Gray and Juvia walked through the maze, not putting too much thought into strategy, but just taking the paths that felt right.
Juvia's heart was pounding. She as alone with Gray, something that hadn't happened since she first met and fought with him. Something she'd been hoping to experience again ever since. True, they and possibly all of Magnolia were in danger, but she still had her Gray all to herself without the many love rivals she hated so prowling about, trying to steal Gray's love.
Gray was trying to figure out who this guy could be why he'd set up such an elaborate challenge and threaten an entire city just to see for himself that Fairy Tail could live up to its reputation. It seemed like a front to him, a mask to hide some dark ulterior motive. The idea that he may have lured Fairy Tail's most powerful members here so he could take them out and weaken Fiore's mightiest guild, making way for dark guild like his own (as Gray assumed he was the master of one) crossed his mind. But then, why not request people like Mira or Gildarts or Mystogan or Makarov himself? That the challenger thought those he requested were the guild's most powerful started to seem more and more unlikely as Gray also considered who had been invited.Mostofusarereallystrong, he told himself. Me, Juvia, Erza, Natsu, Laxus, Gajeel, Freed: us, I can see. But truth be told, Macao, Cana, Bisca, and Alzack are pretty average. Lucy's okay, but not even close to our top thirteen. And Levy… what does she even do?
Gray shook his head. Of course, all of the mages of Fairy Tail were very powerful and very strong-minded. No one in the guild could ever be called weak. But if that were true, why would this person be calling them out on their weaknesses like this?
Juvia, after getting over a little bit of the thrill of being alone with Gray in a place as romantic as a hedge maze (even a deadly one, which they proved by testing the hedges with some grass), was thinking along the same lines. Juvia and Gray, deep down, aren't so different.
"Juvia's very happy to be working with Gray-sama," Juvia said to break the ice after they'd been walking for a while in silence.
"Yeah, I'm glad you're here, too," Gray responded, smiling.
"Um, so, Juvia was wondering what the whole point of this challenge is. Why go through all this trouble just to prove a point?"
"Exactly!" Gray exclaimed. "And the people he requested: so random, right?"
Juvia nodded. "Juvia was thinking the same. How does Gray-sama think the challenger picked the thirteen and paired them up?"
"I have no idea, but since thirteen is an odd number, how did they group us. Who's in pairs or groups, and who's alone?" He'd never really had a quality conversation with Juvia one-on-one. Now that he got the chance to, he found it was going pretty well. They clicked. Yes, he knew she liked him—a lot—and that the guild would be all over the fact that he thought they clicked, but he just wasn't the relationship type. At least, not yet. For the time being, he felt like staying single. Plus, he felt that Juvia was more of a friend to him right now. He'd never really talked to her much, after all.
Juvia had an idea about how the challenger grouped people the way they did. She couldn't see the other groups, so there was no way she could prove her theory, but based on who was requested, she thought maybe this person had paired potential couples together.
This theory, along with the fact that she'd been placed with Gray, enchanted her. It felt like some purely mesmerizing substance—happiness and love in liquid form—had been injected into her bloodstream and coursed through her body. Every square millimeter of her skin, every drop of water that formed her heart, could feel the sheer joy that someone, be he evil or be he good, thought she and Gray made a good couple.
"Juvia?" Gray said, checking on her after she'd been lost in her own mind for a few minutes. There was an expression of wonderment, an overjoyed, intoxicated expression, on her face. "What are you so happy about?"
"N-nothing," Juvia muttered, slowly surfacing form the passionate sea of her mind. "Juvia was just thinking about how truly amazing the guild is." Gray knew she liked him, and he was wondering about how she thought the pairs/groups/loners were placed, but there's no way she could tell him what she'd just been thinking. She didn't want to come off as too crazy.
"Yeah, we're pretty cool, I guess," Gray laughed. "I remember when I first came to Magnolia and joined. It's overwhelming to everyone when they first start out."
"How did Gray-sama find Fairy Tail?"
