Chapter 4 – Downtime
At the Fairy Tail Base Camp
The whole guild plus Naruto were back at the base camp, the fortress Naruto created around it still standing. Currently, Naruto was getting treated by Wendy, using her healing spell. One would think that with Flame Gods Blessing of Apollo, he would be able to heal the wounds he suffered at Hades hands. However, Naurto was incapable of using it on his own person, which meant he could save others from death, but not himself. So he bandaged the laceration on his upper arm and on his forehead to stop the bleeding, but he would have a few scars from it.
Naruto's arm was still bandaged up and in the sling he made, but it no longer hurt. He would have to let it rest. He smiled at Wendy. "Thanks for the help, kid," Naruto said to Wendy.
"Oh, uhm, it's no problem," Wendy said shyly, "I'm just glad we don't have to fight you anymore."
Naruto had a solemn look on his face as he looked at her. "Look, that person that fought you wasn't me. Not the real me at any rate."
"I don't really get it, but I think deep down, you're not really bad." Wendy said innocently.
Naruto let a smile creep along his face as he regarded the young dragonslayer for a moment. "Hold on to that innocence, kid. It will be a real shame when it's gone," Naruto said as he patted her on the head, thinking about how he had finally lost his 6 years ago.
Naruto walked back over to the Strauss siblings to see them gathered around Natsu.
"How am I supposed to relax with Natsu snoring logs like that!?" Elfman asked in frustration as Natsu's snoring was annoying him.
"Now now, brother, he needs his rest just like everyone else," Mira gently reprimanded her brother.
"Hey, I just got an idea." Lisanna said excitedly as she tied the sleeping Natsu's hair into pigtails, making him look ridiculous. "It's pig-tail Natsu, isn't he the cutest?" Lisanna and Mirajane laughed at that, but Elfman about it being unmanly.
"Don't be such a stick in the mud, Elfman," Naruto mentioned as he walked up to them and sat down next to them. "Most girls don't like men who complain all the time." He may not have ever had a girlfriend, but he payed attention to girls his age and some of the habits that are common amongst them.
There was an awkward silence between them before Naruto spoke, "I promised I would tell you all what happened to me after you left. I'm ready to tell you now."Mirajane, Lisanna, and Elfman all sat down around Naruto as he conjured up chairs for each of them. Markarov also sat down with them. Thinking about where he wanted to start, he decided it would be best to start from the beginning.
"I'm gonna get this part out of the way, but you need to understand that I am not from this world." Naruto revealed, to the Strauss Siblings and Fairy Tail's master's complete shock. "In the world that I come from, there is no magic. What humans possess in magic's place is a form of energy called chakra. Chakra is basically the combined form of physical and mental energy. It allows humans to perform superhuman feats like walking on water, manipulating the elements, and casting illusions, just like magic does in this world. Except unlike here, where only 1 in 10 humans can use magic, every human from my world has a chakra network, which is an additional circulatory system through which chakra flows. Anyone could be trained to access and wield it." Natsu had woken up by this point and joined the group. Him and Happy had heard about Ninja and performed their funny ninja pose that Lucy, who had also joined the group, remembered back from their first job together. Wendy was taking a break from healing the guild members by this point and also joined in.
"The ones that typically wielded chakra the most, though, were the shinobi." Naruto said. "In my world, Ninja/shinobi are everywhere. They are the primary military force for every country in the world. Basically, think of shinobi like an army of super soldiers." Naruto knew he could not hide it forever from them and they deserved to know the truth of who he really was. He couldn't move on from his past if he was still bound by it.
"Whoa. A real ninja!" Natsu said as he wrapped his scarf around his face and mouth. "Nin-nin!"
"Aye, nin-nin." Happy agreed.
"Will you stop it with your ninja obsession, Natsu!" Lucy yelled.
"Never, as a master of shadows, I must remain vigilant nin-nin." Natsu responded.
Naruto turned to him with a cold expression. "You laugh, Natsu, but there is nothing glamorous about the shinobi world. Shinobi are not JUST superhuman soldiers, we're superhuman mercenaries. Our services go to the highest bidder. We will do just about anything, including kill, cheat, steal, and destroy if the price is right. Something that hasn't changed since long before I was born." That shocked the guild members present, who thought it was all fun and games.
"Long before I was ever born, there was a period of time called the Warring States Period. In that era, countries were small, constantly vying for land, power, and resources. To fight these battles, shinobi were hired from various clans to fight their battles. This constant battle led to constant death. Most ninja didn't live to see the age of 30. Children barely 7 years old were trained and expected to fight alongside their adult counterparts, more often than not being killed by older opponents." This caused everyone's eyes to widen in horror.
