A/N - And here's the second chapter. Or, is it the third chapter? I have the document for the prologue saved as Chapter 0, but is it technically still the first chapter? Hm. Well, it's titled "Chapter Two," so I guess it's the second chapter!

There's not much to talk about at the beginning, other than the fact that these first few chapters are proving remarkably easy to write. Brandy's a fun character, and a lot more straightforward than Alecto or Tempus is, which makes writing her dialogue a lot easier.

Notes will be at the end of this chapter.

DISCLAIMER: Fairy Tail is the intellectual property of Hiro Mashima. I have no intention of monetizing my fanwork, and this is merely an enjoyable passer of time.

Chapter Two - Meeting Lucy

"So, um, Natsu, Happy, and… Brandy, was it?"

The blonde woman, who had just introduced herself as Lucy, was sitting across from the other three at the small diner booth, looking like she was very much regretting her generosity as Natsu scarfed down plate after plate with no sign of stopping. Happy, despite being a tenth the size, was hardly any better, leaving a pile of fish bones in front of him as he went through what was surely the restaurant's entire supply of fish. Brandy hadn't been nearly so inconsiderate to their new acquaintance, had ordered a simple bowl of tonjiru for herself, trying very hard to ignore the food flying everywhere as she ate.

"Mh-hm!" Natsu grunted in response to Lucy's question, his mouth full of shrimp noodles. "You're so nice!"

"Thanks!" Lucy said sheepishly. "You know, you can slow down, we're not in a hurry, and food is kind of flying everywhere…" Seeming to realize that her request for basic table manners was being made in vain, she switched gears. "Evidently that Salamander guy was using magic, a charm spell, to hypnotize the ladies in town into thinking they were in love with them. Charm spells have the power to attract people to you against their own will. They've been banned for years, nobody even sells them anymore."

"Nobody sells them legitimately," Brandy corrected after swallowing a spoonful of her soup. "Black market magic isn't that uncommon, unfortunately, and really difficult to successfully smoke out." She remembered the time that she and Master Torhearth had trying to track down a group of magics selling illegal magical wands, to little avail.

Lucy frowned at this. "That guy must have gone through a lot of trouble to get his hands on it, then. What a creep! I totally fell victim to his spell, too, but I snapped out of it thanks to you barging in when you did. I really can't thank you guys enough."

Natsu still looked a little baffled, but he wasn't about to reject gratitude expressed in the form of lunch. "You're welcome," he said, his words a bit garbled by the whole tomato in his mouth.

"You know," Lucy continued, "I may not look like it, but I'm a wizard, too!"

"That so?" Natsu said.

"Yeah." Lucy suddenly looked a little sheepish, dark gaze flitting to the grains in the wood of the table and back. "But I haven't actually joined a guild yet or anything."

Brandy perked up slightly, a little more interested in the conversation. A wizard? That would explain why she was able to recognize the charm spell so easily; most citizens would have just looked at his hands and seen two rings, not bothering to give them more thought. She idly wondered if Lucy was a caster-type or a holder-type wizard, and what type of magic she used.

Before Brandy could sate her curiosity, however, Lucy continued speaking. "Oh! I should probably explain, huh? See, guilds are these organizations where wizards come together to share information and find work and things like that. Unfortunately, you aren't considered a full-fledged wizard until you become a member of a guild."

Natsu and Brandy exchanged a quick look over the rapidly growing pile of dishes. Didn't this girl recognize three fellow wizards when she saw them? Brandy wondered how long it would take before she realized. "Like Triad's Foresight?" she asked, playing the part of the naive commoner as she rested her chin on her folded hands.

"Yeah! You know about them?"

I was them, eight years ago. "I grew up in Ranuncolo," Brandy says instead. "Triad's Foresight is a kind of a big deal over there. Biggest congregation of scrying-based wizards in Fiore, if I recall correctly." Of course she recalled correctly; her mother would never stop bragging about it.

"Oh, yes, it's so amazing!" Lucy gushes. "I read about Team Royal Flush in one of the latest issues of Sorcerer Weekly - they're one of Triad Foresight's top Triad Teams, you know! They say that Hyacinth Lliant can scry through any body of water in the world, even raindrops! Can you imagine that? But there are tons of guilds all over besides Triad's Foresight. I've heard it's really tough to get into the more popular ones, and the Guild I wanna join is the most popular one there is!" She'd gone completely starry-eyed. "Aaaah, they're the greatest and they're always featured in Sorcerer Weekly. Oh, if I could actually convince them to let me in, I think I'd just about die!"

