Chapter 52

The Real Katja Neville


Katja


I was dreading going into school. I skipped going in yesterday and thought I was in the clear. My parents received no call and the school made no attempt to find out why I didn't come in. That is until the end of the day when they alerted my parents that I never came in. I have no idea why it took them so long to figure out I wasn't there. Maybe people just don't notice me as much as I think they do?

I took a deep breath outside the building. My father was standing a little behind me, making sure I actually went into the building. I started walking away from my dad and was almost at the door when someone bumped into me and knocked me down. I heard that person snicker as they walked on, totally ignoring me.

I began to pick myself up when someone came over and offered me a helping hand.

"You okay?" the girl asked.

I looked up to see a blonde-haired woman offering me a hand. She was older than me, late teens at least. I accepted her help and got up. My dad was right next to me when I got up off the ground.

"Are you okay, Katja?" Dad asked me.

"Yeah, I'm fine. You can go."

"Alright." He turned his attention to the blonde who helped me up, "Thank you."

"No problem." She replied with a bright smile, "Always happy to help."

Dad shook the girl's hand and left. I began to walk towards the school building when the girl called out to me.

"You're Katja Neville, right?"

I stopped and felt my heartbeat begin to quicken, "Y-yes."

"I'm glad you came in today." She said, "I'll be seeing you later."

I looked at the blonde in confusion, but she just walked by into the building. I followed after her.


To my surprise, school went better than it usually does. Some kids still picked on me, but for the most part I was left alone! Brianna in particular did nothing to mess with me all day! I thought for sure while we were taking a test, she would blow my papers all over the floor or something!

There was something odd going on though. Exercises in my workbooks were completed without me doing them. The handwriting was pretty neat unlike mine and the answers all seemed right from what I could tell. I felt I was being pranked or something, but nobody would really talk to me and I was too scared to ask.

Finally, lunch rolled around. I had to be careful. At least once a week someone would try and flip my tray of food. Sometimes I would get lucky and none of it would get on me, other times I wasn't so lucky. I had to keep an eye out.

I was headed for my table in the back corner with tray in hand. That's when I heard the crashing sound of a tray hitting the ground!

I looked over to see a bunch of kids looking in the direction of the incident.

"Wow, Katja tripped and spilled her lunch everywhere."

"She's such a clutz."

I felt my ego fall a bit hearing that, until it occurred to me, I didn't drop my food. I snuck a closer look and found a blue haired girl, looking identical to me, sitting on the floor looking at her lunch in distress. She was wearing the Mildian Academy Uniform and helping her cleanup was a pink haired boy with a scarf, a white-haired girl, and two cats.

"My lunch…" I heard the girl mutter.

"You're such a klutz, Wendy." The white cat replied.

"Don't worry, Bickslow will get you another one." The white-haired girl told her.

"Wait that's Wendy?" I heard Brianna say from right next to me.

I quickly shifted away from her and made my way to my table as quickly as I could. I sat down as the crowd dispersed. I watched the group with my clone finish cleaning up. A weird looking guy with blue hair and a tattoo on his face joined them with a second tray of food, presumably for my clone. With the weird guy was another boy with dark blue hair, and the blonde girl from this morning! They looked around for a place to eat and set their eyes on my table!

I started to get nervous. Nobody ever really sat with me at lunch since my only real friend left the school. This group of strangers made their way over to me! I was getting really nervous

"May we sit here?" The blonde girl asked.

"Uh…sure."

The blonde took a seat right next me with my clone sitting directly across from me. I stared at the clone in front of me. She looked EXACTLY like me. You would think we were twins!

She smiled at me, "Hi, my name's Wendy."

"Uh…I'm Katja."

Her smile never faded, "I know. They mistook me for you yesterday."

The blonde next to me piped up, "You're teacher thought Wendy was you and pretty much made her be you yesterday. Oh, my name's Lucy by the way."

I stared at my clone across from me. There was silence at the table, and it was deafening.

"Do they always treat you like that?" Wendy asked, finally breaking the silence.

"Wh-what do you mean?"

"Yesterday, everyone kind of treated me…badly. Do they treat you bad as well?"

I looked away in embarrassment.

"You don't have to be embarrassed." The boy with dark blue hair told me.

"…Yeah. Popularity around here is determined by your magic and how well you use it." I explained, "I use a magic that every thinks is lame and I'm not very good at it either."

"Well, Celestial Spirit Magic isn't lame." Lucy said, "Take it from someone who uses it. You just need to train at it. I had help from Professor Alexander and worked with my Celestial Spirits to make it work."

"It can be highly effective." Said the dark blue haired man, who was now shirtless and embarrassing me.

"Gray, you're shirt." The white-haired girl said.

The shirtless man hurriedly put his shirt back on.

"Professor Alexander isn't here anymore." I informed Lucy.

"I know. It really is a shame. He was such a good instructor."

We continued eating and soon the lunch period was over. I actually didn't mind the company of the Fairy Tail mages. They had some pretty cool stories to share and they listened to my problems. Wendy was odd though. She didn't talk much about herself, but I felt at ease with her. I was hoping that I would get to work with her when it was time for Magic Training, but it sounded like she would be more likely to teach Brianna than me. Speaking of Brianna, I was happy to hear that Wendy had the same impression of her that I had. She's a bully.

Magic Training came at the end of the day. We all changed into our gym uniforms and met in the gym. I waved excitedly when I saw Wendy among the other Fairy Tail mages. I was about to get embarrassed after realizing what I was doing, when Wendy waved back at me equally excited.

