The Scars That Make You Whole
By CrimsonStarbird
Thy Will Be Done, Part 1
-Let the Show Begin-
Lucy would have been lying if she'd said she was sad to be leaving Alstonia.
She would miss Mira and Lisanna, of course, but as far as she was concerned, they were literally the only good things about the city which had seen her kidnapped (twice!), thrown into a deathtrap of a slaughterhouse (which she was still not over), attacked by gangsters just for wanting to find a pub (she had to wonder how the hospitality sector was so dominant in a city which had apparently never heard of tourism), and been forced into a fight against her friend that could have ended very badly if not for Lisanna's awesome alter ago.
In the end, not even the exhaustion of that night's events had been able to stop Lucy from being back on the road by midday. She had been slightly put out to hear that the Strauss sisters wouldn't be accompanying her, but they were too important to Alstonia's criminal underworld to leave without warning. They were going to meet her at the guildhall as soon as they could get away.
Lucy had been even more put out to learn that she and Levy would also be parting ways. Levy wanted to find Gajeel, because she'd not heard from him since he and Pantherlily had set off in pursuit of Avatar after Bishop's Lace. Lucy had a hunch that Levy's decision might also have had something to do with the talking radio tucked into her bag, about which she was being unusually tight-lipped (the talking radio wasn't tight-lipped at all, but Levy, wise to this, had a habit of turning the volume down every time he got a bit too chatty around other people). Well, not that Lucy could complain about Levy having a secret or two, when she herself had been keeping quiet about her partnership with Zeref.
Before they parted ways, Levy had given her the long-range communications lacrima she had received from Erza when she first went undercover. Since she was going back to the Rune Knights for the time being, she didn't want a direct line to the notorious independent guild on her person.
From Mira – to Lucy's complete lack of surprise – she had received a handful of addresses for ex-Fairy Tail members. In fact, the most surprising thing was how few Mira actually knew. She explained to Lucy that, at first, she had taken the idea of a training journey to heart and respected the wishes of her guildmates to go their separate ways. Later, she had been too busy running the Gehennan Princess to keep up with what people outside Alstonia were doing. Still, she was able to give Lucy an idea of where to go next.
First, though, Lucy decided to head back to her flat in Crocus. There, she could restock her travelling supplies, rest for a while, and in the morning, make use of the capital city's excellent railway connections to get her to the northern coast in no time.
Not to mention, she needed a day off. After being handed from one enemy to another in Alstonia, it felt so good to be somewhere safe.
Lucy unlocked her front door, collapsed onto the sofa, and had almost slipped into an exhausted sleep right there when she suddenly sat bolt upright in horror.
Something was very wrong.
The last time she'd left her house, it looked like a bomb had hit it. Strictly speaking, it was Natsu that had hit it, but the effect was the same. The sofa had been reduced to ash. The walls had looked as though they'd been decorated by someone who detested every colour that wasn't soot-grey. She hadn't even had a front door, just a forcefield that Zeref had put in place for her.
Somehow, things had gone back to how they were before.
After a minute of not being ambushed, Lucy's grip on her celestial keys relented. This was definitely her house, and she couldn't sense any magic, hostile or otherwise.
Cautiously, she took a closer look at the sofa beneath her. It was similar to the one Natsu had immolated as a sacrifice to the gods of unpaid rent, but newer. Brand new, in fact. Just like everything in the room. Now that she thought about it, she could detect the whiff of paint.
Someone had redecorated the entire place while she'd been away. Professionally. And it couldn't have been her landlady, because there wasn't a YOU'LL PAY FOR THIS LUCY HEARTFILIA sprayed across the wall in vermillion-red.
That being said, she wasn't in the clear just yet. Atop a sideboard that looked superficially similar to the old one – were it not for the fact that its unscratched surface had clearly never seen a tenant, let alone twenty years of them – a white envelope with her address on it beckoned ominously.
She opened it. The size of the figure on the invoice within had a better go at stopping her heart than Alegria had – until she spotted the words 'received, with thanks' printed right at the top.
Even then, the fluttering beats of her heart did not seem enough to bring the strength back to her legs. Who on earth had redecorated her house, and paid for it, without even some good, old-fashioned blackmail thrown in? Natsu? Surely he wouldn't have had the opportunity. The thought of Avatar encouraging their recruits to do a bit of DIY at the weekends was an amusing one.
Besides, Natsu had never shown any kind of remorse for destroying property in his life. Just because she had grown accustomed to travelling with slightly more mature teammates recently didn't mean he-
She sat bolt upright once again. Zeref had said that he felt responsible for Natsu destroying her flat. Did he arrange all this? And pay for it? And all while she and Gajeel had been on the train to Bishop's Lace? How on earth had he sorted that out so quickly? Then again, he had proven ten times over that he was a very resourceful man, in all the ways she had been expecting and quite a few she hadn't.
She wondered if she would ever get a chance to thank him.
She had shouted at him unfairly; sent him away after he had saved her life, and probably her sanity too; used the differences between them as evidence that they would never be able to work together; triggered his curse when he was at his most vulnerable… and then not even tried to apologize, but moved on straight away: another city, new friends, and not a thought for where he was or what he was doing.
