Growing Pains - Chapter 1
It was a laboratory. A full-blown, mad-scientist, walls lined with bubbling glass vials, laboratory.
"This place is frickin' awesome! Happy, check me out!" Natsu turned to face the cat, all clad in rubber gloves and goggles. He held two bubbling beakers aloft and laughed maniacally, not a bad rendition of Frankenstein himself.
"You look super cool!" Happy cheered.
Lucy palmed her face and groaned. The dragon slayer and his cat were already goofing off, as per usual. "Could you two be any more immature!? We're supposed to be looking for the creep who stole all this stuff, not playing with it!"
Gray shook his head beside her. "Natsu you idiot, stop messing around. Erza's gonna kill you if she sees-"
But Gray's warning was too late. The Requip mage appeared behind them as she rounded a set of shelves, Wendy and Carla at her heels. Lucy felt the little hairs on her arms prickle as Erza spotted them.
"Natsu. Happy. If you two don't put those artifacts down this instant, I will personally drag you both back to Fairy Tail where you can wait for the rest of us to finish this mission," Erza said. Her words brooked no room for argument.
Lucy suppressed a laugh as Natsu and Happy froze.
"Yes Ma'am," They said in unison, stripping themselves of the protective equipment and returning the beakers hastily. Erza waited with crossed arms and a pulsing temple vein until the two stood aside, fidgeting and thoroughly abashed.
"Now then, let's get back on track, shall we? Don't forget why we're here. We have a very important job to do. We've been hired to bring a thief to justice!" She held her fist aloft righteously. Natsu and Happy saluted in return. "Aye, sir!" they chorused. Lucy and Wendy giggled at how ridiculous they looked.
The flyer they'd accepted earlier that day had described a wanted mystery suspect who'd been stealing magic tonics and chemicals from various shops around Magnolia. Whoever it was had left a trail spelling disaster. The list of ingredients, if properly combined, could be used to make several illegal substances, not to mention canon fuel and a few other explosives. Given the potential for calamity, Team Natsu had been tasked to locate and arrest the culprit. Thanks to Natsu's nose, it hadn't taken long to find the thief's hideout, but so far, the residence itself was empty.
"Hey, flame brain, use your nose to tell us where this guy's run off to," Gray was frowning in at a set of empty kennels, dark red splatters all over their insides. Lucy could practically see the shiver run down his spine.
"Oh, don't worry. I'll find him," Natsu took an enthusiastic inhale through his nose but choked mid breath and started to cough. "Damn," He rasped, eyes streaming, "The air's bad down here. It's way too overpowering. I can't pick up the dude's scent,"
Wendy cautiously tested her nose as well. "He's right. I can't smell anything other than chemicals,"
"Don't worry. Whoever lives here can't be far away. Look, they've left an open fire," Erza approached a hooded vent, purple vials boiling in the heat of the flames below. Erza wrinkled her nose and used the crook over her elbow to shield her mouth before turning away. The longer they dwelled in the laboratory, the more apparently sinister it became.
The shambolic basement was lit dimly with kerosene lamps. The cement floors beneath their feet were splotched with green-gray stains and the walls around them were charred black with crumbling drywall. A sink in the corner was filled with sharp implements soaking in red-tinted water. Not far from that was a surgical table still splattered with lines of blood. Lucy's stomach swirled with unease. "This place is seriously giving me the creeps. The sooner we find this guy the better,"
"Hell yeah, cause as soon as we find him, I get to kick some ass!" Natsu cracked his knuckles for emphasis.
"Just so long as you leave whoever it is intact enough for the authorities to identify," Erza said seriously.
Lucy rolled her eyes and approached Wendy. She was standing aside a cage just as tall as she was, her hands drawn up to her chin, eyes brimming with tears.
"Hey, what's wrong?" Lucy placed a hand on the young wizard's back and followed her gaze.
"It's just -these poor birds," The cage before them was littered with tiny corpses. About ten finches lay rotting on the base of the habitat. Only a solitary yellow and black finch was left to perch on the crossbar, head cocking back and forth nervously. Its feathers were kept bedly and missing in some spots. Wendy pursed her lips and reached forward brusquely, undoing the rusty latch and wrenching open the door. The bird chirped and burst past her in a flurry of feathers as it flapped to the rafters.
"Absolutely despicable," Erza said as she stared after the poor little bird.
"Hey! Do you guys hear that?"
They all froze in their spots and looked to Natsu, his voice echoing in the ensuing quiet. He had his head tilted to the side like a dog on alert. Lucy hovered her hand over the keys on her belt, pulse quickening as she waited.
