Disclaimer: The following story is a fan made work of fiction. Fairy Tail and Mahou Sensei Negima! are owned and written by Hiro Mashima and Ken Akamatsu respectively. Please support their official releases.
Chapter 4
Hello Dolly
"Argh!" Gray screamed in pain as he wrenched his body away from the maniacal doll. The thing was no bigger than Happy or Charle, but the giant meat cleaver it wielded had carved into his side with murderous intent. The tiny monstrosity gave him no quarter as he tried to back away, a tattered white sheet flaring around his waist as he moved.
"Weeee, look at it bleed." The doll screamed joyfully. Each word was punctuated with a slash of its cleaver. "I cut you, I skewer you, I make you into mincemeat!" He scrambled to the side, dodging the cleaver and gritting his teeth as blood dripped down his side.
With a quick feint to his right, Gray made a rolling leap to his left and placed some distance between them. Slamming his hands together, Gray forced another spell out of his dwindling supply of magic. "Ice Make: Floor!"
A thick coating of ice came into being, covering the surrounding floor for as far as his eyes could see. He gave a grunt of exertion as the magic left him and grabbed his side. The cut was shallow; making the real threat it posed loss of blood. Gray put an emergency coating of ice over the wound to slow down the bleeding.
Then the dang doll floated above the ice and resumed its slashing attack with a laugh. Gray stared at it blankly for a moment before cursing and covering one of his arms with a blade of ice. Every time he came up with a tactic to beat them, the dolls always pulled some new trick that completely negated him.
"Dammit, what does it take to make you go stop?" Gray shouted. The doll tried to stab him again, which Gray blocked with his icy blade. "Why won't you just leave me alone? And why can't you just go back to shouting in that stupid language of yours? I liked it more when I couldn't understand a thing you said."
He got no reply other than a stilted laugh. The thing was crazy but determined, launching attack after attack. "Haha! Look at all the delicious red stuff you put on my blade, silly human." The doll pushed him back with a series of quick swipes which Gray barely blocked. "Your life is mine, black-haired pervert. No one enters the master's bed uninvited and leaves alive. Fear the wrath of Chachazero!"
This had to be the most confusing fight of his life, but Gray didn't give the crazed being any chance to make good on its threats. He locked his sword arm with the things cleaver, maneuvering his body until he got the right amount of leverage. Then he bashed the doll and its blade away, watching as it ricocheted amongst the rubble that surrounded them. It soon popped back up and flew at him screaming bloody vengeance.
Dispelling his icy blade, Gray slammed both hands together and took the stance Ur taught him. "Ice Make: Geyser!" A pillar of frozen magic burst forth from the ground, trapping the screeching doll deep within. Its body froze instantly and hung suspended by Gray's magic. The blasted thing was finally silent.
Then he began to pay the price of casting such a powerful spell. Stars to burst behind his eyes and he began to stagger. His breaths came in gasps as the pain from this battle joined with the wounds he had received in the earlier skirmishes. He fell against the frozen pillar, unable to stand on his own.
The pain came in waves and battered his skull. It flared from the wound in his side and flowed from his exhausted muscles. Every inch of his body hurt, forming a crescendo of ceaseless torment. It was tough to see or think through its haze, and it wasn't long before black began to nibble at the edge of his sight.
"C'mon body. Hang in there." Gray blinked his eyes to clear the stars and blackness. It worked a little. Not much, but a little. "That's how you do it, Gray. Don't let some punkass doll win."
He didn't know how long he stood supporting himself on the geyser of ice, but eventually Gray managed to force the pain away. It fell to a dull roar in the back of his mind, ever present but manageable. He pushed himself off of the frozen pillar of ice and backed away, staring at the doll trapped within.
"Fuck you, you damn psychopath," he wheezed. "And don't come back with any of your friends either. I'm sick of you, alright?" He sat down and placed his back to the pillar, hissing in pain as he felt the skin around the cut tighten from the movement.
"Thing almost gutted me with a friggin meat cleaver." Gray muttered, incredulous. Feeling the length of the cut with one of his fingers, the ice mage winced and counted his blessings. The cut ran clear across his ribs for a good six inches. If he had been an instant slower the thing would have killed him with the first attack. "Note to self; never allow kids to own dolls with blades. It's a crappy idea."
Gray took a quick look around his position. He didn't see anything moving, nor did he sense any sort of magic. It didn't mean much considering how often the dolls had managed to ambush him, but it would have to suffice. He stiffly ripped thin shreds out of the tattered sheet tied around his middle and began twisting them into rough bandages with practiced ease. The blanket had been the only thing he'd managed to grab before that little girl had shrieked like a banshee and cast her spell.
When she had channeled an iceberg the size of a small hill at him, Gray had run like a man possessed. Gray's eyes bulged just remembering the girl's spell. He had never seen ice magic on that scale cast so quickly. Not even Ur or that mystery assailant in the woods had displayed anything of the sort! Any thought of possibly explaining why he had been in the girl's bed had been shut down by that spell and the ensuing doll attack force.
The pain in his side worsened as he applied the crude bandages. He had undone the emergency coating of ice he had applied earlier and the process stung like a bee on drugs. Gray's breath hissed between tight teeth as the thin cloth stuck to his bloody side. It stuck to the blood welling up, quickly adhering to the skin beneath. He then drew on his ice magic to place another thin layer of ice over the wound. It wasn't anything near what Wendy could do but the damn thing might keep him alive long enough to escape this hellhole of a resort. He shook his head to shake off the fatigue of blood loss and magic deprivation. It only worked a little.