Gray's face took on a strange expression: suddenly more serious than he had been but with a certain happiness underneath. "Ur," he told her, remembering his teacher, who'd sacrificed herself to save him, Lyon, and the world from Deliora. "She wasn't a member, but her parents were. She'd been raised in the guild, like Romeo or Laxus. But, when she got a little older, she decided that she'd rather not work in a guild. She liked the familial love that everyone brought with them, especially in Fairy Tail, but the idea of living in city like Magnolia just wasn't for her. She's just one of those people who enjoy company, but like to be far from large, urban areas. When she was fifteen, she moved away, out to a little house in the frozen outskirts of a little town. That's where she trained Lyon and me."
"Wow. Ur-san's lead such an incredible life," Juvia marveled. She loved how Gray told stories; his face, his voice, his eyes, his posture, everything about him felt like it increased in hotness when he was storytelling.
"Yeah, she has. Well, she never spoke much about her life before meeting Lyon and taking him on as her pupil. He and I were always curious, but all she'd disclose was that she had a daughter, who'd died. I didn't understand it at first, but now I suppose that since Fairy Tail is so widely known, she didn't want people to see her as another Fairy Tail wizard—a remarkable thing to be known as, just not what she wanted—but as her, and her accomplishments alone, not the accomplishment of her old guildmates."
"Juvia understands. Ur-san is an amazing person with or without Fairy Tail."
Gray smiled. "Well, one day I got her talking about her parents, and she mentioned the guild. After she defeated Deliora, Lyon and I parted. He set out alone, not wanting to have anything to do with me, and set to work on freeing Deliora, which we took care of on Galuna island. Eventually, he joined a guild, Lamia scale. The first thing I did after Ur's sacrifice was come to Magnolia. I joined the guild, but Ur's parents weren't there. I didn't ask about them, because I had been pretending I didn't know Ur. At that point, I still believed that I'd caused her to be put in that position, to have to use Iced Shell, so I didn't want anyone who'd known her as a kid or known her parents knowing the truth about me."
Gray paused for a moment. "You're the first person I've told the whole story to. Most of the others, they know I was taught by an ice mage named Ur, but most of her parents' generation is retired or dead, and the others who knew her either left or don't remember her. Makarov knows, but he figured it out himself."
"Juvia thinks Gray-sama was very brave to come to a guild of people who knew Ur-san after thinking he'd ended her life as it had been before. Are her parents still alive?"
"No. They died a while before I came to the guild. I don't know what I would've done if I saw them. Ur was my second mother. I didn't know how I would've taken to grandparents. What are your parents like?"
Juvia was silent. "Juvia doesn't like talking about her parents."
Gray was not normally one to press subjects that others were uncomfortable with, but this was something he felt Juvia needed to get off her chest. "Come on. I told you something from my past that I never told anyone else. What happened with your parents?" Gray let his voice make Juvia feel like it was just a friendly conversation, but inside, he was genuinely worried for her. No one in Fairy Tail, as far as he knew, had grown up with normal childhoods or families.
"Well," Juvia began. She'd always wanted to let people in on her feelings, but no one ever seemed to understand. Now her Gray was asking, showing actual interest in her, and she was hesitating? What was wrong with her?
"Juvia's parents were bad people. Whenever Juvia tries to picture herself telling someone about it, it comes out sounding like Juvia's parents weren't so bad, but they were. The story makes Juvia sound awful, so Juvia's never told anyone." Juvia took a deep breath, nervous about continuing.
"Go on, tell me. I'll try to see it your way, whatever it is," Gray assured her.
His confidence in her sent another rush through her body. "Juvia's parents hated Juvia more than anyone else Juvia can remember. Since she was born, it was raining, and they had to be there in the rain with her the entire time, parenting. There was one occasion, Juvia can remember, though she was only five, when they tried to 'help' her. They left her in her room, the doors and windows locked and cameras watching always. They left Juvia in that wretched room, that pitiful room for days without any water. To everyone else, their logic seems perfectly fine, 'Dry her out and maybe the rain will finally stop.' They said they did it so that Juvia might have a better life, a life in which people would actually want to be around her and not need an umbrella. But Juvia knows what they were really thinking, 'Let's dehydrate the girl whose body is water, and when the rain stops we'll know she's dead. Then we can have another child, a child of the sun.'"
