This chapter has been rewritten as of 5/6/19.

Chapter 3

The Getsuga Tenshō, wild but blunted by Zangetsu's sheath, was still more than enough to blow away the magic spell and send the bandits and me flying. I landed hard on the road and rolled for a few yards, nerves screaming in pain. Blood soaked my clothes, pouring from my wounds like water. Fortunately, my Hierro had been enough to shield me from the power of my own attack.

Unable to move from my prone position with the poison coursing through my veins, I shunted power to the holes in my shoulder, stomach, and thigh, wincing as white material bubbled up around the wounds before vanishing, taking the injuries with it.

The drop in my available energy was noticeable, but about what I expected. I was still using the same amount of energy to heal as normal, which was good. Magical wounds weren't more energy-intensive than normal injuries. More pressing was the poison still working its way towards my heart and brain, burning through my veins like lava.

"Ichigo, oh my god, Ichigo."

Lucy. Had to be. I couldn't speak, but I could feel her hands on me, rolling me over onto my back. Sunlight burned through my closed eyelids.

"Can you do anything for him?"

"I wish I could, but I don't know any healing…magic…"

"What the heck? I know I saw him get hit."

"I saw it too."

My body temperature was climbing. I tried to fight it, but the poison had spread too far, too quickly to be simply forced out of my system through power alone.

No, I'd have to do this the hard way. I wanted to tell Lucy and her spirit to get back, but I was still shaking off the paralysis spell, never mind that my nerves were overwhelmed right now.

I tried to even out my breathing as much as I could. This was something I'd only ever done twice before, once because of a particularly nasty hollow and once because of Aizen's torture. It was a last-resort option, a worst-case remedy. Doing it would wipe out nearly all of my sealed energy reserves.

"Lucy, watch out!"

Something else impacted my body, but I was too far gone to care about whatever new injury I'd sustained. It didn't matter. I had no choice.

My reiatsu fluctuated and then broke out of my control. Unable to maintain awareness of what was happening around me, I retreated to a corner of my mind and let instant regeneration do its work. It spread through every infected limb, every infected muscle, every single infected cell. Each and every place the poison had touched was destroyed and made anew. Agony crawled through my limbs, tracing the poison's path with deadly precision. My limbs spasmed, my breathing hitched, and I lost all feeling in my body as instant regeneration chased the poison up my spine.

It was all I could do to stay conscious. This technique rendered me completely helpless until it finished, its thoroughness working both as its greatest strength and greatest weakness. For a time—I didn't know how long—all I knew was the burning pain swallowing all the rest until there was nothing left.

The pain vanished.

I clawed my way back to myself. Awareness came back to me in pieces: a sharp rock poking into my back, the breeze through my hair, the sun warming my skin.

I opened my eyes, squinting against the light, and pushed myself up into a sitting position. The sounds of battle reached my ears, and I blinked until I could focus on the fight happening by the far tree line.

Natsu was engaging the poison guy and yelling something about how he was "nothing like a poison dragon slayer." From the various burns on the bandit's skin and the slight fear in his expression, I knew that Natsu was winning. The fact that Natsu was simply burning any poison that came near him into oblivion seemed to give him quite an advantage.

Lucy, on the other hand, was struggling. The false leader must've attacked them while they were trying to help me, catching them off guard. Every time they tried to launch an attack, whether it was frontal or more complicated, the bandit launched spears of golden light at them. After watching for a few moments to get an idea of what I would be going up against, I realized something.

One of the main reasons Lucy and Leo were having so much trouble was that whenever a light spear hit the ground and appeared to dissipate, it actually formed another magic circle on the ground, causing more spears to shoot up. Since the bandit's magic energy was dropping, I knew that this was a taxing move, but Lucy and Leo were rapidly getting entrapped in the spear prison, no matter how many times they broke the magic or retreated.

The time for holding back was over. This wasn't an experiment anymore; I'd gotten what I needed and nearly died in the process because of my own arrogance. Clearly, these bandits were relatively strong in this world if they were standing up to Natsu and Lucy. I would put them down with the power they deserved.

Reiatsu swirled around Zangetsu's blades as I unsheathed them. That full-body regeneration had left me with less than a tenth of my sealed reserves, but it would be enough. I dug one foot into the ground and then shattered the earth when I pushed off with shunpo.

Just as a light spear was heading straight for Lucy's heart, Leo noticed and darted in front, probably ready to take the hit himself. I reached him just in time and the gold magic broke against Zangetsu's blade.

