The Scars That Make You Whole

By CrimsonStarbird

The Laws of You and Me, Part 5

-Antares is Bright Tonight-

The scratch of claws on tile was the only warning Lucy received. An enormous beast pounced towards her from a nearby roof – body of a wolf, mane of a lion, tusks of a boar, and larger than all three animals combined – with green spittle flying from its jaws.

In the midst of battle, with the adrenaline flowing as freely as ale at one of Fairy Tail's parties, that was all the warning Lucy needed.

She rolled aside, reaching not for her keys but for the hilt of her Fleuve d'étoiles. The energy whip coiled around the beast's front paw before it hit the ground. With a sharp tug, she flipped the beast in mid-air and sent it crashing back-first into the road.

Nor was she finished. Lucy pulled it towards her, retracting the magical whip to add to her strength, and catapulted the beast over her shoulder. It hit a wall with enough force to stun it, and collapsed as a misshapen heap of fur.

Exhaling slowly, she let the stream of energy vanish, though she did not return the weapon to her belt. Even once she had confirmed that there were no other monsters waiting to pounce, she kept a tight hold on her whip as she resumed her jog through the city.

After a toppling building had separated her from Wendy and Sherria, Lucy had run on ahead, determined to catch up with Lyon and Carla at the guildhall before any harm could come to them – either from the villain behind this, or from each other. This part of the town was deserted. Even before the panicked mob had become a systematic evacuation, people had fled instinctively from the point where the guildhall had crashed back to earth.

Now, every sound belonged to an enemy: a pet turned vicious; a wolf dared by magic to strike at a human settlement; a monstrous beast summoned by the attackers, whose natural savagery needed no encouragement.

Ahead of her loomed Lamia Scale's guildhall, and Lucy found herself slowing to a walk. From the flickering of the few surviving streetlamps to the distant groaning of the earth, not yet acclimatized to its new position, everything about this scene was wrong.

Instead of Lamia Scale's palace of tradition and sanctuary there hunched a lopsided parody of a guildhall: walls askew, doorways twisted shut, darker than the evening sky and wrapped in a dead silence that made the quiet roads seem bursting with energy. By some warped miracle, the fairy lights that had once transformed the stern bricks into a fountain of colour had survived the impact, though not one of them was lit. They simply hung there, empty grey bulbs, dusted with the same earth and ash still settling upon the ruins. Lifeless decorations for a lifeless guildhall.

Who would do such a thing?

A chill ran down Lucy's spine as she realized she knew someone who would.

Someone who was more than capable of this level of destruction. Someone she had argued with and then stormed out on that very afternoon. Someone who, only yesterday, had openly suggested destroying Lamia Scale as the next stage of their quest…

Lucy shook her head firmly. Zeref couldn't be behind this; it went against everything he had spent the past two days trying to achieve. He would surely have realized that attacking Marguerite indiscriminately would prevent her from helping him ever again.

Then again, hadn't she sworn that very afternoon that she would never help him anyway…?

"Hello?" Lucy called, and the crumbling façade of the guildhall echoed her cry. "Is anyone there?" Ally or enemy, she didn't much care which, as long as they broke this dead, dead silence. "Lyon? Carla?"

Nothing.

Not a trace of the enemy who had done this to the guildhall. No sign of Lyon and Carla, though surely they would have beaten her here, if Carla had been in her right mind. No cries of any trapped survivors either, though she was grateful for this, because it confirmed that all the Lamia Scale mages had been absent from the guildhall when disaster had struck.

She was alone in this scene of devastation. The arch of dead lightbulbs grinned mockingly from above.

A clattering sound disturbed the stillness, and her heart leapt in a hybrid of fear and hope. A scattering of rubble. The low growl of a wolf. They were coming from inside the guildhall. At once, Lucy ducked through that sinister smile and entered what had once been the guild's courtyard, and now held all the charm of a cemetery.

The wolf growled again, and Lucy began to run. The entrance had caved in, but a collapsed wall had made another. She would have to gamble on its stability. If there was any chance that the Beast Master was hiding inside-

No sooner had she entered the ruins than a flurry of motion burst through a nearby wall: a shower of plaster heralded the arrival of a small figure being pursued by an abomination even larger and less recognizable than the beast which had attacked her on the street. It lunged, and the figure threw up his hands to shield himself, for all the good it would do against those enormous jaws. Lucy's whip crackled into life, but they were too far away-

Like the wingbeat of a ghostly butterfly, translucent black wind pulsed around them and was gone.

Just like that, all the momentum and energy vanished from the beast. It was so sudden and so unnatural that, even before the beast collapsed to the ground, it could only have been dead.

He crouched down and rested his hand briefly upon its snout. It didn't stir. Sighing, he got back to his feet, brushing stone dust from his knees. "Well, I did warn you…"

Lucy skidded to a halt. "Zeref?"

For the briefest of moments, he seemed to look right through her without recognition, and then his gaze sharpened. "Oh, hello, Lucy. Fancy seeing you here."