Our teacher split us up into groups to work with the mages. To my surprise, I was put in the group being led by Lucy and Wendy! Unfortunately, that meant Brianna was in my group.

"You will be working with me today, okay?" Lucy said to me and a few other kids.

It seemed that despite being grouped together, the Fairy Tail mages were splitting us up once more. My classmates with magic more similar to Wendy's were bunched up with her, while the students with magic more similar, or identical in my case, to Lucy's were paired up with her. My group was significantly smaller than Wendy's and included students whose magic powers weren't very strong.

"Open, Gate of the Lion: Leo!" DING DONG! The familiar shine of opening a celestial spirit gate enveloped us as a very handsome man in a suit appeared before us.

Lucy and Leo, or Loke as she called him, gave the other students some warm up exercises before meeting with me privately.

"Alright, since I didn't get the chance to work with you yesterday, I'd like to see what you can do."

I looked at Lucy confusedly.

"She just needs you to summon your spirit." Leo informed me.

"Oh!" I hurriedly pulled out my golden key.

Once it was in sight, Lucy gasped, "You have a golden key?"

I nodded my head, "Yeah, it was a gift. Open, Gate of the Maiden: Virgo!"

Just like with Lucy, a light enveloped us as a slim, pink haired maid appeared before us. As soon as I summoned her though, I fell to my knees exhausted. Unlike Lucy it seems, summoning Virgo takes a lot out of me. I can only just summon her.

Virgo came to my side and helped me up, "Are you alright, Master?"

"Y-yeah." I panted out.

I looked over to Lucy who was staring wide eyed. Leo meanwhile had a very satisfied grin on his face.

"Is… is that really?" She stammered out.

Leo chuckled a little and said, "Yup. The very same one."

I was once again confused, and it must have been visible on my face.

"I had met them before, Master. Back when I was still under contract to my previous Master."

"You look so different…" Lucy muttered, loud enough for everyone to hear.

"As Celestial Spirit's, we can alter our appearance to a degree to fit our summoner's preference." Leo explained, "Lady Katja probably preferred a cuter looking Virgo to the other version."

Leo proceeded to give me a thumbs up.

"But, how did you get her key?"

I explained to Lucy, "She was a gift from her previous Master. I don't know exactly why, but he just gave me her key."

Virgo filled in the blanks for Lucy, "My previous Master sought to better himself and decided to donate my key to someone else, who happens to be Master Katja."

"That's amazing. You're so lucky to have a Golden Zodiac Key."

"Saying that, it looks like summoning Virgo took a lot out of her." Leo said, bringing the conversation back on topic, "We need to work on your stamina and magic reserves. You need to be able to summon Virgo without getting winded like that."

"And I know just the regimen!"

Lucy got me to work with all my other classmates. I mostly just did exercises to build up stamina. By the end of the session, I was exhausted. Luckily, I had Virgo around to keep me from falling unconscious.

Before class ended, the Fairy Tail mages ran a sparring session. Brianna tried to challenge me, but Lucy quickly shut her down, saying that I was in no condition to spar right now. She was right too; I could barely move. I sat off to the side with Wendy while the rest of my class sparred.

"How'd it go?" she asked me.

"Pretty good." I answered, "I'm beat though."

"It'll take a while, you just gotta stick with it."

"I will." I told her, "So…did you really beat Brianna?"

Wendy smiled kindly at me, "Yeah, it wasn't even a competition. Between my versatility and the nature of my magic, she stood no chance."

"What do you mean?"

Wendy turned serious, as if she was giving a lesson she explained, "I use Sky Dragon Slayer Magic. With it, I'm able to literally eat anything wind based. If a wind-based spell were thrown at me, I could eat it to neutralize its effects and recover magic. Furthermore, I can also use enchantments and I have access to healing magic. Though I can't use that on myself."

I was amazed at what Wendy was able to do. It was leagues away from what I could do. I got the gist of how her magic works, but I wondered how much magic was required to use that magic.

"How strong are you?"

Wendy looked at me confused, "What do you mean?"

"Like…It's exhausting for me to use my magic. Is it hard for you to use yours?"

Wendy stifled a laugh. I began to think it was a stupid question. Of course, it's easy for her to use, she's an official mage!

"I've got a ton of magic. I normally only get exhausted if I've been fighting awhile or used a really powerful spell." She explained, "I've also been trained to use this magic all my life. I'm pretty used to it anyways."

"I don't have a lot of magic." I confessed, "That's why it's so difficult to summon Virgo."

"Then your fighting style will just have to revolve around Virgo doing the heavy lifting. There's nothing wrong with that."

It was somewhat comfortable to hear that. While it's the same thing Lucy told me, for some reason hearing it from Wendy made me really believe it.

"Do you think…I'd be able to join a guild some day?"

Wendy's eyes lit up, "Of course! Are you thinking about Fairy Tail!?"

Wendy was getting really excited, "Uh…y-yeah."

Her eyes began to sparkle as she regaled to me all the great things about Fairy Tail. Soon, I was listening to some stories about the mission's she'd undergone. I was genuinely enjoying the last few minutes of Magic Training. Unfortunately, all good things have to come to an end. The period ended and we gave our farewells.

"See you tomorrow!" Wendy called to me as I walked over to my Dad.

"Bye!" I called back, gleefully.

I met with my Dad, who was staring off at the school. He seemed to be focusing on something.

"Dad?"

That seemed to snap him back into reality, "Oh, how was school, Katja?"

I beamed at him, "Great, I think I made a new friend!"


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