Tragedy morphs into a miracle nearly seamlessly. That is, if Lisanna choose to follow her destiny...
Chapter 4: A Fairy Flies To Another World
Adapted Dialogue By Monica Rial and Tyler Walker
The pain was so immense and came so quickly that it had all but looped all the way back to feeling like... nothing at all. At least, it's what Lisanna felt when her body hit the dirt in a clearing. First, her front landed before she bounced and rolled onto her back in this numbed sensation.
Lisanna's arms were sprawled out in their respective directions and bent in ways they really weren't suppose to. She started to black out from the impact's head trauma but it felt more like when Cana dared her to chug a whole mug. Except this sort of intoxication came with an immediate hangover. It wasn't long before the pain began to catch up.
Lisanna couldn't move her head while her vision started to blur in and out of focus. She tried to concentrate on the night sky's stars to stave off this growing fatigue. However, even breathing was becoming a burden.
Lisanna Strauss was dying. Her mental faculties were slowing to a crawl even while her mind was in a flurry, flashing her life before her eyes.
Being cast out by the village Mirajane had saved.
Wandering until they found Fairy Tail, a guild tailor made for outcasts.
Meeting Natsu.
Hatching Happy.
Getting Guildarts to spoil her rotten.
All those missions.
Especially the fights she needed to be saved from.
And now... the Beast swatting her aside like a fly.
Well... what did... I... expect... to happen? Lisanna thought, trying to stay conscious by talking to herself. I say a... few pretty words... and get Elf... to recover... with the... the power of love? She shed a tear in her whirlwind of denial, anger, pleading and depression all at once. And they call... Natsu reckless...
Lisanna's mind replayed the Odaiba Evacuation but remembering those broken promises only added to the pain. Mira was right... she thought. I'll never... be her... Her eyes closed in her growing pain. I'll never... be anybody...
"I respectfully must disagree... Lisanna Strauss..."
The young wizard's eyes opened back up to a voice that sounded as clear as crystal and saw a brilliant flash of light green light explode just above her. Tendrils of energy spilled out while Lisanna's surroundings seemed to fade away into a white void. If there was anything that'd perk her up at death's door, it was certainly this.
At first, she thought this was it. That her soul was entering the afterlife. But... it didn't feel like it.
"On the contrary," the smooth male voice called out, sounding angelic, "this is a new beginning."
Lisanna felt it. That... melody. That feeling of somebody reaching out for her help.
"W... why... me?" Lisanna asked, "I couldn't... even save... my brother." Just remembering what she'd attempted made the aches and pain so much worse. You choose the wrong one.
"You were one of the few who could pick up on my faint Digi-Melody and the only one who stopped to pick me up," the voice insisted, never once raising its tone. "Despite your doubts, you knew somebody needed the kind of help you could provide." As if by magic, a small handheld appeared a foot or two above Lisanna. Tech clearly foreign to Fiore.
"I've... seen that..." young Strauss began in recognition, remembering the dream she had what seemed like ages ago. "My dream..."
"I see..." the voice mused with intrigue. "My resonance has shown you great things in your future."
The handheld suddenly changed colors from blank white to a scarlet red and lowered itself towards Lisanna. It seemed to... beckon her.
"Use this Fusion Loader for the battles that await you," the voice insisted. "It will restore your strength for the battles to come."
Lisanna didn't have a clue about what this was actually about. However, her flaring fatigue told her that she wouldn't have the time to solve this mystery. If the voice meant what he said, that... thing she saw above her could heal her.
At least, that's how it sounded. Lisanna knew not to trust strangers but at the moment, she didn't have much to lose. Wincing all the way, young Strauss lifted her right hand towards this Fusion Loader and opened her fingers.
"Lisanna!" Mirajane's distraught voice called out. The young wizard found the sound muffled before feeling her right hand suddenly held even through the numbness.
Mirajane couldn't see the void or the Fusion Loader when she had arrived Not in her state of mind.
"Stay with me please!" Mirajane begged, her voice cracking like an egg. "Y-you'll get better soon just... hang on please." Tears soaked her face once they overflowed from her eyes while her hands gripped Lisanna's more intensely than ever. She could feel it. Her little sister's pulse was fading by the second.
