Chapter Eleven
FE
The scent hung in the air, alongside something else, a foul odour of blood spilled unjustly. As Natsu raced through the streets of Magnolia, he began to lose the scent, the Dragon Slayer's trail being overpowered by the blood that was beginning to take his focus.
Know that it would cost him more time than he wanted to take, he made a split second decision and bolted down a side street that opened up into a plaza with a large green laid out in the middle. There on the large tree in the centre were three Fairy Tail mages strung up and held in place with magic cuffs made of iron, their blood tainting the air all around.
There were dozens of civilians who all stood by murmuring, some even disappearing entirely after Natsu had entered the scene.
"What the fuck?" he asked aloud, stepping right up to the tree, standing tall even to the blue haired mage that had been strung up in a horrible crucifixion style.
"Hey, you still kickin'?" he asked, despite being able to feel a weak pulse after putting his fingers to her neck.
A soft murmur left her lips but that was it.
"Alright kid, take it easy. Let's get you down from there." he said, gently placing his hand against her forehead and pouring some magic into her, hoping to bring her back to consciousness, but it didn't do a whole lot, she was obviously beaten pretty badly.
"Step away from them, you bastard!" a feminine voice called out to him, garnering his attention.
He turned around to see another mage approaching quickly but didn't recognize this one, though he could see the guild mark on her left hip.
"I just got here." he told her with a shrug before ripping off the iron cuffs by hand, tossing them aside while he gently pulled the blunette down from the tree and laid her out on the ground, showing a level of care that the female mage hadn't expected after everything she'd seen of him.
"Can you call Titania, or the old man?" Natsu asked, turning back to grab the two men from the tree, letting them fall down to the ground with a lot less attention given to them.
"Fine, but step away from them. You might not have done this but in my books you're no better than whoever did. You dark mages are all the same." she yelled, pulling a small card out of a side pouch she wore around her waist.
"You wound me." he replied sarcastically, feigning hurt. "I was coming back this way from Porlyusica but I got the scent of something important to me but then I found this, and, well, here we are. I tried to give the kid some of my magic but she hasn't responded to it, so I can't really do anything to help them." he explained, kneeling down over the blue haired mage, his eyes conveying sorrow as he watched the gentle rising and falling her breathing.
"Erza, we've got a situation here. Team Shadow Gear are half dead by the old oak downtown, the Salamander's here as well." she said, talking directly into the card which Natsu thought was almost entertaining.
"What? Why on earth would I do that!?" she asked incredulously after a moment.
"Please don't make me do this Erza." she sighed in defeat before putting the card away.
"You, dark mage!" she said, pointing at him with all of the confidence she could muster, "You need to stay with me here and take care of them until Erza and Lucy get here." the brunette demanded, trying to keep her features fierce but all it served to get her was a bemused chuckle.
"You must be joking," he laughed gaudily before hooking a thumb over his shoulder, "You're not as experienced as I am when it comes to dealing with malice like this but you need to open your eyes, this was a message and they even left a calling card." he told her with a soft grin.
She cast her gaze to where he was pointing and sure enough there was a guild mark etched into the wood of the tree, just below where Levy had been strung up.
"Looks like Phantom Lord, but what the hell could they want with Fairy Tail? Old Porla usually has a stick up his ass, but, most of the time that just makes him more tolerable." Natsu muttered, mostly speaking to himself, looking back down to the unconscious girl before him.
"Well, whatever the case-" he said, rising to his feet before he was interrupted.
"Stop right there, criminal scum!" he heard the voice of the flying blue cat come charging in before realizing who it was, "Oh, it's you, do you have my fish!?" he asked, tone shifting quicker than the flip of a coin.
"Not yet buddy, I didn't think I would be stopping off just yet." he lied. He'd been intending on leaving a fish at the site of their guild hall for him, he just got distracted with his business.
"Do you know who did this?" Titania's voice reached his ears. They got there much faster than he expected they would but then again the brunette with the magic cards had told them exactly where they were.
"Phantom Lord, as to who did this specifically," a dark look flittered across his features, "This is the work of a Dragon Slayer."
"What, no way! Two of you turn up on our doorsteps in the same day, that's cosmically bad luck." Lucy groaned, a hand deftly gliding across her keys as if to reassure herself that they were still there.
"I thought your magic is a lost art, I can understand that you might be well versed in if you really are as old as you claim, but how can there be two of you?" the scarlet haired mage asked quizzically.
"A long time ago, before I was even born, Dragon Slayer magic was common, as were dragons, there's a lot of ways there could still be lost magic users, and it's only really lost because there aren't any dragons anymore." he told them with a quick shrug.
"In any other situation it might have been a descendant of a first generation Dragon Slayer, or someone could have been fucking around with some lost forms of time magic, but, this…" he trailed off, feeling sorry for what the blue haired girl on the floor must have gone through.
"Well?" Erza asked, crossing her arms and watching the Salamander expectantly.
"The scent that I picked up, this was also another first generation Dragon Slayer, so like myself they're also going to be exceptionally powerful. This one would have been raised by a dragon, Metalicana no less, the Iron Dragon." he told them, his face not one of humour.
"How many first generation slayers are there? If all of them are as strong as you, then we're in big trouble." Lucy couldn't help but feel a lone sweat drop down her neck and then her back, turning into a cold shiver the lower it went. The thought of it really did scare her. The Salamander's power had turned their world upside down, and he hadn't even shown a fraction of the cruelty that Levy must have felt from this other one.
"In the last few hundred years, there were maybe six or seven first generation Dragon Slayers, but, I seriously doubt any of them are as strong as I am, as far as I'm aware, I'm the only Dragon Slayer to learn the magic from a Dragon King." he shrugged casually like that wasn't the most ludicrous thing he'd said so far.
