At the name 'Salamander', Seta, Fate Butterfly's Ace of Swords, was instantly awake. At 'in town' the most calm and calculating of the Aces was on the verge of full-on panic mode. Anyone who watched him dress would assume he had a spell to do it so fast. He considered strapping on his sword but decided this wasn't technically an enemy he was going to meet. He wrenched open the door to see the worried face of Yosuke. "Details."
"That's all we have. Risette's looking up jobs he might be on that'd bring him to the area but she's coming up empty." Yosuke informed him.
Seta left his room and started walking to the stairs, Yosuke following behind him. Seta had taken the 5th floor of the Velvet Spire and true to Igor's suggestion, he decorated it how he wanted. The walls were painted yellow and the floor made up of rhomboid chequered tiles in black and white. The circular sitting area lay in the centre of the floor. On one side were the stairs up and down, on the others were doors to each member's private quarters, Seta's being exactly opposite the stairs. On a wall next to Risette's room was a desk, designed for comfortable use of Risette's Archive magic, the magic she was currently using to find out why the hell Natsu Dragneel was in town.
"Alright, Risette, relay anything you find out to Fuuka and she'll get it to me." Seta ordered.
"Got it, boss!" Risette chirped in response.
Yosuke stopped at the stairs as Seta headed down to the 4th floor, Hamuko's floor. Music and time being her chosen theme. The walls were an opal green colour. Clocks of various designs lined the walls. The clocks would likely be making a cacophony of sound were they not kept precisely in time with an almost religious fervour. The noise irritated newcomers for the first few weeks but eventually they found they had trouble sleeping without the constant ticking rhythm.
Junpei Iori had done a fantastic job of acting like a panicky idiot and had woken most of his floor. This suited Seta just fine as he zeroed in on Fuuka. "Fuuka, keep a telepathic link open to me." he spoke firmly as he continued down the stairs.
Fuuka looked at Hamuko, Fate Butterfly's Ace of Cups, who nodded. Only then did she answer with a semi-confident cry of "Y-yes!"
Hamuko didn't like the strange 'crusade' Seta was on, but she decided to humour him, for now at least.
On down to the 3rd floor, Tatsuya's floor. Unsurprisingly, Tatsuya's floor was decorated to slightly resemble the sky. Rather than just having it be constellations adorning the walls, however, he had decided on a sunset view. One side of the room was covered in clouds of oranges reds and yellows and the further away you got from it, the more clearly the stars could be seen.
Seta made a detour to Tatsuya's door since the lazy moron was still asleep. "Oi, Tatsuya!" Seta shouted as he knocked loudly on the door.
"Oyaaa... Wha' zut?" Tatsuya's mumble came back as he opened the door.
"We have a Class F situation on our hands." Tatsuya's expression perked up a bit at that. "Salamander's supposedly in town. We need your Pervert's Eye to help find him."
Tatsuya, Fate Butterfly's Ace of Coins, grabbed the bridge of his nose and tried to shake off some of his tiredness. "It's called 'Heaven's Eye'."
"And you use it to be a pervert. You know if you teach it to me I'll get off your back about it." Seta offered.
"We've been over this. It won't work with your... thingy eye." Tatsuya responded.
"It's a risk I'm willing to take." Seta pressed.
"No, it's not."
Seta sighed. "... No, it's not. Alright fine, meet me downstairs in five minutes."
On down to the second floor, Naoya's floor. Now, it wouldn't take a psychic to guess what Naoya would base his decorating style on. However, it wasn't just walls painted in rainbow colours like one would assume. The colours were there, certainly, but they seemed to fade into each other, much like the sunset colours did on Tatsuya's floor. Naoya had also decided to add four decorative pillars identical to those they had seen in Philemon's realm.
As usual, Naoya, Fate Butterfly's Ace of Wands, was awake and downstairs before anyone else so Seta continued down to the 1st floor, unchanged from how it was three years previous. "Oi, rainbow man! You hear from Iori?" Seta asked Naoya who was sitting at the bar eating breakfast. Naoya nodded in response. "Good. Salamander. He's a fire mage so you'll be on the hunt with me and Tatsuya. Sound good?" Naoya nodded again.
