First I want to apologize for the delay. I received an injury that prevented me from being able to sit in my computer chair for over a week. Not going into any sort of details, but that's the gist. I would rather keep my hair, so didn't even attempt to write this out on my tablet. So I'm sorry, but sometimes things are out of my hands.

I'm also going to be busy this next week. It's my sons birthday on Friday, so gotta clean up the house so please continue to be patient with me. I hate letting people down, but real life simply must come first.

So I caused some confusion with having Lucy say she has bad news. It was referring to the additional travel they would be doing. Nothing truly sinister (unless you're Natsu).

Also, I'm borrowing names from a different manga/anime for these upcoming chapters. I'm surprised no one picked up on it before. It was just casually tossed in there, but I wondered if anyone would pick up on it. No one has, so let's see if anyone will this time around. No cheating with google :) Tell me your guesses in the reviews.

EdenPeak is completely made up by me. Iceberg is on the Fairy Tail world map I got from Wiki, but the towns, train stations and such are just arbitrarily made up by me. Any resemblance to a real place is completely coincidental, especially since the only mountain "towns" I've ever really been too is Colorado Springs, CO and Guadalajara, Mexico. I've also driven through the Tennessee ones.

Also thank you all so very much for the wonderful reviews and PM's. I had a okay birthday, not as exciting as I had hoped but got to visit somewhere I've never gone before. I'm just not gonna let my friends plan it for me anymore, and just say what I want to do in the future.

Hiro Mashima is the sole owner or Fairy Tail.

So without further ado, I give you, the next chapter. Not really happy with it, but also in pain. So it is what it is.

Chapter 9 Natsu's POV

Chicken Wolf

Have you ever had a day that just plain sucked? I mean, really just sucked? That was my day. And what made it even suckier, was the fact I had honestly expected a pretty awesome day. Considering everything that happened last night, I had some high hopes. Which have been mightily dashed to pieces.

Okay Lucy waking up pissy and suffering a hang over, I can forgive. I feel like absolute crap while traveling, so I figure it's about the same feeling. Or maybe it's like the time I ate the aetherion. So, I can forgive it. Even if it had irritated me quite a bit.

But the memory loss. At first I was just shocked, and if I'm gonna attempt to be semi rational, I can see how that's possible. There have been plenty of times where my guildmates have forgotten there idiocy the following morning after a night of binging. But I'll be honest, it's been bugging me all damn day. Which has added to my irritation, because I don't like being irritated. You never know when you're gonna die, so why waste time being pissy? Unless you've got a good reason, like when I thought Lisanna died. That was fine. But minor shit?

But it feels the more I try to get rid of my frustration on this subject the more pissed I seem to get. What guy wants to be forgotten? Especially after everything we did last night? She hasn't said a single thing about being half naked or about the marks I left all over her.

Let's tack on the 10 additional hours of tortuous hell due to all this damn traveling, and I can comfortably conclude that today just sucks.

I'm glad she's finally gotten over her hangover, and seems to be her pleasant self. I'm trying to not to act like a PMSing chick. But of course she can tell something's bothering me. She can always tell when something's bothering me. Just like I can always tell when something's' bothering her. She's probably asked me "What's wrong?" About 4 times since we've arrived in EdenPeak.

Now I'm sitting here, wasting time waiting for the mayor to grace us with his presence. What could be so important that he's making us wait an hour? Aren't there vicious freakin monsters he wants us to deal with? I wonder if I'm acting...what the hell is the word. Pettitant? Paningtant. Pettinganant? Oh whatever. Lucy likes to throw big words at me when she's annoyed at me.

"Hey Natsu?"

"What's up Lucy?"

"It's time to go talk to the mayor about the job."

Guess I was spacing out. I didn't realize time had passed. "Alright! Bout time. We'll finish this job fast and get some dinner."

We were led to an office by some lady. Guess she'd be a secretary. There were 2 old guys sitting there when we entered. One of them stood up. "Welcome. I'm Mayor Hizuri, and this is our Director of Agriculture & Animals, Ogata."

