Chapter 2 : Fire

The whole palace was in an uproar. They all just couldn't believe that their prince was just abducted. The maids panicked, the guards were all being lectured or fired one by one. It was one catastrophic night in Alvarez.

It finally happened, Natsu left Alvarez, one way or another.

Invel nervously paced back and forth, one step turned the ground into ice, the other steps created layer after layer on top of the ice.

August was fuming mad. Anyone within a mile radius of him had immediately fainted. Fortunately it was midnight when most people were asleep.

"Calm down," God Serena said. "Wouldn't the prince be strong enough to protect himself against a mere kidnapper? It actually surprises me that he was abducted in the first place. Although if he was in trouble, you can all leave it to godly me."

Brandish leaned over to Serena's ear. "I get that since you're new here you're going to need a little explanation. So I'm just going to tell you this: August and Invel aren't angry because the prince got 'kidnapped'. They're really just bitter because they were careless enough to let the prince escape."

"What?" God Serena looked over to Brandish for more of an explanation but she refused because she was too lazy.

Then Azir decided to answer him. "It was no mystery to anyone that the prince wanted to get out of Alvarez and explore a bit. Unfortunately, Emperor Spriggan had placed strict rules on the prince that prevented him from leaving the capital. However, the prince hardly pays attention to anyone, so he would always try andescapewhile his brother left on a trip. None of the Shields minded too much because they made the prince promise that for every failed attempt to escape, he would take ten percent of each of the Shield's paperwork. That's a lot of paperwork considering he usually attempts to escape five times a week. That's fifty percent of each of our work gone.

"I think you can understand why August and Invel are the most irritated because they usually got the most work of all the Shields. You should also understand that Emperor Spriggan has strictly ordered us to keep the Prince inside Alvarez. If he found out that the prince left..."

"We might have to open up the warehouses again to put the paperwork in now that the Prince's gone. The papers are going to stack again…" Dimaria stated not happy to see her beloved away

Annoying…" Brandish angry to see her beloved away

"I would have never expected his highness to take advantage of a spy's teleportation skills," Invel admitted while stopping his ice magic from further freezing the ground. "I'll have to commend him for this when he returns."

"So is no one worried about the prince?" Serena tilted his head to understand the matter.

"No," another member of the Shields appeared, Neinhart. "The prince is strong , very strong. In all the kingdom only the emperor can beat him not even August or Eileen " said another member of the spriggans Neinhart

"The chances of the prince dying on his travels are zero percent," Eileen said and smirked. "After all, I personally taught him how to survive."

"Yes we all remember when you buried his highness three miles in the ground for survival training," Invel sighed.

"That reminds me, I have to continue Serena's training," the Scarlet Despair said as she started digging a hole.

"You're going through with survival training first?" Azir sweat dropped.

"No. I'm going to dump this man into Earthland's core."

"Sweet! Let me help!"

"Godly me… will endure this…" Serena sweat-dropped.

Brandish walked up to August who was still seething with rage. "So, what's going to happen with the country now that the prince and the emperor are out?"

August calmed himself and stared at the ground. "You're right, the country will be leaderless for a while…"

"There's no need to worry about that," Invel cut in. "We shall split the Shields into three groups. Group A: August, Brandish, Neinheart, and DiMaria shall be the group to search for his highness and bring him back. Group B: God Serena shall go under training of Eileen and Azir, as the prince had requested. Group C: The rest of us Shields will stay at Alvarez and maintain order whilst taking the workload of the Shields who will be away."

Brandish tilted her head. "Does that mean…"

"Yes, it means that we all will get a load of work to do."

Brandish collapsed in defeat, "This is so annoying… How are we even going to be able to find the prince anyway?"

"We'll search each country and continent one at a time," August said.

"Told you we should have put a tracker on him," DiMaria bit her lip in irritation.

~Fiore~

"Um… are you okay?" Natsu asked Mest who was still shivering in fear and possibly having a mental breakdown.

