Last chapter, I said you're stupid if you don't like SAO. If I offended anyone then I'm sorry. I didn't mean it! You guys should stop taking my silly comments so seriously...

E.N.D. Rises: Natsu's Return

Chapter 6:

Brother

In the deepest corner of the Abyss Palace, a prison fortress was built with magic-cancelling runes carved into every wall. 50 meter thick walls of pure steel reinforced to the max. Guards were posted at every corner armed with the strongest magical weapons possible. In the center of this impenetrable fortress was a single cell with only one prisoner...

Zeref Dragneel.

His hair had grown to his shoulders and his body had shrivelled away to a skeletal form. But he was okay with it. After all the suffering he'd caused, this was all he deserved. The guard in charge of his food came walking up to the cell with a tray of cold soup, cold water and stail bread.

"Grub time," he said.

The guard opened the small hatch at the bottom of the doorless wall and pushed the food through. Zeref crawled over to it and weakly picked up the bread roll. He achingly took a bite and sorely swallowed.

"Is there... any news on my brother?" he asked.

"Fairy Tail is trying to get permission to see you. I don't know if that's to confirm or deny your brother's survival," the guard said.

"Okay... thank you,"

The guard walked away and Zeref desperately ate up the bread and soup. He only got fed once a day. He shivered as he gulped down the icy cold water and it spilled out of the corners of his mouth. Zeref wiped his mouth and lay back, staring at the ceiling. He'd spend the rest of his mortal life in this cell. He'd rot away and no one would notice or even care.

"Message for the prisoner,"

Zeref looked up. He rarely got messages from outside the prison. The messenger walked up to his cell and opened a scroll. Zeref sat up and looked at him with curious green eyes. The messenger cowered at seeing the world's once most powerful wizard.

"The Magic Council have given the mages of Fairy Tail permission to visit you, Zeref Dragneel,"

Zeref looked at him, stunned then looked down with a smile. Finally, he'd find out. Was his brother alive or dead?

Several hours passed and Zeref heard the sound of footsteps coming towards his cell. He rolled onto his side to see who was coming and saw Team Natsu from Fairy Tail coming his way. They came to a stop with solemn looks on their faces. Zeref sat up and they stepped apart from each other to reveal a person wearing a tattered sweatshirt with the hood pulled up. Erza yanked this person's hood down to reveal Natsu underneath it. Everything somehow became even quieter...

"This is your brother, Natsu," Lisanna said "Zeref Dragneel,"

Natsu stepped forward and sat down on the ground. The two brothers stared at one another with only the glass wall between them. Green eyes met black as they studied one another.

"You don't recognize me..." Zeref stated.

"No... I don't," Natsu said "but from what I've heard, you went through a bunch of crap to resurrect me the first time around,"

Lisanna sat down by him and put her hand over his, comfort washing over him. Zeref looked at his brother to see how he was doing. Pale, hollow cheeks, underweight, dark circles under his eyes and heavy bruising.

"Natsu... What happened to you?" Zeref asked in sadness.

"A bunch of crap," Natsu answered and he groaned.

"Time to check your wounds," Lisanna said.

Porlyusica had given the responsibility of his healthcare to her so she had been acting as a nurse in many ways. Natsu lifted his sweatshirt over his head to reveal the dirtied bandages wrapped around him. Lisanna opened the bag she carried with her and took out some blunt scissors. She cut the old bandages up his back and pulled them away, revealing the fresh wounds neatly stitched by Porlyusica.

Lisanna applied a cream to prevent infection to the wounds on his back before applying a cream to prevent inflammation. Natsu cringed under her touch and she gently blew on his wounds to cool them down. She then used another cream to treat his bruises.

"You've been through worse, Natsu," Zeref said, looking off into space.

"How'd I get past that?" Natsu asked as he cringed even more.

"You didn't... you had tuberculosis in your lungs. You spat up blood for a solid year before it took you..." his brother said "It was caused by infected cow's milk from our family farm's herd. After you died they all had to be destroyed. That financially ruined us and our family fell apart,"

"Yikes..." Natsu said as he turned around for Lisanna to treat the wounds on his front "Sounds like our lives are destined to suck,"

Zeref chuckled when he caught sight of the tracking enchantment on the back of his neck. As fresh bandages were wrapped around Natsu's abdomen, they explained all that had been going on. A dark cloud accumulated over Zeref and he got to his feet. The full extent of his pathetic body was shown when he weakly stepped forward and punched the glass with such force that it shook. He continued to seethe with rage despite his knuckles bent inwards, blood dripping from his hand and his fingers crossing over in unnatural ways.

"Zeref!" Natsu exclaimed, turning to the cell "Your hand! You need help,"

"No... it's fine. I don't deserve help. My hand will heal... eventually," Zeref said and he fell to the floor.

He crossed his legs with his hands on his knees and his back to them. Rage seemed to be building up in him when it was all suddenly released in one deep breath. Zeref lay down and let the blood from his hand pool around it. Natsu looked at him with sadness when anger gripped him. This was his brother and no matter the crime, he deserved medical care.

"You... WHAT?!"

It was after a long story on how Natsu was alive for the Fairy Tail mages to reach the reason they'd wanted an audience with the Magic Council. Natsu remained stoic with his fists at his sides and his friends backing him up.

"I don't care if he was once evil or whatever, no one deserves to be refused medical help. His hand's destroyed and he looks like he could break in two," he said.

"It's what he deserves!"

