The Scars That Make You Whole

By CrimsonStarbird

The Laws of You and Me, Part 1

-Chevalier Lucy-

Any hope that the events of last night might have been a surreal and worrying nightmare evaporated the moment Lucy walked out of her bedroom to find the Black Mage Zeref sat at her desk, leafing through the pages of her manuscript.

Just as before, her hand dropped invisibly quickly to her belt, and she shrieked, "SAGITTARIUS!" In an instant, a single arrow from her Celestial Spirit had ripped the entire stack of papers out of Zeref's hands and pinned them to the far wall.

Zeref stared at his now-empty hands, then at the arrow still quivering in the wall, and then to Lucy, with an expression of deep betrayal. "I was reading that!"

Lucy folded her arms. "I gave you permission to sleep on my couch for the night. Not to start rifling through my drawers."

"I was bored."

"That's not an excuse! That manuscript was private!" Huffing, she stormed over to the wall, yanked the arrow out with some effort, and stuffed the damaged pages back into the drawer he'd stolen them from. Upon catching him eyeing the drawer, she added, "Don't even think about it."

"How does the story end?"

"I don't know. I haven't finished it yet."

"But you must have thought about it," he persisted, as if it were somehow his business.

"Sure. The heroine throws the evil mage out of her house and they all live happily ever after. Except the evil mage, of course. He, having entirely abused the heroine's generosity, now finds himself having to go on his adventure on his own for the rest of the story."

Zeref leaned back in the chair, fixing her with a look of wide-eyed puzzlement that only someone with such a youthful face could have pulled off. "Why, Miss Heartfilia, I do get the feeling that you're trying to tell me something."

She grumbled something under her breath, and busied herself with switching the journalist equipment in her satchel for adventuring supplies. It wasn't exactly the most promising start to a partnership. She hadn't been able to relax last night, knowing that the Black Mage himself was in her house, and when she did finally fall asleep, she had woken up in complete denial, convinced that none of yesterday had happened. She couldn't possibly have agreed to travel the length and breadth of Fiore with her guild's sworn enemy, because that would be completely mental… and the lack of sleep was not helping her deal with the fact that this was reality any more than it was helping her deal with her teammate, who seemed to have decided that basic manners were quite unbefitting a Black Mage.

Then again, he was still here, she was still alive, and against all common sense, the quest to reunite Fairy Tail seemed to be going ahead.

"You've got a plan, haven't you?" Lucy asked. "For where we're going first."

"I do. First, we're going to Marguerite Town."

"Marguerite Town…?"

"Yes. That's where-"

"Wendy is, yes, I know," Lucy interrupted. "She's one of the few I knew; she's hardly been inconspicuous this past year."

"Then what's the problem?"

"There isn't one. I just assumed that we'd be starting with someone like the Master, or… or Natsu…" She bit her lip and glanced away. Going after Natsu was the last thing she wanted right now, but if asked for a list of what made Fairy Tail Fairy Tail, anyone who knew the first thing about the guild would have put Natsu Dragneel at the top.

To her surprise, Zeref didn't demand an explanation for her silence. "Makarov is off-limits," he answered. "I do know where he is, but I'd quite like him to remain there… at least for the time being. Same goes for Natsu. I suspect we'll need them both eventually, but I'd prefer to avoid them until absolutely necessary."

Lucy nodded hastily, so grateful that she did not have to explain her desire to stay clear of Natsu that it did not even occur to her to ask for his own.

"As to why I picked Wendy," he continued, "well, Dragon Slayers are important. So, with Natsu ruled out and Gajeel off my radar, Wendy was the natural choice."

"Gajeel's working for the Council, now," Lucy jumped in, eager to show that she knew something his so-called intelligence network didn't, but he shook his head.

"Oh, I know that. About a week ago, he and…" Here he paused to recall with frightening clarity names he really had no business knowing. "…Levy and Pantherlily were reassigned to a new mission, the details of which are regrettably above the highest level of security clearance I can currently access. I'm working on that as we speak."