"Enough," I growled. Leo looked shocked, and from the way the glowing spears in the air stopped moving temporarily, I knew the bandit was surprised too.

"How are you—?" Leo started, but I didn't have time to talk. The bandit was already recovering, his spears live once more. Just as Lucy turned, hearing Leo's words, I vanished again, racing towards the bandit. I weaved through the lattice of spears trying to trip me up and tear me apart, dragging what limited reishi this world had into platforms I could push off of in mid-air. Zangetsu's blades sliced through any constructs that got too close, shattering them like glass.

"Stay away!" the bandit cried, a fresh wave of brutal light rushing me. I countered by slashing Zangetsu through the air, launching a condensed Getsuga Tenshō that obliterated the attack and knocked the bandit off his feet.

Fear painted over his face when I appeared in front of him, Zangetsu's cleaver blade held at his throat. In the background, Natsu crashed to the dirt after having been knocked from Happy's grasp by a particularly nasty punch from the true leader. Despite the heavy impact, he got right back up again, fire swirling around him.

I refocused on the bandit.

"Surrender."

His mouth worked for a moment as I watched the blood drain from his face. Then something flickered in his eyes. I twisted, letting the light spear harmlessly fly by.

"Can't say I didn't give you a chance," I said, slamming the end of Zangetsu's hilt into the bandit's temple. He fell back, out like a light. I didn't envy the concussion symptoms he'd be experiencing whenever he woke up.

When the bandit fell, the magic he'd been powering vanished, freeing Lucy and Leo from their light prison. They ran over, Leo noticeably more injured than Lucy.

"Your friend okay?" I asked, nodding at Leo. Lucy glanced at him. He winced.

"Sorry, Lucy, I gotta recover." Even as he finished speaking, his body was already breaking apart. He vanished completely a second later.

"He's fine," Lucy said, catching my confused expression. "Celestial spirits can't be killed in our world, but they have to go back to their own world to heal. But how are you healed? I saw you get hit! Your clothes are still completely covered in blood."

I glanced down at myself, mentally wincing. I'd be paying that shop a second visit a lot sooner than I'd thought. "Yeah, I messed up. I'm not super familiar with the magic in Fiore, so theirs caught me off-guard. They hit me with a paralysis spell, so I couldn't get out of the way in time." And, apparently, the only way to shake off that kind of effect was to completely overwhelm the spell with my own power or wait for the caster to get distracted. I'd have to be careful to avoid stuff like that in the future; it wasn't the same as Kidō. Those reiryoku-based spells were a lot easier to break with raw power.

"Are you really completely healed?" Lucy asked, examining me with a worried expression. "I just don't get it. Healing magic is basically a lost art, and you use sword magic. How are you still standing?"

I hadn't anticipated this section of the lie to come up so soon, but it wasn't totally unexpected. During the war, Kisuke had always made a point to plan for as many eventualities as he could. Part of my research in the library had been about finding ways to contextualize my abilities in the rules of this world. All my abilities.

"Plan for everything," Kisuke had once told me, "and you'll greatly narrow down what surprises can be thrown your way."

"It's not something I should really talk about," I said. "You guys have forbidden spells here, right?"

Lucy nodded slowly. "Are you saying you know healing magic?"

"Not exactly. It's more of a restoration spell. My swords, in addition to channeling my magic power, also store it. If I get badly hurt, that magic works to restore my body to how it was before I was hurt. It's how I was able to heal the wounds and get rid of the poison at the same time."

Lucy's eyes were wide. "That's a crazy kind of magic."

"Yeah, and it's limited use. Storing enough magic for healing like that takes months. I won't be using it again anytime soon."

"What's it called?"

"Instant Restoration. The trade-off is that is shortens my life pretty drastically, so I try not to use it unless I absolutely have to."

Shouting interrupted whatever Lucy had been about to say. We looked right and saw Natsu standing with his hands in the air—celebrating, apparently—over the unconscious body of the true leader of this group.

"That's a pretty dangerous kind of magic," Lucy said after a beat.

"Yeah. Do you have anything we can use to tie these guys up? I don't want any of them trying to make a run for it."

Lucy glanced around, frowning. "I…actually don't. Natsu! Do you have any rope?"

"No," he called back. "Why?"

I thought for a second. "I'll run back to town and let the mayor know these guys are taken care of, see if I can get some rope or something. In the meantime, can you and Natsu keep an eye on these guys so they don't get away?"

"You bet," Lucy said. "Still, are you sure you're okay to move around?"

I hesitated. If healing magic really was that rare, I shouldn't play it up. "You're probably right. Could you go instead? I'm sure Natsu and I can hold things down here."

