Chapter 3

True to his word, Loke had transportation waiting for the team when they got back to the guild, and he didn't wait one second past his one hour and ten-minute deadline to have them on their way.

The moment Natsu began groaning about his motion-sickness, the lion reached over with one hand and clocked him in the side of the head. When the dragon-slayer slumped under that heavy fist, he said, "One of you, just toss him in the back with the luggage and let him sleep it off. He'll wake up when we arrive at our destination, or I'll wake him up myself," curtly.

Both Gray and Erza cocked their brows in almost identical expressions of surprise at his actions, and if Loke hadn't been within a heartbeat of the killing edge, he might have laughed. As it was, he just stared at them through eyes that chilled everything they touched.

The other members of the team chose not to challenge the clearly on-edge male, instead just doing as he'd said and stuffing Natsu into the very back to snore the trip away.

"You said that Lucy was on the Heartfilia estate when you found her, right?" Gray murmured after a few minutes of weighted silence, and Loke shot him a sharp glance.

"Yes..."

"Well, I saw a map of that place once, and it's huge. Not to mention, she might not even be there anymore – there's no telling where that dark mage has had her go. So how are we supposed to find her?"

"I can lead us right to her, no matter where she is," Loke declared evenly enough despite his burning frustration with the situation and the slow pace he was being forced to endure.

"Oh? And how is that?" Erza questioned curiously.

"I'll know where Lucy is through our bond. I can feel her. I can always feel her." It's the only reason I haven't completely lost it already... because I still can, he thought with an inwardly dark laugh. I'm just a ticking time-bomb in this situation, aren't I?

"Bond?" Gray asked, a little surprised. When his friend had said that, it had seemed to have a deeper meaning than the relatively simple spirit-and-mage bond that he would naturally have with his owner.

The ginger-haired spirit shot him a look and folded his arms across his chest. "That's what I said."

"Why does it seem that you aren't just talking about your contracted bond?" Erza murmured, just as interested in the many undercurrents suddenly swimming around as Gray was. "Do her other spirits have the same sort of 'bond' with her?"

Deliberately stretching out his legs and crossing them at the ankles, Loke took his time responding. "No, they don't. Only I can feel her even when I'm in the celestial realm, only I can speak to her when I'm in my world through my key, and only I can open my own gate and pass back and forth freely, regardless of her will."

"And why would that be?" the red-head prodded, watching the lion like a hawk through knowing brown eyes.

She received a closed-off glance for her trouble. "Because it's just that way."

Both brows rose at his avoidance. "Hmm," she said skeptically, not at all fooled, "I think there's a little more to it than that. If you do not wish to explain, however, I'll respect that – as long as it doesn't have any bearing on the current situation. If it does, even in a peripheral way, if it could possibly give us a way to save Lucy, then I ask that you speak."

Loke met her eyes, a slightly feral spark gleaming in his for a few seconds before he shuttered his gaze again and shrugged. "It doesn't."

"So, what are we going to do when we find her?" Happy asked, his eyes huge and face solemn.

"That's something that we can't really plan too well, since we don't know anything about what's going on, or why. Or how, for that matter," the lion answered the Exceed, though his voice had gotten more frustrated at his last statement.

"Loke-" Gray began, seeing as his friend was getting increasingly upset. But he was cut off before he could get anything else out.

"Dammit, she was fine when I left her after she'd seen that bastard lawyer - I made sure she was safely in her hotel room before I would agree to go back to the celestial realm! And then I'd barely arrived back there when I felt something terribly wrong and realized that Lucy was in danger. When I turned around and came back through my gate, she wasn't anywhere near her room, she was running around out in the countryside. What the hell happened in the short time I was gone?!" he exclaimed sharply, one large fist clenching involuntarily as he imagined it wrapping around the throat of whoever was responsible.

Erza reached out to the hurting spirit. Clasping his shoulder, she told him, "We will save her. None of us will give up on Lucy, just like she's never given up on any of us."

Oh, you have no idea, Loke couldn't help but think, though he nodded at the warrior mage in silent thanks as she took her hand away. If she had, I wouldn't be here now. She laid everything on the line for me even when she barely knew me, standing up to Seirei-o the way she did. My heart won't allow me to do any less for her.

Even if it cost my life, I would never give up on hers.