"You're working on it?"

"My people are working on it," he amended.

"Your people," she echoed, just as doubtfully as before, and he raised his eyebrows at her.

"You say that as though you don't believe I have any."

"No, I believe you, it's just… we destroyed your army." At his quizzical look, she clarified, "Tartaros. We beat them already."

"Oh, them." Zeref waved his hand dismissively. "I have other armies."

"You have other armies?" she repeated, equal parts surprised and incredulous, and he laughed. It wasn't a sinister sound, but the mirth of a man who enjoyed messing with his teammate. There was no need for him to lie; he threw her simply by being unpredictable, and every bit of it was intentional.

"Terrifying, isn't it?" he smirked. "I'd be making the most of this truce if I were you, Lucy. Are you nearly done packing?"

"Uh… yeah, nearly. Are you not taking anything?" she added, thinking of his apparent lack of any luggage except the clothes on his back. "We could be on the road for a while."

"I have everything I need."

"Suit yourself." Lucy slung the bag over her shoulder, and, finally, returned her Fleuve d'étoiles to its rightful place on the opposite hip to her celestial keys. "Now I'm done."

He jumped to his feet in a flash of childish excitement. "Well, then. Let the quest begin!"

Their amicable start-of-a-new-adventure mood didn't quite make it out the front door.

That was when they both began walking down the street in opposite directions, paused, turned, and looked exasperatedly at each other.

"Where are you going?" Lucy demanded.

"Marguerite Town," Zeref told her coolly, pointing over his shoulder towards the south-west exit from the city. "I think you'll find it's this way."

"Sure, we could go that way… or, we could go this way, get on a train at Crocus Central Station, and be there in an hour rather than like three days."

He met her condescending smile with one of his own, and there was something to be said for having four hundred years of practice under one's belt. "Did I not mention? I can't do public transport. We're not getting the train."

"You are kidding… right?"

"Not at all."

"You can't seriously be telling me that you suffer from motion sickness too?"

"Of course not. But leaving me in an enclosed space full of other people for a prolonged period of time? Trust me, that's not a good idea."

"Well, I don't think it's a good idea to walk all the way to Marguerite Town!"

He shrugged. "It's not as far as you think. We could be there by sundown if you stopped complaining and started walking."

If looks could kill, she'd be giving his immortality a run for its money right about now. "So, not only am I travelling all across Fiore with you on some mission I never even wanted in the first place… but you're making me do the whole thing on foot?"

He tilted his head slightly, shifting seamlessly from condescending to innocent as he pretended to consider the matter. "We might be able to hitch a ride once we're out in the countryside."

"We'd better," she growled. "You know, I really thought my days of having to walk to literally every mission were over. I have the worst luck with teammates."

"The sooner we leave, the sooner we'll arrive," he advised her, with not enough remorse and far too much cheer. As he set off towards the city gates, she glowered at the back of his head and wondered if punching him in the face would still be a violation of the terms of their truce if she could prove she was provoked.

It seemed to take forever for a wagon to appear on the road, and Lucy flagged it down with her most innocent smile and two fingers crossed behind her back.

For an agonizing minute, she was certain it wasn't going to stop for them. She had felt the suspicion of the driver's gaze burning into her back as the wagon gained on them, and even without turning to stare back – not wanting to seem too eager – she knew that his suspicion was mostly directed towards her travelling partner.

On one hand, Zeref was keeping his no doubt immense magical presence fully suppressed; no one not already privy to his true identity would have reason to believe that he was any more than he appeared. On the other hand, he appeared as though he'd just stepped out of an ancient school of philosophy. Emulating the ancients had been a popular mode of dress amongst the learned types four hundred years ago. It was not a popular mode of dress for travellers on the road between Crocus and Marguerite.

Fortunately, his apparent youth went a long way towards promoting an aura of harmlessness – one she had already observed that he was both aware of and not at all above using to his advantage – and it seemed his fondness for making her life difficult did not extend to sabotaging his own quest. He stayed quiet and let her do the talking.

