A/N: Sorry about the super-massive delay. Looking at the date of the last update, I was appalled to realize that it's been almost 18 months since my last update. *horrified gasp* Between finishing my Bachelor degree and starting a Masters program and other more personal reasons that I'll explain in an IM to anyone who is curious, I've been kind of stuck. Setting up an upstairs "office" of sorts helped to unclutter the mental block that had been plaguing this story for close to 6 months but no other effect on the other reasons. Anyway, here's an update. Enjoy! Read & review!
By the by, RIP Robin Williams. *moment of silence*
Lucy arrived in Acalypha the next day. The sun shone down on the city, giving the whole area a generally happy feel. The blond girl herself shifted from foot to foot in front of the merchant guild and glanced once more at the application sheet in her hands. It was filled out in neat block letters that seemed to mock her in their efficiency.
While it was true that looking at this guild always made her feel a sense of pride – she had defeated Naked Mummy here, after all – the whole situation made her feel something like a traitor. She knew she wasn't; her conversation with the Master had put that particular concern to rest. But, still… what would Natsu say when he found out she had joined the same guild as her father, the same man that had as good as instructed Phantom Lord to attack Fairy Tail just to retrieve her?
"Of course," Lucy murmured to herself, "that's pretty much all Natsu knows about Dad."
It was certainly true that the memories that stuck with her were… unfavorable, to say the least. There were far too many instances of Jude ignoring or chastising her in her memory but the letter he had written her reminded her of the better moments, moments that had nothing to do with her mother. Jude standing in front of Lucy, a thin metal pointer in his hand as he thoroughly explained Fiore's trade policy to her; Jude sitting in the background, a small smile quirking beneath his moustache, when she called her first celestial spirit (Cancer, who she had immediately bonded with); the two of them sitting in front of the fireplace every six months, once at Christmas and once on the anniversary of Layla's death, going through the family album and the several pictures that depicted the heart and soul that was her mother.
She had finally come to terms with the fact that her life, her childhood contained as much good as bad and it was far beyond time that she let go of the negativity.
With an anxious sigh, she took the necessary steps forward to the door and walked into the guild. She stepped up to the reception desk and laid her application down, drawing the middle-aged woman's attention. "I'm… uh, I'm here to apply for the magical advisory position. I think."
The woman frowned at her for a moment and then picked up the sheet of paper, peering at it through half-moon glasses. "What is…? Oh! You're Jude's daughter?"
"I am," Lucy admitted, pushing the words past lips that felt too dry. She was rarely this nervous about anything. That year on the road had taught her how to deal with a lot of things as they came. So, why was she so nervous now?
"The Master's been so excited ever since Jude told him about his talented mage daughter. We haven't had a mage with us since Layla left. It's been very expensive to outsource it." She reached for a small device on the far right of the desk and stamped APPROVED in black ink in a big blank box at the bottom of the application. "Your Master was fine with this?"
Lucy laughed softly, her tension easing as she thought on her conversation with Makarov the day before. "Yeah. At first, he thought I was leaving, which I have no intention of doing. Then he said it would help to counterbalance their destructive reputation, having me attached to Love & Lucky."
"Good. Come, I'll take you to Master Tanaka. He has a job for you."
Lucy blinked at that. "Already?"
The woman's eyes twinkled behind her spectacles. "You'll see."
Frowning slightly, she moved to follow the woman, wondering at her mysterious demeanor. It wouldn't do her any good to think too deeply about it, though; this was definitely a take-things-as-they-come situation. Taking long strides at the heels of the woman that led her, both Lucy and the receptionist weaved through the maze that was Love & Lucky's main hall. Before long, they were standing near what had to be the rear of what turned out to be a very large building, in something like a warehouse.
Lucy assumed it was a warehouse of sorts because there were lots of wooden crates. Crates, crates everywhere.
Once ensconced in the storage area, she could see clearly the purpose of bringing her to this location. Her father, his beard no longer present, stood calmly with a man she didn't recognize but assumed to be the Master Tanaka of which he had spoken. Between her and them was a broad table, upon which sat three items. Only two of those items had anything resembling a magical pulse.
