Replaced
Lisanna's back and Lucy feels left out. Natsu wants Lisanna back on his team. What about Lucy?
I'm SORRY! Missing last weekend was NOT my fault. I had this chapter all ready to be posted when BOOM! My internet connection decide to crash the day before. I just got it back Thursday. I was worried it would be out longer, but it seems that that isn't the case, thank goodness. Anyways, one of my reviewers from last chapter pointed something out to me about the Danai issue in the last couple chapters. I got that fixed so now it all matches. Thank you for bringing that to my attention whoever said that. Hope you enjoy reading and don't forget to review when you're done please!
Chapter 25- Family Connections
Hisoka did start crying, silently. Wide eyed with disbelief and complete relief, he stood there, hugging his sister close and crying without realizing it. Lucy was petting Happy again because he'd crawled into her lap as soon as Lila had vacated it, and was purring very loudly. Loke was nowhere to be seen. The horse was eating the little plants, not caring about the reunion of siblings.
After a little while, Hisoka finally put Lila down and sat, hard. "Where did you go? Mom and dad went looking for you after they dropped me off at grandma's."
"I got on the wrong train and went all the way to Crocus. I tried to go back, but kept getting on trains that went elsewhere. When I finally made it back to Shirotsume, you and mommy and daddy weren't there. Then the services found me and notified me that you all had died. They wanted to give me to grandma Emily and grandpa Gido. I hate them, so I ran away and tried to find cousin Lucy because I didn't know where grandma Uma was. She was gone when I went to the house." Lila explained. Hisoka hugged her again and she sat down in his lap.
"Lila?" Lucy asked tentatively, afraid she was interrupting a moment.
"Yes?" The blonde answered with a small voice, wiping at her eyes.
"Do you remember how we're related again?" She was racking through her brain trying to remember, but she couldn't seem to find a connection.
"Aunt Layla is grandma's other daughter. She had two daughters and a son." Lila explained. "Uncle Arashi died protecting something precious to him. That's what grandma told me anyway." The blonde sniffed and wiped at the last of her tears.
"So how did you get to meet Happy here? And why is he black?" Lucy tugged on a black part of his fur and then continued petting him. He continued to purr loudly and contentedly, acting very much like a happy cat.
Lila giggled a little. "I met him in Clover Town. The people there don't know much about mages because they're out in the middle of nowhere, so when he was flying around, they called him a demon. I found him sulking by a fountain and we've been traveling together ever since. I didn't know we were looking for the same person though."
"And he's black why?" She asked again, holding out her hand to get rid of the excess fur coming out of Happy's coat.
"We kind of had to dye it so that he could walk around in Clover Town without being noticed easily. He hasn't grown it all out of his fur yet." Lila explained, smiling. "Is that food?" She pointed to the platter.
"Yes. Do you want some? It's impossible for the two of us to eat all that by ourselves." Lucy said. "You go eat too Happy." She nudged him over and he went digging for a fish. He found it and sat to start eating it, still purring.
"What have you been doing all this time Lucy? Why did you leave?" Happy asked between bites.
Lucy gave a sad half smile. "I've been training to get stronger so that I'm not such a useless burden to the others." She looked up at the canopy of trees. "As to why I left- they replaced me with Lisanna, so I had to do something to get them to take me back. Lisanna's more useful than I am with them because she's worked with them longer. I've been part of Fairy Tail for -what, a year?- and a member of their team for even less than that. I was a burden, though," She looked down at her hand as she clenched it into a fist. "I guess I might be a little more useful now than I was then."
She was silent for the longest time, then changed the subject. "What about you Happy? I'd have thought nothing could separate you and Natsu."
Happy put on his pouty-angry face, puffing out his cheeks. "Natsu was being pouty and getting more and more boring and he wouldn't play with me. Neither would Erza or Gray or anyone else in the guild as soon as they found out you had gone on a job of your own."
It took a moment for the information to sink in. "Wait, what?" Her voice held a pitch of disbelief.
"Everyone is worried about you Lucy. Natsu would wait for you everyday, the others too, but you never came. I left after the first month of your disappearance." Happy explained, munching another bite of fish.
"What happened to them teaming up with Lisanna?" Lucy was eager to hear the outcome, though she wasn't sure what to expect.
"The job they took went badly and they didn't go on one together again that I know of. They didn't look to be planning to go anywhere when I left." The blue and black kitty took another hearty bite of the fish.
"Why did you leave Happy?"
"I went looking for you because I knew you wouldn't ignore me like everyone else did."
"Good to know I'm depended on.." Lucy muttered, taking a drink of water from the water jug that came with the platter.
"Hey, Lila?" Hisoka asked.
"Yes?" She looked at him, meat bun half in her mouth.