In the end, the driver stopped for them. His was an open wooden wagon, half-full of empty crates; she guessed he was a farmer returning from selling his produce in the markets at Crocus. A single black horse pulled the wagon along. His ears flicked in annoyance at the interruption as the wagon rolled to a halt; he gave Lucy a surprisingly intimidating glare as a grey-bearded farmer peered down at her from the driver's bench. "Where're you headed?"

"Marguerite Town," she answered. "My, uh, teammate here-" Not that he was currently contributing anything but complications to the team "-doesn't like trains, so he's making us walk the whole way. We left Crocus about six hours ago-"

"One hour fifty," Zeref corrected calmly, and she glowered at him.

"-Well it feels like six hours, and at this rate, we're never going to make it to Marguerite before sundown…"

She wasn't sure how well she'd be able to pull off damsel in distress with the infamous Black Mage tagging along, but the farmer gave a gruff nod. "You're guild mages?"

"I am." Lucy held up her hand, showing off her pink guild mark. "Technically, my guild has been disbanded, but if you're asking whether we can hold our own in a magical battle, then the answer's yes."

"Aye, Fairy Tail, I know it," he muttered. "That's a trustworthy mark. You're in luck, miss – I'm headin' up to Marguerite myself. I'll take you both."

She sighed in relief. "Thanks, you're a lifesaver!" She hopped up to sit with the farmer at the front, while Zeref shifted the crates to clear himself some space in the back of the wagon. That done, he lay down, hands behind his head, and closed his eyes, basking in the sunlight and happily ignoring the two of them. She wasn't quite sure how he could already be tired enough for a nap, given that he'd presumably not been kept up by paranoia all night like some people, but it suited her just fine. They had only been together a few hours and she was already desperate for someone else – anyone else – to talk to.

The farmer flicked the reins; the great carthorse resumed his plodding advance. Once they had settled into a steady pace, gold-green fields trundling by on either side, Lucy felt safe enough to inquire, "Are you expecting trouble?"

From the old farmer's suspicion towards travellers, and the fact that her membership of a well-known guild had swung his decision to take them, that seemed to be a given, but she hoped he would be more forthcoming with information if she did things by the book.

"You've not heard the rumours?"

Lucy shook her head. Ordinarily, rumours would have been her thing, but with the Grand Magic Games dominating the recent news – and her own reporting – in Crocus, she hadn't been paying as much attention to the rest of the world as perhaps she should have been. Her hand was already reaching for her satchel before she remembered she wasn't a reporter any more. Like it or not, she was a questing guild mage. Her priorities were different.

"Reports of accidents," he grunted. "Carts comin' off the road, cargo bein' destroyed… all in the area round Marguerite."

"Bandits?"

"Not heard nothin' about bandits. Just accidents. If they knew what were causin' it, the local guilds'd be doin' somethin' about it, wouldn't they?"

Not if they've all been focussed on the Grand Magic Games, Lucy thought to herself.

"You can't help feelin' sorry for Marguerite, though," he added. "Their Day of Thanksgiving's tomorrow, and there's no one on the road."

Of course, the festival. It was easy to forget, in the excitement of the Games in Crocus, that other cities had their own summer traditions. From what she'd heard, the Day of Thanksgiving was as big a deal in Marguerite as the Fantasia Parade was in Magnolia. Lucy supposed that the festival preparations would go some way towards explaining why Lamia Scale, despite not participating in the Games this year, wasn't investigating the rumours… and that was far too much of a coincidence for her liking. Her mage side disliked coincidences; her reporter side distrusted them.

They made small talk about Lamia Scale's festival as the wagon rolled on, which was a much-needed break from walking for her feet and from sulking about being made to walk for the rest of her. She already knew, however, that this calmness wasn't going to last. If any part of her quiet life as a journalist had somehow survived the Black Mage himself showing up at her door, then acquiring passage to Marguerite in Fairy Tail's name had well and truly doomed it. Nothing attracted trouble quite as effectively as the pink emblem on her hand.

