The Scars That Make You Whole
By CrimsonStarbird
Brittle Bones, Part 5
-Watch You Fall-
Zeref found it almost fascinating, how hard Invel fought not to fight.
He was a smart man. He knew he wouldn't be walking away from this encounter alive. Frozen irises already reflected the reaper's shroud.
Yet the basic human impulse to flee, which only grew stronger as inevitability backed it into a corner, did not so much as flash across his mind. The panicked sparking of his magic was suppressed by the same ruthless control that rendered it all but invisible in polite company. Even now, he would not allow it to lash out against his emperor, not even in self-defence.
That was his Invel. Loyal until the end.
"It's true, isn't it?" Invel whispered. "All this time we've been collecting information on Fairy Tail to defeat them, you've been using it to help them get stronger. You're playing both sides in this war."
If only that loyalty had been enough. If only Invel could have been content with following orders. If only he hadn't asked so many questions. Hadn't left Vistarion. Hadn't stuck his nose where it didn't belong.
But he had, and here they were.
He liked Invel. He liked how he wouldn't hesitate to tell him he was wrong. He liked the practical viewpoint he brought to discussions. Invel was the highest-ranking member of the government who was born and bred in Alvarez. If the rest of them observed and monitored the empire, then Invel lived it; he understood it in a way Zeref himself never could. They argued. Often. And when they did, fighting over the wording of some constitutional amendment with an intensity rarely found away from the battlefield… there was no one in the empire who could keep up with them.
If ever he wanted something doing – reliably, efficiently, thoroughly, and competently – Invel was the person to ask.
Unless, it seemed, what he wanted was for someone to stay far away from Fairy Tail.
Every plan contained elements that could go wrong, but Invel, loyal Invel, dependable Invel, who had memorized every law that governed the empire and would not fight even in the face of certain death because he had not been given permission to do so… he wasn't supposed to be one of them.
"Please." Invel begged for answers in a way he never would for his life. "Please, Your Majesty, tell me this is all just part of some great plan."
It was incredible how quickly everything could fall apart.
Invel could die – would die – but the past few days would not come undone at his death; the spark of unrest would not be quenched along with his life. Invel had already voiced his concerns to August, and Ajeel, Brandish and Dimaria had also been witness to the call. All four were loyal, but would they remain so, when Invel did not return?
He had thought Invel loyal too, but Invel's allegiance had never been to him.
No, it had always been Alvarez itself that Invel served: that hollow empire, that nation built on lies.
Because that was what it was. Nothing Invel believed in was real. Not the advanced, enlightened empire with a destiny to conquer the world, and in so doing, realize humanity's full potential; not the incomparable unity of all cultures and all walks of life to form one glorious land.
It was all a lie.
Alvarez existed for no one but Zeref. From the lowliest of citizens to the Spriggan Twelve who would lead them into battle, every single one of them existed as a tool for him to use. They lived to be his weapons. They would die to achieve his aims. Once they had served their purpose, he would cast them aside without a second thought.
Only now, as they faced each other in the midnight street of a city so far from home, was Invel beginning to understand that. No explanation was necessary. Some part of him had known ever since his emperor appeared, come with black magic and vengeance instead of an idea for new legislation and a flagrant disregard for what was proper. Some part of him had known ever since he had looked and seen Zeref for who he really was.
Not an emperor with the world in his hands, but a man with everything slipping through his fingers.
Because killing Invel wouldn't make it end. The other four would know exactly why their Chief of Staff didn't return – and they would realize, just like Invel had, that it meant his suspicions were right. Their emperor did not care for them. Their beloved nation was a tool to be used and abandoned; their lives were his to manipulate and abuse at will.
They would understand that their loyalty was poorly misplaced.
And he couldn't stop it. He could kill those four too, but what of all those who would wonder about their disappearance? It would spiral and spiral, the lie unravelling as it spun, and he would lose everything he had built. He had spurned the advances of the dark guilds of Fiore. He had abandoned the demons of Tartaros, who lived only to serve him, and left them to die. He had gambled everything on Alvarez, his greatest of weapons, his mightiest of armies, and now- and now-
It was his fault. He had screwed up. After years – decades – centuries – of keeping his servants at arm's length, he had let himself get a little too close to Invel and the others in recent days. He had communicated with them not from the palace as their emperor, but from the forests of Fiore, where the strict compartmentalizing of his personas wasn't nearly so well-defined. He had felt safe enough to call Invel when he was at his most vulnerable… and now he was going to pay the price with everything he had built.
