A/N: In case you couldn't tell, this story is going to be set in an Alternate Universe. The core four characters (who you will be fully introduced to this chapter) will be strong. Very strong. Perhaps absurdly so. Are we talking Wizard Saint by the beginning of the canon plot? Most definitely, seeing as one of them already was. If I were you and I didn't enjoy reading stories that focus on powerful characters, or stories that are not written to be serious, then I would avoid this one. Then again, if I'm me and you're you then who am I to tell you what to do? Knock yourself out (preferably after you review :D).
Disclaimer: You're lucky I don't own Fairy Tail. Like, seriously, you have no idea.
Warnings: Alternate Universe, Comedy, Trace amounts of Angst, Likely juvenile levels of humour, No Bashing, Ghosts, Nonsense. Keep out of reach of children.
Pairings: N/A
Story Recommendation: [I need to read more instead of wasting my life. Pls ignore.]
Natsu is a quiet boy turned dragon turned boy, who doesn't quite understand life outside his numerous scrolls. Erza's smile is bright enough to blind all to her unhealthy obsession of all things that go stab. Gray is relatively normal, when he isn't talking to ghosts or arguing with his strange tattoo. Lucy is an heiress to an arguably criminal empire who accidentally stumbled into this mess and is content to stay; at least, when she isn't putting out spot-fires or trying to convince Happy that he is not, in fact, the next incarnation of the Devil.
"Uh… hi. My name's Jellal, and this is Erza Scarlet. Oh, I'm Jellal Fernandez. Fernandez is my last name, I don't think I told you that. Did I tell you that?" Without looking up from his scroll, the enormous dragon shook his head, unfurling a little more of the bottom of his parchment and wrapping up an equal amount of the top. Jellal smiled weakly up at him, doing his best to ignore the way the ground trembled and the blood curdling scream coming from one of the Tower of Heaven's upper floors. "Alright, cool, so now you know. What… uh, what's your name?"
"Natsu."
"Natsu, huh? Cool name. Not bad. I like it." A section of wall near the top of the tower was blown outwards, sailing clear of the island and off over the horizon. What was unmistakably a severed head bounced out of the wreckage and into the waves, Jellal securing a hand around Erza's wrist without even looking as the girl moved to collect it. The girl pouted up at him, before manoeuvring her arm so he was holding her hand instead, her attempts to tug him along down to the island's beach barely making him budge. "…So how long have you been a dragon?"
Natsu tilted his scroll sideways, a third piece of paper unfolding itself and extending down almost to the ground. Considering Natsu's claws had the scroll suspended so high that Jellal couldn't actually see it anymore, that had to count as fair effort from whoever had written it. "A while."
Jellal nodded absently, glancing out over the water as that shuddering growl – what had that other boy called it, Deliora? – swept across the island once more. The rest of the slaves were long gone, having had to take every single boat that had been on the island just so there was enough room, leaving there nothing to look at on land except dirt and the reminder of his constant suffering over those long, gruelling months.
His only method of getting off the island would be to swim. That, or hitch a ride with the boy who had barely strung together more than two words at a time in his presence, the one who could apparently transform into a Dragon at will. That sounded like a far more pleasant method, which was the main reason why he was now attempting to ignore to the screams behind him and the section of ocean just a little to his right that was slowly turning red.
He just had to wait for the other boy. The one who was somehow weirder than his companion, the one who could turn into a Dragon at will. Not that Jellal had a problem with that; insanity was par for the course in his old cellblock, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't seem to get any closer to figuring him out. Jellal didn't like not being able to figure something out.
He probably wouldn't have even had a reason to think about it, had Erza not chosen to jump out of the first window they came across while on their way out of the tower.
Jellal wasn't proud to say that in that moment, he had screamed. The lack of air in his lungs had been the only thing preventing him from screaming again when Natsu clicked his tongue, wrapped an arm around his skinny waist, and jumped out after her.
The first scream had been out of fear. The fruitless attempts at a second had been more of a means to express his extreme frustration at the sudden turn of events. Finally out from behind bars, only to die once he hit the ground, especially when he didn't have a say in the matter? What utter bullshit.
Then they'd caught up to Erza, and Natsu had transformed into a Dragon. Erza had giggled, clapping her hands and asking to be placed down near all the shiny lights while Jellal had taken a deep breath and confirmed that the warmth in his pants was indeed his mid-day gruel making a grand encore appearance. Ah well, his clothing already stank, now he just had another reason to jump in the ocean the first opportunity he got. They'd landed, Jellal hadn't bothered to ask why Gray was drawing a jagged circle into the ground or why all the boats were slowly crawling on their own towards the water, intent on having his first bath in ages.
