Rain trickled down the back of Lucy's neck. She was standing in the yard at the back of the guildhall, facing off with another first-divisioner. He was a tall young man, maybe a couple of years older than her, with a red crewcut and cutoff jeans, and he thought having young blonde ladies with excellent figures around made Phantom look like a joke. 'Young blonde ladies with excellent figures' was not the phrase he'd used. Well, Lucy couldn't allow people to disrespect her like that, could she?
The rest of Oak Town branch was standing around the walls, watching. Gajeel cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled "Get on with it!"
Lucy spun her keys in her hand. "Open, Gate of the Chisel! Caelum! Sword Form!" Caelum's hilt dropped into her outstretched palm. The red-haired mage stamped one of his bare feet against the ground. "Material Absorption: Concrete!" His body bulged and distorted. His skin turned rough and grey.
"Oh man, this is going to be tragic," Sue said, and broke out the popcorn.
Lucy sliced a key through the air with her free hand. "Open, Gate of the Bull! Taurus!"
Taurus appeared, bellowing. "Miss Lucy's figure is the best!"
"I know! Can you believe this jerk doesn't agree?" Lucy said, and pointed. "Taurus, cut him down to size!"
Taurus charged. The absorption mage raised both hands, index fingers extended like guns. "Elemental Darts!" Shards of concrete blasted from his fingertips. Taurus deflected them with his axe and the shards buried themselves an inch deep in the wall of the guildhall instead.
Taurus swung his axe at the absorption mage's head. The absorption mage grabbed the blade of the axe as Taurus brought it whistling down and tried to yank it out of his hands. It bit shards from his hands.
"Concrete can't beat iron!" Lucy shouted at him.
"This is the Iron Dragon's branch!" he yelled back. "You think we don't have enough iron around?" He let go of the axe and fired off a volley of concrete shards that Lucy dived flat to avoid.
The absorption mage raced for the other end of the yard, where there was an iron girder propped up against the wall. Lucy wailed dramatically and clutched at her face. The absorption mage grabbed the iron girder. "Element Absorption: Iron!" The upper layers of his concrete skin exploded into powder and were replaced by smooth metal. He laughed and clenched his hands into fists. "Want to try that axe now, cow man?"
Lucy laughed, too, and let the moment of surprise stretch out a little longer before she said "Andromeda, change target! Sue!" There was some loud swearing and a fine spray of popcorn shrapnel from Sue's direction, and then the iron girder turned into a slice of strawberry cake. The iron mage staggered as his metal skin turned into fluffy icing rapidly dissolving in the rain. Strawberries studded his face like Gajeel's piercings.
"Is it just me who wants to eat that guy's head right now?" Sue said.
"Yeah, it's just you," said Bozo.
Lucy waded in with the flat edge of Caelum's blade. With every blow whipped cream splattered the floor of the yard and soon Caelum was stained red with strawberry juice. Lucy knocked the cake mage's knees out from under him and put her boot between his shoulderblades as he sprawled face-down on the floor. She leant on Caelum.
"Which of us is the joke, again?"
The cake mage just groaned.
Well, Lucy considered that an overwhelming victory. "Woo!" She high-fived Taurus. "Andromeda, leave target!" Andromeda returned to what Lucy thought was her default form, a brown-skinned little girl with long dark hair, a white dress and chains wound around her arms and upper body. Lucy offered her a high-five as well. Andromeda looked at Lucy, and then down at the chains pinning her arms to her chest. Lucy gave her a hug instead.
"Great job, both of you!" She dismissed Andromeda and Caelum, and swaggered back to Gajeel and Sue. "I set that up half an hour ago," she bragged.
"Huh," Gajeel growled. "Can't you win a fight without half an hour to plan it, princess?"
"Well, I didn't expect you to appreciate anything more complicated than 'see guy, hit guy'," Lucy said with a pout. Gajeel swung a casual punch at her; it sailed through the air a foot above her head.
