Duke Everlue's mansion was impressive. From its towering metal topped fence to the gilded and bejeweled front door; everything about it screamed wealth. Once again, Lucy found herself comparing it to the Heartfilia manor. Unlike Mr. Melon's house this one came second to her old home. The Heartfilia manor was large and extensive, however it wasn't over stating its wealth. She couldn't help but think that Everlue, if he built the place, made such an effort to appear rich and important that it was coming off as trying way too hard.
Seeing it from the air wasn't much better. It might be because she was spoiled by the large amount of land Lord Heartfilia had, but seeing this mansion right now, with its narrow lawn sandwiched between the building and fence made it seem so much smaller than even Mr. Melon's home.
Happy flew Lucy up to the roof. Her hands were clutched tightly to the cat's paws, however the blue cat didn't say anything about how tightly she was gripping him.
"Hey," she started as they approached the roof, "your wings…they're not going to disappear yet, are they?" Considering the mansion was three stories tall, the drop was not inconsiderable. More than that, beforehand she'd never really been in a position to time how long the strange cat could keep his wings out.
"Not yet." None the less, they quickly moved over the flat roof to where Natsu was staring intently through a window. "We're here."
"Thanks Happy." With the assurance of solid ground beneath her feet, she released her death grip on his paws. She stumbled a bit on her landing but thankfully the other two weren't paying attention.
"Why do we have to sneak in?" Natsu grumbled, still not moving from his place pressed against the window.
"Isn't it obvious? What we're doing is basically robbery."
"But the T in Plan T stands for Take by force." Happy pouted, "wouldn't it be better to go in from the front and blow up everyone in our way?"
"That's a horrible idea!"
"Yeah, then we could burn the book easily that way." Natsu added, ignoring Lucy's half shouted objections.
"Didn't you just hear me? This isn't like taking care of thieves or monsters. Duke Everlue is the duke! Even if half the towns convinced he's the absolute worst in the world, he could still have us all tossed into jail."
"Eeh… so what do you think we should do?" If Natsu's voice was slightly sarcastic, Lucy decided to be the better mage and ignore it.
"We'll go with Plan B."
"Plan B?"
"Break in."
They both gave her an incredulous look, but it was Happy who spoke up. "How is that different from Plan T?"
"Stealth: the objective of Plan B is to do as much as possible without anyone inside the mansion knowing about us…Think umm…" What was the stealthiest thing she could think of; more than that, what would appeal to the energetic, excitable and loud Natsu? "Ninjas." Those mysterious shadowy characters had only cropped up in a few of the stories Lucy'd ever read, but they were cool and likeable, weren't they?
Judging by the starry smile both boys were giving her, Lucy had guessed right. In an instant Natsu's scarf was wrapped around his head, like some sort of face mask. "Ninja!"
"Nin-nin!" Happy added, face serious and his hands in what Lucy could only assume was a stereotypical ninja pose.
"…Right, let's just," Lucy gestured to the window, " break in, shall we?" Though Lucy wasn't sure how they'd manage to do so. She didn't have any wire with her and Natsu didn't seem like the type to carry any either.
Luckily Natsu knew what he was doing as he pressed his hand against the glass. Lucy could only stare in wonder as it quickly melted, leaving a hole for him to reach through.
"Good job, Salamander." She praised, thinking that using his nickname might encourage Natsu to keep up with the whole ninja thing. However, calling him that out loud felt weird. Lucy didn't think she'd do it again.
The window opened into a room full of junk and various antiques. Happy immediately went to a skull which quickly found its way onto his head. "Natsu," he hissed. As soon as he had the dragon slayer's attention, his hands went back into that ninja pose. "Nin-nin."
"Nin-nin." Natsu answered back, mimicking the pose.
While the two of them were being fairly quiet, Lucy wasn't sure if she regretted mentioning ninjas or not. Regardless the trio quickly snuck out and started checking the other rooms. However, it wasn't long before Natsu's impatience broke the quiet.
"Oi, Lucy, don't tell me we gotta search every room."
"It's not like we'd have to go through them all. If it's a book," she hissed to the others, "it'll probably be in a library."
"Wouldn't it be faster to ask someone where it is?" Natsu grumbled; apparently already tired of playing ninja, "sneaking around's boring."
"Aye."
"If being a ninja was easy than everyone would be one." She started, because honestly the only reason the two of them had been quiet so far was because they took being ninjas seriously. For the sake of stealth, she needed to keep them playing ninja. Maybe challenging him would help. "Are you just going to give up so soon? I thought you were more determined than that."
"What?" He hissed, "I'll show you determined!"
However he was going to show her was interrupted with the floor exploding in front of them. Out from the carpet jumped five enemy…maids?
"Intruders detected!" The largest one snapped out.
The three Fairy Tail members all flinched in shock and it wasn't just because of their sudden appearance. All the maids were various kinds of goink. From the gorilla like apparent leader, to the one with the football shaped head, none of them were close to the definition of good looking, much less pretty. Lucy couldn't help but think that, if that was how the duke's taste ran, then dressing her up as a maid would have been useless. Natsu on the other hand…
"Eliminate," the giant pink haired maid intoned, "the targets.
