Guys, I've got to explain a little bit for future reference. I'm writing this story with help from TheLooseCannon. The characters Erika, Trace, and Krage are her babies. Not mine. Check out her profile. Trace of Fairies is the story where I got these OCs from. I strongly encourage that you check it out. It's a lovely piece of work.
Suspicious Intruders
The port was deathly still when a boat crept up. Men and women moved silently like assassins in the night as they set about drawing in the masts and settling the ship against the docks. Silver eyes glistened in the moonlight as Trace Corix checked the wooden platform for any lingering souls.
"And, you're sure that Fairy Tail is here?" she asked to the captain of the Winter's Tale. Trace spun around in the frosty air. Tufts of fluffy snowflakes settled down in her dark black-purple mane. It decorated it in an angelic fashion despite the fact that this group of pirates was sneaking in without permission.
Erika lifted a bottle of booze in the air. She cried, "Of course I'm sure! Do you really think that I wouldn't know where my favorite guild in the whole wide world is?" The captain released the helm from her sun tanned hands, hands darkened from living on the seas for so long.
The woman sashayed down from the quarter deck and towards the main. Joining Trace, she swung around to lay her forearms on the wooden railing. "Is someone nervous about seeing her boyfriend after six whole months?"
Trace scowled and jerked her head away. Even though, it didn't hide the blush steadily inching up her skin. "It's been a long time… What if… What if they forgot about me?"
Erika brushed her shoulder up against her comrade's. Her body was warm against Trace's. She could feel the body heat of the other woman trying to warm her doubts away. Bringing the bottle to her lips, Erika explained, "Love, if they forgot about you, something's mentally wrong with them. You're beautiful, you're strong, and you have Laxus Dreyar wrapped around your finger just like this." Erika extended her hand to wrap a lock of Trace's dark hair round and round on her pinky finger.
The scowl on Trace's face merely deepened. She gave Erika a droll expression before looking back towards the empty docks. It was dark. It got dark up here so high in the north. Not only was it dark and lonely up here, but it was damned cold! Trace hated the cold. Of course, Fairy Tail had to be all the way up in the highest freaking parts of the damned map when Trace was finally able to hunt them down again. Trace didn't think that the layers she was wearing were even doing anything at this point.
Yes, snow was beautiful, but only when viewed through a window as she sipped hot chocolate by a fire. A huge freaking fire.
Pulling her hair out of Erika's playful grasp, Trace added, "Do you think Adamine will be here? You said that she joined Fairy Tail."
Erika took another deep swig of booze before holding the brown bottle betwixt two slender fingers. "I'm certain. Besides, even if she isn't in the competition, she's the Princess of Lancet. It'd be wrong for her to not be here."
"Good," Trace intoned with a curl of her lips. "She and I have a score to settle."
"Oh? A score? Do tell." Erika leaned back, readying herself to settle into a session of battle worthy gossip, but one of her crew came in.
Charging up from the other side of the ship, Krage called out, "We've got company. Assassins lining the whole place up for an ambush. Guess we weren't as sneaky as we thought we were."
Erika slammed her beer bottle down on the railing and gave her long body a stretch. Her puffy pirate shirt pulled up to reveal her smooth midriff. After stretching out, Erika proclaimed, "Nothing better than a warm greeting when you sneak in Port Regale. I swear, Isaac may be on the throne, but this port hasn't gotten any more hospitable."
Trace leaned back from her perch. Right now, her mind was seething on finding Adamine. She had to get a hold of the Princess of Lancet. Where Adamine would be was where the Raijinshuu would be. Where the Raijinshuu would be. Well, that was where Laxus would be. She had to get to them.
When the first assassin dropped in, Trace let her body light up in her Impact Magic. Her arms glowed in a faint silver-blue sheen. Fighting the Magician's Alliance hadn't been on her To Do List tonight, but this group of pirates didn't have the right paperwork to get inside. So… beating people senseless it was!