"Yeah?" Natsu seemed thoroughly unimpressed. And Brandy didn't blame him; they both knew what the greatest guild in Fiore was, and it wasn't Blue Pegasus or Quatro Cerberus. And it definitely wasn't Triad's Foresight.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I guess all this wizarding talk must sound like a bunch of gibberish to you, huh?" Lucy said. (Brandy almost laughed at this, and immediately had to drown her mirth with the rest of her tonjiru.) "But I'm telling you, I'm definitely gonna join that guild someday. And then I'm gonna take all kinds of exciting jobs and make tons of money!"

"Oh?" Natsu said, turning back to the last remnants of his meal.

"You talk a lot," Happy interjected.

"Hey, she's buying us food, I'd say the lady has earned the right to talk as much as she wants," Brandy said. "Besides, she's saying some really interesting stuff, I'd love to hear more about her opinions on wizards. Almost makes me forget why we're in Hargeon in the first place."

Lucy looks up at this. "Oh, right, I almost forgot," she said. "You guys came here to find somebody, didn't you?"

"Technically," Brandy said, nodding to Natsu and Happy, "they're here to find someone. I'm just here to make sure they don't do anything reckless." Or, at least, make a token effort in that direction.

"Aye!" Happy exclaimed. "We're looking for Igneel!"

"We heard a rumor that a salamander was gonna be coming through this town, so we came here to see him. Turns out it was somebody else." The disappointment in Natsu's voice was palpable, something Brandy could very much understand. If she had gone halfway across Fiore to find her father only to find some creepy passing parlor tricks and black market rings off as true magical prowess, she'd be pretty disappointed, too.

Happy nodded, pushing away the now-empty fish basket with his tiny blue paws. "Yeah, that guy didn't look like a salamander at all."

"No kidding. I bet that poser can't even breathe fire like a real dragon."

"Uh." Lucy now looked thoroughly baffled. "I don't get it. Your friend Igneel looks like a dragon?"

Natsu swallowed the last bite of food and shook his head. "No, you got it all wrong, he said. "He doesn't look like a dragon, he is one."

"Aye, Igneel is a real live fire dragon!" Happy explained.

There was a few minutes of silence as Lucy processed this new and jarring information. Then, "Why would a fire dragon show up in the middle of town?! It's totally ridiculous!"

Natsu and Happy scrambled to find an answer, but found themselves at a loss. Brandy rubbed at the back of her head. "You know, part of me was wondering the same thing," she admitted to Natsu. "But I figured you know Igneel better than I do, so I trusted that if you thought someone was him, they would be. Kind of… really stupid in retrospect." Add yet another thing to the list of things her mother should have told her about. If she'd just sent a letter saying, "Igneel's not in Hargeon, don't even bother," she wouldn't have had to warn about Salamander's charm spell in the first place, because Brandy was only there to help look for Igneel. Unless there's another reason I'm supposed to be here…

"No kidding." Lucy glanced out the window before rifling through her purse and pulling out a handful of bills. She left them on the table next to the mountain of dishware and stood up.. "Well, I should get going. Enjoy the rest of your lunch, and maybe I'll see you around."

She headed for the door, where a petite brunette clad in a maid costume waited. "Thank you, ma'am," the brunette said politely. "Please come agaiahh!" Her gaze had fallen on something over Lucy's shoulder, and the blonde turned around to see a reverent Natsu and Happy kneeling on the floor in the middle of the restaurant.

"Thank you for the food!" they chanted in unison, bowing their heads to the floor. Brandy simply tidied up her part of the table, not even bothering to spare a glance for their antics. Just another day in the life of Natsu Dragneel's friend, she thinks. I wish I had some extra cash to tip the staff. They deserve it, producing all this food on such a short notice…

Lucy, meanwhile, was having precisely none of this nonsense. "Cut it out, you're embarrassing me!" she snapped. "Look, it's cool. You guys helped me out earlier. So let's just call it even!"

Natsu turned to Happy. "I feel bad, though, 'cause we weren't even trying to help her," he said in a not-so-quiet whisper that Lucy promptly facepalmed at.

"Aye," Happy agreed. "We owe her something."

Brandy could practically see the lightbulb go off in Natsu's head. "I know!" he exclaimed, mouth stretching wide into a trademark Natsu Grin. "Here, this is for you." He stuck his hand into his jacket, rifling about until he pulled out… the autograph from Salamander.

Lucy immediately fumed at the sight. "No way!" she shouted, before turning heel and storming off.

Brandy watched the door swing close behind her, leaving the restaurant in stunned silence for a few moments before the patrons resumed their previous conversations. After a couple more seconds, she sighed and stood up. Drawing her overcloak in around her to make sure that it didn't snag on a table or something, she headed out the door, pausing only to tell Natsu and Happy, "I'll meet back up with you later, don't break anything" before leaving.