"Hey," Lucy said, mildly annoyed. She hadn't bothered to duck.
"Run your mouth off again and I'll hit you properly next time," Gajeel growled.
"Okay, okay," Lucy said, and stepped back with her hands raised. "Sheesh..." That was when she realised there was a woman she didn't recognise standing on Gajeel's other side. She had blue hair curled into a perfect circle at the ends, she wore a long navy coat trimmed with fur and she was the only person in the yard who'd thought to bring an umbrella with her. Lucy tipped her head on one side. "Who's this?" With that smart coat and that coolly blank expression she looked like she ought to be in charge of something. A visiting subdivision head or something?
"Juvia, this's some blonde princess," Gajeel drawled. "There's no food out here, I'm going inside." He kicked the back door open and went in out of the rain.
Lucy blanched. "...Juvia of the Deep?" She was one of the Element Four! She was the strongest female mage in Phantom Lord!
"Good morning," Juvia said. "Juvia is very pleased to meet you." She was looking at Lucy oddly. Lucy frantically tried to figure out what she was doing wrong.
"Good morning!" she said, her voice much higher than usual. "I'm Lucy Ashley! It's nice to meet you too!"
"Is work going well?" Juvia inquired.
"Aye!" Lucy chirped. Wait, what? Why did she say aye? Was her brain melting out of her ears? "Well, it's been lovely talking to you, I really hope we can do it again sometime-"
"Juvia is about to go on a mission that Lucy can help with, actually," Juvia said. "Juvia would be very happy if Lucy joined her."
"Oh," Lucy said. "Uh. That's not... I don't think..."
An hour later she was sitting in a train carriage bound for Brownian Town with Juvia of the Deep.
How had that happened?! She had so much she needed to do! Well not so much to do considering that the job in Cypress Town had paid her bills for the next few months, but she'd wanted to write a few more chapters and another letter to her mother now that she could send her good news without lying, and she wanted to work on making friends with Ursa Major some more – it was a complicated process, which mostly consisted of throwing Ursa Minor at the Great Bear and then hiding while Ursa Major yelled at her to back off or die or, the last few days, that she was too skinny and needed to eat some damn food. (Lucy kind of wanted to summon Ursa Major and Aquarius together and watch them fight about whether she was too fat or too skinny.)
She pulled a book from her bag and lifted it up to cover her face. What could she do? It wasn't like she even wanted to be on this mission. It wasn't like she even knew what the mission-
"Juvia is reading that book, too!"
"Really?" Lucy said, astonished, and looked at the front of the book to make sure it hadn't changed. Juvia of the Deep was into romance novels?
"Yes!" Juvia nodded, and added "Juvia thinks Mr Darcy is very nice."
Lucy raised an eyebrow. "Oooh, you like them bossy and aloof, do you?" Juvia went pink. Lucy giggled. "But wasn't he awful to Wickham?"
Juvia's face darkened. "Juvia thinks Mr Wickham is up to nothing good. Juvia does not trust him."
"What? I think he seems like fun," Lucy said.
"Juvia thinks he is planning something," Juvia said. "Juvia thinks he is planning to shame Elizabeth's family so that she and Mr Darcy can never be together!" She shook her head violently. "Unforgivable! Unforgivable!" The rain battered at the windows as if in answer.
"If he didn't want Elizabeth and Darcy to get together, couldn't he just let Darcy keep talking?" Lucy murmured, but not loudly enough that Juvia could hear her. Obviously when it came to romance the Element Four mage had a highly overactive imagination. Lucy smiled a little and changed the subject. "So what's this mission about?"
Juvia snapped back to all-business so fast it gave Lucy whiplash. "Three Blue Pegasus mages are attempting to complete a mission within Phantom Lord's territory, and a duo from Subdivision Fourteen who wish to be promoted to First Division have been assigned to stop them. Juvia will be observing."