"How is it that you know about Lucy being our cousin and I don't?" He was trying to figure that part out on his own, but wasn't coming up with anything valid.
"Remember that one summer three years ago? I went to stay with Aunty, who we didn't know was dead for some reason, because I didn't want to learn how to use weapons like mommy and daddy planned on teaching us." Lila looked at Lucy. "And didn't I tell you I had a brother?"
Lucy scratched the back of her head, laughing nervously. "I think you mentioned it in passing." Lila scowled. "How old are you now Lila?" She changed the subject, trying to distract her cousin.
It worked. Lila sat up proudly and smiled. "I turned seven last month."
"How did you know where to find us?" Hisoka asked.
Lila's face lit up and got excited. She finished biting off the part of her meat bun, then set it back on the platter before standing up and holding out her finger as a 'wait' sign. She ran over to her horse and brought out her box from the saddlebags. Carefully, she sat and opened the padded box.
"I used this." She said, taking out the smoky blue crystal ball with the red core. "This thing helps me to See things with my Sight. It's my magic. It puts things into a clearer focus, but it's still hard to See things because I get them in bits and pieces."
Lucy and Hisoka looked at each other, then at Lila. They'd both read histories of the four old magics, and Lila's magic sounded like that of a lesser Star Gazer -a fortuneteller, as they were called.
"So what exactly are you both working on out here?" She asked, and they were glad she didn't notice their look.
"Our magic." Hisoka answered simply. "Lucy's trying to reabsorb the magic she put in that rock." He pointed to the blue stone lying a few feet away. "And I'm trying to figure out a medium for my magic so that I could control it and not accidentally create a zombie apocalypse. So far, nothing has worked."
"Oh, well, maybe some music will work. I found a portable stereo thing while I was lost -before I thought you were dead- with really loud speakers and I though you'd like it. I've been carrying it with me the entire time." She hopped up again and went to fetch it. The curly haired blonde came back with a small, white box and handed it to Hisoka. "I put a lot of your favorite type of music on there." She added as Hisoka opened the box.
Hisoka brought out two hand sized, rectangular, black speakers and a another thing about the same size as the speakers. Upon closer inspection, they found that it was the operating part of the device.
"Here." Lila took the contraption from her brother and hooked the three pieces together and handed it back to him. She flicked a switch and it turned on. Hisoka pressed play and the speakers started blarring out one of his favorite songs. It was a techno song called Lucifer. He grinned and gave his sister a one armed hug.
"What are these for?" He asked, flicking a clip-like thing on the back of each speaker.
"Oh, those are so you can hook them onto your back pockets or the rim of your pants if you don't have any pockets. You can turn the volume up if you want to, this isn't even halfway to maximum volume."
"Are you serious?" Hisoka asked, looking for the volume knob. "It's already so loud." He finally found it and it was only about a quarter of the way turned up. These really were powerful speakers. "Thanks Lila. They're just what I need right now." With that, he stood up and stretched. "Back to work. We can't spend the whole day lazing about Lucy. You can eat and watch Lila."
"Right. We didn't come here to be lazy." Lucy also stood and stretched before collecting the blue stone and walking back over to the river to try and reabsorb the magic again. Hisoka left his music going and turned it up. He breathed like he was taught and concentrated on the dead squirrel thing that he'd been working on before. He'd only raised it once, and even that had only been for a couple of seconds. He hadn't raised it since.
As he was getting ready to summon up the power again to try and raise the dead animal, the song changed to Mystical, a song that he really liked. Without noticing, he began to breath and move his hands to its beginning beat. Somehow, it seemed easier to channel his magic and concentrate on making it a ball in his hands. As the beat picked up, the animal twitched, and so did Hisoka's fingers. They twitched in different directions until the main body of the music came up. He felt like he was doing something, not just raising the squirrelish thing.
Lucy heard something rustle to her right and looked to see what it was. She yelped when the front end of a water lizard popped out of a bush, crawling with a mangled front leg. As she took a step forward to see if she could help it, it crawled all the way out of the bushes and she backed up so fast she fell over. The thing had no back end. Its guts were trailing behind it, half rotten and filled with writhing maggots.
"Hisoka. . ." Lucy croaked, crab crawling towards her new found cousin. A quick glance around the clearing told her that he wasn't just raising the squirrel-thing, but other dead animals that were close as well. She was fairly certain that he didn't even know he was doing it either.
Lucy scrambled to her feet and ran to Hisoka. She gently gripped him by the shoulders from behind and put her mouth by his ear. "Hisoka, I need you to slowly open your eyes, don't break your concentration." She told him quietly. The last thing they needed was for him to lose control of the dead and have them wandering about attacking everything that moved.
