Night had fallen over the Hidden Leaf Village.
While some were either on patrol or doing their duty as Leaf ninja, other people were at home sleeping peacefully.
However, there was one person in particular who wasn't sleeping.
Wendy was at that moment, sitting on one of the heads of Mount Hokage gazing up at the night sky.
The reason for this was that she had been in that world for almost a week and so far hadn't found a way to return home.
Of course, the people of that world were very kind to her and Lapis, especially Naruto who decided to help her become stronger, but even so, she still missed all her friends.
The people from the guild who took her in as one when she lost everything, the people from other guilds she fraternized with despite some past disputes.
All of them were important people to her and now she was far away from all of them without being able to communicate with them.
Most likely they were all very worried about her disappearance.
Those thoughts kept her from sleeping, so she decided to take a late-night walk until she ended up where she was now, sitting with her head resting on her knees, thinking about the people she might never see again.
"Wendy?"
The sky dragon slayer was startled to hear her name and turned her head to see that the one who called her name was Naruto.
"Oh, hello, Naruto." said Wendy.
"What are you doing here?" asked Naruto sitting down next to the sky dragon slayer who rested her head on her knees again.
"I couldn't sleep." said Wendy with a depressed tone.
Naruto could tell from the tone of voice that something was wrong with her, something that made her feel that way and given her situation he could understand what it was.
"It's about your world, isn't it?" asked Naruto, receiving silence in response. "You miss it, don't you?"
"You're all so kind to me and I know you're trying to find a way for Lapis and me to get back to our world, but still… It's been so long. What if they're not looking for me? What if they've already forgotten about me? What if they already think I'm dead?" asked Wendy with teardrops peeking out of the corners of her eyes.
"Come on. Don't say things like that!" said Naruto getting the sky dragon slayer to turn her head towards him. "I may not know how the guilds work in your world, but I'm sure that, if I were one of them, I'd be looking for you even in the far reaches of the world."
"Are you... Are you serious?" asked Wendy.
"Well, of course I do. That's what friends do, isn't it?" asked Naruto with a toothy grin.
That made the heart of Wendy beat with happiness.
At that moment, she began to remember the good times she had with the people of Fairy Tail, people she considered not only as her friends, but also as her family.
With a smile, she used her arm to wipe the tears from her face.
"Thank you, Naruto. I feel better already." said Wendy.
"You're welcome." said Naruto.
After that, the two stood in silence, gazing up at the moonlit night sky.
"Hey, Wendy, tell me... what are the people in your guild like?" asked Naruto feeling curious.
"Well, for starters, they're pretty strong. They're also very lively, but they almost always tend to fight each other over anything." said Wendy.
"Hehe. They seem like a fun bunch. I'd like to get to know them." said Naruto.
"I think the one you'd get along best with is Natsu." said Wendy.
"Oh yes? And why do you think that?" asked Naruto.
"Because he's just like you. He's hyperactive, gluttonous, he tends to hit before he thinks..." said Wendy.
"I don't know if you're complimenting me or insulting me." said Naruto with a monotone face.
Wendy couldn't help but chuckle at that.
"What about your mother?" asked Naruto surprising her a lot. "What can you tell me about your dragon mother?"
Wendy was quite surprised that someone would ask her about her dragon mother, but seeing that there was nothing wrong with that, she decided to answer his question.
"Well, she was a very kind dragon. Even though I was a human child, she raised me as if I was her own daughter. I was a bit of a crybaby, but she was always there to cheer me up. Other than me, she liked humans." said Wendy with a wistful smile.
"What happened to her?" asked Naruto noticing that she was speaking in the past tense regarding her.
"One day, on July 7th of the year 777, I woke up and she wasn't by my side. For days I wandered the world, crying and calling for her, but she didn't show up. I was alone until a boy found me and took me to Cait Shelter, a guild I was part of for a long time." said Wendy.
Naruto felt sad that Wendy was abandoned by her mother at such a young age, though she could assume there was a reason for it, but he also felt good that at least she found a guild that took her in.
