A Matter of Souls

by V. Shalyr

It's been more than a year since the accident that put his entire class in the infirmary, and Zeref has given up on ever finding a partner and going on missions like the other students at the DWMA. That is, until a new student invites himself into his life and they get swept up into the battle against a new witch. Soul Eater fusion, eventual NatsuxZeref

2. Island of Dissonance

Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail or Soul Eater

Pairing(s): Natsu Dragneel x Zeref (eventual), mentions of Gajeel x Levy (established)

WARNINGS: AU , eventual Shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read

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A Matter of Souls

By V. Shalyr

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2. Island of Dissonance

Sickness

Natsu Dragneel was fast becoming a common sight in the school library, as was the sight of Zeref actually conversing with someone. Normally, the librarian would have frowned upon people talking so frequently in this space that was meant for quiet contemplation, but it was nice to see the usually solemn, dark-haired boy actually opening up to someone. And since the two always made sure to keep their voices down, the staff decided to leave them alone.

Today, however, Natsu had only just sat down at his friend's table amidst the shelves when one of the librarians arrived with a worried furrow between her brows and a note in her hands.

"It's for you," she said, handing it to Zeref. "I believe it's urgent. I'll hold on to your books for you at the front desk. You can come back for them when you have a chance."

Puzzled, Zeref thanked her and unfolded the small piece of paper.

As soon as she had gone, Natsu asked, "What is it?"

Zeref lifted his gaze from the paper, a frown on his face not unlike that worn by the librarian. "My presence is requested at the infirmary."

"Anything in the note say I can't come with?" Natsu asked.

He was reaching for his backpack even before Zeref said, "No, I don't think so."

Neither of them spoke as they made their way through the halls. Regular classes were out for the day, and the building was relatively quiet. The few students they passed were whispering amongst themselves, their body language broadcasting anxiety and concern. These were all, Natsu informed his companion, EAT class students—the segment of the student population that actively carried out missions on behalf of the academy and Lord Death.

Both Natsu and Zeref stopped dead in their tracks when they reached the open infirmary door, struck by a sense of wrongness that pervaded the space beyond like an invisible miasma.

"So you feel it too, huh? That's good. I thought you might."

They pulled their gazes away from the two occupied hospital beds to look at the pale-haired man seated backwards on a swivel chair between the two cots.

"Dr. Stein," Zeref greeted. "What happened to them?"

The doctor and scientist made a noncommittal sound in his throat. He tilted his head to one side, glancing at the two unconscious students, then reached up absently to turn the head of the giant screw that protruded from somewhere around his left temple.

Zeref winced internally at the series of clicking sounds it made. He'd always wondered about that screw, but had never found it in himself to ask the man about it. It couldn't possibly actually pass through the man's head, could it? Frankly, Zeref wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer.

"We're not sure," Stein said finally. "They were just leaving their last class of the day when they fainted in the halls. According to witnesses, it happened at about the same time and without warning."

Squeaking around in his chair, Stein snagged a clipboard from the bedside table and glanced over it briefly before holding it out towards Zeref. "Take a look for yourself."

Zeref accepted the proffered charts and moved to stand by the side of the bed nearest to the door. While he skimmed the contents, Stein turned his attention to Natsu.

"I heard you two started hanging out. So it's true. I'm a little surprised."

"Yeah? Why's that?"

"Hmmm." The infirmary lights gleamed off Stein's round glasses. Before he could give an actual reply, however, Zeref lowered the clipboard and spoke.

"I don't understand. This basically just says that they're sleeping."

"That's right," the older man agreed. "And not waking up."

"Have they been out on any jobs together recently?"

"As a matter of fact, yes, they have. Their last assignment took them onto a cruise ship traversing the Atlantic. Although as far as we're aware, they wrapped up the mission without any trouble, and nothing particularly noteworthy occurred while they were onboard. Since then, however, we've received a few odd reports from sailors in the area. Something about people sighting an island, except no one's actually been able to reach it. It could be a hallucination, or... Well, moving islands aren't the strangest thing this academy has seen."

Drumming his fingers on the back of the chair, Stein continued. "Lord Death would like to see you—both of you. There should be a few other students heading to the meeting now, so you should probably get going. Oh, and don't forget that feeling when you first entered this room. I dare say it'll be important."

When the two left, they thought they heard the doctor mutter, "I wonder what they're dreaming about."

Helicopter

Lucy didn't think she'd ever been on such an uncomfortable flight. The helicopter was spacious enough that the six passengers weren't crowding one another, but, well, it was still a helicopter. It only had so much room to offer, and the strange, dark-haired boy who had arrived on the airstrip with Natsu all but radiated discomfort with having them all so close.

He wasn't really what Lucy had expected. Not that she'd spent much time imagining what Natsu's new friend might be like. But if she had given it any thought, given what she knew about the boy's history, she was pretty sure she would have pictured... something else. Certainly, he didn't look like someone who had caused his classmate to go crazy and put more than a dozen students in the infirmary.

In any case, the atmosphere was a far cry from the anxious excitement that had pervaded Lucy's last long flight, the one that had brought her from her hometown to Death City to begin her high school career. Come to think of it, this was the first time she'd been given a mission this far from the school after joining the academy. She'd never actually intended to be part of the EAT class or to go on missions at all. She'd only enrolled at the DWMA because it offered great connections and future career prospects, a fact her father had impressed upon her since she was old enough to understand what any of that meant. He might not approve of her desire to become a journalist, but he approved of the school, and so attending had proved a happy compromise.

