Hello all! I return with a chapter! Hopefully this one will be more cheerful and entertaining, despite the minor cliffy at the end.
Review Response: Dear Lightsbane1905, greetings! Yeah, I can totally see what you mean. A while back, I even went and double-checked what issue of the manga Wren would have last read before coming to Earthland. I try to keep plot holes like that from forming, I really do.
Dear powerrangersfan364, hey there! Bickslow is turning into a very lovable character, isn't he?
Dear Ori Heartlyng, hello! Yeah, Wren's life isn't all sunshine and Fairy Tail Luck. Still, she'll be okay, she's got Bickslow and Laxus to keep an eye on her. Oh, I have plans for their appearance (cackles faintly), we just need to get through a few things first. Glad to hear it! I'm always happy when other people enjoy my stories! Hmm, well, wait a few years (in the story timeline, not literally of course) and I'll be open to pairing suggestions. They could end up being a cute couple though...
Dear 9462641/Zokoi19 (not sure which you prefer), hi there! Wow, I was hoping the chapter would provoke feels, but I didn't think it would do all that to you. I'm ... partly pleased and partly apologetic to be honest. (Offers tissues) There, there? I'm glad we agree on the idiocy of "dies and is totally cool with it" kind of story, I'm also very glad Wren's reactions and such makes sense to you. I'm having a lot of fun fleshing out Bickslow's powers, I really wish the guy got more screen-time in the anime. Bickslow and Cana are too young for me to even consider shipping them right now. But, when they are older ... yeah, I could see that happening. Depends on them though, really, the characters stole the plot of this story about 18 chapters ago. Hmm, we'll have to see. I may do a one-shot detailing Wren's POV of that chapter sometime, but only if the inspiration for it really, really strikes me. The reason I jump POVs so much is to avoid getting stuck, so unless the muses cooperate, trying to rewrite the chapter from Wren's perspective would be a futile endeavor. Sorry. Anyway, it depends what you mean by 'something'. He definitely saw how distressed she was and such like, but other than that I'm not sure how to answer your question. Perhaps the word you are looking for about the last paragraph is 'bittersweet'? Or maybe 'tragic'? Just a thought. I hope you enjoy the newest chapter!
Dear Kuna Longshanks, hello there! Well, Wren has been bottling up that reaction for about three years, so I felt a meltdown was justified. Wren knows a little about the Alvarez Empire Arc, yes, but she never got a chance to read its conclusion. Her knowledge of the Fairy Tail storyline goes up to about ... volume 53, I think? That was released in April and this story started in may/june, so her foreknowledge stops thereabouts. I have a lot of fun with Bickslow, he's a blast to write and flesh out as a character. Thank you, I hope you enjoy this newest chapter!
Dear Pixie, hi! Thank you, I was hoping that would all make sense. It's kinda fun having the characters put two and two together and get three instead, even if its about a very serious matter. It ... really does, doesn't it? Poor Cana. No worries though, things will cheer up for them in a bit.
Dear Dragon Lord Draco, heya! Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it. Runaway chapters are both the most frustrating and the most gratifying, oddly enough...
Dear Guest, hello! Aw, thank you! Describing the auras of various characters was fun, actually. Here's an update I hope you enjoy!
Dear BizzyLizzy, greetings! Glad you think so. I suppose I just need to learn to trust the characters more when they declare that the chapter will go a certain way, even if that way goes against my plot notes.
Dear Wandering Mage011, hi! Thank you, I tried. Heh, Wren is, unintentionally, becoming something of a precursor to Erza in the matter of keeping Fairy Tail mages in line. By the time Erza comes along, the guild will probably be very well trained in how to respond to say, the "Fairy Girls death glare". I dislike writing angst, but like you said, sometimes it's necessary for a story. Hmm, that would be adorable! I'll see if I can coax Laxus into it sometime. Might take a while though.