We shook hands giving normal pleasantries. I never got why we had to do this ritual every single time we had a new client. Obviously they know why we're here. Why not just tell us what they wanted and skipped the small talk? I don't even need their names, especially since chance are I'm not gonna remember them anyway. They kept us waiting an hour already, why the hell are we beating around the bush, though that expression makes no sense when we're talking about wasting my time. "So, what cha want done?" I asked loudly while Lucy was still talking. I hadn't been paying a lick of attention, so just interrupted.

Stomping on my foot quite hard, "Natsu! Don't be rude." She harshly whispered. "Forgive my partner; he was raised by wild animals." Well no shit, I told her my dad was a dragon since day one. "Please continue." She said in what I term her fake professional voice.

"Um, yes. So you see about a month ago, the entire city's crops were completely ruined by these monsters. We literally have nothing to harvest. They were like a plague of locusts, just came through and devoured everything. There were so many, we had no idea which way to even turn. This has never happened before, so we speculate that there population has exploded due to the fact there natural predators have been getting hunted to almost extinction the past couple of years. We thought getting rid of the dangerous beasts would be better protection for our citizens, especially after one almost killed a child. We had no idea the consequences of our actions would cause such chaos." The mayor said sadly.

"What can you grow in snow?" I asked, perhaps a little snidely, though trying to play the 'be nice to the client' game. I mean seriously does this guy just love the sound of his own voice?

"We grow many things, like Snow Peas, Snow Berries, Snow Cabbage and of course Iceberg Lettuce. It's a huge source of revenue for this area to export our frozen goods, and we have nothing to export this year. One year of bad harvest we can handle. But 2 in a row would be even more disastrous." Oggie, Ogatta, Oppy, whatever the hell his name is, said defensively, jumping into the conversation suddenly. Dude had a girly voice.

"So if I'm understanding correctly, you want us to do… population control?" Lucy asked a little hesitantly.

"Yes I'm glad you understand." Mayor sounded relieved, like maybe he thought we wouldn't get it.

"Well what do you feel would be a satisfactory number?" She asked with sadness in her voice.

"At least a thousand, but more would be even better. Before the Spring planting if you can manage it." The mayor said without batting an eye.

"By spring?" I'm pretty sure I didn't just hear him correctly, which of course is silly since I have the best hearing.

"Yes, exactly, we'd like the job done by Spring." Was this guy on crack? He wants us to kill a thousand monsters by Spring?

"And when is spring?" I was trying to do an estimate in my head.

"About 5 months." Well it might doable if they're not huge wyverns or something.

"And what are we hunting?" Maybe bug bears, or perhaps Vulcans. That would really hard. I'd have to call in Erza and Gray to take on that many.

"Chicken wolves." He said this with a straight face.

Blink, Blink. "Chicken..wolf?" Seriously?

"That is correct"

"What the fuck is a chicken wolf?" Now I'm completely convinced this guy is off his rocker.

"Natsu!" Lucy hissed and glared at me. While smacking me in the arm. Well, damn. I'm not the one saying crazy shit.

Pressing a button on his desk the mayor said, "Shoko, can you please bring it in?" The receptionist from earlier dragged a cage on a wagon behind her. The thing was pretty hideous looking for such a dumbass name. It had 4 feet like chicken claws, but instead of drumsticks for legs, they were more dog like. So was its build. It was covered in a grey fur pelt with 2 freaky looking, large, chicken like, wings sprouting from its back, which had feathers and it had the head of a chicken. It was fairly small, larger than a small dog, smaller than a middle sized dog, which was a good thing otherwise it'd really be the stuff of tripped out nightmares.

"You want us to take care of a thousand of th-those th-th-things?!" Lucy was freaked out. It was freaky looking I'll admit, but we've faced off against worse. And it was just sitting there kind of passively.

"A thousand seems like a really high number. Are you trying to wipe them out? Surely a few hundred would be enough." I asked while scratching my head. I was skeptical that he truly meant for us to kill a literal thousand of them.