What would he think of what she was doing now, Lucy wondered. She still hadn't gotten around to telling him about her change in classes.

Gray cleared his throat from where he sat beside his partner Wendy in the front row of seats. "So, any of you know what exactly we're supposed to be looking for?"

"We were told to focus on gathering information about the island," Lucy said. "Assuming we're actually able to reach it. They actually tried sending some of the teachers, but they could never manage to land on it. Only one of the newest teachers got even close. I think they theorized that you have to be under a certain age."

"So that's why it's us and not some of the grownups," Gray concluded. "I wondered about that. And I suppose that's why they're sending you, huh?"

This last question was directed at the boy in the back row next to Natsu.

Zeref turned away from the window to look at him. After a long moment, he simply nodded.

"That doesn't explain what you're doing here though," Gray said, turning to Natsu. "Are you sure you're supposed to go with us?"

Natsu rolled his eyes. "Of course I'm sure. I've done plenty of info-gathering missions."

That was actually true, Lucy mused to herself. He might not have a Weapon partner yet, but Natsu was extremely observant and had great instincts. It wasn't the first time he'd been sent on an assignment to collect information.

From the pilot's seat, Loke, a student in the class two years ahead of them, cleared his throat. "We should be getting close. Get ready."

Without another word, the six of them retrieved their backpacks and jackets and prepared to disembark.

Lucy retied her hair to make sure she got al the loose strands then turned to squint through the window beside her. Far below them, the ocean was a gray-blue expanse splotched here and there with shadows that made her think of monsters lurking just beneath its surface. She shivered and wished that she hadn't read quite so many stories about ghost ships and haunted islands.

"I think I see something," Wendy murmured in the tense silence. "Ten o' clock. Is that it?"

Following her directions, Lucy spotted a black smudge on the horizon. As they drew closer, it resolved into a crescent-shaped wedge of land like the shadow of a perfect crescent moon.

"It fits the description," Loke announced, sounding unusually grim. "Remember, you're not to engage with anyone or anything if you can help it. I'll be standing by in this helicopter in case we need to leave in a hurry. You've all got a communicator, right? I know you've all got your phones, but those communicators are designed to work even in intense magical fields. Professor Stein thinks that might be why we lost communication with those other aircrafts when they passed over this area."

A murmur of confirmation rippled through the helicopter.

Behind her, Lucy heard Zeref murmur, "Natsu, do you feel that?"

"Feel what?"

Zeref didn't reply right away, and just as he did so, the helicopter swept down towards a deserted stretch of beach on the edge of what appeared to be a dense forest. Lucy's attention was caught by movement out of the corner of her eyes, and she squinted towards the line of trees. For a second, she thought she saw something pale and ghostly dart behind a tree trunk. She opened her mouth to point this out to the others, but before she could say a word, a powerful gust of wind slammed into the side of the helicopter and sent it reeling back into the sky. Lucy hit the side of the copter with a pained gasp. Around her, the interior of the helicopter was a cacophony of thuds, crashes, and curses as everyone grabbed onto whatever they could to stop themselves from being rattled about the cabin. The entire aircraft shuddered and veered again, tossed about like a ragdoll caught in a sudden storm. She could hear Loke swearing in the driver's seat, which was bizarre in itself since the older student considered himself a gentleman and was always careful with his language.

"It feels like something's got us!" he called back to them. "I can't get us back on track."

"We're going to crash!" Gray shouted.

Even as he spoke, the inside of the helicopter grew dark. Something—a mountainside? A tower—loomed in the windows, racing towards them way too fast. Lucy's heart leapt into her throat. Natsu was shouting something, but she could barely hear him over the roaring in her ears. And then the door of the helicopter had been flung open and the wind crashed through the space like a tsunami.

The last thing Lucy remembered was grabbing for Levy's hand as the floor slid away from beneath her feet.

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Island

When Zeref opened his eyes again, he found himself staring up at a clear blue sky dotted with fluffy clouds like he would have expected to find in some child's storybook. Strange. Hadn't it been overcast earlier? He'd barely had any time to ponder this when his sight of the sky was eclipsed by a familiar face framed by messy, salmon-colored locks.

"Great, you're awake," Natsu said, relieved. "I was getting worried there."

Gingerly, Zeref sat up. "What... happened?"

There was grass all around him—a field of some kind—and trees beyond that. In the distance, the mountains that they'd seen from the helicopter jutted up towards the heavens, dark against the otherwise bright expanse.

"We got caught up in that weird storm. At least we all got out of the copter before it crashed. Not sure where the others landed, but I think I saw a town or something on our way down. Are you hurt?"

Zeref tested his limbs carefully. He'd probably have bruises, but nothing seemed broken or sprained. "I don't think so. You?"

"I'm fine," Natsu assured him, getting to his feet. "This whole island seems, I don't know, wrong somehow though."

Zeref knew what he meant. It was like an echo of that same sense of wrongness that had plagued the infirmary room back at the academy, like static noise just below the threshold of hearing. It made the hairs prickle on the back of Zeref's neck and set his nerves on edge. He wished he'd said no to this assignment, but really, if there was an age thing preventing adults from reaching the island, he was the only research-oriented staff member who qualified.

"We should get moving," Natsu said, holding a hand out towards him. "I was thinking we could start by heading over to the town. Unless you have somewhere else you want to go first?"