His nonchalance towards the present crisis reminded her abruptly of why they weren't on speaking terms, and her response came as a burst of anger. "I told you I didn't want to see you for the rest of the day!"

"How was I supposed to know exactly where you were planning to be?"

No way was he getting away with that childish response. She snapped, "What happened to staying in the hotel room?"

"There were too many people in the town. It was loud. I didn't like it." Zeref glanced away, folding his arms, back to sulking. "I figured that if the entire guild was in the town, the guildhall would be quiet… Turns out I was wrong."

As much as she hated to admit it, that unhappiness was genuine. Lucy sighed. "You're really not behind this, are you?"

"That would be somewhat counterproductive of me, don't you think? Not to mention, attacking Lamia Scale would be a violation of our non-aggression pact."

Her question had been rhetorical, but his response had come back sharp and quick, and she could not help bristling like she would at the drawing of a weapon. "Oh, I'm sure you'd be able to find some loophole in the fact that Wendy and Carla technically aren't Fairy Tail members right now to-"

"Our agreement never specified members of Fairy Tail," Zeref interrupted. "I promised not to harm any of your friends – so unless you've had a dramatic falling-out with Lyon and Sherria in the past few hours, I couldn't touch Lamia Scale even if I wanted to. Which, by the way, since you're clearly struggling to grasp this concept, I don't."

"Of course not," Lucy shot back. "No, you're saving all your murdering for the First of September."

"Lucy-"

"Forget it!" she shouted, holding up her hand to forestall an argument. The ceiling gave an ominous groan; they both glanced up warily. Quieter, she repeated, "Forget it. I'm not doing this now. I've got enemies to find and a guild to protect, and I can't be dealing with you as well. Stay here until it's over, alright?"

"I was going to do that anyway." His words were short, expressionless. It was difficult to tell whether or not he was still angry until the ceiling groaned again, and his gaze flicked upward once more. "Though, perhaps not precisely here…"

"…Fine."

He joined her as she began retracing her steps out of the ruined guildhall. She said nothing else; a deeply resentful silence held sway. If he had been here the whole time, he must have seen who had wrecked the building – and where they had gone – but he wasn't exactly volunteering the information, just as he had made no attempt to prevent the disaster. His indifference was abhorrent. If only she had never agreed to his stupid-

She never reached the end of that thought. As they passed through the hole in the guild's outer wall, the ceiling finally surrendered to the damage – and in that instant, there was no room in her mind for anything except the danger.

"LOOK OUT!" she screamed, throwing herself bodily at Zeref.

They tumbled across the courtyard as the warped vision of Lamia Scale's guildhall imploded behind them. A chunk of ceiling caught her a glancing blow, and something hit her square in the back, hard, and she knew that they hadn't gone far enough- that they were going to be buried alive-

But no more impacts came. Only dust.

One moment passed, and then another, and it wasn't until the roar of the stone avalanche had reduced to a harmless ringing in her ears that she could finally accept they were safe. The guildhall was an unrecognizable pile of debris behind them, but they'd survived.

There they were, in the middle of the courtyard, Lucy crouched over a prone Zeref who seemed… baffled.

Not shocked, that they'd narrowly escaped the collapsing building with their lives.

Not grateful that she'd pushed him out of the way.

Not even – so some bemused part of her mind noted – outraged at having ended up in what some might have considered a compromising position.

No, he simply looked baffled.

"What are you playing at?" he demanded.

Lucy flared up at once. "Hey, I didn't make the guildhall collapse! You're the one who was in there throwing monsters around-"

"You threw yourself in between me and danger!"

His accusatory tone wasn't quite what she'd been anticipating. Alright, so she hadn't exactly been expecting a thank you from this man, but this was a step too far. No one in her guild would have questioned an action like that. Been embarrassed by it, perhaps, if she'd saved them, but not questioned it. And certainly not treated it like a criminal offence.

She got to her feet, allowing him to sit up, and folded her arms. "Yeah. So?"

"So?" he echoed, as if he'd never heard the word before. "First of all, Lucy, you do know I'm immortal, don't you? It makes literally no sense for you to put yourself between me and mortal danger. I can't die! You can! All you're doing is making the situation worse!"

"Yeah, because the first thing I do when faced with mortal danger is a quick utilitarian calculation," she muttered, glaring at him.

"And secondly, we're enemies! The best possible outcome for you during this mission would be for me to somehow die in a freak accident – no guilt, no liability, just me gone! You should be going out of your way to throw me into as many deadly situations as possible, not trying to protect me from them with your stupid, frail, mortal body!"

"I don't care about any of that!" Lucy shouted back. "Whether or not it'll kill you doesn't make a difference! I'm not going to stand there and watch as a friend is hurt right in front of me!"

It took a moment for Zeref to find his voice. "Since when have we been friends?"

"Since… now! Since I say so! What does it matter, anyway?"

"I thought you were pissed at me."

