Chapter Six
Back So Soon?
The gathered members of the Fairy Tail guild had all but packed out the small bar that Cana would frequent from time to time. It seemed that while most of the people of Magnolia loved and adored Fairy Tail they knew it would only be a matter of time before it would become dangerous for non mages to be in there at the same time.
"It's been a tough day for my brats, Magnus," Master Makarov had found himself situated atop this bar, speaking to the owner like they were old friends, which to most of the guild they just assumed to be the case.
"Make a tab." he tried to be as subtle as possible but this was the realm where Cana's speciality kicked in, as if having super human senses, she reached up with her glass, praising the master for his generosity in their troubling times.
"So what does it do?" Lucy asked, referring to the sigil that was sitting painlessly below Erza's collarbone. It was almost like it had been branded in.
"I don't know," she admitted slowly, "He said that when the time came I would be able to summon him for a rematch, so I guess that this is kind of like a magical contract." the Fairy Queen said, looking down at the brand just as intently as the others.
"Can you feel it?" Lucy asked.
Erza slowly shook her head, "Not really. It feels slightly warmer there than the rest of me does, if anything at all." she answered.
"So this guy came barging into the guild and what, just waltzed right up to you and demanded a fight to the death?" the Celestial wizard asked, shocked that anyone would have the stones to do that to Fairy Tail of all people.
"Well, actually," Mirajane said as she came over and took a seat right next to Erza, "He came in and said something about not being able to find any traces of corruption in our hearts, then he said that Erza and I are pretty." she added with a brief smile on show.
"Then he proceeded to throw Erza around with shocking ease considering that she's the 'strongest Fairy'." Mira muttered from behind a mug of beer, casting a sideways glance at her old rival.
"Do you think you would have faired any better? I think at one point I got a true glimpse at his power, and it was…" she trailed off, staring at the brand that spot where the brand on her chest was.
"I might have, if I had my magic." Mira answered honestly with a mild shrug, "But I guess we'll never know if I'm stronger than your new rival." she added with another well hidden smirk that sat behind her mug.
"Ignoring your obvious jibe, it's easy to sit there on your perch and say that you might have been able to fight him off if you had your magic." Lucy jutted in, subtly trying to instigate Erza and Mira's rivalry from the shadows. She loved exploring the space between the two of them and there was little else she enjoyed more than when they would be confronted with one another. It was a dangerous thrill, one that she was all too aware of.
"Yes, it's not like I can just tap this thing and say, 'Hey Salamander, can you restore my friend's power? She thinks she can beat you but can't right now because she lost her magic'. Erza said sarcastically, tapping the place where the dragon head sigil had been.
There was a quick flash of light before they all felt an intense rush of heat fall upon them, making the air thick and hard to breathe in the small bar.
"Did you just summon me sarcastically?" a rich voice reached their ears, his tone incredibly unimpressed with what was transpiring in front of him. All eyes turned to see a shadowed man under a thick brown cloak.
That feeling was unmistakable, it was him, for the second time that day, he was standing among them, only now he wasn't smiling as he had been for almost their entire previous encounter.
"Titania, I asked you a question." he said after receiving nothing but silent stares, "I gave you a powerful pseudo-contract, one that meant you can summon me from wherever I happen to be for the sole purpose of having our rematch, and you brought me here to this shit hole for, what?" he asked, reaching up with a free hand to pull his hood down, revealing that just as his tone had suggested, he was extremely displeased with this revelation.
"Calm down, there's no need for this to escalate, this is just a misunderstanding, it's not like you gave me any instruction on how to use this." Erza said, subconsciously rising to meet his gaze. She may not have meant to do it, but there was something about him that just made her immediately go into hazard mode.
If she was about to have another scuffle with him, then so be it.
"Fine." he said at last, putting his palm out toward her, placing it against the armoured breastplate that had very quickly appeared. This time she could feel the sensation of heat irradiating from him.
"You get one do-over, no more. This time, I'll let some magic linger as a reminder that the next time you decide to summon me, someone is going to die." he told her, letting the magic freely burn itself into her chest. She winced at the pain but it quickly died down.
"Old man," Natsu said, slinging the bag down onto Erza's table, "The payment they owed me for destroying your guildhall, supposedly there's fifteen million jewel in there, that should go some way towards rebuilding." he explained, keeping his word that he would repay them for the damages he'd caused.
"Now, Titania, repeat after me, 'Salamander, you aren't a fucking genie and I won't summon you again unless it's for a fight.'" Natsu said, throwing the whole guild into sheer awe with the way that he was treating their Fairy Queen.
"I told you it was an accident, but if you continue to speak to me that way then we'll have another fight sooner than you expected. You hurt us at our core today, you should at least respect the concept that you had promised us it wasn't intentional." Erza shot back, holding her ground in the stifling hot bar.
"I suppose that will do. Don't get any wrong ideas, but you did summon me for a reason, did you not?" he asked as he stepped past her and took her seat, picking up her mug and drinking her beer. If the guild could have been shocked into silence yet again, it would have happened at that exact moment. None of them could even find the words to describe what it was that they were seeing.
"I told you, it was an accident, I didn't want to summon you, so you may leave now." Erza glared at him, ready to requip at a moments notice.
"Did you not listen to a word I just said?" he asked incredulously after taking a long few gulps of her drink, "I am not a fucking genie, and I am most certainly not your bitch. You might have summoned me by accident but you have no power to dispel me, that's not how that brand works." he added quickly.
"You, silver top, tell me something, how does one lose their magic power?" he asked, finally turning to look Mira in the eyes, only a foot away from where they were sat next to each other.