Natsu lunged forward and scattered the maids with a flaming kick. "Ninja," he hissed as the women fell down to the first floor, all of them clearly unconscious. "We can't let them find us just yet. Nin-nin" He posed, speaking in his normal volume.
"We must complete Plan B. Nin-nin." Happy added, posing on Natsu's knee.
"You guys are being really noisy though." Lucy muttered. Well, it seemed that the stealth portion of Plan B was over now. She quickly grabbed the fire dragon slayer by his scarf and dragged him to the nearest room. "Someone probably heard that! Let's hide in a room for now."
"Let them come!" Despite his words, he wasn't putting up much resistance to being dragged, "I'll take them!"
"I'm sure you can!" She snapped as she yanked Natsu into the first room she came across and slammed the door shut behind them. As luck would have it; they found the library. She let out a small sigh of relief. Hopefully it wouldn't take long to find Day Break. She was suddenly keenly aware of how very visible and identifiable the guild mark on her hand was.
"Woah! So many books!" Natsu shouted. Even he must have realized that stealth was pointless. His scarf was arranged back to how it normally was.
"Aye." Happy agreed.
As Lucy glanced at the titles, she couldn't quite keep her lips from quirking up into a smile. "The duke has poor taste in woman, but such a wonderful selection of books." She muttered to herself, ignoring the shouts and exclamations coming from Natsu and Happy. "If he actually reads them, I'd respect him a bit. But…" she sighed, "it's going to take forever to find the one book we need…" Like with the Heartfilia library, Everlue didn't have any sort of organizing system. She couldn't help but feel a bit nostalgic as she ran her fingers over the titles. How many hours had she spent looking for a specific book in Lord Heartfilia's vast library?
Natsu's loud voice yanked her from her musings. "I found a golden book!"
"Natsu," she snapped, "take this seriously!" Then she and the other two noticed that the book was, much to their collective shock, the very same book they were hired to burn. Then Lucy noticed who the author was and that stunned her even more.
"Let's burn it then." Natsu cheerfully said, lighting his hand on fire. It was only then that Lucy realized she'd led a reckless, and somewhat careless, fire mage into a library full of very flammable books.
"That was easy." Happy chirped, not seeing the issues an open flame might cause in a library.
"Wa-wait a second!" Lucy cried as she yanked the golden book from the rosette's hand. He pouted and looked a bit confused, but thankfully the fire in his hand went out. Lucy took the opportunity to take a closer look at the book. "The author is Kemu Zaleon?"
"Kemu?"
"He was a famous author, in fact he was also once a famous mage too…" She started to explain, but then figured Natsu wasn't the type to care. Lucy wasn't sure what Kemu Zaleon had been better at: his magic or his writing. Even Lord Heartfilia was a fan of his books. She held the book up in awe. "I thought I'd read all of his works!" Was she holding an unpublished work? Was this a chance to read something even Lord Heartfilia would never get to? More than that, it was a chance to read more work from the author that often made Lucy think she could do something similar.
"Whatever," Natsu brought her back from her happy thoughts. "Let's burn it."
"What? No way!" She clutched the precious treasure close to her chest. "This is a cultural heritage, there's no way we can burn it!"
"Are you abandoning the job?" Natsu's voice suddenly got a lot more serious. However, Lucy didn't want to back down now.
"I just said I was a huge fan!"
"It still sounds like you want to ditch the job." He growled. "Even if you are a member, I won't let you tarnish Fairy Tail's name."
"Then let's just pretend to burn it. I'll keep the book!"
Natsu glared as he crossed his arms. "I don't want to lie. Besides the client said-"
A strange laugh interrupted Natsu's reminder causing the three to watch in surprise as the library floor started to crack.
"I see, I see," A strange voice spoke up. "So that's what you guys were after." An egg shaped man suddenly burst up from the floor. He wore a well-tailored suit with a large round button in the middle and his hair was strangely a much lighter shade than his mustache. "I'm glad I allowed you guys to do whatever. I'm a genius!" He laughed again and Lucy could only assume he was duke Everlue.
"Weren't you the one who didn't want to get caught? Now we have to fight a weird ball guy cause you were stalling!" Natsu shifted into a fighting stance.
"S-sorry." She muttered. Lucy figured any good thoughts she'd earned from saving Mr. Macao at Mt. Hakobe were now long since erased.
"Hmph," Everlue grunted as he landed, "I was wondering what the mages were looking for so frantically. To think you were after that worthless book."
"Worthless book?" Natsu muttered.
That didn't make much sense to Lucy. Why would the client be willing to pay such a large amount of Jewels when the owner thought the book was worthless? "S-so," she started, hope lacing her voice, "I can keep the book then?"
"No." That answer was expected. "Regardless of how worthless it is, the book still belongs to me." If he'd been actually willing to part with it, Mr. Melon could have just bought it off of Everlue and burnt it himself.
"How stingy."