Such was the consequence of not pushing people away quickly enough: they saw the truth.
And once they understood that the man they thought they knew was nothing more than a façade constructed for the purpose of earning their undying loyalty, there would be no going back.
Invel was the one standing in a freshly dug grave, but with every passing second, it was Zeref who felt the shovelfuls of earth pressing down upon his shoulders. Death magic could not harm the corpses around him; immortality would only prolong his suffering. No way out. Not for him.
Run, his instincts screamed. Run, and not look back. Let everyone who knew him die, and run. Another continent. Another empire. A world where he didn't have to be the Black Mage Zeref or Emperor Spriggan, where no one had any expectations for him to disappoint, where he could start building up his lie from scratch once again…
"Please, say something," Invel whispered.
He didn't understand how Invel was still alive.
How had the black wind, which did not understand fear and so came only as fury, not yet crossed that distance and ended his life?
Still Invel didn't run. Still he waited for an answer – an explanation – he must have known wasn't coming.
It was then that Zeref realized he didn't want Invel to die. Not because it wouldn't give him back the stable, secure empire he had yesterday – not even because it would lead to a hundred deaths, a million deaths, until his was an empire of corpses, surrounded by the thing he wanted the most for himself and yet could only bring to others.
But he didn't want to lose this.
Didn't want to lose Invel.
Not because he was useful, or necessary, or part of some grand plan… but because he simply didn't want to.
He wished Invel had never come to Fiore, because then he wouldn't have to.
He couldn't change the past. He couldn't undo the mistakes that had brought them here. There was only one place to which this dark road led: their own high noon beneath the silent stars, from which neither servant nor emperor would emerge unscathed.
"Tell me," Invel pleaded, one last hope that he might at least die knowing why.
"Yes!" Zeref snapped, not knowing how a frightened word could sound so loud, so commanding. "I am the one behind Fairy Tail's revival."
"But why? I know you would never do anything without good reason. I know there must be some explanation… some complex scheme…"
Zeref almost laughed. He couldn't help it. Death jumped and twisted with it, a candleflame caught in a frigid breeze.
Would Invel be happier knowing how little his beloved empire meant? Knowing that this war wasn't about anything so trivial as land or glory or victory; that he and his colleagues lived only to die at the right time?
What would he do then? Suspicions of betrayal had led him to disobey a direct order and come to Fiore to learn the truth, though it had not been enough to alter his behaviour in his emperor's presence. Would Zeref's confirmation finally be enough to shatter his self-control? Would he fight back? Flee? And to what end? Unable to return to his precious empire, unable to bring himself to join their enemies, what would become of Invel then – of this man who had given more than anyone else to this empire of shadows-?
It would be kinder to kill him.
Kill him, like Zeref had intended to do all along.
Like he'd known he would have to from the moment he'd received August's call.
In that moment, an unorthodox voice spoke up in the back of his mind: Answer his question. Tell him why.
At this, he really did laugh. Invel flinched; to him, that cold laugh only shot down his last, ailing hope.
What would telling him achieve? Other than satisfying Zeref's own curiosity as to how far he would have to push Invel before this proper and respectful man would admit to hating him, nothing at all. He had no use for soldiers who would not obey orders. He had no use for servants who asked too many questions. He had silenced many such fools in his centuries of power. Why should today be any different?
And he didn't want to talk about it. To admit it. To make it real. To lay out his flaws in razor-blade words; to cast aside his own imperial façade and reveal the fragile, desperate, pathetic human being beneath…
Do you feel any worse, for having told me what you did?
By now, he was starting to recognize that voice, that sentiment. It came to him with a feeling of comfort – a sense of security that was tied not to a place, but to a person. The quiet gift of not having to be alone.
He had shared secrets with Lucy, and it hadn't made him feel worse.
It had made him feel… free.
