Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail or Familiar of Zero
…
Erza stood there with her arms crossed as she leaned against the wall of the courtyard. In front of her was a stage where one of the students and their familiar was putting on a show for the audience. Included in that audience was Henrietta so the duo performing were giving it their all in an attempt to wow the crowd.
It didn't matter in the end to Erza but there really wasn't much else going on and while she would have prefered the comfort of her room Louise should still be cleaning it as of the moment. The explosion she had caused last night had hit Erza dead on but once the dust and debris had cleared Louise had found the person she had summoned still standing before her, a scowl across her face. The clothes she had been wearing had been damaged beyond repair and a lot of the smaller items in the room had been broken in the explosion.
Straight afterwards, Louise had dropped to her knees and begged for forgiveness, the overwhelming presence of the powerful monster that was Erza Scarlet reminded her of just who she had assaulted. A slew of emotions had passed over Erza in a handful of moments before she had knelt down and placed a comforting hand on Louise's shoulder before telling her that she was sorry for having made her worry. This had swiftly been followed up by the announcement that in the morning as punishment for her actions she would miss out on the festivities. This had at first been met with outrage but a stern look had silenced Louise before she could rant for too long.
From the amount of damage that had been done, Erza had originally figured that it would take roughly an hour to finish. That was until she remembered that having been brought up as a noble, Louise hadn't likely done a single day of cleaning in her life. She had been quite adamant that everything had to be done by the time she got back or else.
That had seemingly been all the enticement that Louise had needed.
As the next set of performers prepared for their act, Erza decided that she had seen enough. Pushing herself off of the wall, she made her way through the nearby archway and into the main building. While the little show went from mildly entertaining to cringeworthy at times, Erza simply wasn't in the mood.
Among everything else that had happened as of recently, the time spent in isolation in the palace's dungeon had increased her desire to find some way back home. On one occasion she had ever wished for Natsu to bust down the cell door, a path of destruction in his wake before declaring that he was there to save her. The course of action of course would have resulted in her smashing her fist into his face, declaring that she was doing this for a reason before thanking him nonetheless.
She needed to find a way back to Fiore soon.
Hence her current destination to the library, with a basic grasp on this world's written language and the power of a set of Gale-Force Reading Glasses she had in her pocket dimension she was determined to begin her quest of scouring through the library. With such an extensive collection of books, surely one of them had some sort of reference to travel between worlds. Even if she found something that only described rumours, she knew that rumours simply didn't pop up from nowhere. If she overlooked such a thing and consequently missed out on an opportunity to return to Fairy Tail she would deeply regret it.
Erza paused momentarily and allowed herself to let out an elongated sigh. She knew that she wanted to return home, even if Fairy Tail was struggling with the loss on Tenroujima and a number of the guild's strongest members. At the same time however there was a sense that not all was quite right with this world. The headmaster hadn't been specific with his detail on just why she was being kept on campus to overlook physical exercises but it was clear that something in the background was worrying him. If whatever he was afraid of burst into fruition and she simply left the situation as it was, how would she be able to live with herself?
Breaking it down to a simple point meant only one thing. If the students were being taught how to run, then they were running for a reason. If they couldn't fight, they were to flee. As far as Erza could tell, war was coming.
The students, the teachers, the golem, the staff, all of them were potentially in danger.
Wait.
Golem?
Erza blinked thrice in order to ensure that she was seeing things correctly. Indeed. There was a golem. Big thing, easily towering over a majority of the buildings the school had to offer. Yet not one scream of panic, not a single person yelling out for help. Erza figured that somebody other than herself would have seen the monstrosity currently residing in a facility occupied mostly by school children!
In a flash of golden light, Erza shot forth into the courtyard in Heart Kreuz Armour, sword in hand as she prepared to tackle the enemy that towered above her in every sense of the word. Despite the size difference however she knew that this golem had to be destroyed. If she failed to stop it, who knew what could happen. No matter what, she had to kill it to protect Louise.
Erza paused as she contemplated just what it was she was thinking. Why, above all else, had her thoughts not been protecting everybody on the school grounds but of Louise specifically? Her thoughts had also been to destroy the golem before her as opposed to simply attempting to stop it. Had she spontaneously had these same feelings in the duel against Mott and consequently acted on some sort of instinct to kill in order to protect?