Lucy scrunched up her face. "So this is, like, an exam?" Wasn't attacking members of another guild illegal? Juvia must have a really good plan to deal with that. "So what am I doing here?"
"Attacking members of another guild is highly illegal. It's very important that somebody make sure no blame can settle on Phantom Lord, should something go wrong."
"And you'll be... busy?"
"Juvia will be observing," Juvia said primly.
Lucy observed that Juvia was getting a better deal there.
When they arrived at Brownian Town, Lucy wandered out of the station to look around while Juvia waited inside for the mages from Subdivision Fourteen. Gulls shrieked overhead and a sea wind made the awnings of the shops flap. The streets were narrow and the buildings on either side were taller than the ones in Oak Town, so that they cut out everything except a strip of dull grey cloud.
Lucy bought herself an umbrella in a corner shop, because the rainclouds overhead didn't look as if they were going anywhere. She lingered over a cute blue Heart Kreuz model but finally sighed and plumped for a plain dark green one. Outside, a hill with a railing overlooked the sea and the roofs of the town. Lucy opened her umbrella and leant on the railing.
She realised very suddenly that someone was standing behind her. She whirled around. There were two men standing behind her, and one had a knife at her throat.
The two of them and the railing at her back cut off any escape. Lucy glanced between them. They were both curly-haired and wearing tank tops. "No funny business, baby, just hand over your purse," one of them drawled.
Lucy stepped forward and through them. They flickered out.
"Show yourself!" she yelled. "Guys wearing vests in this weather, was that supposed to fool me?"
"Tch," someone said. Lucy looked around quickly, but didn't see
"Don't whine, she got you," said someone else. Two mages emerged from behind an illusionary veil – it looked as if they'd stepped out of thin air – and stood glowering at her. "Who're you, then?" The shorter one had a Phantom Lord guild mark on his forearm. Lucy's own stamp was covered up; thanks to the rain, she was wearing the only actual sweatshirt she owned. She looked appallingly unstylish, but then nobody else looked any better so Lucy had almost given up caring.
"I'm a mage of Phantom Lord's First Division," Lucy snapped, "which means I ask the questions! Are you the guys from Fourteen?" She folded her arms and glared at them. They bristled.
"So what if we are?" the taller of the two countered. He had spiky dark-blue hair that added a few more inches to his height, and a heavy gold chain around his neck apparently to make his standard Phantom uniform of dark red shirt, dark pants and fur-trimmed jacket more unique. The other pushed his shaggy charcoal-grey hair out of his eyes, stuck his hands in his pockets and bounced on the balls of his feet. He nearly vibrated with nervous energy.
"Do you want to fight?" he demanded. He spoke so quickly it took Lucy a second to work out what he'd said. "There's two of us and one of you. You want to go for it?"
Lucy couldn't back down from a pair of subdivision mages! She reached for her keys.
"Drip, drip, drop," Juvia murmured. Lucy yanked her hand back from her keys and pretended she was never reaching for them in the first place.
"Juvia was expecting to meet you inside the station," Juvia said to the subdivisioners.
"Yeah, well, we were waiting out here and we saw her wandering around so we... figured we'd... we were only having a joke," the tall one said. He'd started out all aggressive and then his voice petered out under Juvia's stare. "Who is she, anyway?"
"This is Lucy Ashley," Juvia said. She didn't elaborate on what Lucy was doing there.
Lucy folded her arms again. "So who are you?"
"I'm Byrrick," the tall one said.
"Osmurand. Osmurand Sais. I'm a water mage," the shorter one said. "I like water cannons." He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet again and shot Juvia a sidelong look. Byrrick must be the illusionist, then.
Juvia looked them over, looked around – there was nobody out, of course, because who would want to be out in this rain? - and without any preamble began to brief the three of them.
"Two days ago, three Blue Pegasus mages arrived in this town. They haven't departed by train, by ship or through the city gates, according to the informants Master Jose maintains in this town. Nor has anything been reported which would suggest that they have completed their mission. It is not known what that mission is, but they seem to have been following reports of fraudulent vegetables."
