Chapter 3
Sneaky
The day of the Magnolia Harvest Festival, everything went to hell. Or even before it started.
Everyone was having fun together while getting ready for the Festival and Lucy had work. The girls went on a shopping spree to have new, cute outfits just for the Festival and Lucy had work.
Heck, it was day of the Festival and Lucy was cleaning table after table with a rag and hating her life choices very much. Everyone had fun and she was stuck working.
The fact that the restaurant was pretty much deserted at this hour wasn't helping either. For all Lucy knew, the food-stands, table with sweets and random stacks and little shops with knick-knacks, t-shirts and jewelry - and many, many else - were opened pretty early. Both her guild mates and civilians not connected to the Guild whatsoever used the chance to sell whatever goods they managed to produce to it's fullest.
Meanwhile, Lucy was at work, desperately trying to find herself something, anything to do, just to not die of pure boredom. The tables were already shining, the chairs she set in perfectly hours ago. The flowers were watered down, the floor was moped and Lucy started to seriously considering washing the clean dishes.
"Oh my, oh my!" The owner walked into the room, looking around. She was an aged woman of rather chubby posture, fashioning a flowery dress and wore her hair in short, modern manner.
"You definitely outdid yourself today, my dear!"
The owner was actually one of the few things Lucy liked about this job. Being a waitress at a place which belonged to that old guy who once was a member of the Council was a pain, which those ridiculous outfits and all. Here the dresses of the waitress were actually pretty nice and the owner was a pretty cool person too. Through still, waitressing when one was a mage and expected to live through one adventure after another was underwhelming.
"It's not like I had anything else to do," Lucy left out a loud sigh.
"I hear you," the woman nodded. "There are so many rare things available in the city no one cares for plain ol' restaurants!"
Lucy eyed her employer. She felt kind of bad with making puppy eyes and begging with everything but words to be let out of here - she was paid for working at the restaurant, after all - but she truly had nothing to do other than dying out of boredom.
The woman clearly knew what was on Lucy's mind. She set her hands on hips and shook her head.
"Alright," she said with a heavy sigh. "It's not making any sense to keeping you holed up here, when you can have fun with your friends."
"Really!" Lucy gasped, instantly straightening up. Then she blushed. the reaction was so over the top, she really was embarrassed of herself. After living through so many savoir vivre lessons at home it was still astonishing how she was able to just forget everything in moments like that.
"Really," the woman nodded. "But I want to see you here tomorrow, ready to work," she warned. "So don't drink too much!"
"Yes, Ma'am!" Lucy saluted and almost dashed out of the restaurant.
Luckily, she remembered that she was still wearing the uniform before she reached the doors. Blushing even harder, with a sheepish grin on her face, Lucy turned around and jogged towards the backroom of the restaurant.
"Sorry!"
The only answer was a chuckle.
Well, at least someone was having a good day...
Dressing up in a record time, Lucy couldn't help herself, but giggled enthusiastically. She was going to miss the whole thing with trying out for the beauty contest, but she still could have a lot of fun. And her finances were good enough to spend a little something here and there.
Then Lucy walked out of the restaurant and looked at the skies. Which prove that it was going to be a bad day after all.
Whatever the spheres floating in the air over the whole city of Magnolia, they sure looked quite menacing. The magic coming from them was giving a bad vibe as far as Lucy could tell.
She knew for sure nothing like that was in the plans of the Festival and while the Master was pretty lenient towards the members of his guild, the main person behind the planning was Erza. And she wasn't lenient in the slightest.
"I have a bad feeling about this," Lucy murmured, fingering the keychain on her hip.
She decided that having a closer look on the mysterious spheres was a good idea and furrowed her brow.
She could head back towards her apartment. With a little bit of sneaking around, she could climb all the way to the roof and try to have a look from there. The other option was heading towards the guild and asking the other members of the Fairy Tail what was up with these things.
"Now I sorta want a telescope..." Lucy groaned.
A telescope was something she wanted to owe, but the prices were terrifying enough for her to not even hope to have enough to make that purchase any time soon. Still it would be nice to observe the stars closer that just by staring at the night sky.
"What do you need a telescope for?" A sudden voice just behind her, rough as if someone was rubbing one stone against another, startled Lucy enough to make her jump.