This trouble, when it arrived, came not as an attack from the thicket of trees she had been keeping half an eye on, but something so close she almost missed it.

The carthorse tossed his head, as if trying to dislodge a fly. When the farmer's grip tightened, he tossed his head again, more agitated than before. A half-skip broke his beloved regular trundle, and he pawed at the ground, jolting the whole wagon.

"Whoa, boy!" called the farmer, giving the reins a gentle tug.

As the horse whickered his anxiousness, unfamiliar magic skittered across Lucy's senses. The feeling seemed to skip, there and not there all at once, making it too difficult for her to pinpoint the caster – or even state with certainty that there was one. She was out of practice, and she knew it. Keeping her strength up by meditating and practising summoning in the evenings was one thing, but that kind of sensitivity to magic could only be developed by immersing oneself in it, and she hadn't been in a proper magical battle for ten months.

She scanned the horizon, hoping her eyes would be able to spot what her magical senses couldn't. There was no sign of the enemy mage – not of that enemy mage, anyway. To her surprise, Zeref was sitting up in the back of the wagon, gazing out across the fields with an intensity that jarred against the laid-back attitude he adopted for most of their interactions.

"Did you sense that?" she asked.

At once, his face relaxed into a superior smile as he took far too much enjoyment out of ignoring the question. "Looks like you're up, guild mage."

She glared at him. "Am I to take it, then, that you have no intention of helping?"

"None whatsoever," he confirmed happily.

Lucy was not impressed. "Are you physically incapable of being useful? Or are you just siding with every petty criminal we come across on principle?"

"Certainly not. You're the one who said you wanted to make this a proper paid mage job, are you not?"

"Yes…?"

"Well then, since I'm your employer and you're my hired mage, you can't possibly be expecting me to get my hands dirty on this mission, can you?"

Scowling to herself, Lucy turned her attention back to their surroundings. It was good she did, because at that moment, the horse bolted.

Lucy and the farmer were thrown back in their seats. They clung on for dear life as the horse fled the road and raced across the meadow – straight towards a short drop and a rocky brook below.

Heedless to the danger, and to the farmer's frantic tugs on the reins, the horse and wagon hurtled onwards. Lucy took an executive decision: "CANCER!"

Her precarious position atop a speeding wagon had not slowed her gunslinger's summoning. The Crab Spirit appeared without fanfare and, sympathetic to his owner's urgency, cut through the horse's reins. The wagon rolled to a halt.

"What's going on?" Lucy demanded, forgetting in the heat of the moment that her current companion wasn't Erza or Gray, but a man who rejected the very concept of teamwork. Zeref gave her a shrug that didn't mean I don't know as much as I wouldn't tell you if I did. She was on her own in this fight.

"Somethin' must've gotten into him," the farmer answered, not realizing, in Zeref's silence, that the question hadn't been for him. "I've never seen him so spooked before. Look – he's comin' back."

With a flurry of hooves, the horse stumbled to a stop at the edge of the riverbank, close enough to send a shower of dirt down into the water. Then, as if his sudden flight had never happened, he flicked his ears, turned, and began to trot right back towards them.

Lucy's eyes narrowed. Abnormal magic brushed against her senses again. The horse's trot became a canter, and then a gallop – and before her astonished eyes, he lowered his head like a rhinoceros and charged flat-out towards the wagon.

"Jump!" she screamed.

They scattered. Lucy flung herself to the side, but hadn't fallen more than a foot before Cancer snatched her up in his arms, landed neatly, and set her down on her feet. The horse hit the wagon like a wrecking ball of black muscle. Pausing only to shake the pieces impatiently out of his mane, he reared up, turned, and prepared to strike again.