Just seeing Lisanna in this state sprawled across the rocky terrain alone was more than Mirajane could bear. Her sister's eyes had lost that shine she was known for, the first sign of fading strength. She was barely able to move her limbs aside from the occasional twitch.
"I feel..." Lisanna strained to speak, still staring up at whatever it was, "...so strange..." Mirajane hung onto every word desperately. "It's like I... I can't move."
"Don't waste your strength," Mirajane choked out tearfully, grasping to whatever hope she could muster.
"Where'd you go... Mira?" Lisanna asked, wearing a look that seemed... accepting.
"I'm right here!" her big sister promised in her sobbing.
"It grieves me to inform you that time is not on your side," the weathered voice told Lisanna. "The choice must be made now or never."
Lisanna looked up at the Fusion Loader, knowing that there was no turning back if she took the offer. Maybe... through helping the voice, she would be able to feel like a real Fairy Tail member and hold her own for once.
Maybe...
Lisanna slowly turned her head to her right and looked at where she believed Mirajane was.
"Mira," she forced out while her left arm slowly and painfully rose up. "I... I just want you to... know..." When speaking became too tiresome, her finger bend inwards as though she was grabbing hold of something in the air.
"Lisanna?!" Mirajane panicked when her sister paused. "You have to wake up, Lisanna!"
However, her pleas were cut off when her sister glowed with a brilliant flash of green to her growing fear of this unknown phenomenon.
"No..." Mira whispered when Lisanna began to become further engulfed by the light. "Why are you glowing?" She didn't expect an answer in her distress. "What's happened?"
Mirajane got one anyways when Lisanna began to float up into the air and close her eyes. Though it was hard to tell through the light.
"No, don't leave me!" Mirajane shouted louder than ever, embracing Lisanna with both of her arms desperately. "You can't disappear on me!" Her sister's body started to fade entirely with the light growing in brilliant. "Please... don't go, Lisanna!" And just as it was at its brightest... "STAY HERE WITH ME!"
Lisanna Strauss vanished with a flash, slipping through Mirajane's arms like something ephemeral. The data card she had in her pocket slipped out in the process and hit the ground. A label with an image and a few words had appeared on it before fading away just as quickly.
However, Mira barely noticed when she sank to her arms and knees in one loud bawl all alone in File Forest.
Lisanna too believed that she was dying while her numb body seemed to be carried across an invisible current of air. A glimmering tunnel of green and yellow flew past her while the motion caused her eyes to get heavy. Was this her ascension?
Lisanna swore that if she ever saw Natsu again, she'd make a point to apologize for mocking his motion sickness.
Hopefully soon...
Shoutmon yawned deeply and stretched out his left arm while he carried his Mic over his right shoulder. The plains of the outer most area were way more chill than he preferred with only a few hills and plateaus for any semblance of landmarks. It had only been ten minutes out but it felt like ages before he groaned.
"You run around, I run around,
We're all gonna run... run... run arou-ugh!"
Even humming his favorite song couldn't break the monotony.
"Shoutmon, reporting in," the Small Dragon Digimon called in on his left wrist com. "Is Jijimon sure of this 'feeling' of his?"
"Well, he's rarely wrong about a disturbance in the dimension barrier," Balistamon began over the channel. "Though... half the time, it's just bad gas but he hasn't made a toot just yet."
"Wow," Shoutmon snarked while starting over a small hill. "That's reassuring."
"Now are you sure you don't need any back up?" Balistamon asked insistently. "You know you don't have to prove anything to me."
Shoutmon paused at this statement. "It's just a by-the-books patrol," he claimed, trying to brush it off. "What's to 'prove?'"
"I've heard what some of the villagers say behind your back," Balistamon claimed with empathy. "You shouldn't let those naysayers get you down."
"It's..." Shoutmon began, hesitant to admit his feelings. "It's not about them..."
However, their heart-to-heart was disturbed by the sight of a lone Digimon on a grassy patch. At least... Shoutmon thought it was a Digimon. Either way, they weren't from the Forest Zone. The only Digimon powerful enough to traverse from Zone to Zone were often with...
"We'll get in touch with our feelings later, buddy," Shoutmon promised before cutting the com and making a beeline for his find.