"Fraudulent vegetables?" Byrrick repeated in disbelief. "God, that's boring. They couldn't be doing something interesting, like stealing magical artifacts?"
"What do you mean, fraudulent vegetables?" Lucy said.
"A person is selling vegetables which subsequently disappear," Juvia said.
Byrrick was right. That was boring.
Seriously, fraudulent vegetables.
"Your priorities should be to find the Blue Pegasus mages and discover what they're trying to do," Juvia reminded them all coolly. "You may need to complete their mission after you incapacitate them."
Lucy scrunched up her face. So they were chasing some sort of creation-magic mage? Byrrick was thinking hard, too.
"Where's the market in this craphole?" he said.
Brownian Town's market was in a covered gallery. Overhead, the rain beat down on acres of glass supported by massive iron beams. Below, Lucy shook her umbrella off and furled it. There were stalls selling fruit and vegetables, butchers' stalls, and dozens of fishmongers. There were even traders from foreign countries hawking carved ivory from Iceberg and intricately-woven rugs from Desierto. There were a lot of soldiers around, too. Everywhere Lucy looked she saw blue and yellow stripes. The subdivisioners were glowering, but Lucy wasn't sure if that was because they were still annoyed about the fraudulent vegetables or because like most Phantom mages their faces had just got stuck like that after a while.
She tried to make conversation. "This is gloomy, isn't it?" If she were them, she would take it as a bad omen. "It was raining like this in Oak Town this morning, too."
The two subdivisioners looked at her like she was stupid. "Yeah, it was raining in Oak Town this morning," Byrrick said. "You do know it's Juvia behind it, right?"
"What?" Lucy blinked at him.
"Juvia makes it rain everywhere she goes. Everyone knows that." Nobody'd told Lucy that. Whenever Sue or Bozo was talking about Juvia of the Deep, they tended to look over their shoulder for Gajeel, look at Ryos, and then carefully refrain from saying anything uncomplimentary. Why would Juvia want to do that? It didn't seem friendly.
"I like it," Osmurand said. "Ammo, yeah?" He elbowed through the crowd to a greengrocer's stall and leant over it. "Are these vegetables legit?" he demanded.
"...what?" said the stallkeeper.
Osmurand jabbed a finger at a tub of cauliflowers. "Are these like fraudulent vegetables? Are they real, is what?"
"...just what the hell are you accusing me of?" the stallkeeper demanded. "They're cauliflowers!"
Byrrick stomped up behind Osmurand and whacked him across the back of the head. "We're Phantom Lord mages, so don't bother yelling for the soldiers," he told the stallkeeper. "What do you know about a gang of Blue Pegasus guys hanging around here?"
The stallkeeper looked very much about to call the soldiers. Lucy hurriedly slunk away. If they wanted to get in trouble they were welcome, but she didn't want to join them. The soldiers standing around looked keyed-up enough that they might even try to arrest the pair of them.
Lucy sidled up to the one who looked most bored. He was leaning against a wall and idly scratching the back of his neck through his coif. "Hey," she greeted him, faking ignorance, "why are there so many of you around today?" He frowned at her. Lucy twiddled a strand of hair around her fingers. "I only got here yesterday, I'm just visiting my gran. I didn't hear anything about this being, like, a high crime area-"
"It's not!" the soldier corrected her. "Brownian's a good place. There's some out-of-towner around, causing trouble." He scowled and looked the crowd over as if he might be able to pick the troublemaker out by his barbarian horned helmet.
"No!" Lucy said, and dropped her voice to a sultry murmur. "What's going on?"
The soldier stopped glowering and just frowned at her. "You don't sound well. Do you need a drink?"
"...no, I'm good, thanks," Lucy said. Why did her feminine wiles never work? Maybe he was gay. Maybe all of them were gay. "So what's going on?"