There was no reason why he would come back. Except, maybe, for the hoard of archaic, mysterious and probably illegal books that still lurked in her spare cupboard – but she had no doubt that he would be able to get in, get his books, and get out again without alerting her to his presence if he wished. It didn't mean he had any plans to return, only that he had not got round to fully leaving yet.
Still, until the day that they became enemies for good, wasn't she allowed to hope that their paths would cross again?
It was more than a small part of her that spent the night waiting for a knock on the door that never came.
Only then did she pack her bags, leave the house, and resume her quest without a word of complaint.
Today was the day.
Of this, Ajeel was certain. One fist was clenched into a ball of resolve. In the other, he held a laminated document entitled "Should You Ask Dimaria On A Date?: A Flowchart, by Brandish μ".
Yes, today was the day he was going to get this right.
Ajeel consulted the flowchart intently. Question one: is she alone?
He chanced a glance around the corner. Few ventured into the guest wing of the palace these days. Given the current political climate, there were hardly any visitors, and the servants seemed to melt back into thin air after carrying out their cursory checks.
Dimaria stood in front of an elaborate door. Well, to be more precise, she was trying to kick down the door, and the fact that no one was running to investigate the noise suggested that no one was around to hear it.
He glanced back to the flowchart. 'Yes' led to a box reading don't do it, you'll make too tempting a target.
"Well, obviously she's not alone, because I'm here too," he muttered. "Stupid question."
Time to move on. Question two: is August and/or Invel nearby?
He supposed those two were good at reducing tension. August had that terrifying thing he did where his magic made Ajeel's go all quiet and stop wanting to fight, and Invel had a glare that did much the same thing. Neither of them was in the residential area of the palace, though. August was off doing something boring, like reviewing peace treaties or downplaying the rumours of an imminent invasion on the international scene. Invel was looking for his marbles somewhere in Fiore.
Still, Ajeel had a feeling that 'no' would lead to another negative response, so he decided Invel's spontaneous bout of madness made that question inapplicable and moved on.
Question three: is she presently destroying something and/or someone?
Another peek revealed that the door was holding up surprisingly well. "It's clearly still standing, so no, nothing is being destroyed here," he remarked happily, skipping over the 'yes' box (get out while you still can) and moving on to question four: have you done anything to annoy her recently?
Ajeel bristled at the very implication. He was nothing but gallant and considerate to her. Only the other day he had tried to take her on a mini-break to Fiore. It wasn't his fault it had ended up almost getting them both killed by their own Chief of Staff.
That was a definite 'no', then. He followed the arrow…
Don't kid yourself, the flowchart said.
"Hey!" Ajeel protested.
You're in way over your head. Go pursue someone from your own league.
Now that he looked at it, not a single termination point on the flowchart had anything encouraging to say.
"Some friend you are," he grunted, chucking Brandish's gift over his shoulder and marching out into the corridor. "Hey, Dimaria! What's up?"
"Oh, Ajeel. Give me a hand opening this door, would you?"
"Sure." He knelt in front of the door, assessing the lock with a critical eye. "Problems like this take grace and finesse, Dimaria," he explained grandly, conjuring a stream of sand from his finger and sending it into the keyhole. He concentrated on the delicate resistance of the mechanism as he built up a construct capable of turning it. "And while those are both qualities you have in abundance, sometimes you need a little help to realize-"
Her foot smashed into the door right next to his head. This time, the whole thing came right off its hinges and collapsed inwards with a splintering groan. Ajeel lost his balance and followed it.
"Oh, looks like I almost had it already," Dimaria breezed, stepping over his body and into the room.
Ajeel bounced back to his feet and brushed it off in a way he wouldn't have done with anyone else, and asked the question that was only now occurring to him: "Whose room is this, anyway?"
"One guess."
He glanced around. Only the most important foreigners received guest rooms in the palace, along with visiting members of the Twelve who did not have residences of their own in Vistarion, or who preferred the practicality of staying in the palace. Ajeel's eyes were peeled for any personal effects that might give away who was staying here. There were none.
There were, however, mirrors. Lots and lots of mirrors. Free-standing ones, elaborate wall-mounted ones, little hand-held ones, all diligently arranged so that one's reflection from any angle could be glimpsed from anywhere in the room. Either whoever was staying here had a terrible fear of someone sneaking up on them, or…
"God Serena?" Ajeel wondered. "I didn't know he was back already."
"He's not," Dimaria said. "That's the problem."
At Ajeel's quizzical look, she clarified, "He called ahead yesterday to tell us he was on his way and to have his room prepared for him, only he never showed up. It doesn't look like he's been here, does it?"
Scowling, Ajeel shook his head. "Don't know why I'm surprised. If he can betray Ishgar, he can betray us. I don't know why His Majesty puts up with him."
"His Majesty has a thing for Dragon Slayers," came the absent response, as Dimaria surveyed the room in vain for any sign of habitation. "Especially ones who aren't subtle enough to do any damage if they turn traitor. I suppose he has his uses… at least, up until he drowns trying to kiss his own reflection in a lake."
"He is of no use whatsoever if he does not return to Vistarion when His Majesty orders it," Ajeel growled.
