Chapter 2: The Master Appears!
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Natsu kicked open the doors of Fairy Tail and shouted, "WE'RE HOME!"
"Natsu, Happy, welcome back." A beautiful white haired barmaid in a maroon dress called out.
Two men were laughing at one of the tables, one of them yelled to Natsu, "You overdid it again. I read about the Hargeon incident in the newspaper." Natsu's foot collided with his face and sent the man flying backwards off his chair.
"Bastard!" Natsu yelled, clearly enraged, "That info you gave me about Salamander was fake!" Chaos broke out after that. People started throwing their guild mates across the tables and having a full out war. Broken tables, chairs, glasses and plates were strewn across the guild. Lucy stood at the entrance, amazed that she could finally make it to Fairy Tail. She hadn't felt so happy in years.
"Did you say Natsu was back!?" A boy with spiky raven black hair who was wearing nothing but boxers and a silver necklace said, "I wanna finish our fight from last time!" Lucy inched away from extremely strange boy. She hadn't seen many males other than her father and the servants and she couldn't say that she was fond of them.
"Gray, your clothes." A lady who looked in her twenties with wavy brown hair, a light blue bikini top and three-quarter denim pants.
Gray threw his hands up in the air and shouted, "Shit!"
"Another one of those undignified guys..." The lady picked up a full barrel of beer and started chugging it down. She put it down between her legs, "That I hate."
Chaos continued for several more minutes. Lucy was knocked over with something and fell to the floor. 'What's with this place,' She thought, 'None of them are even slightly normal.'
"My, a newcomer?" Lucy looked up to find the pretty barmaid crouched down and smiling at her.
"Mirajane?" Lucy asked. She nodded her head. "Wow, you're even prettier in person... Wait shouldn't you try to stop them?"
"It happens all the time. You don't have to worry about it." Mirajane said cheerfully. "Besides, isn't it more fun this way?"
'It's scary!' Lucy thought.
"Guys, it's time for this to end." The brown haired lady said as she pulled out a blue and gold decorated playing card. Everyone else got ready to use their magic too.
"Come and fight me!" Natsu yelled.
"That's enough." A deep and threatening voice said as a giant foot stomped on the ground. "Cut it out you fools." The giant said. He was two storeys high with his head brushing the top of the guild. Everyone immediately froze and dropped their fighting stances.
"Oh, I didn't realise you were here, master Makarov." Mirajane said with a sweet smile. Lucy looked up in fear of the towering giant, then to Natsu.
He had a huge grin on his face and then looked over the rest of the guild and laughed. "Hahaha, you guys got so scared. This match is my win!" Natsu said with a triumphant voice. The master didn't even give a warning before he stomped on the unsuspecting boy.
"Huh? A newcomer?" The master said.
"Ye-yes!" Lucy cowered. He let out a weird growl and started to shrink in size until he barely reached the top of Lucy's knees and was donned in a short black coat, black pants and a plain white shirt with the Fairy Tail emblem on it. "What!?" Lucy asked/yelled.
"Nice to meet you," Master said with a wave of his hand as if he hadn't been a giant just moments ago. He flung himself onto the second floor, doing several backflips before failing the landing and hitting the banister. The master climbed up with some difficulty before standing with an authoritative air around him. "You've done it again fools. Just look at all this paperwork I've received from the council." He held up a stack of paper and started reading, "First, Gray. Good job on taking out the smuggling organisation but you walked around naked in town afterwards and ran away after stealing underwear that was drying. Elfman, Cana, Loki, Alzack, Levy, Reedus, Warren, Bisca, etcetera. And Natsu... You destroyed 7 houses, burnt down a church in Freesia, levelled a historic clock tower in Tully village, damaged parts of Lupinus Castle and destroyed half of Hargeon's port."
'Wow, most of the articles in Sorcerer Weekly were done by Natsu,' Lucy thought.