Katja's body flew seamlessly in the night. It was strange to say that she was more comfortable running along rooftops and hunting down murderers, but it was the truth. Kat was more comfortable here and now than she was when she'd been playing tour guide for the Sabertooth crew.
She leaped from someone's chimney before hitting feet down on the roof of a shop. She was almost at the docks, and already she could see shit going down. Magic circles lit up the night. Normans fired weapons to stop magic from harming buildings or themselves, and a pirate ship without proper registration was settled in the port like it owned the place.
Grimacing, Katja shred out of her trench coat. The beautiful covering fluttered down to reveal her assassin's clothing. Pulling her mask up to cover everything but her eyes, Katja got ready to battle. The gloves that she'd been wearing fluttered to the same spot as her trench coat, and she donned her favorite gauntlets, the ones that had reservoirs for her poison to rest within.
She felt like Superman shredding her clothes to reveal the S on her chest when she was geared up for battle. As soon as she was ready to go, her brother appeared in similar regalia beside her. "So the message got sent to both officers," Katja realized aloud.
Sven inclined his head. "Kin-Isaac wanted both of us down here when Colin reported an unregistered ship entering port. Apparently, this ship is wanted for piracy. Captain goes by the title of Phantom Erika. Even though all accounts of piracy were in other countries, we can't risk it. There's too much shit going on, and these guys might be the murderers."
"Did Isaac give out the order for kill or capture?"
"Capture. Of course. Since these guys were stupid enough to reveal that big ass ship, they're likely lower ranking goons. That is… if they're the murderers in the first place." Sven touched down on a rooftop before launching himself towards the docks. He landed on the main deck of the ship, and Katja wasn't too far behind him.
All around them, the bodies of members of the Magician's Alliance laid passed out. As Sven perused the group, he intoned, "They're either stupid or arrogant. Either way, they laid our men out easy."
"Doesn't that just suck," Katja grumbled out. She nudged one of their members with her foot to make sure he was still alive. When the male let loose an agonized groan Katja deemed him fine. So far, none of the mages were dead. That was a good sign. For the first time in her life, Katja was praying that it was pirates this time.
She continued her appraisal of the damage. The ship was perfectly fine. There wasn't a single dent in it. The wooden deck didn't even have a splinter in it. Whoever had built this ship had built it well, and whoever had purchased the ship took good care of it.
Even so, Katja continued to stroll about the main deck. Sven took up the quarter deck. The two of them were investigating for clues. Anything to figure out where the culprits of this assault had gone.
As a master assassin, Katja had been taught early to keep all senses on alert. She could never be taken off guard. It was what made her and Sven the best assassins in Lancet. They would always hold this title until someone else came along to snag it from them, and since neither one of them were able to have children thanks to their magic, death would likely be who would steal their titles away.
Using those well-honed senses, Katja looked for specific footsteps in the dew growing along the deck of the ship. She looked for moving shadows, for hints of magic. Just the slightest glow of power, and Katja would find them. She just needed to keep stalking.
Coming to a hatch in the center of the deck, Katja bent down. The enemy would have the upper hand here. Perhaps they were lurking just underneath, waiting for an ambush, or perhaps they were deep within the crew's quarters, waiting for Katja to come strolling by. It was a risk she would have to take.
Determined, Katja lifted up on the hatch. Her body braced for attack. She summoned sleeping poison to filter within the reservoir at the base of her palm. Nothing.
Blinking into the shadows, her hazel eyes peered down. All she saw was the wooden members of the shaft. She saw jointed lengths moving and bending throughout the structure. Thick ropes held the joints, cradling them like synovial fluid that comforted a human's knuckles. Supportive lengths created a wooden haven for stolen goods and a pirate's crew.
A leather high heel pressed against the ladder leading into the heart of the ship, and with a whisper of sound, Katja landed on the wooden floors. Eyes glowed above her black mask. Those hazel eyes scanned about the planks laid lengthwise to elongate the spaces in the hull of the ship. Despite her sexy footwear, Katja stalked silently.
Her purple sash was like a pendulum of poisonous death as it swayed around her hips. It was the tail of a viper, and that tail moved side to side as the viper slithered within the pirate ship.