"I don't see what the big deal is about this guy." Kanji Tatsumi complained from a nearby table. "I mean sure he's a Fairy Tail mage but they can't all be that bad, right?"
"Let me put this in perspective. Most unnecessarily destructive mages I've ever heard of? It goes Gildarts Clive, then this guy." It was at this moment that Tatsuya came down. "Ready to go?" Seta asked.
With the nodding response, the three left for their lizard hunt.
-(-)-
Lucy Heartfillia was in a good mood. She'd just found that one Celestial Gate Key she was looking for in the only magic shop in town. It was even a steal at 12,000 jewel! Lucky!
Little did she know the only reason it was that cheap was the shopkeeper was sick of seeing it in the display. None of his usual customers were going to buy it, after all. And he was making so much more money with the special orders the guild were asking for! Eight pairs of rune-reading glasses didn't come cheap, after all!
The sound of a crowd of screaming girls interrupted Lucy's self-congratulating thoughts. Only then did she notice groups of teen girls running past her talking about seeing the 'famous mage, Salamander'. She knew that name! He was the one who did that amazing fire magic they don't sell in stores!
Mind made up, she joined the crowds running to meet him.
Meanwhile, the three hunting Aces were situating themselves on a rooftop they climbed using Naoya's Purple Fire Net. Master Philemon really had made the right call in having him learn that particular magic from Macao. Seta and Naoya waited patiently while Tatsuya scanned the town with his Heaven's Eye.
It didn't take long to find their target. Tatsuya just scanned for large crowds and found the right one almost immediately. "Oya, Seta? We know what this guy looks like, right?"
Seta looked up from the book he was reading and nodded. "Yeah. Pink hair, fangs, white scarf with a scale-like pattern, black vest, usually seen with a weird blue cat. Why, you found him?"
Tatsuya sighed. "Right. So does a guy with blue hair and a purple cape signing 'Salamander' autographs mean what I think it means?"
Seta raised an eyebrow before palming his face. "If you think it means we get to kick Junpei's ass for sending us on a wild goose chase, then yeah, it means what you think it means." 'Fuuka, tell Risette she can relax. It was a false alarm.'
Tatsuya had stopped searching. So he never saw the buxom blonde girl push her way into the crowd of fangirls. Nor did he see a pink haired boy do the same thing. A pink haired boy with fangs, a white scarf with a scale-like pattern, black vest and a weird blue cat following him.
-(-)-
Later that night
"Hey, boss?" Risette spoke from her desk in the 5th floor common room.
"What's up, Risette?" Seta responded from where he was laying on a couch with his book.
"You remember that thing with the fake Salamander earlier?"
Seta chuckled. "I try to have a better memory than to forget things that happened less than twelve hours ago. Why?"
"Well... I had a bad feeling. So I asked Tatsuya for a better description so I could look him up." she explained. "I, uh, I found him." Risette swallowed before continuing. "His name is Bora. Or 'Bora of Prominence'. He was kicked out of his guild for thievery and using illegal magic like 'Charm'. He's..." She swallowed again, before finishing in a small voice. "He's a suspected slave trader."
Any sound in the room died at that announcement. Seta blinked.
Once.
Twice.
He'd let a slave trader go.
"SHIT!" he yelled, flinging his book into a wall, the resulting bang getting the attention of the whole floor. "Yosuke, Natalie! Get out here! We're going hunting!"
-(-)-
No one would accuse Seta Souji of being the most cheerful member of Fate Butterfly but it was still a rare thing to see him genuinely angry. So when he came through, practically snarling in poorly contained rage and started picking people to follow him, no one argued. In addition to Yosuke and Natalie, Jun was chosen to follow, as well as Naoya since even if Bora was a fraud, he was still likely a fire mage.
The next half hour was spent asking people in town if they knew where to find 'Salamander'. It was shown to be pointless when streams of pink fire shot into the sky out at sea and exploded like a firework. 'Right. Slave trader. So if he was looking for 'merchandise', he wouldn't want to move it over land where it could be easily intercepted.' Seta reasoned to himself. The five mages could still see the ship but needed a way for all of them to reach it. "Any ideas?" Seta asked the others.
"I don't think anyone in the guild could get us all the way out there, Ace." Youske stated solemnly.
"Ms. Kirijo, perhaps." Natalie suggested. "Though for this distance..." she trailed off.
