Hi, hi! I updated! It took a while for me to update this chapter, huh? Well, it's Sunday here in my country so I have time to update now… and I was able to finish this chapter by last night with a few helps from my friend and his sister! XD
'Kay! Let me thank these cool guys: Thieving Alchemist, Namida Usagi-cwan, Derrick, Beta5200, AkaiChouNoKoe, Yuki Kusanagi, inoyamakiori, and Love Virus! XD Thank you so much for reviewing the previous chapter! Please review again this time~!
Disclaimer: I don't own Fairy Tail
Chap 21. The Queen of Fiore Kingdom
Edolas, Present
Cold wind swirled around in circle in slow motion, the sky was gray and the surrounding was darkened by the abandoned burnt-down buildings and houses. As the three young Dragon Slayers walked along with the two Exceeds, they found this place chilling and creepy.
"What the hell is this place?" Gajeel's mouth twisted in disgust when he saw his surroundings.
"So creepy…" Wendy held her two fists on her chest and trembled in fear and coldness.
"This place looks like a haunted town…" Natsu commented as he narrowed his eyes in a slightly serious way, how unusual of him.
The white Exceed stopped her steps and whipped around, folding her arms in process. "This is what I was talking about, people. The place which holds the most treasured memories by Erza Knightwalker…", said her.
"Aye!" Happy added from behind.
"EH? Why here of all places?" the three Dragon Slayers shouted out in unison.
"Please lower the tension, guys…" Charle said as she held a hand forward, motioning them to stop being surprised.
When the three of them seemed to have calmed down, the female feline continued what she was going to explain about this place. She was going to explain in detail so she needed them to actually listen to everything she might utter, though she was seriously worried about the Fire Dragon Slayer who seemed to never get any word uttered to him almost every time he tried to listen to anyone's explanation.
"First, I need to inform you all that this place was this Erza Knightwalker's hometown before she moved into the castle…" Charle informed the three before she started into the real explanation. The three nodded their heads in comprehensive faces, and unable to detect any sign of question by the three, the Exceed moved into the next explanation.
"And now I need you to meet someone…" the feline said before she looked over her shoulder to search for any sign of the person she wanted everyone to meet.
A silhouette of a man appeared from quite a distant from their position, the man walked towards them and the three of them widened their eyes when they saw the face of the man.
Mystogan positioned himself comfortably on the chair of his office as the black Exceed sat on his table, directly facing him so that they could began their important 'discussion'.
"Well, now, Prince. Has there any changes happened to our Erza? Or has her memories return even a little?" the black feline began to interrogate.
"I'm afraid no. None of them had returned. And I think nothing will change for the next few days either. I don't see any lights of hope anywhere…" the blue-haired Prince sighed in desperation at the Exceed's question.
"And for the next question…" Lily stood from his sitting position and he looked at Mystogan with seriousness in his eyes. "…Did you find anything with crimson color after Erza lost her memory?" he asked in a deep, husky voice.
Mystogan slightly widened his eyes, this question, somehow it made him see a light of hope. He wondered why he felt that way. Was it because the answer of that question is a yes? Was he happy because there might be a way to retrieve Knightwalker's memories if he said he found something with that feature?
Mystogan was a little hesitant when he was about to answer that question, but he gulped and put his hand in his pocket, planning to take the crimson crystal ball out. But-
Mystogan and Lily turned their attention towards the door when they heard someone slammed it open in a full force. Panting, the person tried to spoke, "Prince! Captain… Captain Knightwalker is… she's…"
All the Prince could do was to widen his eyes more than before, as his heart was about to stop, he couldn't think of anything now. The only thing carved on his mind was to rush towards the Second Division Captain's room right now, and so he did.
As he opened the door of the female Captain's room, he found something that shocked him to the nerve, and the soon arriving Lily was also unable to control the emotions inside him when he saw the unbelievably shocking scene.
Lucy squeezed the wet cloth and let the water fell back inside the bucket. She putted the piece of cloth on the forehead of her redhead friend, Erza Scarlet, who just fainted out of the blue –well, not exactly- and she had to take care of her.
