Okay this one is a little bit shorter than the chapter before, but it is still relatively long compared to other chapters that I've written in my life haha. So I think I'm going to set this as the standard for each chapter length (give and take of course) Please forgive me for any grammatical or other errors, I don't have a beta and I am only human :'D

Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail or Ranma 1/2

I usually update on every Tuesday, but the chapter before got exactly 10 reviews! So I decided to post a little early for you guys! The next chapter will be out next Tuesday, but if I get 10-15 reviews on this chapter... I'll update sooner :D


As Lucy had suspected, the Clive's visit would last much longer than just a few days. In fact, both Jude and Gildarts had decided that the wedding would certainly happen. Neither one of them seeming to care much at all about how Natsu or Lucy felt on the matter.

Lucy would be lying if she said that she was surprised by her father's behavior and his decision to push forward with the engagement. Jude Heartfilia would more than likely do anything if he thought that it was something that would please his late wife. He'd even attempted to learn the art several times in the past. Although he certainly had the passion… his body was somewhat feeble. Making it impossible for him to get very far at all.

The teen had just gotten downstairs after getting dressed in her school uniform, which consisted of white blouse and sky blue dress combo.

It would be her first day to school since Natsu had joined the Heartfilia's, because he'd arrived on the first day of her summer break. She was a little bit excited for a break from home, if she were being completely honest. Even training in the dojo didn't feel quite like an escape since she often found Natsu lurking nearby. He would often offer to give her pointers, though she hadn't taken him up on that offer yet. Mostly because she was too stubborn, a fatal flaw that she hoped to get over before too much longer.

"Lucy, show Natsu the way to school, okay?" Jude asked at breakfast, casually. "He'll be attending Furinkan high with you from this day forward, so make sure to introduce him to all of your friends! Gildarts has already enrolled him in all of your classes, so make sure to be a good guide alright?" Lucy blinked at the new information.

"What?" She asked, "Natsu is going to go to school?" deciding that was a ridiculous question, Lucy decided to rephrase it. "Natsu is going to go to school here?" She supposed that she really shouldn't have been surprised, especially because of how pushy their dads were being. They brought up the engagement at least five times a day, Lucy had gotten so accustomed to it… that it was quite easy to ignore it. Although, Natsu didn't seem to be having such an easy time.

"Dammit pop!" Natsu's feminine voice came from the direction of the backyard and Lucy noticed the steaming kettle that sat beside her father, he'd been expecting this. Lucy could understand why. Every day those two got to sparring, and it almost always ended up with a trip to the bottom of the koi pond. Ultimately resulting in many heated up kettles throughout the day.

The mumbles and growls that followed Natsu's exclamation told Lucy that Gildarts had also been hit by the pond water.

"I don't care what you have to say about it!" Natsu shouted over Gildarts' retorts, "All of this doesn't matter right now anyway! What we should be doing is finding a cure in China! Now you want me to start going to school? What the hell old man?!" A series of thwacks and slaps followed by a loud splash told Lucy that somebody had taken another swim and she glared at her father.

"You want me to take him to school in this condition? He is going to be soaking wet by the time we get there! And if I don't want to be late we need to leave now."

"Natsu!" Jude called just as the red-head popped back up to the surface of the pond, "Come get changed back, Lucy is going to take you to school now!" Lucy watched as Natsu glared daggers at his father who waved smugly.

Natsu let Jude dump the contents of the steaming pot over his head and Lucy watched with mild interest as he changed from girl to boy. She had a feeling that it would never get old, she especially found it interesting since both his eye and hair color changed as well. Was this what the girl who had drowned in that spring looked like? Lucy found that hard to believe because even in his female form, Natsu did somewhat look like Natsu. Save for the complete change of figure, his face looked pretty close to the same as when he was a boy.

Natsu still had a sour look on his face as they walked her usual route to school. Natsu had leapt onto the fence and walked along it easily, amazing Lucy with the incredible control he had over his body once more. A small pang in her heart made her grimace and look away. She was jealous. She'd been training a very long time as well, yet she was nowhere near the level that he was. It definitely got on Lucy's nerves, but she would do her best to keep from taking out her frustrations on Natsu. It wasn't his fault that he was pretty much a master of the art at such a young age.

"You could try to think of it as another form of training," Lucy offered from where she walked beside the fence, casually swinging her book bag, "I'm sure it'll be a challenge for your patience levels, from what I seen so far… you don't really have a whole lot of that." she giggled softly and Natsu scoffed as he looked up at the cloudy sky. "School honestly is pretty fun. I'm sure you'll see that when you start going." Lucy tried to get him to stay positive.

