The guild was emptier than Natsu had thought it would be. He knew the majority of his guild mates would still be asleep at seven in the morning. But honestly. He was expecting at least a handful of people to actually be in the guild.
Like Nab. Where was he? The guy never moved from his position in front of the request board. And Mirajane made a point of arriving before anyone else in the guild, except for the master.
Makarov!
'Gramps should be around here somewhere,' Natsu thought.
The fire mage headed upstairs to the old man's office, one of the only times he was allowed on the second floor of the building. Gramps and Mirajane kept a very close eye on him since the Galuna Island incident in which he snuck up to the second floor, really he had Happy take the job request from the board, and gone off on an unauthorized S-class job.
He took one last look at the hall that as unnaturally empty before he knocked on the master's door.
The third guild master yelled for him to come in if he must, and Natsu opened the door bemoaning the fact that his dramatic return from the dead was spoiled because nobody was there.
xxxNatsuErzaxxx
Makarov Drayer rubbed his eyes tiredly, mentally cursing paperwork. He had been up all night replying to more complaints from the wizard council about his mages causing property damage to some monument or another that he had never heard of. Sometimes the old wizard swore that the members of his guild were trying to pull off levels of destruction that only Natsu had been capable of for no reason other than to cause him grief.
He glared at the piece of paper in his hands. Maybe if he wished hard enough, this particular problem, something about a bridge that Romeo (which of his mages was daft enough to take a young boy with no control over his destructive magic on a job with them) had razed to the ground, and every other bit of paperwork that had prevented him from sleeping would go find someone else to bother. Someone who actually cared.
Makarov groaned and resisted the urge to thread his hands through his hair. He if that happened he would end up pulling out hair, and he didn't have much left.
He relieved his frustration by dreaming about using his giant form to crush the man stupid enough to create paperwork that had to be filled out and filed for everything. The paperwork might still be there, but at least he would get some satisfaction. If he had to suffer, so did the originator of paperwork.
The guild master was just finishing putting his signature on the last of the forms to pay for the damage his guild caused, his least favorite but most popular form, when a knock sounded on his door.
He stopped himself from putting his enlarged fist through the door. If he was being interrupted this early in the morning it must be important. He granted whoever it was permission to enter as he placed the huge stack of papers in the folder that would transfer them over to the wizard council to be filed properly.
"Alright, brat. What do you wa. . ." Makarov trailed off.
He blinked once. Twice. Thrice. He rubbed his eye again, convinced that what he was seeing was caused by an overactive imagination, over working, and sleep depravity, because there was just no way that the spiky pink haired dragon slayer who had died seven weeks ago was standing in his doorway.
It just was not possible.
"Hey Gramps. Where is everybody? The guild is silent as the grave. There was nobody here when I came in. Even Mira's gone. Just where did they all go?" Natsu rambled.
THUMP!
Natsu stopped talking mid question when he finally noticed that the steadily paling master had fainted.
Well, he thought as he sat down to wait, 'I got to surprise one person. How cool is it that it's the old man?'
xxxNatsuErzaxxx
Master Makarov had come around half an hour later to realize that it was not his imagination and that his favorite troublemaker was really alive and sitting here in his office. He listened astounded to Natsu's tale. He found it hard to believe, but accepted it as the truth because it was Natsu telling the story, and the boy was the absolute worst liar he had ever met.
"Well, my boy, I'm glad to have you back. And I'm sure everyone else will feel the same. The guild has been lifeless since you died," he said. "Your teammates took it particularly hard, especially Erza. But I'm sure you already knew that."
The pinkette in front of him nodded, eyes downcast. Of course he knew his stunt would hurt his friends, and from what he had been told earlier, it sounds like he saw exactly how much.
"I think Gildarts fared the worst," he continued. Natsu's head shot up to look at him in surprise. Sure, he had been close to Gildarts since he had first joined. He challenged him to a fight every time he returned, but he hadn't seen how his death had affected him. He had only seen his funeral and Erza.
"Right," Natsu leapt to his feet, "then I'll go see him now and. . ."
The dragon slayer's exit was barred by Gramps's hand.
"What are you doing, old man? I need to go see Gildarts. Get out of the way."
"Just a minute now, Natsu. There are still some things we need to talk about."