Author's Note: Okay, so, hopefully everyone will find this chapter as fun to read as I had writing it. It's the first part of a multi-chapter mini-arc so to speak, so tighten your seat belts ladies, gentlemen, and exceeds, because Fairy Tail Luck is about to strike again! Now, I could have put this chapter off and continued to cover Cana's and Wren's emotional recovery from the previous chapter and such but ... I figured two chapters of angst in one sitting was enough if I could possibly help it. Therefore, this chapter takes place after a short timeskip. Also, there's a Cliffhanger warning on this chapter. Just a heads up. Hope you all enjoy!
Copyright Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail or any references made in this story. The only things I own are my OCs and the plot.
Chapter Twenty: Train Rides and Robberies.
(Three months, two weeks, two days since joining the guild)
"Yo, Cana!" Cana looked up in surprise as the Raijinshū approached her table, a job poster in Laxus's hand.
Cana blinked, "Hi guys, what's up?"
Laxus gave her a dry look, "We're heading out for a job, let's go."
She sputtered and dropped the cards she'd been shuffling, "Wait, me? Why do I have to go?"
Bickslow tilted his head, "You want to get stronger right? So you need more field experience."
Laxus elaborated, "We're going on a Team job. Jobs that require Mage teams are often harder, but they're much better for gaining experience. Plus, when Fairy Tail Luck kicks in, you have backup." He held out the poster for her inspection and she snatched it eagerly to read over the contents.
"You don't have to come," he drawled with a shrug as she read, "but since you've been doing so well in training lately and Wren is finally free to go on missions again, we thought you might want to come along."
Cana frowned in thought as she passed the poster back, "I don't know. I haven't had very good experiences with treasure hunting jobs. Too many predators and pitfalls and stuff."
Bickslow rolled his eyes from behind his sunglasses, "That's what backup and rope is for."
Cana shot Bickslow a scathing look at his tone, but rolled the idea over in her mind a few times despite herself. Finally, she nodded and stood up, "Alright, I'll come." Laxus gave her a look of mild approval that surprised her while Bickslow merely shrugged and Wren patted her hand approvingly.
Together, the four kids alerted Ricard to which job they were taking and, after a brief stop at Cana's house to grab her travel pack, were on their way to the Magnolia train station.
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Rihanna sat back against the train seat and watched the landscape roll by. On the seat across from her, Laxus gave the bickering Cana and Bickslow a look of annoyance. She knew without turning her attention away from the window that other passengers in the train car were doing the same. I don't know why everyone else is so annoyed. They're not acting up nearly as much as they did before. A flicker of memory from two weeks ago rose in her mind before Rihanna pushed it firmly away. She didn't want to think about the disaster with Gildarts or the panic attack that followed.
"Wren." Rihanna looked away from the outside view at Laxus low mutter. The blond thumbed at Bickslow and Cana, who were now standing in the narrow isle between their seats, heads pressed together as their argument grew louder.
Rihanna rolled her eyes at Laxus's silent command but obediently reached out with her shadows and slapped the two across the backs of their heads. Bickslow and Cana paused in mid-word to look at her and she leveled a dark glare at them before motioning pointedly to their respective seats. Both of them blanched just a bit and sat down immediately, causing Laxus to chuckle faintly, "She's got you two well trained."
Bickslow and Cana bristled at the same time, mouths twisting to retort when Rihanna gave a low hiss through her teeth. Laxus watched in amusement as two sets of teeth snapped together sharply at the noise and two argumentative team members settled down without another word. He glanced over at Rihanna, "Think you could teach me to do that?"
Ignoring Bickslow's horrified look at the prospect of Laxus learning Rihanna's secrets to keeping order, Rihanna shook her head and signed, "Nope. Sorry. It's a girl thing."
Laxus gave her a puzzled look, "… 'girl thing'? Bickslow, did I translate that right?"
Bickslow shrugged, "I don't get it either. I always thought it was just a Wren thing. Shark over there certainly can't do it."
Cana snapped automatically, "Don't call me Shark," before she turned her attention to Wren, "I don't get it either, Wren-chan. I don't think I've ever met another girl who glares like you do."
