partner.
"C'mon, Natsu! What are you waiting for?" Lucy attempted to mock him. She grinned over her shoulder at him. They were nearly there, but somehow Natsu hadn't kept up. That ass! He was toying with her, making her think she could outrun him! Well, she'll show him. She slowed down to a jog.
Without a thought towards his own speed, Natsu was upon Lucy in seconds. He yelped, crashing against her, unable to slow down in time to keep from running over his partner. Lucy echoed the yelp and they crashed to the ground, a tangle of limbs.
Natsu groaned inwardly. Her ass had distracted him enough to take his focus from their competition. Why now? His breath hitched slightly when he heard Lucy whine, that feeling within him stirring once again. When he came to his senses, he discovered he was pinning her to the ground bodily, caging her between his arms, their legs tangled. She was dazed a moment longer than he, and he was frozen in place, his hips seated firmly to hers. He yelped again and leapt to his feet, his face flushed. He tucked his face into his scarf to hide the blush.
"Ow. Hey, what the hell, Natsu?" Lucy started to come to, getting her bearings and remembering that he had klutzily smashed into her. She started to get to her feet, pushing herself up off the ground. "Can't even help me up after that? Come on!"
"Sorry," Natsu mumbled, unwilling to make eye contact with her. What just happened? It isn't like anything was different. This was still Lucy, his partner, his best friend.
"Yeah, well," she sputtered, then sighed. "Guess I shouldn't have cheated." She shrugged, attempting to diffuse the situation by shouldering some of the blame for their crash.
Natsu dared to glance at her. "What? No! That isn't right." Damn it! Why was he having such a hard time with this? "Oh, well, um, we're here, aren't we?" He pointed to the sign on the building. "Magnolia Research Center." Yes, that was the place.
"Oh." Lucy looked up at the building. She had expected a creepy, run down warehouse, or a stone spire, or something creepy. This was just an office building. Honestly, it was kind of a let down. She would have enjoyed being creeped out. She had her partner with her, so anything really dangerous would be easy to deal with.
Natsu cocked his head. "Um, are we gonna go in?"
Lucy blinked and shook her head. "Yeah. Sorry. Wow, this is not what I was expecting." She sounded a little confused. "But, a job's a job. Let's go!"
"Yeah!" Natsu grinned widely. They walked together to the front of the building and found the front door.
The inside of the office building appeared as plain as the ourside. It looked like a doctor's waiting room. Plenty of chairs, months-old magazines, and a lacrimavision in the corner playing a children's movie with musical numbers and talking animals.
"Good morning!" A cheerful, masculine voice rang out from the receptionist desk. "Do you have an appointment with us today?"
"Hello! We're wizards from the Fairy Tail guild. Ww were given this job, and thought we would come see what it was about?" Lucy held up the flyer with the information on it.
The receptionist's eyes glinted, and he smiled. "Wonderful! We received word of your arrival an hour ago. We've prepared your agreements, which you'll need to read and sign before we can tell you any of the details, and determine whether you're good fits for the research we had in mind."
"Uh, okay?" Lucy wasn't much for legality, much less Natsu. Thankfully, it was a blanket NDA, which basically ensured their silence on the goings-on in the research group for a set amount of time, on penalty of huge fines and possible openings to lawsuits, should their talk somehow damage the company's reputation.
You know, typical NDA stuff.
"Man. I didn't think we'd have to go through all this," Natsu complained behind Lucy, who had studied every word on the document. "Can't you just sign at the bottom and be done?"
Lucy scoffed. "I was just making sure they weren't going to come and repossess all of our things if we signed at the bottom, Natsu." She glowered back at him before penning her name to the bottom of the page. "Now, it's your turn. It's the exact same thing I just signed. Here, you don't have to read if you don't want." She gave him the basic run-down of the agreement, and he groaned loudly, frustrated.
"All right, fine!" He huffed as he signed his own page. "Great, it's done. Now what?"
"Perfect," the receptionist grinned cheerily, taking the papers from the mages. "Follow me, if you will."
