A/N Guess what? The story is actually starting to match with the summary now. Amazing right?
Disclaimer- Hiro Mashima owns Fairy Tail
You can finish them up later.
Six words, twenty three letters, and one punctuation mark.
Then again, it was those simple things that landed Lucy in a bathroom stall during her lunch period. Correction, a cramped bathroom stall in the most disgusting girls bathroom on campus.
A place where fungus grew in rapidly in the rusted sinks that had a permanent plumbing issue, causing them to drip brown water nonstop. The previous white walls were a sickening yellow and the bathroom stalls were covered in so much graffiti Lucy couldn't even make out what words went with what sentence. Plus, the floor was missing tiles in places. Not that it mattered anyways since the whole area was caked in mud and dirt; most likely home to bugs not known to human science. And. to make matters worse, the overhead lights were set to constant flicker mode making the whole setting seem straight out of a bad scary movie.
But, to Erza, this was the ideal place to finish Mavis's questions uninterrupted.
Lucy stretched her legs for the millionth time, trying to find a more comfortable position and all the while trying to keep her Chemistry binder from falling from her thigh.
Once she managed to find a bearable position, Lucy shifted her papers back into a stack and began to write again.
Dear Mavis,
My stepmother keep telling me everything I like is evil, that I shouldn't like this or that since it's sinful. She thinks that liking rock music, or fantasy novels is bad and will cause me to end up in Hell. I respect what she likes, and I think she should respect what I like. Any advice?
-Out of My Mother's Loop
Dear Out,
Tell your stepmother to calm down. You aren't going to Hell. You're already in it. It's called high school.
-Mavis
Dink.
And, there went Lucy's favorite pencil into a glop of who-knows-what. She made a face as the pink pencil sunk deeper into the green goo. There was no way she was about to undertake a rescue mission to save it from the muck. It had served her well before meeting its end.
Lucy reached into her bag's pocket for another pencil only to come up empty.
Now what? She had a four fifteen deadline from Erza and if she didn't meet it. . . let's just skip that part. Basically, Lucy couldn't see how things could get worse. She was already stuck sitting on a cracked toilet in a stall that didn't even lock, not to mention the goop her pencil had decided to take a swim in was smoking.
Death by disintegration. Seemed appropriate for the setting.
At that moment, Lucy felt it. The sensation of something slowly climbing up her arm. A chill ran up her spine and she glanced a peek at it.
Where bugs suppose to be that huge or was this just a mutant? Lucy didn't care.
"EEYYYAAA!" she screamed and smacked the creature off her arm. It hit the stall's door with a sickening smack before falling back on the ground.
That was it. She would rather endure Erza's wrath ten times over than spend another second in this place. Pushing her way out of the stall, Lucy leap over anything that seemed remotely suspicious before making it to the exit.
Lucy twisted the handle of the rusted door knob quickly. In her haste, Lucy didn't notice the knob break and fall into her hand before she had already slammed her shoulder into the door.
"Ow!" she yelped, jumping back from the door.
For a rusted old piece of metal it was stubborn.
"Lucy Kick!"
The door broke away on its rusty hinges and fell forward onto the grassy football field. Fresh air rushed in and Lucy was never more thankful for the smell of grass and sweat from the boys' morning practice in her life.
"Never..ever...again," she said, wrapping her arms around herself and stepping out.
Her papers slipped from the top of the binder and scattered. The messy print of an unanswered question blared at Lucy, reminding her she was under a time limit. Picking up the paper, she raised it into the sunlight and read it.
Dear Mavis,
I'm in love with a boy, but I don't know how he feels about me. People tell me he feels the same way, but I don't want to tell him and then scare him off. What do I do?
-Not a Clue
Lucy groaned. This was more of Mira's field than hers.
She ran her fingers through her hair. Even if she had an answer, it's not like she could write it down anyways.
Lucy sighed. Might as well go back and explain to Erza that she would finish the last two questions after school.
As she walked across the field, Lucy let her gaze flit around her surroundings. From afar, the main building seemed to tower over the trees surrounding it. Lucy laughed when she spotted one particularly humongous tree standing out amidst of all the others.
The tree was missing three branches and was leaning slightly to the left as it to topple at the slightest breeze. Not that it would anyways. The fact that it was still standing despite being hit numerous times by Gray and Natsu since it was their usual location to settle their differences.
Lucy jumped slightly when she heard the sound of dead leaves crunch under her feet. While she had been distracted, her feet had unintentionally taken her to the source of the memory.
She craned her head upwards to look at the sky through the twisting branches. There was a small flutter of wings and a blackbird landed on one of the branches. Lucy paused and took a step backwards to get a better look.
The bird's head snapped in her direction, trailing on of its beady eyes on Lucy who now stood frozen on the ground. After a couple of seconds of a stare down, the bird turned and hopped toward the trunk of the tree. Once there, it let out a loud caw and leap around the trunk and out of sight.
"Hey!" yelled an irritated voice in the direction from where the bird had disappeared.
Recognizing the familiar voice, Lucy ran around the wide trunk just in time to see the black bird battling Natsu for a sheet of notebook paper in his hand. Natsu leaned forwards on the thick branch supporting his weight.
"Let go!" Natsu yelled, yanking the paper away from the bird and towards his chest.
