Laxus really wasn't that boorish.

He really didn't know how to classify his prior evening, but it felt appropriate to acknowledge Lucy the next morning. Generally speaking, he had learned by that point in life that when a man does anything with a woman in the wee hours of the morning, it required some kind of attention in the morning. In this case, it was appropriate to congratulate her, because that tiny little woman left him with a bruised chin, a busted lip, and the mother of all headaches.

In that instant before she kicked him, he'd seen lightning in her eyes and it startled him and prevented him from blocking the kick.

Lightning was a precarious element, moreso than any other; that he knew better than anyone. Dangerous, unexpected, and crushingly powerful, it operated under no pretense, struck with devastation, and vanished.

When he followed her scent, he found her in a part not far from the resort, sparring with Capricorn. She punched one of his hands, and then the other.

The spirit stared at her through sunglasses. "Winning a battle is about controlling your body and your emotions. You seem unsettled. Your fighting will be unsettled."

The lightning dragon slayer watched with great dissatisfaction.

Lucy was not good at the form Capricorn was trying to teach, so she was frustrated. As Laxus watched the movement of her feet and hips, he realized she had a lot more potential than people really gave her credit for.

The spirit lectured her about her diet, about her mentality, about her lack of discipline.

He finally spoke.

"Real battles are won by losing control, not maintaining it," Laxus said.

The sparring match came to an instant halt and the two looked up at him.

"Laxus? Umm...sorry about last night. I knocked you out a little, I think," Lucy asked.

He ran a thumb over his lip. "I was impressed. But all of this is wrong. It's bothersome to watch. I woke up with a concussion that says you can do better than play patty cake."

It was rare for anyone to praise her fighting skills, and it kindled a little confidence in her. The blonde put her hands up, and retraced the instructions he'd given her. Her body remembered, and now that she was refreshed, she felt the power of her whole body as she pivoted and spun into the kick. The kick made an impact with a distinct grunt from the little blonde and Capricorn stumbled backwards and fell.

Lucy felt her heart start to beat a little faster and she advanced.

"Control..." Capricorn urged.

Laxus chided on. "Tigers are meant to be wild."

Lucy looked from one to the other; they had drastically different ideas about who and what she was. Capricorn was her faithful and beloved spirit, but he trained her as if she was a helpless schoolgirl who was out of shape and ten kinds of awkward. Then there was Laxus, who had somehow seen some part of her that seemed to be hidden to others even though she never tried to hide it.

Capricorn took issue with him then. "Laxus, you take issue with her training?"

"I take issue with all of it. Stop treat her like she's going to be a boxer. It's absurd. She's a woman. The strength is in her core, in her ass, in her legs. She obviously took ballet as a child considering how she points her toes. Huge advantage. She's fast. Bigger advantage. She could be great, unless you're teaching her to punch, which utilizes her weakest muscle and bone groups. And that bullshit about staying in control is really the icing on the cake."

The blonde was amazed that he knew so much just by watching how she moved over a short period of time. It made her feel a certain kind of way to know that someone so powerful saw potential in her, and when he laid it out, she wondered if this was why she'd been so unsuccessful.

Lucy looked down and took Capricorn's key in hand. "Thanks very much. I'll see you later okay?"

Her spirit bowed. "As you wish."

When he left, Lucy turned to Laxus. "What are you doing here?"

"I really want to ask you the same question."

The blonde bit her lip. "I try, you know. I didn't grow up fighting. There's this moment that happens in most of my battles where I feel helpless, and I hate it. And everyone thinks that's okay because I'm a summoner or because I'm a cute girl or because I grew up rich or because I can yell a certain name and I'm usually all right. I really didn't leave my whole life behind to feel like this."

Laxus seemed thoughtful for a moment as he leaned on a nearby tree. "You're missing the more serious issue. You're a summoner who uses caster magic, and as your spirits become more powerful, your enemies are going to stop wasting time on them and target your body. You'll be killed. It's inevitable."

"I know that."

They stood there for a while and stared at one another, and Lucy finally said, "I want to say that you don't know what it's like to grow up in a family where your last name has expectations, but I think you know that frustration too, Laxus Dreyar. People just saw me as my father's daughter, spoiled, entitled, and in a place where life was supposed to be easy. All I had to do was go through the motions. Be pretty. Marry some rich older man. Have babies."