The Small Dragon slowed to a tip-toeing once he got within four feet and held out his mic by its staff, ready to strike first. He found this stranger possessing a similar body type to Lilymon. She was all but dead to the world with her disheveled white hair and listless head.
The "Digimon" seemed limp to Shoutmon with her limbs sprawled about but appeared to be breathing and stirring in her sleep. Additionally, her fair appearance hardly seemed Bagra. For now. Suspicious as the young dragon was, he couldn't help but walk faster towards the stranger's right side.
"Well, you've seen better days," Shoutmon quipped with concern mixed in with caution. "Bagra or not, I can't turn my back on a potential refugee." He leaned over to shove her chest back and forth in hopes of stirring her awake, feeling a rather squishy lump to his curiosity. "Alright, up an' at 'em now!"
Lisanna groaned while opening her eyes slowly but surely and letting the light let her vision focus. Her mind was still regaining its bearings when she saw what looked like... a small dragon? Carrying a microphone?
"Elfman must've hit me harder than I thought..." Lisanna mumbled when she finally felt her right breast being groped. "What the...?"
She lifted her head and went white as her hair in mortification to what appeared to be the micro-dragon coping a feel while she'd been knocked out.
"Hey," Shoutmon called when he noticed the stranger rousing from her sleep. "Welcome back to the land of the-"
"Kyaaaaaaa!" Lisanna cried at the thought of being taken advantage of, making her "assailant" jump. As if by instinct, her Cat Soul Takeover spell kicked in with her hands turning to paws and allowed herself to lift her upper body in a jolt.
"Living?" was all a surprised Shoutmon could finished before Lisanna's right cat paw smacked him straight up into the sky.
The young wizard rolled backwards with this rush of Ethernano fueled adrenaline and sprung up with her paws to somersault backwards onto her feet. Lisanna barely noticed the Fusion Loader fall off of her person while she posed firmly with her right paw out and left by her side. Just in time for Shoutmon to land face first in the dirt.
"Ow..." the Rookie muttered however muffled.
"You'll really be in for it when my sister hears-," Lisanna declared before her paws, whiskers and cat ears vanished in a flash, "-about this?" Her confusion was fueled further by a weird... empty sensation. Either the Ethernano in the atmosphere was thinnest here or the Beast's swatting nerfed her magic for the moment.
"Wait..." Lisanna began to piece together with a second to think, "how am I still alive?" She remembered the voice's offer but hardly believed it could actually pull it off.
"Give me a second and you'll be a good as deleted!" Shoutmon's hotblooded voice declared, getting the young wizard to look up. "I knew I smelled a Bagra spy." There he was, using his microphone to lift himself from out of the dirt while glaring at Lisanna.
"Ba-wha?" young Strauss questioned, cocking her head over the foreign term.
"Too late to play dumb," Shoutmon declared while making a reckless run with his mic at the ready. "Bellow Blas-" However, a glint of red made him stop in his tracks almost immediately and drew his eyes towards the dropped Fusion Loader. "Shut up...!"
Lisanna had put up fist defensively just before Shoutmon shortened his mic and ran over to grab the fallen tech. "The legendary Fusion Loader!" the Small Dragon Digimon gasped with awe while holding it in his left hand. "But... how?"
"Hey, that's my... Fusion... thingy!" Lisanna protested, sounding less mad than she was letting on. "That's not your's!" She had forgotten Shoutmon's earlier threat when she marched towards the Rookie Level. The young wizard would soon remembered when he extended his mic's staff and made her just short of yellow horn on the grille.
"A likely story, spy!" Shoutmon smarmily accused, glaring up at the concerned Lisanna. "This Digivice only chooses one worthy of its power, one who possess the heart of a true leader." He held up the Fusion Loader in his left hand like it was an idol of great reverence. "It's the one thing that can stand up to Bagra scum like you."
"Seriously, what's this... Bugra... thing?" Lisanna demanded to know in exasperation, cautious of Shoutmon's microphone. "And... what happened to File Forest?" It was only now that she realized that her surroundings had changed from rocky terrain among trees to a plateau amongst an open plain.
However, her true shock came when she lifted her gaze upwards and let her jaw drop upon her discovery. Multiple chunks of Earth were hovering above in the sky each in what seemed like the biggest bubbles anybody could've blown. She was so taken by this site that she push Shoutmon's mic aside to step forth for a better view.