He was running on fumes by this point. After the first few hours of full out battle with the dolls, things had settled into guerrilla warfare. Every time he found a place to hide, they flushed him out. Whenever he tried to take the offensive and remove them, they swarmed his location in an endless horde.
The only strategy which seemed to be somewhat effective was one of constant movement, but it was far from perfect. It required energy and opened him to ambushes like the last one, and Gray had reached his limits. He didn't have much left in his magical gas tank and that psycho doll's attack had made him lose a lot of blood. His hands trembled as they rested on his thighs. On top of that, he hadn't been able to catch more than a moment's rest since the battle started. If he didn't find a way out of this place soon, it would be his grave.
"I have to find that girl," he muttered to himself. "She's the only living thing I've encountered. The only thing that makes sense." He picked himself off of the ground and tried to walk. The pain was almost crippling. He slammed a fist into a nearby wall, using the resulting pain to focus his thoughts. "Where the heck did she go?"
"Right here, little Ice Magus. And I've finally come out to play."
Gray whipped his body around and slammed his hands together. He marshaled the last of his magic and tried to release it in a single powerful burst. The purring voice in his ear had come from right behind him, accompanied by a blazing magical force the likes of which he had never felt in his life. Gray knew that he was finished if she was able to land even a single blow on his battered body.
"Tempestatem Congelata Vincula!"
He felt the impact deep within his bones as the spell flung him through a massive pillar of stone. He crashed through it and into the open courtyard from which he had just left, slamming face down into the courtyard's flagstones. A burst of light flashed behind his eyes as he hit and a gasp of pain burst from his lips.
Gray came to with a start only moments later. He had blacked out for a moment, and control of his senses returned slowly. The pain that came with them proved he was alive. Pain which increased as the ice picked him back up and slammed him down once more.
"You must be the first assassin sent in nearly half a century," the girl's voice spoke sweetly. Gray wanted to grab her by the throat and kill her with that too sweet tone. "It's a pity that you won't able to grow into your full strength; you have great skill for someone so young. With a few more years you may have been able to provide me with some true sport."
Gray tried to lift his head to see her, only to have a bare foot slam his face back into the flagstones. He cried out as his teeth bit into his tongue. Blood welled from the wound and soon drizzled out of his mouth.
"Why must the young always be in such a hurry?" The girl sighed. "Allow me to teach you the price of your folly." She proceeded to mash his head into the torn ground with her foot, grinding his face in the dust and broken rubble. "To think that you could defeat the Dark Evangel with this level of power was beyond stupid. You are a hundred years too early, boy, and your master is a fool for wasting your talent in such an endeavor."
Gray felt every broken shard in the ground try to knife its way into his skin as she continued to twist. He tried to keep his mouth shut, but bits and pieces worked their way in. Soon his mouth was filled with chips of rock and a cement-like mixtures of dust, saliva, and blood. It spilled out of his mouth in bloody heaves.
Her foot let off the pressure, allowing him to shift his head to the side and spit out everything that had entered his mouth. Some of it had gone down his throat, entering his stomach and lungs. Gray's body was wracked with a sudden spasm of heaves as his body emptied itself of everything he had shoved down it. The soft patter of feet came as she moved away.
"Now speak, assassin, and end your suffering before it has yet to truly begin. Or be prepared to receive a taste of what my dolls can do when I am motivated to join them."
Gray worked his tongue around his teeth, dislodging what he could and working moisture back into his mouth. More bloody spit fell to the ground as he spit out everything he could. It felt terrible, but it would work. Gray raised his head and stared at his tormentor. He would not give her the satisfaction of seeing him cower.
The girl stood before him in a skimpy black dress whose red highlights could have been taken from the blood covering Gray's body. Golden hair framed green irises tinged with red in a startlingly pale face. A face that wore an expression of bloody glee that no child should ever wear.
Everything about it dug under his skin. After all of the pain he had endured, after the sacrifices of Ur and Ultear, this is how he met his end? At the hands of an insane child who couldn't be older than ten? It was insulting to everything he had ever done and to everyone he had ever known. Lyon would probably disown him if he ever found out. Yet there was nothing Gray could do to win or run.
His body had broken down and Gray knew it would be only a short time before he passed out. To add insult to injury, he could sense the power radiating from every pore of her body. It was enough to put any Wizard Saint to shame, and Gray doubted he could have taken her before the dolls had worn him down.
However, he would be damned if he went down without so much as a squeak.
With a hacking cough, he shoved out everything he could from his mouth and drew a deep breath. "You know kid, I've got no idea what you're talking about," he rasped through a dusty throat. "I was stuck here for about a day before you arrived, with no idea why I was even sent here without my friends. And if I'd known that you and your crazy dolls were around, you can bet that I would've tried a damn bit harder to break out of this place." A fit of coughing hit, wracking his entire body and forcing him to drop his head.
He bit out his next words into the dust. "So while I know nothing about you, your dolls, or this hell-forsaken place, I do know this: that when you kill me, you will be making an enemy of the worst guild you possibly anger."