"I...Kidnapped a prince…I'm now a... Criminal… Starter of wars…" Mest kept repeating to himself.

"Did I do something wrong?" Natsu tilted his head in confusion.

"No!" Mest suddenly stood up with a nervous smile. "I'm just dead for accidentally kidnapping you…"

"Why would you die from kidnapping me?"

"If Alvarez ever found out that I, a citizen from Fiore, abducted you, a prince, a war will surely happen. And I'd be the first one to die."

"A war? Why would Alvarez declare war over a silly issue such as kidnapping me?" Natsu laughed. "You're funny."

"Why are you laughing? I need to find a way to somehow get you back-" Mest was cut off by Natsu's sharp voice.

"No, I'm not going back, well not soon anyway."

"What?"

"You can't believe how much I've been yearning to leave the country! And I can assure you that Alvarez will not declare war with Fiore over a simple issue as this."

"Are you serious?" Mest's voice was uneasy.

"Yes."

Mest sighed in relief. "But still, I need to keep an eye on you just in case matters with Alvarez get bad."

"Fine," Natsu smiled like the most innocent person in the world as he caught a glance out the window.

"Good," Mest said, taking Natsu's word for real.

"Okay. But tell me the name of this town."

"We're not in a town. We're in Crocus, the capital of Fiore."

Natsu's smile turned into a devilish grin. Mest looked at Natsu dumbly until Natsu suddenly rushed to Mest and punched him hard to the stomach. The force and power of the punch was nothing Mest had experienced in his whole lifetime, his expression was that of shock and regret before he lost consciousness.

"Wake up Happy, we got some exploring to do!"

"Aye…" Happy said, drowsily.

"Woah! This is amazing! I've never seen so many tiny contraptions before," Natsu fawned over a toy store. Ishgar sure had a lot of cool little contraptions. The storekeeper was looking at him oddly and wondered why a grown man would act so childish.

"Aye!" Happy cheered.

The shopkeeper then politely said, "I'm going to close shop soon, you should leave now too."

"Why? It's not even high noon yet?" Natsu said while looking at the position of the sun. It was then that he just realized that it was almost high noon and just a few hours ago back in Alvarez it was near midnight. Maybe the time zones were different.

"Don't you know? Today is the celebration of the end of the Grand Magic Games. The king announced that everyone can take the half of the day off to celebrate another year of success and entertainment."

Natsu had yet another confused look on his face. "Woah… Really? That sounds cool."

"You didn't know? Even after all the commotion that's been going on recently? Ah forget that, it's almost time. I'm closing shop and you should go home now boy." The man closed the shutters in his shop.

"A celebration..." Natsu muttered as his stomach growled loudly.

"Look, that meat restaurant just closed, how are we going to eat now?" Happy pointed out as the man operating the meat shop locked down his store and left.

"You're right, I haven't eaten in a day…" Natsu groaned. He hadn't slept in a while either. "Looks like we'll have to go somewhere else, Happy. Let's- What's that?" he pointed dumbly to a pink frog walking in circles in the middle of nowhere.

"It's a frog!" Happy smiled.

"It looks lost… and happy."

Natsu and Happy approached the frog thing that was about the same size as Happy.

"Are you lost?" Happy asked.

The frog thing looked at Happy for a few seconds until it answered, "Fro thinks so…"

"Were you with a friend?"

The frog thing nodded.

Natsu sighed, "I suppose we'll wait here until this friend of yours finds you."

"Aye!"

The frog thing smiled.

"What's your name?" Happy asked.

"Fro!"

And at that moment, Happy and Fro became good friends and started playing tag with each other. Natsu scanned around the area if there were any other food shops open. Unfortunately, it seemed as though all the stores were closed. He clutched his stomach in pain from his starvation. His ears suddenly twitched when he heard a distant yelling.

Two voices were yelling something along the lines of 'Frosch! Where are you?' and 'Yukino!'