"Erza's right," Gray affirmed. "We'll find a way to save her, no matter what it takes. We'll never turn our backs on her, Loke. You should know that."

"Yes, you should," Charle agreed firmly.

The lion twisted his neck and cracked it, then exhaled slowly and nodded. "I do. That's why I came to get you guys. I wouldn't trust anyone else to help me with this."

"Lucy's our nakama, the same as you. And we don't leave nakama behind, no matter what. That's not Fairy Tail's way," Erza said, the others agreeing with strong, supportive voices.

Loke gave his friends a small, though sincere smile. "I know it."

"Then you should explain as much of the circumstances as you can," Titania stated. "Has anything suspicious happened to her lately, something that sticks out in your mind, maybe someone hassling her? Do you know anything about her last job? And you said something about her visiting a lawyer. Could any of that have any involvement in what's happened?"

With a frown, the lion ran a thumb over his mouth and thought about her questions. "I don't see how... but I can't dismiss anything, at this point," he replied. "As for the job she was on, I don't have much information on that, since she didn't need my assistance. It was a non-combat job, but that's really all I know except that she successfully completed it, to the gratification of the client." Speaking of something that happened recently that sticks out in my mind... "While she was on the way to the town it was in, her train was attacked..." he trailed off slowly as his eyes narrowed. Could that situation have had anything to do with this one?

"Her train was attacked?" Gray asked sharply, his brows in his bangs. "How did she get out of that mess safely?"

Loke cast his friend a slightly vexed look. "Does she know you think so poorly of her? It wasn't all that difficult. When I felt her worry through the bond I opened my gate and came through, and she told me what was happening. Then I had her call out Gemini, and while I went to fight the main group of bandits that were planning to kill the engineer and hijack the train, she and the twins went to take out the ones that had gathered the other passengers and were holding them prisoner."

"I didn't mean it that way, Loke. Stop being so oversensitive," Gray muttered with a roll of his eyes. "I know Lucy's strong and quite capable of doing what has to be done."

Exhaling sharply, the lion ran a hand through his wild ginger mane of hair. "Yeah, I know. Sorry I'm so short-tempered right now."

The dark-haired ice mage shook his head at his friend. "It's okay, man, I understand. We're all worried about Lucy, too."

Loke just nodded. It wasn't quite the same for them, but the reason for that wasn't anyone else's concern, so he didn't say anything.

"The train robbers... what happened with them?" Wendy piped up, her brows furrowed curiously.

"Yeah," Happy added. "I was just wondering about that, too."

"Once we rounded them all up they were restrained and left under armed guard by a couple of the conductors. From something Lucy mentioned later, the train stopped in the next town down the line and they turned them over to the authorities there. Actually," the spirit said, somehow managing to turn a smile on the young girl despite the fear for his mistress determinedly poking him in the gut, "it turned out that the gang had been operating for a while, and the company that owns the railroads had offered a substantial reward for their capture. So she made quite a killing between apprehending them and completing her job."

"Do you know any details about the bandits?" Charle asked.

Glancing at the white cat, he replied, "Not much. They only had one mage with them, and he wasn't very strong. The rest weren't even particularly gifted physical fighters. To be honest," he shrugged, lifting a hand and staring at it with an expression that intrigued the others, "they seemed little more than a group of low-life's with little skill in anything more than frightening the weak and helpless."

"I sense a 'but' in there..."

He chuckled and looked over at the warrior mage, though his eyes weren't all that amused. "Erza, you've always been good at picking up on what lies beneath. You're right. There was a man in the group... he wasn't a mage, but he seemed to be awful knowledgeable about magic for one who had none. Pretty young, and a little better than the others with weapons." His eyes gleamed with a cold light, then. "He was the one who managed to hurt Lucy. He'd gotten her with a knife he had hidden on him, and though it wasn't deep it was fairly long, going from her wrist to her elbow. I cleaned and bandaged it after we'd beaten the group and tied them all up."

"I hope you taught the bastard a lesson for that," Gray hissed angrily.

The dangerous expression in the lion's eyes only strengthened, and a rather terrifying smile crossed his face. "Oh, I most certainly did," he purred. "I made quite sure he knew exactly how much I disapprove of those who hurt my mistress. It was a lesson he won't soon forget – that is, if he even has much of a lifespan left to worry about it. From what I heard, those guys have killed several people already, including some fairly prominent ones, and they might just end up getting executed."