Zeref looked at the offered hand for a moment, hesitated, then accepted it and let the other boy help him to his feet. "If there really are people living on this island, it seems like as good a place to start as any."

Besides, the chances were high that their other companions would start by making their way there as well.

Zeref was quiet for awhile as they started through the woods, just listening to Natsu mutter to himself as the other boy tried to recall what he'd seen of the island as they were falling. It was strangely comforting, and eventually, Zeref gathered enough of his thoughts to ask, "How do you normally handle assignments like this? I mean, I've never had any team missions before."

"It really just depends," Natsu said, pausing ahead of his friend on the leaf-strewn trail to wait for him to catch up. "Honestly, we didn't get a lot of details on what we're supposed to be looking for, which makes things a bit more complicated. I'm assuming we'll eventually split up to search the island, but again, maybe we won't—if it seems like that would be a risky thing to do."

Here, Natsu shot him a sheepish grin and added, "I've really only been on one or two of these kinds of missions myself. I'm usually solo. Like I said, I don't get to do the typical missions that everyone else does because I haven't got a partner yet. I can fight fine on my own, but if there's actual supernatural stuff involved, regular weapons just aren't good enough."

"Don't you usually have to practice with someone in your early academy classes?"

Natsu made a face. "Yeah, I didn't really end up getting along with anyone well enough to work together on an official assignment. And for the most part, there are way fewer Weapons than Meisters, so..."

He trailed off and shrugged.

"I see."

Zeref fell quiet again, averting his gaze from his companion back to the trees and shrubbery on either side of the path. A tiny part of him wondered, just for a moment, what it would be like to actually be able to work with a partner like the other students at the academy did. But he'd given up on that idea so long ago that it was difficult to let himself think about it now. It was easier to just not hope for things that would probably never happen. Besides, he had no wish to put someone else through the trouble of trying to learn to sync with him. Considering the strain it placed on the few Meisters he'd worked with when they were trying to figure out where the problem lay, he would never ask it of anyone, much less someone he was starting to really like.

"You're thinking too much," Natsu said, interrupting his thoughts with a hand on his shoulder. "If you're worried about getting along with everyone, just give it time, all right? They're all good people. Promise."

Zeref glanced sidelong at him and met piercing green eyes far more serious than Natsu's cheerful tone might have suggested. Those eyes observed him with an intensity that would have disturbed him from anyone else. But Zeref had gotten used to that look over the time they'd spent together and didn't comment on it. Instead, he simply nodded. It really shouldn't surprise him anymore that the younger student could read him so well.

"Hey, want to hear about some of the jobs I've been on?"

Zeref nodded again, and Natsu launched into an animated account of his visit to a port city where a witch was rumored to be attacking sailors. Zeref settled down to listen. Uncomfortable thoughts could wait until this job was over.

By the time the first rooftops came into view, Natsu had switched from talking about his adventures abroad to telling Zeref about their current teammates.

"A lot of us were in the same classes our first year and we did a lot of training together," Natsu said. "Levy was originally going to partner up with her boyfriend, but unfortunately for him, that didn't work out."

"Their soul wavelengths weren't compatible?"

"Nah, that wasn't it." Natsu sniggered. "As far as soul wavelengths go, they're fine, but he has no idea how to handle her Weapon form. I guess she's pretty unusual that way, because she turns into a quill pen that you can use to sort of—write certain things temporarily into existence."

"That sounds very interesting," Zeref said, meaning every word. He would have loved to be able to write things into being, even if it was temporary. It sounded like a fun and flexible kind of ability, maybe not the best for hardcore battles, but there were plenty of other people who could do that.

"It is interesting," Natsu agreed. "But Gajeel hates writing, so that makes working with Levy really hard for him."

"Ah, I suppose that would be problematic."

It was a little sad, but also, honestly, kind of funny.

Zeref started to ask Natsu a question, but movement up ahead made them both tense. They stopped walking, scanning the path in front of them and the woods to either side. Almost immediately, Natsu tapped his companion on the shoulder and inclined his head towards one of the trees to their right.

There was a girl standing mostly obscured by the trunk, Zeref realized with a start. From how she had positioned herself, it was difficult to tell if she was trying to hide her presence or not, but her gaze was fixed upon them with thinly concealed curiosity. Her eyes were silver, Zeref noted with some surprise, and there were silver ribbons woven into her chestnut hair.

Natsu raised his voice and called out to her. "Hey, are you from the town?"

Instead of answering, the girl ducked back behind the tree trunk, and they heard the light crunch of fallen leaves beneath her feet as she darted away.

"That was weird," Natsu muttered.

Zeref nodded in agreement, and they made their way past the first few houses on the outskirts of the town in silence until they heard familiar voices calling their names.

"Natsu! Zeref! Over here!"

.

Townsfolk

"This place seems totally normal," Gray said, frowning from his seat at the restaurant table. "It's like a lot of the small towns I've been to. Well, aside from the fact that most of the people here washed up after a shipwreck and how they don't have any hotels I suppose. Guess they don't get a lot of visitors."

"There's the tower," Lucy said quietly. The tea was cooling rapidly in her cup. She hadn't taken more than a sip from it.

"You mean the one at the foot of the mountain?" Natsu asked, curious. "What's unusual about that?"

"That's the thing," Levy spoke up from beside her partner. "None of the townspeople we talked to could see it. Or they see it and just pretend that they don't. They told us we were probably suffering from the crash—you know, like hallucinating."