He manged to raise his head one final time. "So you had better hide my death, 'cause if you don't... then Fairy Tail's gonna come knocking and blow you away." He spit out a wad of bloody dust at her feet and grinned a feral smile. Then he passed out and knew only darkness.
Eva sighed to herself as she ran one hand through her golden locks. She had gotten all dressed up for this battle, readying herself for a thrilling confrontation where she learned his secrets and tore his mind to shreds. His final words were a serious downer, ruining the past three days of constant torture she had inflicted upon the mystery mage who had shown up naked in her bed.
To make matters worse, it seemed that he had some kind of connection to the pink-haired moron Negi's girls had found in the forest. The language should have given it away, she thought to herself. That and the man's nudity. If only he had squawked like his moron of a friend, she might have connected the dots sooner. It was a good thing she had held off indulging her murderous feelings and let her dolls play with him as she watched.
Now it was time to figure out a way out of this sudden conundrum. She hummed softly to herself, running through various options in her head as she paced to and fro.
She could kill the man and move along. Doing so would satisfy her lingering feelings of anger, and in her resort no one would ever need to know. If he was like that idiot Natsu, then the man was from another world entirely. She couldn't imagine a more perfect scenario in which to get away with murder.
But doing so would be wasteful as well. He represented an opportunity to learn more about a completely separate world, one that had completely different ways of using magic. She had tried to puzzle out how he channeled his power but was still drawing a blank. He appeared to use no kind of medium in his casting, nor did he ever say anything besides an initial cry of 'ice make.' If it was a chant, then it was the shortest chant Eva had ever encountered.
She unbound him from her frozen chains and sighed to herself. Damn mages are making me go soft. A few decades ago and he would have been bound within my dungeon, screaming for mercy as I plunged his mind. She could feel the changes that Mahora Academy had worked upon her bubbling to the surface like a scented bath, twisting her sadistic joy to annoyance.
A second spell made the man rise on currents of air, sending him floating towards one of the few chambers not completely broken in the past three days of battle. She quickly came upon Chachazero's resting place, where she took a moment to admire the man's creation. It was quite raw but showed great potential. The spell's construction was both simple and elegant, possibly the most exceptional example of ice magic she had ever seen from a young mortal.
The vampire then snapped her fingers, undoing the young man's pillar of ice magic. It resisted her efforts and stayed put. Eva frowned as she stared at it once again. Such an occurrence did not happen often.
She snapped her fingers once again and put more power into the dispel. The pillar of ice disappeared with a flash of light and a pop of displaced air, leaving Chachazero to stumble around in a daze as she screamed.
"Rend and tear your limbs, bleed your soul until you die." Eva dodged a swipe of the blade and backed away as the doll proceeded to run in a giant circle. "Blood for the blood god and the blood god's bile for Chachazero!"
Eva studied her creation for a moment before tuning it out and staring at the place where the man's pillar had once stood. The ice madness would wear off shortly, and it would be useless to try and communicate with her until it did. Meanwhile, there was something disturbing about the mage's composition that she couldn't quite put her finger on.
Turning, she attempted to dispel another one of the many creations which littered her resort. The man's strange Ice Magic once again resisted her initial attempt to dispel it. Eva looked at the spell, delving past the outer structure and into the inner matrix.
Her frown deepened as what she saw made no sense to her eyes. There were no bound spirits or rune structures within its depths! It was a construct he had made purely from his own will, with no other outside force involved beyond supplying the initial power to create the spell. Then she saw something which truly startled her. The spell contained ki in its composition!
Her head suddenly awhirl with possibilities, she turned her gaze back to the floating mage. He had done something impossible, something no one had ever done before. Combing magic and ki was an extremely rare gift, of which only Takamichi Takahata was a current master. But Takamichi's kanka was pure energy, whereas this boy's power possessed an aspect!
Eva felt a chill run down her back as she considered the possibilities of his strange magic. "I will have your secrets, little Fairy. One way or the other." With a blast of magic, she forcibly dispelled every one of his ice creations. Dolls fell from the sky and tumbled across the ground in a jumble of limbs as they unfroze.
As her creations picked themselves up, she gave them a quick set of commands. "Chachas, take this man and heal his wounds. Make sure that he is kept somewhere secure, but do not harm him in any way. He is to be treated as an honored guest from this moment on."
She fingered a strap on her dress with one slim hand. These new revelations would require her to immediately locate the Boy and to learn if he knew Takamichi's current location. "And find me a school uniform while you are at it. I need to fetch some more guests."
"Fear the almighty god of dolls! I shall devour your toes and drink of your eyes. All your bases shall belong to us!"
Eva blasted the doll with a brief shock of lighting. Enough was enough. "Chachazero, shut up and get started fixing things."
"... spoilsport."
Outside of Eva's woodland cabin, Natsu could feel his blood beginning to boil. "I don't see what the big deal is." He muttered as he kicked a rock with his foot. "I've blown down plenty of doors before. I even had to face an insane gorilla woman one time, and that little girl from before couldn't be any worse." Even if she did smell like Zeref, something that still puzzled Natsu. It had been like the dark mage, yet not.
Thinking about it was like a bad itch. Smells should be simple, not complicated. It was hard enough that he was unfamiliar with nearly every smell. Add a smell that he knew and then change it and things really became unfair for his nose. That's not how things worked!