Lucy nodded. "I'll be back before you know it."

She jogged back down the road. We hadn't made it more than a mile from the village before the bandits had attacked, so it wouldn't take her too long to make the round trip. Natsu ambled over to me, eyes tracking Lucy as she ran.

"Where's she going?" he asked.

"Did she get scared and run away?" Happy tried. I shook my head.

"No, she's going to inform the mayor we're done here and get some rope to tie these guys up. Speaking of, we should put them together so they're easier to keep track of. We'll just guard them until Lucy gets back."

"Sounds good," Natsu said. He suddenly broke eye contact, bringing one hand up to tug at his scarf. "Uh, by the way, thanks for—y'know, saving me from that trap."

"Don't worry about it."

"You can say that, but you got hurt because I messed up."

"I'm fine now, so don't feel bad. We all screw up every now and then. Besides," I added, grunting a little as I picked up a guy and dragged him over to a spot a little farther from the trees, "those two were tougher than we expected. You couldn't have seen that coming. I barely reacted in time too."

"Guess you're right. Still, thanks."

Natsu and I worked together to gather all the bandits in one spot. It wasn't hard; the ones that weren't unconscious were in no state to move. We were done within ten minutes.

"You're pretty strong," I told Natsu while we kept an eye on the bandits.

"Yeah, but that guy was crafty. Not as annoying as the last poison bastard I had to take down, though."

"I heard you yelling about that during the fight. A poison dragon slayer?"

"Yeah, he had this snake with wings that he'd ride on, and it would feed him poison in the middle of the fight, which was totally unfair. But he wasn't a real dragon slayer."

"What's the difference? Are you required to have a winged cat instead?"

"Who, Happy? No. I was raised by a dragon—Igneel. That Cobra guy just had a lacrima embedded in his chest that gave him those powers. Pretty cheap if you ask me."

"Sounds like it."

So, while Natsu acknowledged that these bandits were strong, he'd fought more powerful foes in the past. I really needed to talk with this Gildarts and get my own power level figured out.

When Lucy returned, she wasn't alone. Oak Town's local police swept in and took all the bandits away, cuffing them and putting them in carriages for transport. The mayor was, unfortunately, with them. He stopped in front of Natsu and I, Lucy a step behind him.

"I am so glad you were able to s-subdue t-the…"

"It's not my blood," I said glibly, even though it definitely was and there were still obvious tears in my clothes. The mayor, a little paler now, nodded.

"Um, ah, yes, well, thank you very much. These bandits have been waylaying traders and travelers for weeks and it seemed that no matter how many policemen and wizards we threw at them, they would never lose. This does look like all of them, though. We can clear out the rest of their camp on our own, I'm sure."

"We aren't the first people to take this quest?" I asked with a frown. "Did anyone else get hurt?"

"Yes, but thankfully no one was killed. It was why we had to increase the reward so drastically."

"Speaking of," Lucy said with a charming smile that fooled absolutely no one, "we've completed the job."

Once we got the logistics of payment and prisoner transport out of the way, the mayor suggested adding in clothing to the reward for our relatively clean execution of the job, and needless to say we were out of Oak Town in record time.

Halfway through the trip back to Magnolia, Natsu managed to fall out the window of the train. I would've caught him if I hadn't been fast asleep, my body unusually drained from fighting against wizards.

Lucy, Happy, and I had to get off the train at the next stop, backtrack, find Natsu, and walk the rest of the way to Magnolia because he'd gotten lost far enough from the tracks that it would be faster to just walk instead of trek all the way to a station. Before we were even close to Magnolia, the sun dipped below the horizon and we were forced to camp out for the night. At least Natsu had some blankets.

So now we were camped out in the woods, Natsu prepping his blankets and Lucy setting up some kind of tent that one of her spirits—Virgo?—had brought her from the Celestial Spirit World.

"I'm gonna go clean up at the river we passed," I said. Lucy glanced over.

"It's gonna be dark soon, you know."

"I know. I won't be too long. It's just that the blood is dry now, and kind of crusty—"

"Yep, that's enough, I got it. Have fun."

Leaving Natsu to get tangled up in his blankets, I ducked back into the trees and backtracked along the meager trail we'd been following until I arrived at the river. After checking that there wasn't anyone around, I took off Zangetsu's sheath and then stripped. In the fading light, I washed my clothes as much as I was able in the river's clear water, sending faint trails of red downstream. There was no salvaging anything without some serious detergent, but I could at least make it a little harder to think that I was fresh from a murder scene.

