The Scars That Make You Whole
By CrimsonStarbird
The Laws of You and Me, Part 4
-The Future Promised To Us-
What the hell am I doing?
That one thought played over and over again in Lucy's mind. Never with an answer, never with a helpful hint, never evolving into anything more than that one merciless accusation.
Everyone she'd met had been so supportive. From Romeo's unadulterated joy to Lyon and Sherria's earnest well-wishing, former colleagues and old friends had all come together to help her revive Fairy Tail.
Except, that wasn't what she was doing.
If all Lucy wanted was to bring her guild back together, she'd have signed up when Natsu had first pitched the idea to her.
Things will never go back to how they were. That was what she'd said to him – and to everyone else who'd been dining in the Buon Gusto that night – right before she'd thrown a table at him and earned herself an evening in Central Crocus Police Station for her troubles.
She'd repeatedly told herself that she was here because Zeref was blackmailing her, but deep down, she knew it was just an excuse. His threat against her friends had been a bluff, and she'd called it, and yet she'd still decided to accompany him. And not just that – she'd elected to keep Zeref's involvement secret of her own accord, when she could have confessed everything to Cana or Lamia Scale and begged for their help as soon as he was out of sight.
Everyone assumed she was here out of love for her old guild, and that wasn't true at all.
She was here because she'd been angry and she'd been upset and she'd felt trapped between a present she couldn't cope with and a future she'd just rejected, and it had driven her to do something reckless.
She had said yes to Zeref because it was something different. It wouldn't have mattered if he'd wanted her help resurrecting Fairy Tail or filing his tax return, as long as it got her away from the situation in which she'd landed herself.
In that moment, she hadn't stopped to think about what it meant that the Black Mage himself was the one offering her the way out.
Ever since she'd left Macao's house, though, she'd been able to think of nothing else.
Zeref was the one who wanted Fairy Tail back together. Not her. Maybe she was starting to want it too, but that didn't change the fact that by doing so, she was giving the guild's sworn enemy exactly what he wanted.
It wasn't as though he was helping Fairy Tail out of a sudden conversion to altruism, was it? He wanted something; something he could only get when the guild was whole. By bringing them back together, she was delivering them right into his hands.
The First of September, X792.
When she and Cana had picked that date out of the blue, they'd assumed that they were choosing the date of Fairy Tail's rebirth.
Instead, they had set the date of Fairy Tail's destruction.
As soon as the guild was together again, Zeref was bound to make his move. What he was planning she could only guess, but there would be conflict and there would be death. That was her quest: to reunite all her friends in time for him to destroy them.
She wasn't resurrecting a guild. She was raising an army.
What the hell am I doing?
That thought, again. That accusation.
These were her friends. Her colleagues. Her family. The almost-complete-strangers who had once stood between her and Phantom Lord, refusing to hand her over to save themselves, and whose acts of love and kindness had never weakened since.
These were the mages who had suffered as much as she had upon Fairy Tail's disbanding, but who had refused to stop walking forwards, finding new friends and bettering themselves in the hope that they would one day be able to return to the guild they loved. They were strong of magic and of heart – but they were also human. Victory in the Grand Magic Games had not made them immortal; triumphing over Tartaros had not rendered them unbeatable. These were her friends who did the best they could, not knowing if it would ever be enough.
These were the friends she was about to rip from their lives and plunge into open warfare against an unbeatable enemy without so much as a warning.
I want to revive Fairy Tail, she was telling everyone, but wasn't the truth even simpler? I want you to come and die for a concept even I gave up on.
She curled up tighter into herself. Her wandering had brought her to the fountain somewhere in the heart of Marguerite Town, and no further; she sat upon its low stone wall with her arms around her shins, eyes shut, forehead resting on her knees. She didn't care how much attention she was attracting. Residents of a town with a guild were accustomed to much stranger things.
No epiphany came to her, nor was she expecting one. It simply felt right for her outward appearance to reflect the guilt twisting within. It was indecisive, like she was; it was running away, like she wanted to be.
How long she had been there, thinking the same thoughts over and over, she did not know. Countless pairs of footsteps had come and gone, until at last one set approached and stopped… and waited.
A familiar voice remarked, "You're slacking, Lucy."
"Go away, Zeref."
He did not go away. "What happened?"
"You happened."
Unfortunately, though not altogether unsurprisingly, he ignored the hint. "Yes," he said, soft and curious and strangely musical. "But I happened to you two days ago, and you're only getting upset now, so I'm not the cause, am I?"
