I will more than likely have at least one more chapter before Thanksgiving, so I'll wait for my holiday greetings until then. For now SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Keep your heads when you're out Black Thursday? Friday shopping kids. The people that are working the holiday don't want to be, so try to be extra courteous. They're just trying to do their job. They have no control over coupons, deals, stock, or anything else, so try to be patient. You're choosing to be there, they HAVE to be there. I've worked my fair share of Black Fridays, and I can tell you, I would have rather been eating with my family every time. So do Mama a favor and be nice.
Gleamqueen: Loke mentions the dragon first, but he's just leading up to the reveal that Lucy still remembers Natsu. He says that the two together (the dragon and her remembering) has made his job difficult, not that the dragon caused her to remember. Hope that helps!
CathJorda: The dragon is actually a little figurine, not a necklace. As I said above this to gleamqueen, Loke only says the two together have made his job difficult, not that the dragon caused Lucy to remember. And after he erased Natsu, but before he left Lucy alone, he checked to make sure he'd buried the memories appropriately and was certain that he had. It will come up again later, and you will eventually learn how Lucy still remembers, so I don't want to confirm or deny your guesses just yet. And I apologize for the cliffhangers (kind of) but I'm a cliffhanger slut. I use them everywhere, so hopefully you're heart can make it through the rest until the end of the story.
UnitedOsprey1991: Your comment is almost word for word what I put in my notes, lol.
As always, thanks for all the love and happy reading!
Leo appeared in Lucy's kitchen moments after Erza. "What do you mean, Lucy's in trouble?" The demon's words had shocked him, causing him to teleport slower than he'd intended.
"I left my own runes when I was here last to keep an eye on her."
The angel frowned as he connected with his protection spells, sorting through to find out what had happened. "Why would you do that?"
Erza didn't respond as she checked her own work by placing her hand on the wall. Runes began to glow in response to her touch. "It was a demon. He caught her while she was on her way here."
Leo could sense the same. "Damn it. I thought Aries was watching her tonight." He called out for the other angel, but got no response. "I have a bad feeling."
"I can't tell who the demon is and that's very unusual." Erza pressed her hand harder into the wall. "Wait… no, that's a decoy. He was trying to hide his identity." A hiss escaped her mouth. "It's that damn Midnight again."
"Who?"
"A demon Natsu had a scuffle with a few months ago. He's a nightmare demon so he shouldn't even be able to get into this world." When Erza removed her hand from the wall, she frowned at the dent she'd left behind. "I returned him after Natsu called me, and I spoke with the king. He said he would look into it."
Leo got a strange feeling in his gut. "Isn't the nightmare demon king Natsu's brother?"
Erza fixed the wall before turning his way again. "He is, although many don't know it. Natsu's mother has always been speculated about, but never widely confirmed, so the brothers' relationship has always been kept quiet."
"Do you think Zeref was involved?"
"Absolutely not," she said with certainty. "I spoke with him after our meeting with the kings, and he was adamant about not allowing the realms to rejoin."
"Are you sure he wasn't lying?" Leo asked.
Erza's face darkened. "Even the kings would not dare lie to me."
"So that's a maybe?"
With another hiss Erza turned away. "At any rate, we need to retrieve her. If it was Midnight, my guess is that she is in the lowest realm with the other nightmare demons. I can't imagine any of them having the power to get out on their own, or even come up with a plan to use Lucy, so there must be someone else in charge. However, between the two of us, I think we should be able to retrieve her fairly easily."
"I can still feel her, so as long as they don't-" Leo gasped. A moment later, he was on his knees on the floor. A pain like none he had ever felt before permeated his entire body, making it impossible for him to move or even breathe.
"Leo!" Erza kneeled at his side and put her hand carefully on his shoulder. "What is it?"
What is it? Leo had no idea. He couldn't even tell where the pain was coming from, let alone what was causing it. As the feeling intensified, he realized it wasn't his body that was hurting, but his magic. He forced a breath into his lungs, lessening the stars that had filled his vision.
His magic was being manipulated, but Leo didn't know how, or how it could even be done. His magic was a living thing. It was his essence, his soul. He remained connected to anything he cast his magic on by little tethers. It was how he could find Lucy. It was how he kept an eye on everything in the different realms. The only way for him to lose those tethers was to remove the spell and take that portion of his magic back.