"Guys... The council members are angry at me all of the time..." All of Fairy Tail looked away in shame. "But, I say to hell with the council members," Makarov said as he set the paperwork on fire and tossed it into the crowd. Natsu jumped up, caught the papers in his mouth and landed right in front of Lucy before flashing her a reassuring smile... Well the best one he could give her with his mouth filled with fire.
"Listen up," Makarov said with a smile, "The power to overcome reasoning is born from reasoning. Magic is not a miracle. I mean, pouring all of your soul into whatever you do is the magic. Do not fear the fools of the magic council. Do whatever you think is right! That's the way of the Fairy Tail mages!" Fairy Tail's sprits lifted considerably and everyone went back to being the loud, rowdy guild they were previously. Lucy brightly smiled at the guild that had already started to have a place in her heart along with Natsu, her mother and the servants.
Lucy held the back of her right hand down on the table. "Is this where you want your Fairy Tail mark? Also, what colour do you want?" Mira asked.
"Yes, right here and, ummmm, pink please." Lucy said. Mira held a stamp on her hand (magical of course) and printed the Fairy Tail mark onto her skin. Lucy immediately excitedly ran up to Natsu's table and held out her right hand, "Hey Natsu, look, I got the mark of Fairy Tail!" She said with a brilliant smile on her face.
Natsu barely seemed to care at all. "Good for you, Luigi," He said in a bored tone while stuffing his face full of fire from his special menu consisting of fire pasta, fire chicken and fire drink.
"It's Lucy!" Lucy yelled, obviously annoyed, then settled down, "Honestly Natsu, I've told you my name multiple times, not to mention the times that you've said it. How could you forget it?"
Natsu didn't seem to hear her and didn't reply and excused himself from the mahogany table he was sitting at with a quick 'I need to go on some jobs'. He walked to the request board, acknowledged Nab and started to scan the board for a suitable job. Lucy gave up and sat at one of the bar stools near Mira and ordered a drink.
"Is my daddy back yet?" A young boy with straight black hair questioned Master Makarov though tear stained eyes. Lucy, Natsu and a few people, who were within earshot, heard the conversation that ended with Makarov getting punched in the face by the little boy and said boy running off in tears. Natsu slammed a request that he'd freshly plucked from the board back into it, cracking a part of it and stormed out of the guild hall.
"What happened to him all of the sudden?" Lucy questioned the white haired barmaid.
"A similar thing happen to Natsu," Mira said, turning her back to the blonde with a somber look on her face, "Maybe he sees himself in Romeo, the little boy from before. Natsu's father hasn't come back, oh, by that I mean his foster parent. He's a dragon," Mira turned and sweetly smiled.
Lucy promptly fell of her chair.
"A-a dragon?" Lucy exclaimed with widened eyes, "That's cool and crazy, maybe more of the latter, but still... A real dragon?" Mira looked extremely surprised.
"You're the first to actually believe that story straight off the bat." She proclaimed. Lucy looked at her, confused, she wondered if Mira was joking or if her sheltered life had made her naïve. "Anyway," Mira started again, "He was found in a forest by the dragon and he took him in and gave him the scarf he always wears. Natsu was taught cultures, words and his magic by him, but one day the dragon disappeared from him."
Lucy pictured a smaller Natsu holding onto his scaled scarf and crying alone in an empty clearing with trees and shrubbery surrounding it. "I see... And that's Igneel." Lucy said, saddened by the new information on the dragon slayer.
"Natsu dreams of finding Igneel again," Mira leant over the counter in a gossipy kind of way with her palms supporting her head, "Don't you think that's adorable?" The barmaid asked. Lucy laughed nervously but didn't answer the question. She felt a pang of sadness for Natsu. He wanted to find him so badly but he could never reach Igneel. "We mages of Fairy Tail all carry something. Wounds... suffering... And pain..." Mira cast a depressed look and looked completely defeated, as if the words caused her pain. She whispered out a sentence that Lucy could only make out as '...as well'.
Lucy thanked Mira for the drink and hurried out of the door after a long gone Natsu.