She did not raise her head, refusing point-blank to look at him. "I don't want to talk about it."
"Okay," he said. "But would you like to not talk about it in a café somewhere? We were supposed to meet for lunch two hours ago, and I'm hungry."
"It's two o' clock already?"
"Half past."
"Oh… sorry."
Hang on, why was she apologizing? She glanced up defiantly, ready to take her apology right back from this man she was still angry with – and did a double-take. The Black Mage looked a lot less dignified when there were feathers in his hair.
"What happened to you?" she demanded. "I thought you were going sightseeing, not wrestling in a chicken coop!"
He gave his head a vigorous shake, scattering white-grey feathers around him in an angel's shroud. "I did go sightseeing. I was mobbed by pigeons on the way back. Does that look any better?"
"Yeah. I take it the animals around the town are still acting up, then?"
"Seems that way. So, are we getting lunch, or…?"
With a sigh, Lucy got to her feet. "Alright, fine. But you're paying."
"How do you work that out?"
"You're the one who always goes on about me being your hired mage. Don't you think that you, as my employer, ought to be covering our expenses on this trip?"
"That's a good point," he mused. "Very well; lunch is on me."
"…Oh," Lucy blinked. She had not been expecting him to give in so easily, and now she had to struggle to keep hold of her anger against the surprise of him actually being reasonable for a change. "Well, uh… there was a nice-looking café down this way, I think-"
"Let's not go that way."
"Why not? What's that way?"
"A lot of dead pigeons," he said matter-of-factly, pointing instead towards a small coffee shop on the far side of the town square. "How about that one?"
"Dead…? You know what, I don't think I want to know. That café is fine."
Late lunch with the Black Mage turned out to be surprisingly mundane. The café was unremarkable, the kind with overpriced cakes and underpaid waiting staff that she had become all too familiar with during her ten months in Crocus. Though she suspected that Zeref had picked the table in the corner on purpose – the one furthest away from all the other patrons – the café wasn't exactly busy in the middle of the afternoon, and it hardly seemed worth bringing up.
Unlike her usual travelling companions, Zeref seemed to have some idea of how to behave in public. It was nice to not have the constant, nagging worry that she was going to get dragged into some incomprehensible food fight at any moment. In fact, there wasn't a single thing about him to draw the attention of the other diners. Sat down, he still looked small, but it seemed less strange – perhaps because there was no contrast with the purposeful way in which he often carried himself. She was still unable to sense any magic from him. Not being able to assess for herself how strong he was only gave her imagination the liberty to run wild. She wondered if that was why he did it.
Lucy watched him as he systematically tore the tops off the sachets of sugar on the table and tipped them into his coffee one by one, wondering about the harmless-looking man in front of her. This continued for several minutes, until she concluded that studying him was only making her more confused. His innocent demeanour gave nothing away… other than the fact that he really liked sweet coffee.
It was as he reached for the final sachet that Lucy asked, bemused, "Are you going to save any of that for me?"
He paused, stared down at the almost-empty pot on the table as if only just realizing what he was doing, and reluctantly pushed it towards her.
"Thanks," she grinned, adding it to her own cup. Then, because she couldn't resist, she added, "You have quite the sweet tooth, huh?"
"My body is stuck at fourteen years old, Lucy," he told her calmly, not looking up from the coffee he was stirring. She could understand the need for concentration – it was surprising that the spoon could move at all, given that he must have added enough sugar to turn it into sludge. "How much black coffee did you drink when you were fourteen?"
"…Good point. I never thought about it that way. That must be really annoying."
Zeref gave her a look that she conceded she totally deserved. "You think?"
"Have you tried transformation magic? You know, like Mira can do. Wouldn't that let you take on an older form, even if it was only temporary?"
"No. It's not so much that this body doesn't age as that it resists change. If I get hurt, the wound will vanish within seconds, even if it isn't severe enough to trigger my immortality. My hair doesn't grow, and if I cut it, it reverts back straight away. Any change I make soon comes undone, magical or otherwise. I'm perfectly capable of using transformation magic, of course, but I can't maintain it for more than a few seconds – and even that takes an inordinate amount of effort, as I have to fight against myself every step of the way."
"…Oh."
"Lucy, after four hundred years, it's safe to say that anything you can think of, I've already tried."
"I was only trying to be nice," she scowled; that comment had been unnecessary. "Which, by the way, is more than you deserve, since I'm still mad at you."