"I've gone to school." Natsu frowned down at Lucy, "It just has never been a huge part of my life. Pop never showed any interest in my schooling either. The only reason I went at all was because we had to settle down for a little while because he was too sick to train with me. I honestly didn't like it at all. It was time that I could have spent honing my skills." He groaned and ran a hand back through his still-damp hair. "Pop teaches me all that I need to know, I don't need school."

"Well most teenagears our age go to school, and I think it would probably be really good for you to try to get used to the idea." Lucy may not be interested in getting engaged, but Natsu did seem like a decent enough guy. She was a little bit concerned about his development in other aspects of his life that weren't martial arts related. While he certainly didn't appear to be unintelligent, Lucy was positive that he needed to go to school.

"Besides." Natsu began, slicing through Lucy's train of thought, "I'm going to open up my own school of martial arts one day. I don't need to go to school for that."

"I could argue with that statement." Lucy turned her attention forward and stifled a groan when she recognized a silhouette on the horizon, right in front of the school gates. The blonde cursed under her breath softly before stretching her arms a little bit, careful to not smack herself in the face with her school bag as she did so.

Natsu, having heard her, looked down at Lucy before turning his gaze forward to try and see what she was glaring at. He jumped off of the fence and walked beside her, "Who is that?" He asked as he squinted in an attempt to get a better look.

"Nobody. Hold my bag?" Lucy didn't wait for a response before she threw her school bag at Natsu and took of running towards the silhouette. The pink haired boy easily caught the bag before he really knew what was going on. He ran after her after the initial shock wore off.

Lucy didn't show any sign of hesitation before attacking the man who held a bokken.

"Oh my darling Lulu! Today is the day I will get you to date me!" The brunette held his arms out wide, as if to accept an embrace, before Lucy's foot met with his left cheek and he was thrown backwards, a smile still on his lips, and tears streaming down his face.

"I don't think so Dan," Lucy took only a moment to straighten her school uniform before she turned to Natsu who had come to a stop right beside her. His eyes were wide as he stared at the unconscious student. He wore traditional Japanese garb, and paired with his bokken... lead Natsu to believe that this guy had to be in the kendo club. "Come on Natsu." Lucy urged as she took her book bag from him. "We really are going to be late if we don't hurry."

Natsu didn't seem satisfied with the guys state of unconsciousness. "Hey, what kind of guy asks something like that so early in the morning?" He poked the guys reddened cheek with the tip of his chinese shoe and Lucy groaned when the guy sat up and rubbed his cheek.

"Now you did it." She pinched the bridge of her nose as if in an attempt to ward off the headache that she knew would be coming before too long. A headache was almost always guaranteed after a certain amount of time spent in the presence of Dan Straight. He was a very, very loud guy.

"Lucy Heartfilia!" Dan exclaimed, immediately jumping to his feet. "That was a great kick! Now-" He immediately cut himself off when his eyes landed on Natsu, who now stood a little bit in front of Lucy, almost defensively as he folded his arms across his chest. "Who are you?" Dan demanded, clearly fully recovered from the kick to the face. "How dare you block the way to my darling Lulu?" He rose the pokken and pointed it at Natsu's chest. "I'm afraid that there is no chance I can let this offence go without punishment."

Natsu raised an eyebrow and stifled a laugh with one hand as he turned to look at Lucy, as if to ask if this guy was for real and the blonde only groaned before nodding her head, clearly ashamed. "Just ignore him, we are going to be late-" Lucy was cut off by a horrifyingly sharp battle cry and she grimaced as her gaze returned to Dan, who was jumping towards Natsu with his sword raised.

A smile spread across Natsu's lips as he turned in time to narrowly dodge the attack.

"Now this is what I'm talking about! If school is like this I might not hate it so much!" He dodged another couple quick-paced sword attacks and watched as Dan's confident expression gradually morphed into confusion as he was unable to land a single hit on Natsu. He released battle cry after battle cry as he thrust his bokken towards Natsu.

Finally, as he seemed to tire out… Natsu began to fight back.

Lucy watched in silent amazement as Natsu easily knocked Dan unconscious.

Her knocking the guy out was one thing. He was madly in love with her, no matter how many times she knocked him out… he always came back for more. When he attacked her, it was completely non-aggressively. Dan was actually the captain of the school's kendo club. His skill was actually parallel to none of their rival schools. So it truly was impressive that Natsu was able to take Dan out so easily, without even breaking a sweat.