"What the hell?!" she shouted, turning around. "Didn't mother taught you to not come at people like that?!"
"Never had one," Gajeel said with a shrug.
"Uh..." Lucy put hand over her mouth, feeling embarrassed for gods only knew which time this day. Seriously, she should watch her mouth some more because that last one was quite brutal. At least the Iron Dragon Slayer didn't seemed to be too sore about the fact. More like amused by her reaction.
"What are you doing here anyway?" she asked, pulling herself together.
"Had work, just like you did."
"The school was open today?" Lucy blinked. Then the realization came. "And hey, why do you know that I have a work in the first place?"
"You smell like that cleaning stuff," he answered.
Okay, that made sense. If the guy was able to find her hidden in the city using only his nose, then he sure as hell could tell that she spend her morning scrubbing and washing things. Especially since she didn't put her hand cream on yet.
"So... we're both pretty late, right?" she tried to start a conversation. It sounded a bit awkwardly, but hell, he wasn't exactly the people person either. "Do you know what is that?"
She gestured towards the hovering spheres.
"Those are trouble," he said. Then furrowed his brow, looking at her. "You don't know?"
"Trouble?" Lucy blinked.
"You probably were out of range," Gajeel said with a shrug.
That did explain exactly nothing and Lucy somewhat wanted to strangle the Iron Dragon Slayer. What range? Why was she supposed to know that something was going on? Why he was aware that something was up, while she was not?
So many questions, so little time, so Lucy decided to stick to the most basic ones.
"Can you tell me what is going on?"
"Long story short: Sparky in the coat went crazy and said that he's either going to be the Guild Master or he's going to blow up this joint."
"...blow up?" Lucy's brow twitched nervously. "You're just fucking with me now, right?"
"Nope," he answered, brushing his hair aside. "Those spheres are lacrima's charged with his magic. The thing had to be planned, you can't fill so many in few minutes..."
"So why people are not doing anything?" Lucy bit her lip. "I mean, I know that he's strong at all, but with Erza and all the other people...!"
"As I said, the thing was planned," Gajeel said. Then, he explained everything about the contestants in the beauty show were turned into stone, how freed filled the whole city with traps and how Laxus forced the guild mates to fight against each other.
"We... D-don't have to fight now, right?" Lucy asked with a shudder.
"Nah. Don't wanna step into any traps, I'm just here to drop the bastard who set the whole thing up."
"...drop?" she asked, feeling cold and a little bit sweaty. Gajeel was still scary and speaking of things like that wasn't making him any less disturbing. Quite the opposite.
"Listen, Cosplayer" he said, a tone of annoyance now noticeable in his voice. "We can either stand there and discuss my life or we can go on a little hunt and deal with this mess before shit really hits the fan."
"Right," Lucy nodded. "Sorry."
He was right, there were thing with much higher priority than satisfying her own curiosity.
"You said that there are traps all over the city. Do you know how to tell where these are? Or how to disarm them?"
"Dunno how to deal with them, it's that written magic thingamajig," he said. "But I can sniff where they are."
"...eh?"
"They guy who was setting them up, he spend some time at each spot while making that stuff."
"Oh!" Lucy clapped her hands together. The scent of the mage was probably still there, making it pretty easy for the Dragon Slayer to follow him around or avoid all those carefully plotted traps. "And how you're going to find that mage? Without stepping into none of his traps?"
"Sparky wants everyone in the city, doing Battle Royale for whatever fucked up reason he got for this mess," Gajeel snickered. "I'm simply going to act like I'm leaving the city. Dude should try to jump me."
That was... actually a surprisingly good idea. Even if it was knowingly walking into a trap and then waiting for a sneak attack. The Iron Dragon Slayer, Lucy decided, was weird. He was acting like a grunt with brain located in his fists, so Lucy was fully expecting him to act like more brutal version of Natsu. Or something like that. However, Lucy was observing him for long enough to know that was just a front, a mask he put on to hide as many cards up his sleeves as humanly possible.
While she couldn't quite understand why, she knew that right now Gajeel was her only way around the city that would safely lead her away from all the traps. She would really hate being forced to hurt anyone in the Guild. They were family.