"Quite. Oh well, it's August's problem, not ours. Go and tell him there's no sign God Serena has been here, would you?"
"Why should I? It's your errand, not mine."
She considered this. "Because if you do, I'll spar with you this afternoon."
"Well, I suppose you could do with the practice," he replied, feigning reluctance. "Since we're going to war soon, it's in the empire's best interests that I help you."
"Thought so," she smirked. "Get to it."
Ajeel scurried away, pausing only to give Brandish's flowchart the middle finger. What did she know? That had been a brilliant time to talk to Dimaria. He'd got a date out of it without even having to ask.
It had always irritated Natsu how easily he could identify Gray's footsteps. It implied a level of intimacy with which he was not entirely comfortable, even if they had both grown up in the same building.
Now, though, in the privacy of his cell, he was free to give silent thanks to every draconic instinct he had inherited from Igneel for the warning. By the time Gray rounded the corner, swinging the oversized keyring that accessed Natsu's current living quarters from his hand, Natsu was already on his feet, sizing up his every motion with narrowed eyes. His snarl was far more animal than human: "What do you want?"
Gray's smile was equally inhuman. "I brought you a gift."
Stepping into the cell – although staying just outside the combined reach of Natsu's chain plus arm – he tossed a block of ice to his former guildmate. Natsu caught it reflexively. At first, he didn't understand, and then Gray snapped his fingers and the ice vanished, releasing a limp blue cat.
"Happy!" Natsu yelped, cradling the shivering Exceed to his chest.
"N-n-natsu…"
"As I promised you, he's still alive," Gray continued, his icy exterior utterly unfazed by the burning anger in the Dragon Slayer's expression. "I will need to take him back with me, of course, but since I was feeling gracious, I thought I'd give you a few minutes with your friend."
Natsu's words came out as a growl that Gray didn't have to be a dragon to understand. The ice mage closed his eyes, exhaling the weight of the whole world. Then he gestured again, and the inside of the cell was suddenly enclosed within a dome of ice, distorting the light and sound of the outside world.
Only then did his harsh expression fade somewhat. "I'm sorry, Happy," he ventured. "I really am. But I can't help you without arousing Arlock's suspicions."
"You don't need a hostage!" Natsu spat back. "Let Happy stay with me!"
"That's Arlock's decision, not mine," Gray explained patiently. "He won't let you have Happy until he trusts you."
"He should trust me by now!"
"It took me six months to win his trust, Natsu; you've only been here a few days. The fact that you stepped in to protect the citizens of Bishop's Lace has not endeared you to him. Not to mention, you only passed your first mission because I helped you, and you failed your second one entirely."
"That's not true-"
"So, you didn't let Gajeel collapse a mansion on you, allowing Levy to escape and leaving you out of action for most of the day?"
"Could've happened to anyone," Natsu muttered.
"Fortunately, thanks to my intervention, Arlock is willing to give you another chance. The second Operation Purify is about to take place in Lutea Town. Head straight there and await further orders."
"I want Happy with me."
"No. Arlock has ordered that Happy must remain a hostage in Avatar's headquarters to ensure your compliance during the Operation."
"I'll do what Arlock wants anyway! Happy has nothing to do with this!"
"I've tried to convince him of that, but he just doesn't trust you, Natsu. You've failed him too many times." Another sigh curled through the frosty chamber. "If Happy is the most important thing to you, you can always stay here with him-"
Natsu's eyes blazed so fiercely it was a wonder the ice dome remained solid. "No! I have to be there when they summon Zeref!"
"Then you've got to let me take Happy back."
"N-Natsu…" Happy croaked feebly. "It's okay. You've got to get Lucy back… no matter what…"
With obvious reluctance, Natsu handed his partner back to Gray. "I'll get you out of this, Happy. I promise."
Gray unlocked the chain around Natsu's wrists. The dome of ice disintegrated. In a voice once again as hard as the chain that had bound his prisoner, Gray stated, "Lutea Town, this afternoon. Do not fail us again, Natsu." And with a wink of his blood-red eye, he departed.
Lucy's solo quest didn't exactly begin as planned. In fact, she had barely got to the end of the street when she was distracted by the buzzing of magic from the bottom of her bag.
Pulling out the source, she found herself holding the long-range communication lacrima Levy had given her. A quick scan revealed no obvious buttons, so she shoved her magic at it and spoke out loud, hoping for the best, "Erza, is that you?"
There was a crackle of static. "Lucy? I was expecting Levy."
"She's gone back to the Rune Knights, so she gave me this incriminating lacrima."
"Very well, I shall pass my message on to you instead. Avatar are making their move today."
"Where? When? How do you know?"
Erza answered in reverse order, with a steady authority that stopped Lucy's garbled questions in their tracks. "An agent of Avatar's inner circle attacked the Mobile Temple Olympia this morning. She was barely more than a child, and yet she would have killed the entire guild, had I not managed to defeat her before she entered the Temple. It wasn't difficult to get her to talk. We found out that their High Priest had sent her to steal back the cursed sword we confiscated from Avatar's swordsman in the diner. Apparently, it is integral to Operation Purify. She was to bring it to the city of Malva, for their High Priest to carry out his plan today."