It was just as Natsu was turning to face Lucy again that a flash of lightning made itself known to the world, barely signalling the downpour that followed mere seconds later.

"Oh you've got to be kidding me!" Natsu's voice went from masculine to feminine within that sentence and Lucy threw her hands up in the air, defeated.

"Well we can't have you go into school as a girl on your first day!" Perhaps she should consider bringing a thermos of hot water to school every day? It seemed to Lucy as though the curse ran deeper than it seemed on the outside.

She'd never met anybody who got hit by cold water as much as Natsu and Gildarts.

Almost as though merely thinking about him could summon the beast of a man, Lucy noticed a panda running in their direction. A panda with a kettle. Without hesitation, that panda scooped Natsu up into his arms and rushed towards the protection of the schools overhang. Natsu was a boy again in seconds, yelling about how it had been 'too hot', but Gildarts was already rushing off.

Lucy watched, entirely baffled.

She wasn't sure if she should be impressed by Gildarts' swift save, or mildly creeped out over the fact that he had known to come in the first place.

"Lucy!" Natsu shouted and the blonde turned her brown eyes onto the boy who had begun to wring out the ends of his shirt. She couldn't help but find the way he pronounced her name… cute. Lu-shi. Why she found it cute? She wasn't entirely sure. "You really shouldn't stand in the rain like that, you could get sick." The girl blinked and realized that she'd yet to move from where she'd been standing when Gildarts came.

She was drenched.

Natsu laughed as Lucy yelled at him about how it would be completely his fault if she did get sick because of how he had gone and picked a fight with Dan when it had already been taken care of.

Lucy apologized profusely to their mildly irritated teacher for being a few minutes late, though he let it slide since it was Natsu's first day.

Natsu introduced himself as a martial artist, naturally, before he took the seat that was beside Lucy.

Classes ran slowly, mostly due to the fact that Lucy had to constantly make sure that Natsu didn't fall asleep in the middle of a lesson.

It wasn't until gym that he became completely attentive. Mostly due to the fact that he was very interested in showing off his impressive stamina and strength. As he had phrased it to Lucy before running off to join up with the other boys who were getting ready to do their activities for the day. Meanwhile, Lucy still needed to get changed into her school's gym uniform. She headed to the locker room and tried to make quick work of changing.

"So… are you going to explain to us why you showed up late to class with the new guy?" Lucy grimaced as one of her friends, Erza, draped an arm over Lucy's shoulder just after she'd taken off her school uniform's top. Erza was quite topless as well, although she'd already changed into her sports bra. "The two of you seem pretty familiar with each other…" Erza winked at Lucy and the latter's face did an impressive shift from pale porcelain to brilliant crimson in seconds.

"I-It's not like that!" Lucy was quick to dismiss her friends suggestion before shrugging off the others arm, "He is just… staying with my family for a little while. That's all." Lucy didn't even want to imagine the discourse that would ensue if even one person from her school found out about her engagement with Natsu.

Much to Lucy's chagrin, many of the guys in the school pursued her.

Which might have been something that she'd have enjoyed… back in middle school. Now though, it was mostly exhausting to have so many guys-who didn't even know her, for that matter-be constantly trying to gain her affections.

None of them even tried to get to know her. Lucy supposed that was the part that irritated her the most about it.

"Oh, didn't you hear Erza?" Levy McGarden peeked over from behind a row of lockers, "They're engaged!" Both Erza's and Lucy's jaws dropped at the declaration made by their small, blue haired friend who casually went back to changing.

"What?!" The both of them demanded and Erza's eyes were on Lucy in milliseconds.

"I-It isn't what you think!" Lucy quickly waved her hands around, her face somehow managing to attain an entire level of redness. "Levy! You can't just go around saying stuff like that! You know how the people in this school are!" Lucy looked around quickly a couple times, it seemed as though it was just the three of them left in the locker room. But there really was no such thing as 'too careful' in this kind of predicament.

"Oh, I'm pretty sure everybody already knows." Levy finally walked around the corner and folded her arms across her chest. Levy often opted to change away from her two… bustier friends. She was quite a self conscious girl. "Laxus was talking about it with his little group and well… you know how big of a mouth Evergreen has… I'm pretty sure word spread around like a wildfire. I'm surprised you didn't hear about it, I'm positive I heard people talking about it in class." Levy's eyes then found Erza's shocked expression, "And you should have been one of the first to hear about it Erza, you are in Laxus' class.

The two blinked at the new information and Levy facepalmed. "My goodness, the two of you can be as dense as bricks sometimes."

