Hello everyone! Not quite the longer chapter I was promising but I think you still be happy with this update. I hope I can get these moving a lot quicker in the new year! Enjoy!
As always, I do not own Fairy Tail. It belong to Hiro Mashima and I thank him for it's use in my own creative expressions. *bows*
"Droy," Jet called from his desk before downing the rest of his second Red Bull of the morning. "Hey, Droy, I think I got it."
The fat man was asleep in his swivel chair but he jerked himself awake so hard that he almost fell out of it. "What?" He answered blearily while righting himself clumsily, a few uneaten Cheetos rolled off his chest onto the floor.
"I think I've got it." Jet sounded more like a guy who had found a secret treasure chest rather than some files on the internet.
"Oh, awesome..." Droy picked a stray Cheeto off his pants and popped it into his mouth. "What did you get?"
"A detailed background on Gajeel Redfox…" Jet pounded the computer keys eagerly.
"Oh, you're still on that…" Droy yawned and foraged for another Cheeto. "I thought you were done with that, Levy might not like it if we poke around in her business."
"I didn't give up," Jet replied curtly. "I hit a wall, but I managed to hack into the Police database and there is tons of information on this guy, I just need to finish the download."
"You what?!" Droy was so surprised that a half-eaten Cheeto fell out of his open mouth.
"It's no big deal, pretty easy actually they really need a better system…"
"You can't hack cops!" Droy's face had turned green like he was going to be sick.
"They will never know," Jet hit a few more keys. "Done! Now just to print it… Besides, we had to do it, for Levy."
Droy was still too stunned to be able to answer, he was picturing the cops breaking their door down any minute and hauling them off to jail. He wouldn't survive jail; the food in there would kill him.
The printer set up between the two computer systems clicked on and started spewing out pages. Jet wheeled his chair over and snatched the first one off the pile; it was the mugshot of a man who looked almost identical to the one he had seen in the hallway with Levy yesterday. A little bit longer hair and a menacing look on an ugly face was the only difference, the year on the sign he was holding dated it to about five years ago. Jet felt a stab of alarm hit him in the chest, what was Levy doing with this guy? He took the rest of the stack, still warm from the printer, and started to read. He was barely two pages in when the stabbing in his chest turned into a full body throb of fear, this was bad, this was really, really bad.
"Droy!" He called, his voice pitched higher than usually. "Levy is in serious trouble."
Erza was sitting at her desk trying to concentrate on the work in front of her. The forensic evidence wasn't done yet and it was nearly noon, the lab was backed up because of the short staffed long weekend. A part of her was irritated because it meant that they were stuck waiting when they could be running out of time but the other part knew it couldn't be helped.
Then there was the small part of her that wanted to say screw work and take a much needed nap at her desk. She was exhausted in every way possible, which totally contradicted the thrum of energy that seemed to buzz under her skin. It seemed like everyone in the station could pick up on it, the amount of funny looks she was getting this morning was never ending but everyone was too scared of her to say anything to her face. Everyone but Gray.
"Quit looking at me like that," she scowled as she caught him staring at her yet again.
"Like what…" he tried to answer innocently while looking away quickly but he had never been a good liar.
"Do your work," she ordered absently; it wasn't like he actually had to listen to what she told him to do.
"I am," he replied defensively. "But I'm as stuck as you are until we get stuff back from the lab. You can always tell me what happened last night…"
Erza tried not to whip her head up and look extremely guilty at the same time. "What do you mean, 'what happened last night?'? Nothing happened, I went to the ball and then came home, that's it."
"I don't believe you," he replied. "Something happened that has you jumpy as a cat in a dog pound."
"Nonsense." Erza bent her head over the page she had already re-read three times. "You are imagining things."
"Detectives?" A lab tech appeared at their desks. "I know you've been waiting on this report so I thought I would bring it up instead of paging you down. We compared the DNA from the scissors to the FPD data base like Officer Doranbolt requested."
"Thank you," Erza smiled at the girl and took the pages.
"You're welcome," she replied before scurrying away. Maybe not everyone was scared of her after all. Erza scanned the pages quickly and then passed them over to a waiting Gray. "Mest was right to have them compare thossamples."
"Well, we know now for sure that Natsu is involved." He handed the stack back to her. "It doesn't help us if we can't find him though and we still don't know how this fits in with the Zoldeo murder."