The blonde let out a sigh before she turned around and glared at the two men. "What do you think you were doing, Gray? Stop being so paranoid towards Jellal! He had done nothing to you!" she scolded the young ice mage, Gray Fullbuster who just tried to pick a fight with their new member.
Gray let out an annoyed scoff as he turned away.
Lucy let out a sigh again, then she turned towards Jellal whose eyes hadn't went off from Erza even for a second. "And you too, Jellal. You know how fragile Erza is about romantic matters. Don't say something like that in public. Look how much you shocked her…" Lucy said softly to the blue-haired mage as she also looked at Erza while sweating nervously.
Jellal Fernandez nodded with guilt written all over his face. He noted to himself to never do anything like that ever again. Silently asking Lucy for permission to approach the redhead, Jellal leaned towards Erza when he gained the permission from the blonde.
"I never knew it would end up like this just because I confessed my true feelings for you…" he whispered in her ear while stroking her face with his thumb gently.
Just by looking at the scene, Lucy's face was as red as Erza's hair. She shook her head and tried to deny her thought, 'What am I getting all excited about? I should leave them alone!' she yelled mentally.
The blonde quickly dragged the ice mage along with her as she exited the room.
Jellal stayed beside the armored female the whole time, waiting for her to open her eyes while holding her hand tightly. He studied her expression, she looked like she's having a bad dream. She was scowling even in her sleep. He wondered what kind of dream she was seeing.
There was a voice of a crying newborn. Clearly, she could hear it echoed inside her head. The voice was so familiar. Even though it was just a mere crying voice, she felt nostalgic.
In the pitch black darkness, she tried to step forward, closer to the source of the voice. She stretched out her hand, hoping that she would be able to see a bright world on the other side of this darkness. And to reach that nostalgic voice…
Unable to tell where exactly she was standing now, she stopped. But the darkness suddenly disappeared and the only things she could see was… white. It's white in the entire place. Like a hospital? Wait… that crying voice. Was it hers?
So that's it, this is the time where she was born. No wonder it was so nostalgic for her. But now that she thought of it, she never really remembered how she was before she was taken to the Tower of Heaven as a slave. But why did she remember it now?
She felt like… this dream is going to tell her something important that she should know…
Natsu's jaw almost fell to the ground, and so were Gajeel and Wendy. The person before them now was the former King of Edolas, Faust. The one who made the three of them had to fight that robotic impostor dragon, was its name Droma Anim or something?
"As you people can see. This guy is Faust, the one who burnt this whole town until it became its current state now…" Charle said as she looked at the old man with the corner of her eyes.
"Eh? He was the one who did this cruel thing?" Wendy asked in disbelief.
"Che! How much free time did you have, ol' man?" Gajeel narrowed his eyes cautiously at him.
"How can a weak old geezer do something like this?" Natsu asked in awe, and the next thing he knew was the feeling of Gajeel's fist against his cheek.
"I'll let him do the rest of explanation to you guys…" Charle said as she pointed at the former King.
"What are you here for?" Gajeel muttered to himself, careful so that no one could hear him.
The old man looked at the three Dragon Slayers without any sense of guilt written on his face, even after he put them in danger with the Droma Anim on action. But somehow his expression reminded them of those monks that had cleaned themselves from any bad thoughts.
With the three of them remained silent, the former King began is talk. "I burnt this town twelve years ago, in order to find the person I could use to activate my Anima project…"
"How are those things related?" Gajeel asked, brows furrowed.
"I went to a fortune teller when I noticed the magic in Edolas was at the state of crisis, and she told me to burn this town. She said if I burnt it, I'll find someone. The only person who survived that fire will be the one I'm searching for. The key to my successful future…" Faust explained.
"How cruel…" Wendy held her hands on her mouth.
"I was lost at that time. The only thing on my mind was to think of a way to restore the magic…" Faust looked up to the sky. "I never realized my sin. Who had stolen the lives of so many people and Erza's own happiness. Nevertheless, she kept smiling at me and respected me, unaware that I was the one who stole her life from her…" he whispered before he looked down again, now guilt could be heard in his tone.
"I… regretted the thing I did…" he murmured as his voice disappeared within the swirling cold wind.