"Are you going to tell me why, now? Or are you just going to sit there and sulk?" His gaze flicked deliberately over Lucy's shoulder to the approaching waiter. "I don't particularly care either way. I'm only here for the food."
At that comment, the anger and the doubt that had been draining away ever since Zeref's arrival suddenly returned in full force. This was about her friends' lives. How could he act like it didn't matter?
The waiter set down two sandwiches and two slices of cake and left them alone again. The clutter made the table seem somehow smaller, as though they were closer together, and it was across that gap that she locked gazes with the Black Mage and said, "The Master disbanded Fairy Tail to protect us from you, didn't he?"
He met her stare without flinching; took the words with little sign he had recognized them as the accusation they were. Not a trace of his thought process showed on his face, complementing the neutral tone of his eventual response. "You'll have to ask him that."
"Don't give me that," Lucy snapped. "I don't believe for a second that you don't know exactly what's going on here. The Master disappeared without warning ten months ago and hasn't been seen since, and yet you told me when all this started that you know exactly where he is and what he's doing." When he shrugged, she slammed her hand down on the table. "Don't you dare. Be honest with me, Zeref, or we're through. I'll go straight back home and you can continue this godforsaken quest on your own."
He made a slight motion with his hands that might have purported surrender. He wasn't the least bit intimidated by her, but he would play along. "I can speculate on Makarov's motives, if you'd like."
"Do that. And answer my first question: the Master disbanded Fairy Tail to protect us from you, didn't he?"
Again, he held her gaze for far too long, pensive and impenetrable, until she was convinced that he wasn't going to answer. But she held her ground, and at last, every bit as neutral as before, he said, "Yes and no. I suspect his reasoning was twofold."
"Explain."
Zeref shrugged, as if this meant nothing to him; as if he were merely indulging a child. "Makarov wants to negotiate with me. I believe he feared that if his guild existed as a tangible thing, I would be able to use it against him; by threatening it, perhaps. By disbanding the guild, by cutting ties, he therefore assumed he was strengthening his negotiating position. And, of course, the other reason is obvious – if negotiations broke down, it would not be so easy for me to target the guild in retribution."
Lucy jabbed at her sandwich. Something about how calmly and objectively he was talking about the lives and livelihoods of her friends had stripped away her appetite, but the soft bread was proving to be a good outlet for her anger. "So that's why you want to reunite the guild? So that you can hurt us in order to make the Master suffer?"
"Not at all," came the patient response. "Fairy Tail's existence, or lack thereof, makes no difference to what happens between Makarov and myself."
"But you just said-"
"I said Makarov assumes it does, but his reasoning depends on one fundamental misconception."
"And what's that?"
Zeref smiled. "He believes that I am willing to negotiate."
"And you're not?"
"I am not."
To her own amazement, Lucy burst out laughing. "Of course you're not!" she exclaimed. "I mean, why on earth would you want to talk through a peaceful solution when you can just slaughter all of us instead?"
"There's a little more to it than that, Lucy," he said easily. "What it comes down to is this: Makarov has something that I want. There are no circumstances under which he'll give it to me, and there are no circumstances under which I'll say 'oh well, I guess I don't need it after all.' Believe me, I have spent a lot longer than he has trying to work my way around that little impasse. Conflict between us is inevitable."
"Have you even bothered to discuss it with him? Clearly, the Master must think there's some way of avoiding conflict!"
For the first time, Zeref looked away from her, glancing out the window with a sigh. He looked more like an adult in that moment than she had ever seen from him before. In fact, he hadn't displayed a single flash of childishness since the conversation had taken its serious turn, and she wondered how many of his mannerisms were deliberate.
"Makarov claims he wants to negotiate," Zeref pondered. "And he's being polite enough about it… but what he's really doing is trying to threaten me. That's not a good idea at the best of times, even before you take into account the fact that he has no leverage. All the cute little things he imagines I care about, I don't. There's only one thing that I want, and since I don't currently have it, the worst he can do is threaten to release or otherwise destroy it – which we both know he can't bring himself to do."
With a shrug, he added, "Well, it's not entirely his fault. He has most of the puzzle pieces, but not all of them, and the big one he's missing has been really screwing him over these past ten months. It's been rather amusing to watch, from afar."
There was silence for a moment, and then Lucy asked, quietly, "Where is the Master?"
"I won't tell you that."
"Is he hurt?"
"No."
"Is he a prisoner?"
"No."
"I don't believe you."
"It makes no difference whether you believe me or not. Now, I've answered your questions, like you wanted; are we done here?"