"Call a patrolman and have him check out Natsu's apartment again, he might not think we will be on to him so quick and go back there. I'm going to call Laxus myself and ask him what the hell is going on."
Levy sighed and looked through the semi-transparent curtains that covered the window, cars where coming and going and a handful of children in their swim suits were running through a sprinkler on the front lawn across the street.
She could not remember the last time she was this bored; she was tired of watching TV, of reading and she was especially tired of listening to Sting and Natsu bicker. Ever since he had arrived in the morning Sting hadn't shut up, if he wasn't trying to use bad lines on Lucy then he was picking a fight with Natsu; who brushed it off making Sting try even harder.
"I wish we could get out of here for a while," Lucy commented from the other side of the couch, Plue was lying between them napping. "I can't even take him for a walk."
Levy nodded in agreement, there was only so much downtime a person could take before they went stir crazy. "We could go out to the back yard," she murmured. "At least it's not inside the house."
Lucy gave her a look, after what happened out there yesterday other than letting Plue out a few times to pee they hadn't explored it.
"It looks really sunny and nice outside," Levy continued. "We could go lay out on the lawn…" As much as Lucy was annoyed Levy didn't think she would be able to resist being out in the sun.
"Fine…" the blonde replied. They raided the bathroom and found a couple of large beach towels and two cold bottles of water in the fridge. Natsu and Sting had disappeared downstairs somewhere so slipping outside into the bright sunshine was easy.
Plue raced out ahead of them and yipped a few times while sniffing around in the grass, seemingly happy to have company while stretching his legs. They laid the towels out on a grassy spot near the deck but not in the shade of the tree so they could take maximum advantage of the heat.
"I guess this is kind of a vacation," Lucy admitted once they were settled. "It's not a beach but it could be worse."
Thinking of the beach reminded Levy of the dream she had yesterday and it made her heart race a little. "What do you think we would be doing right now if none of this had happened?" She asked quietly while staring up at the clouds to calm herself back down.
"I don't know, probably sweating in our apartment," Lucy answered back. "Maybe we could have walked down the street to that once place that makes its own ice cream, I would kill for a double scoop of mint chocolate chip right now."
The thought of a vanilla cone dipped in chocolate fudge made Levy's mouth water a little, it was the perfect day to get ice cream. "Yeah," she sighed and closed her eyes, loving the heat on her face.
"Or we could have gone to the park, the one with all the fountains and statues…"
"Yeah, that guy that sells popcorn and snow cones down by the pond who dresses up like a clown… I always thought he was kind of creepy."
"He is creepy; I'm pretty sure one day he was trying to look down my shirt."
"Everyone tries to look down your shirt."
"Hey!" Lucy lightly punched Levy on the arm and they both giggled. Even though she felt guilty for dragging Lucy into her mess, Levy was glad they could still joke and laugh with one another, it would be much tougher going through this alone. They laid there in silence with just the light sounds of the birds and wind in the trees fluttering in their ears until they heard the little dog let out a soft growl.
"Hush, Plue," Lucy muttered beside Levy but neither of them opened their eyes or looked up to see what he was growling at.
"Why are you out here all alone?"
Gajeel knew that he was early but he found himself heading over to Gramp's place anyway. He had called Laxus to let him know what he had found out at the community centre but unfortunately the other man hadn't gotten lucky with his own contacts.
They still had their meeting with Quatro Cerberus to look forward to tonight, hopefully they would be able to fill in more pieces of the puzzle. He pulled up to the house and parked behind a small dark SUV, he got out and tapped on the driver's side window to get the man inside's attention.
"You should be on the other side of the street," he told Rogue. The man nodded but didn't say anything.
"Everything quiet?" Gajeel asked. Rogue nodded again and he felt relieved, his worries earlier had been pointless after all.
Instead of heading up to the front door he decided to check out the broken gate, he had been too mad at himself yesterday to assess the damage. Later he would have to bring some tools over and fix it before anyone else found out. The broken section was leaning against the house, the hinges completely smashed and needing to be replaced, some of the boards were splintered or snapped as well. He might have to redo the whole thing he realized, which would be a pain the ass.
There was a noise and he stopped suddenly to listen, was that giggling? He put the gate back against the wall and moved further into the back yard to investigate. The little white yappy dog was snuffling around in the grass, he turned to look as Gajeel approached, his ears shot straight up and he growled lightly.