"Well, that would seem to be that, then," Gray said, a bit disappointed that line of questioning hadn't produced a more promising lead.

"Not so fast. We can't dismiss them as possibilities, because while the gang themselves might have been imprisoned, that doesn't mean this isn't revenge for Lucy's capture of them anyway. I'm sure at least some of those guys have family or friends of one sort or another somewhere," Erza cautioned, then looked at Loke. "Do you know anything else about them?"

He shook his head. "Nope, and I don't think Lucy did, either."

The redhead frowned thoughtfully. "Moving on, then... do you have any idea why she was visiting a lawyer?"

"I do. She's been planning to sell her family's estate, and had the man looking for a buyer. I guess he was their family lawyer or something, the rude, pompous little twit. He found someone who's interested and requested a meeting with her to discuss the offer."

"Rude, pompous little twit?" Wendy giggled at Loke's phrasing, while Happy snorted a laugh behind one paw.

"Well, he was. He didn't stay that way for long, though."

"What did you do to him?" Gray asked.

"Gave him a taste of his own medicine. Although it wasn't just me," he smiled a little, remembering his surprise at hearing Lucy speak so cavalierly to someone – and his pleasure at the fact that it had been in defense of him. (Though it should go without saying that he wasn't happy that she'd let the fool treat her the way he had.) "I had no idea she had it in her, but you'd have thought she was a queen the way she cowed him."

"Was he a mage? Could this attack on Lucy have come from him?" Erza questioned.

"Not a drop of magic anywhere," Loke returned, waving a hand with casual derision. "He was a dull, plodding old fool. I very much doubt he had anything to do with it. It happened too quickly after their meeting, for one thing, and I don't think he even knows any mages besides Lucy herself – if he does, then I doubt it's a very close relationship."

Gray made a frustrated sound, then. "This is all just speculation, anyway. For all we know, this might have nothing personal to do with Lucy at all. It could be anything – a vendetta against someone she's friends with or even a random attack on her by a wizard looking for any powerful mage to turn into a puppet. It could all be just a 'wrong place, wrong time' kind of thing. Our best bet right now is to discuss what Master told us about Marionette and come up with at least some possible courses of action once we get to wherever she is. The answers to our questions can come after we've freed her."

Knowing Gray was right didn't soothe the lion's jangling instincts or fears at all, and he sat up and swept a hand through his hair again, making it seem even wilder and more untamed than usual.

"Yeah, well, we can't really do much on that topic, either," he growled. "We just have too little information to come up with anything viable at this point."

"Maybe not, but we can at least have some ideas already discussed by the time we get there."

"Such as?" Loke questioned the ice mage, once more on edge. They'd better not mention me actually turning my power against Lucy again...

Erza answered. "Such as how we're going to split up the fight. There's going to be more than one front in this battle. There's Lucy herself, and then there's the mage controlling her – and it's possible there's others involved, as well. We need to have at least a tentative plan agreed on before we arrive."

Gray met her serious gaze with one of his own. "Got something in mind?" he asked, before the lion could.

She nodded. "When we arrive wherever it is that she's at, we can refine it a little more depending on what we find, but at least for now I think we should go at the matter this way. Loke, you, Wendy, Charle, and Gray will go after Lucy. Once you've engaged her I will take on whoever it is that's controlling her, and Natsu and Happy can investigate the surrounding terrain and take out anyone else who might be around."

"Why do I need Wendy, Charle, and Gray with me?" Loke asked, looking through narrowed, suspicious eyes at the red-haired mage.

"Well, I was thinking that Gray might be able to immobilize Lucy to keep her from hurting herself or others, and Wendy should be there just in case she's injured – as well as to see if her healing magic can possibly help Lucy reestablish the link between her heart, mind, and soul."

"But Master Makarov already said that only Lucy-san could do that," Charle interjected. "And only after the mage controlling her has been taken out and the darkness of Marionette has been chased from her."

"Yes, he did. But he's basing that opinion off of what used to be considered true about a magic that's been forbidden for years. Back before it was banned, there wasn't a mage like Wendy to help. I'm not saying she can, just that's it's possible. I think it's worth trying, don't you?" Erza asked – though no one in the carriage missed that she hadn't answered the rest of Charle's statement.

