Yes. Stingy bee has very good post alcohol memory. Enjoy.
Faie.
20: Sting!
Rogue Cheney arched a brow as he watched his fellow dragon slayer walk into the Fairy Tail guild hall. "What happened to you?"
"Natsu-san happened."
Sting plopped down heavily onto the bench next to his partner. He brought the ice pack that was clutched in one fist up to his face, grimacing as the flesh around his eye instantly burned with a fresh pain. The ice pack treatment had started a little too late and the skin had already turned a sordid mottled purple. The cheek on the opposite side was lined with scratches and cuts marked by ripped skin, the blood having long stopped flowing. The skin of his exposed abs were also grazed, and tiny grains of sand were embedded across the expanse of his torso. His clothes too were dotted with coloured grains, and they were particularly concentrated on the left side of his body, indicative that Sting had spent a few seconds of his recent life scraping the uneven ground of Magnolia's roads with himself.
"Why would Natsu-san hit you? Unless you provoked him. I wouldn't be surprised if you did." Rogue retorted blandly.
"Shut up." Sting growled. The ferocity flickered from his face for a brief moment, having been replaced by a wince of pain. "I didn't do anything wrong. I just told him to not go after Lucy when she was taken and he punched me in the eye."
"What happened to Lu-chan?"
"Aw crap. You brought the smurf with you?"
"If I recall correctly you were the one who announced out loud that Lucy was kidnapped."
"Lu-chan was WHAT?! Wait... Did you just call me a smurf? Where'd you hear that from? Gajeel, I bet. I'm going to kill him! No no... That's not the important issue right now. What did you mean Lu-chan was kidnapped?!" Levy shrieked, her fingers tearing at the seams of her dress.
Sting gave a half-hearted wave, his eyes never leaving Rogue's impassive face. "I meant that blondie was kidnapped. And you." He jabbed Rogue's shoulder with his free hand. "If you hadn't asked me what had happened to my face, I wouldn't have said anything at all."
"Ohmigosh! When did that happen?! Where's Natsu? Was he taken too?"
"Ergo, Rogue. This is your fault."
"Oh for Mavis's sake! STING!"
The blonde dragon slayer yelped, startled, when the midget of a girl suddenly grabbed him by the fur of his vest and quite nearly growled into his face. "Puffy. What exactly happened to Lu-chan? And Natsu. Where's he now?"
"Who the hell are you calling puffy?! In what way am I puffy?!"
"The feather boa. And the eye."
"It's a fashion statement! Do you know how trendy these fur vests are in Crocus? Everyone, young and old, wants to dress like me now!"
"Sting..."
Levy's voice lowered into a snarl, and the male inwardly shivered. Maybe smurf wasn't such a good nickname. Heck if he knew how Gajeel had come up with that word but it sounded too cute and cuddly for this... This raging blue haired demonic... Thing from hell.
"Alright alright! Don't get your undies in a twist! I'll tell you everything. Yesterday evening, Natsu-san and I went touring the bars till 4, and we found this really awesome place that was supposed to have the best liquor in town but there were so many female customers there that-"
"I don't want to hear your life story, Sting!"
"This part is important! I swear!"
"What's going on here? Levy, why are you gripping Sting by his furry boa?"
"Erza! Good timing! Help me beat the truth out of this idiot!"
"What the hell. Now it's furry. This is NOT a furry b-"
"Who's beating up Sting? Can I help? Hey, loser bee. 'Sup Rogue." Gray sauntered over, waving, and stood next to Erza, his shirt conspicuously missing. And so was his pants. A few meters behind them, a blue haired creepy looking woman whose name Sting couldn't remember was peeking out from behind a pillar, Gray's pants clutched tightly to her chest.
"Who the fuck are you calling a los-"
"Cut it out, Gray. What happened?"
"Puffy here was just about to tell me how he let Lu-chan get kidnapped by the enemy." Levy gritted out through clenched teeth and pulled down on the fur. The eyes of both the Exquip Mage and the Ice Mage widened and they gaped at the the tiny blunette.
"Lucy was kidnapped?!"
"You bastard! What did you do to Lucy?! Are you still secretly pissed about losing to flame brain so you took it out on Lucy?"
"Fuck you. I didn't do shit to anyone." Sting snarled in response and tugged himself roughly out of Levy's grip.
"Damn right you didn't. Instead you let her get taken right before your eyes. I hope it was ash face who gave you that black eye." Gray snapped as he postured an offensive stance.
"Enough. Both of you." Before the two men could leap at each other's throats, Erza stepped in between them and raised her arms at their chests. She turned to look pointedly at Sting. "What happened to the three of you after you left the guild yesterday evening? And omit the useless details. I'm not interested in hearing about you picking up drunken girls."
"I didn't pick up anyone. If anything, Natsu was the one doing all the picking up."
"Don't be ridiculous. Natsu would never cheat on Lu-chan. He loves her."
