A lime is the name given to a very large number of different species and sub species within the Citrus genus. They are grown all over the world and they are beloved for their unique flavor and scent. Like all plants in the citrus genus, they are readily cross bred with other citrus trees. Yum.
Lucy left for the guild early the next day, terrified that Happy and Natsu would arrive before her and tell the entire gang just what she and Natsu had been doing the day before.
She just didn't know what had gotten into her. Whenever she saw Natsu, all rational thought and logic fled her mind and all she could think about was stripping off his clothes and kissing him senseless.
Well, kissing was probably the PG rated term for what she wanted to do with him.
It was early enough that the guild was fairly empty, with only Kinana at the bar, making coffee in preparation for the addicts who would surely come in soon. Lucy waved, and went straight to the mission bard.
"Any news about the bandit that Natsu and I were trying to take down?"
"No," Kinana said, and then looked thoughtfully in the distance. "Although the city of Hargean did send you a thank you gift of a thousand jewels for chasing the bandit out of their city." She reached under the counter to pull out a slender envelope, which she handed to Lucy.
"A thousand…? Ugh." Hargean's city council had been under no obligation to send them anything, since she and Natsu had completely flubbed up the mission, but apparently their target had fled the city for good, now that he knew there were legal guilds on his tail.
"Well, it's lunch money at least," Kinana said, and Lucy sighed. She was right, of course. Always look on the bright side of things.
"I'm going to grab a mission that we can do in a day, then," Lucy said, and stepped over to the mission board. "Hopefully we'll hear some news by tomorrow."
She grabbed the first mission that looked easy and paid more than a few thousand jewels. The University of Bristlecone wanted a couple of mages that could do a Unison Raid. Perfect, Lucy said to herself, stuffing the paper into her purse.
She fled the guild, determined to head off Natsu and Happy before they hit the guild and started telling everyone about the heavy make out session from last night.
Luckily, she found them about where she'd expected they'd be, walking in from their home just outside the city proper. At least, she found Natsu. Happy wasn't with him. Uh oh…
"Good morning!" she said cheerfully, determined not to talk about last night's heavy petting.
"Morning Lucy!" Natsu said with his own giant grin, happy to play along – or not, considering this was his natural state.
"Where's Happy?"
"He said he's not feeling too well," Natsu said, looking slightly puzzled. "That his eyes were still burning and his tummy hurt from laughing so hard. That, and he thought we needed some 'alone time' whatever that means."
Traitorous cat, Lucy thought unkindly.
"Fine. I found a mission that's really just for us two anyway. Still no word on pervy bandit, but this is a day job." She handed him the mission flyer.
"The university? Isn't that up in Bristlecone?" Natsu suddenly greened. "I don't want to take a train ride," he whined.
Lucy snatched the paper back. "It's a short ride. And the pay is definitely worth the train ticket."
"But Lucy~" he pleaded.
"Hush," she said, and grabbed his hand. The contact sent a fierce jolt up electricity straight up her arm and into her lower bits, but she ignored that as determinately as she did his complaints about the required transportation.
The train ride ended up as usual for them. By now, the train station had learned to give the Fairy Tail dragon slayers a car to themselves, lest other passengers be accidentally puked upon. So Natsu sprawled across a whole seat row, moaning in agony, while he lay his head on Lucy's lap and she stroked his hair, trying to calm him.
His face being on her lap, inches from her pelvis, had never bothered her this much before. Even though Natsu was ill, she couldn't help but be massively turned on by their position. Stupid aphrodisiac.
She found her hands that had been stroking his hair wandering down his neck, along his shirt. She felt the muscles, firm and hard, underneath it. Slowly, her hand crept down his chest, exploring the contours of his amazing torso.
Sometime during her petting, Natsu dozed off fitfully and began to half snore, half snort in that adorable way of his.
Emboldened, she slipped her hand lower, lightly grazing his belly button. She traced her fingers along the seam of his pants, then dared to dip just a little lower…. Just a little more…
Natsu was hard.
She was so startled by this discovery that her first instinct was to shove him off her lap and dump him onto the floor. As it was, she lifted her hand up immediately. Natsu remained dozing and oblivious.
Well, well, well. The flame-brained dragon slayer was totally capable of an erection. Lucy would be impressed if she wasn't so horribly embarrassed by her own actions.
She studied his face. The blue streaks of his nausea were gone in his sleep; the motion sickness that dragon slayers experienced was more psychological than it was physical. Being moved by living beings didn't bother them, only inanimate objects. Like trains… or moving cities.