On the far side of the ruined wagon, Zeref had landed only a little less gracefully than her and Cancer, but the farmer was sprawled on his backside in the grass. His prone position made him the most vulnerable target. Never mind that the horse was a domestic animal; never mind that he had been raised and trained by this man – Lucy knew, with a shiver, that none of it mattered against that strange magic. She opened her mouth to instruct Cancer to attack-

And hesitated. What was she doing? This wasn't a ferocious monster; it was an animal! It was innocent. How could she fight it like she would a dark mage, with pain and force and fear?

Thinking fast, she drew her Fleuve d'étoiles and sent it coiling round the horse's neck. He jerked back seconds before trampling the farmer. With a flick of her wrist, Lucy caused the whip to contract back into the hilt, pulling her through the air – straight onto the horse's back.

At once, his attention turned to her. He bucked furiously, desperate to rid himself of this new irritation. Lucy's whip went flying, and she was forced to abandon it lest she go the same way. She threw both arms around the horse's neck and gripped with her knees and wondered absently how the topic of staying on a frenzied horse had never come up in ten years' worth of riding lessons on the Heartfilia Estate.

Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed Zeref looking on with more amusement than if he had been presented with a button labelled 'press to annihilate humanity'. Anyone else would have rushed to her aid, but no, she was stuck with him…

But she could do this on her own. So what if she was a bit out of practice? She was still a Fairy Tail mage.

The odd magic was making the horse act violent. Therefore, to end this without hurting the horse, she needed to take out the caster, and she still couldn't pinpoint his location from the drifting sense of his magic… but now that it was affecting her steed directly, it was a little clearer than before. If she could trick the caster into increasing the strength of the enchantment further, she might just be able to grab hold of it.

"Lyra!" she called, a touch of her silver key, a shout that resonated across two worlds.

The Spirit appeared at once: a young girl holding a harp larger than she was, wearing a pink and periwinkle concert dress and an expression of pure bewilderment. "You called me, Miss Lucy?"

Loud enough for her voice to carry to the nearby trees and beyond, Lucy commanded, "Play a song to calm the horse!"

"Umm, Miss Lucy, my music can't-"

"Lyra, please play!"

Although not a combat spirit, Lyra was still a friend, and she still trusted her owner. She nodded bravely and sat amidst the wreckage of the wagon, her grace and her purity only emphasized by the contrast, and began to sing a lullaby.

Both Lyra and Lucy knew that, whatever effect the harpist's songs may have had on humans whose hearts needed to hear them, music alone could do nothing to calm a horse driven wild by sinister magic.

But there was no reason why her opponent would know that. And sure enough, there was an answering surge in the magic around them as the enemy mage braced for a battle of control – and this time it was strong enough for her to locate the source at once.

In an act of reckless balance, she extracted her left arm from its death-grip around the horse's neck and pointed towards the tree that the enemy was using as cover. "Sagittarius, please!"

She closed her eyes and hung on as opening a third simultaneous gate required all the focus she could muster. Sagittarius appeared and loosed three arrows in the direction she had indicated. Two disappeared into the thicket with a scattering of leaves; the third hit home.

The enemy's concentration broke. The living magnitude-ten earthquake upon which Lucy was mounted came to a halt at once, and she sat up with a groan, feeling a lot like Natsu would have done on the gentle cart-ride here. Yet he wouldn't have stayed down for long, and neither would she – not when she had a chance to turn the tables. Without the need to cling on, she was free to snap her keyring free of her belt and tap the end of a golden key over her heart. "Star Dress: Cancer!"

Now those years of aristocratic riding lessons were starting to pay off. The short, combat-style yukata of her Cancer Form was well-suited for horseback combat, and with one half-scissor blade in each hand, she used her knees to guide the horse into a charge towards the thicket.

Lyra, whose musical power was apparently not limited to the instrument in her hands, switched to a triumphant orchestral rendition of Ride of the Valkyries. Lucy made a mental note to summon her in combat more often.

