HOLY CRAP I'M ALIVE.
I mean...
Long time no see, party people! Yeah, I've been way focused on a bunch of other fics lately. Lame excuse, I know. But the thing about a one-shot series is at least I can drop it and pick it back up whenever. Kind of a nice perk, right?
I actually started this prompt a long time ago and was totally in the mood to finish it today. It turned out a lot of fun, I think. Hope you guys like it!
#42 Paranormal
Lucy felt as though she'd walked straight into one of her mom's old horror novels. The house—mansion, more like—was one of the largest she'd ever seen. It was dark, and quiet, and dirty, and damp, and all kinds of creepy. Lucy liked to think she hadn't been afraid of the dark since she was little, but something about that house made her feel like she was a toddler again. They hadn't even stepped through the doorway, and already she wanted to leave and never come back.
"Why are we doing this again?" she squeaked in an abnormally high voice, latching clammy hands onto Natsu's arm and trying not to shiver in fear.
Gray turned to her incredulously. "This job was your idea, remember?" he pointed out. "The payoff is huge—you need the rent money, don't you?"
Lucy swallowed hard. "Yeah, but…"
"Besides," Erza scoffed, "this place can't really be haunted. Everybody knows there's no such thing as ghosts."
"Right," Gray agreed. "We go in, we look around, we find some loose floorboards and squeaky doors, and we report back to the old man and assure him there's nothing to worry about. This mission'll be a cakewalk."
"Come on, Lucy," Natsu said, easing her cold grip off of his arm and giving her a reassuring grin. "It's been a while since we all took on a job together. It'll be fun."
Lucy sighed heavily, knowing there was no arguing with these three. "Alright, fine," she conceded. "Let's just get this over with."
As one the team of four stepped through the wide, double doors and into the shadowy entrance hall. It was early afternoon outside, but the thick coating of dust on the high windows effectively blocked out all but the palest shafts of daylight, giving the room a dusky feel. The carpet beneath their feet was old and rather moth-eaten, and the wooden chairs near the door that must have once been elaborate and smooth were now splintered and decayed. It looked as though no one had set foot inside the house in decades.
When they reached the center of the room, the air was broken by a loud bang, which made all four of them jump in surprise. Whirling around, Lucy saw that the front doors had slammed shut behind them. "That's inviting…" she said sarcastically in a weak voice.
"Probably just the wind," Erza scoffed, turning her head back toward the grand staircase. "How about we split up? We can cover more ground that way."
"Split up?" Lucy repeated, her voice squeaking again. "Split up? What, so we can get picked off one by one?"
"No one's getting 'picked off'," Erza explained, sounding slightly exasperated.
"Easy for you to say," Lucy countered. "The ghosts are probably afraid of you."
Erza cocked her head to the side, looking as though she considered that a very logical argument, as Gray mumbled, "Who isn't?" and Natsu sniggered under his breath.
"Even so," Erza went on, seeming not to have noticed, "I'd like to get this mission over and done with, which means splitting up." She turned to the others, hands on her hips. "Gray and I will go upstairs, Natsu and Lucy can take the ground floor. We'll meet up later and go from there." Her eyes locked onto Gray's and flashed almost dangerously. Lucy wondered if maybe she'd heard him, after all.
Gray paled at the look on Erza's face. "Sh-Shouldn't Lucy go with you?" he asked, sounding almost as frightened as Lucy herself had a few minutes ago. She tried not to laugh.
"Lucy will feel safer with Natsu," Erza replied simply, still staring at Gray. Lucy shot Natsu a glance and smiled, still trying to keep from laughing as he grinned back at her. Gray turned to the two of them with an almost pleading expression, but Lucy looked down and Natsu shrugged innocently. "Well, let's get going," Erza announced, before stalking off up the stairs. Gray sighed heavily and followed after her looking dejected.
"I hope she doesn't make him a ghost," Lucy joked once they were out of earshot.
Natsu laughed. "Least then he'd be able to haunt her for the rest of her life," he added. "Anyway, ready to take a look around?"
"No," Lucy answered honestly, taking his outstretched hand and lacing her fingers through his. "But let's go."
The door in the center of the foyer beneath the staircase led into a long, dark hallway whose walls were dotted with wide, oaken doors. Fancy candelabra adorned the walls between the doorframes, though they were empty. There were no windows in the hallway, so Natsu had to summon an orb of fire around his hand to provide ample light to allow them to see.