He looked towards his companions. They just kept their heads glued to the same beeping devices held in their hands that they had been staring at for the past hour. Natsu could feel his right eye twitch in annoyance.
"Oi, you guys done over there yet?" Natsu's voice began rising in volume as the annoyance sunk its claws in deep. "'Cause I'm all ready to blow the door down and get things rolling."
The two mages exchanged looks at this statement, with Takamichi giving Negi a nod. The little guy put his wand down as Takamichi pulled out yet another blinking device. This one made beeps that tore at his ears while Negi walked towards Natsu's position. He snorted in annoyance as he plugged his ears with two fingers. More magic sensing bullshit that wasn't getting him any closer to finding one of his friends. That sort of thing had been going on the entire time since they had left Chao's restaurant.
A blush came to his cheeks as he remembered the restaurant. He really needed to remember Mirajane's other lessons on the subject before doing that again. Otherwise, he might have a repeat of that one incident that had nearly gotten him killed. Sure that Chao girl had been pretty, and it seemed as though she had enjoyed it as much as he had, but that was not the point.
Girls were complicated while fighting was simple. Gildarts and Mirajane had both told him to avoid thinking about the one while concentrating on the other until he got old enough to understand things for real. When that would was, Natsu didn't know, but it sure wasn't now. Thankfully, Negi's high pitched voice snapped him back to reality.
"Ah, Natsu-san, you don't really understand," Negi said hesitantly. For a moment Natsu wondered if the kid could read his thoughts and a look of panic came across his face.
Then Negi's next words reminded Natsu of his prior annoyance. "It's a complex situation right now that we need to deal with delicately. Takamichi and I are recording the remnants of the resonance which took place here. We need to record and package the data while it's still fresh. Dealing with Eva-san before we know what's going on is a very bad idea."
"Argh!" Natsu yelled. "I blow the door down, we enter, and the two of you ask her some questions while I look for one of my friends." A lick of flame popped into existence around one of his fists. "Sounds good to me."
The boy shook his head and adjusted his glasses. "I refuse to do anything like that, Natsu-san. Thanks to a spell my dad cast on her ten years ago, Eva is stuck in the body of a little kid, with limited magical abilities. It would be rude to intrude upon her while she's still weak."
"Bah! She didn't seem all that weak to me back in that Kyoto place," Natsu grumbled. "If it wasn't so crazy at the time I might have asked her to fight me; the woman felt plenty strong."
He then grimaced as Negi stuttered something about circumstances and special situations. These strange mages Natsu had found seemed to be obsessed with rules and complex situations. It was really getting under his skin. Whoever thought them up was almost as bad as the Fiore's Magic Council. Actually, they could be worse. The council had left Fairy Tail alone for the most part and only stepped in when they really cut loose. This place seemed to enjoy stopping even harmless fun.
"Anyway," Negi continued, "Takamichi thinks that she might be inside a special magical sphere right now. If that is true, she will be nearly as powerful as when we were in Kyoto. So please, try not to antagonize her."
Natsu shook his head and snorted. The boy was too dang eager to make everyone happy. "No promises." He heard Negi sigh, but any further discussion was cut off by Takamichi's voice.
"Negi, come over here. I just found a reading that I'd like for you to confirm," Takamichi called from the other side of the cottage. "It seems like a resonance really did happen here, but the etheric traces can't be sorted out. It's too disturbed to understand without greater sensitivity; I'll need your wand to properly calibrate the machine."
"Coming Takamichi." The kid bolted away from Natsu with a smile, leaving the dragon slayer on his own.
Natsu kicked a second rock and watched as it bounced into the woods. It bounce off a tree and tumbled to the ground where it lay unmoving. He kicked another rock and had the same thing happen again.
This is gonna be boring as hell, he thought. No way was he going to stand there and do nothing. "Screw it," he muttered to himself.
He then marched up to the door and pounded on it with his fist, The heavy wood reverberated under his powerful fist. "Hey Eva, I'm here to see you!" No response.
"Oi, open up!" Still no response. That had to mean he could go for it.
"Alright, I'm coming inside." Natsu blew the door off with a boom and entered. Dust and broken splinters rained down in the air around him. A metallic hand sliced towards his jugular with startling speed.
"Oh, hey Chachamaru," he said as he caught her hand. She had some pretty nice speed to her movements. "Where's Eva?"
Eva brushed some dust off of her uniform as she materialized outside of her resort. Noises coming from above caught her attention. She frowned as she touched the web of magic woven around her house and noticed that parts of it had gone completely dark. Someone whose magic she didn't recognize had broken down her front door and was engaging Chachamaru in close quarter combat.
Eva hissed in displeasure. Knowing her recent run of luck, it would be the Boya and his new moron of a friend. What was it with idiots and causing her trouble? It was like she had become a magnet for their stupidity within the last decade. Just one more curse to lay at the Thousand Master's feet.
Climbing the stairs as quickly as her little legs would allow, the vampire burst into her living room. For a moment she stood frozen in shock. Her precious sanctuary was in ruins!
A blurred object shot past her eyes and hit one of the few remaining objects, blowing it apart from the force of its impact. Negi tried to pick his way out of the broken chair, wincing as he touched an angry red blotch on his forehead. Eva felt a low growl build deep within her small body as she looked at all of the broken items surrounding him.