Rihanna waved off the unspoken question and fought to keep her expression neutral, just wait a few years and then you'll see what I mean. At her dismissal of the topic, silence fell over their little section of the train for all of ten seconds before Puppu queried, "Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" Pappa and Pippi immediately took up the cry as well, forming a three-part chorus that would have been charming if that had not been the fifteenth time it had spontaneously formed.
Cana growled in her throat and reached for her card purse, "Bicksaho…"
Bickslow flailed his arms at his tikis as he protested, "It isn't my fault!" Cana, Laxus, and Rihanna all leveled identical looks of skepticism at him and he amended sheepishly, "I'm not telling them to do that! They're just reacting to my emotional state! It's a side-effect of the magic!"
Cana waved one of her paralysis cards threateningly, "Well entertain yourself or something!"
Bickslow threw his hands in the air in frustration while Pappa, Pippi, and Puppu switched their chorus to, "How, how, how?"
Cana pulled back to throw her card only to be stopped by Laxus grabbing her wrist and droning, "Civilians in the car."
Cana tried to tug her arm free, "I'm not aiming at the civilians!"
Laxus didn't even seem to notice her emphatic attempts to free her wrist, "Bickslow's tikis are fast, you might miss."
Bickslow laughed, "Yeah right! She'd definitely miss! There's no way my tikis would lose to her cards!"
"You mean like how you lost to her last week in a sparring match?" Laxus's bland retort made Bickslow deflate with a scowl.
Cana was now attempting to pry Laxus's fingers loose, "Just one shot to shut him up. Come on, Laxus-kun!"
Bickslow stood up from his seat again, "Bring it on, Shark!"
Cana jerked her whole body against the hand holding her wrist in place, "Let go!"
Laxus tilted his head to one side and let his eyes droop into a deceptively relaxed half-lidded expression, "Fine. I'll let you go," Cana brightened and Bickslow's tikis chattered excitedly, "if the two of you will be Wren's and my long-range spell targets for the next three weeks."
Rihanna watched in amusement as Bickslow and Cana went still as marble statues, even paling to the point that they almost matched the hue of the stone they were impersonating. Her amusement grew into silent chuckles as Cana very slowly relaxed into Laxus's grip and Bickslow pointedly sat down, his tikis slinking under the seat with meek chitters.
Laxus studied the two for several long seconds before he released Cana's wrist and ordered, "If you two are that bored, go explore the train or something. Just don't blow anything up. Or damage the cargo. Or traumatize the civilians. Or … anything else that would give Jiji more paperwork to deal with. He's got bad enough arthritis in his hands as it is."
The bluenette and the brunette exchanged unsure glances before shooting questioning looks at Rihanna. Rihanna blinked, why do they need my permission? Laxus is the leader here. Still, she made a shooing motion and, after convincing Bickslow that yes, she would be just fine sitting here watching the scenery with Laxus, the two wandered off to explore the rest of the train.
Laxus and Rihanna shared grateful looks at the blissful lack of fighting and chittering tiki dolls before Laxus went back to his book and Rihanna went back to watching the landscape and mulling over her latest problem. Well, not necessarily her latest problem, just the one that had been dragged to the forefront of her mind for the past two weeks.
The problem was her future knowledge. More specifically, what she should do about it and how she could safely preserve it. Because she was under no illusions as to whether she'd be able to remember all the important parts without something physical to jog her memory. It had already been three years and some odd months since she'd seen the anime or read the manga and who knew what crucial details she'd already forgotten.
Her first instinct was to write down everything she could remember, but then there was the problem of how to keep that item - or items - secure from unwanted eyes. She could encode the knowledge, but she was terrible at codes and simply writing it in english wouldn't work because she had seen the occasional english sign and had heard sprinklings of english words in conversations over the years.
As far as she could tell, english was some kind of semi-dead, semi-assimilated language in Earthland. Which meant that while finding someone who could read, write, or speak english fluently was very, very hard, it might not be impossible. And considering just how Fairy Tail Luck worked, that "almost impossible but not quite" would turn into a "has happened in the worst possible way" if she wasn't careful.