"This is creepy," Lucy whispered, eyeing the thick, gray cobwebs that stuck to the candelabrum to her left as they stepped down the hall.
Natsu looked sideways at her and squeezed her hand. "Come on, where's your sense of adventure?" he asked lightly. "You're a writer, aren't you?"
"Sure, but that doesn't make me a ghost-buster," she argued, still whispering through the eerie silence. "Since when is this guild work?"
"Since the guy's payin' us," he answered. "Besides, it's not like there are professionals for this sort of—" He broke off suddenly as his gaze snapped forward, eyes searching the darkness down the long hallway. And Lucy knew why.
"Did you hear that?" she asked quietly, voice shaking. She could have sworn she'd heard the sound of a door creaking somewhere down the hall, and judging by the look on Natsu's face, he'd heard it, too.
"Could be the wind," he suggested with a frown. "Or a cockroach."
Lucy shuddered. "That's one big cockroach," she said, scooting closer to Natsu in the darkness. She opened her mouth to voice another complaint when suddenly she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. She gasped and flinched violently, shaking in sudden fear.
"What?" Natsu asked, squirming under Lucy's vice-like grip.
"I s-saw something," she whispered, pointing a quivering finger down the hall.
Natsu craned his neck, squinting into the darkness. "How? It's pitch black in here." He drew back his arm and quickly thrust it forward, sending the ball of fire he'd been holding rocketing down the hall, illuminating fractions of the floor and walls as it went. It faded into ash just before it hit the far wall. "See? Nothing there," Natsu said afterward, summoning another orb of light and giving Lucy an encouraging smile. When she didn't respond, he went on, "Let's check out some of these doors. I bet there's some crazy stuff in this place."
"Not too crazy, I hope…" Lucy muttered, following him to the first set of double doors on their right, which led into a high-ceilinged dining room. A long, dusty table sitting on a musty rug stretched down the center of the wood-paneled floor. It was surrounded by decorative chairs, some of which had fallen over or broken apart over time. A few places were set with cracked, graying dinnerware, as though the guests had disappeared from the spot just before the first course had arrived.
"Be nice if there was food on those plates," Natsu said wistfully, rubbing his stomach.
Lucy grimaced. "You're kidding, right?" As they stepped farther into the room, she looked around at the shadowy corners, unlit by the wan light peeping through the vaulted windows across the back wall. It gave the room an endless sort of feeling. With a shiver, she asked, "So… what exactly are we looking for?"
Natsu shrugged unhelpfully, lifting a broken plate and checking underneath it for anything interesting. Of course there was nothing. "Dunno. Anything out of the ordinary? Stuff that might make people think the place is haunted?"
Chewing the inside of her lip, Lucy stepped away from the table and started toward the closest wall, eyes peering through the darkness and hoping she wouldn't see anything but the wallpaper, when suddenly the vague shape of a face appeared out of nowhere. Lucy shrieked and stumbled backward in alarm.
"What's up?" Natsu said from behind her. "You see something?"
She pointed a shaking finger and heard his footsteps as he neared her, allowing the light from the fire surrounding his hand to push back the shadows. In the light, Lucy realized that she had indeed seen a person's face in the darkness, but it was harmless and stationary on the canvas of a painted portrait of an old, rich-looking woman with a sour expression.
"Ugly old broad, isn't she?" Natsu observed with a look of distaste as he stopped beside Lucy. "Definitely suspicious. Good find."
Lucy glared and elbowed him hard in the stomach, causing him to cringe and grunt a laugh. "Ha, ha. I know, I'm being stupid. You don't have to rub it in."
"Okay, I didn't—" He broke off when Lucy screamed again, whirling around and scouring the darkness for whatever she could have sworn had just tried to grab her from behind. Sounding amused, Natsu asked, "What now?"
"I felt something…" Lucy responded, trailing off when she again realized how ridiculous she sounded. She turned with a sigh to see Natsu trying not to smile. "You're loving this, aren't you?"
"No, that's not it," he said, the corner of his mouth twitching upward. "I'm not trying to make fun of you or anything. It's just that… Well, you're cute when you're scared. I don't see it that often."
He stopped trying to suppress his grin altogether and Lucy folded her arms. "I'm glad you think so, but I won't be so cute when whatever's in here drags me into a wall or something."