"ZEF DOESN'T DESERVE THIS!" Natsu yelled and suddenly covered his mouth "Where did that come from? Why'd I call him 'Zef' when his name's Zeref?"

They stared at him in shock when Lisanna suddenly embraced him.

"Natsu! You called him Zef for short in your past lives!" she exclaimed "It must still be in you!"

Witnessing this, Erza stepped forward with a new proposal. Zeref be released into Fairy Tail's custody to receive medical treatment and will pay for it by helping his brother. A sort of "probation" due to strenuous medical circumstances. Besides, that gave them time to figure out how to keep a prisoner healthy during incarceration.

The really weird thing? The Magic Council agreed to it...

...Magnolia Town...

Makarov signed paper after paper after paper, completing the prisoner transfer. Fairy Tail stood outside their guild hall as townspeople gathered around the magicmobile with the Magic Council emblem on it. With all required documents signed, the guards opened the back of the truck and Zeref stepped into the sunlight. He squinted as he stepped down onto the ground below and looked around to see the terrified faces of the bystanders.

"The Magic Council will be watching. That's why you're going to be wearing this tracking lacrima on your ankle at all times," said the guard as he put the tracker around his ankle before unlocking his handcuffs "He's your problem now, Fairy Tail,"

They watched the guards leave first before going back inside. Having heard of his hand injury, Wendy fearlessly approached him and took off the gaws encasing his broken hand. She sighed with irritation before performing her healing magic. Zeref hissed in pain as his bones snapped back together and fell to his knees before the young Sky Dragon Slayer. When she was done, Wendy wrapped his hand from his wrist to his knuckles in bandages.

"I'm not that good at healing broken bones so it'll take a few weeks to heal fully," she said "But that's better than the months it otherwise would have been,"

Zeref sat down on a chair and held his wrist before smiling at her.

"Thank you, Wendy," he said, his voice low and scratchy "It already feels a hundred times better,"

"So, you've had your medical treatment and we'll feed you properly so you can regain strength so can you now help Natsu?" Levy asked "Me and Freed haven't been able to crack the tracking enchantment on his neck,"

Zeref looked over to where Natsu was perched on the edge of a table like a monkey and got to his feet. He walked over to his brother and gestured for him to turn around. The moment he had a better look at the enchantment, his blood ran cold.

"How is... this possible?" Zeref stammered "These runes they're... they're..."

"They're what?" Gray asked.

"Mildian," he said in disbelief "This enchantment is written in Mildian, the ancient language of my and Natsu's birth country. It says 'The Hunter shall Stalk its Prey until the Prey sleeps where the Hunter may Kill it'. The wording makes for the weakness that it isn't as strong when you're awake, Natsu. From what I can tell, they don't even understand what they carved into you,"

"Any way to remove it?" Natsu asked, yawning.

"Three ways, actually," said Zeref "One, you dispel it like you have been trying. Two, you cut out the skin its carved into but that'll probably kill you. And three, the key words are hunter, stalk, prey and kill. By keeping Natsu in Mt. Draco at night, your preventing the second half 'the Prey sleeps where the Hunter may Kill it' since he can't be killed there but that's the problem..."

"What is?" Lucy asked.

"It can only be removed by the one who carved it if we let them kill Natsu," Zeref continued "And I promised not to resurrect anyone anymore so that's out... The best and safest bet is to dispel it. I know a bit about magic runes from my days as a Mildian Magic Academy student and I natively speak Mildian so I'll try to help,"

As Zeref, Levy and Freed began exchanging information, the ghost of the first guild master sat in the rafters. Mavis went unnoticed as she observed the former Black Wizard work alongside her guild. While cursed, you couldn't really guess his age but with it lifted, you could. He really looked like a 21-year-old young man now even if nothing had changed to his physical appearance from before. Those with the Contradictory Curse had no physical ages. Mavis just wished she could have found the weak link in her morality armour.

"So, Zeref, you know anything about magic that isn't evil?" Gray asked "Because you'll need to fight if we run into the facility goons,"

"Actually, back at the Mildian Magic Academy I worked on many projects that resulted in the creation of modern magic and that includes Ice-Make, Mr. Fullbuster," Zeref responded "But now, I can only perform the magic I knew from before I was cursed. I haven't used it in centuries so I'm pretty rusty,"

"And what magic was that?" Wendy asked.

"A sub-category of Fire Magic," he responded as he corrected Levy and Freed's misinterpretations of Mildian "Combustion Magic,"

They all turned to look at him. Combustion Magic? Really? Even before Natsu was raised by a Fire Dragon, their family was already made-up of flame-brains.

Q&A Time:

From Anonymous Person: I'm curious where did you get the idea for Mt. Draco? I thought it was very creative and seriously what a perfect hiding place. There are five dragons there right? That equates to it'll be suicidal to try to sneak into the place especially when the one being protected means so much to pretty much everyone present.

Ah, that also reminds me I've only watched the anime for Fairy Tail, if you've read the manga would you recommend reading it as well?

Well, "Draco" means "dragon" and is also the name of the dragon constellation so I figured it would be a good name. I haven't read all of the manga, I just read the Tartaros Arc but it was good. If you want to read it, go ahead! It's pretty good in my opinion.

From maalikdb: So I got a question. Why are your chapters a lot shorter and does this sequel get intense like the prequel did when [crud] goes down?

My chapters are getting shorter? I try to do 2000 words but sometimes the perfect moment comes to end it. And sometimes that chapter has served its purpose. What can I say? That's how my writing rolls... And this will be getting intense relatively soon.