She could see now what they were about. This wasn't a job so much as a test. She would be offended if it didn't make so much business sense. This was a merchant guild, after all. Interviews should be as comprehensive as necessary.
"Hi!" she greeted the two men brightly as she entered their earshot. Jude inclined his head slightly and even shot her a small smile but didn't say anything.
Tanaka was the one to speak, his mouth pulling into a gentle frown at her informal greeting. "Lucy Heartfilia, Jude insists that you have optimum experience with all things magical and may even exceed Layla in some areas." He cast a brief sidelong glance at the man in question when he moved, revealing a minimal flinch and grimace marring his features. "Such as magical identification," he finished succinctly.
Lucy swallowed, fiercely denying the impulse to look down at her very informal attire. There was a very specific reason why she had been wearing that very formal dress in order to speak to her father so many months ago, why she needed the comparison of dresswear to fully show him how much she was not what he thought she was. Jude was always a very official man, dressed in a cardigan and slacks even at his most relaxed. It seemed that it was likely this guild that had made him that way. Closing her eyes, she focused on pushing on primary personality to the side. From the little information she had gleaned from her father's letter, the connections that the Love & Lucky Guild possessed were her best lead in tracking down the other platinum keys.
Finally, Lucy opened her eyes and stepped forward to the table with its three items. While she loved Fairy Tail and its willy-nilly, come-as-you-are attitude, it was the only guild (magical or otherwise) that maintained that sort of attitude. Additionally, almost everyone accepted into Love & Lucky were businesspeople, possessing the formality and intellectual attitude that she had almost forgotten how to expect from others. Now, she held herself differently, her posture correct and her smile gentled down into congenial lines. She was no longer cheery, merely... polite.
"Only two of these items have a magical signature of any sort," she began, flicking her eyes at the Master before focusing on her report. She picked up the first item, a carved and varnished wand. "For all that this looks real, it's just a stick. It hasn't even been touched by a mage." She arched an eyebrow, feeling her own magic leave an echo of her presence on the toy. "Until now, that is." Turning to the next item, she reached a little with her senses, knowing that the other items were definitely magical in nature. As she got a better look at it, her polite smile twisted into a smirk. "I've seen one of these before. You'll see them in the magic shops closer to Fiore's capital. They call them scepters, because they're similar in make to royal scepters. These items are usually crafted in magic forges and are used by mages to store spells for later use."
"Have you been to Crocus, Miss Heartfilia?" Tanaka asked softly, his voice no longer strictly firm.
Looking up, Lucy shifted her gaze to her father before looking the merchant guild master in the eyes. "Once or twice, with my father." She looked down again, fingering the clear crystal at the tip of the scepter. "I haven't seen the capital in a long time."
"And the last item?" Tanaka inquired, bringing her attention back to the task at hand.
Focusing again, Lucy picked up the last item, reaching out with an inner sense that she had never had any success explaining to her father. It was a small pendant, similar to a cameo in shape but composed entirely of ebony crystal. However, once she touched it, her vision tunneled down to a single spot, surrounded completely by dark gray, and she could hear a gravelly voice shout in her mind. Before the sudden sensation could force a pained scream from her throat, she dropped the item, taking several steps back from the table.
She could still hear the echo of the command in her mind. "RELEASE ME!" Whatever was inside the crystal pendant, it was definitely not something she wanted free in the world.
Breathing heavily, she pinned the guild master with a furious glare. "That last item," she spat out the word as it was poison, "needs to go to the Magic Council."
Erebus bowed before the Spirit King but his defiance was clear in the line of his body. The King glanced over to Draco, his mustachioed mouth twitching curiously, but said nothing otherwise. Having returned to his full draconic size for the purpose of training Erebus, Draco thought about the origins of the Spirit King.