"But then, it happened that, after a battle against the dark guild 'Oración Seis', I discovered that in reality, the guild I had been growing up with was nothing more than an illusion. I thought I was on my own again, until my Fairy Tail friends invited me to join their guild and it was the best decision I ever made." said Wendy with a smile.
Naruto didn't understand about the illusions, but he could understand that Wendy had lost the first guild she was a part of, which was very sad, but at least he was glad to know that she had found a new family to be a part of.
One that she had no regrets about being a part of.
"Even though I had a good home and good friends, I had hoped that, someday, I would meet Grandeeney again, just as Natsu did with Igneel." began Wendy before her smile faded completely. "But that all changed after the battle against Tartaros."
"Tartaros?" asked Naruto in confusion.
"A dark guild made up solely of demons." said Wendy surprising Naruto.
He may have faced resurrected dead and an ancient goddess, but he never imagined such a thing as demons.
"Unlike us, they used curses instead of magic. Their plan was to activate an ancient weapon called 'Face' to remove all magic from the continent so they could rule everything." said Wendy.
Naruto was becoming more and more amazed by the story.
A weapon capable of taking away all the magic of a continent surely had to be a catastrophic weapon.
Had there been a weapon similar to that, but with chakra, at the time when nations were at war, surely there would have been a war to obtain it and use it on any enemy.
"For a moment, we thought we had failed and there was no escape anymore, but then, they showed up." said Wendy.
"They?" asked Naruto.
"Grandeeney and the other dragons." said Wendy.
"What?" asked Naruto surprised by the revelation.
"They managed to destroy all the Face around the continent, saving us all in the process." said Wendy.
"Well, that's great. Not only did they save you, but you got to see your mother again, right?" asked Naruto being positive.
"Yes, it was, but not for long." said Wendy confusing the jinchuriki. "It turns out that the reason she and the others disappeared that day was because they had stored their souls inside us."
"Why did they do such a thing?" asked Naruto.
"So they could prolong what little life they had left, but because they had to leave to save us, they could no longer go back inside." began Wendy before tears began to spill down her face. "So… that was the last time I saw my mother… after all those years. And the last thing she said to me was that she loved me." said Wendy before bursting into tears.
Naruto felt very sorry for the sky dragon slayer.
She had been searching for her mother for years, holding out hope of seeing her again, only for them to have to say goodbye forever shortly after meeting her again.
Wanting to comfort her, he put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to him for a side hug as he stroked her a little.
"I'm so sorry you had to go through that. Your mother certainly was a great person or dragon, if you know what I mean." said Naruto with a small smile.
"Hihi. Thank you." said Wendy feeling a little better.
"You know? I know how you feel." said Naruto, surprising the sky dragon slayer who pulled away from the embrace to turn her gaze towards him.
"Do you?" asked Wendy, receiving a nod from the jinchuriki.
"Have you heard of the bijuu?" asked Naruto.
"I heard something out there, but I don't know what they are." said Wendy.
"Well, bijuu are huge creatures with a monstrous amount of chakra. They were originally created to live in harmony with humans, but, unfortunately, they saw them as monsters and weapons to use for their purposes. So they went about capturing the bijuu and locking them inside special humans. Those humans that housed a bijuu were known as jinchurikis." said Naruto.
Wendy was surprised by the information.
To her, bijuu sounded similar to dragons, but she found it horrible that they were captured and imprisoned in humans as if they were objects and not living beings.
It was then that Naruto lifted up his shirt, revealing symbols on his abdomen area.
"I'm one of those jinchurikis." said Naruto, much to Wendy's surprise.
"W-what? How did you...?" asked Wendy.
"When a jinchuriki dies, his bijuu is passed on to someone else afterwards. I'm the current jinchuriki of the nine-tailed fox, also known as Kurama." said Naruto.
"But how did you end up being a jinchuriki?" asked Wendy feeling more curious about the jinchuriki's life.
"Well, for starters, for my first few years I didn't know I was one." said Naruto.