Swallowing back her embarrassment, she let curiosity take over. She gave a quick glance around the train car to verify that they were truly, really alone, and gently slipped her wandering hand down the waistband of his boxers.
He was blazing hot underneath his clothing, and large enough apparently that her fingers immediately encountered the object of their quest. She bit back a gasp at the unexpected softness of him. Smooth and fleshy and yet so firm as well.
Natsu snorted in his sleep and she froze, but he turned his head to the side and mumbled something about miniskirts. Lucy made a mental note to toss out all the pairs of pants she owned.
She lifted the waistband of his boxers to grant her hand more access, but she was still constrained by his actual pants. She dared not risk unbuttoning him or taking off his belt, so she had to squeeze her hand down what little room his erection left her, until she cupped his entire penis in her hand.
He seemed to twitch and pulse beneath her. His face jaw was slack as he slept, although he seemed to wince when she gave an experimental squeeze.
She ought to stop this right now, she told herself. She had no right to be touching him intimately on a freakin' train. But the aphrodisiac potion was firmly in control, and Lucy could not stop herself from rubbing the palm of her hand up and down the length of him just once.
The look on his face was priceless. He looked almost… like he was in pain, but it was something quite different. She rubbed again.
All of a sudden his expression scrunched up, and to Lucy's horror she felt a spurt of hot liquid on her wrist. She clapped her free left hand over her mouth, trying desperately not to scream. Natsu, completely oblivious to his unintentional emission (it wasn't quite nocturnal since it was broad daylight outside), now had a grin on his face.
Yuck yuck yuck!
Carefully, Lucy scooped up as much of the mess as she could in her one hand, and then slipped out from under Natsu's head, leaving him snoring blissfully on the train seat. She fled to the bathroom and washed her hands of the sticky semen.
She washed them five times all together, not quite able to scrub away the guilt from molesting Natsu when he was at his most vulnerable.
"Wow, I feel really refreshed today!" Natsu said cheerfully, stepping gratefully onto solid land again.
Lucy said nothing. There was no way on Earthland she was going to tell him that his "refreshment" was probably a side effect of accidental sexual release.
"So where are we going?" They had left the train station and they were walking along one of the town's sidewalks. Lucy seemed to know where they were headed.
"The university's main campus," Lucy said, and pulled out the mission brochure. "High Energy Magic building. They do a lot of magical research and they need mages capable of doing a Unison Raid for a particular experiment."
"We've done a Unison Raid together?" Natsu's brows furrowed in concentration, clearly trying to remember such a momentous occasion.
"Well, I've done it with quite a few different people," Lucy said, "and you're certainly strong enough to do it if you really tried." She put her hands on her hips. "I'm sure you could combine attacks with Aries or Leo, for example, since their zodiac element is fire."
"Aries is fire? But her attacks are wool!"
Lucy shrugged. She didn't completely understand it either, but she always liked her zodiac's elements to their underlying personalities more than their actual spells and abilities. "Aquarius is technically an air sign, even though she's the Water Bearer. So her elements are both water and air. I guess Aries is both fire and wool."
"Steel wool can cause sparks," Natsu mused, thinking. "I'll have to remember that."
"Let's go to the High Energy Magic building and get some cash."
The university occupied much of the town of Bristlecone, and was a lot larger than Lucy had anticipated. They'd had to walk nearly a mile down a shady, park-like quadrangle that was lined with ancient buildings before they found the street where the High Energy Magic building was located. The building itself was tall but not thin – about ten stories high, she decided, but its width gave it a feeling of squatness. There was also something disorienting about the windows, which didn't seem to follow any kind of pattern. It was completely and utterly random.
Lucy wasn't quite nervous as they walked in the giant double doors, but she was feeling a mix of dread and curiosity, the same mix she got any time she walked into someplace completely unknown. The inside of the building was cool and cavernous.
"Mages: Please sign in here," said a faded yellow sign with a large arrow, pointing toward an office with a front facing window that could slide open. The window was patterned to prevent them from seeing in, but there appeared to be a human shaped blob behind it.
Lucy and Natsu stepped up to it nervously and signed their names. The window opened and the human shaped blob resolved into a pretty young lady with rainbow colored hair and glittery earrings.
"Hello! Are you here for an experiment?"
"Yes," Lucy and Natsu said together. She handed the girl the mission brochure.
"Oh excellent, we haven't had anyone take us up on this one yet." The girl nodded. "Let me page Dr. Allstone and see if he's available."
She touched a button on a lacrima device, and a few moments later a tinny voice answered with, "Lacrima Magic, Dr. Allstone's Office."
"Is there an experiment slot open today? We have a couple of mages here for the Unison Raid experiment."