Compared to the origins of the other celestial spirits, where the Spirit King came from and how exactly he came to be were anomalous in nature. As he had relayed to Lucy Heartfilia, the golden Zodiac keys had been created by the platinum celestial spirits themselves and the silver keys were created by celestial mages just coming into their power. Black keys like Erebus were rare but possible, often destroyed by their makers because the effort to control far exceeded the ability to create. The Spirit King, on the other hand, had just appeared one day, his presence firmly in the memories of all the other celestial spirits aside from Draco, Hydra, and Phoenix. To spirits such as Leo and Virgo and even Crux (who possessed all written knowledge), the Spirit King had always been there, had always ruled over them. To the platinum spirits, well... Now that he thought on it further, he realized that their time among the gods, having been wielded by gods as the ultimate weapon, removed them somewhat from time and from mere three-dimensional perception.
Introspection made Draco think that the King had been created out of need. Though whose need exactly, he was still unsure.
Sighing at himself, the large dragon spirit whipped his tail around and wrapped a nearby black chain around the long appendage. With a quick glance of his obsidian eyes, he made sure that the chain was still firmly attached to the collar around Erebus's throat. Despite the time that Draco had already spent training the demon spirit, he was still magnificently defiant, almost childishly so. In fact, Erebus had barely spoken after the first day, which he was basically wasted in empty threats and refusing to fall in line.
Draco grinned to himself. Erebus would fall in line, like all others before him. The chaos demon was not the first of his nature for the dragon to train. However, it was no easy thing to control even trained demons. It was not to say that Draco's abilities as a taskmaster were subpar but that demons cannot fight their true nature. In the same way that Aquarius was jealous of other women and Virgo was naturally subservient and Leo was licentious in nature, demons were made to control and destroy alike.
They were much like dragons that way.
Because he was not what some would call a true dragon, Draco did not suffer from an overwhelming need to control the humans as the physical dragons did. From what he had seen, dragons like Igneel and Grandeeney had sought to mitigate such urges through deep, sometimes centuries-long meditation and other dragons like Zirconis reveled in the needless slaughter of what he considered to be lesser species. However, because of what Zeref had helped Acnologia do to himself almost four hundred years past, even the "nice" dragons had made a habit of controlling what knowledge their pet Slayers gained, if only to protect themselves.
"How long will this farce continue?"
Draco flicked his gaze back, noticing idly that Erebus had only been able to remain silent to a total of two days. Locking his idle and retrospective thoughts away in an untouched corner of his mind, he turned his attention fully to the demon. "As long as it takes," the dragon replied, his voice rumbling with the conviction of his words.
"I refuse to bend before the weak will of a human girl," Erebus declared, his dark timbre of his voice no uncertain thing itself.
The dragon had to fight himself to keep his tail from flicking angrily. It had only taken him two days to realize that consistently reminding him it was weak humans that had transformed him into this shadowy reflection of himself was not exactly going according to plan. He had then tried to make the creature realize that no all humans were as weak-willed as he wanted to believe. Draco had run out of ways to prove to the demon that his experience of frightened mortals that ran from the sight of him would not always ring true.
He had a feeling that it was Lucy's will and magic working in tandem that made him what he was now. Else, he would be nothing more than a wisp of thought and essence haunting an empty manor.
"You're so dense, you big dragon," a voice whispered softly, the sound just barely reaching his ears.
Craning his neck around, Draco grinned widely, the expression itself looking almost sinister. There was an echo of a form as large as himself, though this form's body was definitely more serpentine than draconic in nature. At the moment, only Draco could see Hydra or Phoenix... when they bothered to call his attention to their presence, that is. Because their keys were hidden on the material realm, yet to be found by the hands of a celestial mage, they had little to no form on the celestial plane.
"He's still pouting. Pathetic." With that one comment, Hydra slithered away, his long serpent body moving in fluid motion.
Glancing back at Erebus, Draco realized that the serpent had been correct. By the pinched expression that graced the demon's face and the carefully distant look in his eyes, he was definitely pouting but hiding it well enough that Draco had overlooked it time and again. The dragon had to remind himself that Erebus had not be born a celestial spirit like Gemini and had not volunteered to be such a spirit like Draco and his counterparts. The demon had been drafted into an army that he did not understand and likely felt almost honor-bound to refuse any and all duties presented to him.
With a sigh, Draco realized he would have to start from the basics, basics that all other celestial spirits took for granted. He promised himself that even if it took him five years, a lengthy amount of time to be dedicated to training in his own mind, Erebus would be a usable spirit for his new master.