Chapter 5
Team Natsu got off the train at Oshibana Station.
"I'm never riding on one of those again," said Natsu, still recovering from his motion sickness.
"You say that every time," said Happy.
"Lu-chan!"
A short blue haired woman was running up to them with a grumpy looking raven and a black cat following her.
"Hey Levy," said Lucy.
"You said that Gajeel picked up Gray's scent?" asked Erza, getting straight to the point.
Levy nodded, "follow us, we'll explain along the way."
Levy turned around and started walking away from the station. The others followed her and she lead them away from the town and towards the forest. Natsu sniffed the air and was surprised to find a familiar scent, but not Gray's.
"After Erza finished organizing the search parties, Gajeel, Pantherlily, and I went to Oshibana Station. We asked around if anyone saw the people that Natsu described or Gray. Someone said that they saw a green haired woman walking out of the forest, so we went to investigate. Gajeel picked up a trial, it was probably…"
"Amelia," growled Natsu, sniffing the air again to confirm that it was her smell.
Levy nodded, "We thought so. Anyway we followed it and ended up here."
They stopped somewhere in the middle of the forest. It looked just like anywhere else in the forest, just trees, bushes, and dirt. Natsu inhaled and smelled mint and pine needles along with a couple other scents.
"Gray," he said. Wendy nodded in agreement.
"He was here? Can you track him?" asked Lucy excited.
Natsu sniffed again and slowly shook his head.
"Oh," said Lucy, disappointed.
"They must have teleported here and then teleported away," said Gajeel.
"But you said Amelia went into town, did you try to follow her scent?" asked Erza.
Levy nodded, "We tried, but it's really crowded, so other people's scents covered it up. Then again, Natsu's nose is better than Gajeel's, so maybe he'll have more luck."
Everyone turned to Natsu who was already following the scent towards town. It was fairly simple to follow it back to town, but once they entered the crowded streets it became difficult to differentiate it from other smells. Not to mention it was almost a day old.
Natsu managed to roughly follow it, constantly losing and then finding it again. It finally lead him to a magic store. It looked just like any other store, but for some reason Amelia went inside, so there must be something special about it.
"She went inside this building," said Natsu.
"Well what are we waiting for then?" said Erza, pushing the door open and stepping inside.
Inside the store were shelves filled with various magical items. There were a couple of other people, all of them men, but it didn't look like they were were just sitting in a corner playing cards and chatting, but when the Fairy Tail wizards entered they stopped talking and just watched the wizards. There was also a man sitting behind a counter with a large wooden door behind him.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
Erza opened her mouth to speak, but Natsu spoke up first.
"What's behind the door?" he asked.
The owner glanced at the door behind him.
"Nothing," he said a little too quickly.
"I asked, what's behind the door," repeated Natsu.
"It's just a storage area," said the man.
"Yeah right, it's got tons of weird smells coming from it," said Gajeel, "why don't you show us what's really behind it, or we could call up the rune knights to investigate."
Then the group of men sitting in the corner attacked. They took out magic swords and guns that they had kept hidden before, but before they had even reached the wizards...
"Requip! Heaven's Wheel!"
"Fire Dragon's Iron Fist!"
"Iron Dragon's Club!"
The owner just stared in shock as he saw his men get defeated instantly by just three wizards.
"You better give us an answer this time," said Erza, stabbing her sword into the wall next to the owner's head.
"Ye...Yes, ma'am," he said as he opened the door, revealing a stone staircase that lead deep down into the ground.
Erza, dragging the owner with her, lead them down the staircase to a basement. There were more shelves, but these were filled with potions, books, weapons, and other various weird looking gadgets.
Gajeel walked up to one off them and inspected the objects, "These are all illegal charms."
Levy took a book off its shelf and read the title, "The art of dark magic."
Erza looked down at the owner, "You better explain yourself."
"There's no need, it's pretty obvious that he's part of the black market. All of these things are banned by the magic council," said Gajeel.
"Gray was here," said Natsu suddenly, "Amelia and Max too."
Erza glared daggers at the owner, "If you want to make it out of here in one piece, then I'd advise you tell us everything."
The man nodded vigorously, "Please don't kill me. Amelia and Max are, well I wouldn't call them friends, more like acquaintances of mine. Yesterday Amelia came in and said she needed something, so I let her into the basement. I needed to get one of my guards to watch the counter, so I came in after her. When I got down, Max was there and he looked pretty exhausted. There was also a teenage boy with black hair who was unconscious. They bought some magic sealing handcuffs, a potion that restores some used magical energy, and a magic collecting machine. Then they teleported away."
"What condition was the boy in? Was he injured?" asked Erza.
"Um, I didn't see any physical wounds, he was just unconscious."
"Do you know where they went?" asked Erza.
"They mentioned something about mountains," said the man.
"That's great, there are a bunch of mountains all over Fiore, how are we supposed to know which one they went to?" said Carla.
"Do you know?" asked Erza.
The man just shook his head.
"We'll just have to check all of them," said Natsu.
"Wait! I have an idea," said Levy.
The short blue-haired girl took out a map of Fiore and laid it out on a nearby table.
"This was where the robbers were," said Levy as she drew a dot on the map, "and this is Oshibana Town," she said, drawing another dot.
"If we assume they were heading in the general direction of their destination," she said, drawing a line through the two dots.
"Then they must be heading for those mountains right there," finished Lucy, pointing to the only mountains the line passed through.
"Alright, let's go!" said Natsu.
"Wait," said Erza, "We still don't know for sure whether they are actually at those mountains or not. They might have simply made a detour to Oshibana."
Erza turned to Levy, Gajeel, and Pantherlily. "Can I leave him to you?" she asked, gesturing to the owner.
Levy nodded, "Of course, we did use to be part of the council forcible arrest squad."
The man gulped, regretting his decision to join in the black market.
"I also want you guys to return to the guild and inform everyone else about what we learned," commanded Erza.
"You can count on us," said Levy.
Erza nodded, "We'll head over to the mountains and start searching over there."
"Yeah! Let's go!" said Natsu excited.
"That means taking the train to the closest town," said Erza.
"Eh…" both Natsu and Wendy got sick at the thought of that.
Gray bit back a scream as his magic was forcibly drained from him. He could taste blood in his mouth, but he wouldn't give them the satisfaction of hearing him scream. But it hurt, a lot.
"Feels nice, right?" said Amelia.
Gray just glared at her.
"Scary," laughed Amelia.
He was strapped to a table with tubes attached to the metal restraints, which connected to a giant lacrima. He was drenched in sweat and his devil slaying marks already covered half of his body.
"Let's turn the power up a little," said Amelia, turning a little dial on the side.
The pain increased and he could feel his devil slaying marks creep forward covering more of his face and torso. Stop. He commanded, but they wouldn't listen and continued to grow. STOP. He fought against it and the marks began to slow and then stop and then retreat just a little bit.
Amelia noticed the marks recede just a little bit and got annoyed, "Still fighting? Well, let's just turn the power up even more."
The pain increased even more but then died out completely. Gray finally relaxed and gasped for air. He could hear Amelia and Max arguing, probably because Max stopped the machine, but he couldn't make out any words. The voices got fainter and fainter before they disappeared altogether and all that remained was the peaceful silence of sleep.
Author's Note:
Yay! I actually posted on Tuesday. I don't know what gave me the idea for this chapter, but I needed some way for the others to find Gray, so this ended up happening. The ending was kind of abrupt, but I wasn't feeling really creative this morning so yeah. Well, I hoped you liked it and thanks to everyone who reviewed. Please review, follow, or fav :) See you next week!