"Not even your parents?" asked Wendy, receiving a denial from the jinchuriki.
"My parents died the day I was born." said Naruto, causing Wendy to let out a gasp as she covered her mouth with her hands.
"I-I'm so sorry." said Wendy.
"It's okay." said Naruto.
"So, what was your life like?" asked Wendy.
"To sum it up in one word, hard. I grew up by myself, with no one to take care of me except for the previous Hokage who gave me enough money to live on. I never heard from my parents, no matter how many times I asked about them. They didn't even tell me about the whole jinchuriki thing until the day I graduated from the academy." said Naruto.
Wendy felt sorry for him.
She grew up with her mother for a couple of years until she disappeared, and she had to live on her own, but he didn't even have anyone to take care of him and they wouldn't even tell him about his parents.
Surely, his life was harder than anyone she had ever known.
"However, I was able to meet them in the end." said Naruto with a smile.
"Really? When and how?" asked Wendy with surprise, as he told her that they had died.
"The first time was when a guy named Pain attacked the village. During my fight against him, he did something that made me really angry." began Naruto remembering how that person seriously injured Hinata despite her efforts to try to protect him. "At that time I didn't fully control Kurama's power and due to my blind anger, I let him control me to the point where I almost released him from his seal."
"And that would be bad?" asked Wendy.
"Let's just say, if I had, Kurama would have consumed my body until I disappeared." said Naruto, causing Wendy to let out another gasp. "But before I got to do that, he appeared before me."
"Who?" asked Wendy.
"My father, Minato Namikaze and the fourth Hokage of the village." said Naruto with a smile.
"Wait, your father was a Hokage?!" asked Wendy in shock at the revelation.
"Yes. In fact, we're right over his head." said Naruto pointing to where they were sitting.
Wendy looked down and discovered that the head they were standing on was Naruto's father's and now that he mentioned it, she could see the resemblance.
"Is that how you met your father?" asked Wendy.
"That's right." said Naruto with a nod.
"And how was it?" asked Wendy curiously.
"Well, honestly, the first thing I did was hit him." said Naruto with a nervous smile.
"What? Why?" asked Wendy.
"Well because he was the one who put Kurama into me." said Naruto crossing his arms.
"What?! It was your father who turned you into a jinchuriki?! Why?!" asked Wendy in shock, unable to understand how a father could do that to his own son.
"The first reason was because there was no one else around, but the second was because he trusted me. He told me he put Kurama in me because, despite what he might suffer, he trusted me to use his power for good and in the end he was right about that." said Naruto with a toothy grin.
Wendy gave the jinchuriki a smile.
She may not have liked what his father did of putting a beast of great power inside him, but he did it because he trusted him to use it in the right way.
Now that she thought about it, it was the same thing Grandeeney and the other dragons did when they were put inside them, not only to prolong their lives, but also to keep them from ending up like Acnologia.
"The second time was when I was training to handle Kurama's chakra." began Naruto returning to the main issue. "In order to do that I had to defeat him in combat, and it was harder than I thought. I might have died if it wasn't for her."
"Who?" asked Wendy.
"My mother, Kushina Uzumaki." said Naruto.
"And how did the meeting go?" asked Wendy.
"I was very happy to meet my mother for the first time. During the time we were talking she told me some things about the Uzumaki clan, how she and my father met, and especially the day I was born, how they fought to the end to protect me." said Naruto with a nostalgic smile.
It may have been sad that he lost his parents, but she felt better knowing that he at least got to see them even once.
"The third time was during the Fourth Great Ninja War." said Naruto.
Wendy's eyes widened at that.
She remembered that, during her medical internship, Tsunade told her that not too long ago, there was a terrible person who declared war on the five nations, making the hidden villages that were once at odds with each other alias to fight against a common enemy.
It was a terrible war that could have ended with the death of every person on the planet, but they were able to stop it thanks to Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura and Kakashi, but she didn't tell her anything else after that.