"I AM PISSED AT YOU!" she roared. "But – that – doesn't – matter! If you wanted a teammate who would stand idly by when you're in danger, you shouldn't have hired me!"

"But…" For the first time since she'd met this man, he floundered.

A hearty laugh rose from behind Lucy. "You don't know our Lucy very well, do you?"

Lucy's heart tried to leap and sink all at once, achieving nothing but a jolt of painful adrenaline. It leapt, because she knew that voice, and when she spun round, Cana was leaning up against a one-winged cupid statue with a confident smirk on her face. But it also sank, because Lucy's attempt to keep Zeref's involvement hidden from her guild had already fallen apart, and they'd not even left Marguerite yet.

"Cana!" she exclaimed, before waving her hand towards Zeref, who was still sat in the middle of the ruined courtyard. "This is, uh…"

Cana winked. "Your Spymaster General, right?"

"Spymaster…?" Zeref echoed.

"Don't go there," Lucy muttered.

Cana sauntered over to Zeref and held out her hand, and after the longest moment of Lucy's life, he let her pull him to his feet. She didn't let go straight away, looking him up and down without a trace of shame. Lucy could hardly breathe. But Zeref endured Cana's scrutiny patiently, and with more than a little amusement, and at last she let him go without incident and returned to Lucy's side.

"Lucy," she hissed, cupping her hand to her mouth to make the stage whisper even less subtle. "He's cute, don't get me wrong, but I think he's a little young for you…"

"I'm not even going to dignify that woefully strained misinterpretation of this situation with a response," Lucy said stiffly.

Laughing again, Cana slung one hand around her friend's shoulders, and with the other, she waved Lucy's hand – the one still marked with Fairy Tail's symbol – in Zeref's direction. "Know what this is?"

"I do."

"No, I don't think you do, so let me explain it to you," she breezed. "This is the reason why you could be Lucy's sworn enemy and she'd still try and protect you from a rockfall." Then she considered this, and amended, "Well, maybe some of that is just Lucy being Lucy. She's too nice for her own good, sometimes. But the point still stands! We're Fairy Tail. We're the good guys. We don't stand by and let others suffer, whoever they may be. Understood?"

"Alright, Cana, he gets it," Lucy muttered, her face bright enough to rival Erza's hair. "You can let go of me now."

"You have a lot to learn before you're ready to run with my guild, Mr Spymaster," Cana grinned.

Zeref's eyes sparkled. "We'll see about that."

"Anyway," Lucy interrupted, as she wriggled out of her friend's grasp. "Cana, what are you doing here?"

"Looking for the bastard who did this to Lamia Scale, of course. There's only one man I know who's capable of levitating the guildhall like that, and I've been hoping to run into him ever since Tenrou Island. We have unfinished business."

"Unfortunately, he's not here. He must have left as soon as the guildhall fell, along with whoever is controlling the animals."

"Damn. Don't tell me we're going to have to search the whole town by hand…"

"I've fought him before," Lucy told Cana, resisting the urge to look at Zeref. It wasn't as though he'd help anyway, after how he'd acted on the road to Marguerite. Besides, she was with her guild, now. She didn't need him. "I can sense the magic that the Beast Master is using, and I can almost locate the source… but it's just a bit too weak. Last time I used a trick to get him to strengthen his magic, but the battlefield here is too large, so that won't work… but if we can amplify the signal, I might be able to pin the caster down."

"How do we amplify it, then?"

Recalling the instinct that had guided her when she'd provided cover for the evacuees, she suggested, "It spikes whenever there are animals present that it's affecting. If we can get enough of them in one place, it might make the magic strong enough for me to locate the mage behind it."

"Leave that to me."

Cana drew two cards from the holster at her belt. One was The Lovers, a standard card in the Major Arcana that she used in many magical combos. The other was less standard. It had a picture of a pigeon on it.

As the two cards began to glow, Lucy had to wonder if the effect of this spell wasn't to instil dread in all who witnessed it. "Cana, please tell me this isn't going to do what I think it will…"

"As much as I'd love to reassure you, Lucy," her friend replied sagely, "on balance, I believe this magic is going to do exactly what you think it will."

And there Lucy had been thinking Zeref was her least favourite teammate ever.

The squawk of a pigeon was not usually an ominous sound. It conjured images of birds scavenging for food in the town square, plodding the cobbled streets with their little heads bobbing and fleeing from overexcited toddlers. However, when the sound was multiplied a hundredfold by a flock swirling like an ever-growing storm in the sky, blotting out the stars with grey wings and aggressive talons… then, she wouldn't have been surprised to find the apocalypse right behind it.

Pigeons have wicked eyes, Lucy thought absently. I've never noticed that before.

"Is that enough pigeons for you, Lucy?" Cana grinned.

"That's enough pigeons to last me a lifetime," she muttered. In what she privately considered to be the bravest act of her life, Lucy closed her eyes against the sky of squawking death and focussed on the magic she remembered from the road.