"Hey, that's not gonna happen," Natsu said seriously, smile fading to a reassuring stare. "You don't see anything else here, do you?"
Tentatively she looked around the dining room. "No," she admitted. "Just you."
"Exactly." Letting his fire fade, he reached out and rubbed her tense arms with both hands. The warmth from his touch actually helped her muscles start to relax. "It's all in your head. You just gotta calm down. Everything's gonna be fine."
She shot him a half-hearted glare, taking a step forward to poke him in the chest. "I hate you," she lied shortly.
He grinned, his hands sliding down to rest on her hips. "Let's get this mission under our belts and then you can hate me all you want."
Lucy shook her head as she slipped her own hands around Natsu's neck and pulled him closer to her. "Oh, I will," she promised with a smirk, just before tilting her head to catch his lips with her own. She leaned against him, breathing in the comfortable heat that emanated from his mouth and suddenly feeling a whole lot safer in his arms than she had moments ago. As his fingers slid under her shirt and up the skin on her back, she felt the rest of her fear seem to disappear all at once. Maybe he was right, and it was all in her head. After all, she was the only one who was overreacting. Maybe if she just calmed down and looked at this mission like the rest of her team did, she would realize that it really was all just unfounded superstition. There was no skill involved here. A cakewalk job, as Gray had coined it. So what reason was there to freak out over it?
Well, that was what she started to think, until a heavy force slammed into her back and shoved her forward, bowling her and Natsu both to the floor in a jumbled heap.
"Ow…" Lucy muttered, realizing she'd bitten down hard on her tongue in the confusion—and Natsu's too, judging by the blood he'd just wiped from the inside of his mouth.
"What was that?" he demanded sharply, jumping back to his feet and summoning orbs of fire in both hands. His dark eyes darted back and forth in suspicion.
Lucy climbed up from the floor much more slowly, straightening her disheveled clothes and feeling a tense chill rush through her body. "Um… I really don't want to say I told you so, but…"
Natsu looked at her and frowned, but apparently he couldn't come up with a proper argument. She opened her mouth to suggest, again, that they consider leaving when something whooshed rapidly through the air right in front of her face. She stepped back with a yelp and turned to see a rusted kitchen knife embed with a thunk in the wall to her left.
"What the—?" Natsu muttered, looking first at the knife and then toward the direction it must have come from. He'd only taken a step before two more utensils sped toward him from somewhere above the table and he leapt backward to avoid being skewered. With a growl, he turned and punched at the air, sending a stream of blazing fire at the projectiles' source and illuminating a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling. A few old candles still resting in their holders caught the flame and remained lit, lighting the room enough to see the blotchy shadow shoot from the chandelier to the door with inhuman speed.
"There's somebody here," Natsu said in a low, angry voice, starting immediately after the shadow.
"Wha—Wait!" Lucy called, hurrying after him. "Maybe we shouldn't mess with—"
"He's the one messin' with us," Natsu cut her off as they entered the main hall. They both stopped, the shadow having disappeared in the darkness. Natsu grumbled something under his breath in frustration and marched resolutely down the hall, prompting Lucy to slump her shoulders and follow him.
She took a deep breath and tried to regain her calm. Now at least she knew the bad feeling she'd had wasn't only her imagination—not that that realization was exactly comforting. The question that remained, though, was of course whether their new quarry was something natural or supernatural. Natsu obviously believed they were after an intruder. A bit more open-minded, Lucy wasn't so sure.
"Let's go find Gray and Erza," she suggested, rushing to catch up with Natsu and keeping as close as she could behind him. "We could probably use their help."
"Here," Natsu said suddenly, ignoring her. He came to an abrupt halt and she promptly walked clumsily into his back.
"Natsu…"
"Shh!" he cut her off. "You hear that?"
Throat turning dry, Lucy held her breath and strained her ears. After a few seconds, her eyes widened. "Music?"
Natsu nodded, stepping toward the nearest door. He opened it silently and the music—soft, lilting piano tones playing a haunting sort of melancholy tune—grew louder. Inside was some sort of sitting room, with a huge fireplace, a bunch of moth-eaten armchairs, and a few tiny end tables. In one corner was a dust-caked grand piano, which appeared for all the world to be playing although every key was decidedly still.
Natsu stared at the piano, a bewildered expression on his face. "How…?"