Lucy was a little ways ahead, her golden-blonde hair swaying back and forth in the slight ocean breeze. "Lucy!" Brandy called out, weaving her way through the passing citizens. "Hold up!"

Lucy turned around at the sound of her name. "Oh, hey, Brandy," she said, slowing down to give the darker-haired woman time to catch up. "What's up?"

"Nothing much," Brandy said, matching pace with Lucy. The two girls walked down the street side-by-side, looking like night and day in appearances and no doubt drawing a couple of stares. The thought sent Brandy's skin crawling, but she ignored it as best she could and kept walking. "I just really wanted to thank you for buying us lunch. I know it couldn't have been cheap; Natsu eats like every meal is his last."

"Yeah, I noticed. Where does he even keep all that food?"

"Oh, that boy burns off food just as quickly as he eats it. I don't even know about Happy, though. That cat's like some sort of fish vacuum."

"Haha, yeah!" Lucy looked over at her. "It's kind of hard to believe that you're even friends with those two. You seem so… well, sane. Apart from the fact that you're wearing a big heavy cloak in the middle of July, I mean. Seriously, how are you not sweating yourself to death under that?"

"I'm used to wearing it," Brandy answered. "It's comfortable, and the heat doesn't really bother me that much. As for the whole 'being friends with Natsu' thing, well…" She gave Lucy a sly wink. "There's more to me than you might think at first. Besides, sometimes the people you like hanging out with the most are the people who are the least like you."

"Oh. I guess that makes sense." Lucy did a double take. "Wait, is this like a 'the friend you never thought you wanted' way or in a 'opposites attract' sort of way?"

The question was probably meant innocently enough, but the concept proposed was so ridiculous that Brandy couldn't help but burst into laughter at the very notion. "Oh, as if!" she gasped between bouts of hysteria. "I guess Natsu's handsome enough if you like hot-headed idiots, but he is not my type! I like men and women that are a little more reserved, you know?" She wiped away the tears that had started to form at the corners of her eyes from laughing so hard, a painful grin still stretched across her dusk-brown cheeks. "I mean, not the completely stoic type, but just.. not that, you know?" Now people really were staring, their gazes drawn to the strange woman in the cloak too heavy for July, doubled over with laughter like she'd just been told the funniest joke in the world.

"Hey, it was a perfectly reasonable question," Lucy pouted. "There's no reason to act like it was so ridiculous."

"I'm sorry, but it was kind of funny," Brandy said. "I've known Natsu for seven years, he's more like an annoying little brother than anything else. Could you really see us dating?"

Lucy stared at her. "I guess not," she admitted.

Brandy managed to straighten herself up. "I'm sure there's someone out there for him," she said, "assuming he cares enough about romance to look. But I'm definitely not that person." This line of conversation was starting to get a little awkward, so she switched gears. "But enough about that. You said that you were looking to become an official guild wizard, right? What sort of magic do you specialize in?"

"Hm? Oh!" Lucy reached for a keyring attached to her belt, and Brandy's eyes widened to the approximate size and roundness of coins when she realized just what those keys were. "I'm a Celestial wizard!" Lucy continued, completely oblivious to Brandy's awe. "I know it doesn't look like I've got a lot of Gate Keys, but I've already got three golden ones, which is actually super rare! Most Celestial wizards don't even get one!"

"That's… incredible!" Brandy gawked. "If you're a Celestial wizard, doesn't that mean you have an insane about of magical potential? I mean, you have to be pretty strong to open a gate, don't you?" No wonder this girl could spot a charm spell at a second glance. Celestial wizards were said to be some of the most rare and powerful Holder-type casters there were. Not in terms of direct spells, but due to the energy it took to summon their Celestial spirits, all of which were varied and strong in some manner.

"Weeeell, I don't know if I would go that far." Lucy's expression suggested that she wasn't nearly as averse to the praise as she was acting like she was. "Like I said, I'm still not an official wizard. I've been holding out for that special guild, you know? I mean, I could probably get into one of the smaller ones, but it's just my dream, you know? Every time I see them in Sorcerer's Weekly, I think about how cool it would be to meet all of them and take on all those cool adventures and just- aaaah, I really hope I impress them enough to get in!" Lucy paused in her fangirling. "Wait, how do you know about Celestial Spirit magic?"