"Haha! Got ya there, Negi. Come on back when you're stronger!" Natsu and Chachamaru were trading vicious body blows with one another in the middle of the adjoining room. The fiery idiot looked unfazed by the devastation he had wreaked upon her home as he displayed a dazzling skill in unarmed combat.
Dodging a blurred one-two punch combination Chachamaru fired at his midriff, Natsu spat a small ball of flame into her face to throw her off-balance. Eva blinked; that wasn't something your average mage could accomplish. Meanwhile, her servant stumbled back and failed to see his leg kick out, sweeping her to the floor. As she fell, the fire mage jumped onto Chachamaru and tried to place her into a full body lock.
Instead, he got a raised knee slammed into his groin. It looked as though Chachamaru had faked her blindness in order to lure him into a trap. The dirty tactic was almost pleasing enough to make Eva forget the antique German table that been crushed in the process. To add insult to injury, Chachamaru's rejoinder sent Natsu's body smashing into a four hundred year old Hungarian cabinet, where the doll proceeded to grab one of his arms with both hands.
"Negi-sensei, I've got his arm. Come quick before he manages to –" Chachamaru's yell cut off midway through. Natsu had wrenched his arm out of her grip and shoved his other elbow into her face in the process.
"Ha! Got you too Chachamaru!" The pink-haired fire breather smirked at his android opponent. "Still got more in the tank? I'm all fired up right now."
He managed to block a series of blows towards his face. Directing them away, he waited patiently until she changed from chopping slashes to a blurred punch. He caught her fist in the palm of one hand and smiled as he cocked his other arm. Then he was blasted off of his feet as hidden rockets suddenly fired in her joints, overwhelming his defense and smashing into his jaw.
"Okay, so you got some spark," he muttered from beneath the broken rubble of Eva's other antique table. He stood up, cracking his neck and grinning like a madman. "This party's just getting started, yo. Let's go for round two!"
"That's enough for now, moron," Eva hissed as she jerked his feet out from under his body with a set of thin wires. The things came in handy when your body was weak as a newborn kitten. "You've already blown up half of my house and owe me a Hell Ticket; anymore, and you'll owe me a piece of your hide as well."
From his place on the floor, Natsu muttered something into the wooden floorboards. She couldn't hear it, so she stepped closer. He then raised his head and fired a blast of fire at her unsuspecting face.
"Ah!" She gave a short cry and stumbled backward, closing her eyes. With a thump, she fell to the ground on her backside. "Ow ow ow!"
That was it. The idiot had damaged her house and bruised her pride. Her face flushed as she stood, holding her hands firmly to her sides and away from her sore bottom. She would show this upstart mage a thing or two about making fun of her. With a quick look at Chachamaru, Eva indicated her intentions.
Wires snaked out from her fingertips and gathered around his unsuspecting body. With a growl, she prepared to unleash her wrath upon his head. Then he began to laugh.
"Wahahahaha! Look at your hair – it's all fizzy!"
Eva just stood there in shock. Slim hands rose to her perfectly straight hair. The hair that she took great care in maintaining, one of the few things about her body that was the same no matter which form she took. Her hands felt a mass of unruly curls.
A shriek of inarticulate rage tore through the house as the vampire flung herself onto Natsu's laughing face. All rationale thought fled from her mind as she was gripped by one thought only: to stop that laughing face and to replace it with tears.
Gray groaned as he slowly fought his way back to consciousness. He was in a soft but unfamiliar bed, probably in the guild's dorms. His body ached all over from last night's brawl; that damn duo of Natsu and Elfman must have really gotten him good if someone had taken him to the dorms to sleep things off.
Another groan came as he realized he wasn't wearing any underwear. He could only feel some sort of charm tied onto his wrist. Maybe Juvia had stolen it sometime in the night while Gray was sleeping and slapped some silly love bracelet as a twisted form of recompense. I need to set her straight, he thought to himself. I am not a doll to be dressed and undressed at her convenience.
Then memories of the past few days returned and adrenaline surged through his body. He rocketed upright with a sudden gasp. The sheets feel off of his waist as he grabbed his suddenly pounding head between both hands and squeezed both eyes shut.
"No, no. Stupid pervert needs to stay still. The healing process is not yet finished." It was the voice of the doll who had stabbed him. Gray's eyes snapped open and he tried to bring his hands together to freeze the source of the voice. They had made a mistake in leaving him able to use magic, and he would make them pay for it.
His plans for revenge came to an abrupt halt as he felt a sharp point of metal dig into his throat. The damn doll was standing on top of his bed and pressing the tip of her cleaver against his throat with a smile. At that moment, Gray hated it with the passion of a thousand fiery suns.
"But if he wants, Chachazero could make him feel better by stabbing his throat." The doll said with a grin. "Ya feeling lucky, punk? Are ya?" Gray slowly shook his head and dropped his hands.
It waggled the cleaver and sighed in disappointment. "Aw, why'd you have to go and be a good little doggy? I wanted to stab you and make more red liquid gush out!" The sigh deepened before suddenly turning back into a smile. "Eh, oh well. Just lie back down and stay still for awhile. Master told me to clean your room; you have a guest coming to see you shortly."
The doll drew back the knife and hopped off the bed. Placing the weapon by the door it then picked up a brush and dust pan. The maniac then started to hum a strange song about guests putting its service to the test, and Gray could feel his mind shattering.