He'd gotten back just as Gray clapped his hands, and the spectres had appeared. They had been shaped like humans, and they had moved like humans, but one of them had looked him in the eyes and left him feeling utterly… void. Tiny trails of ice followed them as they drifted down to the beach, the forms expelling fog and spreading dew drops over the few blades of grass the island had.
Gray had disappeared in between the time it had taken him to blink, the rest of the slaves had fallen through the Tower of Heaven's front entrance, and the screaming had picked up from within. Most of the people had stared at the Dragon, a majority of the others had stared at the spectres, many of the others had simply chosen a boat to curl up in, and the sparse remaining few had made their ways to the icy ghosts with hope clear in their eyes.
Jellal had almost decided which boat he wanted to leave on when Erza looked up at him, her remaining eye large and shining.
"I wanna stay."
The twitch running rampant across his spine and through various organs had even made the Dragon take a step back.
"Why!?"
"Their hair, Jellal. It's so spiky." Her smile grew so bright that one of the ghosts melted. Thankfully, Gray must have foreseen something akin to that happening, as one of the spectres that had been standing around and doing nothing moved forth to take its place. "Think of all the people I could stab with it."
She had looked so damn happy in that moment that his cold hard slave heart had melted, just a little bit. Utterly defeated at nothing but a look, Jellal had turned away, his cold hard slave heart hardening over and covering itself with brimstone and obsidian all over again as every single person they had shared a cell with waved at them from a departing boat, which was being pulled along by a small group of the icy spectres.
Simon and Wally had always gone on about finding what had happened to their siblings, so it wasn't like he'd had much faith in convincing them to weather the storm along with him, but where were Millianna and Sho's excuses? Rob had smiled at him from the back of the group, the suggestive way his eyebrows had been moving neither lost nor appreciated even at that distance. With about as much faith as he'd first had when he was being shipped to the island, Jellal glared sullenly as boat after boat was filled and towed away, stubbornly refusing to offer Natsu any assistance as Erza poked at his toe and asked to borrow one of his fangs. For research purposes, of course.
It wasn't Natsu's fault, per se, but it made him feel slightly better. After everything he'd been forced through, he felt he deserved it.
He wasn't exactly sure when Natsu had pulled his scroll out, or where he'd pulled it out of. He wasn't sure when the last boat had finally disappeared from his view, or when Erza had finally calmed down and begun playing with his matted, unkempt and less than pleasant to the touch hair. So lost in his thoughts, he almost missed when the island finally stopped shaking and Natsu stowed away his scroll. In fact, he would of, had Erza not poked him in the cheek and pointed conspicuously at a now very human Natsu.
"Gray's coming back." Natsu wrinkled his nose, plugging up his nostrils with two of his knuckles. The entrance of the Tower of Heaven buckled outwards as Gray walked through, the air behind him coated in blood and various other nondescript things that belonged within a human body.
Jellal grimaced. Erza let out a soft 'ooooohh', tilting her head and following the blood splatter with her eyes.
Gray marched up to the small group, his chest still bare and bit of his hair glued down to his head with questionable adhesive agents. The giant splatter of blood kept on moving, making its way down to the waves.
"So I found the guy in charge." He began conversationally, wiping something from the corner of his mouth and flicking it onto the ground. He paid no attention as Erza struggled past him, Jellal's feet digging trenches in the dirt as he was dragged towards the beach. "Turns out we didn't get along. Told me he wanted to revive Zeref of all things; that was just before I cut his tongue off, mind you. 'Ora ended up eating him, said something about poetic justice. I don't think he was using the term correctly…"
Natsu nodded, poignantly ignoring the morbid parts of Gray's recap. It was easy for one to overlook things that would usually cause distance in people when one enjoyed someone's company after such a long time being by oneself. "Cool. No idea what a Zeref is, but cool."
"Some really old guy. Made 'Ora kill my parents, and a whole bunch of other people. I'm thinking I'll kill him one day." Gray shrugged, glancing around at the nothingness that made up much of their surroundings. "So, I guess you waited for me?"
Natsu looked down at himself, kicking a small rut into the ground just to make sure he was still present. "Looks like it, yep."
"Ah… cool. Nobody's really done that for me since Ur. I think they all think I'm insane…" Gray trailed off as Natsu suddenly stiffened, the boy turned Dragon turned boy tilting his head back and sniffing the air, a frown spreading across his lips. "Natsu? What's wrong?"
"I think…" Slowly, Natsu turned around to face one of the many paths that had been trudged through the dirt, rocks obscuring much of the view before it got down to sand, a sheer descent at the end robbing anyone standing atop it of their visibility down. Gray manoeuvred around until he was standing next to him, ignoring the noises Jellal and Erza were making as the former dragged the latter away from the scary floating crime scene. "I think someone just got here, but I can only smell magic. No actual person."