The water, while cold, wasn't painfully so. I worked quickly, getting as much blood and gore off myself as I could. Once I was done, I slung my wet clothes over a low branch and concentrated some of my reiryoku in my palms. The altered Shakkahō materialized in front of my raised hands, hovering there as a simple ball of heat.

I would really have to be more careful in the future. In the war, I'd grown accustomed to how much damage I could reasonably take. If magic had operated on the same principles as what I was used to, my life here would've been absurdly easy. Unfortunately, that wasn't at all the case. While my Hierro did offer a meager defense, without consciously strengthening it, even low-level magic attacks could cut through it.

Worse, my Quincy abilities were severely limited. I didn't know how effective the Blut techniques would be, but with so little ambient reishi, they were all I had.

I sighed. This wasn't ideal, but there was nothing I could do. I would just have to find a way home before anyone asked too many questions.

When I got back to camp, clothes a little damp but significantly cleaner, both Natsu and Lucy were asleep. The dragon slayer was filling the clearing with quiet snores, and Happy had joined Lucy in her tent to be somewhat shielded from the elements. I could tell from his quiet mumbles about fish that he was asleep too.

Picking a convenient tree as a backrest, I sat down and closed my eyes. Now was as good a time to practice as any. I stretched out my reiatsu sense. There was Natsu, Lucy, and—if I really strained—Happy, whose reiatsu was far weaker than the other two's.

That was all well and good, but this mission had shown me how useless my reiatsu sense was. People just didn't produce it in the same quantity here, and while I was far better at sensing reiatsu than I had been originally, I still didn't have the fine-tuned sensitivity of someone like Kisuke or Uryū. I was having a hard enough time using reishi-based abilities. My Shinigami and Hollow powers were unaffected (besides the strange relationship between magic and reiatsu), but I needed to get better at sensing at magic if I wanted to avoid traps like that in the future. The skill would also let me scale my power to an opponent without having to take a couple of hits first.

During the fight, I'd sensed surges of something whenever Natsu or that spirit had unleashed a spell. I was willing to bet that stuff had been magic power. It hadn't pushed on my senses like reiatsu; it was a different feeling entirely, albeit similar in principle. Natsu and Leo had just been pumping out so much that even a novice like me had been able to sense it without trying.

I needed to hone that sense. Evening out my breathing, I tried to examine the clearing for something other than reiatsu. It wasn't easy; time and experience had made sensing reiatsu automatic, so trying to do something else was like trying to hold my breath. Doable, but strange.

For several minutes, there was nothing, only my own heartbeat and the sounds of the forest. What had Natsu's magic felt like? Heat, for sure. Like fire, but wild, and with a trace of something I didn't recognize at all. I hunted for that feeling, trying to match it to anything floating through my senses.

It had to be ambient, right? Emitted unconsciously, like reiatsu. It was a power source, so it made sense that drawing on it would release some into the atmosphere. If I just searched for it…

At first, I thought I was just imagining it. Trying so hard to sense it that I tricked myself into thinking I had. But no, this was real: an energy, faintly warm, in the air, radiating out from Natsu. Once I sensed it, I couldn't stop, even when I opened my eyes and stared at him. The moment I tried to broaden that sense, though, I lost it.

Scowling, I closed my eyes again. This was going to take some time. At least it was a distraction from sleep; that nap on the train had been dangerous enough, but thankfully I hadn't dreamed. I couldn't risk falling asleep without safeguards in place or I could hurt Natsu or Lucy.

Another thing keeping me from sleeping: the person skulking around in the bushes nearby. I recognized that reiatsu.

"Leo, right?" I said out loud, keeping my voice low. "Lucy didn't seem like the paranoid type."

"She's not." He stepped out of the trees and stopped a couple yards away, looking as put-together as he had initially, no sign of the injuries he'd sustained, not so much as a loose thread in his suit. "I summoned myself here. I didn't want to confront you and put Lucy in the middle of it. Let me be blunt: you're not a normal wizard."

"I told you, the magic I practice comes from my swords. That healing was a forbidden spell my friend discovered. He was a scientist, and I was usually the one who ended up being his test subject."

"That's fascinating," Leo said, each word as cold as ice, "because every spirit I consulted in the Celestial Spirit World had never heard of Instant Restoration. If it was a real magic, someone would have heard of it, or something like it."

His gaze bored into mine. "It doesn't exist."

Well, shit.

"Defensiveness is natural. Shift the blame. He clearly trusts the spirits, so there is only one other we can use."