Lucy thought of the town that had gone up in smoke and the god whose summoning only Zeref's incredible skill with ritual magic had been able to prevent, and wondered how much worse Avatar's second plan was going to be. If what she had deduced from Jerome's words in Alstonia was any indication, Arlock was the only one who knew the true extent of it. Still, she duly asked, "Did she say what Arlock needed the sword for?"
"She didn't know," Erza admitted. "But we do have one advantage. Arlock is expecting this girl to turn up in Malva with his sword. This is the best chance we're going to get to beat him and stop Avatar once and for all."
The warning bells were ringing in Lucy's mind long before her friend had stopped speaking. "Be careful, Erza. Arlock is smart. Sending one Avatar mage against your entire guild was always going to be a long shot – he must have accounted for the fact that she could fail. It might even have been his plan from the start. After all, if you rush to Malva to confront him in the Mobile Temple, you'll be bringing the cursed sword right to him."
"We know, but we can't pass up this opportunity. Avatar have evaded us for months, and now we finally have a chance to catch their leader in the act. We will have to take that risk – and overcome it. That's the Fairy Tail way."
"Yeah," Lucy said, smiling. "I understand. I'm only an hour away from Malva by train. I'll head straight there."
"Then I suppose it's my turn to warn you to be careful. You'll get there before we will, and I have a feeling you're not about to agree to wait for us to back you up."
"After what he did to Bishop's Lace? Not a chance," Lucy confirmed.
"Then I can only wish you the best of luck."
If Natsu ever retold the story of this day, he would probably attribute the spontaneous decision that started everything to some powerful epiphany about friendship and not leaving allies behind. Or he would credit a warning from his draconic intuition. Maybe he would even pretend that the subsequent chain of events hinged entirely on a desire to fight Gray and prove he was stronger than his old rival.
Whichever excuse he chose, it was bound to be better than letting the world know that Avatar fell because Natsu really, really didn't want to get on a train.
As he stood in Malva Central Station, looking up at the train that would take him to Lutea Town – via about five hours' worth of stops at minor towns he'd never heard of – there was only one thought in Natsu's mind, and it had nothing to do with proving he was the strongest in Fairy Tail.
He would happily have marched through hell for the chance to defeat Zeref… but a five-hour train journey was another matter entirely.
Not for the first time, he wished Happy were with him. The Exceed could have flown him to Lutea in half the time, and provided a smooth, comfortable, nausea-free service to boot. Yet Natsu was here, facing the monstrous locomotive all on his own, and Happy… a growl edged around the Dragon Slayer's fangs. Happy was frozen in ice, a hostage meant to ensure his loyalty.
It was the meaninglessness of it that frustrated him the most. Natsu's need to reach Zeref was enough to stop him from doing anything that might endanger Avatar's plan. Gray knew that, but was refusing to do anything about it. Natsu was sure he could have found a way of rescuing Happy if he tried. But no, Gray had no reservations about freezing one of their oldest friends in order to cement his position as Arlock's servant.
Natsu didn't like it.
Nothing justified treating Happy like that. It wasn't what Fairy Tail did. Even though Happy had told him it was fine, had made him promise to rescue Lucy, it still didn't sit right with Natsu – and he liked that he didn't like it, because it proved that the black mark of Avatar he had taken to go undercover held no sway over his heart.
Gray, though… maybe he needed a reminder of just whose side he was supposed to be on. With fists.
And Natsu couldn't do that if he got on this train, could he?
Where was Gray, anyway? This Operation Purify couldn't be that urgent if Gray and Arlock were planning to catch a later train. Natsu was bound to have time to return to their base and show Gray the error of his ways first.
Besides, if he rescued Happy, then even with factoring in an extra five minutes or so to beat up Gray for old times' sake, he could still be in Lutea Town before this accursed train.
That settled it. Natsu turned his back on the train and jogged back into Malva.
Thus it could be argued, as Natsu would no doubt try to do in the future, that friendship and guild loyalty were responsible for Avatar's downfall, and the fact that Natsu wouldn't have thought twice about charging off to face Zeref if Lutea Town had been within walking distance was neatly brushed under the rug.
It was, however, somewhat ironic that Natsu would be ashamed to admit he had only made the right decision because of his mistrust of vehicles.
After all, while someone like Zeref would have realized straight away that sending a nosy Dragon Slayer to ride a train for five hours was the perfect means of getting him out of the way for an afternoon, Natsu's greatest strength had always been his instincts.
It was the first time Natsu had got a good look at the outside of the building in which he had been imprisoned. When he had stormed the black church described on the job flyer he had taken from Sabertooth a million years ago, and woken up in a damp, dark dungeon, he had naturally assumed it was the same place. The aesthetic seemed to fit, after all.
Even after Gray had helped him convince Arlock that he wanted to join them, he had been transported to and from his cell unconscious. Avatar did not take risks – or, rather, Arlock didn't. Today was the first day Natsu had been allowed to leave the cell of his own accord – and thus the first day upon which he had realized that the dingy staircase didn't lead to a sinister hideout, but to the basement of a perfectly ordinary building in the centre of an unassuming town.