It came to her more readily every time she reached for it. It was surely too wide-ranging for any one person to be wielding on their own, but it was nonetheless identical to the magic the snake-man had used. The alien sensation permeated the entire town – both a blessing and a curse, because it drifted aimlessly, originating from everywhere and nowhere all at once. It was as though she had been thrust into the middle of a field of arrows, all pointing in random directions.

Yet every pigeon joining the swarm brought with it another arrow, and the more that gathered, the more she began to see that there was a trend. It was weak and it was badly distorted – but the net flow of magic was moving from east to west.

"I've got it!" she crowed, her eyes flying open. "They're outside the city, hiding in the hills to the east!"

"Nice, Lucy!"

There was a pause.

Lucy prompted, "So, you can get rid of the pigeons now!"

"I don't have a way of getting rid of them!"

The two mages stared at each other.

"You have got to be kidding me," Lucy groaned.

"Time to run, Lucy!" Cana breezed, and she sprinted across the flagstones.

Lucy made to follow her, but a hand closed around her wrist before she had taken more than one step. There was an intensity that she could not quite read in Zeref's black eyes as he warned, "I still need you alive, Lucy. Don't do anything reckless."

"I'll do what I like, thanks," she retaliated, snapping her wrist out of his grip.

"I mean it. I'm not going to come and rescue you."

"Good, because I don't recall ever asking you to do so!"

"Fine."

"Fine!"

Above the wingbeats of their impending doom came a roar too sleek to belong to any wild beast: the artificial thunder of an engine. A flash of black and silver burst into Lamia Scale's courtyard, spun, and stopped in front of them with a screech of brakes. Cana had found a motorbike.

With a terrifying grin, Cana shook out her windswept hair and patted the seat behind her. "Hop on, Lucy."

Lucy didn't move a muscle. "Where did you get that bike?"

"I'll return it once the crisis is over," Cana evaded.

"Do you even know how to ride one?"

"I spent four months hanging out with Quatro Cerberus, Lucy. Of course I know how to ride. That whole biker gang aesthetic they have going on isn't just for show, you know." Then, in what must have been the least reassuring reassurance Lucy had ever heard in her life, Cana added, "It's cool, the town has been evacuated. There aren't any people there for us to hit."

"It wasn't other people I was worried about!" Lucy exploded.

"Don't tell me you left your sense of fun with Fairy Tail!"

"We have very different ideas of fun," Lucy muttered. With a last glance towards the pigeons – which, night-draped, looked more like vultures than urban wildlife – Lucy climbed gingerly onto the bike behind her friend.

"Time to revive our team from Tenrou Island," Cana remarked. "Hey, imagine how great the S-Class Trials would have been if I'd had a motorbike!"

"Yeah, you could have had a different partner, too."

"Oh, Lucy." Cana revved the engine; its growl was nectar to the butterflies in Lucy's stomach. As Cana glanced back at Zeref, Lucy could have sworn that she was gloating. "Sorry, Mr Spymaster. There's only room for two."

"He wasn't invited anyway," Lucy pointed out.

"Ooh, trouble in Team Lucy?"

"Can we just get this over with?"

"Right you are."

It took approximately three seconds for Lucy to regret opening her mouth. That was how long it took for the bike to jump from zero to sixty, anyway, leaving Lucy's scream and – so it seemed – most of her insides back in the courtyard.

Thus began Lucy and Cana's charge to save Lamia Scale: trailing fumes and screams and skid marks across the city, breaking every traffic ordinance in Marguerite in the process, and with a flock of crazed pigeons in hot pursuit.

The scariest thing about the situation was not that it was really happening, but that, if Fairy Tail got back together, Lucy knew this was probably going to end up being her new normal.

Elsewhere in the city, the slightly less suicidal team of Wendy and Sherria was also making its way through the town. If Cana's maniacal recklessness and Lucy's sheer pessimism netted off to produce a team with a normal level of adventuring spirit, then the subdued manner shared by the two Sky Slayers only emphasized the gloom of their situation. Wendy was worried about Carla. Sherria was worried about Wendy.

Since Wendy clearly wasn't going to speak, Sherria ventured, "Wendy? Do you sense the disturbance in the sky?" When no response came, she prompted again, "Wendy…?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah…"

"I think we should head in that direction. Let's trust Lucy to handle the situation at the guildhall. If we can defeat the Beast Master, we can protect the town and… and Carla too."

Wendy seemed to spend an eternity thinking this over. "Okay," she conceded, and Sherria let out the breath she had been holding. She knew it would feel to Wendy like abandoning Carla, but Sherria couldn't bring herself to believe that Lyon was in danger even if Carla had fallen victim to the enemy's magic. He could look after himself. Putting an end to the one behind this was the best course of action.

As they followed the flow of the magic in the air towards the town's eastern exit, she couldn't stop herself from asking the question that had been at the forefront of her mind since this began. "Wendy, why didn't you tell anyone about Carla?"