"During the fight with a powerful enemy an... old acquaintance decided to lend us a hand." said Naruto not wanting to talk about a certain legendary Sannin who betrayed the village.
"How?" asked Wendy.
"By bringing back the Hokages of the past, including my father." said Naruto.
Wendy's mouth dropped open in shock.
According to Naruto, his father as well as the previous Hokages were dead, which meant that this person must have known some technique capable of resurrecting the dead.
She had only seen that technique in her world when the demons of Tartaros came back to life despite having died before.
On one hand, she wanted to know how that person was able to bring those people back from the dead, but right now she wanted to know about what happened after that.
"At that time, I was able to fight at my father's side and it was one of the best moments I had. After the battle, I had to go back to say goodbye to him, but before I did, I told him what I wanted him to tell my mother. The last thing he told me was that he would be sure to tell her everything." said Naruto with a nostalgic smile.
Wendy was very happy for the jinchuriki, happy that he was able to meet his parents and be able to talk to them about what really mattered even though they were at times quite tense.
"You know? After knowing that, I'd say we're pretty much alike, wouldn't you?" asked Wendy with a smile.
"Heh. I guess you're right." said Naruto with a smile before the two shared a small laugh.
"Thank you, Naruto, for joining me tonight." said Wendy.
"That's what friends are for, right?" asked Naruto patting the head of the sky dragon slayer.
Below them, far below them, under the heads of the Hokage, there was someone who had been listening to the conversation despite the enormous distance.
It was Lapis.
Despite her attempts not to be caught, Lapis woke up at the first moment and discovered her sneaking around and decided to follow her to see where she was going.
Once she saw that she had sat on the fourth Hokage's head, Lapis thought for a moment to go ask, but then, thanks to her enhanced hearing, she could hear Naruto arrive on the scene and talk to her.
She sensed from the beginning that Wendy missed her friends, but she didn't think it was to the point where she thought they didn't care anymore.
But what struck her the most was the fact of how Wendy lost her dragon mother during the Tartaros incident.
That brought back small memories to the water dragon slayer, memories she didn't expect to think about again at that moment.
It was then that she heard Naruto tell her the story of his parents, but what she paid more attention to was the last thing he said.
"That's what friends are for, right?"
Friends.
It was something Wendy wanted them to be on the first day in the village, but she flatly refused. However, even though she didn't want them to be friends and didn't know anything about her, Wendy considered her a good person that she would be willing to sacrifice herself for in order to protect.
Those thoughts made her heart clench.
She didn't know what the pain was about or even why it came up, but she wanted to get rid of the pain as soon as possible.
After the talk with Naruto, Wendy felt better and went back to her apartment to sleep.
However, the moment she entered the room, she let out a gasp of surprise when she saw Lapis sitting on her futon, her head resting on her knees with her back to her.
"L-Lapis! I'm sorry I woke you up, but I..." began Wendy before...
"Lindworm." said Lapis interrupting the sky dragon slayer, who was confused by that.
"What?" asked Wendy arching an eyebrow.
"My father, the water dragon, Lindworm, disappeared the same day your mother also disappeared." said Lapis.
At that moment, Wendy understood two things.
The first was that Lapis had been listening to her conversation with Naruto and the second was that, for the first time, Lapis was telling her about herself.
Determined to pay attention to the story, she sat down next to him with the water dragon slayer still on her back.
"Just like you, I too was wandering alone, crying and calling out to him to come back. Then, one day, a person found me. However, unlike you, that person didn't come to help me." said Lapis.
Wendy began to feel that the story was taking a turn she wasn't going to like.
"That person was a member of a dark guild and when he found out what I was, he kidnapped me and took me to their lair. Once there, they ordered me to fulfill missions for them, but I flatly refused, so... they... decided to force me to follow their orders." said Lapis with difficulty, since what she was telling was not at all easy to tell.
"They locked me in a room where they forced me to fight against various opponents they captured, from beasts to mages to bandits. Every time I lost or refused to fight, they would punish me cruelly." began Lapis before placing her hand over her right eye patch. "In one of those punishments, I ended up losing my eye."