Zeref's gaze dropped to the ground as the black wind of death vanished. "Alright," he whispered, and it was far more tentative than any word Invel had uttered in the face of certain death.
A minute passed in silence before Invel dared to venture, "Your Majesty?"
Two words he must have heard a million times before. They had been odd at first, many centuries ago, but they had long since become as natural to him as his own name… and yet never, in all those years, had he heard them said like this.
Your Majesty, Invel said, but what he meant was, why am I not dead?
Zeref had not known how much those two words could hurt until that moment.
He didn't know what he wanted, only that this wasn't it.
"Meet me at Fairy Tail's old guildhall in an hour," he said. "I will tell you everything."
It was all Lisanna's fault.
The thing was, the mission to reunite Fairy Tail had been going so well. Before today, Lucy had been questing for over a week, and she'd only been kidnapped once – which, as far as her adventure-to-kidnap ratio went, was something of a record even before one took into account that the first kidnap hadn't even been her fault. Zeref was the one who had freaked out and got himself captured by Avatar, forcing her to surrender.
Then they had come to Alstonia, and lo and behold, Lucy found herself waking up as a kidnap victim for the second time in less than six hours.
The first time – well, that could have happened to anyone. How was she supposed to know that walking into a café in broad daylight would have the same consequences as getting caught snooping around Mercurius? No, that wasn't her fault either. The second Alstonia kidnapping, though… that was a lot less clear, which was probably why Lucy was doing her absolute best to pin it on Lisanna.
Yes, it was all Lisanna's fault, for being too damn cool.
Ever since Lucy had worked out that her mild-mannered waitress friend and the enigmatic, black-armoured vigilante were one and the same, Lucy hadn't been able to stop thinking about how awesome it was. The secret identity! The stylish yet functional costume! The echolocation powers; a clever use of magic that went far beyond merely beating someone up! Lucy couldn't help wishing that she'd thought of it herself… but then again, she had her own kind of transformation magic, didn't she?
There weren't any bat constellations in the heavens (and she suspected that trying to make one artificially, by, say, projecting the shape of a bat into the sky wouldn't have quite the same effect), but there were a lot of birds. Although she didn't know what decided the appearance of a Star Dress form, she suspected that intent and belief played a part. Why else would they follow in the vein of her own culture's interpretation of the constellations? Surely, with enough willpower, she could give it a little nudge in the direction she wanted.
Deneb, Yukino's black-feathered Swan Spirit, was an option, but she didn't really want to use another of Yukino's Spirits without permission. In the end, she had settled on Corvus, the Crow. She was fairly sure he didn't currently have an owner. Besides, the transformation probably wouldn't go through if he didn't want it to… and she really, really wanted to be a dark superhero. Black feathers, wings, perceived as a sinister omen – what could be better?
That was why, after she and Levy had split up, Lucy focussed her thoughts upon the far-distant constellation and let its power flood into her body. Given how her rapidly her proficiency with keyless magic was improving, she wasn't surprised when it worked first time.
She skipped to the nearest shopfront to study her reflection in the glass, but it was too dark to catch any details. Fortunately, Celestial Spirit mages were nothing if not resourceful. Who needed a full-length mirror when she could just summon Gemini to copy her appearance? With a shifty glance around, she pretended to study the dresses in the window display while Gemini subtly appeared in between the mannequins, striking a proud pose.
A long, black hooded cape stretched almost all the way to the floor. It was made of feathers, but not the fluffy, ostentatious kind. They were small, sleek, tight; this was a garment of purpose rather than decoration. Knee-high boots felt nicely supple as she rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet. The power of the stars flowed through her, coming not as force but as energy, an agile strength.
That, however, was where expectation and reality diverged.
The rest of her and Gemini's outfit was a dull crimson. Her sleeves and gloves were a bold green. The belt buckle and trimmings were gold, simultaneously adding to the fiesta of colours and detracting quite remarkably from her goal of moody heroism. Even at midnight, the city's criminals would have no trouble seeing her coming, and when they did, the tiny slip of mask around her eyes would do little to hide her identity – or her embarrassment.
"I don't look anything like a bat," she sighed. "I don't even look like a crow. What kind of superhero would-?"
