Forbidden-Hanyou has given me motivation to post another chapter quickly. Here it is!
Also, thanks for reviewing — I forgot to put this in the previous chapter and I'm too lazy to do it now, so yeah.
This chapter will (hopefully) answer some questions.
Chapter Two.
"So. Let me get this straight." Lucy pointed at future Lucy, then at random places in the café as if trying to connect the dots somehow.
"You're me."
Future Lucy grinned. "Mmm-hmm."
"Five years older than the current me."
"Yep."
"This . . . can't be happening. I mean, there's only supposed to be one of me! Lucy!"
"I don't know about that, Lu-chan. I mean, she looks pretty real to me." Levy, not bothering to hide her fascination, was staring wide-eyed at future Lucy. "How did you come back to our time? Some sort of time travel magic? Self-preservation method? Huh?"
Levy seemed to believe the whole thing, so Lucy chose this moment to appraise her future self again.
"Well . . . I'll look hot," Lucy said appreciatively.
Future Lucy laughed. "You two won't change much in the next five years. Still as bubbly as ever." Then her eyes clouded and a frown replaced her smile. "Which reminds me of the reason I'm here."
Lucy and Levy, all ears now, perked up and listened.
"Yes, tell us about what's going on with the killings lately," Levy said, her eyebrows furrowed in that typical Levy fashion that showed she was thinking hard.
Future Lucy sighed and looked away. "Where to begin . . .?"
The two younger girls wriggled impatiently on their seats.
"Are any of you familiar with the Staff of Testament?"
Lucy shook her head, but Levy, who made it a point to spend hours poring over books in the library, spoke up.
"Of course. The Staff is a very powerful magical object. It's renowned for its ability to store large quantities of magical power inside, but it went missing several years back."
Future Lucy nodded. "Correct, Levy."
"But what does the Staff have to do with the mages being killed?" Lucy piped up.
Future Lucy folded her arms and her eyes took on a glazed look. "As Levy said, the Staff is famous for its ability to store magical power. However, it also has the ability to use the stored magical power, with the right spells to activate it. The 'Testament' part of its name comes from the fact that the magical power is used depending on the user's will — both good and bad."
Levy gasped as she got the gist of what future Lucy was saying.
"You don't mean —!"
"I do, Levy."
Lucy looked from Levy to her future self back and forth. "Um, what do you mean?"
"Used in the wrong hands, the Staff will bend to its user's evil intentions. Think of this: the user stored a large amount of magical power in the Staff. Now what happens when the user unleashes all of the stored magical power . . .?"
Something clicked in Lucy's brain.
"So the mages that are being killed . . . the culprit is killing them to obtain their magical power and store it in the Staff?"
"Exactly." Future Lucy leaned forward and gazed at the two girls. "You understand, don't you, what will happen if our enemy manages to get the Staff? What havoc he can wreak, depending on his will?"
"But — but why? What do they intend to use the Staff for?"
Future Lucy looked troubled. "It is better if I show you. Do I have your permission?"
Lucy and Levy stared at each other, not understanding what the older girl meant.
Without waiting for an answer, future Lucy grabbed both girls' hands in her own. "Close your eyes," she told them.
The second Lucy did, colors started flickering through her mind — flashes of pictures, memories, images that made no sense whatsoever. It was so unexpected, Lucy flinched and nearly pulled her hand away, but future Lucy kept her hand there in an iron grasp.
She tried to talk, to say something, but somehow her mouth couldn't form the words. It was as if she was paralyzed, and she knew Levy beside her was feeling the same thing, so she resigned herself to the flickering images in her mind.
At last, like a new camera being tried out, the pictures started to focus until Lucy recognized one particular picture.
It was Fairy Tail.
Fairy Tail, in shambles, wrecked, burned and nearly obliterated.
If Lucy could move, she would have cried out at seeing her beloved guild in such a state.