Behind the tree lurked a single hooded figure. An arrow protruded from one of his shoulders. Lucy was upon him in an instant, one blade cleaving towards his neck, which he parried with a hastily raised arm. Her strike cut through dark cloth and stopped at once. Armour? Scales? From the soft thunk, she suspected it was the latter, a guess then confirmed when the wake of her thunderous charge knocked back his hood.

At a firm nudge from Lucy, her steed wheeled around, flowing between the trees like the shadow of an oncoming storm. She could see her opponent clearly now. He was more serpentine than human: beneath a bowl of straw-coloured hair, little grey-green scales glittered upon his face, and the tongue that flicked out between his lips was forked.

Lucy's charge did not slow; she had fought monsters a thousand times more intimidating than a snake-man. Celestial light sent shadows spinning through the trees as her magic flowed into Cancer's blades. Scales or no scales, this time, her sword would strike true-

Something huge and furry hit her from the side, knocking her straight from her mount. She hit the ground hard – but instinct had not fled with the breath from her lungs, and she rolled at once, her heel striking the beast that had collided with her and catapulting it away. She came to a stop on all fours. The snake-man was in front of her, but of more concern was the huge wolf staggering back to its feet – with her ring of keys in its mouth.

Separated from her keys, the power drained out of her Star Dress transformation. Her swords disappeared. She could call no more Spirits, and the three already present had been left behind by her reckless charge. One good leap would bring her foe within her grasp, but she was unarmed.

She could end this-

If she used-

But-

That moment of indecision was all her opponent needed. The alien magic picked up again, and Lucy threw herself aside in the nick of time as her horse reared and plunged his hooves back down towards her. By the time she had made it to her feet, the snake-man had fled.

The wolf lunged for her, jaws agape, only to be met by twin streaks of red and brown. Cancer and Sagittarius had finally caught up with her: the latter's arrow knocked Lucy's keyring free from the fang which had hooked it, while the former's scissors sheared the wolf in a heartbeat. The naked beast whined, shivered, and slunk off into the shadows.

Exhaling slowly, Lucy hung her head. It felt as though her whole body had suddenly doubled in weight. She'd let the enemy get away. And not only that – she'd managed to simultaneously look like a fool with that buckaroo stunt in front of Zeref, while also revealing to him that she was capable of using Star Dress. That was not something she'd wanted to flaunt in front of her future enemy.

Something wet nuzzled at her cheek. Glancing up, she saw the horse nudging her awkwardly with his nose, as if in apology for his behaviour earlier. "Not your fault," she muttered, reaching up to rub his neck.

"Miss Lucy." After a brief stare-down with the real horse, keen to remind him that Lucy only needed one equine on her team, Sagittarius edged forwards and placed the celestial keys in Lucy's hand. She nodded in gratitude, and he returned to his own world with a sharp salute.

Cancer lingered a little longer. "Lucy, why didn't you-?" But she cut him off with a sharp shake of her head, and he too disappeared, significantly more put out than Sagittarius.

Deciding she couldn't put it off any longer, Lucy got to her feet and led the horse back to the road. Zeref was sitting cross-legged atop the wreckage of the wagon. Her irritation at how unruffled he looked compared to her immediately quadrupled as he leaned over and whispered something to Lyra, who promptly burst into an enthusiastic version of the Pomp and Circumstance March.

"So, the guild mage returns victorious," he smirked.

Lucy rolled her eyes, but nothing more. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

More to the farmer than her unhelpful teammate, she reported, "The enemy mage got away." She handed the horse over, and he proceeded to examine the animal's condition with more than a little wariness. "He was using magic to control the horse – and the wolf that attacked me too – and make them act violently. He fled, so you should be fine to ride your horse back home."

"Thanks, miss," came the grateful response. "If you hadn't been here, I'd've been dead for sure. You're a credit to your guild."

"Between you and me, I'm not sure that's a compliment," Zeref weighed in, amused. "Personally, I rate you three out of ten. I'd be wanting my money back, if I were actually paying you."