Still, he had been in such a hurry to leave – at least until he discovered that Lutea Town was an entire train ride away – that he hadn't paid much attention to it. Only now, as he retraced his route through the streets, did he realize that his prison had been beneath the Malva City Community Centre, home to the Girl Guides on Wednesdays, free History of Magic lectures on Monday evenings, and the Black Knights Of Malva Chess Society every second Sunday.
A crusading guild mage would tear down every dark fortress on the continent before thinking to look for Avatar in a Community Centre, and that understanding only deepened Natsu's loathing of the evil cult. Trust them to hide behind civilians. No, he was done with pretending to be one of them. He was grabbing Happy and flying straight to Lutea Town to destroy them and Zeref once and for all.
Natsu burst through the window in a whirl of glass and fire – much to the astonishment of the Black Knights Of Malva, at whom Natsu yelled to get out of the building as he sprinted by. He didn't know where Arlock would be, but from down in the cells he had often heard the authoritative tones of someone preaching an undoubtedly dark and manipulative sermon, and that had given him a general idea of where Avatar's hidden chapel lay.
So he was rather disappointed to find himself in a lecture theatre, complete with projector and tiered seating, instead of a profane place of worship.
That disappointment ebbed as soon as it had appeared, however, for at the front of the room stood Gray.
The ice mage didn't look happy to see Natsu, but did he ever? "What are you doing back here, Natsu? You're going to miss Operation Purify."
"So are you," Natsu retorted.
No, Natsu thought, that wasn't the expression he usually received if he turned up on one of Gray's missions unannounced. He wasn't being insulted, either. Perhaps recognizing Gray's footsteps was embarrassing, but there was no shame in recognizing the annoyance his rival so often directed towards him – the annoyance that hadn't been genuine for a very long time.
Until today.
"I have other instructions for today," Gray stated. "That's why I was counting on you to stop Avatar."
It still wasn't right. It wasn't sarcastic enough. It was too cold even for an ice mage, because ever since Galuna Island the warmth of their family had been enough to thaw that ice, and now it might as well have been coated in diamond.
Natsu growled, "Give me Happy."
"You know why I can't do that," the other responded, drawing out the words with a fake exasperation that only made Natsu's hackles rise further.
"Except you could do it. You could hide a stuffed toy inside the ice instead of Happy, or craft a flaw into the ice so that he could escape on his own. What you should have said is, you know why I won't do that. And I do know."
A single crimson flame ignited at Natsu's fist. "I really wanted to believe in you, Gray. Never thought I'd say that, but it's true. I don't know if you got in so deep with the bad guys that you can't tell the difference between right and wrong any more, or if you were already like this when you joined, but you're not Gray of Fairy Tail any more. You're my enemy."
"Yes," Gray agreed, warmth entering his voice for the first time since their conversation had begun. "I can't really argue with that."
He was ready for the explosion of fire. It levelled walls and cratered the floor and burned the entirety of the tiered seating like a sacrifice before the altar Natsu had expected to find here, but it did not so much as crack the rampart of ice a lazy flick of Gray's wrist had conjured.
The the barricade did crack. Natsu's left fist did with force what his flames could not. A halo of fire swirled around him as he thundered towards Gray. A one-handed invocation brought a crude blade of ice to Gray's hand, and he struck back.
Natsu met it head-on. Like he always did. Like he had a hundred times before in a hundred guildhall brawls.
And for the first time ever, Gray's blow stopped him in his tracks.
The impact pulverized muscles strengthened by a dragon's magic. Black ice froze unfreezable flames. Fire and ice that had always been evenly matched met with only one victor – and it was Natsu who was blasted back through a wall he had fortunately already knocked down, while his flames burnt themselves out around him.
At first, Gray seemed more stunned than his opponent. He glanced at the jagged chunk of ice in his hand, as if to check it was really his own magic. When his gaze turned to his rival, slumped against a wall on the other side of the street, he gave a bewildered laugh. "Since when were you so weak? What the hell have you been doing this past year, Natsu? Hibernating? Even Lucy was stronger than this!"
Groggily, Natsu tried to push himself to his feet. He could hardly breathe. His lungs were spasming uncontrollably from the pain of Gray's attack; the layer of white frost – frost! – it had left upon his skin leeched the fire from his belly. How was Gray this strong? Natsu had been training non-stop since he'd left the guild! He'd mastered magic he couldn't even have dreamed of ten months ago! And now he could hardly think through the pain of a single blow…
"I've really screwed this up, haven't I?" Gray marvelled, shaking his head in wonder. "I was convinced you were a threat! I played along with this farce because I genuinely thought you could ruin Arlock's plans if you knew the truth! I should just have killed you from the start. You're not a threat to Arlock; you're not even a threat to me! One hit, and you can't even stand!"
Natsu gasped down one breath, and then another. Thirty seconds into the battle against his old rival, and he was already stalling for time. "What did you do to get magic like that?" he spat. "What did you sacrifice? Your soul?"
"Nothing!" There was another euphoric laugh. "All I did was train for ten months! I thought that was the whole point of the guild splitting up, but you clearly missed the memo!"