Her words struck a chord, and a spark of interest ignited. "Why did you leave? Most women would love to live that kind of life. It would have been easier. I once saw you beaten to hell and wondered what makes a princess run away to live the violent life of a wizard. Were you bored?"

The lightning flashed in her eyes again. "I left because I'm not the kind of girl that can be trained by a corset," she answered indignantly.

It was possibly the most interesting answer to any question he'd ever asked in his life.

He wondered if his teammates know she was a force of nature waiting to hatch, but knew it was likely they did not. Because he was at a loathsomely boring phase in his life, he decided this would make things infinitely more lively. His grandfather told him the doldrums of his twenties were life's way of telling him to settle down, and he'd steadily been looking for something to entertain him as getting married and procreating were completely out of the question.

"Are you the kind of girl that can be trained by a dragon? I won't go easy on you."

The blonde nodded. "As far as you're willing to go, I'll go along."

XXX

On her first morning home, her alarm clock went off at 4:30 am, and Lucy slid out of bed and put on her workout clothes. She really wasn't in terrible shape, but she wasn't in elite condition either. It was five miles between her apartment and the building where the Raijinshuu trained.

She stretched, ate some corn flakes, stretched some more, and ran there, arriving sweaty, tired, and sore, but still standing, a testament to training she had already attempted and somewhat failed at.

The building was tall, and covered in bricks on the outside.

There were lacrima runes all over the place, probably to keep it from being destroyed by magic. There were two halves to the building: a gym-like area for training mages, and a giant empty room lined in concrete with rune carvings. Judging from the black marks all over the floor, many a lightning bolt had struck in the room.

Freed greeted her when she entered. "Welcome, Lucy. We call this the dragon's nest. Laxus doesn't let anyone else come here."

"I wonder why he even agreed to train me, but I'm grateful. From a professional standpoint, to be trained by someone so elite is quite something," she answered.

The green-haired man led her to a couple of soft mats. "To be honest, Laxus has been restless lately. You ever get that feeling you need to change something up in your life? Master told him to find a wife and have some babies."

Lucy burst out laughing. "No. Just...no."

"His sentiments exactly. But anyway, we're going to stretch. It's going to be awful for the first couple of weeks. You're going to have pain in the strangest places, but just bear with me, because this is going to help you a lot in the future," he said.

Freed gave her instructions on no less than twenty different stretches she was to do three times a day, and on this first occasion, grabbed her limbs and pulled, twisted, and otherwise contorted her in ways that she wasn't sure the human body was supposed to bend. It was torture, or maybe something a little bit worse, and once it was over, her body felt like it was made entirely of rubber bands that had been pulled too tight.

Strength training was next, and she learned the art of resistance bands, feeling every muscle in her back as it burned. "Somehow, I pictured myself lifting weights," she growled.

"Lifting weights would be useful if you often carry small, dense objects with high weight during battle. They tend to work isolated muscles at a time, and in battle, you're going to use your muscles in groups, so it's better to train that way," a voice called.

Lucy, drenched in sweat and so sore she could barely move, released the band and looked up at Laxus.

He was amused. "Besides, lifting weights will bulk up your muscles. If you want have bulging musculature, we can go that way."

"Th-this is fine," she panted.

"I'm impressed you're still standing."

She defiantly put her hands on her hips. "You have no idea how bad I want this."

Laxus gestured for her and took her to a balance beam. "Take your shoes and socks off and get up."

"...but..."

"Up."

Lucy climbed up on it in a fairly graceless manner and stood with shaking legs. "Why do you have this?!"

Laxus jumped up without a problem.

Her heart started to pound.

And she realized Laxus was completely out of his mind.

Whatever happened next was going to be crazy, but as she stood there, she played little flashes of her memories back. Laxus was amazingly nimble. During the fight with Master Hades, he'd bounced, flipped, and jumped around the room dodging his magic whips like it was nothing. With Jura, he jumped and ran across all the earth mage's constructions while they were growing and then catapulted off them to attack.

"Come at me."

Lucy looked down at the merciless, hard floor, and wondered if maybe there should be mats on the floor. Then she decided that was unlike Laxus; if the floor was soft then it would discourage her from landing on it less.

She extended her arms and walked shakily across the beam, but when she got to Laxus, she wasn't sure what to do.

