I decided to write a chapter for this fanfiction instead of 'Our Shinigami Brother' because I need to plan out that fanfic and remember what I wrote before I make mistakes. So, I'll probably write a few chapters in this fanfic before returning to that one. Enjoy!
19
Zeref had hidden under an invisibility spell as he broke into the Fairy Tail guild hall. It was early morning, so the master and a few members ate breakfast, clearing a path to the request board. Zeref smiled, but the smile had a playful quality to it.
The dark wizard stood in front of the board and scanned the area. No one was looking, so he quickly slapped the page he held to the board. It was a job request he made for his little brother to take. Of course, he laid a curse on the page that would only affect Natsu, and he made sure Natsu would be the one to take it.
Zeref looked around the room again, seeing the people sitting closer to the board looking up, wondering what that sound was. He did slap the board pretty hard, but oh well.
Now that his curse was in place, Zeref left the guild hall just in time to see Natsu approaching the building with his blue cat companion. An excited dark smirk stretched across his face when he followed his little brother with his black eyes. His prank would begin soon, so he should get moving.
()()()
Natsu entered the guild, ate breakfast, and stood before the request board.
"What job should we take, Happy?" Natsu asked.
"Um, actually, Natsu, Lucy asked me to go with her on a solo mission already," said Happy.
Natsu turned his wide eyes to his best friend. "What? When and how did that happen?" he asked.
"Lucy said she needed help with flying, so she asked me."
"Why didn't she ask me to come along as well?"
"She didn't ask you because the job doesn't involve fighting."
Natsu's face pinched like someone put pickles on top of chocolate cake. "Oh, well… you have fun, I guess…?" he said, not sounding sure if his friend would have fun on a job that sounded boring.
"Oh! Natsu, there is a job asking for your help specifically." Happy's words brought Natsu back to the real world, and he looked at the board again. The middle of the board contained a job request asking for Natsu's assistance.
Natsu pulled the page from the board and read it. It asked him to lift a curse on the city where all inhabitants were turned into animals. It reminded him of his first S-class quest, but it must be a lot easier than that since it was on the downstairs board.
"Lifting curses isn't really my thing, though," Natsu muttered but accepted the request anyway since he was asked to help.
As Natsu left the guildhall after showing his master the job, he heard Makarov mutter, "I don't remember that job being there earlier."
()()()
Natsu followed the instructions on the request page and stood before a wall surrounded by a thick forest. He looked at the opening in the wall, wondering where the door was, but he couldn't think about it for long. The sensation of his skin crawling reminded Natsu of spiders. However, when the dragon slayer looked at his arms, he noticed pin feathers growing beneath the skin. His eyes widened in horror as more feathers grew, and he shrunk. When the transformation ended, Natsu noticed his body was covered in light pink bird feathers.
Slowly, Natsu looked around at the suddenly larger environment. There was a puddle he missed lying next to him. So Natsu looked into it to see what he had become. His head was a darker pink, matching his usual hair color, with dark red patches on his cheeks.
Natsu didn't know what bird he was, but at the moment, he didn't care because panic set in. He ran around screaming while flapping his wings, causing feathers to fall and scatter. The pink bird dashed through the opened gate blindly, never stopping his mad run or squeals until he tripped over a small pebble. Natsu yelped and crashed onto his face, wings limply forward. He lifted his head and used his right wing to rub his face.
"Ow…" he groaned, but the pain was welcomed because it snapped him out of his panicked state. "Why did I panic like that, anyway?" Natsu wondered, but a hiss stopped him. His eyes widened as he turned to look behind him, praying it wasn't a cat.
When he fully turned his head, his eyes widened in horror. It wasn't a cat, but the animal was so much worse. The creature's body was long and scaled, and its eyes were green and pierced into his soul. Around the neck of the animal expanded, showing off an impressive hood. It hissed loudly, spitting venom from its long, sharp fangs.
"A…A cobra?!" Natsu stuttered nervously. If his body was still human and not a bird, Natsu was sure his skin would have been white.
The cobra lunged forward, earning a screech from Natsu, but before the snake could sink its fangs into him, something dark swooped from the sky and grabbed him. Natsu felt panic rise again, but he calmed when his savior gently placed him onto a tree branch. He looked at the creature perched next to him. This time he recognized the breed: it was a raven.
The raven tilted its head. "Are you alright?" it asked, sounding male, but his voice sounded familiar to Natsu.
The dragon-slayer-turned-bird nodded his head slowly. "Yeah, thanks for the save. Do you know what's going on?"
"What do you mean, little parakeet?" the raven asked, unknowingly helping Natsu identify his breed.
"What I mean is: what caused the humans in this city to turn into animals?"
The raven's head tilted again, black eyes shining in confusion. "Humans turning into animals? Nothing like that is happening here," he said, causing Natsu to be reminded of Galuna Island again.
'Maybe the humans forgot they were humans? Wait! That won't happen to me, will it?!' Natsu thought, but the raven continued speaking before he could panic again.
"This city had been abandoned by humans a hundred years ago."
"Huh?" Natsu questioned and turned to examine the surrounding buildings. They were covered in plant life and cracks. When looking at the ground, tree roots grew from the concrete streets. Natsu wondered how he missed this but then remembered he was panicking before entering the city.
"Thank you for telling me this," Natsu said. "I'm going to look around to check for clues. Maybe there is something that could tell me how this happened."
"I told you already that no human is an animal here," said the raven.
"Maybe you're not, but I was human before I entered the city," Natsu said before gliding to the next branch. "Thanks again!"