Like hell they were done. "If it really has nothing to do with the Master, then why do you want Fairy Tail back together?"
"I won't tell you that, either."
"Then how do I know I'm not giving you the one thing that the Master risked everything to protect?"
"You don't."
Lucy slammed her fist down onto the table. The air seemed to snarl as she dragged it between her teeth.
He watched her for a moment without reacting, and then said, "To be honest, Lucy, I don't know either. As I told you, I can only speculate on Makarov's intentions; I have yet to speak to him in person. However… I am almost certain that the great inconvenience he has caused me in disbanding Fairy Tail is a coincidence. I do not believe he is aware of the true reason why I need the guild."
He picked up his fork, gave his slice of cake a half-hearted prod, and then looked back at her. "Are you done interrogating me now? I'd quite like to eat."
"One last question," she said, in the coldest tone she could muster, and he set the fork back down with a sigh.
"Go on, then."
"Are you going to attack Fairy Tail as soon as it is reunited?"
The response came without shame or hesitation. "Yes."
"Then I'm not going to help you!" she burst out.
"Lucy-" he tried to interrupt, but she simply spoke louder.
"Yes, I want my guild back, and yes, I want to do something for all the people who have spent ten months waiting to return to Fairy Tail… but if all I'm doing by reviving the guild is leading those people to their deaths then I'm not going to do it! Better they live on without their guild than die for it!"
"Lucy!"
Something flashed in his eyes. Something that burnt crimson, something like hellfire, something like a gate that never should be opened; at long last, she was picking up the sense of sheer danger that she had been expecting ever since he had invited himself into her life. But rather than scaring her, it made her blood burn with ferocious confrontation. If he wanted to challenge her, to argue, to fight, she was more than willing to defend her beliefs-
There was a tap at the window.
Both of them turned to look in silence. A bird was perched on the window ledge. It might have been a pigeon, except Lucy had never before seen a pigeon that shone like diamond in the glare of the afternoon sun. Perhaps it was a statue, then, but no human hand could carve so perfectly from crystal… and besides, statues didn't tap on windows.
"It looks like one of Lyon's ice creatures," Lucy said numbly. The switch from anger to bewilderment was too much for her mind to process; she continued to stare as the bird tapped at the window again, shaking feathers veined like snowflakes.
Zeref got up and opened the window, and the bird hopped onto the table, where it proceeded to ignore him completely and hold its leg out to Lucy. There was a tiny roll of paper attached to it. When she took it, the construct dissolved as sparks of blue magic.
"What does it say?" Zeref asked. There was no trace of that momentary danger in his words; his eyes were once again starless skies.
Unrolling the miniature message, Lucy read it aloud. "Lucy – we haven't found the source of the trouble in the city, but we're going ahead with the Thanksgiving Parade anyway. We're meeting at the guildhall to discuss increased security measures. Can we count on your assistance? -Lyon." She turned the paper over. "Hang on, there's a postscript. PS – the messenger pigeon was my idea. Cool, huh? -Sherria."
Lucy smiled at that, but it quickly faded. Scrunching up the note, she got to her feet. "I'm going to help Lamia Scale with the parade tonight."
That assertion was a dare for Zeref to contradict her, but he just shrugged. "Do what you want."
She made to leave, and then stopped, rounding on him once again. "We're not done, by the way," she spat. "Our mission is postponed until further notice." After a moment's thought, she reached into her bag and tossed him the key to her hotel room. "I'm going to be at Lamia Scale's party all night. Stay in the hotel and stay out of my way. I don't want to see you for the rest of the day. Is that understood?" When he just shrugged again, she snapped, "Zeref!"
He tilted his head to one side and gazed up at her with all his false innocence. His left hand was playing with a silver-white pendant around his neck; with the fork in his right hand, he indicated her plates of food. "If you're leaving, can I have your cake?"
With a wordless growl, she turned on her heel and stormed out of the café.
If anything in the world could take Lucy's mind off her disastrous lunch with Zeref, it was time with her guild – and if her guild wasn't available, Lamia Scale was a close second. The stately feel of their guildhall did not dampen the festival spirit, but elevated it to a level of sophistication that would have made guests at the king's Summer Ball jealous. Their home had been transformed into a palace of colour and light.
Despite four more reports that morning of domestic animals suddenly turning on their owners – and one eyewitness report of an entire flock of pigeons falling dead from the sky, which was quickly dismissed as nonsense – no one had found any trace of the serpentine man Lucy had fought on the road, or unearthed any motive behind the incidents. If they were trying to scare people away from the Day of Thanksgiving, the crowds already jostling for the best position in the streets marked their plan as a resounding failure.