Slanted eyes scanned the area, and gauntlet tipped fingers drug claw marks into the beams holding the ship steady in the water. Her claw marks were like an animal making placeholders for itself. If the culprits had gotten away, Katja was going to make sure that they saw her marks. She was going to make sure that they knew of her presence. This was the territory of the infamous Poisoneva, a name that had haunted the kingdom of Lancet back when she was but a slave owned by the bastard held deep within King Isaac's dungeons.
When you were marked by the bite of the viper, her poisons coursed through your body. They flowed within you, never letting you go. That was what those claw marks were meant to express. Symbolically, they read, "Hide while you can, but the viper has you in her sights."
After perusing through the deepest parts of the pirate ship's hull, Katja was forced to come to a conclusion. Whoever had been here was gone. Even though she came to that conclusion, Katja couldn't help but feel like she was being watched.
Her black gauntlets dug deep into the wood when a shadow slithered about the floor of the ship. Katja was the stalker. She did not get stalked. Despite the annoyance at being followed, Katja couldn't stop the sense of fear inching up her spine. Katja was a silent huntress, a shadowy assassin. She was not stalked.
Or… that was what she used to think.
Shadows moved where they shouldn't, and Katja tried to stomp down on an inkling of insecurity that crept up her covered skin. Her Time Out Box was opening, something it always did when she felt just the slightest bit of self-doubt.
The shadow moved, and the Time Out Box opened a little more. Her heart pulsed hot. It pumped blood thick through her body. Irrational thoughts filled her mind.
Was it the ghost of that boy come back to haunt her?
Had the dead, the innocent dead, that she'd been forced to kill during her training come to take her?
Was this darkness the souls of her innocent victims coming up to drag her down to hell?
Katja gulped. Mentally, her hands flew to the Time Out Box in her head, a box gilded in sorrow, indecision, and regrettable deaths caused by her own hands. Flashes of the past came to her. Those days where she had been stripped by gloved hands and forced to touch her bare skin against the body of another. With just a single touch, a single accidental brush of skin, Katja had killed so many. Then… Then she had been encouraged to kill. She was taught to kill. The pit. The pit. Always the pit. The pit and the cell she'd lived in.
Oxygen seemed to be pulled from her lips when the shadow came closer. She felt like death was approaching. As the shadow came closer and closer, the Time Out Box opened wider and wider. Her chest heaved. Fanatic dots scurried about her vision. No. No. No. She was not being watched. Those people didn't die. She was in denial!
King Isaac had forgiven her for her sins. She was happy now. Katja wanted to be happy! She wanted to be…
That dark hand snatched her up, and she tumbled to the floor. Landing on her hip, Katja stared at the shadow growing before her. This was it. This was her nightmare, the dream she always had. The only one that stalked her was death and regret and sin.
Sven's name was right on the tip of her tongue. She wanted to call out for him as the shadow grew larger. Katja was just about to scream when the shape changed entirely.
"Katja," Rogue's voice hissed in the darkness. He grabbed onto the woman's hand. It was strange. One moment Katja had been stalking like the perfect predator, and the next she was hyperventilating at the sight of his shadow body moving around in the darkness. Rogue had thought that he was careful. He hadn't thought she'd seen him, but a single screw up and Kat had completely changed.
Making sure not to touch any bared skin—which was really only around her eyes thanks to her ninja attire—Rogue pulled Katja up towards him. "Katja, are you okay? What happened to you?"
"R-Rogue?" Katja mouthed in confusion behind her mask. Then, she repeated his name. "Rogue? Rogue. Rogue!" Like a wildcat Katja leaped from Rogue's comforting hold. She grabbed him up by the dark mantle he draped around his shoulders. His feet completely lifted up from the floor of the ship when she threw him against a wall. "What the bloody hell do you think you're doing? It's past curfew! Mages aren't permitted to be out past twelve!"