Wendy couldn't help but let out a huge gasp as she discovered the reason behind the water dragon slayer's missing eye.
She couldn't believe what she was hearing.
She was just a child who had just lost her father and those people had kidnapped her and were forcing her to do things she didn't want to do and punishing her cruelly if she refused.
In fact, it reminded her a bit of Erza's story, of when she and other children were captured by an organization that forced them to work as slaves.
"In the end, I understood that, if I wanted to survive, I had to do what they wanted, so I began to seriously fight every opponent they put in front of me. In some of those fights, I even went so far as to kill my opponent." said Lapis, clenching her fists at the memory.
That made Wendy understand what Lapis told her when she felt bad for that bandit who died in her first ninja mission.
She must have also gone through the same thing she did the first time she killed someone and after doing it so many times, she ended up getting used to it.
"There's one thing I don't understand." said Wendy catching the water dragon slayer's attention. "If your father disappeared on the same day as my mother, how come you're the same age as me?"
The reason she was still young even though that day happened many years ago was because, after Acnologia's attack on Tenrou Island, a spell from the first guild master saved them, but as a result, they had to be in a sleep state for seven years until they finally woke up.
But Lapis wasn't on Tenrou Island when that happened, so she couldn't find an explanation for it.
"Well, I don't know about your case, but I'm sure mine is different from yours. After the last test, those people decided I was ready and started sending me on missions, such as robbery or murder. For those people, I was the perfect weapon. And since they wanted to keep their perfect weapon for a long time, they decided to keep me in a cryogenic state between missions." said Lapis.
Wendy recalled reading in a book that the cryogenic state was a process in which a person was frozen to the point where they would stay alive all the time, as if they were in a dream.
"However, when it came time for me to wake up from cryogenics, I discovered that the dark guild that captured me had been destroyed." said Lapis surprisingly to the sky dragon slayer.
"How?" asked Wendy.
"I don't know exactly, but, from what I could gather, shortly after they cryogenically, their lair was discovered by the Magic Council. All the members were arrested, and all their stuff commandeered, but unfortunately, I was in a chamber so hidden that no one could find me, so I stayed there until the cryo chamber ran out of power… seven years later." said Lapis.
Seven years.
The same time Wendy was gone, the time she and her friends were missing while her guild was losing credit until it was considered the weakest.
"Even though I was now free, I didn't know exactly what to do, but if I learned anything during my captivity it was that I had to survive anyway, so I started traveling around the kingdom, doing various missions. Whether they were protection or even assassination, I didn't care, all I wanted was to be able to keep living." said Lapis.
Wendy felt bad for the water dragon slayer.
Her childhood was taken away from her by some terrible people who wanted to turn her into a weapon and although she was happy that those people were gone and that she was free, she felt bad that she had no one, no friend and ended up fighting to live.
If she had met her before the whole being in another world thing, she would have possibly invited her to join her guild and be able to help her feel appreciated, to feel what a real family was like.
"And that's when Tartaros and Face happened." said Lapis remembering what happened at the time.
"At the time, I was living in a small abandoned cabin on the outskirts of a town where I was planning to apply for missions. That night, I was sleeping peacefully when I heard strange noises outside."
Lapis could be seen sleeping peacefully in an old, abandoned cabin as she began to open her eyes and sat up while rubbing them.
"What's that noise?" asked Lapis before getting up and walking out of the cabin, only to be shocked by what she saw. "But what?" asked Lapis in shock.
In front of her and all around the area were multiple columns glowing and the most striking thing was that the tips of the columns looked like human faces.
"I didn't know what they were at the time, but my instincts were screaming at me that they were something very dangerous. I had intended to go into town to look for answers when that happened."
Lapis was about to leave when suddenly he began to feel something strange in her body and she fell to the ground trembling and with her heart beating very fast.
"It was terrible, as if I felt that something even more terrible and monstrous had just appeared. Soon after, those things activated, and I felt myself losing my magic. I came to think it was the end, but then, he appeared."