By now, everyone in the guild had heard the rumour that the city was being targeted, and that was precisely why they were twice as lively as usual. Going ahead with the parade sent a message: We are here. Come and get us if you dare.
Tonight, Lamia Scale's presence in Marguerite was going to be blindingly bright. Any enemy who attacked their city was going to regret it.
That was the reassurance they were hoping the townsfolk would take away from the parade, at least.
But declaring their challenge meant nothing if they couldn't back it up. Most Lamia Scale mages were participating in the parade, and they couldn't afford to scale that back if they were to appear undaunted by recent events, but they had called back to Marguerite all their members who had originally chosen to undertake jobs in local villages that night rather than participate in the parade. Public performance wasn't for everyone, after all. Those reinforcements, along with Lucy, would be stationed as security guards at fixed intervals along the route.
It was the first time Lucy had ever been enthusiastic about guard duty – mostly because it guaranteed her a good vantage point from which to watch the parade. She cheered up even more upon learning that she would not be watching it alone, either: Lyon had assigned Carla as her partner for the evening. Even though Carla had fully recovered after a night in the infirmary, Wendy had been adamant that the Exceed had to take it easy for a few days. Carla had protested vehemently against this decision until realizing it would save her from having to be a backing dancer for the Sky Sisters' routine.
Lucy and Carla had been deployed in the town square. It was the widest part of the parade route, and by far the busiest, thanks to the fact that it was where the Sky Sisters' float would stop for their first proper performance. Lucy knew that the sheer concentration of people would make it the most likely target.
The fact that Lyon was assigning her there, rather than a member of his own guild, was an unspoken reminder of his faith in Fairy Tail, and in her. After that afternoon, she wasn't sure if she deserved that faith, but she wouldn't let anything Zeref had said stop her from protecting Lamia Scale with everything she had.
And as they poured over a map of the parade route, discussing defensive strategies she hoped they wouldn't need; as she watched the Sky Sisters' last-minute rehearsal and wondered if it would be possible to surgically remove half of Sherria's hyperactivity and switch it with half of Wendy's nervousness; as she listened to Lyon's rehearsed pep talk for the performers, and his second, spontaneous, and somehow twice as rousing pep talk for the guild's newly appointed security team, Lucy was swamped by a sudden wave of nostalgia for her guild.
Right now, Lamia Scale was everything Fairy Tail once was.
It was everything she wanted Fairy Tail to be once again.
And the moment they had it back, it would kill them.
Better they live on without their guild than die for it.
"Wendy says you're trying to reunite Fairy Tail," Carla said.
Lucy winced. She had been wondering how long it would take Carla to bring that up.
The truth was, she'd hoped to have more time to work through her own doubts before having to defend her position against Carla. She liked the Exceed, of course, but Carla had always been a little harder to get on with than the other members of their team – and if Wendy wanted to stay in Lamia Scale, Carla would not only defend that decision to the death, but she would do so with a cold and irrefutable logic that could convince anyone not already swayed by Wendy's emotional plea.
Right now, Lucy couldn't even convince herself that reuniting Fairy Tail was the right thing to do. She didn't stand a chance against Carla.
"Yeah, I was." She shrugged, as if it wasn't a big deal. "Wendy said she wanted to stay in Lamia Scale, though, so it doesn't matter. Look, it's Lyon! Aren't his ice birds so pretty?"
Awkward conversation thus nipped in the bud, Lucy turned her attention back to the parade. She was sat on the roof of the same café in which she and Zeref had argued that afternoon, keeping an eye on the crowds below – and the pigeons above – for any sign of suspicious activity. Carla was beside her in human form. They had chosen this location partly for the views of the town square below, and partly because it was directly facing the spot where each parade float stopped for a brief performance. They might as well enjoy the show while they could.
Lyon had taken the front float. Not only was he one of Lamia Scale's most famous members, and one who secretly delighted in dazzling the crowds with his magic, but he was also more than capable of looking after himself, and the first float was the most likely target. The Sky Sisters were right in the middle of the parade, and their Guild Master brought up the rear. (To anyone who asked, this was because the rear float also could be a target, though Lyon had privately informed Lucy that it was mostly in response to the requests from last year's festivalgoers that they be able to watch the rest of the parade and then sneak away without having to find out what horrifying spectacle the old woman had planned for them this year.)