Last he remembered he had been dead to rights. The girl's ambush had gone off without a hitch, and he had been completely unable to resist her. She had given him every indication that his time had come to an end, that he would be joining Ur and the others in the afterlife.
Yet now one of her creations, a sadistic monster that had carved into him like a butcher into meat, was cleaning out his sickroom, where he had been healed from his injuries, for guests? Things did not add up. No one was this bipolar without a reason. Gray had to figure out the reason. Otherwise his mind might actually crack from the strain.
"What's the deal, you sadistic monster," Gray probed. "Feel like healing me up before doing round two? Is that how things are gonna go down?"
The doll laughed and continued sweeping dust into her little pan. He narrowed his eyes; that was not the reaction he had expected. "Or did your master get cold feet when I mentioned Fairy Tail?"
The doll paused to cock her head. "Nope, I don't think so. Murder doesn't give her cold feet; just the winter and meetings with members of Ala Rubra. But Fairy Tail sounds really pretty – is it something I can stab?"
He blinked. "No. It's a wizard guild." She stared blankly at his face. "A guild. An association of people wherein like minded mages gather for social and economic betterment." She continued to stare blankly.
Gray threw his pillow at her face. "Goddamnit, it's a special group of people who can use magic that mages and non-mages alike contact for jobs and assignments. Get it now, you dunce?"
The doll stopped his pillow with one tiny hand and shook her head with an annoying 'tsk'. "You mean those things still exist? I thought they ended when magic users created the whole separate world. Seriously, who'd a thunk. How have you not been turned into ermines by now?"
Gray felt his head begin to swim as the pain in his body steadily began to increase. Its words made no sense. It didn't know about Fairy Tail? Magic guilds were gone? There was a separate world for magic users? People were turned into ermines?
His mind blazed at a million miles an hour. Possibilities were viewed and discarded as he began to assimilate the information. Maybe Warrod's spell had really messed up and tossed them so far into the future that Fairy Tail had been forgotten. Mavis' spell had cost the guild seven long years, and the circumstances had been very different at the time. For all he knew, everyone could be scattered across both time and space!
All he knew was that he was somewhere or sometime where they didn't know of Fairy Tail and where wizard guilds no longer existed. He needed to examine the situation logically. Panicking would only cause his exhausted body to pass out.
He tried to add in other nuggets of information he had uncovered. The dolls had spoken some sort of strange language when he had first encountered them, but that had changed after a time. It was possible to do that with some forms of magic. It would probably be a cinch for a mage like the little girl. But creating a separate world for magic users? That was impossible. No mage could do something like that, not even Zeref. Then Gray felt his eyes widen as he began to feel an eerie similarity to another situation he had previously encountered. One piece was needed to complete it.
He asked the doll with a shaking voice. "So, out of curiosity, where in Earthland are we? Is this Fiore?" His guess couldn't be right, could it?
The doll's chirping reply was the worst possible answer. "Nope. Welcome to Mahora Academy, Japan, foreigner."
Gray started panting, his breaths coming in heaving gasps as things began to add up. Not knowing Fairy Tail. The odd language the dolls had spoken. The girl's strange, insanely powerful ice magic and a completely different world. Gray clutched his chest. Pain flared throughout his body and the room began to blur. Then the room spun and Gray blacked out.
The next thing he knew someone was shaking him awake while shouting into his ear. Someone oddly hot hands and a booming, idiotic voice.
"Natsu?" Gray mumbled. His eyes started to flutter open.
"Oh thank God, I'm not alone." The dragon slayer's piercing voice filled Gray's ears. "It's only stupid Gray, but I'm not alone!" Gray opened his eyes and tried to say something, only to get his head bashed against the bed's headboard. "Gray! Stop being a lazy bum and get your dumb ass up and help me out already, or I'll punch you in the –"
A punch to Natsu's face shut the man up and sent him flying to the floor. "Goddammit Natsu, shut up and let me speak already!" He glared at the starstruck dragon slayer lying on the floor by his bed. "You don't fling people around in bed when they're recovering from being beat to death. Show a shred of decency for once!"
The dragon mage lifted his head and glared up at the bed. "Moron, punching someone when they were only trying to wake them up." Then he sniggered and pointed at Gray's midriff. "Ha! Maybe you should put some clothes on before telling someone else to be decent."
For a moment Gray froze in that familiar feeling whenever someone pointed out that he had undressed. Then he flung himself off of his bed and on top of the fallen dragon slayer, lack of clothes be dammed. He had been hunted for three days, beaten unconscious, and was now trapped in a strange land. Natsu's remarks were the final straw to his tattered patience.
"Argh!" he yelled. "This. Is. For. Every. Stupid. Thing. You. Just. Did." Natsu tried to fight back, but Gray kept breaking through the blocks and misdirecting the few punches that came his way. "And. For. Every. Damn. Doll. That. Made. Me. Bleed."
Gray smelled a hint of sulfur and saw Natsu's throat begin to bulge. Oh no, he won't be pulling that trick off on me, Gray thought to himself. Faster than Natsu could form and release his fireball, Gray brought his hands together and cast his own spell.
"Ice Make: Hammer!" Several hits and multiple cries of agony later, Natsu lay very quiet as Gray staggered to his feet and stared down triumphantly. Then Gray paused as his memories of the past few days came rushing back once again. What if Natsu had been there to rescue him?