Gray's eyebrows furrowed, his tattoo pulsing to life and coiling around his wrist like a particularly evil looking bracelet. He'd just finished getting in contact with Zeroth when someone crested the hill, her steps halting and her face slackening in shock at the sight of them.
Several things slammed into Gray in that moment, none of the physical in nature.
Her face. Even from the distance, her features were achingly familiar. Small differences; the shape of her nose, the rise of her cheekbones, it wasn't a perfect replica of his former mentor, but it was so close. Too close to be a coincidence.
Her magic. Cold, freezing, descending lower than even his in temperature. Her shock slowly formed into a scowl as her eyes landed on him, his pulse quickening as she took a step back and her form wavered.
The fact that her ghost hadn't been following Ur around. No matter what, every single ghost infant he'd ever come across had stayed close to the parent they were closest to, living or dead. Ur had only ever told the story once, during one of the rare nights she would call off training and dive into a liquor bottle. There hadn't been any ghosts taking up residence in Ur's house, so either the father of her baby was still alive or he had felt no reason to stick around.
She was supposed to be dead, but there had never been a spirit or a body. Gray had always assumed that he had been wrong, or there must have been extraneous circumstances. That for whatever reason, she had been drawn to the father she had never met, either following him around or moving on with him to the afterlife.
Never had he really considered the possibility of her being alive. Sometimes it was hard for him to remember there being any difference.
"Ultear!"
She had disappeared before his voice had stopped ringing from his throat, her eyes full of hatred and vitriol as she faded from view. Gray was off like a shot from a cannon, barrelling through two lingering ghosts as he tore down the path towards where the Thought Projection had been standing. Footfalls echoed from behind him as he dropped to his knees, his tattoo swirling along with arm furiously.
"What do you mean, you can't track her!?" Gray slammed the hand that wasn't currently covered in tattoo into the dirt, leaving tiny stalagmites behind as he pulled away. "She's Ur's daughter, Zeroth! She's still alive, I need to find her!"
"Gray-"
"'Somewhere East' doesn't help me, Zeroth! You saw her face before she left, she's not going to sit around and let me come to her! You can sense her magic, so have a taste and try telling me what her maximum range with that spell-"
"Gray!" The Ice Mage paused in his tirade, glancing over his shoulder as Natsu raised his now scaled head and sniffed at the air. A forked tongue flicked out from between his teeth, and he closed his eyes, tilting his head slightly to the side in concentration. "…About four hundred klicks East and fifty North, moving South at about twenty-five klicks an hour."
Gray blinked up at him, his tattoo fading back into his skin. He opened his mouth to talk, the words dying in his throat as something behind Natsu groaned.
The Dragon stepped aside, and Erza smiled brightly, her hands still clutching her growling stomach.
XxX
"So, do you want to destroy it?"
"Nah, you can do it. I'm not the one ghosts kept annoying, am I?"
Gray grinned from where he was standing on Deliora's shoulder, almost perfectly eyelevel with the direct centre of the Tower of Heaven. Natsu hovered beside them, Jellal and Erza gripping onto the scales on his back for support, one looking nervous and the other absolutely thrilled. "Ready, Zeroth?" He asked his arm, which pulsed black in answer.
The Ice Mages grin grew slightly deranged as he raised his arms and crossed them over his head, his tattoo jumping from one limb to the other with almost palpable glee. "Ice-Make: Zeroth's Collection!" The black lines shot off from Gray's skin, curling in on itself and stretching up until it the top of the column had disappeared into the clouds themselves. Snow began to drift down as the top of the constructing morphed to ice, the frozen water beginning to climb from Gray's hands to meet in the middle and coalesce with a flash bright enough to block out the sun.
"Sky-Scraper!"
A very big blade, hefted by a very small boy, descended on the Tower of Heaven with the ominous crack of a sound barrier shattering. Just one sound barrier, Gray didn't want to be rude.
The Tower of Heaven folded like wet paper.
Erza and Jellal watched on from the safety of Natsu's back as the Tower of Heaven descended down to Hell, the lucky pieces abandoning the doomed island altogether to sail out into the ocean.
"Can I-" Erza began, actual stars visible in her eye if one were looking vigilantly enough.
"NO!"
XxX
"WHAT HAPPENED!?" The doctor yelped as she charged into the hospital room the group of children had been shown to, the severity of Erza's injuries carrying enough weight for their arguments of not being separated to be acquiesced. Already, much of her was covered in bandages, Erza going against everything she had been hurriedly told over the last ten minutes and crossing her arms defiantly.
"I fell down a flight of stairs."