"Hush, Plue," he heard the blonde girl's voice call from near the deck. Lucy and Levy were both lying out on the grass; if he hadn't heard her speak just now she would have thought they were sleeping. Natsu and Sting were nowhere to be seen and for some reason that annoyed him, they were supposed to be doing their jobs.
"Why are you out here all alone?" He asked curiously. He had meant to startle them a little bit but from their reaction you would have thought he had lit a firecracker right under their ears.
Levy's eyes flew open when she jumped awake, but then she recognised him and the surprised look turned to annoyance. "What?"
"You shouldn't be out here alone," he repeated. "Where are Sting and Natsu?"
The girls shrugged. "Inside somewhere," Lucy answered. "Sting wouldn't stop talking."
"Yeah, he does that." Gajeel looked around, the backyard was closed off except for the broken gate and the fence was high enough it would be hard to peek in without being obvious. They probably had nothing to worry about as long as they stayed within yelling distance from the sliding deck doors, so why did he feel like making a much bigger deal out of this than it probably was?
He glanced down again at the girls; they were both glaring up at him with huffy faces. It wasn't until then that he noticed what Levy was wearing, not that he usually looked closely at that kind of stuff but it seemed to pop out in his mind. The dress made her seem younger, if that was even possible, and the cute way that her hair curled while up in pigtails just made it seem more obvious. Gajeel cleared his throat and looked away before she realized he was staring at her. "You guys shouldn't leave the house alone," he told them gruffly. "Even if it is just the backyard, it could be dangerous."
"Yeah, like what happened yesterday," he heard Lucy mutter and the memory of their mix up made his face feel a little heated. "There won't be any more surprised like that," he answered back.
"Did you find anything else out about what happened with that guy?" Levy asked quietly. It was first time she had really spoken since he got there and Gajeel had forgotten how naturally soft her voice was, at least when she wasn't mad at him.
"A few things," he admitted but he didn't want to give too much away without talking to Laxus first. "Nothing for sure though."
Levy bit her lip nervously, he wondered if she knew that he was keeping things from her or if she was remembering the murder in the alley. He opened his mouth to reassure her that they were doing everything they could to find the killer but the sliding door from up on the deck flew open and a pink head popped through it.
"There you are!" Natsu exclaimed, he didn't sound panicked or worried, just curious. "I was wondering where you guys went." Ignoring Gajeel completely as he stood there regarding them all with his hands on his hips.
"It's not like we could be in too many places," Lucy answered him wearily.
"Yeah, why would they want to hide from this?" Sting appeared beside Natsu and Gajeel rolled his eyes. Sting's cocky attitude could get on his nerves fast; he preferred Rogue's stoic and quiet personality even if it was strange sometimes. Levy and Lucy looked disappointed that their quiet haven had been breached by the two loud mouth men hired to watch over them, Gajeel could understand their feelings.
"Where were you?" He asked them, trying to balance out the reproachful tone with a raised eyebrow.
"Uh, just down in the basement…" Natsu looked down sheepishly. "Everything's been quiet all day."
Instead of answering Gajeel just sharpened his glare for a few seconds before sighing and looking away. There were only so many times you could try and pound something into Natsu's head before it started getting pointless and tiring.
"I was telling Natsu about your fight with Rogue yesterday," Sting piped up.
"It wasn't a real fight…" Gajeel muttered, sparing with Rogue was fun and compared to some of the scraps he had been in over the years it didn't really count.
"We should do a tag team match someday, you and Natsu versus Rogue and me; I bet it would be epic."
"It isn't wrestling; it's practice so that you know what to do on the job." Gajeel wondered if he ever took anything seriously or if he was this trivial about everything.
"You guys fight with each other?" Levy asked.
Gajeel looked over at the blue haired girl; he had forgotten she and Lucy were still listening. "It's not real fighting," he tried to explain wearily. "It's just practicing at the gym."
"Sometimes it gets pretty intense though," Sting added excitedly, not really helping Gajeel's intention of downplaying it. "You should come watch."
"Yeah!" Natsu spoke up for the first time in a while. "You should come to the gym with us sometime and show us what you got!"
Gajeel didn't think that was what Sting meant with the invitation, Lucy looked mortified at the thought of it but Levy was obviously still curious. The old saying "curiosity killed the cat" popped into his head but he shook it away. "Ok, party's over, let's all go back inside."
The girl grumbled as they stood up, Lucy called for her dog and Gajeel herded them up the stairs. He vowed to find something interesting to do before Sting gave them any more bad ideas.