Since her balance was reliant on her legs, she swung at him hard with one fist, and he dodged easily. She fell off the beam, but an inch before her nose hit the floor, he grabbed her by the shirt and lifted her back up. He held her until she was standing on the beam, but now she was facing away from him.

"Again."

Lucy fell trying to turn, and again, and again, but on her fourth try, she turned without falling off the beam. "Ha! Take that!"

"I'm waiting for you to attack me. So far, standing has been the biggest challenge you can handle," he incredulously answered. "When you're struggling to keep your balance, your upper-body can check your balance or wreck it."

The blonde was starting to sort the physics out, but Laxus was right. She had been in ballet so she did have some weird abilities. Pivoting on one foot was something she could do, or she could remember doing. She took one step back, then two steps forward and swung her fist. He dodged and the force rotated her on her pivot foot. She extended one leg and just barely missed him

Laxus bent over backwards like a cat and grabbed the beam with his hands and flipped onto his feet. "Good. Use what your body knows. Improve."

"God, you're like a cat."

He tilted his head and smirked. "Meow."

Lucy spent over fourteen hours straight on top of the balance beam with him. They even drank water together sitting on the beam as she was forbidden to set foot on the ground until they finished. She fell a total of sixty-two times, but he never let her impact the floor. He promised her that he'd stop catching her after a few lessons, and that he was doing it to keep her feet from getting reacquainted to the floor and not because he was concerned about the injury it would cause.

When she finally got down, it was surreal. It was like she was hyper-aware of her sense of balance. Her feet tried to stay in the pattern she'd walked in, her her hips and shoulders had memorized the motion of staying balanced and square. "This is cool..."

"That was really pretty impressive," he said.

"You think?"

Laxus nodded.

Her legs suddenly turned to jello and she crumbled to the ground and crossed her legs. "Who taught you that?"

"Believe it or not, Gramps. If you pay attention to him when you see him fight, he really is like a feline. Small and agile. It's not all about size and strength. Being able to stay on your feet is very important. Even if you get hit, being able to stay on your feet will minimize injury. In battle, more injuries are caused by crashing into other objects than actually getting hit," he answered as he went to where he'd thrown his jacket on the floor.

Laxus brought her a book and sat on the floor with her.

Lucy cracked open the book, which contained spells and mathematical formulas. "What is it?"

"It's ability-type Kinetics magic. That's the only copy of the magic in existence, so don't let Natsu burn it. I got it as a reward on a mission a long time ago. It's not useful for attacking, and it can't be used with an other kind of ability-type magic. It's also extremely difficult to understand, but the ability involves turning energy from movement into magic power and vice versa. For instance, the energy from getting hit with an attack, or the energy from falling twenty feet and hitting the ground.-it would protect your body, replenish your magic, and give you a serious boost in your ability to move."

"I've never used ability-type," she mused.

It wouldn't have made sense to learn another form of magic when celestial spirit summoning took so much energy. But if this replenished her magic, it potentially helped her body skills and her summoning skills, so she decided she'd at least try.

Laxus rested his head in his hand. "Ability-type magic always causes the human body to change. Right now, magic flows from your magic container to your keys. When you push it through your bloodstream and flesh, there are going to be side effects."

Lucy nodded in understanding.

He stood and offered her a hand, but she stood on her own with a groan. "Once last thing and then you can go home. Empty your magic. Do it three times a day from now on."

The blonde nodded.

Lucy limped into the concrete room, cast Urano Metria, and passed out face-first on the floor.

Freed carried her home, drew a hot bath with some muscle soak, and waited for her to stir. "You okay?"

"I'm wonderful," she sarcastically answered.

He waited for her to get in the bath and left, and Lucy settled under the water, agonizing over her aching muscles as she took a mental inventory of her pains and aches. There were no injuries, but literally every inch of her body was in pain.

Lucy sat in the bath and cried from the pain, but it was so worth it. She knew it, and she was grateful that Laxus was investing his time to teach her. She hadn't really had any kind of proper teacher for magic or for fighting. Her mom died when she was little, and she'd just been making due all along.

It really was nice to have someone believe in her like that. Of course her team believed in her magic, but they tried to keep her out of the fray. That's right where Lucy wanted to be.

She cracked the book open and studied for an hour, then got out of the water, did her stretches, and went to bed, knowing she had to redo it all again in the morning.

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