"You have several missing digits, more than half of your body is scar tissue, and you only have one remaining eye!" Another doctor pushed his way into the room, placing down several recently grown fingers (ah, the miracles of modern day medical magic) wrapped securely in tissue and rushing back the way he had come.
"It was a very powerful flight of stairs."
Much to Jellal's ire, the surgery bay Erza had then been wheeled into was off limits for anyone not affiliated in some way with said surgery. It would be many hours until she managed to sneak out of her hospital room and escape on a certain Dragon's back, whatever had been possible healed through the mystical powers of the Deus Ex Machina- I mean, magic and enough money to cover her medical bills lying suspiciously on her pillow.
Her exfiltration would have been completely flawless, had she not accidentally fallen down a flight of stairs.
XxX
"Pardon me, but myself and my companions here are in search of a female we believe to be on this ship. Have you perchance encountered a magic user by the name of Ultear? Purple hair, about this tall?"
Natsu barely raised his claw off the ground, staring expectantly down at the silver haired teenager that had been part of the group they had come across upon Natsu landing on top of their ship. When the teenager didn't move a muscle, Natsu sighed, almost accidentally blowing Rustyrose from where he was standing and into the water some couple of kilometres down.
From beside him, Gray took a punch to the face, retaliating with a kick that made his opponent cup himself with his still burning hands.
Without warning, Natsu's head plunged down, the boy he was standing in front of making a very interesting sound as Natsu flashed his very sharp teeth right in front of his glasses.
"Talk."
"Ultear's on the ship!" Rustyrose straightened up, almost talking too quickly to understand. Natsu's left cheek was engulfed in an explosion that was already disappearing into his mouth before it had stopped echoing, his disapproving look actually bringing Azuma pause. "She's been in a really bad mood lately but I don't know why please don't eat me!"
"Great! Thank you very much." It was a strange sight, watching a Dragon grin down at you, not that Rustyrose cared all that much as Natsu turned away. Blowing out a sigh of relief, he almost choked on his own air as the girl that had been riding the Dragon jabbed a fork twice in his direction, drawing a line across her throat with her finger. The blue haired boy beside her rolling his eyes and sending him a sympathetic smile didn't make him feel any better.
"Gray." The assortment of Ice-Made weapons in the boy's hands flew across the top of the airship, detonating against the goat man that was currently looking up at Natsu and drooling. The explosion was magnificent, the aftermath and subsequent absence of about half the goat man's body not so much.
"Gray!" Black flames, the ones that had washed over Natsu's scales not too long ago and actually stung a little bit, charged across the makeshift battlefield in relation. With coiling black ropes, a shield of ice was formed, the inky markings repurposing themselves into a whip that found itself lashing across the belly of the enormous man that had been trying to sneak up on him.
Natsu sighed, clearing his throat and cracking his mouth open wide. The pink spears bouncing off his chest may have actually warranted some concern, if they had been doing literally anything other than bouncing harmlessly off his chest.
"GRAY!" Wind howled as Natsu's roar reverberated across the ocean they had been floating over. The clouds overhead split, all wind reversing and all nearby animals fleeing for their lives. Gray froze, his expression that of a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, while everyone else in the vicinity took a fair few big steps back. "What did I say about fighting before asking?"
"He started it!" Gray shouted, stabbing an accusatory finger in Zancrow's direction. Natsu turned and raised an eyebrow at the God Slayer, pretending not to notice Gray's victorious smile. "He called ice shit."
"Ice is shit!" The part of Zancrow that lacked self-preservation instincts shouted out. That is to say, all of him.
"Your face is shit!"
"Gray." Natsu's rumbling voice thankfully cut off the argument before it could be revived, his head in one of his massive clawed hands. "Ultear is inside. Go talk to her or whatever you want to do, so we can leave."
"Not so fast." The main entrance from the roof into the ship had been ruined somewhere in the barely minute the group of four had been present, and now an old man was standing atop the rubble, his arms crossed and his absolutely magnificent beard flowing in the wind behind him. Gray scowled at him, while Natsu and his passengers watched on with mild interest. "This airship is the headquarters of Grimoire Heart. Only members are permitted to step inside."
Gray narrowed his eyes, and Natsu resisted the urge to sigh and shake his head.
"Ultear, open up!" Gray hollered at the top of his lungs, his shiny new Guild mark proudly displayed across his right pectoral as he slammed a ball-up fist against the only purple door in the living quarters corridor.
XxX
I love it when I get an idea, and while I'm thinking that it's stupid and ridiculous and it would never happen but wouldn't it be funny if it did, I remember that this is fanfiction. In case you were wondering, I decided that the core four would be joining Grimoire about five minutes into the writing of this chapter.
I feel that I am going to have a lot of fun in the future.
Till next chapter!
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