"Oh that's great!" the disembodied voice on the other end of the lacrima communicator said. "And yes, we're clear until late this afternoon when we're having a staff meeting. I'll tell Dr. Allstone. Send them on up."
The rainbow haired girl was scribbling on a post it note before the conversation was even over.
"He's on the 7th floor," she said, and handed them the post it note. "Room 118. Jennie will get you all signed in."
They headed to the elevator, looking around the relatively sterile and boring looking academic building.
"They don't have the same style as the magic council," Lucy commented.
The university had been devoted strictly to academic subjects until the whole incident with Jellal and the Tower of Paradise, when the magic council had finally dissolved its research division. The university had offered to open up a magic school, and the High Energy Magic building had been born. They had made great strides in lacrima based technology, but in many ways they were still in the pocket of the Council's magical army.
The duo reached the office. Lucy felt that the palpable, totally one-sided sexual tension from before had faded somewhat. This building was the un-sexiest place she'd ever been in, aside from perhaps her father's mansion.
Lucy knocked politely. The door opened almost immediately, and she saw the source of the voice on the other end of the lacrima communicator, another young lady, this one also pretty but fairly plump and with normal red-brown hair.
"Hi, I'm Susan," she said, and extended her hand politely to shake with both Lucy and Natsu in turn. "Thank you for coming out today." She nodded at them. "I've actually heard of both of you. We tend to keep our eyes on very powerful mages, and I'm glad to see you are willing to participate in our study."
"Do you want to see us do a Unison Raid together?" Natsu asked, his face carefully blank.
Susan waved her hand dismissively. "No, that was really just an indication of the power level and control we were looking for. So the mission sheet is a tad misleading. We tend to do that a lot around here. Just asking for 'strong' mages gets us rookies."
Lucy watched as Natsu let out an unconscious sigh of relief. Silly boy. She knew that, should the occasion arise, his magic would be completely compatible with hers. And because she had done the Unison Raid so many times, she knew exactly how to time it and to initiate it. It really wasn't so hard. If you thought of your magic as an extra arm, it was just a matter of reaching out and grabbing the other person's extra arm… and then holding hands together.
"All right, so you'll need to fill out these forms…"
Sometime later, after all the paperwork, Natsu and Lucy found themselves in what appeared to be a wrestling ring. Susan and a tall, thin middle aged man in a white research coat were standing off to the side. Wires lined the ring, closely spaced. The floor was firm but springy.
"This arena measures the magical discharge from people," the thin man said. "Your base magical aura is usually very low, because unless you are actively using magic, you tend not to emit anything. We're trying to measure how much very strong mages emit in battle."
Lucy and Natsu glanced at each other.
"You mean we have to fight?" she said, concerned. Yet another thing not mentioned on the mission sheet.
"Not seriously," he said, waving his hand dismissively. "Just play a bit."
That was not something Fairy Tail mages did. Even play fights were serious.
"All right," Natsu said, punching one fist into the other palm. "I'm all fired up!"
"In that case," Lucy said, and brandished her key ring, "let's play hard. Open the gate of the Lion! Leo!"
Within seconds her magic circle opened, and the strongest of her celestial spirits appeared.
"What is it, Lucy?" Loke asked, looking around his surroundings in interest. "I don't see any enemies."
Lucy pointed to Natsu.
"He made me cry," she said truthfully. It was out of sexual frustration and not his normal stupidity, but she most definitely did cry because of him.
That was all the motivation that Loke needed to switch to a hard battle stance.
"Natsu," Loke growled, the undertones of a lion's roar coming through his voice.
"Lucy," Natsu whined. "You didn't say I made you cry before!"
"Get him," was all she said, stepping back to the side of the ring.
Dr. Allstone was furiously scribbling notes while Susan fiddled with little dials at what must have been a control panel.
Lucy watched calmly as Loke threw a punch at Natsu, who nimbly ducked. The fight proceeded more or less like she had expected, with Leo on the warpath and Natsu trying not to get hit while also trying to do some hitting of his own. Eventually, Natsu managed to land a solid right hook on Loke, but Loke used the opportunity for a counter punch that sent Natsu flying into the air.
"Tea, mistress?"
Lucy had summoned Virgo, who had assessed the situation in her calm manner and assumed the fight between the boys to be of no consequence. She handed Lucy a hot cup of tea and a cookie.
"Thank you."
Lucy sipped her tea and munched the treat absently while she and Virgo watched the fight.
"Fire Dragon's Breath!"
"Regulus!"
The two young men approached each other, both fists blazing.
"You have no right to touch my Lucy!"
"Oh yeah? Well, I've touched and kissed her breasts!"