Natsu and Lucy glanced at each other, then followed after the man. He led them through first one set of double doors, then down a long hallway, through a second set. The floor was slanted downwards, and Lucy swore they walked for ten minutes before they came to another pair of doors. When they clicked and hummed, the automatic doors opened smoothly, and they were met with what Lucy was expecting more of, from the front.
The lights were slightly dimmed, but not dark. There were observation rooms, medical equipment for regular checkups, and what looked like a gymnasium, with a comfortable-looking break room on one side. It didn't appear like the scene should feel weird, but Lucy got a chill up her spine. She glanced at Natsu, who looked perilously close to being bored.
"What's all this? It looks like the guild hall, but less fun!" He looked around, eyeballing the medical equipment, sniffing at the gym. "There's no one else here!" He turned and glared at the receptionist. "What are you getting at?"
The receptionist smiled and lifted his hands, waving them in front of him. "Hey now, you do realize this is a privately owned research laboratory?" He lowered his hands and met eye contact with Natsu, smiling easily. "We have deep pockets, but few who are willing to put themselves in our care. Curses do seem to deter most sane people." At Lucy's protesting squeak, he chuckled. "But, you're Fairy Tail wizards, aren't you? A little insanity is to be expected." He grinned at the pair, his green eyes peering at them over the rim of his glasses.
"I don't like it," Natsu said uneasily, trying to menace the man. "You're offering a lot of jewel to do what? Make us smell funny? Cause us to itch uncontrollably? Have our hair turn into snakes?" He was being flatly sarcastic, but Lucy tensed at his last example.
The man laughed, his silver hair, which came down to his jaw, tossed back as he unexpectedly guffawed. "No, no! Oh, gosh, nothing like that." He chuckled as the full laughter started to die down, wiping a tear from his eye. He cleared his throat. "It occurs to me I haven't introduced myself. My name is Dr. Steiner. I specialize in behavioral curses." He reached out a hand to Lucy, who was wary, but slowly touched the hand, which he shook once, then released. He grinned. "We have already done studies in animals for many years. Come, I have a video for you to watch."
He turned and walked towards the break room, expecting them to follow. Natsu stared at his retreating form, his mouth a hard line. Lucy glanced curiously at Natsu, then looked at the man. She shut her eyes and sighed, determined to follow through. She opened her eyes again and followed, letting Natsu decide for himself if he would join her.
The break room was a lot larger than what it seemed from the main hall. There were vending machines, a fridge, a couch, a desk, and a reading nook. There was a bed tucked away in the corner. Lucy raised an eyebrow at the doctor, who looked confused, then following her line of sight, chuckled. "I thought it might be more comfortable than a bed roll or a cot. Some of these curses are taxing, after all. People don't generally like their behavior being altered." He was being matter-of-fact, something Lucy appreciated.
"All right, let's see this video," she stated, pulling up a chair in front of the admittedly large lacrimavision, which had a respectable library of videos stacked in the entertainment center.
Natsu snorted, but also sat to watch the video. Something didn't feel right. But, Mira did vet the source. He guessed he could at least trust her, even if he was getting a creep vibe from the doctor.
"Great! I'll leave you both to watch, then discuss the video privately. Oh, the rooms in this establishment are monitored, except for this break room. I mean, that's why it's a break room. Okay. I'm going now." He scurried off, his footsteps fading until even Natsu didn't hear them. He sighed, a short, irritated sound. "I don't like him," he stated plainly.
"He is kinda weird," Lucy agreed. "But I guess working alone in a research center requires some quirks. Let's watch the video."
She flipped the video on, and the lights in the room dimmed so they could view the screen better. There was a bit of static, then the picture snapped clear, with the doctor's face huge on the screen, eyes piercing. The pair yelped, the startle catching them both. "Good evening, and thank you for your interest in Dr. Steiner's Behavioral Curses studies." Well, that was a relief. It wasn't a live feed. It was barely the afternoon. Lucy relaxed a little, as did Natsu when the image of the doctor stepped backwards so his face didn't fill the entire screen. "Today, I'm goin to show you some footage of our animal test subjects. Please note that none of our companions were injured in any way as a result of our studies, and each of them has found an adoptive home, once their services were complete."
:"Aw." Lucy smiled sweetly. She had a soft spot for animals.