Her future self's voice sounded in her mind. "Relax. Pull yourself into this picture, and you'll see soon."
Lucy did, and she saw a vision.
An armada of gaunt, skeletal wolves with glinting red eyes is loping to her guild. Behind the wolves, black mages are riding on shadows and flinging dark projectiles to her friends. Hellhounds follow close behind, whining eagerly with the promise of devouring more magical power.
Lucy is fighting, Levy is fighting, Natsu, Gray, Erza are fighting — most of the mages are injured and sporting bandages, but still, everyone screams a ragged cheer of defiance, and Lucy's heart swells with pride as she realizes that even if they're going down, they're going down fighting.
Loke is beside her, taking down wolves with his Regulus magic. They're working in perfect harmony, master and spirit.
Her beloved spirits, her trusty whip, Natsu's fireballs, Gray's ice lances, Erza's sword, an array of different types of magic from different members are taking down enemy after enemy, but there's so many — too many —
— And deep down, Lucy knows she's fighting a losing battle, she knows her friends know it too, but still they press on, intent on making their last stand.
Suddenly a pained yell pierces the din of battle and a hellhound, black as night, bowls over Lucy through her lapse in concentration. The slavering jaws are an inch from her throat, she tries to keep its fangs away from her, but its saliva drips down on her arms, her mind is fogging over from the hellhound's dark touch and it burns —
— And then Loke is there, blasting the hellhound away with a halo of pure light. Instantly, her mind clears and she scrabbles up, nodding in thanks to Loke before swiveling around to locate the scream, because it sounds like . . . it sounds like . . .
Bisca.
Her neck is in a wolf's jaws, blood trickling down from numerous cuts on her arms and legs. She is still screaming, a horrible choking sound, flailing and weakly trying to prise the wolf's jaws off her. Lucy's eyes meet the wolf's red ones, and she can swear it's smiling a twisted smile as it crunches harder on Bisca.
"Open! Door of the archer, Sagittarius!" Sagittarius appears in a poof, and Lucy shrieks hysterically, "Bisca! Save Bisca!"
Even as three arrows speed toward the wolf, Lucy knows it's too late, but she just can't stand there doing nothing, and as the wolf howls and drops down dead, she rushes over to Bisca. Her eyes fill with tears as she sees how badly wounded Bisca is.
Sagittarius keeps the enemy at bay with his inexhaustible supply of arrows, giving Lucy time to bend over Bisca and cradle the other girl's head.
"Lucy." Bisca's voice comes out as a nasty gurgle.
"I'm here." Tears roll down Lucy's face, splashing on Bisca.
"Show them . . . that Fairy Tail won't ever back down."
"We will. We'll show them." Lucy's crying in earnest now, as reality sinks in — the first death. She's seen the first death in this battle, and she doesn't want to see any more.
"And tell Alzack . . ."
"I promise. I'll take care of him."
And with a sigh, Bisca's gone.
The scene stops and shifts. Darkness, then once more the images start.
"They will come. They will come in three months in your time, and Fairy Tail will be ravaged. You will see."
Lucy sees Fairy Tail again, only this time her guild is demolished. Empty. There is nothing left. Her friends are gone. Fairy Tail crumbles down.
Her heart breaks as she scans the area for any signs of life, of her friends.
Her eyes stop on a figure in front of her guild. He — for she knows it is a man — is covered in a black cloak, and there is a pulsing mass of shadows surrounding him.
He holds something up, and Lucy knows it is the Staff, and it is glowing brighter and brighter by the second, as if absorbing a great quantity of magical power. And with a jolt, Lucy realizes that it is absorbing the magical power left from Fairy Tail's dead mages.
Natsu.
Gray.
Erza.
Happy.
Levy.
Everyone is dead.
Everyone is killed, and their magical power will be stored in the Staff, to use it for the man's evil intentions, and Lucy feels a rush of sudden anger and hatred.
The scene shifts again.