The movement of the golem shook Erza back into the situation at hand as it reared it's fist back before striking out at the tower. Instead of the wall giving way however, the attack was repelled by some sort of shield that left the tower untouched. It had seemed to have not noticed Erza at this point, something the swordswoman took great delight in as she charged forward.
The distance she covered however was done in a time much faster than she had anticipated but she adjusted, planting herself at the base of one of the golem's feet before swinging her blade with power she didn't know she possessed. The blow was clean, striking right through where the achilles would have been and severing the foot from the leg in a single swipe. The sudden loss of balance forced the golem down to a knee as Erza set about gaining some distance from the construct.
From it's kneeling position Erza was able to see someone standing atop the construct, someone that seemed to be controlling the golem and someone who Erza had to kill in order to...
Erza shook her head from side to side as she did her best to banish those thoughts to the deepest parts of her mind. Instead she focused on the fact that the golem was standing upright once more, pulling from the ground beneath it to reform and repair the damage that had been taken. Her target now though was the person standing atop the creature's head, the golem was merely a construct of their own magical ability, much like Guiche's valkyrie.
A golden shine encompassed her body once more and in no less than a second she stood in her Heaven's Wheel Armour, the silver of the outfit glistening in the light of the sun. She raised the blade in her hand and allowed a vast amount of her arsenal to manifest behind her. Dozens of swords floated in the air just above her, a scene which seemed to terrify the person controlling the golem.
The construct's arms lifted in order to defend the person only seconds before the blades descended upon them. The devastating strikes rained on the golem's guard, some blades ricocheting off the constructs arms while others dug into the stone that it was composed of. With their vision cut off however, they were unable to act as Erza shifted armour once more. With the midnight black of her Purgatory Armour encompassing her body, the Fairy Tail mage leapt at the head of the golem with the giant mace she wielded clutched in both hands. With a single swing of her beastial weapon, the defence of the golem was shattered, the two arms crumbling like dirt in the wake of the massive blow.
A gasp of shock rang out from the robed individual, taking quick, trembling steps backwards to avoid the nightmare before her. Her footing did not last long however as she stumbled over a craggy piece of the golem and started to fall. Instead of panicking however she twisted in midair and focused on the ground beneath her. She was Fouquet the Sculptor!
As she began to channel the magic necessary to survive the fall, she was caught off guard as another body crashed into hers. Erza, in a moment of heroism, had leapt off the top of the crumbling golem and latched onto Fouquet, her arm tightly grasped around her waist as in her spare hand she summoned the largest spear at her disposal and with extraordinary strength, thrust it into the nearby wall.
The fall came to an abrupt halt as Erza gripped onto the spear shaft tightly, the metal bending slightly under the combined weight of the two women while in her other hand Fouquet was clutched to the metal of her breastplate. The would be thief quickly summed up her options, the wall close to them almost in reach. Were she to manipulate the stone she could...she could...
No, there was nothing she could do. The strength the woman possessed, the speed and skill, any type of attack she formed would be null and void. "Hold on," warned Erza as she relinquished her hold of the spear, allowing them to drop the last handful of metres at a much slower pace. The tiles they landed on gave way and cracked under Erza's feet but she paid them no mind as she allowed Fouquet to stand on her own.
Erza didn't need to see the face under the hood to know that her opponent had given up and she was grateful that she didn't have that little voice in her head telling her to slay the person in front of her. She would get to the bottom of that one way or another.
Before Erza could start her interrogation of the woman before her and discover just why she had crafted a giant stone golem to break into the academy (the golem had dissolved into nothing by this stage, without Fouquet's magic powering it it had effectively collapsed in on himself creating a mess that the cleaners were going to hate with a passion), the sound of someone nearby caught her attention.
"What...what just happened?"
Erza felt her head drop ever so slightly as she recognized the voice immediately. Turning her head ever so slightly, Erza eyed Louise who had collapsed to her knees, shock spread across her face. The familiar golden glow encompassed her frame as she changed back into her familiar armour, still not keen to go back into her casual clothes with a prisoner in her grasp.
"Let's go see the headmaster, you," she said giving the would be thief a slight jostle, "and...I have some explaining to do."
This was definitely not how Erza thought her day would have gone.