Since the Frosch name sounded similar, Natsu guessed that these people may be looking for this pink frog/cat thing. When Natsu called Happy and Fro to follow him, they both sprouted wings from their back and flew to Natsu. There, they each perched on Natsu's shoulders. Happy on the right, Fro on the left.

"Woah Fro you can use Aera too?" Happy gasped in surprise. He thought he was the only cat that could fly.

"Fro thinks so," Fro said in his usual cheery expression.

Natsu smirked as he realized Happy finally had a friend he could somewhat relate too. He walked over to the direction of the two voices.

Once he reached the Capital's plaza, he found two young men around his age yelling around about where this Frosch is. One of them had a muscular build and blonde, spiky hair. The other one was paler and less muscular. His black hair was a bit long and straight. It was sudden when the two turned on each other and started quarrelling. After they punched each other in the face at the same time, they both apologized immediately and laughed.

Natsu approached them quietly and said, "Excuse me?"

The two looked at Natsu with an annoyed look, until their eyes immediately lay on Fro.

"Frosch!" The raven haired man opened his arms up in surprise.

"Rogue!" Fro exclaimed in happiness as he leaped into Rogue's chest.

"I worried so much! Don't ever leave on your own again!" Rogue had a waterfall of tears streaming down from his eyes.

A more furry, reddish brown cat appeared from the blonde's shoulder. "Frosch! Don't ever scare us like that again!"

The blonde smiled as his eyes drifted from Rogue and Fro's reunion to Natsu. "Thanks for finding Frosch, how can we repay you?" he asked as he smiled in gratitude.

"Oh it's nothing," Natsu nervously scratched his head. He had no idea of how he should act around commoners. His whole life he'd spent time around the Shields, the nobles, the royal guard, and Zeref.

Happy whispered to Natsu's ear, "Why not ask them if they have any food?"

Natsu's stomach growled in agreement.

The blonde's gaze immediately darted from Natsu to Happy. "Woah, is that an Exceed?" he pointed at Happy in surprise.

"Aye!" Happy cheered at the name of his species, remembering that that was what Zeref told him.

"Wait so if you're an Exceed, does that mean your friend here is a dragonslayer?"

"Aye!" Happy chirped as Natsu nodded. He dug the lower half of his face in his scarf.

"Woah, I didn't think I'd be meeting so many dragon slayers in one week," he said as he looked at Natsu. "My name is Sting- but you probably already knew that, what's yours?"

Natsu smiled nervously, was this Sting guy some kind of celebrity or something? "My name's Natsu, nice meeting you Mr. Sting." His voice was a bit muffled from the scarf covering his mouth.

Sting sweat-dropped. "There's no need for formalities. Just call me Sting, my Exceed friend is called Lector and my scary friend *points at black haired male* is named Rogue."

"Hey," Rogue smiled as he was clearly grateful that Frosch was back. "Thanks for finding Frosch."

"Uh… No problem," Natsu guessed that those were the words that normal people would say when they were replying to a thank you.

"You mentioned something about food," Sting started. "Maybe we could bring you to the celebration that the King's holding."

"Uh…"

"I'm not taking no for an answer!" Sting smirked as he grabbed Natsu's arm and forced him to follow. Rogue also followed as he put Frosch on his shoulder.

"Off to the Palace we go," Sting smiled.

"Uh…" Natsu wondered if this was how normal people treated each other every day. If that was the case, he sure liked this life more than the life of a prince.

At that moment, each of the Exceeds lifted off from their partner's shoulders and sprouted their wings to fly in the air. Above their respective partner, they each started talking about anything including fish.

"So Sting, are you part of a famous guild or something? Everyone seems to be taking pictures of you guys," Natsu said as he noticed a lot of people, mostly girls, took their cameras out and took pictures of the men. They all squealed and muttered things like 'cute' and 'who's that other guy with them?'