"I'm going with you," she decided.
"And who says so?" Gajeel raised an eyebrow.
"You're setting up a trap, right?" she asked, forcing her mouth to bend into a sneaky smile. "Every trap needs a bait."
That was going to be such a bad day.
xxx
If Lucy had to pick one word to describe her current situation, it would be definitely something like "surreal" or "disturbing".
People of Magnolia City seemed to be blind to what was going on around them. How else one was to explain why they were occupied by their usual business, while the Fairy Tail guild was about to destroy itself, with its members fighting all around the city? The fact that no one was even trying to do anything, to ask them what was going on... it hurt.
Lucy was aware that most of people didn't know much about magic - heck, she herself felt like a novice and she spend most of her life using magic - so they had no way of telling what was going on, but still... couldn't they notice that there was something wrong?
She eyed Gajeel. Lucy had no clue what she was looking for, but it definitely wasn't that weird expression between being blank and slightly annoyed. Did he cared at all? Not like he had a good reason to do so. After all not that long ago he got literally punched in the face when he tried to act friendly with other guild members. Friendlier.
Ugh.
Lucy grimaced. Gajeel was just so difficult to read and the natural curve of his lips wasn't helping. It was going downwards and it made him looked constantly pissed instead of... whatever he was feeling at the moment.
If she wasn't staring at Gajeels face, she would have probably missed it. A slight twitch of a muscle in the corner of his eye. Did he noticed something? Then why he was keeping his mouth shut? They were working together to solve this mess, he should be doing something!
Lucy huffed in annoyance and decided that she was done with waiting for him to take the initiative.
"We should try find Evergreen first," she said. "I mean, with her down the girl that were turned into stone should return to normal, right?"
"Don't care," Gajeel grunted.
"What do you mean, you don't care?" Lucy raised her voice. "Juvia is among them! She's your friend!"
"Well, being a bit more solid is definitely a new thing for her," he smirked. "I would hate to rob her of that experience."
Lucy gasped.
"That was a terrible thing to say!"
"Told you before," he just shrugged. "I don't care."
Lucy closed her hands into fists, hard enough for knuckles to turn while. Trying to take a deep breath, exhale and then another breath wasn't working all that well for her either. All she could do to keep herself from punching him was standing there and shaking.
"What now?" Gajeel looked at her over his shoulder. His eyes seemed to be so much more red than a few moments before and the odd shape of his iris wasn't making him look human at all. Natsu was a Dragon Slayer too and Lucy looked into his eyes so many times, but his stare never was as disturbing.
"You don't like something you see, little girl?"
Lucy didn't turn away, because it would be like admitting defeat.
"I'm going to save my friends," she stated. "With or without you."
"Whatever," Gajeel grunted. then he broke the eye contact and continued to walk forward through the city, not waiting for her.
There were people walking on the sidewalks, merchants and shopkeepers filled the air with noise and quarrel, but at the same time it was like they were the only real people in the otherwise empty city.
Lucy swallowed hard and turned on her heels, then rushed forward. She didn't want to run, because running in a situation like that would be just wrong and it would make it looks like they've just broke up or something and there definitely wasn't anything to be broken in the first place.
She shook her head, because it was no time for her mind to wander in odd directions either. Lucy was in hurry and she couldn't waste any more precious seconds. Her friends needed help.
She turned at the first fork in the road and stopped. She took a deep breath, brushing the keychain with her fingers and waited.
It didn't take that much time. There was a sudden light coming from the direction they were heading just a few minutes before and a swooshing noise and Lucy couldn't help herself, but smirk.
"Open! Gate of the Virgin! Virgo!" she said quickly, trying to keep her voice as quiet as possible, while twisting the key in the air.
"Princess?" the Spirit looked at her, pink hard done as perfectly as always and the maid uniform looked like it was freshly ironed.
"There's a fight going on not far from here," Lucy said quickly. "I want you do dig up a tunnel to there, but don't finish it!"
"Of course," Virgo bowed. "anything else?"
"Make it wide enough for Taurus to move freely," Lucy said, a smirk growing on her face. "and that would be it."
"I'm on it, princess."