"I hear it, too," Wendy said, "Whoever owns this place is coming back,"
"Everyone hide!" Erza abruptly took hold of Gray and Natsu by the scruffs of their collars and pulled them behind a solid bookshelf. She urged Carla and Happy to duck beneath a termite-eaten desk and directed Wendy and Lucy into another shelf-made crevice just across the way.
"Wait- are you kidding me? Why are we hiding from this guy?! I can take him!" Natsu tried to leap from the hiding spot but Erza crammed herself on top of him before he could make any headway. Gray groaned as he was shoved into the wall underneath both Erza and Natsu's weight.
"We have no idea who this person is or what they are capable of! We should air with caution and take the element of surprise!" Erza whispered.
No sooner had the team hidden away did the entrance door creak open. A short-statured man shuffled into the dungeon-like laboratory, muttering distractedly to himself, arms laden with what looked to be more stolen supplies. He was hardly taller than Makarov and had salt-pepper hair that was wild around his ears and thinning on top. A set of thick glasses rested atop his nose and he wore a brown-gray lab coat that probably had been white at some point in time. The whiskery mustache on his upper lip gave him a weasel-like appearance.
"Oh come on, that guy is old and tiny-"
Gray jabbed Natsu in the abdomen, cutting off his words just as Erza's boot found his foot with a well-aimed stomp. Natsu yelped quietly and fell silent, brooding.
They watched from the shadows as the little man sorted through the items he'd brought before squinting in at the heated beakers in the vent hood. He smiled with chipped teeth as he donned the set of gloves and goggles Natsu had been playing with not ten minutes earlier. "Finally ready. Yes, yes," He used a set of metal forceps to carry the boiling beaker over to his work station.
"What's he doing?" Lucy whispered to Wendy who shook her head. The criminal was pouring over the beaker like a chef making soup. He added all kinds of unpleasant looking ingredients. A pinch of fluorescent green powder, a drop of liquid black as night, three feathers, a foot from one of the dead birds. His smile widened as he worked and he hummed tunelessly all the while.
"Soon," Erza mouthed to the team.
Lucy nodded and watched uneasily as the scientist clapped his hands together and purred at the final product he'd produced. Surprisingly the solution had turned as clear as water. He drew it into a syringe and held it to the light, flicking it to burst air bubbles from the needle. His hissing laugh made Lucy's skin crawl.
"On my signal," Erza whispered. They all shifted into ready stances, magic dancing at their fingertips.
When the Requip mage finally nodded, all seven team members burst out of hiding.
The weasel man jumped away from the table in surprise, spewing a stream of curses as he looked wildly at the wizards surrounding him.
"By the name of Fiore law and the Fairy Tail Guild, you are under arrest!" Erza pointed her unsheathed sword directly at his chest. He gulped and went cross-eyed as he followed the tip of the weapon, but he didn't yield as they'd expected. Quick as a flash, he reached into his coat pocket and produced a colorful green bead which he threw to the floor by his feet. It exploded on impact, bursting open to engulf his entire body in a thick plume.
"Shit! A smoke bomb!" Gray cursed.
"Don't let him get away!" Erza darted forward blindly into the cloud.
What happened next could only be described as pure chaos.
Natsu and Gray simultaneously dove to tackle the scientist as he emerged from the smoke but he was quick. They grasped nothing but air as they barreled into the work station behind him instead. The table was upturned on impact, all the vials and ingredients on its surface shattering on the floor. Almost instantaneously, a new cloud of smoke burst into existence as the liquids and powders mixed at random, vaporizing and proliferating until the whole room was filled with a rainbow-colored pea-soup fog.
There was shouting and cursing and a domino effect of toppling shelves as a bookcase was knocked in the calamity. The plume turned into a tornado as Wendy tried to disperse it with her sky dragon roar and a sea of pink fluff suddenly engulfed them as Lucy summoned Aires to sop up the chemicals. Erza's swords were ricocheting out of control, ice blasts were firing at random, and Natsu's flames were licking the air and causing miniature explosions of their own. Carla was at wit's end, Happy's fur had become an afro, and Lucy's shirt had been splashed with fabric-eating acid that threatened to leave her topless.
"Everyone, STOP" Erza yelled, halting the action in its tracks. They all froze, shielding their mouths against the noxious gas and using the moment to refocus on the target.
"This way!" Natsu yelled, his sharp ears catching the pattern of their suspect's feet heading towards the back entrance. The fire dragon slayer sprinted after the sound, teammates not far behind, fighting to wade through Aries' thick wool in a slow-motion pursuit.