Although Lucy was on constant watch for any anomaly in the crowd, she had ditched her original plan to summon Sagittarius and use his Star Dress transformation on herself. The performers were doing their best to appear relaxed, and having two snipers with drawn bows in full view of the crowd wouldn't help anyone's nerves.
Besides, there hadn't been a whiff of any illicit activity so far – and if Lucy recalled correctly, the twin jugglers presently wowing the town square with synchronized routines of daggers and torches were the act directly preceding Wendy and Sherria.
"What do you mean, it doesn't matter?" Carla demanded. Lucy twitched; she had thought she had escaped that conversation. "One person said no, so you're giving up? If that's how insincere this reunion is then I'm glad Wendy turned you down!"
That scathing tone brought a protest automatically to Lucy's lips. "It's not like that!"
"Isn't it?" Carla challenged. She folded her arms; her tail swished impatiently. She could be every bit as cold in human form as she could when she was a snow-white cat, and ten times as intimidating. "Because that's exactly what it looks like to me."
"Then… Carla, does that mean you want to come back to Fairy Tail?"
"Wherever Wendy is, that's my home. If she stays, I stay. If she goes, I go." Carla's eyes narrowed as she gazed down upon the plaza, though Lucy suspected she wasn't paying any attention to the jugglers. "Of course I miss Fairy Tail. I thought that when our guild disappeared and we came to Lamia Scale, it would be just like joining Fairy Tail after we lost Cait Shelter… but it wasn't. When we joined Fairy Tail back then, we already had connections to it – other Dragon Slayers; other Exceed; allies and mentors we had already come to know on the Oración Seis mission, who went out of their way to make us feel at home. Wendy has Sherria here… but I only have Wendy. I miss you and Natsu and… and Pantherlily…"
"And Happy?" Lucy asked innocently.
"I do not miss the male cat," Carla harrumphed, and her blush was far more obvious upon unfurred cheeks. "Excluding him, though… Yes, I miss Fairy Tail, and yes, I want to see it back together again. But this indecisiveness? This half-heartedness? That's not the guild I love."
Then Carla sighed, and her harsh tone relented. "I'm sorry, Lucy. I'm not trying to blame you – not when you're the only person trying to do something about this situation. But… when the guild was disbanded, Wendy cried for weeks. Weeks. I won't let her give up the security and friendship she has in Lamia Scale for some vague and ill-planned vision of a reunited Fairy Tail. She deserves better than that."
"I know," Lucy conceded softly.
Below, the jugglers' float was turning an awkward bend around the fountain. Soon they would be gone, and the Sky Sisters' stage would take its place. Already the crowd was beginning to chant their names. The looming threat had failed to quieten them, and with the arrival of the main act, they roared triumphant at last.
On impulse, she added to Carla, "That's why I was determined to gather a load of our friends together before talking to Wendy again. I wanted to prove to her that Fairy Tail was still alive. But… I'm not so sure if resurrecting the guild is the right thing to do any more, that's all."
"Why not?"
"Because…" She paused to try and frame the question in words that wouldn't give too much away. "Carla, what would you do if I told you that the guild was going to be targeted by dark mages the minute it was back together?"
The Exceed's response came without hesitation. "I'd do everything in my power to stop Wendy from going back."
"Yeah, I thought so."
Carla continued, "And Wendy would do everything in her power to be there."
"What?"
"Look, they're starting!"
As the music picked up, Carla shushed her impatiently. A whirlwind of silver and violet formed on the stage, which burst into a storm of pure white feathers, revealing Wendy and Sherria standing hand-in-hand as they greeted their fans.
Sherria was as hyperactive and confident as ever, but Wendy was an entirely different person from the trembling girl who just that afternoon had rushed to the guild's physician for written confirmation that it was impossible to die of embarrassment. She was every bit the God Slayer's equal on that stage. Just as she had learnt to unlock her magic's full power by watching Natsu and Gajeel, until she had become a reassuring presence on the battlefield in her own right, there was nothing Wendy couldn't do if she put her mind to it – and watching her from afar, Lucy felt a surge of pride and affection completely distinct from the intoxicated cheering of the crowd.
I want to give her back her guild, Lucy thought, and it twisted uncomfortably in her stomach.
It wasn't until the float began to move on, to bouquets of appreciation and wails of lamentation flung from the crowd, that Lucy realized she had been so absorbed in the performance that she had completely forgotten her duties as Lamia Scale's lookout – and if the guilty look Carla shot her was any indication, the Exceed was the same.
