Natsu lunged forward, and Lucy only barely caught him by the arm. This was the only time her faith in him was shaky. He was breathing hard, his fingers spasming in what Lucy knew was rage. "Natsu," she called, but his name did nothing to bring him back. He was too far gone, seeing red.
"Ah, so this is the beast Don is known for taming," Alyssa said, her voice amazed. Her eyes shone as Natsu shook Lucy's feeble grip off his bicep. He didn't go forward again, though, his eyes were fixed on the Captain. Lucy sized him up, too, and decided she didn't like their situation. He had gotten even bigger, which Lucy hadn't thought possible, and meaner looking. Her eyes drifted to his elbow, where she and Natsu had snapped it a year ago. It didn't seem to be too much of a problem for him which was disappointing, but there was what she assumed to be a permanent yellowish bruise.
His mocking smile grew as he took them in. "Hey, blondie," he leered, and Lucy shuddered. Natsu bristled in front of her, straightening and moving to block Lucy from his sight.
"You're here for me, pal, lay off my girl." Lucy blushed, looking up at Natsu to see if he was bluffing. His face was deadly serious, and he wasn't looking at her. But he didn't seem to be kidding. Lucy's heart pounded.
Alyssa crooned at the display. "How tender, it's beauty and the beast." Her face soured, lips curling like she'd eaten bad fruit. "Let's go, Salamander. I'll leave your bruised corpse for the police."
Natsu walked forward, the threat rolling right off his shoulders like water. But he snatched Lucy's hand and kept her close; he must have known she was shaking like a leaf.
As they walked by Alyssa, Lucy patted her phone and smiled prettily. "Also, Alyssa, please keep heaping on the dramatic threats, because I'm still recording." Natsu let out a breathy laugh above her when Alyssa's cool stare broke, and she looked just the tiniest bit afraid. Lucy patted herself on the back for that.
Because until they got out of this pub, it would be the little things for her.
/
As they came back out to the floor, the pub had already been cleared out. The lights flickered blue and red as the sirens outside made their rounds. A mug of beer was shattered by the Captain's heavy footsteps, the glass crunching reminding Lucy like the sound of broken bones.
She shuddered.
Natsu wandered over to the bar and climbed onto the bar top. He searched around a cabinet before pulling out a tall glass bottle full of amber liquid. A flame was the only thing printed on the whole bottle. Natsu flicked open the cap and turned the bottle upside down, taking large gulps of whatever was inside. After the tenth swallow he put the bottle back and wiped his mouth off, eyes intensely focused on the Captain, who looked just as unfazed as he did when he'd arrived.
Natsu stumbled past her, but Lucy grabbed him one more time. He looked at her, panicked, but Lucy shook her head. "Don't worry, I won't try to talk you back down. But here." She slipped her hand into his pocket, dropping the lighter and pulling her hand back. She stepped back to let him go, but he grabbed her hand.
"Lucy," he grumbled. "Hide. I don't want you to…" He trailed off, but she knew what he meant. "I don't want you to see me like this."
'Silly boy,' Lucy thought. 'You can't scare me off at this point.' But she nodded. He reached out his hand to her face, but changed his mind last minute and ran up into the ring. Lucy sighed and clambered up and over the bar to hide behind it. She moved the glasses on the shelves as quietly as she could to the side to look through the hole in the bar at the ring. Natsu had kicked it through during one of his first few fights, according to Don, and he had shown it to her one time when she'd asked him why he was hiding.
She heard Alyssa's voice, high and reedy over the sound of the two growling men. "Oh, no preening yourselves and bashing the other's ego? Unexpected, but all right." Lucy caught both fighters tense at her jab. As she prattled on, Lucy realized that Natsu might come off his high if she kept going. He was now drunk and waiting, and with a start Lucy realized that must be what Alyssa wanted.
'I don't think so.' Lucy moved into a crouch and scanned the floor for the bell. As soon as that sound went off, Natsu would pounce in the state he was in. She huffed in frustration; that was her one shortcoming in her time here: she had never actually pinpointed where the announcer stayed during the fights. Yes, she'd seen him, but she didn't think he was real in times like this.
Giving up, Lucy whipped out her phone. She turned the volume down all the way and started listening to different bell tones. If it was going to work, it was going to be right. Alyssa still droned on in the background, and Lucy idly wondered how she could keep talking for so long. Did she breathe? What was she even talking about?
Finally, she found the perfect one. She turned her phone up to full volume and returned to her position by the hole in the bar. Alyssa was still talking, standing in the middle of the ring, and Lucy covered her mouth to keep from laughing. This was going to be hilarious. She held her phone up above her, speaker up, and pressed play.
The clang sounded from her phone, and Natsu exploded. He sprung forward so fast he was a blur. Alyssa Cobeson was curled into a ball, screaming, while Natsu and the Captain went at each other. As she watched, she understood why Natsu had wanted her to hide. He had far surpassed the Salamander of a year ago; she could hardly see him as he fought. It seemed the Captain could hardly keep up. He was keeping his one arm close to his chest, and Lucy figured that it must still be vulnerable. But this handicapped him, though it didn't seem to matter all that much. For every swipe of his arm, Natsu got in a good three hits. He seemed to be going after his elbow, which was why the Captain was hunching in on himself more and more as the fight went on. It was getting harder and harder to protect it.
Lucy was so captivated by the fight that she didn't notice a very important fact until it was too late. A hand descended from the bar and grabbed a fistful of her hair, yanking her up. Lucy screamed at the pain and opened her eyes to see Alyssa Cobeson's fist flying straight at her face. More pain blossomed across her cheek and she almost screamed again, calling out his name. But she caught herself, just in time.
Lucy let herself become dead weight, dropping to the floor and out of Alyssa's grip. She rolled to the other end of the bar and slid over the top, reveling in Alyssa's surprised anger. She let her eyes go to the ring quickly, and shook her head at Natsu, who was staring at Alyssa murderously. He had to focus on the big problem here; a glance at her watch showed that Leo was still seven minutes away, by Capricorn's estimate.
Lucy wiped the bloody spit off her lip and stretched her arms over her head, leaning into the stretch and enjoying how it made Alyssa twitch. She had known that it might come to this. That Natsu might have to choose between saving his own skin or hers, in a high stakes moment just like this. So she made the decision for him, as soon as he was arrested. She would not be a weak link in his legacy anymore. So she had trained with Don, and a few of his fighters that had lost to Natsu before. She had learned how he worked, how he fought, and trained to complement where he lacked. Luckily, he didn't lack in very much. But in those rare times when there was more than one opponent, he tended to tackle the biggest one first, letting the other one fade into the background. So Lucy trained to handle the smaller ones, whatever that may mean.
Which got her here. "You know, Alyssa, I never got a chance to tell you something, in the hallway." Lucy rolled her shoulders and started walking forward, squeezing her knuckles together to pop them. Alyssa scrambled backward, but the opportunity for information seemed to be the only thing that was keeping her close. Lucy smiled and reared back her fist, and that was when Alyssa tried to bolt. But Lucy cracked her fist forward, and cringed at the feeling of her nose shifting under her fingers. Alyssa fell like a sack of bricks, wailing and holding her nose. Lucy kicked her sharply in the ribs, then just hard enough to knock her out in the head, like Don had taught her.
She wiped her hands off and looked down at the defeated Cobeson. "I don't like you," she said. She looked up to see how Natsu was handling himself, and saw a familiar image: Natsu dangling limply from the Captain's fist by his neck.