"We've heard they're a highly dangerous mage," the soldier told her. "There's a few people prowling around today who'll recognise them, though. It'll probably turn into a fight. You'd be best off running home to your grandma." He looked around. Lucy could see him mentally totting up the number of people there and the number of exits and rehearsing the evacuation plan in his head. Then he swore.
"What is it?" Lucy asked, and became abruptly aware that the noise had changed, gone from the omnipresent rapidfire babble of haggling and gossip to focused on the centre of the market. The other two had done something stupid, hadn't they? She scrambled onto the next stall over's tall pile of Desiertan rugs, ignoring the merchant's complaints, and straightened up to see over the crowd. A space had cleared and the crowd was hurriedly scrambling away from it. The soldier was already gone. Lucy jumped down and shoved a path through the throng towards the circle of empty space.
What she saw when she emerged into it was a shopkeeper hanging onto a redheaded youth, a trio of young women and the soldiers fanning out to surround them.
The young man shook off the shopkeeper, looked between the soldiers and the young women (the Blue Pegasus mages?) and said "Aw, hell, this ain't going to be much fun."
"Finally!" the leader of the young women barked. She had round pink cheeks and brown hair in braids, and she wore a blue-and-pink tunic with laced sandals. She kept a flute in a sheath on her belt like a sword, and her teeth were bared. "Do you know how long we've been chasing you, Vanderwood?" Definitely the Blue Pegasus mages. And this was the guy they'd been hunting for? Why? He didn't look like much. Ginger hair, big blue eyes, freckles, good-looking in a farmboy sort of way. Lucy looked at the Blue Pegasus mages. One of the other two had deep brown skin, cornrowed hair and vast sky-blue eyes; she wore a star-patterned kimono jacket with a miniskirt and balanced nervously on one foot with the fingers of her other hand pressed to her mouth. The other was anonymous in a long dark hooded robe and unadorned tragedy mask. She stood silently with her hands clasped behind her back.
"It wasn't never my intention to be causing you ladies any inconvenience," Vanderwood said.
"Good job with that, turnip boy," their leader growled. She was looking around. "So where is-"
"Water Cannon!"
Lucy yelped. The Blue Pegasi's leader leapt backwards out of the way of the blast of water, which sent a pair of soldiers flying. The crowd scattered, shrieking. The rest of the soldiers fell back. Lucy couldn't blame them. None of them would be mages; any mage who wanted to join the military would go for the Rune Knights, who paid a lot better.
"Who the hell are you?" the leader demanded.
"We're Phantom Lord," Byrrick sneered, "and you're in our territory here. Who the hell do you think you are?" Had he seriously just... he'd seriously just announced that they were Phantom mages in front of two dozen soldiers! Lucy groaned. What was he thinking? Didn't he realise how illegal this was?! Osmurand hadn't even covered up his Phantom stamp!
"You have no idea who you're screwing with, do you?" their leader demanded. "We're the Muses of Blue Pegasus, asshole! Euterpe, Urania and Melpomene!"
Oooh! Lucy'd read a review of one of their gigs in Weekly Sorceror! Euterpe of the Flute, Urania of the Heavens – that must be the one in the star-patterned kimono – and Melpomene the bass guitarist! That last one wasn't especially helpful as nicknames went.
"Never heard of you," Byrrick said.
"Is that supposed to be scary?" Osmurand asked. "Are we supposed to be scared?"
"What the hell is that, a flute?" Byrrick said, gesturing to the instrument hanging from Euterpe's belt. "Music magic's shit, it's only good for support."
Euterpe bristled.
"More like Euderpe," Osmurand said. "Hahaha. Because her name sounds like derp."
"Yeah, Os, I got that," Byrrick said.
"...oh screw this, let's just kick their asses," Euterpe said. Urania stretched out her arms, crossed at the wrists.