Ideally, she either needed a way to lock the item so that no one could read it except her, or she needed a place to hide it where it was guaranteed to remain undiscovered. She knew there were magic spells that could do those things, the killer-flute from the Lullaby arc had been sealed somehow if she recalled, but considering the seal had been mentioned only in the context of getting broken, she was not filled with confidence about that option.
Besides, where would she learn something like magic sealing when she couldn't read Japanese yet? Plus, how would she gain the needed proficiency in it in time to write down her memories before they faded away completely?
Rihanna sighed and pressed her forehead against the cool windowpane in an effort to soothe her growing headache. There had to be a simple, safe answer that she was either forgetting or didn't know yet. Whatever that answer was, she needed to find it soon. Her attempt with Gildarts and Cana had proven just how stupid it was to wing something as delicate as rewriting the "plot" of the world and Bickslow's questions that horrible night had proven that she needed to be careful if she didn't want news of her "divination magic" to be known to every villain in the Fiore and beyond.
Rihanna tapped her fingers against her leg as she scowled. She was … lucky that Bickslow and Laxus had handled her breakdown the way they did. After that night, neither boy had mentioned her "third magic" or questioned her further about it. They had just hovered protectively for the majority of a week before allowing her to go out shopping with Cana and Levy. The trip had successfully cheered up both Rihanna and Cana and things had mostly returned to normal, but the memories of the incident still bothered her.
She had been so terrified when Bickslow had figured out that she had known about Gildarts' relationship with Cana. Scared out of her mind when he had asked how because what could she say? That she had learned it all in an anime? A story? That Bickslow had been just a character in an entertaining fantasy before that day she'd woken up just outside Aternum and wandered inside looking for help?
She couldn't tell him that. She could never tell him, any of them, that truth. Not only would they never believe her but … it would hurt. Saying those words would hurt not just them, but her in a way that could never be fixed. If she did and they believed her for some reason, they would want to know why she didn't say something earlier. Worse, they want to know their futures and wouldn't understand her refusal to tell them. But what would she be able to say?
That the Raijinshū would turn their backs on their guild? That Laxus would be exiled from the guild? That a dragon would nearly rip Gildarts apart and then attempt to destroy Fairy Tail's sacred island while Makarov and a bunch of children were on it? That they would be trapped in time for seven years while the rest of the guild fell into disarray and was abused by a bunch of bullies?
What about the Grand Magic Games? The future that Lucy died to rewrite so that she would never have to see her family burn under the rage of dragons? Or what about Gray, Lucy, Macao, Jet, Droy, and so many others dying until Ultear gave away the majority of her remaining years to buy them a single minute in which to change their fates?
A low hiss escaped her teeth as she thought about the manga she had taken to reading after finishing the anime.
What about the Alvarez Empire arc she never got to finish? That, above all other arcs, had been horrible to Fairy Tail. To be caught in an impossible situation, against an army even more devastating than the dragons of the Grand Magic Games or the demons of Tartaros, with no way out but forward and even that having almost no hope of survival.
No. She could never tell them about those things.
Rihanna had been trying to avoid so much as thinking about those things for a long time now. But the Gildarts debacle and Bickslow's questions had forced it all back into her mind and now she couldn't let it go. She had to do … something. Find a way to remember it all so that she could help out Fairy Tail as best she could. Even if they survived everything in the storyline, that had just been a story. This was real now and there was no way she was going to simply let her guild, her family, go through all of that if she could possibly help it.
But how to preserve her knowledge without risking it falling into uncharitable hands?
"Wren?" Rihanna blinked out of her endless circle of frustrated thoughts and shifted her gaze to Laxus. Laxus had laid his book on his lap and was studying her intently, "Are you alright?"
Rihanna smiled weakly at him and Laxus narrowed his eyes, "You aren't alright."
Her smile dropped at the conviction in his voice and she sat up wearily. There was no point in trying to lie to him, Laxus had some kind of built in lie-detector when it came to his friends and was as stubborn as a rock if he wanted to be. Raising her hands, she signed, "I'm fine. Just thinking."