Oh, good, so she wasn't quite as unobservant as she seemed. Still, no need to drop the pretense of mundanity just yet. "My mother has a Celestial Gate Key," Brandy said. "One of the more common silver ones, and before you ask, no, I don't know which Gate it opens specifically. Mom's very protective of it, I shouldn't even be telling you this." It wasn't a lie by any means. Her mother really did have a key, but it also wasn't something her mother liked to make public knowledge, especially to Celestial wizards for some reason. But to hell with it, she was feeling rebellious and bitter towards her mother . "Buuut I like you, and you managed to stifle Natsu's whining about his stomach for the next few hours, so I'm being nice."

"Oh!" Lucy said. "Your mom's a Celestial wizard? No wonder you know so much about magic and guilds." Oh, you sweet summer child. "But I don't understand, why would she want it keep that a secret?"

Brandy shook her head, dark brown locks tickling her jawline. "She wants to keep the key a secret because she's not a Celestial wizard," she clarified. "Or, at least, that's my guess anyways. She says it's a family heirloom of some sort, so perhaps someone down the line was a Celestial wizard or something? I don't know, I've never been that interested in my ancestry."

"Oh." Lucy frowned a bit at this. "I guess I can understand wanting to keep a family heirloom safe, but a Gate Key really should be in the hands of a Celestial wizard who knows how to use it and how to make a contract with the spirit it summons."

"You can try and tell my mom that," Brandy suggested, sarcasm lacing her voice like a fine doily. "I'm sure she'll be more than willing to hand it over. Or she'll just lecture you about how she knows what's best for family and how the key's staying right where it is and how you're grounded to your room until dinnertime for good measure."

"Wow, she sounds pretty strict."

"'Strict' is one word for it. My mom…" Brandy cast about for the nicest possible way to phrase "is an arrogant snob who always lords her abilities over everyone, even master wizards far older and more experienced than her." "My mom holds herself and everyone around her to a very high standard," she settled on. "And mercy help you if you don't meet them. I don't talk to her that much because she's still all the way out in Ranuncolo, but it feels like she can't even send a letter without finding some way to berate me for something or anoth-"

Brandy froze in place, yellow gaze focused on something in the distance. The two girls had walked out far enough to where the boats docked at port were visible, and standing out among them all was a gleaming yacht, the sort only a self-aggrandizing celebrity wannabe like Salamander would have.

Board the boat, but do not drink the wine.

Her mother wouldn't have let her go to Hargeon in the first place if she didn't think there was something there worth doing.

"Of course," Brandy rambled, "I won't say that my mother's ego is completely unwarranted, she didn't get where is now by being incompetent at what she does. Look, I've got something I need to look into, it's pretty important, work stuff, you know how it is. It was nice meeting you, Lucy, maybe we'll see each other again, that'd be nice, okaytalktoyoulaterbye!"

Lucy stammered something out resembling a cross between a "goodbye" and a "what the heck," but Brandy was already halfway down the street, her mind a whirlwind of thoughts. Spiting her mother was one thing, but that man, Salamander… if that even was his real name, and at this point she was seriously starting to doubt that… he had gotten his hands on illegal charm magic and had invited a bunch of enraptured people to his yacht for an ocean party. Even without her mother's wisdom, that had "shady" written all over it.

Just what the hell is this guy planning?

A/N - Lots and lots of talking in this one, eh? It's important talking, though! It establishes characterization and stuff. A few things to touch base on this chapter:

Tonjiru (or "bujitaru") is a type of Japanese pork and vegetable soup that's flavored with miso. I figured that since Fairy Tail is a Japanese show and Natsu seems to be eating quite a few Japanese dishes in the diner scene (or at least dishes you would reasonably find in Japan), it'd make sense to have Brandy eat a Japanese dish as well.

Everything mentioned about Triad's Foresight and its members is important later, so don't forget it. Those who read my Soul Eater fic know that I'm a big fan of hanging Chekov's Guns on the wall, so make sure to keep an eye on what sounds like throwaway details, because you never know when it's going to come back into play in a big way; maybe not even in the way you expect.

The part at the end about Cassandra being sly because she wanted Brandy to board the boat and get involved in shenanigans was a last-minute addition born out of necessity. Mostly because I was asking myself the same questions that Brandy was, and I needed to provide a plausible answer. My little sister always says one of my biggest strengths is the ability to write myself out of a corner. (She also says I'm a loser. Love you too, sis.) That won't be the first time I'll be writing myself out of a corner regarding Cassandra, I'm sure. Sneaky Cassandra.

The events of Episode One will run up through Chapter Four. After that, we get a bit of Episode 2, and then a little original adventure for a couple chapters. Chapter Three will be up soon. In the meantime, feel free to favorite and leave a review!

-Diana "Nocte"