Lucy realized she was still holding her breath and let it out with a heavy sigh. "Oh, I knew it, I knew it, I knew it, this place is haunted!" she said in a shrill whisper, dropping heavily into the nearest armchair.
Natsu shook his head vaguely. "But… Nah, there's gotta be a—"
He was interrupted once again by Lucy's scream as thick ropes sprang suddenly from the cushions of her armchair and wound around her body, trapping her in place. Natsu spun around in alarm and yelled "Lucy!" as Lucy thrashed, trying to break free. Arms pinned, she stretched her fingers toward her belt, but her keys were just out of reach. Of course they were. That was just her luck.
It was a good thing she wasn't alone, or she would've been done for, defeated by a stupid old chair. Thankfully, fire was very effective against rope, and a quick wash of heat later Natsu was yanking her out of the chair and away from its deadly reach.
"Can we leave now?" she pleaded, her voice an octave too high.
Not seeming to hear her, Natsu knelt down beside the chair and picked up a cut piece of the rope—or rather, what Lucy had assumed was rope. Now she could tell that it was green and threaded like grass.
"Vines?" Natsu said with a frown.
Looking up, Lucy's eyes caught on a moving shadow—possibly the same one as before. "Look!" she shouted, pointing as it raced through the door.
Natsu's gaze snapped in the direction she was indicating. "Oh, it's not getting away this time," he said threateningly, springing to his feet, vaulting over the chair, and chasing after it. Lucy followed without question as he darted into the hallway and to the right, speeding down the corridor. At the end, the hall branched to the left and opened into what looked like a kitchen.
Natsu skidded to a halt and cursed under his breath, looking around for their escaped specter. Lucy took a few steps away from him and listened for signs of movement. Her quick and random entrapment had been terrifying, but it did have the bonus of suddenly making the entire mission seem more real. At least now she wasn't sneaking through a quiet house, wondering if something was going to pop up at her any second. Now she knew they weren't alone.
Okay, that probably should have made the situation even more frightening. But for whatever reason, it actually helped Lucy keep her head on straight. Must have been a wizard thing.
"Hey," she whispered to Natsu to get his attention. She jerked her head toward the opening to an upward stairwell, from which she was sure she'd just heard footsteps. Natsu nodded and together they crept soundlessly toward it. As they halted, Lucy heard it again—there were definitely slow, quiet footsteps creeping down those stairs. The two of them flanked the doorway and Lucy unhooked her whip from her belt, ready to stop anything Natsu missed with the initial strike she knew he would make. This time, she and her partner would be ready when they were ambushed.
At least, that's what she though. What she hadn't foreseen was said ambushers expecting them as well. The instant they saw movement at the bottom of the stairs, a few unfortunate things happened in quick succession. Natsu hurled a blast of fire at the stairwell, causing a male voice to yell in surprise. There was a flash of light and suddenly the floor beneath Lucy was slicked with ice, causing her to lose her balance with a short cry. She swung her whip as she tripped and accidentally smacked Natsu in the back of the head, knocking him dazedly toward the stairwell, where he seemed to collide with someone on the way. There was another shout and Lucy was almost beheaded by the wild swing of a dual-edged, silver sword before everybody seemed to freeze at once.
"Lucy, Natsu," Erza said casually as she regained her balance and removed the point of her sword from the vicinity of Lucy's jugular vein. "There you are."
"What the hell, man?" Gray demanded as he and Natsu disentangled themselves from each other and climbed out of the stairwell. "Why'd you attack us?"
"You attacked right back," Natsu argued, kicking the ice that still coated the floor in front of the doorway. "'Cept you missed."
"That's 'cause somebody tried to roast me!"
"We thought you were the guy we were chasing!"
"We thought you were the guy we were chasing!"
"Wait, you guys were after somebody, too?" Lucy asked Erza with a frown.
"Yes," Erza answered, dismissing her sword into the void with a flourish of her hand. "We were getting closer; we thought he might have gone down here."
"What did he look like?" Lucy said, wondering if they were all referring to the same person and hoping for a little more information to prove that it wasn't a ghost after all.
"Well, we didn't actually see anyone," Erza admitted. "But we heard banging and were attacked by some flying metal objects. We followed the sounds to somewhere around here."