With a roar, Natsu leapt back into action. A burst of flames propelled him faster than his frozen muscles could manage. It still wasn't fast enough; a rough-hewn shield of ice deflected his blow with ease. He could feel the cold seeping into his fist just from the contact.
Superheating the air beneath his feet, he used the updraft to carry him over Gray, just like he'd practised against Gajeel, letting him blast his opponent with a dragon's roar from point-black range. That, too, was futile. Black ice crawled across Gray's skin like living crystal, repelling the devastating inferno as if it were a spring breeze. Patiently, patronizingly, Gray waited for Natsu's lungs to empty – then retaliated with a breath attack of his own.
An ice age full of winters hit Natsu at once. Sheer cold stole the feeling from his body until he hardly felt his own collision with the ground.
It wasn't right, Natsu thought distantly. Only a few days ago, he had fought Gajeel – twice! – and they'd been just as well-matched as they had been before the guild split up. It was just Gray who was different. He was the only one against whom Natsu's magic was doing nothing. He was the only one whose attacks hurt so freaking much.
The cold was dulling his thoughts. No more the mighty Salamander, he was a mere lizard, a slave to lethargy as the winter set in. He had to get up… fight back… survive…
Because if he couldn't even beat Gray, how was he going to defeat Zeref?
A flame of pure rage ignited where determination had always burned.
It was new, but not unexpected. It had been smouldering ever since he had caught Zeref's scent in Lucy's apartment – ever since he had lost her to the guild's greatest enemy. And now, he let it in. Embraced it. Let it burn away his doubts.
He was going to kill Zeref, and woe betide Gray or anyone else who got in his way.
It wasn't a draconic growl that slipped through his lips, but something worse. This wasn't an almost-friendly rematch, like his fight with Gajeel. Nor was it a righteous battle against a dark mage plotting society's destruction.
Gray was standing between him and Zeref, and that was the only reason Natsu needed to strike him down.
Flames ignited all over his body, at last hot enough to burn through his own frozen sweat. Beneath it, his skin looked almost crimson – not scaled, but burnt. Nails became talons. His pupils seemed to rupture, flooding his eyes with darkness.
"Now, this looks more interesting," Gray observed. "That's not your Dragon Force. What are you doing?"
Generating a misshapen bow of ice in his hands, he loosed an arrow almost experimentally towards his opponent. Natsu dodged, leaving the overpowered missile to skewer the houses behind with ice. He seemed suddenly twice as fast. This time, when he closed the gap and lashed out with a claw enveloped by flame, Gray's carapace of black ice did not shift fast enough to deflect the blow.
It was barely a scratch compared to the devastating pain Natsu had received from Gray's attacks, and yet it seemed to trigger something inexplicable in Gray.
Inarticulate rage consumed Gray's smug retort. His black-stained face contorted with a hatred Natsu would never have been able to picture on his rival's face before that day, not even against Deliora. "So that's what you are," he hissed. "This just gets better and better."
Fire shot through Natsu's veins… and the moment Gray struck him with another icy explosion, it immediately sublimed to steam. Boiling fury left no room for anything else, let alone words.
Hatred seethed between them. It could not be expressed in dainty syllables – only in an inferno that turned the streets to channels of lava and a blizzard that whipped all life from them in a single lash of wind. The violent devastation layered the circles of hell one by one upon the unsuspecting city. Neither noticed the damage they were doing. That in itself was not unusual, but the fact that they would not have cared even if Makarov had appeared between them holding a repair bill even larger than himself must have been a first.
There was nothing in Natsu's mind but the agony of every blow Gray dealt him. He no longer recoiled from it. No, he seized that blinding pain pulled it all into himself, fuel for the flames that were burning ever fiercer, ever darker. Flames that lived for vengeance against the man who stood in his way. This nothing-man, this pathetic, pointless human, who inflicted such pain as he had never known, and dared to stand between him and Zeref…
Not for much longer.
Because, in a moment of recklessness, the thing that had once been Gray overstepped, and the thing that had once been Natsu did not hesitate to seize his weakness.
Natsu's attacks had long since ceased to be recognizable as the spells he had spent ten months developing, just as Gray's were warped parodies of his once-beautiful Ice Make. There was no pattern to his magic, nothing but heat and fury. As Gray's crimson eye widened to let out the first adverse emotion he had shown since the battle had begun – fear – all the pain in the world was nothing compared to the new emotion in Natsu's chest: a heart-pounding, hand-trembling, tongue-biting glee.
His fiery fist closed around Gray's heart.
Time to kill.
Time to eat.
Lucy's train never quite made it to Malva Central Station.
It started slowing down before the houses of the city had even come into view, and there was still no platform in sight when they ground to a halt. Lucy was already on edge before the train's PA system informed them that they would not be going to Malva today, and that another engine would soon arrive to tow them back the way they had come.
That was a good enough confirmation that something had already begun in Malva. Lucy jumped to her feet. The automatic doors weren't working, so she summoned Taurus, and his axe cut them a manual one. Ignoring the cries of alarm from her fellow passengers – which made the actual alarm she had set off seem tame by comparison – Lucy jumped from the train and scrambled up the embankment.