Natsu eyed the guild master and the appendage blocking his path. He reluctantly sat back down knowing from previous experience that any attempt to go against the master's wishes would earn him an oversized fist to the head.
xxxNatsuErzaxxx
The dragon slayer eyed the door he stood outside of warily, as if it would bite off his wrist if he knocked. He couldn't understand why he was hesitating. He had been to Gildarts's home many times, and it's not like he was brining bad news. Actually, his being alive was damn good news in his opinion. Gildarts would be overjoyed to know that he wasn't really dead.
So why was Natsu scared to knock on the man's door?
Maybe he could wait until Gildarts left and then sneak in and wait for the older man's return. Then he would be able to shock two people in one day and avoid confrontation with the wizard that needed to keep constant control of his magic or hit would destroy anything he touched.
Natsu knew he was afraid that Gildarts magic would lash out at him if he surprised the man, so he supposed he had to choose the lesser of two evils. Appearing on his doorstep was much less surprising than coming home to find someone you believed to be dead sitting in your house.
The pinkette quickly rapped on the door before he could change his mind for the sixty somethingth time, pulling it back so fast that it looked like he had been scalded.
There was a thunk from within, and then the sound of muffled footsteps reached his ears.
'Alright. Deep breaths, Natsu. You can do this. Just explain it like you did with Gramps.' He thought.
Gildarts Clive opened his door. Natsu smiled up nervously at the man who towered over him.
Before he could open his mouth to explain, Gildarts had punched him in the face.
xxxNatsuErzaxxx
Natsu groaned. "Hey, what's the big idea Gildarts!" his voiced squeaked.
The dragon slayer was having a mini panic attack. Just what had Gildarts done to him? His voice had never squeaked before in his life.
"What did you do to me? Fix me!" He shook his fist up at the taller man. What a minute. He knew that Gildarts was tall, but since when had he only come up to the top of his boots?
Gildarts was looking a little pale. Afraid that he was going to faint like Gramps had, Natsu looked around frantically for something to help his friend, only to nearly give himself a heart attack.
Brawling behind was a swarm of mini Natsu clones. Just what the hell had Gildarts done to him? Forget fainting, the pinkette was going to beat the S-class mage unconscious.
The horde of mini Natsus leapt at Gildarts, their fists alight with flames screaming Fire Dragon's Iron Fist.
xxxNatsuErzaxxx
Natsu had barely finished telling his story when Gildarts threw himself at him. Then he was left gasping for breath because the older man was trying to crush his bones without the use of magic.
"I'm so glad you're not dead," the orange haired man had muttered repeatedly.
"Me too, Gildarts. No way, I couldn't kick the bucket before I beat Erza!"
Gildarts laughed uproariously and strengthened his hold on the pink haired teen.
xxxNatsuErzaxxx
Natsu was irritated. He had spent the past two hours searching for his constant companion. How hard could it be to find a talking, flying blue cat?
The answer: ridiculously difficult.
He hadn't seen Happy at the guild, and he wasn't out his house during the vision, so Natsu reasoned the next logical place for his best friend to stay was at Lucy's place. He peeked through the girl's window, hoping in to see Happy digging into a plate of fish the blonde always had for him, but he wasn't there either.
And if he wasn't at his place, the guild, or Lucy's apartment, the dragon slayer had no clue where his furry friend could be.
The pinkette trudged through the forest. Had Happy taken his death so hard that he had left Fairy Tail permanently? But where would he go if he did that? Fairy Tail was Happy's home. He had found his egg, and together, Natsu and Lisanna had built a house to raise him in.
That's it! How could Natsu have forgotten the hut he and Lisanna had made when she first decided they were going to be Happy's parents? Happy must have returned there.
Natsu grinned, whirling around and dashing towards the hills where he would find the make shift house. There was no doubt in his mind that he would find Happy there.
"HAPPY? ARE YOU THERE, BUD? COME ON OUT, WILL YA!" Natsu hollered.
"NATSU!" Happy barreled out of the one room house and straight into the dragon slayer's outstretched and waiting arms. "I KNEW IT! I knew you couldn't be dead. What took you so long, Natsu?"
"Just so magical exhaustion and the bad luck of being stranded god knows where. Wait till you see this new move I made. It is so cool. Way cooler than anything that stripper is capable of." Natsu continued to tell Happy everything that had happened to him, gloating all about his new spell which gave him his own fiery dragon's wings and how they could now fly together.
The two fell right back into their easy companionship that came from three years of always being together, teasing each other and trading insults as if the last seven weeks had never happened. To Happy, it certainly seemed that way, now that Natsu was back.