"Meteor Pursuit!" Darts of yellow light burst from her hands and shot after Osmurand. Osmurand called up a shield of water, and when the glowing darts hit it it exploded into steam that billowed through the market, obscuring everything. Lucy fumbled for her keys and whispered urgently "Open, Gate of the Bull! Taurus!"
"Miss Lucy! Your body looks-" Taurus's bellow reverberated off the walls. "...where are you?"
"Taurus! Don't say anything!" Lucy yelled.
Green light sliced through the fog, Taurus yelled, and there was a crash that sounded very much like Taurus landing on a market stall and splintering it into dust. The steam cleared just long enough for Lucy to see Taurus hauling himself up out of the wreckage of a florist's stall with a garland of flowers looped over one of his horns, and Melpomene charging up green energy around her hands, before Byrrick shouted "Veil of Illusion!" and everything was drowned out by grey fog. "What are you doing?" Lucy wailed. He didn't have to cast it on her, too!
"Won't help!" Urania sang out. "Meteor Pursuit!"
Yellow flashed in the corners of Lucy's eyes. The impact flung her off her feet, knocked the air out of her lungs and left her wheezing on the floor twenty feet away. Homing magic? Euterpe blew a single high note which cut through the fog and sliced Byrrick's spell to pieces. The illusion collapsed. What was left of it looked like wandering threadbare grey bedsheets.
Byrrick swore, dropped to one knee and pressed one palm against the ground. "Black Wyvern Summon!" A magical seal blossomed around his hand and billowed smoke. A massive green monster rose out of the ground and turned solid. For a moment Lucy thought Byrrick had really summoned something, until the wyvern tried to move and its limbs lost all connection to its body. Its tail hung in the air three feet above its back and its huge feet with their disemboweling claws slid off to the right of its body. Urania let out a peal of delighted laughter, raced through the illusion and slammed her open hand into Byrrick's face. "Heaven Palm!" The impact hurled Byrrick off his feet. He hit the ground, rolled, and lay limp like a rag doll.
Euterpe was playing a song that made everything look shaky. Lucy could barely focus on her. Osmurand's water blasts were missing by miles. He cursed and started firing Water Cannons wildly in Euterpe's general direction. Market stalls splintered under the assault. "Heaven's Shield!" Urania shouted. A golden seal bloomed in front of her just in time to catch one of the water blasts. Euterpe ducked behind it with her.
Whatever spell Euterpe had cast, it had affected Taurus as well. When he swung his axe at Melpomene it sailed harmlessly over her head. She stepped in close as Taurus swung his axe back to strike again and hit him in the gut with a fistful of green energy. The blast threw Melpomene back and flung Taurus, all two hundred and fifty pounds of Taurus, into the air and into one of the iron girders holding up the ceiling. "Gate of the Bull! Close!" Lucy shouted before he could hit the ground. Melpomene half-turned and swiped one hand casually through the air, releasing an arc of green energy that slammed into Osmurand right under the ribs. He crashed through a stall and didn't get up again.
"Thanks, Mel!" Urania called, and dispelled her shield.
That left Lucy, all alone, against the three of them. "Gate of the Chisel, open!" Caelum dropped into her hands. Lucy spun to gain momentum and flung it upwards. Caelum smashed through the ceiling. Glass shards fell like rain. Lucy ran for cover and dived under a market stall just in time to hear a dozen sharp fragments thud into the wood above her head. Through a crack in the stall front, she saw Melpomene throw up a crackling green shield that consumed all the glass falling towards the Muses.
Euterpe straightened up and looked around. "Where'd she go?"
"Oh!" Urania said, and pointed. Lucy tensed, but she wasn't pointing towards Lucy. "Frank ran away!"
"What?" Euterpe wheeled around. "Dammit!" She slammed her fist against her other palm. "It's my fault. I should have-"
"There was no helping it. They attacked us." The quiet voice issued from the darkness behind Melpomene's mask.
"Well-" Euterpe threw her hands up in frustration. "Let's go, quick. Someone outside might have seen which way he went." They left.