The city looked like it had been bathed in a firestorm and swallowed by a blizzard at the same time. Entire streets had been flattened, houses alternately burned to the ground and locked inside metre-thick ice. The heat could not melt the ice, and the ice could not quench the flames, and so they locked in a battle unending, and the cost was the city itself.
She had never seen destruction like it, and she was a member of Fairy Tail. This was, after all, the result of Fairy Tail's two biggest troublemakers turning their destructive might upon one another.
"Natsu, Gray…" she whispered.
There was no doubt in her mind that they were going to kill each other. The devastation seethed with killing intent.
All thoughts of finding Arlock vanished. Maybe Natsu had realized that Gray wasn't the ally he had thought – no, he must have done, because Gray might have been taken over by evil right now, but Natsu wouldn't do something like this without good reason. One thing was for sure: she had to stop this.
Not that she had any idea how. Walking into that would be suicide.
No, she needed to help Natsu break through to the real Gray, but she had already failed to do that twice – once with reason and once with force. It wasn't an external influence that could be broken. It was Gray's own magic – his Devil Slayer magic, if her guess was right; a fundamental part of him. The only way to stop it would be to destroy the magic itself, and magic couldn't be destroyed.
Or could it?
Before she knew it, a desperate plan was forming in her mind.
It was the most frantic, most risky, most last-minute plan she had ever come up with. There were a million things that could go wrong – but none of them were as bad as Gray or Natsu dying at the other's hand.
She didn't slow her pace as she fumbled in her bag for the communication lacrima. "Erza!" she panted. "I need that sword!"
"Lucy…?"
"The sword Avatar tried to steal back. I need it. Here, now, in Malva."
There was an uneasy pause. Lucy could practically feel how hard Erza was trying to analyse the situation and come to a mature decision, but sensible leadership was the last thing she needed right now. What she was about to attempt was not sensible by any stretch of the imagination.
Erza tried anyway: "Lucy, you yourself said it would be giving Avatar exactly what they want."
"I know. But it's also the only way to save Gray. We'll have to take the risk with Avatar; Gray is far more important."
"Very well. We're about half an hour away-"
"We don't have that long. They're going to kill each other. Please ask Jellal to bring it on ahead. He'll be here in no time at all if he uses Meteor."
"…I'll see what I can do," Erza promised, and the lacrima went silent.
That was step one. Now for step two.
She needed something that could make Gray lose his cool. Something that would antagonize the dark side of him and drive it beyond all reason. Something that would feed its rage and solidify its control over Gray.
When they'd fought in Bishop's Lace, he'd remained darkly calm throughout the battle, unmoved by taunts or pleas. There was only one thing that he wanted – the thing for which he had abandoned Juvia and joined Avatar and been swallowed so deep by the darkness that he could stand by and watch as Bishop's Lace had burned.
The odds of this succeeding were miniscule. The odds of her surviving if it succeeded were smaller still.
But there was no risk she wouldn't take for the sake of bringing both Gray and Natsu safely home.
She held her hand out before her and focussed all her willpower on a little piece of magic Zeref had taught her one night in the forest.
Inwardly, Invel was seething.
Of course, to the untrained eye, he was the paragon of restraint and maturity. His gaze never strayed from the sky opening before them. Both hands rested on the controls just as the instruction manual advised. The altimeter's needle hovered at the most fuel-efficient height.
He wasn't a natural at flying airships, like Ajeel was; he'd been forced to work hard at it when he'd had far more important things to be doing. Still, he wasn't the kind of man who would scrape a pass in the pilot's exam when distinctions were on offer, and he looked every bit the dignified, masterful captain as he calmly flew his emperor towards their destination.
Never mind the fact that he would have been up on the deck punching the clouds out of their way if it would have got them to their destination any quicker.
Avatar. How he wished he had ignored the order forbidding him from investigating them! If he'd had any inkling of what they were up to – besmirching his emperor's name, abusing his reputation, styling themselves as his true followers – he would have travelled to Fiore and crushed them himself.
So what if His Majesty had always stressed his desire to keep his lives as Emperor Spriggan and the Black Mage Zeref separate? They were inextricably connected. Invel knew that better than anyone, now. Avatar's existence was an insult to all of Alvarez. No – Invel detested the entire kingdom that demonized his emperor and allowed such groups to thrive. The sooner the invasion could commence, the better.
"This vengefulness isn't like you, Invel," His Majesty spoke into the silence, sounding amused. "You're not supposed to dislike Avatar more than I do."
"Forgive me… but are you not angry too?"
"Of course I am. That is why I intend to destroy them." Darkness glittered in his eyes and was gone. "However, it is far easier to plan when I am calm. I want your word that you will not do anything reckless, Invel. You are better than them."
"I will not shame you, Your Majesty," he vowed, chastised.
"I know you won't." Jumping easily to his feet, he came to stand beside Invel, surveying the patchwork of blues above and greens below. "Show me the map again." One of the many display screens switched to a digital diagram of the settlements around them. He tapped the largest with a slender finger. "We're close. This appears to be our destination – the city of Malva, I believe."