()()()
Slowly, Natsu learned to fly but was still unstable and stumbled when he landed. He was in the air, flapping his wings and doing his best to fight the wind, but the wind kept trying to knock him out of the sky. A notably strong gust knocked him off balance, forcing him to land on the roof of a building hard. He fell onto his side and lay there, catching his breath.
After ten seconds, Natsu stood back up. He walked to the edge of the building with his wings out, ready to take off again, but something caught his eye.
Below him was a plant-covered plaza with a dry fountain and billboard. What caught his attention was the billboard. He could have sworn he saw his name on it. So, he glided down to the fountain and looked closer at the words.
The paint was new, and the writing sloppy. Natsu had to go over a few words to understand what was written. When he finished reading the message three times, the dragon slayer planned death again.
"If you are reading this, Natsu, it means you took the fake job I left for you. The City itself is cursed, but the curse does not turn people into animals. No, it instead keeps people out. I wanted you to see what it was like to live among animals for 12 hours. -Zeref
PS, if you look hard enough, you might find me in the city too. I'm using transformation magic to look like an animal. Have fun! :)"
'If Zeref was that snake, I'm killing him!' Natsu thought as he took to the sky again and hunted down the cobra.
He had met many animals, but they were either trying to eat him, ignore him, or run away from him - all in that order. The first animal he ran into was a dog. He was going to ask if it had seen the snake, but it didn't talk; instead, it growled and looked at him with hunger in its cold brown eyes. The second animal was another bird. It looked like him but yellow in color. When he asked if it had seen the cobra, the parakeet ignored him in favor of preening his head. He met four birds afterward, but they all did the same thing, so he moved on from them and met his final animal. It was a cute, tiny, brown mouse, running with a crumb of bread in its mouth. Natsu landed before the little creature and opened his beak to ask if it had seen the cobra, but the mouse screamed and ran into a hole.
Natsu sighed when he accepted defeat. There was no way he was going to get answers from these animals.
"You look like you could use some help." Natsu looked up when he heard a familiar voice. He turned and saw the raven he spoke to hours ago perched on a trash bin. "What are you looking for?" the raven asked.
"I'm looking for the snake that tried to eat me. I think it might be who I'm looking for," said Natsu.
The raven tilted his head. "Oh, now you're looking for someone? I thought you were trying to lift a curse."
Natsu clicked his beak. "Zeref tricked me. He placed a fake job request on the board and turned me into this bird."
"Hmm…well, the snake you're looking for is a girl, so I doubt she's who you're looking for."
"Then where could he be?" asked Natsu. "He said he is one of the animals in this city."
"Maybe I can help you look for him?" Natsu gave the raven a hopeful look and jumped up to join him on the trash bin.
"You would help?" The raven nodded. "Thanks! I don't know what animal form he took, though."
"Well, let's get to higher ground. It's the best advantage a bird can have." The raven flew into the clear blue sky, Natsu following close behind. They flew until they reached the bell tower, where they perched and looked below at the city. "We should be able to find him from here."
Natsu looked at the streets, seeing dogs, cats, squirrels, rabbits, and many other animals, but none screamed, "HEY, I'M ZEREF!"
Natsu sighed, "I can't find him. They all seem to be acting normal."
The raven chuckled. "Of course, they're acting normal. What did you expect? One of them holding a camera?"
"Well, maybe…" Natsu stopped as he processed the raven's words. 'How did he know Zeref would hold a camera?' Natsu thought as he slowly turned his head to the bird. The raven's eyes were wide and round as he stared ahead. The raven flicked his eyes to Natsu with a sheepish look to them.
"Oops…?" the raven said with a nervous grin. Natsu stared at the raven for five seconds before he pecked him on the head. "OW!" The raven, now known as Zeref, cried out and leaped off the bell tower.
Natsu quickly chased after him while shouting, "GET BACK HERE, ZEREF!"
"Oh, are we playing tag now, Natsu?" Zeref questioned while cackling.
"Yeah, and once I catch you, I'm going to pluck all your feathers out!"
Natsu chased Zeref around the city for ten minutes before a beeping sound filled the air. Zeref paused mid-flight, causing Natsu to crash into him, but since Natsu was smaller and lighter than Zeref, the raven didn't get knocked out of the sky.
Zeref used his magic to look at a watch, the source of the beeping sound. "I apologize, Natsu, but I must be going. I have a meeting to get to. You can leave the city and return to the guild if you want. You know the drill, the curse will lift at 12 AM. Oh, before I forget. Did you ever wonder why you scare so easily? It's because you're a prey animal. BYE!" Zeref teleported away, leaving a confused, tired, and fuming Natsu behind.
"A meeting, with who? Also, my panic attacks were because of my curse? Darn it, Zeref! You're lucky that no one from my guild saw me like this!" Natsu then looked down at the black feather he pulled from Zeref when he pecked him. He glared at it with burning rage, causing it to catch fire. Natsu watched as the feather became a pile of ashes and waited for the embers to cool, imagining Zeref in the feather's place.
Done! I hope you all enjoyed this chapter as much as Natsu enjoyed getting a little payback on Zeref.
Natsu: I wanted to do worse to him. *puffed cheeks*
Enj/Dark: You'll get your chance.
Zeref: I wonder how you're going to do that.
Enj/Dark: I'm still thinking. To the readers, you can all leave suggestions.
Zeref: Yes, please, but don't leave any for me.
Natsu: Yes, please leave some suggestions for what I can do to Zeref in the final chapter!
Enj/Dark: Please review! ^-^