That was it.
That was why it hurt.
Someone had figured out how to cut the tether to Lucy.
They were eliminating his bond to her by severing the connection. That part of his magic was being cut off from the rest of him so he couldn't find her. He'd never had his magic removed like that before, so he hadn't known that such a thing would be so painful.
When the pain suddenly eased, he could sense his magic soothing itself, wrapping around the loose tether and attempting to heal where it had been cut.
"They- cut off my connection to Lucy."
Erza frowned. "And that causes you pain?"
"Normally it wouldn't, if they had just removed my magic, but they found some way to cut it. Since it's basically my soul, cutting it is more detrimental than just removing it." He looked at her through a single eye as he tried to breathe through the pain. "Our magic is very different from yours."
"So it would seem." Erza glanced at the window, and then moved silently to blend in with the shadows. "Someone is coming."
As soon as she spoke the words, the door jiggled and then someone began to knock. "Hey Lucy, open up! Why'd you lock the door?"
"It's just Cana." Leo took two deep breaths and then stood to answer the door, carefully arranging his face so she wouldn't know anything was wrong.
Cana squinted up at him as he swung the door open. "What are you doing here?"
"And good evening to you," Leo answered.
"I'm serious, Loke, what are you doing here? It's girls' night, go away."
"Am I not allowed to be here for some reason? Lucy is my friend too you know."
"Girls' night," she emphasized. "Go away now."
"Yeah, it's girls' night, so you're not invited," called Levy from the sidewalk, a smiling Juvia at her side.
"Listen, can you guys do this another night? There's something-"
"Nuh-uh," Cana said as she dropped her bags. "Loke, I will remove you with my bare hands if I have to. You've done what you can, but now it's our turn to help Lucy feel better about her man trouble. So go away."
Suddenly, Cana, Levy and Juvia all froze. Leo was confused until Erza joined him at the door. After a quick glance down the road, she walked outside and began to carry his frozen friends into Lucy's place. "What are you doing?" he asked.
"Putting them inside." Loke grabbed Cana and her bag as Erza carried the other two passed him. "We do not have time for this," she said. "We must find Lucy soon. The longer she is gone, the harder it will be for us to track her, especially now that you are no longer connected."
Once the trio were comfortably situated around the living room and put to sleep, Leo and Erza returned to the kitchen.
"Tell me something," Leo said. "Did you leave the dragon on purpose?"
Erza glared. "I am not going to dignify that question with a response. Now tell me what plan you have to find the human."
Leo rubbed his hands over his face. "I need to find Aries and then speak with my king. We're going to need back up. I think I need to send an angel to each of the realms and see if they can find her. Some are better trackers than others, so it will take some time to coordinate, but I think it will be better that way.
"Lucy shouldn't have been alone, so I'm worried something happened to Aries. I'd like a little time to find her first. I think your theory about the midnight demons is sound, so why don't you check out their realm first?"
"I will do so, but I will need time to make my own stop." Erza crossed her arms. "The kings will need to be informed, because I think our best bet to find her will be Natsu, which means he will need permission to temporarily return to this realm."
"Are you sure?" asked Leo.
"I am." She took a breath and with a flash, her armor changed, becoming black as a moonless night. "You go find your friend and I will reach out to the kings. I will speak with Zeref first. Perhaps he will know where his brother is."
"Sounds like a good plan," he said. "We should plan on somewhere to meet up once we've finished those tasks."
"My office will be empty for several hours. The building as well. We can meet there once we are ready."
"Sounds good."
With a nod, Erza disappeared, leaving Leo alone except for the soft breathing coming from the other room. And Cana's snores.
Leo grinned a little. "To think she'd have the same idea as me."
In a flash, he was also gone.
"I don't understand."
Lucy turned her head a little, but kept her eyes on the TV. "Don't understand what?"
"This is supposed to be a love story, right?"
"Basically, yeah."
"They're fighting an awful lot," he said, frowning.
"Some couples do that."
"Seems like a crappy thing for people who love each other to do."
Lucy smiled and cuddled up against him a little more. "If you'll remember, we argue, too. And I kicked you into a wall when we first met."