"Well… she doesn't remember what happened on the cliffs, and I didn't want her finding out that she attacked me. She'd feel so guilty, even though it's not her fault. I didn't want people to treat her like an enemy…"

"I see," Sherria said shortly. "You were only trying to protect her."

A nod; a sniff.

Sherria continued, "Is that why you turned Lucy down, too? Because you were trying to protect me?"

"No!" That was far too quick a protest, and besides, Wendy's poker face was only marginally more convincing than her best evil glare. "Well… that's not the only reason…"

"You do realize I'm capable of doing jobs without you, don't you?"

"It's… it's not like that…"

"Carla wants to go back to Fairy Tail."

"Does she? She's not said…"

"Well, obviously she hasn't, just like she didn't say anything when you decided to come to Lamia Scale in the first place! She'll do anything for you! So it's even more important that you do the right thing for the two of you!"

Wendy still couldn't meet her friend's gaze. "It's just… if Carla and I leave, you'll be on your own."

"I'll have the entire guild looking out for me! Which was working just fine before you joined, by the way!"

"Yeah, but…"

"Where's your faith in the guild, Wendy? In me? I'll be alright without you!"

"I…"

"Look, I'm sorry, okay?" Sherria said abruptly. "I know this isn't the right time. We'll get Carla back, and then we'll sit down and talk about this, all three of us."

"Y-yeah. Okay."

Wendy tried to smile, but she was still out of it. Sherria bit her lip. She knew she shouldn't have brought it up, not in the middle of a crisis, but it was too difficult when thinking about it made her so angry. For now, since Wendy clearly wasn't up to it, she had to take charge of their team.

"Wendy, do you still have your headset?"

"Huh? Yeah, I do."

The two Slayers were still in their idol outfits: complementary fluffy skirts – pink and white for Wendy, purple and blue for Sherria – and white wing ornaments in their hair. Both had worn feathered wings during the performance, but those had been abandoned the moment it became clear that there would be fighting. They did, however, still have their headsets – discreet microphones and earpieces that utilized the latest developments in magical communication not only to connect them to the speakers on stage, but also to allow them to telepathically speak to each other during the performance, just in case.

"Switch it back on," Sherria instructed.

They had reached the outskirts of the city. Here, the magic disturbing the air was stronger than ever, and in case they needed proof that they were in the right place, the incline ahead of them was swarming with monsters. From snarling wolves to oversized lizards to huge magical beasts no naturalist had survived trying to classify, the hellish tide was pouring down the hill towards the town – and the two girls were the only things standing in its way.

"Ready?" asked Sherria.

Wendy gave a nod. "Let's do this."

She held out her left hand, and Sherria took it with her right. Their fingers interlinked. The circuit was complete: power surged between them, spilling out into the air as divine light and rising wind. The God Slayer's black and the Dragon Slayer's silver flowed together to form a great jagged spiral, pointing up the hill ahead of them.

Together, they sprinted up the incline. Their fused sky drill cleaved through the tide of fur and fangs, hurling beasts of all sizes up into the sky like a dragon's idea of popcorn.

As impressive as it looked, however, it was clear to Sherria – and to Wendy too, if she'd been focussed enough to notice – that this was a mere fraction of their true combined power. The winds moved slightly out of sync with each other, silver lagging behind black like a time-reversed shadow, unnoticeable in the heart of the vortex but rapidly losing strength further out.

This was her fault. Because she'd picked exactly the wrong moment to confront Wendy about leaving the guild.

But if Wendy hadn't been so determined to treat her like a child in the first place…

Sherria shook her head vigorously. A huge monster not indigenous to any of the civilized realms of Ishgar was hurtling towards them: a mammoth covered in natural green plate armour, with tusks as large as Wendy and red eyes burning with a fury no animal should have possessed. Under normal circumstances, their combined power could have pierced its scales, but Sherria could not bring herself to believe in it right now.

"Scatter!" she sent through the headset. "You take the ones in front!"

At once, Wendy dived to the right and Sherria to the left. The mammoth burst straight through their disintegrating sky drill, but the two girls were clear.

Turning, Sherria slashed upwards with her hand and a pulse of black wind struck the monster from behind and underneath. Its downhill momentum was to be its downfall; its hind legs flipped over its head and it was sent rolling towards the town like a great scaly wrecking ball.

Perhaps she should have stopped to think about the consequences of that attack – the rolling mammoth punched straight through five consecutive houses before the sturdier stone of a church was able to bring it to a stop, and it wasn't even the fault of their team's ex-Fairy Tail mage.

Still, the evacuated town was not her priority right now. She turned back to the hill in time to see Wendy's Roar take down another wave of wolves, and then they were running together up the path she'd cleared. They were almost at the top. Many people – minions, no doubt – were gathered on the hill, but only one mattered: the snake-featured mage Lucy had described. He was the one behind this.

As Sherria and Wendy came face to face with their opponent, they came to realize two things.