She must have looked enough like a certain caped crusader in the gloom for the villains, though, because the next thing she knew, she was awakening to darkness, a throbbing head, and the taste of hessian against her lips.
Panic set in. When she inhaled, the sack pressed against her mouth. She choked. Scrabbling with her fingers did nothing when her hands were bound behind her back. No magic answered her mental call. Her experimental transformation had vanished too, though she couldn't bring herself to be too upset about that.
Someone pulled her roughly to her knees. The pressure over her head loosened, and then withdrew entirely. Light flooded in as the sack was removed. Fighting to keep her eyes open, she glared up into the face of her captor.
Staring back down at her, mirroring her startled expression beneath his shaggy blond hair, was Avatar's swordsman, Jerome.
"You're not who I was expecting to see," he observed, when he had managed to find his voice. "How many costumed vigilantes are there in Alstonia?"
"What are you doing here?" Lucy retorted. "Last I saw, you were all trussed up in a ruined diner, ready and waiting for the Rune Knights to take you away."
"The Rune Knights were more than willing to take my side after they saw I had been fighting those criminals, Crime Sorcière. You, though… I do believe you were fleeing with that very same guild of traitors. Poor, lost souls. They turned away from Lord Zeref, and now they are hated on all sides."
"Interestingly, Macbeth and the others only recovered from that battle because Zeref figured out how to reverse the effects of your sword, and freely shared that information," Lucy pointed out.
She had long since given up hope that any member of Avatar could be talked out of their delusions – and to be honest, after the attempted slaughter at Bishop's Lace, she no longer felt inclined to try – but it was nice to see the way his expression darkened at her confident statement. Very little had riled this man when they'd fought – and why should it, when he had held his own against multiple strong mages? The knowledge that he had been defeated in the end, though, was leverage capable of overcoming the traditional captor-captive roles.
"Shame Jellal took that magic-eating sword from you," she continued easily. "Not so confident without it, are you?"
She'd guessed those words would make him snap, but not this much.
She managed to stay silent as the first blow sent her sprawling. The second produced a gasp. The third time his boot crunched against her ribs, there was no denying her yelp of pain.
"You have no idea what that meant to me!" he shrieked. "And you took it- you took away the only place where I belonged- now Arlock despises me!"
His foot stopped an inch away from striking her again, and she seized the reprieve to gulp down air. "I suppose you are fortunate that I will have no need of Arlock's acceptance once Lord Zeref returns. He is all that really matters, and we are so close to him now."
Lucy choked out, "What do you think Zeref will do for you?"
"Grant my wish, of course."
"I think you might be getting him confused with a genie."
A snort escaped his curled lips. "Perhaps there are some affiliated with Avatar who do so, but do not confuse them with us, the inner circle. We had to give the masses something to believe in. No, Lord Zeref will grant my wish because what I want is what he wants. We will give him the power and the means – followers, finances, devotion – and he will turn our dreams into reality."
"And what, exactly, do you think Zeref wants?"
Jerome didn't answer, at first. His gaze drifted, as though seeking a sign of something beyond these walls. Corrugated iron sheets had been wrenched haphazardly into the shape of a shed, now a prison. A single torch provided the only source of light.
At least their ramshackle surroundings meant that Lucy wasn't back in the slaughterhouse. She wondered if Levy or Mira had noticed her absence yet.
"I was born without magic," Jerome said – and then, to her astonishment, he laughed. It was a twisted sound, and every shallow reflection from the warped walls seemed to twist it further. "I know what you're thinking: so what? Most people are. They don't care, and why would they? Should they also resent the fact that they're not born able to run marathons or speak five languages? The few who do care, learn. Magic is all about heart. That's what my instructor promised. If I put brush to canvas enough times, one day, I'd produce a masterpiece.
"So I practised and practised… and the next thing I knew, I was taking the same beginner's class for the fifth time, surrounded by a group of children five years my junior, having achieved nothing with all my hard work except line my instructor's pockets with a steady fee. I left him and his talk of belief and determination, and went to see a doctor. There I learnt that my connection to my magical core is irreparably damaged. I will never even be able to operate magical tools, let alone use magic."