Zeref turned his head to look out the window. He could make out the tower in question clearly, its tall, narrow silhouette rising above the distant treetops.

"I think the helicopter went down near there," Wendy said uneasily. "I wonder if that's where Loke is."

Out of the seven people who had been in the aircraft, the older student who had piloted the vehicle was the only one who had not yet found his way to the island's only human settlement.

Wendy and Gray had arrived first, something about her and Gray being able to use the wind to travel more freely if Zeref remembered correctly. Lucy and Levy had ended up nearly giving a farmer a heart attack when they'd stumbled out of the woods, bruised, bettered, and covered in brambles. They'd landed close to the town, but had been forced to take a long detour in order to avoid the attentions of a large bear. Natsu and Zeref had arrived last, both because they had taken their time traversing the woods and because they had landed the farthest away.

Natsu wolfed down the rest of the grilled salmon on his plate then said, "Well, at least we've still got most of our supplies. We can buy anything else we need from the townspeople and head over to check out the tower first thing in the morning."

A murmur of agreement rippled around the table. The sky had already started to grow dark, and none of them thought it wise to go traipsing through those woods after nightfall. Sure, this town looked normal. But they knew better than most how looks could be deceiving.

"But if they don't have any inns, are we going to have to camp out?" Wendy wondered aloud.

Lucy shook her head. "That's one piece of good news at least. The farmer we told you about said we could camp out in his barn if we don't mind sharing the space with a couple farm animals."

"It might smell a bit," Levy added ruefully, "but it's better than being outside."

Most of the time anyway, especially in suspicious territory.

Aside from the two cows napping in their pen, the barn in which they arrived an hour later was relatively empty. Zeref looked up the ladder to the loft, taking in the bits of hay he could see above and the pungent odor of large livestock and dry grass. This was the first time he'd slept anywhere other than a proper bed in an actual room. The thought didn't bother him. He just wasn't sure what he was supposed to do.

"Do you want to do the first watch with me?" Natsu asked from the doorway. "We're all taking turns, but if you're tired, you should sleep. I know you're not used to doing work like this."

"I'm okay," Zeref said, moving back to join the other boy outside.

The windows of the house next door cut squares of light through the evening twilight. Even through the thin curtains, they could just make out the silhouettes of the farmer and his wife as they moved about the kitchen, cleaning up after their own dinner. With Natsu's help and the aid of a few empty barrels, both boys were soon on the barn roof where they had a clear view of the area around them. If they stayed low, away from the roof's peak, it would also be difficult for other people to spot them through the dark.

"Do you think we need to tell them about that girl we saw in the woods?" Zeref asked quietly, his gaze drifting from the glowing windows to the shadowy line of trees marking the edge of the woods.

Natsu shrugged. "I don't know. I figured it was just some kid from this town playing in the forest. But now that we got a look at the people here, their clothes aren't anything like what she was wearing. She looked more like a noble's daughter than a regular townsperson."

Zeref agreed. There was a silence, and then Zeref said, "I suppose this situation would fall under too risky to split up?"

Natsu chuckled and clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Sure looks like it."

Zeref frowned at his joviality. "Isn't that a bad thing?"

"Well," Natsu drawled. "I guess it depends on how you look at it. It's more dangerous, sure, but it's also not going to be boring."

"Sometimes, boring is good," Zeref murmured.

Natsu only shrugged. "Let's wait until this is over before we decide that."

.

Black Tower

They had breakfast in the same restaurant in which they'd eaten dinner the night before, both because the food had been reasonably appetizing and because it turned out to be the only proper restaurant in town. That seemed pretty strange to them too, but after the bacon, eggs, toast, and other dishes had been laid out upon their table, none of them thought more about it. Nor did they spend much time wondering why they were the only patrons in the restaurant. It was barely the crack of dawn after all. Come to think of it, it was amazing that the restaurant was open at all, considering how early it was.

Zeref finished his own meal earlier than the others and excused himself to look around the town. He expected Natsu to find him when it was time for them to depart, but to his surprise, it was Lucy who eventually called out to him while he was retracing his steps through the main town square.

"The others are still eating, if you're wondering," she informed him as she approached. "But they'll be done soon, so I said I'd come get you."

"Thank you," he said, waiting for her to reach him before starting back through the streets towards the restaurant. The girl must have gone through quite a bit of the place herself while searching for him. He felt a bit sorry for having put her through the trouble, but apologizing seemed strange.

"So," she said after awhile, breaking the silence. "Did you find anything? I mean, I don't know what you were looking for either, so maybe I should start there."

A slight frown made its way onto Zeref's face as he replayed his walk through his mind.

"There's no cemetery," he said finally.

Lucy stumbled in her surprise then righted herself and rubbed at the goose bumps on her arms. "That's kind of a creepy thing to notice. Are you sure they don't just burry the bodies somewhere else?"

"Maybe," Zeref conceded, but it was clear in his voice that he doubted it.

"I'm not sure I want to know what that implies," Lucy muttered then sighed. "But I suppose we're going to find out whether we want to or not."

So it was with no small amount of wariness that the six students set out, leaving the relative safety of the town and striking out back into the woods. Charting a path for the tower was relatively easy. The thing was so tall that they never lost sight of it, and the rest was just about forging a straight line from the town towards it and the foot of the mountain where it had apparently been built.