"This went on for at least 2 centuries. The clans of this era don't really matter with the exception of 2; the Senju and the Uchiha. They were the strongest shinobi clans in the world, both of them along with one other clan, my clan, the Uzumaki, being direct blood descendants of the first person to ever wield chakra, a being called the Sage of the Six Paths, who was basically a living god. Towards the end of the Warring States Period, the future Leaders of the respective clans, Madara Uchiha and Senju Hashirama befriended each other in their youth. They would go on to fight many battles, but this friendship did eventually lead to an end to the fighting. The two most powerful clans stopped fighting and joined forces, leading other nearby clans to join the village they had formed and other clans in other countries to emulate them. For a time, peace was achieved."
"But only for a bit. I was born about 57 years after the formation of the Hidden Village system and 3 world wars had already been fought, the last one ending a year before my birth. All the Hidden Village system ended up doing at the end of the day was consolidating the shinobi forces of the world. The wars were less frequent, but still more destructive and widespread." This shocked those present, as Naruto regaled them more and more with what the dark and violent nature of his former world. At this point, more Fairy Tail mages were gathering around their little group.
"Then, comes my birth. I don't know exactly what happened that day, but I know this. The Nine-Tailed Demon Fox, the most powerful demon of my world, attacked the village. The Fourth Hokage, the leader of the Hidden Leaf Village, which is where I was born, gave his life to stop it by sealing it inside of my infant body. My parents probably were killed by the beast. And my life was a living hell."
Seeing everyone's quizzical looks, Naruto elaborated further, "Because everyone knew the fox was sealed inside of me, the civilians and a lot of shinobi saw me as the Fox itself. I was hated by Konoha, kicked out of the orphanage at 5 and forced to live out of dumpsters and steal food from others just to stay alive until I was given a rundown apartment to stay in. The people hated me and verbally tore me down, and when they would sell me food, it would be rotten and old, and they charged at least 3 times the regular price. Even though their kids didn't know about the Nine-Tails, they emulated their parents by ostracizing me. I was alone for basically my entire childhood." Hearing such a sad childhood made some like Lucy and Levy start to tear up at how terrible it was for Naruto. Others like Erza sympathized more quietly, while feeling relieved they had never been forced to experience something quite like that.
"I suppose, luckily or unluckily, I was able to become a Shinobi. It wasn't much better there since most of the teachers sabotaged my learning or kicked me out of lessons for no reason, so I wasn't learning what I needed to. I was ignored, and so, I turned to pranking, just to get people to notice me. And I was pretty good at it. I mean, I painted a mountain sized monument with graffiti and nobody noticed it until after I was finished. And then I'd always outrun all the elite ninja as well." Mira and her siblings smiled at that as they visualized it in their heads. They had never seen Naruto perform pranks when they lived in the village but it sounded fun. "But I was very naive. When I failed the graduation exam for the 3rd time, though not for lack of trying, I was actually tricked into stealing the Forbidden Scroll of the Village. Think of it like a book containing the most dangerous, powerful, and forbidden techniques our village had. I ended up learning one of the techniques in the scroll and used it to defeat the traitor, which allowed me to become a shinobi. I was only about 12 at the time."
"Wait, Naruto-kun, you were a child soldier?!" Mira asked in horror.
Naruto nodded. "Same as everyone else. You start training at a young age and entered the Shinobi Academy, about 6 or 7. I could have graduated earlier at age 10, if the damn instructors had actually done their job."
"Why would they do that to mere children?! I thought you said that the point of creating the Shinobi Villages was to end that!?" Erza shouted. What heartless monsters would train children to be soldiers!? Erza and several others felt this was too close to home to their less than stellar childhood.
"Why else? Power, greed. You think up a reason, the Kages would justify it as a reason to go to war. And if you think that was bad, that was the standard during times of peace. In wartime, kids went to the academy at age 4, and graduated at about 7." Naruto said, shocking them yet again.
"Why?" Lisanna asked as she covered her mouth in horror. "Why would you sign up for that life, Naruto-nii?"
"Because the alternative was staying as a helpless civilian and being treated like a plague the rest of my life. At least, as part of the military, I was somewhat protected, since any action taken to hinder the Hokage's shinobi was seen as risking the security of the village and hurting it's strength." Naruto said, since the civilians became much more hesitant to mess with him after he became part of the military.
"Things got somewhat better when I became a ninja and got assigned to a team, but not by much. I'm not really gonna go into it much, because what occurred back then does not really matter. The only part that matters is what caused me to arrive here. My former teammate, see when he was a kid, his whole family was killed by his older brother and ever since, he had been driven by an all-consuming need to avenge them. To that end, he desired power, not really caring where it came from. He had an encounter with his brother while he and I were on a team, and that really left him shaken, because his brother thrashed him around like he was nothing. And when I showed him that he and I were on equal footing, something he couldn't stand because I had always been considered a dead last up, that was the final straw for him. He betrayed the village to go to a rogue ninja to get more power so he could kill his brother." Naruto said.