"Oh, come on, I wasn't that bad!" Lucy protested. "Sure, the villain got away, but no one was hurt, and there was very little collateral damage…"

All three of them turned to look at the wrecked wagon.

"That's actually pretty good by Fairy Tail standards," Lucy pointed out.

"I suppose I should give you credit for not simply decking the horse," Zeref mused. "I imagine the vast majority of your guild would have taken that approach. Fine: four out of ten."

Scowling at him, Lucy retrieved her Fleuve d'étoiles from the wreckage and turned back to the farmer. "I really am sorry about your wagon…"

"No need to worry, miss. It was only full of empty boxes." The farmer swung himself bareback onto the horse. "My farm's not far from here, but I'm afraid you'll have to go the rest of the way on your own."

"That's alright. We'll speak to Lamia Scale when we reach Marguerite, and see if they know anything more about the snake-man or the attacks on travellers."

Nodding his gratitude, the farmer rode away. It was with some dismay that Lucy realized Lyra had disappeared too, meaning she was once again on her own with Zeref.

Well, she supposed she might as well get it over with.

Placing her hands on her hips, she turned to him and demanded, "Go on, then."

Curious, he tilted his head a little. "Go on… what?"

"You can't just score me four out of ten on my combat skills and then leave it at that. If you're going to criticize everything I do on this mission while doing literally nothing to help, the least you can do is explain your reasoning behind it. You've got to be useful for something around here."

He hid it well, but Lucy was certain that, just for a moment, she had seen surprise flicker across his face.

"Very well," he conceded, falling into a lecturing role with surprising ease. "In your favour, your summoning is exceptionally quick. Impossibly quick, in fact. You're skipping so many steps that it shouldn't be possible… you must be cheating somehow."

It was her turn to look smug, but he simply shrugged. "Well, I'll figure out how you're doing it soon enough. I also wasn't aware that you had learnt Star Dress. Clearly my intelligence on that count was outdated."

Her smug smile slipped a little. So much for the hope that he might not have picked up on it.

"I'll give you bonus points for being competent on horseback; you never know when a skill like that will come in handy. Furthermore, that was a clever trick you used to discover the enemy's hiding place, though it barely wipes out the points you lose for not being able to track his magic properly in the first place. You've clearly not fought any real battles for a while. And, on that note…"

Slipping back into that familiar, condescending tone, he began counting points off on his fingers. "First, you're quick to summon Spirits but slow to dismiss them, so you reach your limit far too quickly. Your versatility is your strength and you're actively capping it. Second, you're clearly not accustomed to fighting hand-to-hand with Star Dress. You relied too much on your first strike, and when his scales deflected your blade, you had no alternative despite having a second sword in your off-hand. I'm guessing you only learnt the technique recently and have never used it in a real fight. Third, you rode a horse into battle against an enemy who can control beasts – it doesn't matter how good it looked in action; you handed him back his most dangerous weapon! Fourth, and not unconnected, you failed to fully think through the consequences of your opponent's magic. Beast control in a wooded area; of course he would have other animals at his disposal, ready to pounce. And, fifth…"

His eyes sparkled. "On a scale of one to ten, with one being a Celestial Spirit speed-summoning competition and ten being single combat against Acnologia, how screwed would you have been if you'd lost your keys before you'd managed to summon any Spirits?"

He'd made some valid points – though she'd have put most of them down to being out of practice rather than lacking good judgement full stop – but that last one grated. It wasn't as if she'd never noticed the weakness of the magic she'd been using her entire life.

"Not at all," she huffed. "Loke will always come if I need him, whether I have his key to hand or not."

"He didn't, though," Zeref pointed out.

"Clearly, he knew he wasn't really needed."

"What if he can't come to you?"

"Well, then, it'd be your turn to step up and start pulling your weight in this partnership, wouldn't it?"

Zeref snorted. "What sort of guild mage relies on their employer to protect them?"