"I'm not blind. It's obvious Natsu-san's a sucker for Lucy." Sting crossed his arms and frowned. "I meant that the girls in this town all want a piece of him now that they've seen him in the Games. Instead do the great Sting Eucliffe of the Twin Dragons, they preferred pinky. For bar we went to, everyone would instantly go crazy. Girls were slipping him love notes left and right. Some guys too. Yergh. Whatever. I'm not interested in girls with terrible taste anyway."
Gray rolled his eyes exaggeratedly and made a pinching action with his thumb and four fingers. "All I heard was blabbity blah blah blah. I don't give a shit about how many girls find ash face attractive. It just goes to show how many dumb females there are in Magnolia."
"Lu-chan's not dumb!" Levy huffed.
"Lucy's special." Gray shrugged.
A few meters away, there was the sound of fabric, namely Gray's pants, tearing and a ominous growl of "Love rival...!"
Erza harrumphed impatiently. "Sting-"
"Yeah yeah. Important parts. Anyway, around 4we found some seedy joint at the edge of town where there wasn't much people."
"Sting!"
"I'm getting there! Geez, Titania... ANYWAY, there was this girl, with crazy black hair serving there, and she offered us some really amazing concoction that she called the house special. It was friggin awesome. Then we... Uh... Went to Lucy's and banged on her door till she let us in." Sting scratched his head awkwardly and turned his one eyed gaze to the table.
"What...?" Erza and Gray both gave sceptical looks.
"You two idiots. Went to Lu-chan's place at 5 in the morning. Piss drunk off your asses. I'm surprised she didn't break up with Natsu."
"Nope. They were making out on her bed." Sting shrugged nonchalantly.
Erza instantly turned a deep blush red. "M-m-m-making out? You m-m-m-mean l-l-like k-k-ki-ki-kis-kis-kissu...!"
"Oooookkaaaayy. Not important." Gray patted the great (-ly embarrassed) Titania on her shoulder, sighing.
Sting's face turned serious and his fist tightened around the ice pack over his eye. "They came after dawn. Two of them. Lucy greeted them at the door so I didn't get a good look at the smaller figure, but he was male and had red hair. But the girl we recognised. Her voice. Her face. Everything was the same except for the outfit she wore."
The group startled when the ice pack suddenly broke apart in between Sting's fingers as ice cubes and water splashed messily across the table, drawing even more looks from the others around their corner of the room.
"It was her. That bitch poisoned us."
Gray held up a hand to pause Sting in mid-speech. "Stop. Waitaminute now. Poisoned?"
"It was the black haired waitress I mentioned! She definitely slipped something into our drinks. Neither of us could use any magic. I still can't, and I don't think Natsu-san can either." Sting hammered the table, causing some cubes to jump up and slide off the edge. "Then she did some kind of spell that barricaded me and Natsu-san in one end of the room. It wasn't runes, and-"
"Barrier without runes?" Levy leaped to her feet, her own small palms slamming the wet table. "That's just like what we faced in that Stella inn!"
"What do you mean?" Sting asked, and the blunette quickly gave him a Cliff notes version of what they knew so far. The male looked contemplative for a second before he nodded.
"It's probably the same barrier that Lucy experienced when she couldn't call out to the Natsu-san's cat. Ours also blocked out sound. Black haired bitch and Lucy spoke for a while but we couldn't hear jack. Physical attacks didn't work on the barrier. She then caught Lucy in some kind of invisible grip that knocked her out... And then they left."
Silence fell, the earlier levity within their group of five having long disappeared. Sting could see the warring expressions on the Fairy Tail mages' faces. Anger and fury for their missing nakama, fear for Lucy's safety and finally – barely reined in impatience. They wanted to leap to their feet and head straight to where the Celestial Mage was and beat up those who had dared to touch one of their own, but this time, they had no clue on where to start. Even Levy didn't know the type of magic the enemy used, and that just gave them another dead end.
For the first time, they had nothing.
Rogue's face was still impassive, but Sting could detect just the slightest bit of anger in his eyes. They hadn't known Lucy for long, but amity had been forged between the Twin Dragons and Fairy Tail during the post-Games celebration at the palace. As soon as they managed to locate them, their enemies were in for a fight of their lifetime.
The white dragon slayer suddenly laughed, drawing suspicious looks from the Fairy Tail mages. Gray spoke first.
"Is Lucy being kidnapped that funny to you?"
"Nothing of the sort." Sting shrugged. "In my mind, I just referred to the guys who took Lucy as 'our enemies'. Look at me, I'm speaking as though I'm one of your nakama now."
Erza looked surprised. "Aren't you?"
"What?"
"Aren't you one of us now? You may not be a Fairy Tail Mage, but being nakama and fighting for each other's sake isn't limited to only members within the same guild. As long as you agree to being friends with us, Fairy Tail will always accept you as an important comrade. As one of our own."
A shocked look flashed across Sting's and Rogue's faces for a second, and the white dragon slayer recalled how Natsu had thrashed their inn in Crocus for the sake of a Sabertooth celestial Mage. He laughed again and raised his palms. "Alright. I accept your offer of nakama-ship. Rogue?"
"You know what my answer is." He stated flatly, not even looking at Sting.
"Right then."
"Natsu." Erza suddenly piped up. "What happened to Natsu?"
