Disclaimer: I own neither Fairy Tail nor any of the characters.

Warning: psychological torture, etc.

Enjoy!


Lucy shot up with a gasp, noticing absentmindedly that she was in the middle of a forest, sitting on the ground.

'Where am I?' she wondered, eyebrows furrowing.

She slowly stood up, taking stock of her surroundings and listening carefully for an enemies. After all, she had no idea what kind of situation she had found herself in this time.

Hearing nothing, she sighed, taking out Pyxis' key. The compass would hopefully be able to lead her out of this forest, and she could figure out what was going on.

However, before she could call for the spirit, she heard a strangled scream coming from in front of her.

Immediately, she started running as quickly as she could in the direction of the scream. It sounded a bit familiar, but she couldn't quite place it…


'Good job, Miss Heartfilia.' Yama, one of the judges for the Games, thought with a smile. 'Running towards the scream (and possible danger) instead of running away trying to save your own skin…'


Lucy burst into a clearing, only to find a faceless mannequin hanging from one of the trees. Her eyes widened when she noticed the black Fairy Tail emblem stamped on its chest.

Without a word, she Requipped her Fleuve d' Toiles and her Capricorn key. He was the fastest of her spirits, and if someone was in trouble, she needed him to get that person away quickly.

A moment later, she heard a twig snap behind her, and immediately spun around, launching an attack with her whip and summoning Capricorn as she jumped from the spot where she had been standing. It wouldn't be the first time someone launched a surprise attack.

Lucy's eyes widened as she noticed that her summoning had failed.

"Your spirits are unable to help you…" a raspy voice whispered, seeming to come from all around her. "In fact…"

She heard what sounded like someone snapping their fingers, before her whip and key disappeared. She tried using her Requip magic to get them back, but wasn't able to.

"You blocked my magic!" she said, horrified.

All those years, training to the breaking point and even having to go to the hospital from straining herself too hard, only for her magic to be useless when she needed it most.

"Oh yes." The voice answered giddily. "It's more fun that way, you see."

A figure suddenly appeared in front of her. It was tall, at least seven feet, and was completely black. Was it made from shadows?

"My name is Phobos." The figure announced, before Lucy saw another figure in her peripheral vision. It was exactly the same as the first.

"And I am Deimos." The second shadow finished, before the two converged on her.


"Phobos and Deimos!" Raven hissed furiously, ignoring the light lacrima (lightbulb) that shattered. Stupid emotion-fueled powers…

"What's wrong?" Erza asked nervously.

"They're the Greek gods of panic and terror." Levy whispered, chalk white.

"But…they aren't real." Romeo said. "Not as far as I know, anyway."

"That does not matter." Juvia said, appearing in the doorway. She was still mentally and emotionally weak from her own test, but she couldn't stand the infirmary. The others who had been with her were right behind the Rain Woman. "The serum is limited only by her imagination."

"Shit." Natsu muttered.

If there was one thing that Lucy had plenty of (besides intelligence), it was imagination. She was an author, after all.


Lucy dodged, weaving in and out of the trees as the two figures tried to capture her.

"ENOUGH!" one of them hissed, and Lucy found herself paralyzed. Seconds later, she found herself bound in tubes, kind of like the ones Millianna used.

Not that the magic-nullifying aspect of the tubes mattered, considering the monsters had already taken hers away.

"Let the fun begin." The other hissed.


Lucy grunted as she was thrown rather painfully into a tree, before the tubes moved to tie her to it.

"We're going to play a game." Deimos murmured. "That dummy is going to turn into one of your little friends." he spat out the word as if it disgusted him.

"We are going to torture you." Phobos continued. "If you scream or cry out, we will inflict the pain on your guild mate in your place."


"NO!" Natsu shouted, horrified.

"You can't die in this, right?" Gajeel asked seriously, and looking worried.

"I sincerely hope not." Jellal muttered, pale as a ghost.

"What?!" Laxus growled, panicking at their commentary.

"When Phantom Lord attacked, I was tasked with keeping her captive until we could take her to her old man." Gajeel answered, gripping the ledge painfully. "I wanted to have some fun (here he sneered in self-disgust at the word) and decided to rough her up a bit. She wouldn't make a sound, and it pissed me off, so I tried harder to break her. It didn't work, but she ended up worse off than she would have been otherwise."