Laxus squinted at her hands before he asked, "You looked more like you had a headache. What's bothering you?"
Rihanna hesitated, wavering between diverting the conversation or stating a water-down version of the truth. After several seconds of arguing with herself over which option to take, her hands moved almost without her consent, "The pictures in my head. I want some way to remember them."
Laxus's eyebrows shot up, then his expression shifted to a thoughtful one, "They fade over time?"
Rihanna shrugged, "Yes."
Laxus rubbed his chin, "I'd suggest writing them down, but you can't write yet…"
Rihanna bit her lip and confided, "I'm afraid of someone seeing them. If I wrote them down. I'm afraid someone would steal the pictures and hurt people with them."
Laxus's lips moved silently as he deciphered her sentences. He was getting fairly good at translating, but he lacked the experience needed for rapid translation. When he finally decoded her hand-signs, he tilted his head, "That's a good point. You'd need a way to hide it…"
Rihanna shot him a "no duh" look that needed no translation and Laxus huffed, "Right, right, you already know that." Bookmarking his place in his novel, Laxus set it aside, "I'll think it over, see if I can come up with any ideas. Anything in particular I should know about your … pictures?"
It was a probe made out of concern, but Rihanna still shook her head violently and subconsciously cringed away from him. Concern flashed over Laxus's face for a moment and he leaned forward, hands out placatingly, "Whoa, easy, Wren. I'm not going to pry, I promise. It's okay. I won't ask further or get mad or anything like that. Just stay calm."
Rihanna forced herself to take deep, slow breaths to lower her heart rate back to normal, calm down. You shouldn't be so jumpy, you need to remain calm. You know Laxus, you trust him, he's fine, just calm down. You shouldn't freak out so badly over a stupid question. Just calm-
An muffled, teeth-rattling "whoomph" rippled through the train car and Rihanna was thrown violently forward out of her seat as the entire train shuddered under the force of the explosion. Laxus caught her clumsily and, after a few moments of them both trying to regain and keep their footing, they exchanged looks, "Bickslow and Cana?"
Rihanna ignored the other screaming passengers of the train car as she signed, "Bickslow and Cana."
Laxus growled and began pushing his way through the standing throng of agitated civilians, Rihanna close at his heels, "By the great Tenrōjima Tree, it's been fifteen minutes."
Really? I'm surprised they've been quiet this long. She kept that thought to herself however, and focused on keeping up with Laxus as he pushed his way to the back of the car and flung open the door.
The wind howled and buffeted them the moment the door was pushed aside and Rihanna fought back a spell of nausea at the sight of the ground rushing away just outside and below. This is not a good idea! This is really not a good idea!
Laxus studied the short yet potentially fatal distance between them and the next train car and roared over the wind, "Think you can make that, Wren?" Rihanna triple-checked the distance, then decided it wasn't worth it the risk and grabbed Laxus's wrist. Laxus looked down questioningly as Rihanna mentally reached out to the shadows. Whispers of velvet curled up her arms and flashes of images spun beneath her eyelids as she focused on locating a proper shadow.
Train tracks blurring away beneath her, nope. The underside of a passenger seat, nope. Beneath a table in the dining car, maybe… More glimpses of the locations of various train cars flashed by as she stretched her senses out farther down the long line of cars. Being able to see where a shadow would put her was a relatively new facet of her Shadow Magic, and took a lot of concentration to sort out. But it was very useful for determining where to teleport when in unfamiliar territory. If she could just find the right shadow…
There was a flash of green light behind her eyelids and the impression of whirling action. Bickslow! The shadows were twisting too fast, changing shape too rapidly for Rihanna to grab them properly and she mentally backtracked one train car. Light filtered in through the slitted windows, lengthening the shadows of the cargo boxes and Rihanna tightened her grip on a confused Laxus before she pulled.
Freezing darkness swallowed them and Rihanna felt the cold creep down her throat warningly as she was delayed slightly by the shadows' resistance to her passenger. Then, just as the cold was becoming dangerous, they were free again, stumbling to keep their footing in the shaking and shuddering cargo car.