Then he pulled out some pictures. "These were taken during the invasion. " They depicted quite a rampage. I guess a thousand isn't too high of a number. There were easily 4 times that many in the pictures, "Luckily they're herbivores," He continued, "I hate to think what would have happened if they had been after the towns people instead of the crops. We'd have been wiped out. So to prove you've taken care of a thousand we'd like you to bring back there pelts as evidence."

"This is a really big job. When we took the flyer it didn't say there would be so many to take care of. Plus you want their fur? That will take even longer." Lucy piped up.

"We did say a 'Large Group of monsters'. "

"That's true, it said a large group of monsters' not a giant hoard plus skinning. A large group is 20 maybe 30, if you had been clearer we would have brought several more people." Lucy said. "Also what plans are you putting in place so there numbers don't get so large again?"

"We have made it illegal to hunt there natural predators for now, except in cases where they are attacking a person." The mayor said, "Plus we'll capture and bring a few back and letting them free in their territory."

The director dude spoke up, "It'll take a little while for a balance to happen. During that time will also be constructing large fencing around our fields. We're hoping that with thinning there numbers down significantly they won't run out of food and so they won't come down the mountain and devour ours."

"That's still a lot of animals you're asking us to get rid of." Lucy said.

"Monsters. Please make no mistake that these are monsters. Are you going to turn the job down?" The girly sounding man said.

"No we can handle it, it'll just take a LOT longer than we planned." I said. I had thought a week tops. This would take months, unless they're all huddled together. But then needing to bring back there fur, it'd be easier to just haul their bodies back, then spending time skinning them.

Lucy suddenly spoke up, "However I feel we should renegotiate the terms. You're only paying 200,000 jewels for such a huge job. That means only 200 jewels per monster. That's not reasonable. Plus I know those pelts aren't just for counting purposes. You plan on doing something with them; making coats and selling them I would guess." She seemed to get her footing back. When did she turn into such a business women? "I feel 1000 jewels per monster is much more reasonable, especially for the extra work of sk-skinning them." I get it, Lucy is putting on a show. She does have a slight green tinge to her cheeks, now that I'm looking for it. Ugly monsters, and really bloody job. Yeah, not her cup of tea. Perhaps she's hoping they'll refuse and she can have a reason to bow out. Of course, now that she put it in perspective like she did, they were expecting some really cheap labor.

"That's outrageous!" The Mayor said.

"How do you figure sir? We're looking at months of work. Do you know where they live? Are they pack animals? How fast are they? We need to know this kind of information to better understand how to handle this task." Lucy proceeded to ask question after question, not really giving the 2 guys a chance to answer. I assume they were good necessary questions, but I wasn't really interested in all those details. I spent my time staring at the chicken wolf. The longer I looked at it the uglier it seemed to get. It was looking at me as well. Probably coming to a similar conclusion about me.

This was taking so long. I have no idea how much time passed. But finally the mayor guy said "Enough. We get it. $500 per monster and not a jewel more. In case you're forgetting the whole reason for needing this taken care of, we lost all of our crops this year. We can't afford any more than that."

After having stared at that thing for so long, I had one last very important question. "Is it edible?" I think they forgot about me, because he kind of jumped and just stared at me. So I pointed at it, "Can you eat it?" I asked again.

"Y-Yes, I believe it has a similar taste and texture to normal chicken." He said somewhat distractedly.

Good enough for me, "You've got a deal then. We're gonna need about 2 weeks to gather supplies and finish up some other things, but we'll return and take care of everything for you." All I can eat meat. Whoot! My mood increased significantly with that thought.

Lucy gave me a look and said to the mayor, "Yes, like my partner said, we'll be back in about 2 weeks then. We'll need at least that much time to gather the supplies we'll need, and to contact our guild to let them know about the increase in time we're going to need to complete the task, and to see if any other guild members can join us. Please have a new mission contract drawn up with the revised terms and we will formally start then." Lucy said, with a hand shake and a fake smile. And we left.