Lucy wriggled out from behind the stall, stood and looked around. Rain was coming through the holes in the ceiling, and her brand-new umbrella was lying on the floor. She had landed on it when Urania's Meteor Pursuit had thrown her off her feet, and two of the ribs had snapped. Also lying on the floor were Byrrick and Osmurand, who had been incredibly lucky not to have been shredded by the falling glass unless Melpomene had shielded them as well. The soldiers were mostly fallen in a heap near the closest exit. Lucy lifted her head and scanned the market. Juvia was standing well back, observing. She was almost perfectly hidden behind a rack of scarves, that is unless you noticed the big pink umbrella sticking up above it. Juvia stepped out from behind the rack and walked purposefully towards Lucy, her heels click-clacking on the floor. Lucy ground her teeth together and turned to face her, fists clenched, ready for an argument.
"Will your cow man make a full recovery?" Juvia asked.
Lucy stuttered, caught off her guard. "Y-yes? Taurus is really strong, he wouldn't be badly hurt just from that!"
"Juvia is pleased." Juvia looked around at the wreckage and said, "Juvia thinks this could have gone better." She looked at Lucy.
"Um," Lucy said. "Yes?" Juvia was still looking at her. Was this some sort of test? There wasn't anything they could have done except attack them, and even though that Vanderwood guy had got away that was better than having him captured by the Muses. "They should have targeted the support mage first, and they definitely shouldn't have said they were in Phantom Lord?" Lucy guessed. Juvia nodded. Lucy breathed out a sigh of relief.
"Of course, Lucy could have advised them not to identify themselves as Phantom mages the first time that they did it," Juvia added.
"What?" Lucy protested. "I'm not obligated to save them from their mistakes!"
"Lucy is correct that she has no obligation to them," Juvia said, "but she is responsible for the success of the mission. Juvia is required to not intervene except in the direst circumstances. Lucy is expected to help."
Lucy bit back an angry response and ducked her head. "...fine. I'm sorry." Rain dripped off the end of her nose.
"Juvia does not mean to be rude," Juvia said. "Juvia thinks Lucy did well in the fight."
Lucy hmfed, stalked over to the gutter and scooped up a stray turnip.
"Open, Gate of the Hunting Hounds! Canes Venatici!"
Misha and Boo (well, she'd had to name them something, right?) appeared in a flash and a burst of smoke. Misha barked in wild excitement and tried to climb up Lucy. Boo sat down and tried to pretend he didn't know Misha.
"Hey! Hey, calm down-" Lucy petted Misha's head. She immediately fell on the ground and rolled over to have her belly rubbed. Lucy obliged. Misha's tail wagged so hard it nearly fell off.
"What are you doing?" Juvia asked. Lucy ignored her and showed Boo the turnip instead.
"Could you find the guy who conjured this up?"
Misha scrambled up, sniffed the turnip, shot off, collided with a fishmonger's stall and fell over. Boo sniffed the turnip and headed with grim determination for the exit. Lucy followed Boo. Juvia followed Lucy to the exit, but Lucy didn't look back. The hounds led her through a maze of narrow streets. Boo trotted a little way ahead, and Misha alternated between tearing off far into the distance and racing back to Lucy's side. Lucy stopped briefly to buy another umbrella, not that it would help much considering her clothes were already soaked, her hair was plastered to her skull and her boots squelched with every step. The streets the hounds led her through grew narrower and the high buildings on either side seemed to lean over her. Finally they stopped outside a narrow, battered, run-down building. Rain sputtered from a blocked gutter. Several of the windows were broken and boarded up; one set of boards was painted with the slogan FETTER LANE LODGING HOUSE REASONABLE RATES.
Lucy thought that 'reasonable rates' would have to mean that they'd pay people to stay there.