"Well, shit," he muttered to himself. He had done a pretty thorough job on Natsu. "Now what do I do?"
"I'd recommend getting dressed as a start," spoke a sharply sweet voice spoke from his left. "Then you could follow me for a little discussion with some other guests of mine."
Gray's eyes swiveled to its source, the little girl who had thrown an iceberg at him. Gray assumed his casting stance and stood over Natsu's body protectively. Pounding Natsu with a hammer until he blacked out was fun. Letting an enemy kill him was entirely different.
The little girl gave a haughty sniff and strode into the room with a cocky swagger to her hips. Her black dress was gone, replaced by some kind of uniform with rips and patches where it had been recently burned. Gray mentally kicked himself for knocking Natsu out cold. Next time, ask before you punch. It was possible that he had fought the girl.
Following the girl was one of the puppets, one that appeared more dangerous than the others Gray had fought. More metallic and less childlike, she also moved with a deadly grace to her footsteps. Gray frowned as he watched her from the corner of his eyes. He didn't know if he could take them both on at once, but he would be dammed if he gave up before a fight even broke out.
"What's your angle, puppet girl?" He baited. Up close, she didn't look any older than ten years. Her magic was the real deal, and those eyes of hers didn't belong to any child he had ever met.
"Did Fairy Tail come to rescue me or something?" He noticed Natsu beginning to stir. The man's ridiculous durability to ice attacks was finally useful for a change. If it really was a combat situation, Gray just needed to stall for a short time. "Or did you get cold feet when it came time to kill me?"
A dark look crossed her features. A hint of menace crept into her voice as she replied. "Cold feet? You don't know how wrong you are on that count, little ice mage. And rescue? That would be a definite no. You are no longer my prey but my patient. Our little fight from before was an accident, one that I have corrected by healing your body and providing you with that charm on your wrist to translate speech."
That made sense with the warped take on reality Gray seemed to be experiencing. Her damned doll had been cleaning his room earlier, and he had not been restrained. But he didn't buy it just yet.
"Say I believe you," he said. "Why do you have Natsu's burn marks all over your uniform?" He injected steel into his voice and tested her knowledge of the moron. "He's generally hard to anger and not one to fight back. You must have really ticked him off."
Her eyes flashed such an intense shade of red that Gray almost froze her on the spot. "Slow to anger? Not one to fight back?"
She advanced on Gray's position, and for a moment he could have sworn that her hair formed a golden halo of power behind her head. Maybe Gray should have asked a different question. But he was given no time to reply as she continued to advance.
"On my way to fetch this idiot and a few others, the moron blew down the door to my home and assaulted my servant." The girl bit every word out as though hoping to draw blood. "When my servant and another associate of mine tried to restrain him, he then started a brawl which leveled half of my home and destroyed priceless furniture. Furniture that I have spent centuries collecting."
A dark smile came to her lips, causing the hair on the back of Gray's neck to stand up" Centuries? But you look like you're only –" he cut off his words as she threw back her head and laughed.
"Oh no little mage, I am far older than I seem." She began circling his position. "You see, mortal, I am a vampire and I have lived for centuries in this world. They call me Dollmaster, Queen of the Night, Apostle of Destruction, and the Dark Evangel. There is no one in this world or the other with a higher bounty on their head, and none who have sought it have lived to tell the tale."
She stopped circling once Natsu lay between them. "Yet this impudent fool not only destroyed my home and assaulted my servant, he then had the temerity to repeat the same with myself. As such, little mage, he owes me a great debt. A debt that I will collect," she purred.
A slim hand reached out and fluttered over Natsu's aorta. The groaning fire mage shifted slightly at her touch, seeming to sense a threat in his blacked out state. Her fingers slowly traced his neck, fluttering lightly whenever they touched upon a vein. "Oh yes, you little bastard. I will collect. You can count on it." A rime of frost spread from her feet and a chill crept into the air.
Gray watched the girl's every movement as she stood over Natsu, with gears continually turning in his head. Assumptions and hypothesis were examined and discarded as he interpreted every word and gesture she had made since coming into the room. While antagonistic and possibly threatening to Natsu, there was nothing immediately hostile in either her words or her actions. Nor did any of her words contradict themselves.
He winced a little. Actually, her story about Natsu blasting into her home and tearing it apart made too much sense for him to disbelieve. The man was a complete idiot created for the sole purpose of collateral destruction.
Gray added in Natsu's apparent cheerfulness and things began to click. If the man had been on his game, there was no way Gray could have knocked him out so easily. While somewhat scuffed, he seemed to be physically alright with all of his clothes intact. Neither of which would be true if he had fought his way through the puppet horde Gray had faced; and the possibility of Natsu sneaking around a stronghold full of powerful enemies was flat-out impossible.
These thoughts led Gray back to the conclusion he had drawn shortly before passing out. Something had gone wrong with Warrod's spell, and they were no longer in Earthland. They were somewhere new, and this insane vampire could be their only way home. His hands slowly lowered to his sides as the notion gained strength within his mind.
It was time to see if he could get some confirmation. "I still don't trust you," he said as she continued to stroke Natsu's neck. "But I believe your story about Natsu... and I think that I need to ask you some questions about this world as well."