He paused, and Lucy allowed him the chance to gather his thoughts. She wasn't sure where he was going with this, and she told herself she didn't care, but that curious, that human, part of her – which had encouraged Zeref to share his own story – thought it mattered.
"I loved magic. Runes, rituals, translations of ancient spells… and by an accident of birth, that future was closed to me. No scholar of magic would take on a non-mage as their apprentice. They didn't understand why I would want to study something I could never do anything with. Guilds weren't interested in someone who couldn't earn them money. Cast out by the world I worshipped, I was alone when Arlock found me. He didn't care about my power, or lack thereof. What mattered to him was my enthusiasm, my devotion – and I was far more devoted than any of those sheltered fools who could cast spells before they could walk! He welcomed me in. He made a place for me. He gave me an ancient weapon only I could use – a magic-destroying sword, which might as well have been designed for me alone."
"He told you to kill, and you did," Lucy observed.
"Only those who deserve it. Crime Sorcière are traitors to the cause who deserve everything coming to them. We seek freedom for all; they have taken it for themselves alone, and use it to hunt dark guilds, their own kind!"
"I'm not talking about Crime Sorcière – I'm talking about how you tried to slaughter an entire city for the sake of a ritual that was never going to work!"
Jerome's expression darkened. "Even the inner circle did not know about the sacrifices in Bishop's Lace. Arlock only told us he had the power to summon Zeref, not what it would entail."
"Is that why Arlock didn't publicize Avatar's name after the attack?" Lucy frowned, recalling what had seemed so odd when she'd read about Bishop's Lace in the newspapers. "His own name was everywhere, but there was no mention of Avatar. I bet that only members of the inner circle know their leader's identity, don't they? He lied to you before the attack, and he lied about it afterwards, in order to keep his support amongst the masses."
Jerome glowered at her without speaking.
"You know this," Lucy remarked, "and yet you still follow him."
He hesitated, but only for a moment. "It would be far worse for us to let the destruction of Bishop's Lace be in vain. A world where Lord Zeref rules is a better world for all. Yes, lives will be lost, but that is true of any revolution."
"Arlock took advantage of you for his own twisted dreams."
"They are my dreams, also. I want to live in Lord Zeref's world, where the magic I find most fascinating isn't forbidden, where I won't have to pursue my dreams from the shadows, where all the guild mages who laughed at the magic-less man who wanted to join them will burn!"
Lucy sighed. "What does a black magic cult want from a city like Alstonia?" Surely they weren't planning to repeat the slaughter at Bishop's Lace here. This wasn't some helpless, backwards town; Mira's Familia would crush Avatar the moment they reared their ugly heads.
"You have no right to that information." Then Jerome paused, and tilted his head towards the iron sheet serving as a roof. Perhaps he had heard some signal she had not – something which stole his anger away and replaced it with a confidence he had not displayed since losing his sword. "Ah, it seems the She-Devil has come to rescue her sister."
"Who isn't here," Lucy pointed out.
"Clearly, she doesn't know that."
"Your plan will fail. You don't stand a chance against Mira-"
"Hush," said he. "The show is about to begin."
Drizzle.
Not heavy enough to be called rain, not thick enough to warrant an umbrella, it seemed to hang rather than fall, a vague mist congregating in the sodium-orange buzz of the streetlights. The night was dark enough without it; the colour had already been leeched from the world. It lingered and it clung to the towers and the ground, one more shadow in a world already brimming with them, a grey veil for a corpse bride.
Mira did not know when the drizzle started, only that by the time she reached her destination, her hair was plastered to her face and her dress clung to her legs. With that realization came the urge to blaze electric, to let a halo of neon flame devour the water and the crackling voltage warm her veins… then another breath and then urge was gone, and the skies above were starless, and the night as quiet as her footsteps.
Tall shapes loomed around her, accusing spires and monstrous tombstones shrouded by the dark. She did not have to look to know they were sprawling heaps of scrap metal, ruined vehicles, broken appliances, cranes, wrecking balls, compactors; all of them motionless and silent in the night. She had almost died here once already-
Died? We could have slaughtered them!
-would have died, against the combined might of two hostile Familias, had Lisanna not appeared with reinforcements in the nick of time.