After Lucy had finally found Natsu at a carriage hire shop to take them to mount Hakobe. They boarded, Natsu slower than the rest and Lucy soon saw why. He had motion sickness, enough to immobilise him completely. Lucy and Natsu sat across from each other with Happy sitting with Lucy, who hugged him like a stuffed teddy bear.
"Why are you even here Lucy?" Natsu questioned through gritted teeth, trying desperately not to vomit all over the girl across from him.
There was a pregnant pause. Why did she come with him? She could've easily stayed and gossiped with Mira and the others. "I guess I just felt like it, does it bother you?"
"Ehh, whatever, just don't get in the way," He answered and, of course, Happy added his signature 'aye' at the end.
"Oh, that's right! After we find Macau I need to find somewhere to live." Lucy blurted out her thoughts. Happy raised his hand as he suggested that she live with them. "Maybe I'll take you up on that offer if I can't find somewhere to stay when we get back." Natsu screwed up his face but said nothing until the carriage stopped, when he yelled out that it stopped in delight.
"Sorry, but this is as far as I can take you in this carriage," The driver chattered out.
Natsu forcefully opened the carriage doors into a full blown blizzard.
"What's with this weather!?" Lucy yelled, "I know it's in the mountains, but should there really be a snow storm now?" Natsu hauled her and Happy out of the warmish carriage and Lucy face planted straight into the snow. "Cold!" She said as she got up as quickly as she could to snatch the blanket that that was sticking out of his backpack.
"You don't get the blanket. You should've worn something warmer." Says the one who dressed in and open vest, Lucy mused. Happy was currently perched on Natsu's shoulder with his tongue poked out. Lucy guessed that Natsu was naturally warmer than the average person and Happy was definitely mocking her because of his warm spot. Damn, that cat got on her nerves easily.
Lucy pulled out Natsu's blanket, and with a triumphant look, wrapped the surprisingly soft blanket around her and started to summon a stellar spirt, "Open, gate of the clock constellation! Horologium!" A giant grandfather clock that was taller than Natsu appeared from a glowing golden light with a face, arms and legs. She climbed in.
"I'm going to stay in here for a while, she says." Horologium repeated for Lucy.
"What did she even come here for?" Natsu questioned to himself. He sighed in exasperation, a small breath of fire puffed out, why did he have to suddenly look after a girl his age? He'd be better off with just Happy's company, at least he could escape from danger if needed.
"Speaking of that, what job did Macau come here for? She says." Horologium repeated in his monotonous voice.
Natsu looked at her incredulously, "You came here without knowing that? He needed to subdue the brutal monster, Balkan." He said with irritation creeping into his voice.
Lucy sat quietly shocked; she didn't think Macau's quest would be so scary. "I want to go home, she says."
"Go ahead, says I." Natsu said and began to stalk off further into the snowy landscape.
"Aye." Happy added from his warm spot atop Natsu's shoulder. Lucy, not wanting to be left behind by herself and Horologium, asked her spirt to follow Natsu and Happy.
"Macau!" Natsu shouted into the air, "Where you done in by that Balkan!?" Giant snowballs, three to be exact, tumbled down a white covered mountainside, all of which almost hit Natsu and if not for his spacial awareness on jobs and reflexes he would've been squashed in a heap of snow. Soon after, a giant monkey-thing coloured dark grey and white jumped down from the mountain almost unnoticed until Natsu suddenly backflipped out of the way of its attack.
It stared past Natsu before vaulting over him and ran straight to Horologium and the blonde haired girl that was inside. "A human woman!" The Balkan said. Natsu looked back just in time to see Horologium getting picked up and abducted with Lucy inside.
"So he can speak, huh?" Natsu mused.
"Natsu, save meeeeeee! She says." Happy jumped off Natsu's shoulder and began to track the Balkan from the sky.
Natsu started to follow Happy to the Balkan. "Tch, I knew something would happen to her," He muttered under his breath, "I should've left her in Magnolia."