"Natsu." Lucy said a few minutes later. We were walking towards a restaurant.

"Yeah Lucy?" I could tell by her tone, that she was unhappy about something.

"I don't really want to do this mission." She said pensively.

"I figured. But we really have too now; especially after that little show you did in there. Seriously you spent forever convincing them to pay us more, which good job by the way, but it'd be really stupid to spend that much effort to get them to pay more and then say no to the job."

"It wasn't a 'show', it was the truth. They were really being unreasonable in their expectations. They were purposefully misleading about what they wanted done on the flyer."

"Maybe. But from what I can tell it won't be too difficult, just time consuming."

"Exactly, they expect us to give up months, MONTHS Natsu, and not even pay enough to cover rent for the same amount of time we're gonna need to do it. Plus it's going to be freezing."

"Well yeah, I told you the place is called Iceberg for a reason."

"Natsu, these things live all the way in the actual mountain ranges. It's significantly colder up there than down here. Plus there are no towns, or shelters up there. I know you'll be fine, but where will I sleep?"

"Lucy you act like I would let you freeze to death. We'll get a tent, and I'll be your own personal heater." A small tent where we get to huddle close together. And she'll cling to me. I'll definitely make sure she stays warm. Oh yes, this will be a nice couple of months. "But before that, we should head to the party thing. Finish that request, and then come back here."

"But Natsu I have no idea how to sk-skin an animal! Do you?"

"Lucy, I was raised by a dragon, and live in the woods." I said with a quirk of my eyebrow. Seriously, for such a smart girl she says some silly things. I believe I've heard it called "blond moments", though it seems to happen to lots of people despite hair color.

"Right, sorry, but I still don't feel comfortable just killing a thousand animals like that. They're living things."

I took a moment to think about it. "What did you think it meant by take care of a group of monsters when we saw the flyer? Also if they had said 100 it'd be fine?" I asked curiously. Didn't she understand the request before we came all the way out here?

"I know what it meant, but I thought they were talking about vicious man eating monsters that were attacking children. And the number is really bugging me as well."

"Well the number is very high. They may not be 'man-eating', but they are causing havoc. The flyer said for preventative measures. We are helping them prevent the monsters from destroying their livelihood for 2 years in a row. And it's really not that bad, since I'm gonna eat em. You won't have to worry about paying to feed me." And I was looking forward to it. We'll hunt them together then I'll skin them and Lucy will cook them. And then we'll sleep in a small tent, and it's going to be just me and her.

"You're gonna eat them?"

"Well yeah, why waste perfectly good meat?"

"That's so gross Natsu!"

"Lucy, last time I checked you weren't a vegetarian. Where do you think the store gets meat from?"

"I know all that Natsu, it's just different though."

I could tell she was getting more upset, so instead of continuing to debate, which was making less sense to me anyway, I just reached out a grabbed her, giving her a firm hug, "Lucy, its fine. You don't have to do it. I'll go back on my own, and I'll do the mission. I'll contact Erza and Gray and maybe they'll be able to come help me out in 2 weeks, or hell maybe even Gajeel would be willing. I'd never make you do something you didn't want to do. So don't be upset anymore." Good bye tent and Lucy's home cooking. I pulled away and looked her in the eyes "Okay?" I asked her quietly.

Taking a deep breath she surprisingly said, "No Natsu, it's not okay. What kind of Fairy Tail Mage would I be if I backed out of a mission I agreed to do? And what kind of partner would I be if I left all the work to you? I'm not a pampered princess anymore, and I will do the mission I accepted. Sorry for acting like a drama queen."

"Alright! Way to get fired up. Now let's eat."

"Uh, No thanks Natsu. You go ahead without me, I can't stomach the thought of food right now. I'll go get a room."

"I'll go with you, so I can drop off our stuff, and then I'll go get dinner." My way of making sure she was somewhere safe while I eat. But she doesn't need to know I think about her safety so much.