Eyebrows drawing together, Lucy exchanged a glance with Natsu. "That's different from what happened to us…"
"Really? What did you experience?"
Lucy chewed her lip. "Well—"
She was interrupted then by a loud, metallic bang that seemed to come from all around them.
"That's it!" Erza hissed, dropping into a defensive stance and looking around as the banging repeated. "Look out!" She leaped on Lucy just as a rusted cooking pot flew toward them. The banging sounded again as suddenly there was a blaze of light and bright yellow fire appeared in the fireplace at the far end of the kitchen. Half a second later, more of those ropy vines crawled out from the nearest sink and wound around Gray, who was crouching a little too close to the counter. With a growl, he pounded a fist against his hand and sharp icicles shot from his body, slicing through the vines as they tried to restrain him.
"What the hell's going on here?" Natsu exclaimed as he ducked a flying frying pan.
Tense with apprehension, Lucy peered up over the nearest countertop and looked around. By the light of the fire now burning in the fireplace, she saw a familiar moving shadow speed past a set of shelves toward a doorway into another hall.
"Natsu, it's our friend!" she called, springing to her feet and rushing around the counter. Having her entire team together proved to further bolster her resolve. She was still afraid, but this… whatever-it-was was kind of starting to tick her off.
Natsu followed without question as she raced for the hallway, prompting Gray and Erza to tag along. The firelight was enough that when Lucy entered the hall, she caught the barest glimpse of the shadow speeding through a set of open double doors far down to her right. How could he have gotten there so fast? she couldn't help but wonder, a lump rising in her throat. If they really were dealing with something paranormal, then maybe their magic wouldn't be enough to take it down.
The doors led into a huge library, so big Lucy stumbled to a halt inside and stared around in slight awe. Boy, if she wasn't in the middle of scary haunted-house mission right now… That thought was interrupted when Natsu charged into the room behind her and ran smack into her, nearly knocking her over.
"Where'd it go?" he asked as the four of them gathered in the middle of the open reading area to the right of the door.
"I don't know," Lucy responded, eyes combing the shadows for movement. "But I swear I saw it come in here." They all waited silently for a few long seconds, but nothing happened. With a frown, Lucy turned toward her friends and said, "Maybe—YAAAAHHHH!" She shrieked as something touched at the back of her skirt from behind and reflexively she swung out an arm to smack whatever had invaded her personal bubble, corporeal or otherwise. Surprisingly, her fist collided with what looked like thin air and there was an audible shout of pain as a figure fell out of nowhere and rolled across the ground.
Heart pounding, Lucy approached the person, the others on her tail. Anger welled inside her as she recognized the spiky, red hair and pointed, elf-like features.
"Jet?" she demanded in disbelief.
Jet rolled onto his back and waved weakly, giving Lucy a nervous smile. "Hey, guys," he said as though he'd just run into them on the street.
Lucy curled her hands into fists. That definitely debunked what she thought might have been a ghost. Jet wasn't invisible, he'd just been moving so fast they couldn't see him.
"What are you doing here?" she asked in a less-than-friendly tone.
"Uh…" Jet responded intelligently. "You see, there's a perfectly good explanation for this…" Lucy raised her eyebrows expectantly, but a twinge of movement to Jet's right caught her attention and she glanced over to see yet another length of vine shooting toward them. Erza stepped up beside Lucy and let the vine catch her by the arm, twisting around her wrist, before she closed her fingers over it and pulled on it with the sort of strength only she had. Another shout of surprise came from near the door as a second person was jerked into the open from behind a bookcase.
"Droy," Lucy identified him easily. She was hardly surprise this time. After seeing Jet, the vines made perfect sense.
Erza stepped forward and used Droy's own vine to hog-tie him in the blink of an eye. Jet's eyes widened and he sprang to his feet with an apologetic glance at his partner. He started to run, but he'd barely made it two steps before he was frozen in his tracks—literally—by immovable ice that encased his legs and trailed the floor to where Gray was knelt a few yards away.
"Explain," Erza said coldly. "Now."
"Th-This wasn't our idea!" Droy wailed as Jet struggled in vain against the ice surrounding his legs. "I swear! It was Gajeel, he put us up to it. Said it would be easy, scare you guys away and then the reward money would be all ours!"
"What?" Natsu demanded with an angry expression.