After feeling that, Lapis stood up again, only to see that the columns were beginning to glow and her power was slowly diminishing, but suddenly, she heard a roar, a bestial roar.
Looking up to the sky, she was completely paralyzed when she saw it.
A blue dragon, with a pair of horns on his head and four long whiskers along his face. From his head to almost reaching his back, he had a bluish-green fur, then a little beyond his back he had 5 spines which almost reached his tail. His tail was long and at the end of it he had a fur equal to that of his head.
It was the water dragon, Lindworm.
Lindworm let out a roar as he flew at full speed through the air, hitting every pillar in his path and completely destroying it.
"Thanks to him and the other dragons, magic was saved."
The sun had already risen when Lindworm managed to knock down all the columns in the area.
After that, he landed in front of Lapis.
"When I asked him about where he was, he told me about how he had been in my body the whole time and how he was going to die in a short time. I felt sad to know that this would be our last meeting and that's when I decided to ask him an important question."
"Dad, do you hate me?" asked Lapis with concern.
"Why would I hate you?" asked Lindworm.
"Because... if you were really in me all this time, then you would know what I went through, what I had to do." began Lapis lowering her head. "I would understand if you hated me."
"I don't hate you." said Lindworm.
"How can you say that?!" asked Lapis raising her head, showing that she was shedding tears. "After all the horrible things I've done! I've killed people! I even killed someone who was begging for his life! Why? Why? Why don't you hate me?!"
"Because I know you better than anyone, Lapis. What you did is in the past doesn't matter. What matters is what you will do in the present. Before I go, I want you to know one thing. No matter what you do or what may happen." began Lindworm before leaning down so that his muzzle touched his daughter's head. "I will always love you, my daughter." said Lindworm before disappearing.
More tears began to be shed from her one eye as she saw the specks of light that were once her father, the one who had just told her that he would love her no matter what.
"DADDY!" cried Lapis in utter sadness.
"He told me he loved me." Lapis began as tears streamed from her closed left eye. "Despite knowing everything I did, he told me he loved me. I didn't deserve those words. I don't deserve to be his daughter. I'm not a human, I'm a monster!" said Lapis bursting into tears.
Before she knew it, she was hugged by Wendy.
"You're wrong. You're not a monster." said Wendy trying not to cry over the water dragon slayer's story.
"H-how can you know that? You don't know anything about me." said Lapis.
"Did you even like what you were doing? About fighting those people and killing them?" asked Wendy.
"No, of course not, but I had to do it if I wanted to avoid further punishment. I was just doing it so I could live." said Lapis.
"So, you're not a monster. If you were a monster, you would have enjoyed those things. Besides, a monster wouldn't have saved me from that bandit on the first mission or wouldn't have agreed to help me fight those hooded men in those ruins." said Wendy remembering the moments she had with the water dragon slayer.
"Even if that's true, I have no one. I'm alone." said Lapis.
"No, you're not. You have Naruto, Sakura, Kakashi, Miss Tsunade, all the people we met in the village and most of all you have me." said Wendy.
"Why are you doing this? I told you I didn't want to be your friend." said Lapis.
"I told you. Just because we're not friends doesn't mean I don't care about you. I wouldn't do this either if you weren't a good person, don't you think?" asked Wendy.
That made Lapis start to shed more tears, not out of sadness, but out of happiness, since she didn't expect that there could be someone as kind as her, someone who could accept her despite everything she did and on top of that tell her that she was a good person even though she thought otherwise.
Without even thinking about it, she jumped in to return her hug while crying with her head resting on her shoulder.
Wendy closed her eyes with a small smile as she stroked the water dragon slayer's head to comfort her.
No doubt, that was a very long night, but it was an important one for Wendy, for it was the night Lapis finally decided to open up to her and confess what she truly felt.
She was sure that it would do her good and that after that she could have a better life.
AN: What did you think of the story I gave to my OC?
Was it too much? Wasn't it?
I like it and I hope you do too.
See ya!