"Oh right. The barrier released at about noon and Natsu instantly took off out of the building. But for some reason, the enemies' scent had vanished in the middle of the street. It was like they had just disappeared into thin air."
"Are you serious?"
Sting looked offended. "We are awesomely powerful dragon slayers. Even if the scent started from five miles away, we would have been able to track it. But there was nothing. Ten meters from Lucy's building doorstep, the scent just went cold. The last time something similar happened to me, the person had been sucked up into an anima. But it is possible that the reason we are unable to sniff them out is because they're too far away."
"What constitutes... Too far away for you?" Erza inquired.
"Uhm... I can usually smell things up to three or four miles away. I'm not too sure about Natsu-san though, since he is, regrettably, more powerful than I am."
"Oh oh! What about the bar where the black haired girl worked?" Levy noted, although she already knew what Sting's reply was going to be. It was obvious.
"The owner of the bar said he didn't even knew the girl. And he had closed his bar at midnight. He didn't know someone had broken in till we came by. Everything was as it was when he had closed the shop."
"They left absolutely no traces then. That really makes things difficult." Ezra ruminated, rubbing her chin with one armoured hand.
Natsu-san kind of lost it after that. I mean, he was already furious. But after the bar, he really lost it. When I told him to wait till our magic had returned so that we at least stood some tiny chance against them, he punched me and took off by himself into the forest."
Gray sighed and smacked his face. "Shit. Seriously. Shit."
He didn't understand.
Him and his stupid white dragon slayer mind. He just didn't understand.
This was all his fault, if only he hadn't succumbed to the alcohol last night. He wasn't a fervent drinker like the older guys nor was he a hopeless addict like Cana, but after the first few mugs, he had thrown what inhibition he had left to the wind and simply downed another after another, not caring what exactly is was that he was drinking.
Sting had wanted to bail around 3 in the morning but it was Natsu who insisted that they continued celebrating the night, and maybe get rid of the blonde's odd dourness. As their drink count went up, Natsu's enthusiasm soared exponentially, but for some reason Sting became more and more grumpy, and was constantly complaining about some stupid girls. Around 5, they had been planning to head home but instead found themselves standing outside a lit bar Natsu didn't even know Magnolia had nearer to the edge of town. It was then that a frizzy haired teen girl had served up the most delightfully fragrant mugs of her special concoction. One sip was all it took to make him imbibe the entire mug in a single mouthful, and he had.
Fuck this!
When Natsu saw that waitress girl again, he wasn't going to make sure that every single strand of hair on her body was in ashes by the time he was done. Her, and that tiny redheaded boy who had all the while watched impassively as his female partner squeezed the life out of his woman. The barrier had soundproofed Lucy's pained cries, but the expressions playing across her face, and watching the life being constricted out of her body was enough motivation for the fire dragon slayer Salamander to want to break every single bone in the girl's body.
And that was exactly what the fire dragon slayer was going to do. As soon as he found his prey.
And got his magic back.
Godamnit to hell!
"Polyushka!"
Where was this secret forest cabin that Polyushka had sequestered herself in? Natsu was reckless yes, but he wasn't stupid. He knew all too well that going to hunt the enemy with no magic would be more than dumb. It would be devastatingly dumb, and even if he somehow, by some miraculous stroke of luck, managed to find Lucy, he would only going there to get himself beat up. But seriously...
Natsu cursed when yet another twig broke under his sandal and the scrap of wood poked him in the side of the foot. A clump of mushrooms oozed reddish purple liquid against his ankle when he kicked his foot to free the broken twig, and instantly the flesh around his foot began to swell a tiny bit, and the skin began to itch something really, really bad. What the f-
Where the hell did she live?!
"Polyushka! Polyushka! Where are you?! You old hag, where the fu-"
"Shut the hell up! You don't run into someone's backyard, crush their herb garden and- you! What are you doing here?"
Natsu whipped around to face a bristling old woman with hair a shade darker than his own brandishing a broom at his face. "Polyushka!"
"You're the fire wielding idiot! What do you want with me? Has Fairy Tail gotten in another war with God knows who else?"
Natsu frowned. "No. Why would you guess that?" Polyushka arched a brow. "Alright fine. Anyway, that's not it. I came with a problem of my own. Lucy's been kidnapped."
I recall in the previous chapter, A Stellar Reunion, I believe, that there was an isseu about how Sting behaved towards Lucy. Yeah, sorry about that. I had forgotten about the chapter that came after the fight with the dragons that Sabertooth had pretty much ironed things out with Fairy T.
Yes. This is a shitty update, and I haven't been updating the rest either. But with all the running about NYC (my long awaited holiday!) plus the trips coming up next, the moment I get back to my airbnb apts, I'm dead tired, and I still have to cook for my spoilt, rich family roomie who only knows how to boil carrots all the damn time.
I just survived a whole 24h day in Fort Lauderdale airport, and I've got another 12h transit in JFK. Whoop de doo! Almost 2 days of my remaining holiday spent waiting in airports. Hope you guys are having fun wherever you are.
Faie.
Out.