Lyon had put the Sky Sisters in the middle of the parade – the safest spot – precisely because they were so popular locally that it made them the obvious targets. Yet their main performance of the night, given in the most crowded spot along the whole route, had gone without a hitch.
"This doesn't feel right." Lucy voiced her worry out loud without thinking, and at Carla's sharp glance, she added, "I mean, I'm glad there haven't been any attacks, but…"
"I know. If they were targeting Marguerite, why not strike during Wendy's performance? I have a bad feeling about this…"
"Is that a premonition?"
"No. Just my intuition. I can direct my premonitions better in human form, but I still can't make them come on command. I haven't had any for a while."
"Didn't you have one yesterday?"
"…What?"
"Wendy told me you had some sort of vision yesterday while you were out on a job. That was why you passed out and ended up in the infirmary, wasn't it?"
Carla dragged her attention away from Wendy's disappearing float to give Lucy a genuine frown. "No? I mean… I suppose I could have done, but I've never had one that I haven't remembered before."
"What happened on your job, then?"
"I don't know," the cat admitted. "I remember arriving at the cliffs with Wendy, and I remember her calming the birds… and the next thing I know, I'm in the infirmary. I'm fine now, though," she added, a blatant challenge that Lucy had no intention of taking; Carla was intimidating on a whole different level to the Black Mage. "I can still fight to protect Wendy and the town. And, speaking of which…"
They turned their attention back to the square below. The crowd had calmed with the Sky Sisters' departure, but it was showing no signs of dispersing, as the rest of the parade floats continued to pass through one by one. With every new performer, Lucy's anxiety rose. Every float that passed beneath them unharmed only increased the chance of the next one being the target. Lucy watched, one hand on her keys… and waited.
Five young women dancing with ribbons and rainbow fire.
A transformation mage doing comedic impressions of the royal family.
A telekinetic puppeteer acting out the legend of the Fall of Dragnof using a homemade wooden dragon.
No attacks.
And she waited, and she waited… and still the night held nothing but joy.
A joy she could not share. What had they missed?
"Lucy!"
Carla's sharp shout interrupted her, and she had Loke's key half-raised before she realized that the panic was only in her head. The cat-turned-human was pointing down towards the square, but it wasn't an enemy she was indicating.
Not the conventional kind of enemy, anyway.
The float belonging to Lamia Scale's Guild Master had finally arrived, and the spectators who had attended the previous year's Day of Thanksgiving were beating a hasty retreat.
Carla continued, "Remember what Lyon said? We don't want to watch this. Come on, let's get down to the ground."
They busied themselves with scurrying across the rooftops, looking for an empty alleyway in which they could climb down without startling anyone. By the time they emerged into the town square, the Master's float was receding, and the significantly depleted crowds were milling about with lingering merriment but none of their prior intensity.
"Lucy! Carla!" A familiar silver-haired ice mage was weaving his way towards them, and Lucy tensed again, but there was none of the bitter aura of magic about him that would have indicated the presence of danger. "Any news?"
"No, it's all been quiet here," she reported. "You?"
Lyon's uneasy expression mirrored her own. "Same. Wendy and Sherria should be wrapping up their final performance about now. I've been retracing the parade route since I finished, and no one I've spoken to has had anything to report."
"Perhaps the extra security scared the enemy off," Carla ventured, though it was clear from her tone of voice that she didn't believe it either.
"Maybe. I don't think I'll believe that until we're all safely back in the…"
"Lyon?" Lucy prompted, as he tailed off.
The ice mage was staring at something over her shoulder. "…The guildhall," he finished numbly.
She turned, and there it was: Lamia Scale's guildhall was floating.
The entire building, from its crooked towers to its castle-like fortifications, hung in the air as if it had been hooked on a heavenly fishing line. It didn't sway; it didn't shake. Dirt and rocks poured from it in a constant rainfall, as the foundations beneath squealed at their sudden exposure. All the lights affixed to it before the festival still shone, fairy lights and torches and streaming magical banners: the guildhall had been transformed into a huge decorative lantern, held in the middle of nothingness by its own peculiar gravity.
"Is that… part of the celebrations?" Lucy murmured.
Carla shook her head, wide-eyed. "I don't think so…"
Without warning, all the lights on the guildhall suddenly winked out.
In their absence, the town square was bathed in a darkness that the half-set sun and the abundant streetlights couldn't fully account for. It was the darkness of doom, of inevitability, as every single person knew what was about to happen and none of them could do a thing about it.