Mira's face was as grim as the skies above. The only light in her eyes was the muted throb of ailing streetlamps.
"I have come as you asked!" she called, and it echoed between the husks of ancient machines. "I am alone. Where is my sister?"
The silence seemed to mock her.
We can find her for you.
"Hello?" Mira shouted. There was no response. She knew they were here. This was where they wanted her; this was where the ambush waited.
It would be easy for us. We don't mind helping you, Mirajane-
A blast of violet energy pierced the ground where Mira had been standing.
She was already gone. Her body was extraordinarily light as she leapt aside, her legs abnormally strong, her motion unhindered by the damp dress that had been clinging uncomfortably only a moment before, and her eyes – had any been close enough to see them – flashed yellow-green and piercing rather than sapphire-blue and guileless…
Now that's more like it!
When she landed, it was heavily, almost clumsily. She pushed damp hair back from her forehead with one hand as her sodden dress seemed to condense once more around her.
"Show yourself!" she shouted. Narrowing her eyes, she tried to pick out motion from the heap of machinery where the blast had originated.
It struck while her back was turned. Sleek, metallic, only vaguely human, it detached from the side of a crane behind her, bursting forth in eerie soundlessness. A blade of that fizzing, violet energy materialized at the end of its arm-
It wasn't the swiftness of Mira's transformation that made it remarkable. It was the effortlessness of it.
There was no flash of light. No tell-tale pulse of power. Not even a twitching muscle to give away that she was using magic. One moment she was Mirajane Strauss, the barmaid come to rescue her kidnapped sister – and the next she was the Demon Mirajane, the fiendish queen of all she surveyed.
Without even looking, she raised her fist behind her, and a single, lazy blow smashed her robotic assailant half a metre into the ground.
This time, the ensuing silence was one of her own creation.
And if she had intended to change into her normal Satan Soul form rather than her full Alegria one… well, that wasn't something her opponent needed to know.
Sparks burst from the crater she had made in the middle of the junkyard. Static fizzled, hydraulics hissed, and then the mechanical soldier spoke. "So, the rumours are true. You really did consume the souls of all the demons of Tartaros."
There was a wheezing laugh.
"I knew you were far too valuable to become merely a pawn in Abel's game. You stole those souls from Zeref. I will extract them from you and give them back to their rightful owner, and in return, he will finally give me-"
Kill him.
Mira's finger twitched.
A surge of dark energy, made distinct from the desolate night by the sheer vitality of it, plunged into the crater. When it faded, the hole still spat out the occasional spark, but the words had stopped coming.
Pathetic.
Taking a deep breath, Mira focussed on her pounding heart. She tried not to think about her beaten enemy. She tried not to think about Lisanna, or about Lucy. No fear, no aggression, no strong emotion at all – and slowly, so slowly, her Take Over transformation began to reverse.
"BOOOORING!"
She flinched at the sound of that sing-song voice. Her Take Over snapped back into place. Whoever had spoken made no move to attack, and that made it worse; the chitinous tentacles sprouting from the back of her Alegria form lashed through the air with pent-up energy.
"I knew it would be no fun to fight you in a straight battle," the same voice chirped. It belonged to someone young, or perhaps not entirely human.
Mira had pinpointed him from the first word spoken: a small boy sat atop a tower of burnt-out cars. Clown-like makeup ringed his eyes, and a striped turban almost as big as himself again was perched on his head. She could smell the black magic seeping from his body, confirming her suspicions that he was more than he appeared – though not much more, and the desire to crush his pathetic excuse for power spread warmth throughout her chest.
"D-6 was always so unimaginative," pouted the boy. If D-6 was the robot she had crushed, then Mira reasoned that this boy must be the Abel he had referred to. "Kill you, and return your souls to Lord Zeref? How tedious."
"Where's Lisanna?" Mira demanded. She knew perfectly well where Lisanna was, of course – if all was going to plan, her sister would be rescuing Lucy right about now, while she caused a distraction – but she couldn't let him know that.
To her surprise, Abel waved his hand coolly towards a ramshackle shed next to the stilled pendulum of a wrecking ball. "Right over there."