"It's a long story-" she'd started to say.
"Time is an abundant resource." he cut her off.
"One that I don't feel like sharing with you." she retorted, clapping back at him just as Erza had.
The guild began to get a bit of their confidence back. Despite the terrifying power that almost all of them had witnessed earlier that day, it made them feel whole seeing two of their S-Class mages standing their ground against the infamous Salamander.
There was a moment of silence as Natsu finished Erza's drink completely, slamming the mug down on the table.
"Let me tell you a little story, see, once upon a time there was a boy-" Natsu began, but this time it was his turn to be cut off.
"I couldn't care less. You destroyed our home today, your hurt my friend and you disrupted the very peace that we have held together in that building for decades. You can take your stories and shove them up your fiery ar-" Mira was inches away from physically lashing out at him.
"The hard way it is." he said with a soft sigh as he put two fingers to the centre of her forehead, closing his eyes and focusing on what was hidden within.
The outside world became a blur, whatever happened inside the bar would have to wait until he was finished with his current business interest, namely figuring out what was going on inside the silver haired beauty's body.
There was magic in here, he could feel it, but something was actively blocking it from rising to the surface.
He found himself realized into a memory, standing next to a visage of Mira herself, both of them looking down from a grassy perch into a clear below them.
"So, some kind of incident caused your magic to disappear?" he softly asked her, seeing the realization flutter across her features.
She slowly nodded, her eyes fixed on the three young kids marching confidently through the clearing.
"Is that you?" Natsu asked sceptically, pointing toward the boisterous teenager that led the way, flanked by a far younger version of a man he was sure he'd seen among the Fairy Tail mages earlier.
Another nod, only this time she decided to speak, "This is just a memory right? If this is your plan to get my magic back then I don't want it, do you hear me? I don't want to be in here, stop this." Mira turned to him, grabbing him by the scruff of his cloak.
"I jumped in here by my will, and I suppose that I can leave just as easily, but this is your mind, make no mistake that you are the powerful one here. Even someone like me can't change that." he explained, seeming infinitely softer with her than he was in the outside world.
"I don't want to relive this. This pain was hard enough the first time." Mira said, tears beginning to fall.
"Hey," Natsu said, softly cupping her chin, "Snap the fuck out of it." he said. His personality had flipped in an instant, "You are the Demon of Fairy Tail, are you not? Yes, I've heard of you before, just as I have heard of Titania, and indeed your crash magic mage has made waves in my world, though, for different reasons."
"You really are a heartless bastard." she said, pushing him away while more tears flowed freely.
"Heartless, yes, perhaps." he mused quietly. "I wasn't always like this, you know." he said uneasily, trying to break the tension.
"The little one down there, your sister?" he asked. The silence he received had let his know his answer.
"I know what it's like to lose a loved one, I know what heartbreak feels like. I've felt everything you've felt in this moment, now imagine for a brief fleeting moment that you had spent dozens of years by the side of a loved one, cherishing each day before that love was violently ripped from your grasp." the pain in his words caused Mira to turn to him so sharply that she almost got whiplash.
How could a dark mage like him speak with such reverence and love. She could almost see it, she wasn't sure if her eyes were betraying her but she swore she could see the faintest trace of tears in his eyes.
Slowly he pulled the cloak to one side, opening up his shirt to reveal a huge scarred patch of skin situated above where his heart should have been.
"I was once human too. The pain of heartache for someone like me was… Literal. That was when I changed. I lost my love, I lost my brother, and I lost my best friend, all in one fell swoop. That was the darkest day of my life, when Zeref and the Black Dragon took everything away from me." he told her, his voice trying to promise her that it would get better, that time would heal all wounds.
"I know what it's like to lose, but you have to use that pain, use it to make you stronger. Pain made me more powerful than ever, I will make them pay one day, through sheer fucking determination. Now, show me your resolve, I want to see that you aren't about to watch that little girl die again and let her sacrifice for you be in vain." his words were trespassing into dangerous territory.
He was inside her mind, if he stepped wrong, this could all end horribly, and he knew that very well, but there was little else he could do at this point.
"Lisanna." Mira breathed, her head hung low and her eyes glued to the floor, shadowed by her vibrant bangs.
"Her name," she breathed out before Natsu watched as a half transformed creature struck out, killing the girl.
"Is Lisanna!" Mira bellowed out, her body covered in darkness, crackles of energy, and strong whipping winds that snapped and lashed out at Natsu's body.
She was engulfed in rolling waves of power that irradiated uncontrollably out of her body.
There was a blast of something that he'd felt all over him and when he opened his eyes, he looked up to see the bright blue skies over Magnolia, no longer an inhabitant inside Mira's mind, and no longer sitting at that table in the bar.
Sitting up, he pulled himself out of a pile of rubble only to find that he'd been blasted down the street leaving behind a trail of destruction. The road had been upending completely. It must have been at least two hundred feet from where he sat to the bar.
"You are going to pay for what you've done to me!" Mirajane, now completely different, covered in an extraordinarily revealing red body suit, had wings, a tail, and glisteningly sharp talons lining her hands, was gently hovering above the ground, gliding toward him.
"I must admit, I was excited and slightly smitten in my fight with Titania, but this? You're bringing out a side of me that I haven't seen in centuries!" Natsu erupted from the ground, fire bellowing everywhere around him as his deep onyx eyes began to shine gold like an endless sea of aurum.
"Now, show me your true power, Demon of Fairy Tail!"
A/N: Review?