"He will need a long time to gather the necessary magic power and create the incantation for unleashing the Staff's stored magic — but he will get it done. He will . . ."
The same man as before holds the Staff up in front of a large dark green sphere that pulses with raw energy — Lucy thinks it might be a portal — and mutters some words. The Staff is glowing all the while, and Lucy has a knot in her stomach that's telling her something very bad will happen.
And it does.
The light from the glowing Staff connects to the sphere and it enlarges, humming and throbbing. And then a deep rumbling voice speaks.
"I have returned."
Blackness.
". . . And finally, five years later, he will succeed."
Lucy blinked her eyes open, and just like that, the images disappeared. Beside her, Levy woke up from the vision.
Future Lucy sat in front of them, fingers intertwined.
"You all saw that, didn't you?"
It was a rhetorical question, but Lucy decided to answer anyway.
"He's planning to . . . to reawaken something. Something powerful."
"Yes. Our enemy here has a very twisted religion. He worships the Dark Lord and plans to return him to our world. Once he has returned, the Dark Lord will feast on more magical power from other mages and recover his full power. He will then summon an army of the living dead to walk this earth and bring us our doom."
A stunned silence followed.
A stunned silence, followed by an exclamation of: "Oi Gray! Find your own hiding place!"
"Shut up, you hothead. They're going to find us."
"Gray! Natsu! Stop eavesdropping!" Lucy shrieked to a potted plant, where a flash of pink hair was hiding.
"But Luce, we're a team! I don't know about the ice freak —," Natsu pointed accusingly at Gray, "but I have a right to be here!"
"We all have, in fact." Makarov and Erza said from behind Levy and Lucy.
Gray folded his arms. "In your face, ash-hole."
Before a full-scale fight could start out, Erza grabbed the two boys and sat them forcefully on two café chairs.
"Sit."
Lucy savagely enjoyed them melting under Erza's glare while she bound and gagged the two boys with a spare piece of rope. "Yes, ma'am."
Makarov trotted up to future Lucy and regarded her silently. "Explain how you managed to come back to our time?"
Future Lucy grinned. "Hello, Master. And no, I didn't exactly come to your time, as you put it. I'm only a memory. I'm not a real person, and I will fade away as soon as my task here is complete."
She took a deep breath, as if reliving painful moments from the past. "You knew, when our enemies came, that the battle would be our last stand, Master. We had been fighting for hours. My magic was completely exhausted. Macao, Freed, Miki, Bisca, Droy, Gray, Cana. They all fell. The rest of us barricaded ourselves in what remained of our guild, but we knew it wouldn't hold for long.
And then the necromancers found a way in. A wolf got me — cracked several ribs and bit me on the neck before Erza killed it. Wendy couldn't heal me — the wounds were tainted with darkness — and you knew none of us had long to live, so you sealed the last vestiges of my dying soul and memory into the guild. You sent me back into the past and gave me my task — to tell the others that they must stop this evil in their time before it's too late."
"And how do you know all this? About the Staff, the Dark Lord, and everything else?" Erza demanded.
Future Lucy smiled bitterly at Erza. "As I have said, Erza, I am from the future. I lived through it. The fear, the torture, I watched the death of my comrades — everything. That is how I know what will happen. And it will —," here she directed her words to all the Fairy Tail mages, "unless all of you find a way to stop it."
"Lucy." Future Lucy gazed at present Lucy. "Do you know what you must do?"
All eyes turned to Lucy. Her throat felt dry and constricted, and she licked her lips. "I do. I — we — will find the Staff and make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands."
"And then bring it to me so I can make sure the Staff is sealed securely, once and for all. Do you understand what will happen if you all fail?"
Lucy, Levy, Natsu, Gray, Erza, and Makarov replied in unison. "We do."
And with those two simple words, Lucy knew that no matter what, her friends will see each other through.
notes: edit, edit, edit.
The plot thickens! Woot!
-TheAliensDidIt