Chapter Nine: Rebellion
"Infra, Nero, Ladin!" I cried, leaping up to them.
"Oi, Lucy, not so loud!" hissed Nero, "This place isn't friendly, if you haven't noticed already!"
"Oh," I said as realisation dawned on me and I immediately felt stupid for yelling so loud. Then, in a whisper, I said, "How did you get my key?"
"Some guys gave it to us," said Infra, "We came to the guild and two guys saw us outside. They said this would be useful to us and gave us the key. Then we just sneaked in without anyone noticing and here we are!"
"What did the guys look like?" asked Retina, appearing at my side.
"One was a punk rocker and the other was a silver-haired, tongue-sticking-out weirdo," said Infra, "And… who are you?"
Retina started to explain but I cut in, "Too long to explain. Basically, she's a well-known friend."
"Oh, OK," shrugged Ladin, taking my word for it, "So we should really be going."
"Yeah," nodded Retina, "Reiki's always watching; we have to move as quickly as we can. Follow me." She turned and ran towards a blank wall a couple of doors down. She held her hand over it, muttering a few incoherent words. A thin outline of a rectangular door appeared and gradually became solid, allowing us to pass through into a mostly lit room. It had a wooden floor with floor-to-ceiling wooden beams and wide windows.
"Reiki showed me how to do that when I first joined," said Retina, running ahead, "This guild is full of secret doors that can lead anywhere. Now we're upstairs without even having to take any stairs!" She suddenly stopped, "Ow."
"What's wrong?" asked Ladin.
She reached into her boot and pulled out a silver key, "Oh."
"What is that?" I asked, looking at the key.
"Well, it's the key to your cell," said Retina.
"Why didn't you use it back there?" cried Natsu.
"I forgot I had it," replied Retina.
"NANI?" we all shouted.
"Stop shouting!" said Mira, "At this rate, anyone will know where we are—"
Suddenly, the floor broke, splinters of wood flying everywhere in front of us and a dark figure jumped out which I saw to be Reiki, "RAVEN HAWK!"
He landed solidly on the other side of the hole, breathing heavily and looking furious, "You traitor!" he shouted at Retina, "I knew it was a mistake to show you where all those secret doors were!" He closed his eyes to be immune to her magic, "Just now I realise what a mistake it was to implant eye magic in you." He muttered words as a green magic circle started to appear.
Erza reacted and quickly used her Requip magic to throw swords at him in the blink of an eye, causing him to jump away and break his chant. The green circle disappeared.
"Keep attacking him with long distance attacks!" said Erza, summoning sword after sword and hurling them all at him, "Don't let him summon that circle!"
"Loke," I said to him since he was already out anyway. I got my whip out to fight alongside him.
"Yeah," said Loke, "Regulus!" He tossed a few gold spheres at Reiki who dodged them all neatly, landing beside a beam, ducking behind it to avoid Erza's swords.
Suddenly, Reiki summoned his magic circle and a series of shadows appeared.
"Shadows?" I said in surprise as they darted towards us.
"Watch out, they can be dangerous!" said Nero, ducking as one zoomed past his head.
The shadows took place before each person and slowly moulded into a shape.
The shadow before me slowly grew legs and arms, the top of it slowly taking the shape of a ponytail.
"It's me," I realised as the shadow beside it grew to look like Loke. The shadows were completely black with no features but solid, like black mannequins except it had our hairstyles and body outlines.
"What is this?" said Erza as her shadow copy took swords out of a black magic circle and got into a swordfight with her, "These are the exact same copies of us."
"Is it an illusion, Erza?" asked Gray, avoiding his shadow's ice blade as it came whistling past his head. I avoided a crack of a whip as my shadow attacked me and counter-attacked back but the shadow skipped aside.
"No," said Erza, clashing swords and changing her armour, "I can't sense anything!"
"Shouldn't this take up a lot of magic power?" asked Mira, dodging her shadow's attacks, "Satan Soul!" At the same time, her shadow transformed into a solid outline of Mira's Satan Soul form.