"Oh… well…" Erza's cheeks were then red, "I was a little bit distracted in class today." she admitted sheepishly as she played with her hair, though quickly her easy-going expression turned stern as her eyes fell onto Lucy and she pointed at the blonde. "You are too young to be engaged! What are you thinking Lucy? You need to focus on your education! On your martial arts!"

"I'm telling you!" Lucy felt like she would cry of embarrassment, "It is not a decision that I made! Our dads set it up! Apparently it was some kind of crazy thing they'd decided on before I was even born, it is honestly not something I really want to talk about."

"Oh." Erza blinked before pulling her gym shirt on over her head, "An arranged marriage, huh? I didn't think anybody did those anymore."

"They don't." Lucy sighed loudly before pulling the side pony-tail out of her hair so that she could pull all of her long, blonde hair back into a high pony-tail, not wanting any of it to get in her way during gym. "Our parents are… special cases." She shook her head, letting a few stray strands of hair fall to frame her face. "But we should really get going, they'll be picking the captains for volleyball soon."

Despite the fact that both Erza and Levy clearly wanted to talk more about Lucy's personal life, they concurred and the three of them left the locker room together. Thankfully they hadn't been late, though almost the second that her foot touched the gymnasium floor… Lucy could have sworn all eyes fell onto her and chills ran up her spine.

"I'm pretty sure everybody already knows." Levy had said, and her words echoed in Lucy's brain as she walked to stand in the line that the other girls had formed for when the team captains would be picked. Already Lucy could hear the hushed whispers and she felt like crawling under a rock.

She was going to kill Laxus when she got home.

A loud whistle sounded in the gym, effectively silencing all of her female classmates and drawing their attention off of Lucy and onto the gym teacher who stood with two volleyballs in hand. "Scarlet, Narsa." After he spoke each name, he tossed a volleyball at mentioned person. Erza caught hers easily. "You are today's captains, pick your teams and warm up. We start a match in ten." He then left the girls to their own devices so that he could tell the boys what they would be doing that day.

While Furinkan was definitely a co-ed school… it was a little bit behind in the times when it came to gym activities. The class was always divided between girls and boys.

"Lucy." Erza said first thing, without even a moment's hesitation. It wasn't surprising to the blonde, Lucy was almost always first choice when it came to teams. As a martial artist, her reflexes were good and she was very fit. So naturally, she was pretty good at most sports.

By the time the teams were split up, Erza had managed to snag Levy and quickly got everybody to start stretching.

"So Lucy," the girl beside her, Cana Alberona, sent a sly look her way. "I hear you've already snatched up that handsome new kid." She wiggled her eyebrows and Lucy turned her eyes upwards as she switched the legs that she was stretching. "Engaged huh? How does it feel to be the first girl in school to be engaged? Have the two of you already…?"

The suggestiveness in her tone took Lucy by surprise and she nearly fell over.

Lucy had a feeling that it was going to be a very, very long day. And of course, as most of her instincts have been as of late… she was right.

She was asked about her engagement to Natsu many more times throughout the day, she didn't even want to know about the earful Natsu must have been getting. Truthfully, she wasn't looking forward to talking to Natsu after all was said and done. But of course, she was going to have to. Especially because they lived together.

When their final class wrapped itself up, Lucy said goodbye to Levy before sending a look to Natsu, who had been talking with a couple of the guys in their class and he stood up.

They didn't speak until they were outside.

"You're pretty popular," Natsu mused casually and Lucy groaned, "You should have heard some of the things that the guys were telling me…" he trailed off and stuck his tongue out playfully at Lucy, though frowned when he saw that she was definitely in no mood to tease. "What's the matter?" He asked curiously.

Lucy refused to look at the boy beside her. "Aren't you embarrassed? Or angry that something so personal got spread around the school on your very first day?"

Natsu shrugged and Lucy finally looked over at him, his arms were crossed behind his head and his gaze was on the finally clear sky above them. "Why would I be embarrassed? You're probably one of the most popular girls that goes to school here, you're… pretty." For a moment, Natsu's cheeks seemed to be a slightly darker shade than they usually were. But he shook his head and grinned at her. "And I get to fight anybody who wants to challenge me, so of course I'm not angry. Maybe going to school here won't be a completely horrible thing."

For some reason… his words made her laugh. Which seemed to surprise the guy.

"You're not a very complex person, Natsu." Lucy laughed again, "There is something somewhat… refreshing about that." She then took off running, "I'm still gonna kill my cousin though, you can help if you want!"

Natsu was left to watch the girl run off for a moment before he grinned and tore off after Lucy.


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