The guildhall plummeted back to earth.
An almighty crash silenced the jubilation of half-drunk revellers; strangled the soaring crescendo of the Sky Sisters' final performance; condensed the dread trailing through the town into pure distilled panic.
Even at this distance, Lucy felt the shockwave pulsing through the streets; tasted the dust and ruin wrapped up in it. The wind brought with it bared fangs and bone-white claws. The falling guildhall had been the signal, and a pack of wolves poured into the town square, racing towards the crowd.
"We left the guildhall unguarded!" Lyon cursed, even as he threw up a wall of ice to stem the influx of beasts. "Dammit! They're after the guild, not the town!"
His barricades would do no good against the pigeons, which had left their urban nests to gather like a black swarm of arrows in the dusk, but Lucy had been on the verge of summoning Sagittarius for the past hour. The man-horse archer was already repelling their dive with a volley of his own arrows before Lyon had so much as shouted a warning.
Lucy grabbed Carla's shoulder. "We need to find the man behind this. Carla, can you fly me straight to the guildhall?"
"No!" Lyon interrupted. "Carla, take me instead. This is my home. My guild. Let me protect it." When they hesitated, he insisted, "You'd feel the same if Magnolia was under attack, wouldn't you?"
"…Very well," Carla agreed, and she shifted back to cat form to carry the man more easily.
"Lucy," Lyon called down to her. "Meet up with Wendy and Sherria and evacuate the town. I'll find the perpetrator. You have to protect the townsfolk."
"I will," she promised. The ice mage gave her a grateful nod, and then he and Carla burst through the flock of confused pigeons and up into the sky.
On the ground, Lyon had blocked all exits from the town square except one with icy barricades, and it was towards this that the crowd was stampeding. Dealing with mass panic was not something that Lucy's time as a Fairy Tail mage had prepared her for – they were usually the ones causing the panic – but she knew someone who could help, and she reached for her keys once more.
Loke appeared at once in front of the crowd. With a lion's irrefutable – and deafeningly loud – roar, he half-instructed, half-scared the fleeing festivalgoers into slowing down. Under his guidance, the panicked charge slowly began to shape itself into an orderly evacuation.
While Loke led the way, Sagittarius continued to repel the aerial assault by releasing exploding arrows skywards every time the swarm of pigeons drew too close. His owner, borrowing his power through their Star Dress connection, focussed on any wolves or worse monsters which threatened the crowd Loke was leading. She could sense the same unnatural magic she had encountered on the road permeating the air. It ebbed and flowed as the hordes of beasts approached and scattered, but she understood the rhythms of it now; whenever it spiked, she knew some feral dog or crazed donkey was about to come bursting out of one of the gardens they passed.
More and more people joined the wave of evacuees, including Lamia Scale mages, who lent their own magic and voices to the effort. Deferring to their superior knowledge of the streets, Lucy sent back the exhausted Sagittarius, and, after a moment's consideration, she asked Loke to leave as well – at least until she'd decided upon her next course of action. There was a lot that Zeref had failed to understand when he'd criticized her fighting style on the road – not least that her Spirits weren't swords to be drawn and sheathed at will, but her living, breathing friends – but she grudgingly admitted that maximizing her available options until she knew exactly who or what she was fighting had some merit.
"Lucy!"
Her hand was once again at her keys before she placed the voice as Sherria's. The two Sky Slayers were racing up the street towards her, Sherria waving her hands over her head.
Lucy sighed with relief to see both girls unharmed – but it didn't last. As they drew closer, she could see that Wendy looked frantic. She was running too quickly, too close, and Lucy had to take a step back when she shrieked, "Where's Carla? I thought she was with you!"
"Wendy, she's fine!" Lucy insisted. "She and Lyon flew over to the guildhall to catch whoever is behind the attack."
Somehow, her reassurance completely backfired. Wendy fell back, wide-eyed, her hands over her mouth. "Oh, no…" she whispered. "I should have… oh no…"
Sherria rested her hand on Wendy's shoulder, flashing her idol's grin. "Wendy, she'll be fine! She's with Lyon, remember!"
"No!" Wendy turned that distraught gaze upon her friend. "Carla's not the one in danger!"
"What do you mean?"
"Sherria… do you remember when I came back from the job yesterday, and my wrist was bleeding?"
"Yeah, you said you'd cut it on a rock, right?"
"It wasn't a rock," Wendy sniffed. "It was Carla. She attacked me. The magic that's turning the animals wild affects her too."