Go on. Spring the trap. We'll burn it all down.
The desire to dash straight over there must have shown on her face, because Abel assured her, "It's the truth. There's where we're keeping your sister."
"And why would you tell me that?" Mira spat.
"So that you can kill her for me."
Now there's an idea.
Mira choked. "You must be out of your mind!"
"No, see, it's perfect!" Abel insisted. "The murder-suicides get pinned on the jealous younger sister with the suspicious alter ago. The Familia head kills her own flesh and blood in order to preserve her power. The whole honour and sanctuary thing you've got going on in the Gehennan Princess is revealed to be a lie. In this atmosphere of fear and mistrust, your little Familia turns on itself… and who is there to offer stability to Alstonia but Avatar? Isn't it the perfect ending?"
"Perfect," Mira echoed. "Except for one teeny tiny flaw."
"And what's that?"
"I would never hurt Lisanna in a million years!"
"Yes, that's what all my victims thought, at first," he countered easily. "It was safe for them to walk the streets, because they'd never harm a stranger, let alone take their own lives with the same knife."
Narrowing her eyes, Mira focussed, preparing to fight off any mind-affecting magic that might be sent her way. Normally, she'd have felt supremely confident in her mental defences, especially with the power of a demonic Take Over backing her up. Now, though…
Scared, Mirajane?
She gritted her teeth.
The assault never came.
No, rather than using magic, Abel appeared to be rummaging around in his knapsack. "Do you think I went to all the effort of breaking into your apartment just to write a threatening message on the wall? So clichéd. No, what I was really after… was one of these."
And to Mira's bemusement, he pulled from the knapsack a long white hair.
Jerome had stopped divulging any interesting information, so Lucy didn't consider it a great loss when the door burst open and Lisanna delivered a solid blow to the back of his head. Without his killer sword, Jerome was powerless. Lisanna didn't even need to use a Take Over form to knock him out.
"Piece of cake," Lisanna breezed. "Now, let's get you out of here."
Lucy looked her up and down, considering, and then said, "No."
"I'm sorry?"
"No, thank you, I would not like to be rescued today."
"…Eh?"
"Last time you 'rescued' me, I was dropped head-first into a slaughterhouse and very nearly decapitated, eviscerated, and shoved through a meat grinder! You're lucky you're not having this conversation with a packet of sausages!"
Lisanna's mouth flapped in an impression which put her Fish Take Over to shame.
"So, if it's all the same to you, I think I'll pass on that rescue, and just wait here until it's over."
"But… you…" Then Lisanna pulled herself together. "No, sorry. I'm a dark superhero. The rescue is not negotiable."
With that, she picked up the still-bound Lucy bridal-style and carried her out of the temporary prison.
Which was probably for the best, given that it exploded half a second later.
"What?" Lucy squeaked, watching a black flame eat through the remnants of the corrugated iron walls like they were made of cardboard and doused in lighter fluid.
"How are you feeling about that rescue now?" Lisanna asked idly.
"I'm sold."
"Thought so."
Swiftly, Lisanna set her friend on her feet, cut her bonds with a flash of a bird's talon, and turned to the still-burning shed. There in the wreckage, unharmed by the black flames dancing at her feet, stood Mira in her Alegria form.
"Hey, careful with what you're blowing up!" Lucy protested indignantly.
Mira, however, was not smiling. "Lucy, Lisanna, you have to run! Please- get away from me-"
They didn't have a chance to ask what she meant before she was lunging towards them. Instinct won out, and they both dived aside. Mira struck the ground where they had been standing with a punch containing enough power to send shockwaves through the air.
"Mira!" Lisanna exclaimed. Her sister bounced back from the impact, her body bending impossibly far, and advanced on her again. "What's going on-?"
"I'm not doing this!" Mira shouted back desperately. Her left hand grappled with her right, as if trying to stop it from forming another fist. "It's Abel- he's controlling my body somehow-"
Lisanna jumped away again, but Lucy was frozen in place. She knew this magic. She still had nightmares about this magic – or, more precisely, about what Natsu had done to defeat the Grimoire Heart mage who had attacked her using it.
As a terrified Mira tried to stop herself from punching her own sister with the force of a titan, however, Lucy had a feeling that those old nightmares were about to be overwritten.