The first was that the man himself wasn't the sole source of that magic – of course he wasn't; the taint saturating the atmosphere was far too widespread to be the work of a single mage. The snake-man was the caster, but behind him, nestled within a four-wheeled cart, was a large crystal orb. A magical amplifier.

But before either of them could leap forward and crush it, the second realization hit them: the enemy had been expecting them.

"I wouldn't take another step if I were you, little ladies."

It wasn't the Beast Master's warning that really made the Sky Slayers stop in their tracks. It was the little sideways glance that did it – the one deliberately designed to hook their attention.

Lyon was slumped on the ground. His eyes were closed, and he did not stir, not even when Sherria screamed his name. A thick rope bound him – the knowledge that their enemy would not bother tying up a dead man was the only thing keeping her on the right side of madness. The half-folded collar of his jacket, still laced with sapphire glitter from a parade all but forgotten, could not conceal the angry red marks encircling his neck. Sherria pictured unnaturally pale hands creeping down- closing around his neck- strangling him mid-flight-

If only Wendy had asked Carla to stay away from the parade that night.

If only Wendy had told them what had happened, the Exceed would probably have volunteered to stay away of her own accord, no harm done.

If only Wendy hadn't gone and decided that no one around her was capable of dealing with the truth.

Sherria's fists clenched, and the sky trembled.

"Uh-oh, I hope you're not planning any rash moves there," sang the Beast Master. He gave a very inhuman hiss, and the rope binding Lyon uncoiled of its own accord – no, not a rope. A snake. Not an ostentatiously bright serpent with something to prove, but a nondescript brown one, comfortable in the knowledge that anyone who doubted its toxicity wouldn't make that mistake more than once. A mouth opened lazily; twin fangs hovered over Lyon's unguarded throat.

"Once her venom enters the bloodstream, death will follow within thirty seconds. Take one more step, and Lamia Scale's beloved ice mage dies. And believe me – it may be quick, but it won't be painless."

"What do you want?" Wendy whispered.

"Lamia Scale's unconditional surrender," the snake-mage smiled. "Though, I admit that may be a bit much to ask, since I doubt there's any kind of organization within your guild right now. I'd settle for you two waiting here like good little girls until my friends have finished with your town."

Gritting her teeth, Sherria glanced around for options. As well as the Beast Master, and a handful of henchman, they were ringed by a circle of wolves. Their chances of escaping back to Marguerite were nil.

Not that she had been planning on escaping. Not with Lyon and the enemy right in front of them.

"Wendy," Sherria sent silently through the headset. "You're going to have to heal Lyon."

"Wha- Sherria, you can't be-"

"This is the best chance we're going to get to smash that amplifier. If we can take that out, our town – our guild – will be saved!"

"But- Lyon-"

She knew that the Dragon Slayer was looking at her in horror, but she kept her attention focussed on the Beast Master, not giving away any hint of their telepathic link. "Look, Wendy. He doesn't know we can use healing magic. That's the one advantage we have. I'll break the amplifier, you can save Lyon, and then we can fight these guys on an even footing!"

"But Lyon might die! You can't gamble with his life like-"

"He won't die!" Sherria was practically screaming into the link now. "You have to trust him – and trust me, for a change! He's stronger than you think, Wendy! And so am I!"

With that, she broke into a run. Wendy was screaming something, but she blocked it out. In the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of brown as the serpent buried its fangs into Lyon's neck… and then she had blocked that out too.

Next moment, the Beast Master was right in front of her, too startled by her sudden charge to act. Pressurized air swirled like blades around her left fist as she drove it towards her opponent. He jumped back – but she was only feinting. Sherria slipped through the gap and smashed that fist into the amplifier instead.

The effect was instantaneous. The crystal shattered, and so did the ambient magic. Howls tore through the night – howls not of challenge, but of confusion, as the outer circle of wolves dissolved into chaos. Some turned upon the minions standing closest to them; still more fled the battlefield, seeking safety from the perplexing affairs of man. The closest beasts remained under the enemy's spell, but the long-range effects of his magic had been broken. The threat to the town was over.

"WENDY!" Sherria screamed, out loud this time.

Despite her horror at Sherria's actions, Wendy had not hesitated. She had leapt into motion as soon as those bone-white fangs had sunk into Lyon's throat, dodged the two mages who tried to grab her… and then fell flat on her face.

"WENDY!" screamed Sherria, again, running towards Lyon herself, part of her dissolving into pure terror and the other part pondering, in a completely detached manner, if Lyon was really about to die because Wendy was a klutz-

Then it hit her, too.

There were invisible weights tied to her wrists, her legs, her neck. Her knees gave way and she collapsed face-first onto the grass. Angrily, she tried to force herself to her feet – but she was so heavy, so impossibly heavy, as if the small body that so often caused her enemies to underestimate her had been transmuted into concrete.

Sky Magic whined in confusion as it tried to heal her and found nothing wrong with her body. It was the universe that had broken – the laws of gravitation wrenched from their usual course and aimed directly at her.