"He's right!" Jet agreed, eyeing Natsu warily. "So, uh… don't hurt us! We didn't mean anything by it, really! We love you guys! It was just a game! Ha ha!"
"Yeah! Ha ha!"
"You may not have noticed," Gray said dryly, "but the rest of us ain't laughin'."
"I think it's pretty funny," a voice announced from Lucy's left, and she looked to see the iron dragon slayer himself step casually into the library, arms folded across his broad chest. "Come on, admit it. For a second there, you actually thought this place was haunted."
Natsu's face contorted in a snarl. "Why, you…" He started forward, but Gajeel held up his hands in submission.
"Cool it, flame-breath, we ain't lookin' for a fight. We were just havin' a little fun."
"We're really sorry, guys," came another voice as a fourth culprit stepped in meekly behind Gajeel.
Lucy's jaw dropped. "Levy? You were in on this, too?" She supposed she shouldn't have been surprised after seeing the rest of Shadow Gear, but still, she'd be lying if she said this was something she could ever expect from Levy McGarden, possibly one of the sweetest people she'd ever met.
Levy gave an apologetic shrug. "We were planning to take this job, but you guys beat us to it. I didn't think it was a big deal, but Gajeel, well…"
Gajeel clicked his tongue. "Bunch'a weasels, all of ya. Yeah, fine, it was all my idea, okay? We sneak in, rattle your chains a bit, and when you all run screamin', we come in and collect the reward. Is that so wrong?"
Yes, Lucy wanted to say, annoyed with all four of them for spooking her so much (not that she was about to bring that up). "So," she began instead, "all of that was you guys? The knives and the music and the vines and the fire…"
"All of it," Levy confessed. "I did the fire and the music—"
"I thought that was a great touch, that piano thing," Jet said with a broad grin that withered instantly when Erza shot him a scathing look. "I mean… I was the one in the dining room. Gajeel was following Erza and Gray around and banging on stuff…"
"Okay, okay, we get the deal," Gray grumbled.
"So… I guess we did complete the mission, in a way," Lucy pointed out, trying to find the positive. "We proved the place isn't haunted. How about all of us just split the reward?"
For a second, Lucy expected another argument to break out. But to her relief, everyone grudgingly agreed to this suggestion. Anymore, all she really wanted was to get out of that house and never come back. Somehow the money didn't really concern her too much anymore.
The man who'd posted the request dropped by for their results shortly after, and Lucy and Erza gave him a tour and invented some believable excuses for whatever people had been experiencing in the house (choosing to leave their own experiences out of the discussion). Satisfied, he handed over their reward money and bid them a hasty goodbye, leaving in a rush and making them promise to lock up on their way out.
"Well, he sure seemed in a hurry to leave," Gray noticed as he finished counting the reward money and stuffed it in his bag. Shadow Gear had left earlier after being promised half the earnings, seeing as it was customary for the same team to collect as accepted the job in the first place.
"Yeah," Natsu agreed, frowning out the front door from where they stood in the mansion foyer. "Guess we didn't completely convince him after all."
"At least we tried," Erza said with a shake of her hair. "Some people just have a harder time accepting reality than others."
"We can't blame him too much," Lucy said. "This place is pretty creepy."
"Aw, admit it," Natsu said with a grin, nudging his arm against Lucy's shoulder. "You had a little fun."
She gave him a rueful smile and a playful shove, before linking her arm with his and twisting their fingers together. "Maybe a little. But still, haunted or not, I'll be glad to put this place behind me."
"Me too," Natsu agreed.
"Me three," Gray added as he zipped his bag shut and patted it protectively.
With a submissive sigh, Erza nodded and said, "Me four."
"Me five."
"Me six."
"Me seven."
The four of them froze stock-still, sure this time that those voices did not belong to Gajeel or the others. Slowly Lucy leaned around Natsu and eyed the empty space beside Erza, but it was just that—empty.
Then in unison they all screamed and bolted out the door, leaving the haunted mansion behind.
Hahaha, this one makes me laugh. It was supposed to be a combination of suspense and comedy, pretty light-hearted all around. I'm a fan of it :D
So hopefully this won't just be like a drive-by and I can actually do a few more sometime soon. Fingers crossed that I'm in a Fairy Tail mood more often!
How 'bout a review? Go ahead and scold me for taking so long, it's justified. I'll try and be a bit more diligent :D Thanks, gang!
Later days!
-oMM