Everything was perfectly normal. I dropped her off at the hotel room, and left just as planned. Got my food, ate, and came back. I brought her back a salad since I figured she just didn't want any meat after our conversation earlier. Went to our room, entered the room and closed the door, and turned around just in time to see Lucy butt naked with a towel pooled at her feet. Her body glistening with water, her long hair dripping down her back. She didn't notice me at first as I watched her bend down to pick up her towel and proceed to dry herself off with it. I really enjoyed seeing my marks on her, and I wasn't even aware of my actions when I found myself starting to walk towards her.

Guess she felt my presence or something because she suddenly turned around and screamed, "NATSU!" And quickly re-covered herself with the towel. "What the hell Natsu?"

"What?" I asked more nonchalantly sounding then I felt. I continued walking towards her, very slowly. A tension growing in the air.

"How long were you standing there?" She said, slowly walking backwards away from me. She didn't show any fear, so perhaps it was just instinctual?

"Not very." Just long enough. I thought with a smirk.

"Get out so I can get dressed!" Her back hit the wall.

"What? It's nothing I haven't seen before." I asked as I got a little closer to her. I could smell her mango shampoo. Vanilla soap. "I think you look fine just like that." I said continuing to smirk, and stopped when I was right in front of her.

"Y-Y-You're too close Natsu." She said having nowhere to back up too.

"That's not what you said last night." I said flirtatiously.

Her eyes widened, "Natsu. What…" I interrupted her by bending down and sniffing her hair. She froze and became really stiff.

"You smell really nice, Lucy", I said in her ear. I looked at her wide, shocked, eyes with a slightly fearful expression, and chuckled. "What? Just wanted to smell your hair." There was subtle change in her scent. She couldn't be... aroused?

"What do mean about last night?" Her voice quivered a little, and she was shaking ever so slightly.

"Would you like me to demonstrate for you? Maybe it'll help jog your memory." My voice was husky. Please say yes.

Unfortunately she shook her head in the negative, quickly saying no.

Too bad for me, "Let me know if you change your mind." I said while straightening up, I held out the salad I bought for her. And said it a llouder more normal voice, or what I hoped was a normal voice, "Here ya go, I know you said you weren't hungry, but I brought you a salad anyway. I'm gonna go to the bathroom." Because I don't know how much more I can take right now.

"Thank you." She said really softly. Taking it from my hands while looking at the floor.

My mental will power is beyond amazing. Because honestly I'm not sure how I stopped myself from grabbing her, and taking her on that little bed.

One thing I forgot to mention previously. A very sad, and significant event happened the month before our 1 year anniversary. 9-11. I was one of the millions who watched as the planes crashed into the World Trade Towers.

There were whispers and some fears of a draft potentially happening. War would definitely be happening soon. We wanted justice and revenge against the people who had attacked us.

So even more this idea that he could be taken from me had cemented in my mind. Prime drafting age, though he was in college so chances weren't high, but there was still this fear. So back to after our 1 year anniversary.

Life for us continued. I can't point out specifically, but our relationship definitely deepened after confessing to each other that we loved the other. We still did the same things, but there was more intimacy(?) in our actions and conversations (no not sex pervs) Not sure if that's the correct word though.

But life continues. We were still concerned about war, and would there be more attacks. We stayed away from down town this entire time as a just in case precaution. Michael continued doing fabulous in school, and I struggled to find work.

So months went by. It was almost spring of 2002, but a chilly night. We were snuggling on the couch and he asked me out of the blue, "What do you see for our future?"

I was a little confused, "What do you mean?"

"I mean, you and me and the future. What do you want to happen?"

I thought about it and a little hesitantly said "I want to marry you." I was a little scared, you always hear about guys running for the hills at the mention of marriage and commitment and all that. But I wasn't going to lie to him either.

He relieved my fears by giving me a huge hug and said he wanted to marry me as well.

We were now unofficially engaged. Though I told him we wouldn't be official till he got me a ring and asked me on one knee.