Nodding, Invel rapidly computed the distance and altitude and selected the most efficient method of descent. The other stepped back, happy to leave it up to him. One hand still held the Book of END to his chest.
Naturally, Invel had asked how His Majesty was directing them to Avatar. It was nothing to do with being nosy; Invel just wanted to be sure how reliable their method of navigation was, and if he should be factoring any uncertainty into their schedule. In a startling display of openness – though perhaps less startling after the previous night – His Majesty had informed him that one of his demons was with Avatar, and he was using its book to track it. He had, however, also made it clear that he was not willing to say anything more on the matter.
Invel had acquiesced to his wishes and stopped prying. Juvenile curiosity was not a good reason to jeopardize his newfound relationship of trust with his emperor. There would be better moments than this to ask.
He did wonder about it, though. He had thought that the only demons still in existence were the ones who served His Majesty in Alvarez. Invel's attention rarely strayed from his duty as a pilot, but when it did, it was always because of the uneasiness on his emperor's face whenever he looked down at the book in his hands.
Not being magically connected to the book, Invel could not sense what he was sensing, yet even he could feel the heat radiating uncontrollably from the book. All ice mages were sensitive to changes in temperature, but this was no passive flame. The tendrils of heat coming into contact with his suppressed aura wielded a mad kind of aggression. He might have thought it intentional in the demon's design, if not for the reaction of its creator.
It was because Invel was paying such close attention to the book that he noticed the instant it vanished.
It was so unexpected that, despite its quiet and utterly undramatic disappearance, the airship lurched with the first mistake Invel had made since taking to the skies.
"Where did it go?" Invel demanded, out loud, before he remembered that he wasn't supposed to be thinking about that book.
"I don't… what… how…?"
That voice sounded terrified.
His emperor was shaking. Clutching hands pawed at the empty air where the book had been. It was as if his entire structure of control had vanished when the book had, and he whispered, "I don't understand… where has it gone? You can't take it from me… I need it…"
"Your Majesty…?" Invel dared to whisper. "Are you-?"
The other's head snapped up. The beautiful black obsidian of his eyes had been swallowed by the deepest, most violent crimson Invel had ever seen.
"Faster," he hissed. In the blink of an eye he was right behind Invel, close enough that he could feel each snarled breath upon the back of his neck, skin prickling under the unrestrained heat of anger, as out of control as anything Invel had felt from the book. "They will die. All of them."
For the first time since they boarded the airship, there was an unsightly tremble in Invel's hand as he reached for the controls.
When Lucy opened her eyes, the Book of END was in her hand.
It shouldn't have worked. The book should have been too far away. It should have been stowed in Zeref's Requip Space, where no magic but his own could reach it. It should have been somehow protected from this, the simplest of magics.
But he had trusted her once, and once was enough for betrayal.
Once, in a dead forest by firelight, he had showed her the Book of END, and she hadn't wanted to give it back. She'd felt a connection to it that she hadn't been able to put into words. It had felt like the best possible combination of her new friends and her old; of Zeref and of home. It was everything that had been missing from her life for the last ten months, and she didn't want to lose it again.
And on the spur of the moment, before he could take it away for good, she had requested to see it one final time… and she moved the spell he'd taught her for summoning a precious object from her keys onto the book instead.
She hadn't been planning, back then, to steal it. There hadn't been a logical reason for her actions at all. Perhaps she had only wanted to feel close to it.
And now she had used it to betray him in the worst possible way.
But if she could have asked permission to borrow it, she would have done. If anything less than Gray's life had depended on it, she wouldn't have even considered it.
She knew, she knew, how much it would frighten Zeref, and destabilize him, and hurt him. She would make sure he got it back safely if it was the last thing she did – and it would be the last thing she did, because if he didn't hate her already following their argument after Bishop's Lace, this would do it for sure.
Right now, though, she had to get to Gray.
"Virgo!" she called. The Maid Spirit was there at once, taking the Book of END from her and vanishing back to the Celestial Spirit Realm. Just as Lucy wouldn't have been able to summon it from Zeref's personal dimension, he wouldn't be able to summon it from the Celestial Spirit Realm. It was beyond his reach, completely cut off from his magic. If he wanted it back, he would have to come and take it in person… and that would give her the time she needed to save Gray first.
She hoped.
On the other side of the city, amidst a disaster zone of their own making, the clawed hand that was locked around a heart suddenly loosened.
Opalescent eyes, more human than they had appeared in quite some time, creased in confusion as they met his opponent's mismatched blue and red ones.
"Gray…?" Natsu whispered. "What's going on? I don't feel so good…"
Then his eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed at the ice mage's feet.
Gray stared. At first, the black ice was the only thing that could move, crawling like a living thing across his chest and sealing up the holes Natsu's claws had made. Unable to comprehend the sudden extinguishing of the flames, the sudden vanishing of life, Gray waited, on edge, for Natsu to spring back to his feet…
But Natsu didn't move again.
Not even to breathe.
"Well, that makes things a lot easier," Gray remarked, as he summoned a sword of ice and drove it towards Natsu's heart.
A/N: We're in the final stretch of the Avatar arc at last! Hold on to your hats, folks; it's going to be a wild one! ~CS