Her eyes flickered to his own. Unlike his first time meeting her, they were a pure emerald green. After a moment, though, she shook her head. "Not here."
Gray crossed both arms over his chest. "Then we're stuck. I don't exactly trust people who tried to kill me a short time ago. Especially when they claim to be powerful, century old vampires." The two stared at one another as tension filled the room.
Then Natsu's shrill voice was in his ear once more. "Kya! Gray you bastard, where did you go?" The moron picked himself off of the floor, shoving aside the tiny vampire so forcefully that sent her into a nearby wall. He looked at her twitching form for a moment, then turned his head to locate Gray.
Upon finding his fellow Fairy, Natsu shoved his face into Gray's with a growl. "Hentai bastard. Take this!"
Natsu's fist buried itself in Gray's stomach, sending the air flying from his lungs. Another punch connect with Gray's face and the Ice Mage swore that he saw stars burst into being within the room. Woozy from the hit, he tried to stand but fell against his bed instead. His body may have been better but was far from recovered from three days of constant battle.
Natsu stomped over and stood over him, arms folded beneath his chest. "Got your attention?"
Gray scowled at the man and took a swipe at Natsu's face, growling when it missed. "Shitty flamer."
Natsu snorted. "Iceprick." Then a serious look came over his face. "We've got a lot to go over, Gray. So put some clothes on and hurry up." He then offered Gray an arm to help him stand. "You've probably already figured it out, but we're not in Earthland anymore."
The ice mage looked at his friend's face. It wore a look Gray associated with Natsu's failed quests to find his dragon father. He would often come back to the guild looking as he did now. Resolved to never stop trying, but possessing doubts as to if he would ever succeed. It did more to convince him that they were in over their heads than anything else.
Gray grabbed Natsu's arm and hauled himself up. "Yeah, we were just about to start talking about it when you woke up and started fighting me." He then shot a look towards where he had last seen the girl.
She had managed to regain her feet. Hair askew and eyes glaring daggers at Natsu, Gray could feel the icy power bubbling under her small form. He shook his head and backed away a little. Leave it to Natsu to piss off an ancient and insanely powerful vampire in her own home. Gray himself wanted nothing more than to leave her damn place as fast as he possibly could.
To facilitate that, he interjected before she could begin fighting his friend once more. "We'll put our stuff on hold until later as well, Evangeline. But in the meantime, I'd be grateful if you could hook me up with some clothes so we could get things started." He grabbed the sheet off his bed and wrapped it around his waist. "I'd like to have some sort of clothing before meeting with other people."
The vampire turned her head ever so slightly in the direction of her doll. "Chachamaru? Escort Gray to the wardrobe section and see that he is properly outfitted."
She then took a step forward towards Natsu, who finally seemed to sense that he could be in danger. "I'll take Natsu to join the others myself. We have matters to discuss before we arrive." A cold smile graced her features as Natsu frowned.
The tall doll whose name appeared to be Chachamaru took a step towards him. "This way, Mr. Gray." She gestured to his right. "You may follow me to your destination." Moving silently, the automaton exited through the door and turned left. Despite his better judgment, Gray tightened the sheet around his waist and followed her out of the room into a giant stone corridor. But he hung back quite a bit. If it tried anything, he would be ready.
Yet before he could do anything more, he heard a sharp series of booming blasts echo throughout the halls. Dust fell from the stone ceiling for a moment before silence reigned again. Gray felt his blood run cold once more. Maybe everything said earlier was actually a trap designed to split himself and Natsu. Maybe he had just made the biggest mistake of his life and left his friend to be killed by an insane vampire.
Swearing, Gray ran back to the room and poked his head back in, magic at the ready. "You alright Natsu? Don't worry man, I've got your –" What he saw made Gray cut off in mid-sentence.
The room was in shambles, with parts of it frozen and various things on fire. But instead of being locked in combat, the moron was running around with his head and hands encased in a single block of ice. A cloud of smoke and a string of furious curses coming from behind Gray's blazing bed told him where Evangeline was located.
A few seconds of watching Natsu and the girl trying to free themselves of the other's magic convinced him that whatever was going on was due to stupidity rather than hostility. "Morons, the both of them," he muttered to himself as he watched Natsu bash his frozen head against a stone wall. The man's face was turning purple, although it was tough to tell whether it was from the cold ice or lack of oxygen. "Why am I always surrounded by them?"
He left the two to their madness and made his way back to where the doll stood. The thing was waiting for him without a shred of emotion on its face. Other than the crazed doll with the butcher's knife, none of them had shown any emotion whatsoever. Gray gave it brief look and then nodded for the automaton to continue moving. It was time he understood what was really going on.
Next Time in Fairies of Negima: Gray gets some new clothes; Negi takes a small step closer to his father; and Natsu throws down the gauntlet.
A/N: This was a tough chapter to write. I wound up splitting the dang thing in two in order to try and maintain some semblance of flow, sending it through well over a dozen rewrites, and extracting about 6,000 words of material while I was at it. With that being said, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It also means that the next chapter will be out much sooner than I originally anticipated.
Charle = Carla. I prefer that version of the name, so it's what I'm going with.
Edited per usual by my excellent Beta Raiyoukai, a man who believes that Igneel is hiding within Natsu's soul.
Scary thing is that he's got a point.
Until next time,
Elsil