Just to make sure she wasn't going crazy.
"Hey, hold it!" Shoutmon protested while going after the bewildered wizard. "I haven't even started my interrogation yet." He pocketed the Fusion Loader for safe keeping. "Some prisoner of war you are."
"Elf?" Lisanna cried out, her head darting around distress. "Mira, where are you?" The only things for a mile was what seemed like far taller plateaus among a more bumper terrain. "Anybody?" That wasn't even touching upon how it was suddenly broad daylight without any sign of her brother or sister searching for her.
Shoutmon's glare softened when he heard how anxious Lisanna sounded and the fearful look in her eye. He knew this could've been a spy trick but remembered how war refugees often arrive with that kind of distress. The young Rookie decided to take a chance.
"Who are they?" Shoutmon asked more gently, lowering his microphone. "These 'Elf' and 'Mira' characters."
"My brother and sister," Lisanna answered, sounding more calm. "We were helping a village with an attack when..." The memory of that strike made her pause in discomfort. "...something bad happened." It felt easily now that Shoutmon wasn't on the defense anymore. "I must've been flung clear across Fiore to... wherever this is."
"Fiore?" Shoutmon asked in genuine curiosity. "I don't remember the Digital World having a Zone like that."
"'Digital World'?" Lisanna questioned with mounting confusion. "Are you just... making up words?"
"Uh... the Digital World?" Shoutmon answered incredulously, unsure of what how to properly respond. "The world we all live in?" Lisanna blinked once puzzled. "Little monsters everywhere?" Lisanna blinked twice in bafflement. "Like... what kind of Digimon are you?"
"That... depends," Lisanna finally answered back. "What's a Digimon?"
-Earthland, X782-
"Lisanna!" a tattered Elfman called out, pushing through the pain and the foliage. "Mira!" His left eye blinked hard when wincing at the aches and pains lingering in his limbs. "Dammit!" The low hanging tree branches smacking into him didn't exactly help matter. "Think I'll stick to my Beast Arm a little longer."
Eventually, Elfman's still sharp ears picked up on sobbing from what was certainly a girl to his right by a tad. Suddenly, his body's battered state was too trivial when he bolted as fast as he could've and turned right towards that precise direction.
"Anybody out there?" Elfman tried to shout before coughing. "Girls?" He remembered now how the Beast's roaring did a number on his throat but his memory of it was still spotty.
Sure enough, Elf made it to the clearing where he discovered Mirajane sunk to her knees from behind. Her hair was a mess while her outfit was miraculous only in need of a tailor compared to his torn up uniform. However, a major red flag arose when he saw her shoulder trembling while her sobs subsided into sniffling.
"M-Mira?" Elfman called out cautiously, baffled by his big sister tearing up let alone crying. "I-It's me, Elf." He stepped forth slowly by one step at a time, his pain catching up with him. "For real this time, I promise."
Mirajane gasped with a slight jolt and turned around to show the most devastated look in her eyes. Elfman thought that his botched takeover scared her senseless and didn't have the heart to hold it over her.
"H-Hey, it's all better now!" Elfman promised while slowly making his way. "I just had to knock myself into the cliffs and tire myself out." He hunched over to make himself look less threatening upon getting within four feet of Mirajane. "At least, that's what I feel any-"
Elfman paused considerably when he saw something glint in the open palms Mirajane was holding out before her. It was that data card. The one that...
"We still love you."
The very words were the next piece of his fuzzy memories Elfman felt clearing up, one that made his heart sink in dread. He felt it plunge to further depth when he saw exactly where Mirajane was standing in front of and stumbled back in cold denial. An harsh indent in the otherwise rocky surface. Big enough... for a teenage girl.
"Mira..." Elfman began to question, begging to be wrong. "Where's Lisanna?"
To Be Continued...
Lisanna embarks on an adventure she never asked for, never quite knowing how much her absence will affect her home.
PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT AS TO HOW YOU'VE BEEN ENJOYING THIS FANFIC SO FAR. I don't mean to be pushy for those who may be shy but I only wish to improve my craft or know how I'm doing in general. Rip me to shreads YouTube style even.