Rogue's brows flew up at her sudden admission. Judging by the way the tan skin around her eyes was flushed, he was assuming that Katja had full on facial blood flow at the moment. "I-I… uh-um-uh…" His mouth didn't seem to want to form a cognitive thought at this sudden outburst, but when Katja pulled off a gauntlet and looked to be about to touch his face with a hand bespelled with sleeping poison, he blurted, "The kings said we could help find the mages committing the murders, and that it would be taken as a typical guild mission with pay and everything!"
"What the bloody hell are you talking about?" she cried out, pulling her mask away from her lips so she could properly yell at him. "Isaac would never…"
"But he did," Sven intoned as he approached from the darkness. "It was my idea."
Katja dropped Rogue where he landed in a teetering heap on the floor. Her hips swayed back and forth. Once she got in front of her tall, younger brother, she stabbed him in the chest with a gauntlet tipped finger. "Why in the bloody hell did you do something so stupid?"
Sven merely shrugged. He may have been accustomed to his sister's violent outbursts, but Rogue wasn't. He quickly straightened up and set to rights his clothing.
"You deserve a break, Katja. Your Time Out Box can only hold in so much," he explained.
Time Out Box? What were they talking about? Rogue hadn't seen any box.
Apparently, he wasn't allowed to think much about it. With her covered hand, Katja scooped Rogue up from the floor. She manhandled him with an impressive strength towards the ladder. "There's mages out trying to kill mages for being in a mage tournament," Katja hissed to herself. "So, what does my idiot brother do? He tells our mage king to let foreign mages come to the mage tournament and hunt down these mage killing mages!" Her voice rose with every time that she said the mage word, and Rogue wasn't surprised when he was thrown, literally thrown, out of the pirate ship.
Katja's three inch stiletto heels were the most frightening thing Rogue had ever seen when they stomped hard by his face. "Get up, Rogue. You're in danger by simply being out here. We don't know where those mages went, and we don't have a single lead." Her eyes cut back to Sven like he was the reason for their leadless state.
"I want to help! It's why I came," he proclaimed, forcing his reasons for coming to Lancet to the fore. Katja and her knife tip sharp shoes may be the most frightening thing he'd ever seen, but he couldn't let them distract him from his purpose.
Those heels came threateningly closer, and he forced himself to gulp down the lump in his throat. Ah, man. She was going to behead him with those boots. She scooped Rogue up. He tried not to melt into a puddle of shivering fear, but those eyes, those boots, that sneer. Yeah, hard not to melt.
"Oh? You want to help. Well then, get this straight, shade. When I'm wearing this outfit, my name isn't Katja. It's Poisoneva. I'm the assassin that people warn their children about. Ever heard the Lancet tale that goes around Christmas. 'Kids, you'd better be good or Poisoneva will sneak into your bedrooms and eat you'? Yeah, the best thing you can do to help is stay inside where the target on your head isn't neon and flashing."
Rogue narrowed his crimson eyes. He was both intimidated and annoyed when she forced him to stand in front of her like a teacher making sure her trouble student didn't run off. He was going to open his mouth to protest, but he could practically feel the aura of ire she was putting off with that death cold stare.
Sven didn't look so impressed. He pulled himself out of the hatch and closed it like he hadn't just been perusing about in a pirate ship. "Rogue, you'll have to excuse Katja. She gets a little bitchy when someone out stalks the stalker. You scared her." He pulled his mask away from his lips to cast a fuming Katja a cavalier grin. "You two go back to the lodge. Colin is going to be coming in soon. Felix just sent me a message about him getting punched by one of the Mermaid Heel girls for being his usual pervy self, so he's going to haunt the town with me tonight."
"Fine!" Katja growled. She pulled her hood off her head to reveal waves of dark chocolate hair. It cascaded down her back arrogantly as she flipped it away from her face. "Can't believe I just got replaced by freaking Colin."
When Katja started marching off, Rogue followed suit. Even though he followed, Rogue didn't miss Sven flashing him a snarky grin. The assassin knew something that Rogue didn't. Apparently, this Winter Grand Magic Games was going to be just as interesting as the last.