Laxus leaned against a pile of boxes, wheezing heavily and shivering, "A little … warning next time … Wren!"
Rihanna righted herself and shook off the cold in her limbs with difficulty, note to self. Work on teleporting with a person-sized passenger more. That wasn't fun. She began to frame an apology to Laxus when an explosion suddenly shook the air and they were both instinctively lunging to one side to avoid a hail of wood fragments.
Sunlight poured in, almost blinding her with the sudden extra illumination and, after a few blinks, Rihanna gaped in shock at the state of the cargo car. The majority of the left wall was gone along with about half of the right wall. The roof was missing entirely and a good portion of the boxes that had once been in the car were destroyed, their contents rolling around on the floor amid the debris, What in the name of Pantherlily? Even Bickslow and Cana together wouldn't do that!
Rihanna looked around frantically for a glimpse of her brother and friend, or the source of the explosion, when Laxus roared over the wind, "What the h-" Another explosion, no, another cannon ball whipped over their heads, sending them diving for cover and drowning out Laxus's words.
Still, Rihanna shared the intended sentiment as she dived out of the way of the access smoke. Rolling to her feet, Rihanna stared at the … thing rolling along at high speeds next to the train and tried to determine if she was hallucinating. A quick pinch to her skin made her conclude that no, she was somehow not hallucinating.
There was a pirate ship shooting cannon balls at the train.
An actual legitimate pirate ship, complete with three masts, billowing sails, a jolly roger, and lots of angry pirates.
With no bodies of water, large or small, anywhere in sight for miles.
Why in the name of Igneel would you put a pirate ship on wheels? Is that even possible? No wait, it's totally possible. Blast Fairy Tail Luck. This just isn't fair! Laxus pulled her out of her thoughts when he grabbed her sleeve and shouted, "Over there!" Tearing her gaze away from the pirate ship jouncing and rolling next to the train, Rihanna spotted Bickslow and Cana on the next platform over.
On par the course for the day, they were fighting what looked to be a boarding party of pirates.
It said something that Cana and Bickslow, two children with only magic cards and tiki dolls between them, were doing a pretty good job of fighting off the full grown, burly pirates waving scimitars and the magic versions of flintlock pistols. Though whether it said something about the skill-level of the two kids or the pitiful abilities of the pirates, Rihanna didn't have time to decide.
Laxus lunged forward, using a homing-type Lightning spell to launch himself across to the platform and crash feet first into the back of a bludgeon-wielding pirate. With a sigh and a quick eulogy for yet another portion of her sanity, Rihanna stretched out her shadows and pulled herself across to join the other Raijinshū in fighting off the pirates.
Rihanna landed lightly on the ground amid the scuffling feet of three pirates, her shadows curling around her like angry tails before exploding outward in concentrated shockwaves and sent them flying off of the train with screams of surprised terror. Inwardly praying that the unnatural durability the people of this world seemed to have would ensure she hadn't just committed murder, Rihanna darted off to place her back briefly against Bickslow's.
"Fifteen minutes, you two!" Thundered Laxus as he roundhouse-kicked a pirate away from Cana's right side, "I left you alone for fifteen Mavis-forsaken minutes!"
Bickslow's tikis whirled into a shield formation to deflect an overhead scimitar slash before firing off lasers to drive the pirate back, "Oi! This is not our fault! They were the ones who boarded the train and were stealing stuff! What were we supposed to do? Let them?"
Cana darted between the legs of a particularly tall man, slapping a lightning card above her head as she passed by, "I want to know why the train hasn't stopped! Doesn't the conductor notice that the train is being attacked?"
The man went down with a howl of agony and Rihanna used the falling man as a springboard to axe-kick another pirate in the face, how many of these guys are there? Do they keep sending more or something? Another boom went off and Rihanna rolled clumsily across the platform, wincing as she crashed into the form of an unconscious pirate.
