I AM SUCH AN IDIOT. HATE ON MYSELF. Why, just why, did I delete my document for Four Magics/Fireflies! Luckily, it's still on Fanfiction... but ARG!
The lights dimmed, and slowly, the girls quieted. The only lights were on a small stage, with ten chairs in a row on it. Natsu and Igneel walked up on it, and some of the girls squealed. Lucy tch-ed, rolling her eyes in the darkness.
"Hello! You girls have been chosen as possible candidates for being the future bride-to-be for Natsu!" Igneel introduced. The girls cheered, except Lucy in the background. She didn't care about this stupid ceremony, she just wanted to sneak out and hide in the castle for a bit until she could break Michelle out.
"Natsu will now read the names of the ten girls that he had chosen." The parent looked over at the boy, who was holding a piece of paper in his hands. The Prince took in a deep breath and read.
"Erza Scarlet." The scary redhead walked up on the stage, and sat down on the first chair. She looked tall and proud, and she honestly was a beautiful character. Her scarlet hair was as soft and smooth-looking as red velvet, and she wore a slimming violet dress decorated with flowers stitched into the bottom. Her eyes were dark chocolate.
"Lisanna Strauss." Lisanna gave her a grin and walked up to the chairs, sitting down next to the woman named Erza.
Natsu named a few more, and Lucy silently counted in her head. "Flare Corona," a creepy redhead whose head was cocked to the side. Six. "Kinana Cuberos," a kind-looking purple-haired girl wearing a green dress. Seven. "Angel Wings," a slightly Asian-looking girl wearing a long, feathery dress. Eight.
At this point, he wouldn't choose her. Spirit silently cheered.
"Lyra Heart."
Lucy froze, looking up at the stage in shock. The girls around her noticed her shift and gave her dirty looks, but Lucy could only stare for a moment. Dumbfoundedly, without thought, she walked up the stage, and sat down. She blinked, realizing her feet betrayed her again. Damn feet! Lucy took a deep breath in, trying to relax her panicking nerves. It didn't work.
The bandit was chosen to be his WIFE.
I was chosen to be Natsu's WIFE.
Her brain exploded, and she had to stop herself from jumping out the window. THIS WAS BAD. So, so very bad. This meant she'd have to spend more time with Natsu. While the idea on its own was horrifying, the worst part was that he had a better chance of recognizing her and kicking Lucy out of the competition before she could break Michelle out. Did she mention that she could possibly have the chance of marrying Natsu?
She mentally shuddered, while Natsu called the last girl. "Meredy Pink." A pink-haired girl sat down next to Lucy, smiling over at her, seemingly very excited.
"Are you happy? You seem very nervous," she whispered. Lucy's head whipped around to face her, and she pasted on a wide, phony smile.
"M-Me? I-I'm fine! Perfectly f-fine! S-Seriously, I'm A-okay, not panicking at a-all!" Her eyes were wide, and her right eye twitched. Meredy turned back to face the crowd, swallowing.
"Could all ten women go down that hallway?" Igneel asked. "All other girls can go down that one." With some cheers and some grumbles from each groups, they filed out to where the King of the castle instructed.
Lisanna ran up to her. "You got picked!" Lucy pasted that phony smile on, but Lisanna couldn't help but notice the twitch in her eye.
"Yeah..! I got... picked. I'm so... happy." She grit through her teeth. Lisanna swallowed, the same reaction as the pink-haired girl before.
"I'm gonna... uh, go ahead. And, uh... bye!" She zoomed to the front of the crowd, but Lucy couldn't peel off the wide fake grin on her face and wide eyes. She looked positively insane, twitching after the other girls walking down the hallway.
The girls stopped at a room, with ten guards inside and an equal number of chairs. The girls supposed they were to sit down, so they all did.
Eventually, the King walked into the room, standing tall and proud. Natsu wasn't with him. "Hello. My name, as you may know, is Lord Igneel Dragneel, Lord of the Dragneel castle and Natsu's father." Lucy knew the royalty act on this guy was false, remembering his real childish behaviour when she first met him. She sweatdropped at the thought of it.