"What do you want me to say to that?" I challenged. "That's what Kisuke told me. Are you saying he lied?"

Leo crossed his arms. "I can't know what your dead friend was thinking—"

"Wait, stop," I said. "How do you even know about Kisuke? I only told Lucy."

"I've been keeping a close eye on her ever since you appeared in that alley and attacked her," Leo said. "Your fighting style is strange, not to mention void of magic. I saw you dodge all those attacks. You were clearly using something, but I couldn't sense it."

"Again, I don't know what to tell you. I use my magic the way I use it, the way I've always used it."

For a second, I thought Leo bought it. Some of his suspicion drained away.

Then his eyes hardened. "You're not from some small town. You're not from Seven. You're not from Earthland. You're not from this world at all."

I stared blankly. It was all I could do.

"How the fuck does he even know that?"

"It is possible he is merely guessing and is waiting for you to confirm or deny it."

"Everyone here is born with a source of magic inside themselves," Leo continued. "Everyone. Even people who never even think of being wizards. I've tried to find yours, tried to see you gathering magic, but you never do. You don't have a core. You don't gather magic. There's only one explanation for why that is."

"That I'm from a different world."

"Precisely."

Kisuke would drop me as a student if I gave up on a story so easily. "I think I would know if I was from a different world. Kisuke would've—"

"You put a lot of stock in this friend of yours."

Just like that, I had a new angle. "He was more of a mentor figure," I said. "Why? What are you trying to say?"

"You truly believe you're from this world."

"Yes, I do. Why the hell wouldn't I? You're the first person who's told me something this insane. Why should I even trust you?"

"I am the leader of the Zodiac," Leo said, as though that was supposed to answer the whole question. "Your friend did more than lie about your ancient magic."

This was supposed to be a shocking revelation for me. I reached back to when my dad had told me the truth about my mom's history and let the emotions roll through in waves. "What?"

"How much older than you was he? Do you know?"

Leo thought he was guiding me. In truth, it was the opposite, and I was beginning to understand just why Kisuke enjoyed manipulating others so much. It brought with it a particular kind of rush. "Uh, fifteen, maybe twenty years? What are you implying?"

"And you've said that your friend sent you here by experimenting with teleportation magic."

"I did, but he was saving my life."

"Maybe he was. But he is also what put you in that situation. He brought you to this world from a far different one, I don't know how, and never told you. Whatever abilities you have are remnants of your homeworld."

"That's insane."

"Have you not felt that there was something strange about your abilities?"

I shifted in place with a frown. "Maybe. But what you're telling me—"

"Is the truth. Time flows differently in the Celestial Spirit World; I've been thinking about this for a while. If you truly did not know, then I'm sorry for dropping this on you so suddenly."

"Why?" I asked. "Why do you care so much?"

"You're working with Lucy, and it's my job to keep her safe. Frankly, I don't trust you. Besides, you've copied my look."

I scowled. "My hair? Seriously?"

Leo sobered. "If you hurt her—"

"You don't have to threaten me," I said. "I joined the guild for my own reasons. It had nothing to do with Lucy. Fairy Tail values loyalty and friendship, right? I'm not about to go and trample all over that."

After a brief staring contest, Leo looked away. "The moment you try anything, I'll be there to stop you."

I raised my hands. "Warning heard. Just…try to keep this whole separate-world thing secret, all right? I'm still wrapping my head around it. I don't want to draw too much attention." Loke frowned. "More eyes on me means more eyes on Fairy Tail. More eyes on Fairy Tail…"

"Means more eyes on Lucy." He sighed. "Fine. For now."

He vanished with the same rippling-light effect as before. As the particles dissipated, I sighed. I hadn't expected a problem of this magnitude. The second Leo found out the truth, the real truth, he would tell Lucy, who would undoubtedly tell someone else, and so on until damn near everyone knew. It would be impossible to lay low if word got around and I really, really didn't want to become a center-stage character in this world. I just needed to get back. My lies only had to hold for as long as this mission took and not a second longer.

Keeping track of them, though…that would be hard. I was going to have to be careful. Putting the blame on this fictional version of Kisuke felt a little dishonest towards the Kisuke I knew, but he wouldn't expect anything less. Leo hadn't given me many options, and if not for that accidental way out in the middle, I would've been forced to give him a lot more of my actual history. As it stood, he still knew I was from another world, but he had no idea how deep the divide went.

My gaze drifted across the small clearing to Lucy's tent, a patch of lighter darkness among the rest. While Natsu continued to snore, I leaned back against the tree. There were hours until dawn; I would keep watch until then.

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