"I've seen this magic before," she told them. "There's a doll, Mr Cursey. The enemy can use it to manipulate the body of anyone whose hair is attached to it. All we've got to do is grab the doll, and we can break the spell on Mira!"
"Where's the caster?" Lisanna shouted back.
"Good question," Lucy frowned. Kain Hikaru had been neither subtle nor clever. Abel was a mage of Avatar, and underestimating them had almost got her killed more than once. If nothing else, the graveyard of machines offered countless hiding places.
"I'll find him," Lisanna vowed. Her arms became the wings of a tropical bird, dulled to a pigeon's grey by the night and the ever-present drizzle. Beating them furiously, she rose above Mira's flailing punch.
In the meantime, Lucy turned to Mira. "Mira, cancel your Take Over!" she instructed. "The doll controls your body, but not your magic! That way you can punch us all you want, and it won't hurt at all!"
"That's it!" Lisanna added her own shout of support from above. "Just reverse your Take Over, Mira!"
There was a pause. Abel, it seemed, had stopped manipulating Mira's body to let them have their moment – so that they could see the dreadful expression on her face, the sublime horror, as she whispered, "I can't."
"What do you mean, you can't?" Lisanna shrieked back.
"I can't, I'm sorry, I can't!"
It ascended to a scream as she was forced to attack again. Lucy dodged the first blow, but insect-like tentacles of Mira's Alegria form had minds of their own, and one whipped across her cheek, drawing blood.
"I'm sorry," Mira repeated. There was heartbreak in her voice, but she didn't cry, couldn't cry; demons had no tears. "I should have told you months ago, Lisanna…"
"Told me what?" her sister shouted back. "Mira?"
Instead of answering, Mira pounced towards Lucy again. There was a fluidity to her movements, distinct from the marionette jerk of a moment ago. Somehow, Lucy dived aside and called up to Lisanna, who was still circling the battlefield on laborious wingbeats. "This isn't supposed to happen! Avatar must have improved the magic they got from Grimoire Heart!"
"So, what do we do?"
"Back to Plan A – find Abel and steal his curse doll! Can't you use your echolocation to find him?"
"No; rain distorts the signal!"
"Then I guess we're doing this the old-fashioned way-"
"Got him," came a satisfied shout. They glanced up, Mira included, to see a short figure standing tall atop a heap of scrap metal. The Rune Knight emblem gleamed on her shoulders, finding even the dimmest of lights to reflect. From one hand dangled a boy even shorter than her; in the other, the terrifying smile of the curse doll squeezed out from between her fingers.
"Thermal imaging. Basic Rune Knight trick," Levy explained. "Well, not basic unless you happen to be fluent in Eridanian and Abraxi and the villain is kind enough to tell you where the battlefield is going to be in advance so that you can enclose it in the necessary runes, but the principle's the same… oh, come on, you weren't seriously expecting me to sit around at home while you lot went out catching criminals, were you?"
"Now you're sounding like Gajeel," Lucy muttered, shaking her head. "Throw us the doll!"
Levy plucked the white hair from the top of the doll and tossed it down to Lucy, who wasted no time in summoning Cancer. With a flash of scissors, the dangerous weapon disintegrated into fluff and thread.
"At least that's over," Lisanna sighed, coming in to land.
"Careful," Lucy warned. "Last time, Kain had multiple copies of that doll-"
Levy brought her fist crashing down on Abel's head, knocking him out cold.
"-or that, that works too," Lucy finished weakly.
"Thanks, Levy," Lisanna grinned, as her feet touched the damp ground and her wings returned to being arms. "You're a lifesaver. Now, let's go home and-"
"Go home?" They jumped at the sound of Mira's voice, high and cold and mocking. "Why would we do that, when we are finally free?"
A/N: Abel's / Kain Hikaru's magic is actually pretty terrifying when it's not being used for comic relief. Not much good in a straight battle against four very resourceful opponents, though.
And it's nowhere near as terrifying as Mira hearing voices in her head.
Thank you so much for all your support and comments; they are always really great to read! (Welcome back, yue! I'm glad you're alright!) ~CS