A/N: In case you're wondering, there is no time lapse between any of my chapters in this particular story. Heh.
"Get me out of here!" he yelled, pounding a fist against the mirror. It didn't even rattle the glass on Levy's side.
"What do you think I've been trying to do for the past six hours!" she retorted. Honestly, she'd been glad to see him again—but here he was being ungrateful! At least she'd made him visible again!
"What kinda person leaves booby traps like that layin' around, anyway!"
"What kind of person goes through other people's stuff without asking!"
"Hmph!" He recrossed his arms and turned his nose up stubbornly. Levy sighed and ran a hand through her hair. Honestly, he could be so frustrating sometimes. The fact of the matter was, though, that he was trapped in her mirror and she had to find a way to get him out. Her stomach rumbled, and she realized that he too was probably starving. It hadn't been lunchtime yet when she found him outside Fairy Hills, and by now everyone at the guild was probably eating dinner. She knew what she could be like when she'd missed two meals—and she was much more reasonable than the thick-headed dragon slayer, if she did say so herself.
When she looked back up at Gajeel, she saw that he was watching her from the corner of his eyes. He continued to do so, as if waiting to see what she would say. She sighed again.
"Let's try and get you some food," she said. She arranged her fingers just so, saying "Solid Script: Iron!" as she focused on the area inside the glass. The giant word merely bounced off the mirror as if it were rubber, not even scratching the surface.
"What, no heart this time?" he smirked.
"Sh-shut up!" she blushed. He merely laughed. Levy sat on the nearest pile of books and tried to think. Her Lost Item spell had worked to reverse the effects of the vanishing charm—but somehow Gajeel had reappeared inside her mirror. She had begun the afternoon with one charm and one mysterious packet of powdered glass—and here she was with the counter spell and a mysteriously trapped Gajeel. Arithmetically speaking, there had to be a correlation between the two.
"Glass, Gajeel…" she mused aloud. Gajeel had recognized the look on her face as the one she wore when she was deep in thought. Despite his outbursts and his hunger, he knew that if anyone could get him out it was her, and that the sooner he let her do her thing, the sooner he'd be eating dinner. And lunch. And maybe even another breakfast. He settled into a comfortable seated position, but after a few minutes, he grew restless.
"What happened, anyway?" he asked.
"Hm?" she looked up, as if just remembering that she wasn't alone. "Oh, you cast a spell on yourself when you read that paper—hang on," her brow furrowed. "I didn't know you could read ancient dialect."
"I can't," he said simply. "Some of those symbols looked familiar though, I guess." He paused to think. "Like the axe and the wheel, maybe I recognize 'em from my time with Metalicana," he finished.
"Axe and wheel…" Levy repeated. That didn't sound right. "Gajeel, there was no wheel image." A quick glance at the vellum sheets confirmed her suspicions. "You're talking about this one here, right?" Levy's slender finger identified a round symbol in one of the lines.
"Yeah, ain't that a wheel?" Gajeel squinted at it, his hand rubbing the back of his head. "All the rest of 'em look a little different now though, like maybe backwards or somethin'?"
"Yes of course!" Levy's eyes lit up as she knelt in front of the mirror, her face level with his. "Gajeel, you're a genius! Well, you're also an idiot, but you're a genius!" If he hadn't been on the other side of a piece of glass, she'd have thrown her arms around him in her excitement.
"Care to explain what the hell you're goin' on about, Shrimp?" He didn't share her enthusiasm—he didn't see how some funny-looking scribbles could have had anything to do with this, and he didn't like not knowing what was going on.
"See here," she pointed at the round symbol again. "This isn't a wheel, Gajeel, it's a sun! It's actually pretty irrelevant to the structure of the charm itself, the magic would work just fine without it."
"So what's it doin' there then?" Gajeel was struggling to keep up with the girl's logic.
"It's there as like an extra bonus ingredient—the purpose of the spell is to vanish things. What this does is add something back—in this case, and with it being a sun, I'd expect radiance or something like that."
"Huh?" His head was starting to ache slightly.
"It's a cosmetic charm, it removes blemishes and scars. It's not really that much of a stretch to suppose that whoever wrote it added in the sun to add radiance—to skin!"
"Ya tricked me into sayin' some girly spell!" he roared. Levy barely flinched, although she did roll her eyes.
"Of course I didn't, you're the one who was snooping through my stuff! Anyway, that part of things isn't important. You mistook that sun for a wheel, which altered the meaning of the spell!" Here, Levy paused to think. Magic worked in very intricate and precise ways. This charm had been written several centuries ago. Not only did each symbol have multiple meanings, but those meanings often changed and grew over the years. Whenever someone—at least, anyone worth their salt—wove a new spell, they accounted for this degradation of sorts. That wasn't the problem here—this spell had been written properly. That's good, at least, Levy thought to herself. This meant that any misplaced symbols, such as a wheel where there should have been a sun, would be interpreted in the same way all the other images were. So what did a wheel represent back then? It couldn't be that much different from today—wheels were universally associated with travel.
"Applying travel to a vanishing charm," she thought aloud. "Well the obvious answer is that the blemish—sorry Gajeel, object—is transported elsewhere. But why a mirror?" Here she was stumped. In the case of a blemish or a scar, wouldn't the magic be inclined to take the simple route, and move it to another object? Levy had plenty of books lying around. Theoretically, Gajeel could have been put into one of them.
"Don't you girls use them?" Gajeel asked. Levy hadn't realized he was paying attention, let alone what he meant.
"Use what?"
"Mirrors. If this is a—what did ya call it? Makeup spell? Don't ya use mirrors for that kinda stuff?" His cheeks had turned slightly red and he wasn't looking at Levy. She considered this.