Long, slow strides crossed her half-buried vision, and in the greatest exertion of her life, Sherria tilted her head upwards until their owner came into focus. He was a tall man in a long white coat, wearing his hair in a waist-length ponytail – perfectly ordinary features which could not explain the utterly unordinary aura of intimidation he was emitting. Compared to him, the Beast Master might as well have been part-bunny rather than part-snake. Wendy had met this man once before, but even Sherria knew him through reputation: he was the dark mage Bluenote Stinger.

"I've done the job I was contracted to do," he stated, and his dead voice matched the dead look in his eyes perfectly. "I have no interest in fighting children who cannot fly."

"Ah, but they are such pesky flies," purred the Beast Master. "If you can hold them there while we get the backup amplifier…"

Bluenote said nothing. The increased gravity did not relent. Sherria fought, Wendy fought, but neither could so much as raise their arms.

Great, Sherria thought distantly. They've got a spare amplifier. He's just going to take control of the beasts again. Lyon's going to die for nothing.

And then: This is my fault.

I was reckless. I was so angry… I was so desperate to prove to Wendy that I could do this… and now…

Sherria closed her eyes.

"BLUUUUEEEENOOOOOTE!" someone bellowed.

That wasn't the sound death was supposed to make.

In fact, it sounded an awful lot like a certain Fairy Tail mage.

Still, even knowing all about that guild's penchant for anarchy didn't prepare Sherria for the sight of Cana charging Bluenote on a motorbike at about a thousand miles per hour, literal fire streaming from the exhaust.

Nor was she ready for the way Cana shot up the hill and then kept going, launching straight up into the sky. Once Fairy Tail got going, nothing so trivial as the laws of motion could break their inertia.

As she approached the cylinder of Bluenote's increased gravity, Cana's maniacal grin didn't lessen in the slightest. She jumped free of the bike, kicking it into the cylinder at the perfect angle to use Bluenote's magic against him. Gravity seized it; accelerated it; turned the vehicle into a meteor headed straight for him.

It exploded on contact, and the mage disappeared into a fuming fireball. Magic pulsed almost immediately, and the flames burst outwards and died, revealing a nicely singed Bluenote stood with his arms crossed in a defensive posture.

Unfortunately for him, a single breath of night air was the only reprieve he was going to get. The motorbike missile had blinded him from the true threat: its rider, who was currently diving towards him from the sky, her right hand raised towards the heavens.

"Gather, O river of light guided by the fairies! Shine to destroy the fangs of evil! Fairy Glitter!"

And the world was filled with light.

It was power, it was hope – but more than that, it was a distraction.

As Bluenote turned his full attention towards Cana, the gravity field dissipated. Sherria was on her feet at once, and so was Wendy. They sprinted across the grass, diving, reaching out – and the Sky Sisters' hands touched Lyon at the same time, flooding his body with all the healing magic they had.

Lyon's heart trembled, fluttered, and then beat once. Somehow they heard it over the immense outpouring of noise that was Fairy Glitter – heard it like thunder; like the world was beginning anew. Toxic decay slowed, stopped, and began to reverse its progress.

Sherria and Wendy looked at each other and smiled. Then, with the wind beginning to swirl once more around them, they turned as one to glare at the Beast Master.

He gulped.

Lucy, who was proud to consider herself amongst the sanest members of Fairy Tail, had bailed from Cana's kamikaze motorbike charge the moment it became clear that she had no intention of slowing down.

To be more precise, she had paused for the impossibly short amount of time it took her to summon Aries, and jumped as soon as she had been assured of a fluffy landing. Cana did not notice that she had been disavowed by her passenger and drove on, still laughing delightedly.

By the time Lucy had finally rolled to a halt, the light of Cana's Fairy Glitter was already fading. Trust her to open with her finishing move… though even Lucy had to admit that, in a rematch against Bluenote, it was practically compulsory. They had both come so far since their encounter with the dark mage upon Tenrou Island. This time, things would be different.

At last, she reached the top of the hill. On one side, Wendy and Sherria were standing between an unconscious Lyon and the serpentine mage who had escaped from her on the road. On the other, Cana was defiantly staring down Bluenote.

Bluenote, who had just taken a direct hit from Fairy Glitter.

Bluenote, who looked unharmed.

Maybe things wouldn't be different, after all.

"I remember you," said he, in that slow – that bored – way of his. "You're the one from Tenrou Island. You couldn't fly then, either."

Still, if Cana's grin was anything to go by, she either hadn't noticed or didn't care. "You flew, though, didn't you? Blasted off like a rocket, courtesy of my old man. What, did it take you these past eight years to walk back to Fiore?"

Bluenote's eye twitched, but nothing more. "Eight years, indeed. And you have become no stronger. Still you wield magic too great for you with an incompetent hand and unrivalled ignorance."

"To be fair, it's only been a bit over a year for me."

"You do not deserve a magic you cannot even use to its full potential. I did not expect to ever see it again, but since I have… it would only be right to take it from such a contemptible wielder."