Gray was horrified by Juvia's story. He couldn't see how anyone would sympathize with the parents unless they were there to defend themselves. But to Juvia, everyone who hated the rain she brought with her had the potential to be exactly like her parents.
"Juvia nearly died in that wretched, pitiful room. That's what her parents called it. They said it was a wretched, pitiful room for a wretched, pitiful rain girl. On the fourth day that Juvia was in that room, she stopped feeling hurt. Juvia stopped her self-pity, her sadness, her betrayal. All Juvia felt on that fourth day was pure anger and hatred. If her parents hated her, then Juvia would hate her parents. The rain outside, the rain that tapped at her locked window through all of those four days, beat down harder and harder until it found a crack in the roof and pushed it into a gaping hole. The rain poured so powerfully that it soon broke through the entire roof. It destroyed the Loxar house. Juvia danced in the rubble of that room, spinning with her arms out wide and her mouth held open and smiling to the sky. The rain softened once Juvia was free and generously fed her weak, drying body."
Juvia turned away from Gray then, embarrassed to tell what came next, but feeling like she had to now that she'd come co far. It's Gray-sama. Juvia can't afford to push him away. "Juvia's dad grabbed her by the arm and stopped the joyous spinning. He stared into her eyes with such hatred and fury, Juvia thought his eyes alone could kill her. He yelled at her to look at what she'd done, shaking her arm and squeezing it so tight. Juvia, in bringing the rain down on the house, had killed her own mother." Juvia paused to collect herself. "Juvia, using her water body, pulled her arm out of her father's grasp and yelled back that it was their fault for killing her in that wretched, pitiful room. Then, he sent her to boarding school. A very nice boarding school, where she'd live well enough, and he'd only have to deal with her in the summer, which he sent her to camp for. Juvia hated the school and the students, but she hated her father more. One day, when Juvia was thirteen, she ran away. He father dropped her off at the school, but instead of going to the dorms, Juvia dropped her bags and ran through the rain, seeking anyone who would accept her for what she was. That's when Juvia found Phantom Lord." Juvia took another deep breath. "nine months after joining, nine months spent with people who saw her power and its strength and not just the rain, which Juvia had grown to love, for it gave her strength, Juvia saw a strange request on the board. A man needed help finding his daughter, who'd run away. It was Juvia's father, of course. No one at the school had even noticed that Juvia hadn't returned for the fall, just that the skies were clear. Juvia supposed they all thought she just didn't show up, though Juvia was enrolled, and forgot about the gloomy rain girl. It wasn't until summer, when she should've returned home, that the question of where she was became an issue. Juvia took the request. Juvia only wanted to talk to her father, because though she hated him, he still should know what she was doing. When Juvia got to his house, the first thing he did was call her a wretched, pitiful rain girl, who even after a school year of being with a guild of wizards, she hadn't managed to end the gloomy rain. Juvia couldn't control herself. Juvia ended up killing her father."
Juvia hung her head, waiting for Gray to reject her and run away in fear of the girl who was responsible for both of her parents' deaths-one of them intentional.
But Gray didn't run. He only asked, "Why did you kill your dad? Were you just really angry or was there more?"
"Juvia's father, in the time that she was gone, had redecorated her room, the room she stayed in during those weeks between school and camp. He remade it so that it looked exactly like Juvia's old room from when she was five. It was a wretched, pitiful room for a wretched, pitiful, runaway rain girl. Juvia killed him because the first thing he did was show her the room and start talking about her mother's death. He was a terrible man, and Juvia just couldn't stop herself."
Again, she waited for Gray to run, but again, he didn't. In fact, he was about to comfort her and tell her how sure he was that her dad probably had deserved it and was hated by many others who knew him, not just her. She was the brave one who stepped up and took him out. But before he could say anything, they stepped over a line of runes.
Thin edges sprang up from the ground and connected above Juvia's head to form a green, leafy cage around her, and both of them cringed at the sound of a deafening roar.
"Juvia, you okay?" Gray asked before whatever had roared found them.
"Juvia's fine, but Gray-sama should run before danger comes."