There was a loud rip and the paper tore in half, causing the Natsu to tumble backwards. The bird shook its head once before taking off into the sky with its share of the paper tightly grasped in its beak.
"Natsu? Are you alright?" Lucy called causing his head to snap towards her voice and his eyes widened slightly, "What are you doing out here, Luce?"
"I could ask you the same thing." she replied watching Natsu stuff the paper hastily into his pockets.
"Hold on," he yelled, grabbing one of the bigger branches in his reach "I'm coming down."
"That's like a 80 foot drop! Climb, don't jump!"
"What?" he yelled as if he hadn't heard her.
He pushed off from the trunk so he was dangling by his hands. He looked down at Lucy and shot her a grin.
"Look out below!" he called and released his grip from the branch.
Lucy stumbled backwards as Natsu fell through the branches and landed smoothly on the balls of his feet directly in front of Lucy. Shifting her binder and Mavis's questions to one arm, she used the other to pick the bits of sticks from his hair.
"I still don't understand how you are still standing after everything you push your body through." she muttered.
"I've been training." answered Natsu. He moved his hands towards Lucy's to help, "Besides, that drop was nothing."
"If you say so." said Lucy, moving her hands to brush the dirt from his pants. She paused when her hands brushed the corner of the paper sticking out of his pocket.
"What's this?" Lucy asked, pulling at the paper the bird had ripped, "Notes?"
Natsu jumped away in a flash, "Nothing! Just something Loke wrote up for me earlier today." He pushed the paper deeper into his pocket so it was no longer visible.
"What does 'Making Her Fall' mean?" she inquired suddenly.
"What?"
Lucy pointed at his pocket. "I saw it at the top of the page before you hid it. Are you trying to pull a prank?"
Natsu jumped, "Oh, that? Like I said, Loke just wrote it up for me."
"And, you decided to walk out of the way out to the other side of campus to read it? You even climbed up that huge tree."
Natsu scratched his neck and adverted his eyes only causing Lucy to become even more suspicious.
"Well?" she pressed.
Natsu snapped his eyes to meet her abruptly, "What about you? You are out here too. y'know"
"I was just walking back." she retorted, defensively.
"Then, what were you doing before?"
Lucy glanced down at her Mavis papers guiltily.
"Aha!" said Natsu, pointing at the papers. "So you were doing that!"
"You don't even know what 'that' is!"
"Your point?"
Lucy sighed and pressing her binder against her chest; hiding the questions from view, "I was just finishing some stuff up. Fairy Weekly's room was locked so I had to come out to the football field."
"Oh," he said, lowering his finger slightly.
"And, how did this turn on me anyways? I was just asking what was written on the paper when you got all defensive. It's only natural I got curious."
Natsu stuffed his hands in his pockets and sighed, "How about I don't ask what you were doing anymore if you don't ask what I was doing, agreed?"
Lucy raised a brow. She didn't think Natsu would become the peacekeeper; usually that was her job. "Okay, but I have a question."
"What?"
Lucy flipped her hair over her shoulder shyly, "You're a guy right?"
There was a moment of silence.
"You're asking if I'm a guy?" asked Natsu, incredulously.
"No! Not like that!" Lucy looked down at her binder, "I mean, since you're a guy, you should know what a guy likes, right? So, hypothetically, if there was a girl I knew who liked a guy and wanted to tell him, but not scare him off, what do you think she do?"
Natsu looked at her as if trying to tell if she was being serious or not. He shook his head and muttered something under his breath.
"What?"
Natsu locked his eyes with hers, "What kind of guy are we talking about?"
Lucy frowned, "I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"Well, I don't exactly know the person. All I know is she needs help."
Natsu took a step forward, "How?"
"How?" repeated Lucy, mirroring Natsu's actions and took a step backwards.
"How do you know she needs help?" he pressed.
"Well, she sent me a message."
"A message?"
"Yes." Lucy huffed, "It's a form of communication, remember? Look. if you can't help than that's fine. I'll just figure it out on my own."
Lucy brushed past Natsu, but stopped when she felt him grab her wrist.
"No, wait." he said, ducking his head so Lucy couldn't read his face, "Personally, I'm no good at things like this, so I'm going to come out and say it," he took a deep breath, "I-"
His words were cut off when the blackbird from before landed noisily above their heads in the tree. Lucy noticed that the bird had string, grass, and the other half of Natsu's paper grasped tightly in its beak. The bird walked over to a small. hidden crook in the tree and set its treasures down before taking off again in search for more materials.
"It was making a nest." said Lucy watching the bird disappeared into the sky, "So, that's why it wanted your paper, Natsu."
When Natsu didn't respond, Lucy looked over to see him staring at the sky intently, "Natsu?"
His head shot towards and he grinned, "Like I said, I'm no good when it comes to this stuff. Maybe you should ask Mirajane about it? She can probably help you." He abruptly turned on his heel and started running back in the direction of the school, "See you later, Luce!"
"See ya?" replied Lucy dumbfounded at his change in character. She began raising her hand in a farewell before letting it fall to her side when she realized his figure has already disappeared into the trees.
What was that about?
A/N I think my inner sadist is peeking out in this story. I have put Lucy through more torment in a span of a few weeks than I go through in a span of a few years. Poor girl.