Seta considered it. "... Okay. Here's the plan. We get Mitsuru, get as close as we can, Yosuke disables the ship and we board it. It's risky but we don't... have..." Seta also trailed off as he saw a swirling mass of water rise above the sea. "That's... bad." He glanced towards the harbour where dockworkers where finishing a shift. "Very bad. Yosuke, get a counter ready for that wave!"
With that, Seta ran towards the docks, yelling at anyone he came across to get to higher ground. With precious few seconds left, he stopped at the end of the first pier he came across and started inscribing a rune set. It basically translated to 'water cannot rise beyond this point' and set it to cover the area around the harbour, adding any caveats that came to mind that would ruin the set if not included. In a way, it worked just as Seta wanted it to which shocked him to his core as he looked back on the slapdash inscription. The enormous wave that threatened to wash anyone on the docks into the ocean was stopped in it's tracks by an invisible wall.
But the ship was still free to pass through. And it did, ten feet in the air thanks to the sudden disappearance of the wave it was riding on.
This was where Yosuke came in from his position further along towards the beach. "I'm not ready for crap like this, dammit!" he growled as he prepared one of his newer spells. As the ship landed in the water again, he cast his first spell. Slamming his hands together, he called out "Wind Palm!" as a miniature tornado struck the bow of the ship head on. Three more of these had well and truly destroyed the front-most part of the ship. However, it had also bled off most of the ship's momentum, allowing it to grind to a complete halt on the beach to the west of Hargeon. Yosuke was conscious long enough to see his success before passing out from exhaustion with a smile on his face.
Seta watched all this with raised eyebrows. 'Maybe Igor gave me the wrong card. Fortune would've been a better fit, surely.' He watched the others who were standing by head towards the beached ship and shrugged. 'Time to go meet a slave trader.'
-(-)-
Naoya was surprised by the presence of the three people still conscious in the area. First there was the blonde in the water with a cat and a mermaid. 'Probably a celestial spirit. Aquarius? Impressive if it is, for a spirit mage, at least.' Next was Bora of Prominence, himself, looking pissed. And then there was-
"Are you a mage of Fairy Tail?"
Natsu Dragneel. The Salamander.
'Well of course the real one shows up.' Naoya griped inwardly. 'I don't know whether Seta is gonna be more or less pissed when he finds out.'
"So what if I am?" Bora yelled back at the pink haired mage as his flunkies started coming around.
'And now the henchmen are back in it. We need to nip this in the bud.' As Natsu threw off his coat, Naoya looked at Jun. "Tie them down."
Jun nodded. Running a finger down the rose he was carrying, he threw it at the henchmen crowding around Bora. "Rose Restraints!" As the rose neared its target, its length extended to fifty times normal and coiled around the gathered mooks, effectively neutralising them for the time being.
Bora looked in the direction the rose came from and sneered. "Keh. The Butterfly Brigade. Here I was hoping you wouldn't notice. You really think you can hold a fire mage with plants?" he asked, preparing a spell.
"No." answered Natalie from a short distance behind Bora, having used Jun's spell as a distraction. Raising her revolver, "Spark Shot!", she fired a single shot at each of the five henchman and Bora, the spell activating and sending thousands of volts of electricity through all of them. With a grunt of shock, they fell to the ground, temporarily paralysed.
"Oi! What the hell!" Natsu shouted. "I was gonna kick that guy's ass!"
"Oh, you knew he was a slaver, then?" Seta asked as he arrived at the scene. "I'll be honest, I was wondering why you were here."
"Huh? He was sayin' he's a Fairy Tail mage! I can't forgive anyone who says they're from Fairy Tail so I'm gonna kick his ass!" Natsu again shouted, his fist lighting on fire. As soon as it did, it swung directly at Natsu's own face for some reason.
'Ah, so much for that small amount of respect I almost had for him.' Seta thought as he adjusted his glasses. "I see... Well it doesn't matter now. In a few hours he'll be convicted as slaver scum by the proper authorities. Those proper authorities." he said, pointing behind him at the soldiers coming into view. "I bet they'll have some questions about that tidal wave that nearly destroyed the docks."
Seta hadn't even finished the sentence before the pink haired dragon slayer was being dragged away by the drenched blonde girl.