"That's actually a really good point!" She sat up straight again and reached for the packet on the desk.
"What d'ya mean, actually!" Gajeel complained—but in truth he was pleased.
"Gajeel, look at this." Levy opened the envelope and showed him the broken glass. The shards glinted as she shifted them about in her hand. She picked up one of the larger slivers to inspect it more closely. "I thought it was glass at first, but Gajeel—I think it might be pieces of a mirror!"
"Hanh? But your mirror ain't broken," Gajeel pointed out. "Ya got another one somewhere?"
"No," Levy blushed slightly, "I don't really use one."
"Ya sure about that?" Gajeel raised a skeptical eyebrow.
"Of course I'm sure—why, are you trying to say I ought to?" Levy stuck her lower lip out in a pout.
"Geez Shrimp, ya really know how to take things the wrong way," Gajeel stood up in a swift movement and faced away from her. He took several steps away from the glass, his figure shrinking in the framed mirror.
"Gajeel, how far can you go in there?" Levy's previous irritation seemed to be forgotten.
"I dunno, looks like it goes on forever." His voice sounded more distant the further he walked. "Oi, seems I was wrong. There's a chunk missin' outta the floor here."
"Hmm," Levy considered. She hadn't done much research into alternate worlds—her knowledge mainly consisted of the conclusions she'd drawn from the guild's experience with Edolas. In that case, Anima acted as a portal between the two worlds. When Edo-Lisanna died, it pulled Earthland Lisanna through into Edolas. Obviously some sort of portal had been opened by Gajeel's reading of the spell—perhaps when he left the human world, a portion of the mirror world took his place? But then, why did it shatter? She sighed for what must have been the hundredth time that evening.
"Gajeel, I'm sorry—I don't know what to do," she pressed her hands against her forehead, which began to pound. "I have so much knowledge packed into my head, and I don't know a thing about parallel worlds," her voice trailed off as she squeezed her eyes shut.
"Oi." His voice was much closer than it had been the last time he'd spoken. She nearly jumped, and looked up. Gajeel had returned to the glass and was crouched in front of her. His elbows rested on his knees, and he fixed her with a steady gaze. "Cut that out, will ya? Ain't ya got some book around here?"
Levy took a deep breath. He was right. She must have something laying around. Now that she thought about it, she remembered that she'd bought a few books shortly after the Edolas situation. But where are they? That was seven years ago! She looked about the room.
"C'mon Shorty, didn't ya tell me earlier that ya knew where everything was?"
"Uhhh," Levy hesitated.
"Giehee, ya tryin' to keep me here?" he teased. Levy blushed hotly.
"I am not!"
"Really? Coz I think ya like this." Levy wanted nothing more than to wipe that infuriating smirk off his face. Instead she hid her red cheeks by turning back to the room. She stomped over to her bed and climbed onto it. Teetering on the tips of her toes, she reached up to the shelf hung over her pillow. Gajeel watched in amusement as she strained to catch the binding with her fingertips. After a couple jumps, she managed to hook it and get it down.
"Gotcha!" She bounced into a seating position on the bed and flipped the book open. "Mirrors... mirrors… mirrors! Oh, but it's such a long chapter!"
Gajeel rolled his eyes. "You're a script mage, ain't ya? Use those goofy glasses!"
"Duh!" Levy slapped a hand against her forehead. She hopped up and grabbed the glasses off her desk before settling back down on the bed. Within seconds, she was whipping through the book in an almost trancelike state.
"Ya know, for a shrimp you can be pretty scary," he said. Levy didn't seem to have heard him.
When she finished she closed the book with a snap. She looked straight at Gajeel.
"Well, what do you want first? The good news or the bad?" She stood up and walked back to the mirror.
"You pick," he said.
"Where to begin… well, I think we were right about the trading places thing. This bit of mirror came here when you went to the mirror world. The important thing to remember is that the laws of physics work differently in different worlds. Remember how you guys said that Edolas had a limited supply of magic?"
"Yeah, and ours is unlimited. Giehee," he pumped his fist.
"Exactly. Similarly, some things don't do so well when they enter alternate worlds. I'd almost forgotten, but when I got sucked along with Lucy and the others to the Celestial Spirit world, we all had to wear clothes from that world. Otherwise I don't think we'd have had such a pleasant time there…"
"Yeah I remember that, I got left behind!"
"Consider yourself lucky! You got to train for three months—we only got five days! And anyway, that's not important," she stressed. "Some things don't survive so well in other worlds. In the case of objects from the mirror world, which is a two-dimensional world—"
"A what?" he interrupted.
"Two-dimensional world. Flat. Like paper," she explained. "Objects from the mirror world are flat. If they were to enter a three-dimensional world like ours—not flat, Gajeel—they wouldn't last."
"An' why is that?"
"Well, one thing you can rely on in any world is that nature is always working to maintain balance. If a two-dimensional world object enters our world, then our world will make it three-dimensional."
Gajeel scratched his head. "How does that work?"
"…It doesn't. The mirror exploded when it tried to become three-dimensional." Levy knelt down in front of Gajeel and placed her palms on the glass. "Gajeel, this is where it gets bad. Do you know what happens to a three-dimensional object when it enters a two-dimensional world?"
"It…gets squished?" He pulled a face, studded eyebrows rising toward his hairline. "How come I ain't a pancake yet?"
"I'm not completely sure, but I suspect that it's because your body is much more complex than a piece of glass," she reasoned. "And if we don't get you back before you become two-dimensional, you wouldn't survive the trip back to our world."
"So what's the good news?"
Levy gave a shy smile. "I think I know how to feed you."
A/N: Don't forget to review! One day I want to write a more romantic story for these two-but they're a tricky pair and I'm still a novice... T.T