"Before any testing is done, we ensure that our volunteers are physically fit to handle our curses." There was a brief clip of a dog that was being given a physical examination by an unknown person in a lab coat. "Our animal laboratories are in a separate facility, and our veterinary staff are well-versed in the biological needs of many different species."
Natsu yawned and stretched. He was getting bored. "Can't we just get to it? I'll die of boredom before we even get to this part."
Lucy shot him a look, but refused to fast forward the movie. Before long, they were treated to a fully-visible human in regular street clothes. The woman smiled and greeted the dog from the previous scene, leaning over and patting him on the head. The voice over of Dr. Steiner rang out. "This is Malida. She has studied curse theory, and will be assisting in the afflictions we will be working with today. For this particular study, we were attempting to cause extreme fatigue in the subject." As the voice over spoke, a purple magic circle was drawn under the dog, who seemed oblivious, sitting and vigorously wagging his tail, expectant of a command or a treat, if Lucy had to guess. The light from the circle flared, then faded, and suddenly the dog yawned, all of his teeth showing. He then shook off lazily, then curled up and laid on the floor, right where he was.
"Wow!" Lucy was impressed.
"Pfff. It's probably just a sleeping spell. How is that a curse?" Natsu didn't believe it.
The video then focused on the date and time stamp. A time lapsed video showed the dog barely moving, always sluggish, for a total of three days, ten hours, and forty-five minutes. "Whoa. I've never seen a sleeping spell work for that long!" Lucy worried her hands. She didn't want to be tired for three days.
"As you can see, our volunteer has returned to normal." The dog was eating - no, inhaling food in a way that impressed even Natsu, who nodded respectfully towards the dog. "He will eat his fill, be given plenty of water, a few days' rest, then round two."
Round two?
After a moment's thought, Lucy didn't recall seeing anyone trying to cure the dog's fatigue.
The same dog was brought to the screen again, and Malida met him, kneeling to the floor and rubbing and scratching his back furiously. The dog loved it, nearly throwing himself into her lap. SHe smiled genuinely, then stood, and the dog sat expectantly. There was a repeat, the same magic circle, and the same deep fatigue plagued the dog.
Next, the vet that examined the dog in the beginning came forth, and offered the dog a treat. "The snack the veterinarian is offering to the dog is infused with a concoction we believe will cure the fatigue," explained the voice over. The dog cracked open an eye and his tail moved, supposedly a wag. He lipped at the treat, and got it down his throat with great effort, then slumped down again, fast asleep.
A failure.
The vet wrote down the findings at time-lapsed intervals, feeding the dog a new treat every hour.
By the middle of the second day, just 26 hours in, the dog started to show signs of vitality. Instead of ignoring attention, he rolled onto his back to get belly rubs, which he was rewarded with gusto by both the vet and Malida.
The video went on like that for another three trials, the voice explaining the strength of the remedy increased with every new trial.
"Animal trials concluded. The fatigue curse can be countered with our concoction. Findings successful," the vet said in a monotone, professional voice into a lacrimarecorder.
The video ended, and the lights came up again. Lucy shrugged. "I guess that doesn't seem so bad."
"If you say so." Natsu let out a huge yawn and stretched. "You sure they didn't somehow fatigue us through the video? That was boring!"
"Yeah," Lucy agreed. "But, I feel better about it. I wonder what they'll have us do?"
"You have a few choices." The doctor returned to the break room a moment after the video ended. "There's the truth-forcing curse, the emotional enhancement curse, the fatigue curse you saw in the video, and a few others. Nothing too crazy." He grinned. "We're starting with baby steps, before we go for more, um, physically obvious curses."
Lucy lifted an eyebrow. "Physically obvious?"
"Oh, you know. Ugly pox, extra limbs, serious disfigurements, things of that nature that arise from magical means, instead of natural ones."
"Hmm." Lucy tapped her chin. "Okay. I'm in."
"All right," Natsu resigned himself. "So, what do we gotta do?"
Doctor Steiner grinned again, the light reflecting from his glasses. "Follow me."
A/N: I know, I know. It's kind of a slow burn. This was originally going to be a one-shot, but this idea kind of took off in my head and now I have to navigate it. Hang in there! I do plan to get to the good stuff, soon.