Sting abruptly stopped and turned to face Natsu with a shocked expression. "You don't know who I am? Meaning… You haven't heard of us or anything from the past seven years or past seven days?"

"No?" Natsu sweat-dropped and came up with an excuse for his lack of knowledge. "I've been living under a rock for the past seven years anyway."

Sting smirked. "Well, I'm part of a famous guild. Guess which guild I belong to!"

"Um…" Natsu tapped his head when he recalled the name of a guild that was on Fiore's newspaper. "Fairy Tail?"

A quick groan sounded from Sting as it looked like he was dying inside. He dramatically collapsed on the floor, face first. This caused some of the fan-girls to shriek and protect Sting. Lector noticed and poked Sting carefully.

"What did you do to Sting-sama?!" one of them accused.

"Uh... nothing?"

"Liar! Let's get that man and avenge Sting-sama!" someone, apparently the leader of Sting's fanclub yelled and pointed to Natsu.

Natsu worriedly looked to Rogue for help but Rogue just disappeared into a shadow, literally. A message was written in the shadows: Don't mess with girls.

As someone who had been raised by a dragon and raised as a prince for the majority of his lifetime, he had no idea how to act around girls. There was Brandish, DiMaria, and Eileen who always act sensually towards him.He remembered Zeref's advice, which was: Don't mess with girls, which was basically the same advice Rogue just gave to him. Probably all the men in the world had this same advice about women. He'll have to consult Invel about this woman issue when he gets back.

Natsu immediately ran at the speed of light, away from Sting and all those fangirls that were trying to make an effort to chase and attack him.

He ran through many streets and corners, until he accidentally ran into something hard and cold.

"Ouch!" he exclaimed as he fell back. "Sorry!" He slowly looked up to the person he bumped into and his eyes widened in surprise, and fear. His eyes met the scary stare of a woman who had scarlet hair. Natsu almost yelled 'Eileen?!' but he noticed how this woman in front of him wore armor. Eileen hated the cold steel of armor, she was more like a witch with all the robes and certain type of fabric clothing. Nevertheless, this woman still scared him.

"Are you okay?" she asked as she reached out a hand. There were a lot of bandages covering her body.

Natsu sweat-dropped as he grabbed the hand. Definitely not Eileen.

He got up to his own two feet with the help of the red-head and noticed she had two other companions with her. Another was a girl with blonde hair. The other was a shirtless man who gave off a similar cold aura to that of Invel's, wait was being shirtless also normal? They both had a lot of bandages on. "Thanks," he said as he heard the voices of the women that were previously chasing him.

Shivers crawled up his skin as he no longer liked the idea of hanging around women. He was about to make a run for it, but he remembered that he left Happy with that weird Sting character. He was now conflicted.

Just as he was about to make a run for it, the red haired girl's voiced suddenly popped up. "Hey, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," he answered casually and bit his lip. "It's just that Sting's fan club is out to kill me."

"You know Sting? Are you part of Sabertooth? Do you know where Yukino is?" the redhead bombarded him with questions that Natsu did not know the answers to.

"No I only just met the man just now. I kind of regret it now… What's a Sabertooth? You mean that extinct animal, right? And I don't know any Yukino..."

The trio looked at him with puzzled looks. They were giving off that were-you-living-under-a-rock-for-the-past-seven-days look.

Natsu didn't pay too much attention to their reaction as the angry mob of Sting fans came into view. Still having no idea how to deal with girls, he instinctively hid behind a person slightly larger than his size, aka the shirtless man. Fortunately, the mob ran by without noticing Natsu was hiding and after a few seconds, he was in the clear.

He sighed in relief which earned him a few curious looks from the group. "What? Isn't it normal to be chased by random mobs of girls?" Natsu was serious, he didn't know if something so ridiculous was normal for the commoners.

The blonde awkwardly answered, "No… It isn't."