"It should," said Retina, expertly catching the shadow's sword as it zoomed past her and hurling it back, "Reiki's 'Shadow Storm' should take up lots of magic power. But he has a huge amount of magic so I can't really say how much it actually affects him."
I dodged another whip attack but landed accidentally on my sprained ankle. It shot a huge pain up my whole body and I cried out in pain as I fell down, clutching at my ankle. The shadow immediately took advantage of this and raised her whip. I closed my eyes and waited for the blow but it never came.
I opened my eyes and saw someone had protected me.
"I owe this to you, don't I?" said Gray standing in front of me, a long cut set diagonally on his chest. Some drops of blood dripped from the wound.
"Gray!" I said in shock as I crawled over to where he was. I looked around for his shadow and saw it standing beside the shadow-me. My shadow lowered her whip and I somehow heard a message in my head in my own voice but at the same time, it wasn't mine, Gomenasai… what you have is rare. Don't lose it.
The Gray shadow seemed to be saying something to Gray as well before both turning to the rest of the shadows. One by one, they stopped fighting and seemed to be apologising to their human forms before fading away. All except Retina's who kept fighting.
Reiki seemed shocked for a moment as the shadows stopped fighting, "N-Nani?" But he became more confident as he spied Retina still fighting. He laughed and said, "Even her shadow is all for herself! Like when you abandoned your own guardian in the street for your own safety, right, Retina?"
"Liar!" yelled Natsu, "She regrets it every day you shithead!"
Retina suddenly stopped moving so fluently, allowing her shadow to knock her down, a sword pointed at her throat. When I looked at Retina, her eyes were wide and scared. She must have remembered Freya dying and feeling guilty for it because of Reiki. All of us started to run to help her but a glow suddenly interrupted us.
We all looked over to Reiki who was struggling to keep his own magic circle closed, "N-Nani?"
The green circle burst wide open and another shadow came into view. She was taller than the others and her dark wavy hair bounced about as she moved. A few curls framed her face and she was graceful, stopping beside Retina's shadow.
Retina's shadow immediately stopped fighting and looked up at the taller figure. They seemed to be talking. Retina's eyes practically burst out of her head as she looked at the taller shadow.
What's wrong with her? I thought.
Retina's shadow seemed tame after talking with taller shadow. She dropped her weapon and seemed to apologise to Retina before both shadows disappeared.
"I-Impossible," said Reiki, moving his hand as if trying to summon them again but nothing appeared. After a few failed attempts, he glared at us; specifically Retina who was defenceless since she was so scared looking for some reason, "At least the death of one of you will be worth it!" He lunged towards Retina who didn't move, paralysed to the spot.
"Watch out!" I yelled at her but she didn't seem to hear, trying to run to her instead.
"Lucy, don't move!" cried Mira.
Before I could ask why, I looked over to Reiki who looked surprised. At the last second, he kicked at something between him and Retina, pushing off and doing a somersault, landing solidly back on the ground.
"How—?" I began to say when a Rune wall appeared in front of Retina, stretching across the whole width of the room so it appeared in front of us and became a barrier between us and Reiki.
"Runes?" I thought, thinking for a split second maybe Freed had somehow appeared but then I remembered someone else knew how to do Runes.
"You should call us before you get in a head on battle with the Master of a Dark Guild, you know," said a familiar voice.
Two figures jumped down from one of the beams in the room. One landed on our side and the other on Reiki's.
"Aston!" I cried, looking at the figure on our side, before trying to look past him to the other person on the other side of the Runes, "Then, he is…"
"Araluen!" bellowed Reiki, "What's the meaning of this, huh? You're choosing that traitor over your family?"
"That traitor is your son's friend," replied Araluen, his tongue not sticking out for once. He added in a quieter voice, "One of the best friends he had."
"One of the only friends you've had," snorted Reiki sarcastically before adding, "So for that traitor who was planning to murder you, your only other friend and your whole home, you would fight me, your father who brought you into this world by the way?"
"This isn't a home," said Araluen, "And you're not a father." He resumed a fighting position and barked at the rest of us, "Go! Leave my father to me!"