Lucy furrowed her brow, trying to fish out the sounds of fighting. As soon as Virgo was finished, Lucy let her go away, because conserving her energy for a real fight was an important thing. Besides, Taurus needed a lot of fuel to just hand out on this plane and she really needed him. She had a Dragon Slayer to save.
xxx
It was supposed to be a much more epic entrance, however the high heels once again got in Lucy's way. She tripped and almost feel on her face, but somehow managed to regain her balance.
"My," Freed raised one elegant eyebrow at her awkward struggles. "It appears another opponent entered the battle."
"Uh, yeah!" Lucy straightened up, trying to look at least somewhat heroic. "So what?"
"Well, it wouldn't be fair if I didn't explain the rules, right?" he asked, smiling coldly.
'Rules?" Lucy asked, making a careful step to the right, so she could see the mage behind green-haired menace in front of her.
The Dragon Slayer was still in one piece and looking somewhat pissed, so everything was well. If not counting that weirdo in a coat between them.
"The rule of this fight is," Freed continued, his voice almost dripping with satisfaction. "No destructive magic is allowed."
"Oh," Lucy said. That explained thing or two. Like, why the street and the building around were still existing.
"You see, dragon Slayers tend to be not too careful and we would hate to turn this whole city in the sea of ruins before the right time," Freed continued. "You seem to be at the disadvantage too, miss Hearfillia. As far as I understand, your spirits tend to deal a lot of damage and we just can't have that here..."
He smirked and it was a nasty expression.
Behind Freed Gajeel carefully took one step back, then another, muscles tense and eyes burning red.
"What?" Freed chuckled. "You two want to work together and gain something by flanking me? How amusing!"
"And what's so amusing in that?" Lucy grunted.
"My, because my magic does not bring destruction of course!" he said, his grin growing even wider. "Well, not a physical one..."
Freed raised his hand, but before he managed to finish the gesture, Lucy opened her mouth.
"Now, Taurus!"
The ground right behind Freed exploded, sending dust and debris everywhere, stones click-clacking on the ground, crashing into walls around them.
Taurus roared, accompanied by a shriek of breaking glass in one of the windows nearby and raised his axe.
Before Freed managed to turn around, the weapon fell down, smacking him in the side of the head with the blunt side of the blade. The force behind was enough to throw him into the brick wall of nearest building with a loud thud. He traveled all the way to the ground, slowly sliding off the wall, like he suddenly turned into a rag-doll.
Suddenly, the streets and walls around them - and probably around the city - started to shine with a greenish light of complicated runes, before the letters, one after another, perished.
"Mooouission accomplished!" Taurus proudly announced.
"Good job!" Lucy grinned.
"Huh. You're big," Gajeel commented.
He was still standing in the same place, though his back was now bend backwards, so he could look at the huge Celestial Spirit.
"How did you know he's underground anyway?" Lucy asked. She was forced to awkwardly bend to the side so she could see the Dragon Slayer behind the - indeed quite big - Celestial Spirit.
"He smells like ozone," Gajeel explained. "And a cow."
"Now, that wasn't very nice!" Taurus pouted at him.
"Don't care."
"Of course you don't, you're a prick," Lucy rolled her eyes. "Taurus, could you please return to the Spirit World now?"
"Muooff course!" The huge bull saluted with his axe and then disappeared in a puff of smoke.
"Didn't he say that destructive magic was not possible?" Gajeel asked, looking around the rubble and wreckage that was around them.
"That wasn't magic, that was an axe to the face," Lucy smirked.
"True," Gajeel nodded.
"By the way... is he uh...?" she nervously looked at Freed.
"Nah, still alive," Gajeel said, kneeling by the unconscious man. "I'm pretty sure that his shoulder and collarbone are busted, but he never hit the wall with his head..."
Lucy blinked. "You seem to know a lot about those things!"
"Well, no contrary to what some people may say about me, I never was a dark wizard," he said, his red eyes burning holes into her, before he turned his attention back to Freed.
Lucy blushed. Well, that was awkward. Though at the same time, the explanation made a lot of sense - if someone was using brute force while fighting, that someone also needed to know how to not kill the opponent with said power.
She was about to say that she was sorry for asking stupid questions like that, because she was supposed to trust her guild mates, but the words died in her throat before she managed to voice them.