Now that the blonde got his attention, Natsu noticed the the girl looked awfully familiar. Before he even thought it, a question rolled off his tongue. "Hey… Is it possible that you're a Heartfilia?" After realizing what he just said, he clasped his mouth.

Suddenly, a sword was held against his throat by the redhead. "Is this normal too?" he asked, it may take him a while to fully grasp the true life a normal person.

The redhead looked a bit surprised that he didn't find a 'sword to throat' as a threat…

"Erza, stop," the blonde sweat-dropped. She then looked to Natsu. "I'm sorry, that last name usually brings bad luck… How did you know?"

The redhead, who the blonde called Erza, lowered her sword.

"I don't know, you look a lot like Ann— I mean your mom, um…" Natsu quickly realized how odd his answer was. He was pretty sure that no one nowadays had knowledge on four-hundred year prominent figures. To correct it, he corrected 'Anna' to 'your mom' because he guessed that the mother of this girl probably looked similar. But he probably never met this girl's mother which made it all the more weird and awkward.

They all looked at him with befuddled looks

" Yes. I know your mom she helped me around" he stated then turns to Erza and say " Are you perhaps Eileen daughter or a member of her family?"

Erza looked surprised and say " Who is that Eileen? "

" Ah you don't know her , I have a picture of her in one of my lacrimas. Where is it " said him before searching in what seem like a magical storage

" Ah it is here. There is a picture of her"

They all looked at the picture and saw what seem like Erza more adult version. " It is probably your mother or your sister" said Gray

Erza was paralyzed for a few seconds before saying" Where is she"

" In Alvarez " replicates Natsu

" it's a little late we have to go our separate ways i have to find someone" said Natsu fearing for Mest security before running away

A. few meters away he ran into a movie object, he accidentally tripped over something that looked a lot like a pumpkin that was moving. Having never seen a moving pumpkin before, he just assumed that he ran into a normal pumpkin. Instead, there was someone inside of the pumpkin and it looked like Natsu just accidentally kicked the living daylights out of him. Natsu immediately apologized but he knew the now unconscious man could not hear him.

Suddenly, a large number of people that dressed up like guards suddenly surrounded him and started accusing him of 'attempt of murder'.

Natsu, completely confused at his situation did nothing as the guards picked him up and cuffed him with some sort of weird cuffs.

"You are under arrest for assaulting the king of Fiore," one of the guards said as he pushed him towards the direction of some sort of palace in the horizon. Natsu wondered if the small pumpkin he just tripped over was their king. If it was… then the outside world is a really strange place...

While he was being dragged to wherever, Natsu caught a glimpse of the trio he had just met. Their wide expressions showed that they were just as confused as he was.

When Natsu was thrown into a cell that was pretty deep in the palace, he couldn't help but regret leaving Alvarez. As boring as being a prince was, nothing was more depressing than being thrown in jail with no idea why. He was actually kind of hopeful that August would just suddenly burst in and destroy everything and take him back home. Or maybe that Mest guy could teleport in and apologize for everything for no reason like he did before and teleport him back to Alvarez. Of course, there was always the option of burning down the whole palace with his own magic and returning back home, but he wasn't exactly the type to 'show off'.

Then he realized what these strange cuffs were. They were magic restraining cuffs, an interesting contraption that didn't necessarily exist back in Alvarez. These things were probably useless to a demon who had curse power.

Natsu sighed as he casually melted off the restraints for they were uncomfortable and unnecessary. He then laid back and hoped that he would be acquitted for this misunderstanding. As a prince, he would respect other countries' laws, he just hoped that he would not be forgotten and left to rot here for all eternity. If that happened, he would lose all respect he had for this country.

Then he wondered what the hell Happy was doing with his life. Probably eating fish or complaining about having no fish. Hopefully his feline friend stuck with Sting and Rogue…

The dragon-slayer laid back on the cement floor. He stared at the plain old ceiling that reminded him a lot like the one in his room.

"I'm not free…" he whistled.

End of this chapterSee you in the next chapterDon Maruko