Slowly and carefully, Hisoka obeyed her command, and he was so shocked he almost lost control, but remembered at the last second that doing that was a bad idea. The clearing was filling with dead animals, some of them skeletons.
"Did Loke show you any way to release them?" Lucy asked quietly in his ear.
"No." Was the quick answer.
Lucy cursed. Of course he wouldn't know, he was the only necromancer around. "Do you remember reading anything that could possibly help?" She pressed, hoping.
Hisoka tried to mentally go through the books and scrolls he's read to see if he could dig up anything. There was something about mediums in there, wasn't there? The song switched to the techno song Geronimo. Not exactly the right beat and mood for the situation here. Lucy still had her hands on Hisoka's shoulders and she started to unconsciously sing the song softly into his ear because she knew the song. It was catchy. Her head bounced to the beat. Slowly, one by one, the animals began to drop and move no more.
Hisoka broke off the connection as soon as the last one slumped to the ground. Lila and Happy watched the whole thing like it was a movie. If only they'd had popcorn. . .
"Great job Hisoka! You did it!" Lucy cheered.
Hisoka just stood there for a moment before shaking his head. "I don't think it was just me Lucy."
"What do you mean?" The blonde asked, confusion on her face.
"I don't know, it just felt like it wasn't all me doing that." He mused, going over to examine one of the bodies.
"Hmm." Lucy frowned, then noticed that the stone she was still holding onto was gray again. "YES!" She shouted, jumping up and down and startling everyone else in the clearing in the process.
"What?" Was the genius response by Hisoka.
Lucy threw the stone at him, and he dodged it easily. The gypsy mage was grinning like a fox on Easter Sunday. Hisoka gave her this WTF? look and looked back at the stone he'd dodged. He finally got it when he noticed its color. "Now if only I knew what I did to do that." was the mutter heard from Lucy.
"We should probably start heading back if we want to be there in time for dinner." Hisoka suggested, gathering up his weapons.
Lucy looked up at the sky and saw that the sun was going down. "Yeah, you're right." And she sighed, looking at Lila and Happy. "Get on the horse Lila." She instructed. Lila obeyed with help from her brother and they all set off after making sure that they had everything.
The greeting at the main gate was what they'd been half expecting. Uma, the Danai, and Hisoka's three teachers were there, glaring at them. Hisoka smirked and Lucy just kind of laughed nervously and rubbed the back of her head. Uma's scowl deepened when she saw that they had company.
"Grandma!" That threw the old woman for a second. She watched as a curly haired blonde little girl jumped off the horse and ran into her, hugging her around the waist. "Grandma!" She squealed again.
"L-Lila?" The older woman stuttered, shocked. Both Lucy and Hisoka's jaws dropped. Uma, the devil of training, had stuttered. "Where have you been?" She gasped, hugging the child back.
"I got lost at the train station and got on a different train." Lila said, burying her face in Uma's skirt. "They found me and told me that mommy and daddy and nii-san had died, so I went to look for our cousin, Lucy."
Uma looked at Lucy and then back at Lila, as if she expected one of them to explain. Then she really looked at Lucy, who felt like she was being stripped and it really made her want to hide.
"Wait, what's your mother's name Lucy?" Uma asked.
Lucy gulped. "Um, Layla."
"Her maiden name?" The older woman pressed.
"Uh, Lunaris?" She said it like she wasn't sure and shrank back at her teacher's scrutiny.
Uma didn't say anything for a long time. "Grandma?" Lila asked, looking up into her grandmother's pale face. The woman was staring at Lucy with an expression that showed grief and disbelief.
"Well," She finally croaked. "That explains everything."
"Uma?" Lucy asked, wondering what the heck she was talking about.
"I haven't seen Layla since she was eight. That explains why I couldn't recognize the resemblance." Uma's voice was very thin and weak.
"Why haven't you seen her all this time?" It was Hisoka who asked, not Lucy.
Uma sighed and rubbed her temples. "We had a big fight and she went to live with her Uncle. She's hated me ever since and hasn't come to see me even once. How is she doing?"
Lucy's mouth flattened into a thing line and she looked down at the ground. "Mom died when I was only a few years old. It was an illness that took her. And I ran away from home just over a year ago to get away from my father." Her face turned to a scowl when she mentioned her father.
"And you haven't seen him since." It was not a question, but a statement.
"No, I've seen him. I had to tell him off when he nearly obliterated my guild trying to get me back so that he could marry me off. He should leave me alone now." And with that being said, she stalked through the gates without looking over her shoulder. She could smell the food.
Hisoka was the next to move, tugging the horse with him, and the others soon followed. Everyone was hungry after the long day.
I didn't think it was too bad. Can anyone guess what his medium is yet? REVIEW! and thank you for reading.
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