A week later, Levy was released from the infirmary, and her friends hadn't made any progress on their revenge plan, seeing as how Levy didn't remember exactly who it was who beat her up.
Natsu was particularly frustrated. "We'll take on the whole school if we have to!" Lucy could just imagine fire spewing from his angry lips. The others were just as angry, but they just let Natsu voice it for them. Whenever anyone would mention Phantom Lord or what happened to Levy, Erza would clench her hand into a fist a few times, like she wished she had a weapon, Gray's eyes would harden to ice and he would appear as though he were glaring at the person who spoke, and Lucy would glance up as if asking the stars why someone had to bring it up again.
All Levy could remember of her attacker was black hair and the gleam of dark metal. She had never clearly seen his face, so that was all she was able to give her revenge-driven friends.
Although she would admit it to no one, Levy was getting tired of it all. She was tired of being treated as if she would have to be rushed back to the infirmary on a gurney any moment. She was tired of her friends obsessing over getting back at the boy who had attacked her. She loved her friends and appreciated what they were trying to do, but she just wanted everything to go back to normal.
However, normal was out of the question.
A few days after the blue-haired girl started class again, the school was vandalized. In the middle of the night, someone had graffitied a side of the building, nastily insulting Fairy Tail. They had smashed a few of the windows, emptied trash cans of awful-smelling gunk across the lawn, and broken some extremely expensive equipment that was stored in one of the rooms with a broken window. Finally, as a last straw, they had spray-painted an impossibly large symbol that looked like a spiked eye with a tail; Phantom Lord's logo.
When Lucy's group saw the damage, the anger that they had been feeling for over a week reached a boiling point. Juvia was the only one who didn't look ready to murder someone. She just looked sad. When Lucy noticed, she was able to set aside thoughts of revenge for her newfound school to ask her blue-haired frenemy what was wrong.
For once, Juvia didn't look at Lucy like competition. She looked at her, her dark-blue eyes a little distant. "I used to go to Phantom Lord." Lucy's own eyes widened. This meek girl used to attend a school that did things like this? "I never realized they would go this far." Juvia turned her gaze to the damaged school.
"Why did you choose to come to Fairy Tail?" Lucy asked, hoping this would distract her from the damage caused by her former classmates.
She was right. Instantly her lights lit up, the way they did when she was talking to, looking at, or thinking about Gray. "It was fate! There was a writing competition between our schools, and Gray-sama and I were against each other. But I immediately fell in love and I couldn't bear fighting him! So I switched schools, and here we are." Juvia sighed lovingly. Lucy admired her devotion. Every time Juvia spoke of Gray, all traces of shyness disappeared, and she became so animated. Lucy could only hope she would find someone she cared about that much.
Natsu interrupted Lucy's thoughts, rushing over to Juvia. "You used to go to Phantom Lord, right?" The blue-haired girl's face fell back to guilt, like she was responsible for this. Natsu, clueless as ever, pushed on thoughtlessly. "Do you know who did this?"
She turned her eyes to the ground in thought, and after a moment they widened, and she kneeled and picked up something that flashed with a dull, metallic sheen. "I know who it was." She looked back up at Lucy and Natsu. "Gajeel Redfox."