"So there could be another six Dragon Slayers roaming around, but you're the strongest because you're some kind of Prince?" Lucy asked, her eyes wide at the revelation.
"Not that kind of title, it ain't about royalty, a Dragon King is a rank, and there's more than one, there are four." he grinned, seeing the look of surprise on the celestial mage grow evermore.
"So, if you were going to be hanging around to find this other Dragon Slayer, we wouldn't really have to worry about him?" Erza asked, trying her hand at tact, something she'd failed miserably in the past.
"Well, as I said, a Dragon King is a status of power. You've got my old man, Igneel the Fire Dragon King, old sparks Elexion, the Lightning Dragon King, some bastard who calls himself the Black Dragon King, though he's definitely one of the stronger ones out there." Natsu almost growled, his hands subconsciously folding into gripped fists at the memories of the past.
Painful memories.
"And who's the fourth Dragon King?" the brunette asked, somehow having attained a mug of beer.
"I am." he said, flashing a toothy grin to emphasise his point.
"You." Lucy pointed, her eyes almost falling out of her head.
"Me." he nodded slowly, "Like my father, I am a Dragon King. First generation or not, I'm not particularly worried when it comes down to brass tacks." the Dragon Slayer explained with a small laugh that sent a wave of heat rushing over the celestial wizard.
"But you're just a human!" she argued the possibility of it all.
"According to whom?" he raised a brow, "Using Dragon Slayer magic for most people won't really do anything, but the stronger you are the more it becomes ingrained into your very essence. I am a Dragon, I just so happen to be strong enough that I don't have to worry about my physical body." he told them with a sigh, he wasn't really planning to reveal anything of that nature but there was something about her that just made him want to talk to her for longer.
"Damn, he was hot before, but now it's even worse." the brunette said, smiling even harder at Lucy's very visual discomfort with the direction the conversation had taken.
"I'll take some pride in the fact that I've ploughed a Dragon King through the ground." Erza said, badly hiding a smirk that served only to rile Natsu up.
"You seem to enjoy mentioning me and ploughing in the same sentence quite a lot, don't you?" he asked, knowing immediately that his joke had landed from the deep pink blush that had crossed her cheeks.
"I think you'd better save that kind of talk for Mira, that's more her speed." Lucy chided in, putting a palm across her face. The sexual tension in the air had become almost palpable within an instant.
"Silvertop? I'm unsure on whether or not I'm willing to get thrown around like that again, although…" he stopped, staring into the distance with a smile, "Scratch that, I bet she can absolutely throw down. What, TMI?" he asked, loving how uncomfortable it made two thirds of them.
"No, keep going." the brunette chimed in, taking a large swig of the beer.
He never got the chance, as instead a huge lightning bolt hit the ground, revealing Makarov and a younger muscular man.
"Who is responsible for this!?" he bellowed, kneeling down to put a hand around the back of Levy's head.
"Pretty sure that little love note on the tree is Phantom Lord's guild mark." Natsu said, one again waving behind him at the tree.
"You're lucky that you aren't the one in our sights, this time." Laxus told him, crossing his arms aggressively as he stared down the supposedly dark mage.
"Oh yeah? And I suppose that a second generation Dragon Slayer is going to cane my hide over such a thing?" he grinned upon seeing Laxus' surprise.
"How-"
"I can smell you, just as I could smell you when I walked into your guild. We may share the same magical foundation but yours was giving through some kind of experimentation, or lacrima implants, something like that, right?" he asked.
"Something like that. I know that I'd still give you one hell of a bad day. You think Erza is the strongest Fairy? Think again hot shot." Laxus' thinly veiled threat went a long way towards someone like Natsu.
"I came back this way because I was chasing a scent, someone who I never expected to find here of all places, but if you really want to make this a personal thing, then I'm all for it. I was taking my time with the Fairy Tail guild before because I found some worthy opponents, but now I'm busy, so if you really want to do this, I won't hold anything back." Natsu warned them, rising up and holding a single palm out to his side.
A ball of fire erupted into his palm, gently rotating like a small sun, with heat irradiating around them in equal measure. The grass beneath them wilted into a greyish brown like dead hay.
"Enough, he's just upset like the other guild members who you've stricken a sore blow against today." Makarov interrupted, getting between them, showcasing a small sliver of his own power, the pressure not bothering Natsu at all.
"Fine. Titania said that you wanted me here for something, so tell me what it is you need to say and then let me be. Whoever did this is gone, for now, but they'll be back." he told them, waving the small sun out of existence.
Once it had gone, it felt like a blanket had been lifted off of them, the cool breeze feeling far better than it ever would have otherwise.
"I bargained with the magic council to have you stripped of your title as a dark mage. I feel no evil within you, there's no reason that you should walk this dark path alone." Makarov grumbled, producing the contract between himself and the magic council.
"This is an edict directly from the head of the magic council that declares you will no longer be branded as such and will be forgiven for your previous misdeeds. This is all under the condition that you will accept my offer to you to join our family and become a mage of the Fairy Tail guild." he explained, holding up the page close enough that Natsu could easily read the details.
He was stunned to say the least. It can't have been more than ten hours since he'd burned their guild hall to the ground, fought with several of their members, probably aggravated and insulted all of them in that time, and yet Makarov wanted him to join them, after all that he'd done in such a short time.
"Just think Salamander, we can fight under friendlier terms whenever you want." Erza told him with the slightest trace of a smile.
He looked between the various members with a totally blank expression.
"No." and with that, he left them all speechless and behind him, walking towards the sea, hoping that he might get lucky and pick up the scent.
Another Dragon Slayer, his long journey was finally coming full circle.
A/N: Review?