"Are you kidding me; no!" yelled Erza, "It's suicide!"
"Maybe so but it keeps you all safe," said Araluen.
"Over my dead body!" shouted Natsu, running at the wall. He thunked against it and more symbols appeared: No mages may pass this wall.
"I made that rule just then," said Aston, "We have to go now!"
Hesitantly, Erza spoke up and said in a quiet voice, "We have to go."
Retina got up shakily and seemed to temporarily recover from whatever shocked her, "We do have to go."
We looked between Araluen and the escape door before finally turning towards the door. Gray and Mira helped me up since I could barely walk. Aston came over and put his hand over my boot, "Hold still." A light pulsed out and my ankle surprisingly became better. I turned around to Loke, "You can go back to the Spirit World now, Loke."
"OK," said Loke, slowly fading away. I turned back around and saw Aston healing Gray's cut.
"Sorry, I don't have much magic power left," he said, "The healing won't be as good as it can." The bleeding stopped and skin grew back together but it left a dark scar there in its place.
"Yeah, it's OK," said Gray, looking over to Araluen, "But I don't feel too good about leaving him behind…"
"Araluen has a great sense of pride," said Aston, "He couldn't bear for anyone to be hurt because of father. He's really stubborn and a great leader. And, he's the only one here who has a chance at beating him."
"Why?" I asked as we made a run for it. Reiki yelled something at us but we ignored him, obviously.
"That Lost Magic that prevents other magic from being used…" said Aston, "As well as knowing it himself from having it implanted in him, Araluen even knows how to undo it."
"Undo it?" I said, "How?"
"I don't know," said Aston, "He's the only one who knows how. Reiki taught him everything he knows so it's an even match between them. It's dangerous for anyone else to be near when they're practising, let alone having a death match."
We ran through the door, back into the one where the cells were.
"The only way out in the front, main door," said Retina, sounding as if she were cursing.
Suddenly, before we could reach the door leading to the front of the guild, it smashed open and members of Demon Crosses burst in. I never realised there were so many members.
Erza yelled above the uproar, "Mira and I will stay behind! You all go ahead!"
"We will, too!" shouted Nero, pointing to himself and Ladin, "Infra, you get out!"
"Like hell!" shouted Infra.
"Go!" shouted Nero.
Infra scowled but ran after us as we pushed through the crowd to the open door. The minute we stumbled through, we saw Ochre.
"Hello, Fairy Tail mages and co and rebellions," he said pleasantly to us, raising his sceptre, "I have to let you know I was made Reiki's assistant for a reason other than my Lost Magic. I implanted everything I ever copied into myself."
"Nani?" I said, "Everything?" I remembered Retina's words, we can have as many people's abilities in us as possible without any harm and all the bottles on that large shelf in that heavily guarded room. Just how many abilities did this old man have?
"Yeah," said Ochre, looking up.
"Don't look in his eyes!" said Retina just in time. We all ducked our heads as Ochre released attack after attack from his sceptre at us and tried to force us to look up.
"This is ridiculous; how do we fight like this?" said Gray, dodging a blue bolt of magic.
"Use your other senses," said Retina, closing her eyes and ducking instinctively as a beam shot past her head.
"I've never relied on my other senses!" I said, trying to not look at Ochre's face.
Just as I couldn't take it anymore, I looked up but something blocked my view. A huge, what seemed like a hand, came through the floor, bringing up wooden splinters and smashing Ochre to the ceiling, breaking through that as well. Some wooden chips cut my hands but I didn't care. I only knew one person who could do that.
Sure enough, a small figure jumped through the hole in the floor after the hand shrunk. The unconscious figure of Ochre fell down and smashed onto the floor, leaving a dent most probably.
All the others had opened their eyes and smiled at the sight or having a full blown grin in Natsu's case.
Standing there was our guild Master!
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So… finally finished this chapter! I spent ages trying to think up a decent fighting style for Reiki. I don't know what's with me and mistreating fathers lately~ I insist this is a coincidence though. xD
Please review~