Back again! As promised, this chapter will be an introduction of both Lucy and Natsu to the story.

I would like to thank The Evil Stick for great input and support as well as proofreading my chapters!

As always, feedback is greatly appreciated :)

Chapter 1

Natsu Dragneel had been running his whole life. He had been running from an unknown enemy as long as he could remember and he did not even know why.

Now, at 18 years old, he had grown up to be a handsome teenager with unusual salmon-coloured spiky hair and a slim, muscular body, a result of taking hard labour wherever he could find it. He never received a proper education, there had never been a chance for him to sit down and properly study even though his dad had taught him the basics in reading and writing. They had always been on the move, never settling down on the same spot for any period of time. His father had taught him that this was necessary to survive and even though Natsu had always wondered why, his father had always refused to explain anything. He had just looked at Natsu, smiled sadly and said that it was for his own good.

Then one day he was gone. No letter, no warning. When Natsu woke up one morning he was just gone.

Natsu had looked for him, for years he roamed the streets in different cities and the country side of many different states but he never found a single clue as to where his father had gone.

Now, more than seven years later, he had stopped looking.

Lucy's mother had hid her. She had spent most of her young life in a dark basement in which her mother had home-schooled her. On her death bed, Lucy's beautiful mother Layla Heartfilia had given her three ornamented golden keys, all of them looking slightly different and a small piece of paper with three addresses written on it. Layla had made sure that Lucy knew the addresses by heart and then burned the small piece of paper before handing her daughter the exquisite keys. She had arranged for Lucy to come and live with the owner of the first place: a dignified lady with a fierce temperament and the most remarkable blue hair, seemingly coloured by the deep sea from which she made a living, in a small fishing village in the outskirts of the country and if anything would happen Lucy had been instructed to run, run to the next place and not look back. Always running, and hiding.

Such was her life and now at the age of 17 she had gotten used to it. She knew why it was necessary and she had accepted her faith, her only problem was she was now down to her last key.

She had lived with the grumpy fishing lady for three years until they had found the place. She had managed to get away from her followers but only just, and it had been a hard earned lesson for her.

Never ever let your guard down.

If she would have been more alert, then maybe the lady with the azure-blue hair would still live peacefully in the small village, earning her keep by heading out on the sapphire blue ocean in the early mornings and selling her fish at the market the same evening. As it was now she rested quietly many feet underground next to a small unattended gravestone.

The next address on her list had belonged to a hair dresser; he was a tall man with red and black Rasta braids plated together into two big buns on the top of his head. Lucy silently wondered how on earth her mother had come in contact with these, in her opinion, rather random people but she never gathered the courage to ask, afraid of the answer she had always forced herself to drop the subject whenever the nagging thoughts popped into her mind. Admittedly, she could easily have found the answer without asking but she had over the years learnt not to pry into people's minds, not unless it was an emergency and she needed to do it to protect herself.

Lucy had stayed with the hair dresser for almost five years. If she had to pick she would probably have chosen those years to be the most joyful years of her life. He had a way to hold himself that made her feel relaxed and at home in his small apartment, she worked in his little shop, helping out with taking bookings and other minor administration duties as well as sweeping up old hair from the floor and keeping the place tidy in general.

It was a warm, sunny Tuesday morning when she started running the second time. She walked down the street towards the hair dresser shop to open it for the morning when she saw the smoke. It grew taller and darker by the second and originated from where the old shop used to be. She turned around and ran, desperately hoping that the tall, goofy man who had been kind enough to give her shelter for so long had not arrived early that morning but not turning back to confirm that he was alright.

Even though she hoped that he had made it out, she knew better… She had already seen it…

Salty tears gushed freely down her flustered cheeks as she cursed her destiny, she had never asked for this so called 'gifts'. It had never brought anything but pain. It was not fair and she cursed her mother, the one who made her what she was.