They spoke little during the journey, their attention focused more on scanning their surroundings than on facilitating conversation. It was well into the afternoon by the time they left the shelter of the trees and found themselves faced with a wall of ebony black stone stretching up and up until it swept inward to form what they knew to be a pointed roof.

A thorough search of the building's perimeter uncovered no doors or windows of any kind. What they did find, however, were countless magical runes carved into the massive slabs of stone the formed the base of the gigantic structure.

"Do you think that means there's a witch living here?" Lucy asked nervously.

The rest of them had gathered around Zeref, who was crouched examining the markings on a section of wall. From what they had learned in their classes at the academy, they could tell that these markings were definitely magical runes. And Witches were the main, if not the only, people who used such runes in the current era.

Gray was the one who answered her. "Considering all the odd occurrences related to this place, I'd say the chances of that are pretty likely."

"I think I might be able to let us in," Zeref said, lifting a hand towards the wall. But before his fingers could touch any of the markings, a pale green light emanated from a string of the complex characters, and a section of the wall simply faded away.

"Uh, did you do that?" Natsu asked.

"No," Zeref said uneasily. "It happened before I had a chance to try anything."

Wendy tensed and narrowed her eyes. "Which means that someone wants us to go inside."

It was an unsettling thought, but there wasn't much they could do about it. They were, after all, here to find things out. And if there really was a witch here, it was their responsibility to capture her.

It would have been nice though, if she hadn't known they were coming. Then maybe they wouldn't feel so keenly as though they were walking into a trap.

.

Voice

"Now this is an interesting development, although I suppose I should have expected that ridiculous school of yours to come poking around sooner or later."

The voice echoed through the large, dark chamber, although no one was there to speak.

In silence, the six students scanned the room where they had found themselves. The doorway had closed again behind them, leaving them in a gloomy semidarkness broken only by a faint glow that seemed to emanate from the very walls themselves. As far as they could tell, they were the only people in the room. A single, spiral staircase rose from the center of the floor and vanished into the ceiling.

"It's not very polite, you know," the disembodied voice continued. "Barging into someone else's home like this and not introducing yourselves."

"Aren't you the one who let us in?" Natsu asked, raising his voice.

The speaker laughed. "Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't."

"Frowning towards the ceiling, Gray spoke up. "Two of our classmates are unconscious right now. We think they dropped by this island. I don't suppose you can tell us anything about that?"

The voice laughed again, and this time, there was a distinctly mocking edge to it. "Maybe I can, maybe I can't. How about we play a game? And if you win, I'll give you your answers. But if I win, I'll take something from you instead."

"What kind of game?" Lucy asked uneasily. "And who are you anyway?"

"Oh, just a girl with a lot of time on her hands these days," the reply came, echoing around them and laced with far too much amusement. "And as for the game, why don't you come upstairs and find out?"

They exchanged wary looks, but before any of them could answer, the voice added, "Oh, and, in case you were wondering, I found a friend of yours wandering around my forest. He's up here too, although I'm afraid he didn't turn out to be very interesting."

Zeref glanced at the stony expressions on the others' faces, something cold settling in the pit of his own stomach. He wasn't sure what that meant, but somehow, he doubted it was anything good.

"Don't take too long," the voice sang gleefully, and as the last echoes of it died away, a light fell from the space in the ceiling to illuminate the stairs. This was followed by a change in the chamber, like some presence that had been present had departed.

For a second, none of them said a word.

Then Natsu cracked his knuckles and said grimly, "Guess we don't have a choice. Ready to go?"

"We should probably be ready to fight," Lucy said, glancing at her partner, who nodded in return.

This was followed by two flashes of light, and both Levy and Gray disappeared.

Zeref blinked and stared at the long, folded fan that Wendy had resting across one shoulder. It looked as though it had been crafted from multiple sheets of thin, semitransparent ice, and there were rose designs sprawling across it in swaths and lines of frost. Natsu had told him that the other boy became something made of ice, but Zeref had been imagining... something different. According to his friend, the fan wasn't cold for Wendy to hold, but that had not been true for some of the other students Gray had tried to work with his first year at the academy. It sounded like finding someone that you could actually work well with had been a difficult journey for a lot of people.

"What?" Gray's voice asked a bit defensively, and for a moment, Zeref thought he could see the boy's ghostly reflection within the ice.

"I'm just surprised," Zeref told him. "I've never met anyone who turned into a fan."

And, well, it was a very pretty fan. Practically an ice sculpture. The kind of thing you saw in art galleries.

"You really shouldn't be so defensive all the time," Wendy told the fan as she started up the stone steps. "You know you have some great abilities, and swords and stuff are boring anyway."

Her Weapon grumbled something in reply.

Zeref watched them go then shook his head and followed. It seemed like all the Weapons in their group were a bit atypical.

.

Dolls

As they emerged onto the second floor of the tower, they thought at first that the vast, circular room was full of people. They tensed, prepared for an attack, but nobody moved. Upon closer inspection, they realized that what they had assumed were people were in fact dozens upon dozens of wooden dolls.

"Creepy," Lucy whispered. The glittering pen in her hand murmured in agreement.

Natsu stopped by the statue of a soldier and pulled the long spear from its motionless hands. "I'll just borrow this. This guy won't be needing it anyway."