"The hell are you doing?!"
That was an important question, since Gajeel picked up still unconscious Freed.
"Moving him?" he answered.
"...and why you are doing that?"
"Have you even seen a guy with a nasty concussion?"
She didn't. But that was supposed to not be too great when it came to thinking and other things, since well, it was a result of a pretty hard hit to the head.
Gajeel looked around for a short moment, with Freed hanging under his arm like a sack of potatoes. then he headed straight towards the dead end, where nothing but a bunch of big, metal containers stood.
"...you are going to make a joke about how trash should know it's place or something?" Lucy asked, her eyes twitching slightly.
Gajeel didn't seem to care much. He just dumped the unconscious wizard inside, closed the container and then used his magic to seal it.
"Nah," he finally said. "I just don't want him wandering around. Doubt that he would be able to pick up where he left his stuff, but no point in risking a nasty surprise."
"...makes sense."
Though more because there was a river nearby. Lucy had no idea how well a person could move while having a concussion, but if it was at least partially as wobbly as Natsu was during his sickness, then that river was a serious danger. And Gajeel was making sure that the dumb follower of Laxus was safe while they were going to look for his boss.
"By the way, nice entrance, Princess," Gajeel smirked at her. "Didn't know you can lie that well."
"My, thank you," Lucy couldn't help herself, she just had to bow slightly. "Though you are wrong. I wasn't lying at all."
"Oh?" he tilted his head and the wild mane of black hair followed the movement like a wave.
"I do think that the first one we should go after is Evergreen. And I am going to save my friends."
"What about this asshole?" Gajeel gestured towards the trashcan with his thumb.
"Oh, he went after us, not the other way around," Lucy shrugged.
He blinked, staring at her for a short moment.
"Duh," he said afterwards.
Suddenly, it was all awkward again, with them standing in front of each other in silence, like two weirdly placed statues.
"Eh, at least we work together pretty well!" she grinned.
"You're not afraid," he stated all of sudden.
"Huh?" Lucy blinked. "Where that came from?"
"Your pals all act like they're torn between pissing their pants and kicking me in the gut," he stated.
Huh. Well, the whole mess with Phantom Lord was just one terrible... not misunderstanding. More like a betrayal and turning Gajeel and Juvia and all the others into tools by Master Jose. And a whole lot more other issues Lucy couldn't quite put her fingers on. But what she could put her finger on...
She smiled, looking him right in the face and then raised her marked hand. She grabbed his left shoulder, where the twin guild mark was. Her fingers looked small and pale against his skin, not even fully covering the black guildmark. That wasn't important at all. No matter how big and scary Gajeel was, he was still warm and breathing and tense because of the sudden touch. Human.
"As long as we both have it," Lucy said, still smiling. "As long as we belong to the same Guild, I have nothing to be afraid of."
Gajeel looked. First at her, then his blazing red gaze moved towards her hand and the pink mark on it. After that, he took one stiff step away, so the contact was broken. Turning on his heel he proceed to moving forward.
"Aren't we supposed to look for the whatsherface?" he grunted.
Lucy somehow managed to swallow her laughter and covered her mouth with hand, just to be sure and jogged after Gajeel.
Someone was shy.
A/N: Okay, this is pretty much the last chunk I have prewritten - I was waaay behind during the NaNoWriMo this year, so I pretty much wrote it all in one sitting _^_'
(Gajeel is so very comfy for me to write about, I have a ridiculous amount of headcanons about him XD)
Anyhow, we learned many thing here!
Gajeel is pretty damn bad at plot dumping (he, like, ignored everything but the absolute necessary), but at the same time he knows a lot of stuff.
Lucy and Gajeel are making a great team, which made the whole fight to be a rather underwhelming experience. They're fairy (pun intended) smart, so letting the opponent show all his trick wasn't a thing. Sorry!
I'm trying very hard to stick to only one POV in this story - I tend to jump around like crazy bunny, because I like to have a very lively and constantly changing background, so not poking that one is quite a challenge for me.
Lucy is not helping, she's got her own opinions about stuff, so she's misinterpreting this or that.
Thanks for the reviews and other forms of attention, I'm glad we can have fun together! ^^