Natsu was the first to burst past the rickety door and into the torch-lit stone passageway beyond, finally free of the chemical cloud. He could see again -but too late. In an unexpected turn, the short little bastard leaped onto Natsu's back, his stubby legs curling around Natsu's waist piggy-back style. His spindly fingers came to encircle Natsu's throat from behind.
"The hell?!" Natsu choked, thrashing and clawing the hands at his neck.
"I might not be able to escape, but at least I've managed to find myself a test subject. You will be my next experiment!" The little man cackled and Natsu felt something sharp bite into his neck.
He yelped in surprise and flailed harder.
"Get off, you weird little rat person!" Natsu slammed his back and the little man latched around his throat into the stone wall. The scientist let out a fitting squeak as he was crushed between the two surfaces. The arms laced in front of Natsu's Adam's apple untangled as the man went limp and slumped to the floor. An empty syringe rolled from his hand and skittered across the ground, glinting in the torchlight and only coming to a halt once it hit the far wall.
Natsu coughed a few times and rubbed the front of his neck where the man had choked him. His hand next slid to linger over where he'd felt the jab of pain. He frowned at the empty syringe on the floor. I wonder what that was all about-
His thoughts were derailed as the rest of the team pushed through the pink fluff and into the back hall. Erza first, then Gray, Wendy, Lucy, Happy, and Carla. They all toppled to the ground behind her, gasping and hacking.
The red-haired wizard sheathed her sword and sent it back to the ether world. "Good work Natsu! I guess I did overestimate him, though, admittedly, that could have gone a bit smoother,"
Natsu broke into a successful smile and let his hand fall from his throat to display a gleaming 'thumbs up'
"Went pretty smoothy to me! We got him!"
"If "going smoothly" means destroying the whole building, then yes. Real smooth Natsu," Lucy said, arms crossed to hide her breasts as she lamented her disintegrated shirt.
"Hey, it wasn't my fault this time! Gray's the one who knocked over that table with all the crap on it!"
"Don't pin this all on me! We both knocked it over, you idiot!"
Erza shook her head in fond annoyance and bent to gather the limp man into a manageable position before tossing him over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. "Let's get out of here before this place explodes,"
"Uh-I second that!" Lucy said, hastily accepting the new top Virgo brought from the celestial realm. The plume of smoke behind them had turned an inky black and was roiling dangerously.
They hurried along the stone passageway which thankfully led back above ground and safely away from the unstable laboratory. Even the little finch chittered by their heads as they left. It skirted into the sky as soon as they reached the surface.
The group split ways after depositing their catch to the authorities who thanked them profusely and gladly paid the offered reward in full, praising their timeliness. The police had also been nice enough to turn a relatively blind eye to the destruction following the small explosion that had engulfed the suspect's home. Thankfully no one had been hurt and the sheriff muttered something about 'knowing what they had signed up for,' before shoeing them all out the door.
"Not too bad of a job, being done before supper and all!" Lucy said, looking into her purse with a satisfied nod. It had become quite a bit heavier than earlier that morning. It wasn't a huge monetary sum, but it was enough for a few months of rent, groceries, and maybe a couple of fun nights out.
"Yeah, kinda boring though," Natsu was trailing just behind her, his arms casually raised with fingers laced behind his head. Happy was greedily clinging to Natsu's hip and rummaging through his pants pocket to count the Jewels.
"This is going to buy us so many fishies!"
Natsu ignored the cat, who was quite literally drooling over the money as if it actually were fish. He sighed irritably, "I didn't even get to throw a punch!"
"Oh, cheer up, Natsu! There are more important things in life," Lucy said, rolling her eyes.
Natsu huffed but nodded in agreement, finally reaching down to shoo Happy away from their spoils.
"Yeah, I guess you're right..." As if on cue Natsu's stomach growled audibly, loud enough for Lucy to throw a knowing eyebrow towards the pink-haired wizard.
"More important things like food! Let's go grab something to eat- I'm starved!"
Happy nearly fainted with excitement at Natsu's proposal. Lucy smiled widely at the two and gave them a nod. "Sounds like a plan!" Lucy had to brace herself as Natsu darted forward and snagged her wrist, grinning ear to ear.
"Well, what are we waiting for? Let's get going!"
"Aye!" Happy said, sprouting wings and soaring after the two.
Natsu pulled her through the crowded evening streets like a salmon swimming upriver. Lucy could never say Natsu lacked enthusiasm. She matched his grin and let him drag her along.
tbc