Zeref looked around at the dolls, wondering if he should find something to defend himself with as well. But the thought of getting any closer to the displays than he absolutely had to sent prickles of trepidation skittering up and down his spine. Something about the room bothered him, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what. Maybe it was just how lifelike the dolls appeared. They were incredibly realistic, and every single one was different.

Noticing his hesitation, Natsu liberated a second spear from another doll and passed it to him. "Here. Do you know how to use one of these?"

"Not really," Zeref admitted.

Natsu grinned wryly. "No problem. Just stay behind us when you can, and if anything unpleasant gets too close, poke it with the sharp end."

Despite the seriousness of the situation, this made Zeref chuckle.

Natsu's grin widened, and the two of them hurried to catch up with the others.

It wasn't until they stepped past a cluster of dolls dressed as pirates that they realized why the room felt so wrong.

Lucy spotted it first, and her stifled gasp had them all turning to look at a pair of dolls standing at the foot of the stairs leading up onto the next floor. One was a man in a plain, brown tunic and leggings, a long-handled shovel resting across his shoulder, and the other was a woman holding a rake and wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat. Although they were standing as still as statues and their eyes were utterly devoid of emotion, all of them easily recognized the farmer and his wife who had offered them the use of their barn for shelter.

The students halted, uneasiness creeping up around them.

Zeref blinked a few times and adjusted his vision, shifting the way he looked at the world around them. He sucked in a sharp breath and tightened his hold on the spear.

"What is it?" Natsu asked, adjusting his own grip on his borrowed weapon.

Zeref breathed out slowly and turned in a circle to survey the rest of the room. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, but they nonetheless heard every word in the muffled silence. "They have souls."

As though his announcement had broken some kind of spell, the stillness that had pervaded the room evaporated. Zeref ducked when a pirate doll swung a rapier at his head, and Natsu struck the doll in the chest with the butt of his spear, sending it sprawling backwards into another one of its fellows. Both dolls crashed to the floor, but other dolls moved forward to take their place.

To their right, Lucy had tied the feet of several dolls together with a rope of yellow light, but then a javelin thrown by a doll further back in the crowd forced her to jump back.

"Lucy, duck!" Wendy shouted.

The blond girl ducked, and Wendy sent a gust of wind over her head that caught the next volley of javelins and flung them away like matchsticks.

Natsu pulled Zeref out of the way of a woodsman's axe and severed the doll's arm at the shoulder with the blade of his spear. His next hit removed the doll's head from its neck, but rather than crumpling to the ground, the doll simply grasped the axe handle with its remaining hand and attacked once more. Even more disturbing was that, if they looked carefully, they could see a ghostly replica of the doll's missing arm and head where the absent appendages had been, giving the overall impression of a creature that was half corporeal manikin and half disembodied spirit.

Natsu cursed and called over to Wendy, "Can you maybe just freeze them in place? Then we can get up onto the next floor."

"I can," she called back, fending off a child manikin wielding a baseball bat. "But I need the rest of you to get out of the way."

"The stairs," Lucy said, scrambling towards the staircase. But she was blocked by the dolls of the farmer and his wife.

"They're the only ones who didn't move to attack us," Zeref said, glancing from the pair of dolls at the foot of the steps to the mass of dolls milling about the rest of the room. "Maybe that's the goal here, to get to the next floor. If that's true, they might not follow us if we can get past the two guarding the stairs."

"Well, it's worth a try," Natsu said, charging past him. ""We were headed that way anyway. Wendy, we'll leave the other dolls to you, okay?"

"Got it."

Zeref ran after Natsu, intent on getting out of the blue-haired Meister's way. When a wave of cold air rolled over them, however, he couldn't help but chance a glance back. It wasn't often that he got to see his fellow students fight in earnest. Ice sheeted across the floor before the giant fan in Wendy's hands, coating the dolls in its path. Some of the dolls were frozen in place, but others thrashed free of the imprisoning cold, and Wendy sent another wave of ice in their direction. With two coatings, even the extra determined manikins were temporarily disabled. It looked like Wendy would be fine.

Not for the first time, Zeref wondered what kind of things he might be able to do if he dared to test his own abilities. He knew, of course, that he could be extremely dangerous, and he wasn't sure how he felt about that. But Stein had suggested once that his abilities might change if he ever found someone he could properly work with. The scientist had described what he'd seen of Zeref's powers as "wildly unstable" and possibly a bit corrupted. Zeref had been curious about it in the past, but now... He snuck a look back at Natsu, who was fighting with the farmer and the farmer's wife, buying time for Lucy to create a complex net of chains large enough to tie them up. Maybe, just maybe...

As soon as the two dolls guarding the stairs were down, the students scrambled past them up the steps, Wendy bringing up the rear and moving backward to make sure none of the dolls broke free or followed them. But while a few of the manikins tore themselves out of the ice and staggered to the steps, they stopped at the bottom and did not attempt to ascend in pursuit of them.

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Puppetry

The second flight of stairs seemed to wind on forever, curving gently inward in an endless, upward spiral lit only by the faint, unnatural iridescence that clung to the walls. The others murmured quietly amongst themselves, but Zeref hung back, half distracted by what he'd seen on the floor below and half reluctant to intrude on their conversation. They were worrying over Loke, the older student who had piloted the helicopter, and wondering about the dolls and the townsfolk. Zeref knew what that sense of wrongness that permeated the island and the academy's infirmary room was now, and that knowledge made it easier to pinpoint the sources of the unpleasant feeling.