Igneel grinned, scarily similar to his son's grin, and she couldn't believe it for a second. Lucy let out a huff of air.
"I'm... uh, talented?" she answered. She swore she got a tic in her eye.
"Well, good job!" he patted her on the back, and she nearly tipped forward from the force of it. Behind his figure, she saw Queen Grandine roll her eyes.
"Well, luckily for you all, one of you is going to be chosen to be future Natsu's bride-to-be. For the next two weeks, you will all spend time with the Prince, and he will later decide who to marry, got it?"
The girls nodded, so Igneel threw him arms out. "Well, you're all going to be living here for the next two weeks, so we'll get you some nice clothes for you to wear around. Plus, you'll be having a guard accompany you all the time, for security measures and stuff." The guards walked up to the girls, on cue, and randomly chose a future bride to accompany.
Lucy didn't bother looking, she saw a vague character move beside her. She didn't really care who she was with, even though a guard would be troublesome. Of course, she could easily evade him when the time came.
"So, that'll be it. Your guard will escort you to your new rooms now." Lucy stood up, and ran after her blue-uniformed guard, still not paying attention to him. As they passed the hallways, she was mentally plotting the castle for quickest escape routes and such. They were deep in the castle, no doubt.
Lucy climbed a staircase, feeling the texture of the walls outside. They were rock; easy enough to scale. But her rope was too short for how high she was going. She could possibly scale to another window and move down, but that was troublesome and she didn't want to flash her panties to anyone that looked up.
She sighed, but followed the guard, who disappeared around the curl of the never-ending staircase. "Sorry, Lyra that there's so many stairs. It is a nice room, I assure it. I hope you're not scared of heights." She heard the guard say. Okay, whatever. She wasn't scared of heights and she slept in a forest most often and recently a cell. She wasn't bothered, or cared for that matter, about a good room.
She climbed the last of the stairs, and the guard opened the door. Despite herself, her mouth widened in surprise.
It was a nice room, she had to admit. There was a queen-sized bed, with a lush blue comforter and plushy blue pillows. The walls were painted the same colour as the sheets. There was a large wooden dresser/table/mirror put to the side, and there were twin white double-doors on the other side of the room.
Lucy walked inside, and opened the doors. She got dizzy at the sight of it. She was rooming in the tallest spire of the castle, on a nice white balcony. The fast-moving wind made her hair twist and dance, and Spirit had to hold it down. She was sure, it she reached hard enough, she could touch the clouds from here.
Lucy turned around. "Than... ks." Her sentence drifted off, and she realized who her guard was.
Great. Just... great.
The Ice-mage guard Gray was standing in front of her, just standing inside the room. He was smirking, his hands in his pockets, looking down at her.
"Thanks!" She covered it quickly. "I'm, uh, really thankful. It's, uh a really nice room!" She stammered. Gray smirked further, making her scowl.
"Glad you like it, Lyra." the way he said it made Lucy a little... uncomfortable. They walked back inside, Lucy closing the door behind them.
"So, I'll be staying in the room below yours, and if you're going down or need anything, just ring. And there's new clothes in the drawer." He gestured to a little bell attached to the wall, and then the dresser, in a lazy, cat-like manner. "Yeah. Anything else you'd like to know?"
"Eh... er... No!" she realized she was stuttering a bit, and blushed. Gray clued onto this and his smirk became a little more... snooty. The bandit didn't like that, and tried to wipe the red off her face, scowling.
"Are you okay?" he asked, a little bit of mocking added to his tone.
Glowering, she replied, "Yes. I'm fine. It's just hot out." Totally the wrong thing to say.
The temperature around the guard dropped, and suddenly, Lucy was cold. "That better, Lyra?"
"Y-yeah. T-thanks." She stammered.
"Okay, if you're fine, then I'll be heading downstairs. There's nothing scheduled until supper, so I'll alert you then." He told her, walking to the door and opening it.
"O-Okay. Just make sure you, uh, knock."
"Sure." He chuckled, and Lucy fought the urge to throw her flats at his face. Unfortunately, she knew that it wouldn't hurt that much and he would recognize her as her 'boot-throwing self, [as Natsu had said,] after that.