Laxus whirled in the direction of the pirate ship and bellowed, "Oh, will you quit that!" A bolt of lightning shot out from his body at the peak of his shout, lancing across to the pirate ship and setting one of its sails on fire. The pirate ship swerved away from the train a little, shouts of alarm rising from the figures on deck as they scrambled to save their sail.
"Hey! Hey, let go of that! That isn't yours! Hey!" Cana's shriek yanked everyone's attention away from the ship and back to where Cana was trying to pull a large box away from a man several times her size. Needless to say, it didn't work. With a growl and a firm tug on the box with one hand, the pirate suddenly grappled across the distance between the platform and the ship with the box in under his arm. Just before he got out of range, Cana leaped forward and latched onto the box, shrieking threats the entire way.
Cana! "Cana!" Bickslow and Laxus shouted at the same time while Rihanna reached out a hand futilely in Cana's direction.
One of the few pirates still standing shouted, "That's the last one, lads! Back to the ship! Back to the ship!"
The other pirates began to pull out grapple guns and fire them, pulling themselves back to their ship while Bickslow and Laxus roared and tried to knock them out of air with tiki blasts and lightning strikes. The ship swerved away from the train while the remnants of the boarding party were still in midair, rapidly leaving Laxus's Lightning-jump range despite their tattered sail.
They've got Cana! I've got to do something! For a moment, panic and determination overrode her increasingly faulty common sense. Desperate to rescue Cana and with no time left to think it over, Rihanna reached out to the shadows and yanked on them demandingly. There was a pause, a flash of the dark cold between the shadows, and then Rihanna was stumbling clumsily into a barrel as she tried to regain her sense of balance after teleporting to a moving target.
Her shoulder smacked painfully against the barrel with enough force to make it rattle a bit and Rihanna hissed faintly before she darted backward into a corner and dropped into Shadow Form. Three seconds of panting and looking at her surprisingly uninhabited surroundings later, Rihanna slapped her face with a palm very hard. Oh. Pantherlilies. What did I just do?
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Bickslow snarled and paced in the grass next to the now halted train. Just after the pirate ship had pulled away and sailed off with Cana as a hostage, the conductor had finally managed to stop the train. Now passengers were milling worriedly about while Laxus towered over the pirates he and Bickslow had taken prisoner and demanded to know what the pirates had stolen and how to find the ship.
Stupid, idiot Shark! What was she doing clinging to the box like that? Should've just let the pirate steal it, but no. She just had to get herself captured along with the stolen box didn't she? Why didn't she just nail the guy with a paralysis or lightning card? Stupid, stupid Shark!
Huffing agitatedly, Bickslow ran his hands through his hair and tried unsuccessfully to calm down. Laxus would get the pirates to talk, and if the Lightning Mage wasn't scary enough to make the scum talk then they'd just sic Wren on-
A new thought occurred to him and Bickslow looked around frantically. After several seconds of scanning the area, calling, and even rescanning the area with Figure Eyes, Bickslow swore richly and ran to Laxus's side. Laxus was in the middle of lightly shocking a pirate to make him cooperate when Bickslow shoved him aside and cannoned into the prisoner, "Where is she?"
He had dropped his sunglasses onto the grass a few feet away, his glowing eyes meeting the prisoner's without any block between them. The pirate's colors froze and fell under Bickslow control as he howled again, "Where is she?"
The pirate sputtered, unable to answer the question despite Bickslow's demands because of his wording. Laxus grabbed Bickslow's shoulder, "Whoa! Bickslow, calm down! We'll find Cana-"
"I ain't talking about Cana," snarled Bickslow to Laxus before he turned his focus back on the pirate, "Where is Wren, you piece of trash? Where is my Imōto?"
Laxus stiffened for a moment before he too realized that Wren was missing from the scene and lightning began to roll dangerously off of his shoulders. Fear colors fought to grow and move under Bickslow's grasp as Laxus leaned forward and growled through his teeth, "We're only going to ask one more time, slimeball. Where. Is. Your. Ship?"
Japanese Translation: Imōto - Little Sister
aho - moron.