There had been something wrong with the souls in those dolls, quite apart from the fact that dolls weren't supposed to have souls at all. They hadn't been tainted, not like the souls of those who had committed evil deeds, but they had been unstable and distorted somehow. Zeref wondered if it was possible for a soul to be in pain. It was a disturbing thought.

"How are you holding up?" Natsu asked, falling back to walk beside him. "You didn't get hurt back there, did you?"

Zeref shook his head.

"That was crazy, wasn't it? I had no idea that someone could do that with dolls."

"That's actually not that unexpected if you think about it," Zeref said. "Necromancers can animate the bodies of the dead using souls that they manipulate. The concept seems quite similar."

Natsu considered this. "Huh, I guess you're right. But I thought those tended to be corrupted souls. I didn't think even witches could just make any old spirit do whatever she wanted."

That was a good point, Zeref thought. All souls contained a mixture of good and evil in them, and if a person knew how, he or she could manipulate the balance of such characteristics within a person to cause them to behave in certain ways. In the past, witches and other beings prone to mischief had found ways to provoke chaos and encourage criminal behavior by using tools to strengthen the influence of various types of Madness. Fear, anger, and a desire for strength were all powerful factors that could drive people to do terrible things, but that wasn't the same as actually controlling a person.

"It's probably more complicated than that," Zeref said finally. "We'd probably know more if I could get a closer look at one of those manikins."

"Do you think it's possible that all the people in town were actually dolls, and we just didn't notice?" Natsu wondered aloud.

"If that's true," Zeref replied, "then it's possible that we've already come into contact with some enchantment without realizing it. Because I'm almost positive that at least one of us would have noticed if everyone we talked to was made of wood and fabric."

Natsu let out a snort of laughter.

Ahead of them on the staircase, the other four fell silent to eavesdrop on the conversation going on behind them. It was the first time they'd heard Zeref talk this much. Until then, it had been difficult for them to picture him as simply another academy student. But listening to him now, it became just a little bit easier. Maybe it shouldn't feel like a relief, but it did.

They weren't sure how long they spent climbing those steps. They were all far too tense to take a break for snacks, especially when several attempts to contact Loke via the communicators they'd been given yielded no results. It felt like forever until the staircase leveled out onto a small landing with a set of double doors set into the far wall.

The image of two praying mantises had been carved into the doors, and their red glass eyes seemed to shine as the students approached. Lucy eyed the giant insects' scythe-like arms with trepidation. The things looked disturbingly realistic, so much so that she half expected them to scuttle off the doors.

"Ready?" Wendy whispered.

The others nodded, and Natsu moved forward to push the doors open while Wendy and Gray—perhaps the best in the group at general defense—prepared themselves in case of attack.

The first thing they heard when the doors swung silently inward was someone clapping.

"Oh, very good," the voice that had greeted them upon their arrival echoed around them, rebounding from the vaulted ceiling. "That was very nicely done. You'll be wonderful additions to my collection."

Unlike the floor below, this one was almost entirely empty. Emerald green flames burned in braziers set at intervals along the walls, which in turn had numerous mirrors hung upon them so that the chamber felt even more vast and empty than it already was. The applause had come from a girl, who was standing beside what they immediately recognized as the broken remains of their helicopter. And slumped in the driver's seat was—

"Loke!" Lucy gasped. "What did you do to him?"

"Oh, no need to worry about him. I was going to add him to my collection too, but he turned out not to be suitable." The girl waved a hand dismissively and fixed them with her silver stare. "The rest of you though, I think the rest of you will be just fine."

"What are you talking about?" Natsu demanded, eyes narrowed.

Both he and Zeref recognized the girl as the same one they had seen in the forest.

The girl who was probably not quite a girl only smiled a disconcertingly sunny smile and snapped her fingers. The sound of it echoed surprisingly loudly in the large chamber, and almost at once, several green and ghostly figures materialized from the air beside her.

Their eyes were drawn at once to two figures in the middle of the group.

Two very familiar figures that they had last seen occupying twin hospital beds in the DWMA infirmary. Two figures that swiftly became one figure as the form of the shorter changed to that of a trident, which the taller swung up into a battle position.

The girl's smile widened at the expressions on their faces, and it was no longer a friendly expression.

"Have fun! And try not to die. It won't work if you die."

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Decisions

This is bad, Zeref thought.

He hung back, sticking close to the wall beside the large mirrors as he edged along the perimeter of the room, not wanting to get in the way. This fight was nothing like the one in the room of dolls. The ghosts seemed to shift between corporeal and non-corporeal forms depending on where the light within their bodies was most concentrated. That fact alone would have made these phantoms difficult opponents, but they were also far more skilled than the manikins from before. Perhaps that was to be expected, considering at least one duo were DWMA students. It wasn't hard to imagine that the other phantoms were facsimiles of other individuals with above average skills in combat.

The witch, for witch the girl almost certainly was, had moved towards the center of the room where she could direct her ghosts more effectively, and Zeref kept darting glances at her and then at his teammates as he made his way towards the helicopter. He reached the aircraft without being noticed, and pulled open the opposite door so he could reach Loke without having to move closer to the fight. There was blood on the dashboard. Zeref steeled himself, half afraid that the boy might be dead after all, then reached out to shake him by the shoulder.

"Please wake up," he muttered, shaking the older student again when there was no response. "Come on, this is a terrible time to be unconscious."

Loke groaned.