She sighed, but listened to his footsteps travel down the stairs. When she couldn't hear him anymore, she ran up to the door. There was a lock. She twisted it, and let out a huff.
Great. Gray, the Ice-mage guard who injured her heavily before, now had a crush on her and was flirting. With Lyra Heart, who was her, in disguise.
Just flippin great.
The bandit sighed, checking the room for Magical Sensors before releasing the spell to disguise her. it was taxing, honestly, to keep the face of Lyra Heart on, but she was finally getting used to Transformation Magic. She would recuperate until supper, she decided, moving about and inspecting her new room.
Knock, knock, knock.
"It's me, Gray!" the man called. Lucy grabbed the picture of Lyra, focused, checked the mirror hastily, and opened the door.
"Hello." She greeted, putting on a smile.
"Okay, so you'll have to get dressed up, Mighty Igneel says." Gray told her. Her eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
"Mighty Igneel?"
Gray rolled his eyes. "It's what he tells us to call him." Lucy couldn't help her lip cracking into a smirk.
"Okay, I'll be getting dressed," she said.
"Good. Dresses are in the second drawer. They're Magically spelled to fit the wearer, so pick a dress and comeon." He told her. She shut the door, locked it, and moved to the dresser.
When she opened the drawer, she grinned. They were pretty! Lucy shuffled through the dresses, and then pulled one out.
She slipped on the dress with difficulty, and then spun around in front of the mirror, hands up. She had to admit, she did look good in this dress.
The dress was stunning on the bandit. It was a midnight black, long, strapless dress with a slight poof at the end. It was tight enough that it didn't squeeze her to death, but was padded in certain areas to make her already generous curves and assets look better than they already were. Tiny silvery sequins were sewn into the fabric with enough delicacy that her body looked like the starry night sky; when she moved it seemingly created a trail of stardust. She hadn't done her makeup or added accessories and she already looked dazzling.
[A/N. To all of you who read FireFlies..!]
Wait. She looked too good. Lucy took off the dress quickly and got into another one; this one a pale blue. She looked good, but not perfect. That was good. She didn't want to look too good; in fact, until she could break Michelle out, she would act like a slob to make sure she didn't end up as Natsu's wife.
She grinned cattishly, giving a second glance at the mirror to check her appearance before opening the door again. Gray smiled, and moved back so she could step through. She hoisted her dress up, and trot down the stairs, purposely ignoring the Ice-make guard.
A little GraLu, for all you shippers. I no promise Love Triangle.
T^T I AM SUCH AN IDIOT! Arg, so frustrated right now. You may know my other multichaps, Four Magics/Fireflies, a [about to be,] trilogy, well, I just realized that I deleted the documents on my laptop. Just great. Now I'll have to copy/paste each chapter back onto another document! I hate myself.
Now I'm gonna be a little Tsundere. Did I mention I love you guys? I really do. I get so much love for me and my stories..! *sobs, hugs all reviewers, favouriters, and followers,* I LOVE YOU ALL! Unfortunately, because I got so many reviews, I can only do some replies... I don't want to cram them all in at the bottom... sorry!
Aitanna: *faints from compliments*
Fairy-Tail's-Dragon: I know! I'm only on the seventh episode and can't watch more because I HAVE TO TYPE THIS WHILE EATING CUPCAKES! I'M GONNA GET FAT!
SnowDragonSlayerTasha: YEAH, LIKE A BOSS! The problem is, Lucy's not a complete idiot. She remembers a certain yellow-haired mage that Natsu warned her about, [you'll see him later!] plus, she's not just gonna storm a castle on her own, is she? About the disguise, she can't exactly waltz in undisguised, can she?
Well, thanks to my other reviewers [which I am unfortunate to not be able to reply,] 1fairytaillover, KSB.96.12, NatsuandLucy4ever, Axlorg89, Sofia3, AngelTheSwordMage, 8XxAnimexX8, 08, TheGrammarQueen, and Lunar Mistress!
*Place catchy review question here.*