-(-)-
Even later that night
"Have to... get out..." Seta mumbled as he tossed and turned in his sleep. "Please... coming... can't stay here... get out! Get out get out GET OUT! MOM!" Seta finished, shouting as he woke up from his nightmare.
'Dammit. Again?' Seta complained inwardly, donning slippers and a robe and heading downstairs. 'Why'd I pick the 5th floor again? Oh, yeah. Good exercise. Tch. Makes late night trips to the bar a pain in the ass though.'
"My assumption you would have one tonight was correct then." Margaret spoke from behind the bar as she saw Seta reach the bottom of the stairs.
Seta blinked away some of his bleary vision before answering. "One? One what? I don't know what you're talking about." he lied.
"Your room might be soundproofed now, but it wasn't when you first moved in. We all know about your nightmares." she explained, her voice softer than usual.
Seta tried not to let his embarrassment show as he sat at the bar. "Fine."
Margaret automatically poured him a drink. The kind anyone other than Seta would liken to paint thinner in flavour. "Want to talk about them?"
Seta knocked the drink back in one go. "No." he answered flatly before offering his glass for a refill.
She gave him one. "... Want to talk about today? You should feel proud. I heard Hamuko even apologised for complaining about your Class F protocols." she finished, smirking.
That was true. Hell, she even thanked him for it, saying if he hadn't set them up, a lot of innocent people might've died and the guild would be partly to blame, it happening right under their noses.
"Honestly, I don't know how to feel about today." Seta admitted. "Sure, if I hadn't set up the protocols, we wouldn't have seen Bora. But that wouldn't mean anything unless Risette went the extra mile like she did. And even then the only reason we even caught Bora was because a stupid, reckless spirit mage almost killed a bunch of people."
Margaret thought over what she could say to that for a short while. She settled on, "Maybe we shouldn't talk about today after all. You're clearly thinking about it too much already."
Seta chuckled mirthlessly. "Heheh, thinking is my thing, remember? It's what I do."
Margaret sighed. "Well, allow me to tell you what I think. I think your preparedness allowed us to save a group of girls from a fate worse than death. I think you have a team who will always go the extra mile when they know it's the right thing to do. And most of all, I think we got very, very lucky."
"Lucky." Seta deadpanned.
"That's right." Margaret confirmed. "Lucky. You can't fix everything, Seta. You can plan, you can prepare, but sometimes it won't be enough and you have to hope things turn out alright. And if they don't, you'll have nothing to feel guilty about because you did everything you could. Was what that girl did stupid? Yes. Was it reckless? Absolutely. But in the end, the result was a good one."
Seta was not pleased by that. "You think that was-!"
"No, I'm not saying what she did was right." she denied patiently. "But she did it, and it turned out fine. So for today, maybe you could accept that luck was on our side."
"We can't rely on luck." Seta stated.
"Of course not. We rely on what we have and what we do. Luck is just a nice bonus."
-(-)-
A/N: By GOD did this chapter turn out angsty! I don't know what it is about Seta but whenever I write him he turns out angsty for some reason! He's a blank slate, he shouldn't always turn out like that!
Rest assured the angst-master won't be the focus too often. I did centre the story around the four Aces, after all. Next time we have Hamuko going on her first S-Class adventure to a certain island...
Also, you may have noticed I don't like Lucy much. I don't. She constantly gets handed these one-of-a-kind magical keys on a silver platter and she's still barely competent. Karen Lilica was a famous spirit mage with two of the zodiac keys. Lucy currently has TEN and still wins her fights with dumb luck half the time... I'll stop ranting now. I'll try not to bash on her much in story if I can avoid it.
REVIEWS!
Xafnir: Persona users? Definitely. S-Links and others? Probably not. Definitely not from P1&2 since I haven't played them. Maybe some cameos from 3 and 4 but it's not particularly likely.
CleanUp: Thankee muchly.
Engineer4ever: Oh, I have some ideas.
Haah, right, next chapter won't be angsty. I promise. Oh, wait... Gray's backstory is in the next arc, isn't it? Okay, if the next chapter is angsty it will not be my fault. Better?
Thanks for reading!
P.S. I probably ignored physics for some of this chapter. So I'll leave the obligatory 'a wizard did it' notice here. Buh-bye now!