A wave of relief washed through him, and he shook the boy's shoulder again. "Are you all right? What did she do?"

Loke lifted his head, coughed, and put a hand to his temple. A trickle of blood stained the corner of his mouth.

"What…?"

"We came to find you," Zeref said quickly. "Can you walk? I think we need to get out of here, because—"

He was cut off by Lucy's scream. "Wendy!"

Jerking his head up, Zeref peered through the windshield at the battle. Wendy was on the ground, apparently knocked out cold, and Gray was crouched next to her, shielding her from attack as best he could while he tried to bring her back around. Natsu was protecting the both of them, but despite being a skilled fighter, the spear he was wielding was only ordinary wood and steel. There was a reason DWMA students didn't work with ordinary weapons on missions. And Lucy, the blond girl was being steadily overwhelmed by a crowd of phantoms, and it didn't help that her team's abilities weren't as offensive.

"The witch," Loke gasped, his voice scratchy in his dry throat, "her scimitar, don't let it cut you. You have to warn them—"

He broke off into another fit of coughing.

The witch's scimitar? Zeref hadn't even noticed the long, curved blade in the girl's hands until Loke had mentioned it. And no surprise, since the blade itself was almost transparent, edged only with faint glimmers of green light not unlike the bodies of the ghosts or the flames in the braziers along the walls.

There was no time to ask Loke for an explanation. Zeref worried at his lower lip, watching the witch move towards Natsu and his two classmates, and he made a decision that he desperately hoped he wouldn't regret.

"Loke?"

"Huh?" Loke blinked, his head still spinning and nausea trying to claw its way up his throat.

Zeref didn't wait for more of an answer. Tugging the necklace he wore from around his neck, he pressed it into one of Loke's hands, words spilling from him in an urgent rush, "Take this. Don't lose it, and don't move. Pretend you're still unconscious. I'm... I'm going to do something, but when the enemy is gone, you'll have to use this."

On reflex, Loke curled his fingers around the coil of delicate, silver chain. "What? What are you—?"

"When it's safe, just throw it at me," Zeref said, cutting him off. And then he was on his feet again, ducking out from the helicopter, and racing across the room towards Natsu, not caring this time if he drew attention to himself. If he could distract the others' attackers, all the better. . A blast of green energy flew at him from one of the apparitions, but he ducked and threw himself forward to avoid it, catching Natsu's eye as he did so and reaching out to grab for his hand.

And abruptly, the ambience of the chamber shuddered and shifted.

.

Black

The next five minutes were the longest five minutes of Lucy's life. A heavy blow from one apparition had thrown her hard into the wall, for which she would be eternally grateful. Because that meant she was on the ground and out of the way when Zeref disappeared and the world around them went dark.

Looking back, it was difficult to remember specific details from what happened. There was the black fog that seemed to surround them all and the flash of green light off the edge of a blade that she couldn't quite see through the whirl of shadows. But if someone were to ask her, she wouldn't have been able to say what form the Weapon in Natsu's hands had taken or how exactly the witch's scimitar ended up flying across the room to clatter against the far wall. The spear Natsu had been using before hadn't even been able to touch the semitransparent blade.

No, the only thing that she could recall with utmost, unsettling clarity was the way Natsu froze for just a split second before launching himself at their opponents with a ferocity that startled his teammates just as much as it surprised the enemy, and whatever he was fighting with had cut through even the insubstantial forms of the witch's phantom servants with ease. Of course Lucy knew there were Weapons that could do such things, but knowing and seeing were not the same. And Natsu, there was something odd about Natsu. He tore through the apparitions that the witch redirected towards him and immediately went after the witch herself.

For as long as she lived, Lucy would never forget the look in the witch's silver eyes when the gleam of a blade flashed towards her throat. The girl jerked back at the last second, flinging her arm up, the glimmer of green light wrapping about her hand and forearm. Whatever she was trying to do, Lucy never found out, because Natsu's attack sheered through the magic like it was nothing and left a long gash diagonally from the witch's wrist to her elbow. Her scream echoed through the chamber, but somehow, Lucy could still hear the splatter of blood upon the floor, black in the eerie light of the braziers. His next strike just barely missed her back, because she'd turned and darted across the room. Without sparing a look back, the witch flung herself at one of the mirrors upon the walls. Its silver surface rippled and she vanished just as Natsu lashed out and the entire mirror shattered.

Maybe Lucy should have felt relieved, but instead, all she felt was a spike of anxiety as Natsu turned back towards them. Was the room getting even darker? Lucy's fingers curled reflexively around the pen by her hand, but other than that, she didn't quite dare move. Getting up seemed like a terrible idea, but staying on the ground didn't seem much better. Before she could make up her mind about what to do, movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. Lucy turned her head just in time to see Loke dash out from the helicopter. Natsu turned to face him, Weapon raised, and Lucy wanted to call out a warning—tell Loke to keep his distance. But then he threw out his hand and something thin and glittering silver flew through the air. Natsu made to swat the thing away, but the moment his Weapon came into contact with the object, the air in the room shifted again.

A flash of red light momentarily blinded them, and when it cleared, everything was still and the shadows that seemed to have been seeping through the room disappeared.

---

TBC...

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AN: Thanks, it's always good to know someone's interested:)

As for whether I've ever considered doing a crossover one-shot collection, I can't say that I have. Are you talking about a series of things like this where it would be the characters living in different universes? Or do you mean a world-hopping type thing? Hmm...

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