Laxus had to work hard to control his fury that the Iron Dragon Slayer had dared to hurt his girlfriend, even if it was in the past and the two were sort of friends now.


The two systematically tortured the Celestial Spirit mage, attacking her physically and magically as the dummy cycled through her friends' appearances. Her spirits, and then the older crowd in Fairy Tail before going through the younger kids: Romeo, Asuka, Wendy, Yui, Happy, Carla, baby Astoria…

Of course, that made her more determined.

She didn't make a sound throughout the entire thing, eyes glazed over as she blocked out the taunts and tried to stay conscious.

Who knew what these bastards would do to her nakama if they no longer had her to torment?


"Final round!" Phobos cheered. "You die!"

Lucy cringed weakly, barely able to move from the beating she had endured.

She was covered in injuries. Second and third degree burns littered her body, while long gashes caused by a whip littered her back (they had released her from the tree so that she was on the ground), deep enough that the bone was showing. The small patches of her skin that weren't burned and blistered were covered in bruises. Her left eye was swollen shut, and her nose was broken and bloody from when she fell to the ground.

"And the best part is that Fairy Tail will die with you!" Deimos hissed sadistically. "A magical guild is so thoroughly connected, it's rather easy to use Maguilty Sense to our advantage!"


Meredy cried out, horrified. Not that she hadn't already been sobbing (that kind of deep sobbing where you could hardly breathe) at the state her friend was in.

That was her magic, and they were sullying it!

It was bad enough that she had tried doing something similar to Gray and Juvia in the past, but to see someone doing it with the sole intention of tormenting one of her closest friends was heartbreaking.


"Fairy Tail is what you always wanted!" Deimos shouted.

"People who care about you! Who won't use you like your father did!" Phobos growled.

"People who will go to the end of the earth for you, like you would for them." Deimos finished.

"DO SOMETHING!" the pair roared.

Lucy screamed, clutching her head, before putting her hand on her guild mark and wiping it away.

The shadow figures were satisfied.

"Congratulations. Your friends will live to see another day." Phobos said emotionlessly. "However, we cannot say the same for you."

From behind him, a great roar sounded, one that Lucy had heard once before…

Lucy glanced at the mannequin to see that it had disappeared, and her last thought was that her friends were safe.

The world faded to black.


Back in the real world, almost every single person in the audience was stiff and pale, if not crying. The kids, especially, were wailing.

Fairy Tail was, of course, effected the most. To see the extent that one of their own would go to in order to protect them was staggering.

They all knew that they would die for each other, but actually seeing it was something else entirely.


No one was at all surprised when Lucy scored first place.

Later on, once she was brought back into consciousness, it was determined that her wiping off her guild emblem in the simulation hadn't happened in real life as well.

Of course, that was hardly important. Makarov could've immediately replaced it.

No, the problem was that Lucy had just been through one of the worst experiences of her life, and was in an extraordinary amount of pain. Her injuries might not have been physical, but like Juvia, the phantom pain lingered.

She spent the better part of two days in bed, under the care of Wendy, Porlyusica, and Chelia, a young girl from Lamia Scale who had offered her assistance after watching Lucy's simulation.

After all, Chelia valued love over anything, and the blonde celestial wizard had more than proven herself.

Obviously, Lucy was rather traumatized by the experience, and spent the nights cuddled up in a pile with her favorite people. Astoria offered her constant company, as did Laxus unless he was called to participate in an event.

Once the contestants had all completed their simulations, a majority of the guilds participating, as well as every single person in the crowd, would call for the serum to be illegalized. The king would have no choice to comply.


Please review!

Sorry, I couldn't just skip the pain Lucy went through after her fight with Flare, so she's feeling it here, though more intense. The guild is the most important thing in the world to her, the family that she'd been missing since her mother died, so I figure being put into a situation where she left the guild, in her mind leaving her family behind, would be a good substitute. I feel horrible about it, though.

I was going to have her magic kind of 'explode' in the real world in response to what was happening in the simulation, but realized that I put them all in the infirmary and it would probably kill everyone.