"Are you sure?" she asked Misha and Boo. Misha yipped with excitement. Boo sat by the front door and waited for her. Lucy groaned, and kicked the front door open. She wasn't about to touch it with her hands. It opened into a narrow hallway stained with cigarette smoke. Even the light from the bare electric bulb seemed to have a brown tinge to it. Boo slid past her and trotted inside and up a flight of twisting rickety stairs. Lucy followed him with a grimace. An old woman stuck her head around a door at the far end of the hallway and hollered "You don't live here!"
"Just visiting!" Lucy yelled. Misha galloped after her.
"And no pets!" the woman roared.
"They're not pets," Lucy called back, and kept going. On the third floor Boo stopped outside a particular door. Misha joined him and barked wildly, apparently to get Lucy's attention in case she hadn't noticed it.
"What was that?" someone said, and Vanderwood opened the door. The sleeves of his checked shirt were rolled up. That revealed a Blue Pegasus guild stamp on his left forearm. That explained...
Lucy was actually not sure what that explained. Frank followed her gaze and instinctively covered the mark with his other hand.
"...anyway," Lucy said. "Hi! Can I come in?" She was gripping her keys tightly behind her back. 'Highly dangerous mage', the soldier had said, even if he did look like a total doofball. What'd he done, kill someone and feed them to his pigs?
"I'm thinking I remember you being with those Phantom Lords, ma'am," Frank said.
"Yup! I'm Lucy Ashley. Do you want to make a deal?"
"A deal?" Frank repeated, puzzled. "What sort of a deal?"
Lucy ignored that. "May I come in?"
Frank glanced around and then stepped back to let Lucy in. Lucy slid inside and scanned the room. It was a small room, holding only a double bed with rumpled sheets, a small window looking out onto a brick wall, and a door to a bathroom or a cupboard, which was left ajar. There was hardly enough space to swing Caelum or her whip, if she tried to summon Taurus his horns might crash through the ceiling, and it was Cancer's day off. Behind her back, she closed her fingers tight around Serpens' key. Frank stayed standing, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, and after a moment Lucy realised it was because she hadn't sat down.
"You're trying to get out of Fiore, right?" she asked. "We can help with that."
"Begging your pardon, ma'am," Frank said, "but I don't see as how you can, when the Muses have got people watching every way out of this place, and I can't see as why you would, either."
"We're not doing it just to help you out," Lucy said. "The Muses came into our territory, so we'd be trying to stop them whatever they were doing. And anyway, it's not like it's a problem for us if a Blue Pegasus mage wants to cause trouble and flee the country." Her grin was bright and conspiratorial. "You don't get to be the number-one guild without sabotaging the competition a little!"
"That's mighty kind of you, ma'am," Frank said, proving that even farmboys could master irony. "But I don't see as how you'd be planning to do such a thing."
"The ferry port," Lucy said. She was glad she'd flicked through some leaflets in the train station. As well as the commercial docks, Brownian Town had a ferry port that ran a service to the town of Vaish in Seven every morning. "We'll sneak in overnight, you stow away in a lifeboat or something and then when the ferry leaves you're home free... well, not home, maybe, but definitely free."
"There's four guards who watch the security checkpoint overnight, and Euterpe'll have paid them off to tell her they see so much as a peep of us," Frank said. "And if we caused any sort of a ruckus they would just stop the ferries running." We, Lucy noted. So he was at least thinking about agreeing. "Can't hardly swim out to it neither. The water's powerful cold and full of diresharks."
Lucy laughed. "We've got an illusionist, remember? We'll sneak through!"
Frank's forehead creased up. He chewed on his lower lip. "Well, I'd sure like to trust you, miss, but-"
"But what?" Lucy said. "What else are you going to do? Wait to be dragged back to Blue Pegasus like a naughty child?"
He looked down, and then around the room, and sighed. "All right then." A moment of hesitation. "Count me in."
"Great!" Lucy chirped. "Two a.m., tonight, outside the port terminal. See you there!"
Of course, it was going to be a trap.