Lucy stepped inside the room to check on the Jellal and Erza. She saw no difference from before, Jellal was still beside Erza and she was still asleep.
The blonde stepped closer towards the blue-haired mage. "She sure takes a long time to gain consciousness. Did that accident shock her that much?" she asked as she raised an eyebrow.
Jellal nodded softly, still staring at the redhead beauty before him. "When Erza can't wake up, it usually means that she has something going on that she herself doesn't know…" he muttered.
Many question marks appeared on the blonde's head. "Eh? What are you talking about?"
Jellal flinched. "I'm sorry. I was just muttering randomly. I just remembered how Erza was when we were little…" he tried to explain and Lucy found his action cute.
The blonde took a seat on one of the nearest sofa. "So? When she was little, she can be like this too?" Lucy asked while resting her elbows on her lap and her head on her palms.
"Yes. If I recall, she was like that a few times. Sometimes she could just fail to realize what happened to her surroundings, and she can be really clumsy too…" Jellal said as he let out a chuckle when he remembered how the young redhead tripped on her feet almost everysingle day.
"If she took a long time to wake up, it means her dream is trying to help her realize something she should have realized by herself but failed…" Jellal said. "She can be so dense from time to time and it'll be very troublesome…"
'She's so dense about her acting skill, I suppose…' thought Lucy while laughing nervously. Remembering the time when they were at Onibus and Erza practiced like a professional, though they ended up finding that she had a stage-fright. But she never realized it and would never listen to anyone who told her about that.
Jellal turned back to stare at the redhead. "I wonder what her dream is trying to show her this time…" he murmured.
…Erza followed the baby girl who was brought by the nurse to have her first bath. Seems like she's unseen by the people here. Well, she'll take advantage from that.
A fair looking man also followed the nurse. Erza assumed that he was the baby's father, or for short, her father. She really wanted to examine the face of the man more, but she just couldn't see it no matter what, so she gave up.
As she saw the man bathe the baby girl, she smiled and left for the woman's room once more. She also really wanted to know how her mother looks like. Well, even though she couldn't see her face clearly here, but at least she wanted to be right by her side for a little longer before her chance vanished.
As Erza entered the room again, she saw another woman standing beside the bed where her mother was lying weakly. The other woman has long azure hair and she seems to also own a fair complexion. But Erza noticed that that woman was holding a baby in her arms. Seems like the baby was still a newborn like her infant self, but this one was older by a few months.
That other woman was looking at her mother with a mocking expression, mixed with disgust. Erza concentrated on hearing what they're talking about.
"You filthy woman. Don't ever think that I'll accept your child as the next heir of the royal family! Not the child from a disgusting whore like you!" the azure-haired woman shouted furiously while pointing at her mother, who seemed to receive her anger calmly.
'Royal family?' thought Erza curiously.
Her mother seemed to be able to handle her emotions. She eyed the azure-haired woman. "I was never planning on letting Erza become the next ruler of this kingdom. Just let your son do it. Erza and I will go away from your life as soon as possible… I won't bother your life…" she stated firmly. Now Erza knew where she got her strict personality from.
The azure-haired woman gritted her teeth frustratingly, "Of course! Don't even think that just because you have a child from the King, your child will be the next ruler of this kingdom!" she exclaimed. "My Jellal will definitely be the next King!" she stated proudly.
Erza's eyes widened to its extent. 'J-Jellal?' she yelled mentally, her whole body seemed weak now and she needed someone to comfort her now. She really needed to see Jellal now, she wanted to feel his warm hand patting her head and stroking her back to calm her down as he usually did.
The azure-haired woman smirked, "The Queen of Fiore Kingdom is definitely me, Azura Fernandez…" she put one of her hand on her chest.
'God… you've got to be lying to me…', Erza said mentally as she bit her lip anxiously.
~To be continued~
Whoa! There are so many cliffhangers here, I guess. O.O
But don't worry, I'll try to update as soon as possible! Please wait for me, guys! XD And please REVIEW~~
And I haven't decided the title for the next chap, so I won't write it from now on, I hope you guys don't mind... ^^