They collided in a giant blaze, fire meeting light magic. The resulting explosion caused a shock wave of heat and magic that blew Lucy and Virgo's hair away from their faces.
At the end of the blast, both Natsu and Loke were padded out flat on the ground. Loke's avatar dissolved into a gentle flow of light motes before he disappeared, leaving Natsu alone.
"You seem to have won, princess."
Lucy hurriedly set her tea down on the tea tray and went to Natsu, who was knocked out cold. She could imagine a series of little flying Exceeds over his head.
"Splendid, splendid," Dr. Allstone said, looking at readouts from the lacrima control panel. "Natsu's maximum power output was significantly higher than yours, Miss Lucy, but your overall magic output was much higher. I'd assume you have much better control."
Lucy nodded; that was an accurate description of their respective abilities.
"It appears you're also regenerating your magic at a much higher rate." He frowned. "You're the first Celestial Mage and he's the first Dragon Slayer we've had in any of our experiments, so this is quite fascinating." He pulled on his chin, studying the numbers. "Well, we'll need some time to analyze the results fully. Your part is done, and we thank you for your contribution to lacrima science."
Lucy ended up having to ask Virgo to help haul Natsu away from the field. Susan had given her their rather generous pay, and confirmed that there was reservations at a nearby hotel for them to spend the night.
She and Virgo left the university campus, the latter with an unconscious Natsu slung unceremoniously over her shoulder. Lucy would have felt bad about it, except that Virgo was one of her strongest avatars and certainly had some of the highest stamina.
"Why is it that you're almost as strong as Leo?" Lucy mused aloud, not really directing the question at Virgo, but perhaps hoping for an answer nonetheless.
"Because you believe I am," Virgo said. Lucy stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and stared at her. She was met with Virgo's fathomless eyes.
"Is it really so simple?"
Virgo nodded, and subtly adjusted Natsu's form in her grip. "All Celestial Spirits reflect the will of the person with whom they hold a pact. The stronger the will, the strong the bond between the spirit and the key holder." Virgo's gaze seemed to be boring straight through Lucy. "If you mistreat your spirits, or believe that they are weak, then they will be weak."
"So… you get stronger, the more I believe in you?"
"That is correct. Leo is the strongest of us not only because he is our leader, but because you believe him to be the strongest."
A terrible thought was seizing Lucy, and she felt her heart thudding in her chest. "So… I'm the one that is holding you back? My avatars who aren't as strong… it's because I don't believe in them enough?"
Virgo shook her head in vigorous denial. "No, Princess. An avatar has a base strength, but we also reflect the will of the key holder. The more we are used, the stronger we become. The more time we spend together, the greater our bond will grow."
"I wish I could summon all of you all the time, then," Lucy said, and resumed walking. "But that would be selfish. You have your own lives in the Celestial Realm."
Virgo said nothing as they continued down the road, until Natsu stirred.
"Ugh, I'll get you Loke~" he muttered, then glanced down to see that he was being carried by the Maiden of the Zodiac.
A familiar look of nausea immediately came over his face.
"Virgo isn't a vehicle!" Lucy shrieked at him. "Argh! Put him down, I guess."
Standing on his own two legs, although a bit wobbly, Natsu immediately looked better.
"Did I win at least?" he said, finally standing up straight and trying to pop a kink out of his neck.
"Nope," Lucy said, and suddenly she was really proud of herself. "Loke and you punched each other out. Since I was the last one standing, I won." She gave him a big smirk full of Fairy Tail pride.
"No way! If we both punched each other out it was totally a draw!"
"That's not what the professor and Susan concluded," Lucy sang. Mavis, he was so cute when he was frustrated!
"Fight me again!"
"No," Lucy said simply.
"C'mon Lucy, summon Gemini or that horse guy. Someone weak! I want to beat them!"
Lucy shook her head. "All of my avatars could beat you in a fight."
If the strength of the Celestial spirits really was dependent on her will, the least she could do was believe in their strength.
"Lucy!" Natsu wailed, and then suddenly stilled. His nose quivered in the air, as if he was a bunny rabbit.
"What is it, Natsu?"
The dragon slayer's exquisitely sensitive nose twitched again.
"I think I smell our bandit from before," he said, and pointed down the road. "In fact, I'm sure it's him."
Sorry for dropping off the face of the Earth! I graduated, quit my job, went on a cruise, and got hired for a new job... all in the space of a crazy month and a half. I've also been doing a lot of beta work for folks ^_^ So a ~wave~ to newserkrzz and woolums!
There is one more nice fat chapter planned for this. I promise not to take nearly as long this time.