"Shut up ugly." She twitched at that. It would figure, considering his taste in maids, that she wasn't his definition of attractive but that was no reason to call her ugly.
"All we have to do," Natsu started, sounding bored; Lucy thought he was getting fed up with everything, "Is burn it, and we'll be done here."
"No!" She wailed. Despite his obvious impatience for their job, Lucy couldn't help but object. He was talking about burning an unpublished one of a kind Kemu Zaleon book. She couldn't let that stand! "Absolutely not!"
Her, somewhat childish, response caused the dragon slayer to snap. "Lucy!" And there went all the good will she'd accumulated with him. "It's our job!"
"Then let me at least read it!" She snapped back before setting herself down on the floor and opening the book right then and there.
"Here?" The three men gaped.
She dimly heard more words being exchanged but her sole focus was on the novel in her hands. It was hard to tell at first, when reading the first few lines, but after a while a problem made itself abundantly clear.
The book was awful! Even a few pages in she could see how bad the book was. There were so many spelling and grammatical mistakes that it almost physically hurt to read! Not to mention the main character. What kind of vain, petty, egotistical person would make an author write a whole novel about them?
And yet, despite that she could see bits and pieces of Zaleon's usual writing style in it. She could tell, even without having the name on the cover, that her favorite writer did actually write the piece of garbage she had in her hands.
By the end of the first chapter, something clicked in her mind. The knowledge that Zaleon was not only a writer but a mage. That he was hired to write a book for Everlue. That he, with all his other successful works under his belt would write something so deliberately awful for something that was obviously commissioned. There was the fact that, according to the publishing date on the back of the cover page, this was the author's very last written work. More than that, now that she was concentrating, Lucy could feel the magic in the pages; a spell had been cast throughout the entirety of Zaleon's last work.
She was dimly aware that there were two more people in the room; that didn't matter, Natsu was strong enough to take them on. Probably.
Lucy had to swallow thickly, it felt like there was bile rising up the back of her throat. She didn't know if it was because of the terrible writing or the horrible feeling in her gut. She didn't want to read anymore, and not just because it was a very badly written book. At the same time, she had to keep reading, she had to find out just what Zaleon was so determined to hide. She had to find out why Everlue made him hide it.
She leapt to her feet. "Natsu! Buy me some time!" She shouted as she dashed out the door to the library. "There's some kind of secret to this book!"
"Lucy! Where are you going?"
"Someplace to read it!" With that she slammed the door shut. Lucy wasn't actually sure if that'd do anything to slow down pursuit, but it made her feel better. A part of her did twinge at the thought of leaving Natsu alone to deal with enemies, however she was certain he'd be fine.
Lucy raced down the halls. Not knowing where she was going, but figuring she shouldn't leave the building, she headed downwards. She didn't stop running, not until she'd gone as far down as she could. She'd wound up in some sort of strange sewer system below the mansion.
With a deep breath of the fowl air, she settled herself down against the wall. Out of her pocket she pulled out a red pair of glasses. She'd never expected to have to use them in this sort of situation, but she was glad she'd splurged and bought her own pair of Gale Force Reading Glasses after leaving the Heartfilia manor. She was even gladder for her habit of carrying them everywhere.
She got to work.
Her eyes flicked rapidly over the quickly turning pages. By the time she was half way through a pattern had started to emerge. Perhaps it was the reading glasses, or because she was a mage or perhaps it was because she was used to working with codes. Whatever the case, Lucy kept finding sections and chunks of writing that offended her literary sensibilities, yet when the letters or words were swapped it became something so different and beautiful it took her breath away.
By the time she finished 'Day Break,' she was confident she'd cracked it. Lucy closed her eyes and took a deep breath before opening it back up to the beginning and starting again. This time she translated it as she went along, starting with the title.
Even with her magical glasses it was slow going, it had to be, considering. Often times she'd had to flip back a few pages just to retranslate what she'd read before. When she did finally finish her second, much more honest, read through a headache was pounding behind her eyes and Lucy was torn between crying and throwing up.
She closed the book and took the glasses off. "How…" She gasped out, her eyes were burning and she wasn't sure if it was because of what happened or because she'd strained them too much. "How could someone just do that?"
It didn't make any sense. Kemu Zaleon, or rather Zekua Melon, was a genius when it came to the written word. There was never going to be another like him. To have someone just treat him like a disposable trinket, like he was nothing special was…painful? Horrible? Terrifying? There were too many words to describe just how bad it was.
And to think, from something so awful Zekua Melon was able to write something so heartbreakingly beautiful.
"I can't burn this book." She said sadly, looking down on the precious treasure in her lap. A part of her wished she could erase the true words she'd read from her mind. Those words didn't belong to her; she'd born witness to something private and personal. Something meant for only one person. With a shaky sigh she put her glasses back into her pocket. "I have to give this to Mr. Melon."
Duke Everlue's weird, somewhat boing-y laugh sounded through the tunnel she'd sequestered herself in. "Carrying around Gale Force Reading Glasses? You really are a great reader, aren't you?"
Lucy inhaled sharply. She'd been found.