"That's different," he argued, his warm arm wrapped firmly around her.
"How? They having figured out yet that they like each other. They're still figuring out how to act around the other, testing boundaries and preferences. We do that, too."
"Well I still don't think that's very solid relationship behavior."
"They figure it out," Lucy reassured him. "Sometimes you just love someone so much, it's too intense and the pressure has to blow off in whatever way it can."
Natsu was quiet for a while.
"I'm glad we're not like that," he said eventually.
"So am I," she said. "I'd hate to have to kick your butt every day."
Natsu pulled away a little, one eyebrow raised. "Oh, you think you would be the one winning?"
"Of course," Lucy said, confidently. "You think you would?"
He grinned and then pushed her over on her back in one smooth motion. "Of course, and it would easy."
Their laughter filled the room as Natsu tickled her, mercilessly. Lucy eventually managed to plant a foot and pushed both of them to the floor, but once she found herself on top, she found she didn't want to tickle him back. He was still chuckling as he laid under her, his smirk a challenge that, for once, she chose to ignore.
She leaned down so her nose barely brushed his own. "You know, I think you would let me win."
He rubbed his nose lightly against hers. "Yeah, probably. Be safer for my health if I did."
With a smile, Lucy tilted her head and kissed him. She squeaked a little when he wrapped an arm around her and flipped them, but that quickly turned into a sigh as his hands slid under her shirt to reach her skin and his mouth continued to move against her own.
It was a long time before they returned to the couch. When they did, Natsu was thoroughly confused by what was happening on screen.
Lucy only laughed as she rewound the movie.
Zeref stepped off the elevator into the lab hidden miles below his home. It had taken him far too long to convince Erza Scarlet that he knew nothing of his brothers' whereabouts and even less about where Natsu's former master was. She was a shrewd demon, good at her job, and too suspicious for her own good. He'd almost decided to have her locked up until he was done, but the other kings would notice her absence, so he knew it was safer to have her running around, even if she was suspicious of him.
"Good evening, my lord." His new lead scientist had more backbone than his predecessor, but he wasn't quite as good at his job. Zeref was glad he'd managed to obtain the information from Zalanoon's minions' work. It had allowed him to follow through with his plan much sooner than they'd initially planned to.
"You sound rather pleased with yourself, Gillax," the king said as he paused next to the tall demon. His skin was a deep purple, with pitch black eyes and teeth that could give grown demons nightmares. His tail and wings were hidden, but Zeref knew they were enormous, and with the scars that littered his body, he was honestly terrifying to behold in all his glory.
It was no wonder Zeref had taken a liking to him.
Gillax grinned as he continued to tap away at his keyboard. "I've got the human strapped up, and now that I've combined all the information you gave me with my own experiments, my machine is almost running at peak efficiency."
"Almost?" Zeref frowned. "I thought you said you were ready for this."
"Oh I am, my lord." The demon switched some screens and pointed at one of the monitors. "I did what I could until I had her on my table. The machine is adapting and pulling her blood as quickly as it can, but I discovered that by manipulating her emotions while she sleeps, I can get her heart pumping faster and have the blood pushed through her body and collected more quickly."
"Is there no other way to do that?"
"Of course, my lord, but I'm missing some machinery to do it the old fashioned way, and my dream manipulation prototype is already here. And as you can see, I've already proven my theory is correct." The screen changed to display an incomplete graph. "That first bar is from her dreamless sleep. The second is nearly a third higher, and that's only the first experiment. I'm using my machine to manipulate her dreams by bringing up different memories using one of the other devices I found in the closet. Her different emotions will produce different results and once I've tested them all, I will know which memories to go find based on which emotion produced the best results.
"At which point," he finished with a smile, "we will be at peak efficiency."
Zeref gave him a small smile in return. "That is good to hear." He looked up at the screen once more. "Tell me, which emotion did you use for the initial test?"
Gillax went back to his keyboard as he responded.
"The strongest one, of course. Love."
Despair. Anger. Destruction.
Annihilation.
He needed to make everything look how he felt.
He needed to break it, break everything.
Maybe then he would feel better.
Maybe then the pain in his chest would fade and he could finally breathe again.