"One without whom said employer is going to struggle to complete his mission," Lucy retorted, folding her arms. "Besides, you can criticize my style all you like, but you also said I looked good, so…"

"I did?"

"You said I looked good charging the enemy mage on horseback," she reiterated, daring him to take back his words.

"Well, you did. Not enough mages go in for mounted combat these days. It was popular two hundred years ago; I was very disappointed when the trend died out. It's utterly useless outside traditional warfare, of course, and it's incompatible with most forms of modern combat magic, but still, it's very aesthetically pleasing. You should bring it back. Chevalier Lucy has a nice ring to it."

"…You're making fun of me again, aren't you?"

"Whatever gave you that idea?" Getting to his feet at last, he stretched, and gazed dramatically off down the road. "Well, we can't stand around chatting all day. We've got walking to do."

Lucy glared at him. "You're having a lot of fun, aren't you?"

"You know what, Lucy? I rather think I am."

"LUCY!"

Natsu hammered repeatedly on Lucy's front door, much to the dismay of the straining lock and groaning hinges. The only thing louder than his knocking was his shout: "Lucy, I'm sorry! I need to talk to you! Please, open the door!"

The sight of a young suitor shouting apologies through a closed door was not an entirely unprecedented one in the student district of Crocus, to which Lucy's desire for similar-aged neighbours (and, of course, cheap rent) had drawn her. When the man in question was wrapped in a ragged travelling cloak and still bearing the hallmarks of a ten-month training journey, however, he was far more likely to attract unease than sympathy.

Worse, when he was still recognizable to any Grand Magic Games fans as Natsu Dragneel, Fairy Tail's most infamous member and the man who only yesterday had burned Domus Flau to the ground before proceeding to get into a fight in a restaurant… well, it was only a matter of time before someone called the Rune Knights.

With a concerned glance around the street, Happy ventured, "She's probably at work, Natsu. This is precisely why I told you to go and apologize last night…"

"If she was at work, that cool reporter would have said so when I asked for her address," Natsu countered. "I don't like this. Something's wrong."

"Natsu-"

The next fist Natsu sent towards the door was covered in flames.

It surrendered quietly, and they stepped inside. Happy had his paws over his eyes, bracing himself for the inevitable explosion of rage from within, but none came. Natsu's hunch was right. Lucy's house was empty.

As they moved warily through the lounge, Natsu still calling out his friend's name, Happy fluttered over to the haphazard stack of notebooks Lucy had tipped out of her satchel that morning. "Natsu, look! All her journalist stuff is here. She wouldn't have gone to work without these."

Only silence answered him.

Natsu wasn't listening. He had gone completely still. Stood on the rug in the centre of the room, with his face lifted slightly skywards, nostrils flared, the Dragon Slayer was as frozen as if he'd been caught in one of Gray's ice blasts.

"Natsu…?" Happy whispered.

The look his partner turned towards him was furious enough to make Happy flutter backwards. "Zeref," he hissed. "Zeref's been here!"

"…What?"

"Zeref has Lucy!" Natsu shouted the words, as if unable to understand why Happy wasn't sharing his fury – or the fear it hid; the fear that only the cat knew him well enough to be able to hear.

That was why Happy fought back the cold, clammy hand that sought to wrap around his own little heart, and offered up the voice of logic and calm in Lucy's absence. "We don't know that for sure. There's no sign of a struggle-"

His words had the opposite effect. "There wouldn't have been a struggle! You haven't met him- there's nothing she could have done! He's taken her!" Spinning abruptly, he drove his fist into the closest wall. Cracks raced through solid brick; a vortex of angry flames scorched a spiral onto the plaster. "Dammit! I should have been here!"

"Natsu…"

The trickle of dust and the soft crackling of flames provided the only response.

Then Natsu took a deep, shuddering breath, stood up tall, straightened his scarf, and turned back to Happy. "We're going after them," he vowed. "The scent trail's still strong. I'm going to get Lucy back, Happy, I swear it."

"Aye!"