I know what you're thinking, Erza... and you'd better stop. I refuse to turn my power against Lucy like that. There has to be some other way, and I'll just have to find it.

Loke braced his elbows on his knees and laid his head in his hands, his heart hurting. I hate this... "You're right. It's worth a try." Then he cocked his head a little and glanced at Erza out of one livid hazel eye. "But I'm the one that's going to go after the bastard that did this to her, and I'm not going to back down on that, so don't bother trying to convince me."

She looked steadily back at him, but didn't respond otherwise. Loke knew her too well to think she'd given in, but since she didn't say anything, he left it alone. It wouldn't matter anyway. When they found the fucker responsible, he'd take him out before she could do anything to stop him.

"Is that just because she's your mage?" Happy asked, a calculating expression in his eyes that actually managed to catch the lion by surprise - he'd never seen the cat give anyone a look quite like that before.

Well, he's certainly not as oblivious as Natsu usually is to the undercurrents.

"No," was all he said in reply, though he turned his gaze away from the blue Exceed as he did.

"Or maybe it's because she saved you from certain death, and you feel a debt to her."

Erza's eyes were a little too perceptive for Loke's tastes as she watched him take in Gray's statement. Unable to really hide his clamoring emotions from his friends any longer due to his already heightened tension and churning stomach, he sighed. Clasping his hands between his knees, he stared at the floor, and a humorless chuckle slipped from his throat as he looked back at that time in his life.

During the three years he'd been stuck in Earthland he'd accepted his coming death as the only acceptable penance for his part in Karen's. What did he have to live for, anyway? Being picked over by the next cruel human to gain his key? Used and abused as nothing more than a perpetual tool? His exile had made him look at the life he'd lived as a celestial spirit and wonder why any of them would even want to continue existing – they were the stars, the sentient glory of the night skies, and yet they had been made little more than slaves to dull, light-less humans.

He'd been very bitter.

And then he'd looked up one day from his seat in Fairy Tail's guildhall and witnessed a miracle walk through the doors. He'd immediately felt a resonance between himself and her soul that he'd never experienced before, and even though by then the agony of his energy slowly being eaten away had become his constant companion, it had suddenly eased as a wisp of her magic slipped away from her and teased his senses. Then it had gently slid inside him as though looking to heal him, and seared away his pain.

Her power had burned hotter than the stars of his heart-system, and for one moment outside of time he'd basked joyously in the glorious and all-encompassing heat like a small cub.

But when he'd realized just what kind of mage she was, he'd panicked. How could he not have noticed? The thing was, Lucy's magic hadn't really felt like any human magic he'd ever encountered, not even a celestial mage's. If there was anything that even came close, it was a stellar spirit's own power. Her magic felt sort of the same, but not quite. It was truly unique... as was she.

At the time, however, he'd let his knowledge of her use of said power sour him to what kind of person she really was, and it had taken repeated run-ins with her for him to finally be forced to accept that she could never be judged by any other stellar mage's actions.

She was Lucy. And she was just as brilliantly, boldly spectacular as any star in the heavens, and far more so than any other human.

Then he'd started running from her even more and with nothing but curses for the cruel, cruel joke fate had pulled on him in his last days. It had finally allowed him to meet the only woman in existence who could heal his heart... when it was far, far too late and he was beyond any sort of redemption. He'd absolutely hated life then, and his own most of all.

But too late or not, Lucy had fulfilled the promise he'd seen in her and saved him anyway. She'd taken a fallen star and placed him back in the heavens, something that had never happened before in all of history.

He would worship her for eternity for it. She was his guiding star, and he would follow her faithfully down whatever road she chose to take. As long as her light illuminated the path, he would never be lost again.

That was why he would be the one to destroy whoever it was that had done this – because they'd hurt her, and because they had stolen her away from him. It was his right to be the one to make the bastard pay for his crimes against her as her knight, her prince, her strongest spirit.

It was also his right to take revenge on the one who'd taken the light of his life away.

"Are you really asking me if this is about duty, or because I'm trying to return the favor of a life for a life? If so, then the answer's no to both. It never has been," he finally said flatly, then fell silent. He didn't speak again, and the others, seeing that he was at the end of his patience, let the matter go for the time being.

Quiet once more fell in the carriage, leaving the only sound to be heard the rumbling of its wheels over the hard ground as it moved across the landscape.