"Come and get it, then!"

With that fearless cry, Cana flung herself at her opponent. Lucy was hot on her heels. Alright, so maybe charging towards a man who had once again shrugged off Fairy Glitter as if it were nothing counted against her earlier declaration of sanity, but she wasn't about to let Cana fight this alone.

Her hand dropped with that gunslinger's speed to her belt-

-and grasped empty air.

Her heart stopped.

Her fingers twitched uselessly, unable to process the lack of golden keys beneath them, a feeling burnt into their muscle memory. She glanced down and her eyes confirmed the impossible: her keys were gone.

How? Where? Why?

A hundred questions flooded her mind with a fear so immense it dwarfed her feelings about Bluenote's strength or Cana's questionable driving. She'd had her keys a minute ago. She'd summoned Aries. And then…

Her memories held no explanation. She asked the world instead, with a wide-eyed glance around, and it offered her a single anomaly in return. Where there had previously been one opponent standing against Sherria and Wendy, there were now two. At this distance, the newcomer was small enough to pass for another member of the Sky Sisters – as she often did, when Wendy could talk her into it. But her white wings weren't merely for decoration, and the ring of gold keys she was twirling around her index finger weren't another idol show prop.

Keys she had been fast enough to steal in cat form.

Carla wasn't an animal. She was one of the smartest people Lucy knew. The Beast Master's magic hadn't turned her wild – it had made her cruel.

What crossed Lucy's mind then wasn't betrayal or fear or foolishness, but something Zeref had said to her only yesterday: how screwed would you have been if you'd lost your keys before you'd managed to summon any Spirits?

Lucy gritted her teeth. If she'd asked Aries to stick around after their motorcycle stunt, at least she'd have had one Spirit left in play. Now, she had nothing. She'd allowed herself to be disarmed in the middle of battle, right when Cana needed her the most.

Distant, dreamlike, she turned her face skyward. Perhaps repentance was up there. Perhaps strength. Perhaps answers. But as she let out a long, slow breath, it was not some intangible ideal she focussed upon, but a red star hanging low in the southern sky.

Antares is bright tonight, she thought distantly.

While she gazed heavenward, a tremor of power ran through the ground. Bluenote had pressed his hand to the top of the hill. The earth convulsed, shuddered, and burst apart from the pain.

Next thing she knew, she was in the air – air that wasn't air, merely an absence of the exploding ground – and then she was falling. It wasn't until she hit the dirt far too hard and far too fast that she understood just how much stronger the gravity had become.

She lay face-down in a crater that had formed around her own body, before the soil beneath her had become compressed to a density that would take her increased weight. She exhaled and it almost killed her. Against that force, her lungs could not re-inflate, and that was the last of her air.

Red panic filled her vision like a tide of blood. What could she do without her keys? What could she do when she couldn't even breathe-?

"It will take some time to extract the magic from you," Bluenote was saying to Cana, without emotion, nothing to suggest he was talking about murdering her and ripping Fairy Glitter from her corpse. "So I shall get your friend out of the way first."

That meant Lucy. Yet she couldn't stand, couldn't run, no different from the last time she had faced this monster of a mage; they were stronger now, but so was he. She strained to raise her head – one last act of defiance – and that was when she saw him.

How she recognized him at that distance, she wasn't sure. He could have been Wendy or Sherria; he wasn't much bigger than either of them. Her vision was black and white and blurred from the pressure.

But she knew.

So much for stay here until it's over.

So much for I'm not going to come and rescue you.

So much for I mean it.

He needed her alive, and he needed it so badly that he looked not merely indecisive, but more afraid in the face of her own impending demise than she was.

In that moment, Lucy knew two things.

One: if she did nothing, Zeref would save her.

Two: she was not about to let that happen.

It wasn't about the ideology of not wanting to be saved by her enemy, or even the danger of owing the Black Mage her life.

It was nothing more and nothing less than her pride as a Fairy Tail mage.

In that moment, it didn't matter who was or wasn't watching. So what if she was showing her guild's final enemy her secret weapon? She wasn't going to lose like this when she didn't have to.

Bluenote sounded almost puzzled. "Is that all? No defiant final speech? I don't know why I expected more from a bird who cannot fly."

And Lucy said, "Antares is bright tonight."

"…Pardon?"

"Antares," she murmured. "It's beautiful, don't you think?"

She was standing, now. Bluenote doubled the gravity upon the hill with a sweep of his hand, but she didn't seem to notice; it broke around her like storm clouds torn to shreds by a passing meteor. Her entire body was glowing – her eyes, her skin, her heart – and the light was not distorted by his gravitational field, because the best Bluenote could produce was laughable compared to the space-bending forces it had escaped to reach the earth.

She shone with a red fiercer than any mortal flame, the equal of the God of War: the light of Antares, the red star, the Scorpion's Heart.

The night blazed ruby, and then, once again, became dark.

Lucy had vanished.