"Just don't touch the hedges; they're probably set up just like the ones that make the walls," Gray said, ignoring the second part of her comment.
A thumping sound signaled the approach of their enemy, and soon, a huge mountain vulcan appeared. Vulcans were known to be big and strong, but this vulcan looked like it could very well be twice the size of any regular vulcan.
"Gray-sama, you run, I'll get out of the hedges, defeat this guy, and meet up with you," Juvia suggested.
The vulcan then spotted her and started running towards them, chanting, "Woman, woman, woman!"
"No way," Gray said, getting ready to fight the vulcan. "I won't leave you to fend for yourself against this guy, and don't you dare try to get out of there. I have a feeling it will go away once we defeat the vulcan, but right now, I think even your water touching it would have a harmful effect."
The fight between Gray and the abnormally large vulcan took a very long time. For a creature that had been raised on a mountain of snow and ice, the ice mage's attacks were just that much less effective. No wonder it's people like Macao who take the requests to take care of these things and people like Natsu who go to help them out. It's being a fire wizard that really comes in handy.
The sky grew dark, and Juvia, trapped in her hedges, couldn't bear another minute of just watching. When the vulcan's fist came down on Gray faster than he could Ice Make to stop it, Juvia lost it. Gray stood up form the ground, shaking but still fighting, and she couldn't stand to simply look on and root for him any longer.
Juvia sent some of her water out through an opening between to "bars" of hedge, and Water Locked Gray. She then slipped through the same opening, making her water body flat, and water sliced the vulcan, simple as that.
But before she had time to even think, Nobody hurts Juvia's Gray-sama and goes unharmed, and before Gray could even be angry with the risk she took but also grateful, Juvia collapsed.
The Water Lock released Gray, and he ran to her side. "Juvia! Juvia!"
"Juvia's sorry she didn't listen to Gray-sama. Juvia didn't have to touch the hedges…. The runes were all around."
"Juvia, come on, you'll be alright," Gray said, reassuring her just as much as he was reassuring himself. He looked back at the hedge cage, which had disturbed runes showing up all over it in purple. Pain, they read. Something about them was familiar, but he ignored it, focusing on the issue at hand.
He looked back at Juvia. She was silent and still, but her face showed it all. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her brows knitted, lips pursed together, trembling. Gray didn't know how to stop it, but he had an idea. He froze the runes, and Juvia immediately relaxed.
"Juvia can protect Gray-sama better than the others," Juvia whispered.
"That may be true, but you really don't have to," Gray insisted.
"Juvia's just too passionate," she said. "She gets worked up about certain things and reacts inappropriately. Maybe that's Juvia's weakness. Maybe Juvia's too passionate."
Gray helped Juvia up and held her shoulders. "Maybe that's what the challenger thinks, that it's a weakness. You are very passionate, but I like passionate people." With that, he leaned down and kissed her.
The rush of joy that had mesmerized Juvia before returned, but it'd grown far stronger. Utter happiness resonated through her with such force, such passion, that she felt she might never wake up from this dream come true.
Remembering the maze, they parted, and continued walking, hand in hand. "Another thing I like about you, Juvia, is how understanding you are," Gray told her. "Earlier, when I told you about how I came to Fairy Tail, you referred to Ur as you would any other living person, but everyone else talks about her like she's dead."
"Juvia was still with Phantom when Gray fought Lyon on Galuna island, but she heard about it. Ur-san is still alive. Ur-san is the ocean." This meant a lot to Gray, coming from Juvia. Juvia of the Deep knew better than anyone just how alive the ocean really is.
Gray smiled, so happy to have someone who finally go it so completely, so happy he'd been paired with Juvia.
They found the maze's center shortly, a circular opening with a large clock at nine twenty-two on the ground. Their maze opened next to Erza, but they saw Freed with Laxus and Cana with Macao on the other side. Everyone had the time of their arrival written above their heads. After a second of seeing the pairs across from them and hoping it confirmed her old theory, Juvia noticed the way Erza, Macao, and Cana were staring at Freed. Gray noticed it too and realized what was familiar about the runes before. Freed, you bastard, he thought.