"Long story short, I'm the one that catches up to him out of the team that was assigned to go after him. We fought, and I had to use the Ninetails' chakra to keep up with him. Eventually we were both running out of steam and decided to use our strongest attacks to end it. Our techniques hit each other and somehow opened up a wormhole, likely due more to me using the Ninetails power than anything else. Both of us were pulled into the wormhole, which brought us here. But the thing about moving through dimensions, if you don't know what you're doing, your body will get ripped apart. I saw Sasuke's body get ripped into a thousand pieces as we moved through the wormhole. I would have suffered the same thing had it not been for the Kyuubi working overtime to save me, because of the way he was sealed into me, if I died, he would die as well." Naruto continued.
"I ended up landing a few miles outside of the village you and your siblings lived in Mira, and immediately noticed something was different. My whisker marks on my cheeks that I had been born with were gone, I didn't feel my chakra anymore, and I couldn't sense the Kyuubi inside of me anymore, so I came to believe he had been extracted from me when I moved through the dimensions." Naruto said.
"As you know, we became friends. I helped you beat the demon in that church and I did all that I could to shield you from their hate afterwards. But it wasn't enough. I was sad that you left with your siblings without telling me, but I was more angry that they made you leave. Those fucking ungrateful villagers! You and I saved all their worthless lives and they hated and scorned you for it. It struck a little too close to home for me. So, when I went to your home and saw it destroyed, finding your note, I decided to make them pay." Naruto said, remembering what he did after he found out Mira had left.
Flashback
Hamura Village. A small village within the kingdom of Fiore on the easternmost region, on the border with Bosco. This is where Naruto had landed after his accidental travel through dimensions after his battle with Sasuke. It was here that he met the Strauss Siblings and became friends with them. The village itself was relatively peaceful, at least, looking at it from the outside.
But looks are deceiving. After Naruto and Mirajane killed the demon that had invaded the church, and Mira had accidentally absorbed the demon by means of her inherent Take-Over magic, the villagers showed their true colors.
Despite saving their lives, Mira was treated with scorn and hate. Believing her to be a monster, the townspeople mocked her, called her awful names, and ostracized her. They sold her rotten food, in the belief the demon was starting to possess her and that it couldn't be allowed to regain it's strength. Some of them even openly attacked Mirajane and her siblings and Naruto had to fight them off to keep Lisanna, Mira, and Elfman safe.
Mirajane and her siblings couldn't take the abuse for very long, and left in the dead of night after little more than a month. Mira knew the village was punishing Naruto and her siblings for their affiliation with her. And Mira did appreciate Naruto's efforts to shield them from the abuse but it had become more than she could bear. All she had time to prepare was a note for Naruto when he came by the next day.
Of course, that day, when Naruto came by their house, he found it a pile of rubble. The damage was fresh too, meaning that whoever did this was probably still around. He dug around, trying to find her and her siblings, but even after all the digging, all he found was a note. Taking the note he began to read it. 'Naruto-Kun, I don't know how to break the news to you, so I'm going to just say it. I've taken Lisanna and Elfman and ran away. I'm sorry you had to find out this way. We overheard that they were making plans to capture and kill us last night. I'm sorry Naruto, I know you tried so hard to protect us from their wrath. I should have told you we were leaving but I was afraid the villagers would find out and stop us. I hope you'll be able to forgive me one day, Naruto. You're better off not having a monster for a friend. - Mira'
Suffice to say, Naruto was shocked by the contents of the letter. Shocked and angry were what he was feeling right now. He couldn't bring himself to be angry at Mira. She put up with so much just for lending a helping hand. He couldn't blame her for being afraid for her family and running away when they heard what the villagers were planning.
No, he was angry with the villagers. Angry at them from driving Mira and the Strauss siblings away. Angry at them for hating her for their lives. Angry at them for taking away the people he cared most about in this world!
"Fucking bastards." Naruto growled as his god slaying flames came to life, burning the letter in his hands. They wouldn't get away with this. Naruto wouldn't let them. "I'll make them pay."
The Village
Within the village, a celebration was occurring. Booze and music flowed freely and the villagers celebrated.
"We did it!", one villager said as he guzzled some booze.
"We rid ourselves of the demon brat and her evil siblings!" Another said.
"Beers on the house for everyone!" the local bartender said as he served beer from a stand.
These were just some of the things that Naruto heard as he walked through the village square. Each word filled him further and further with rage. It struck far too close to home for him, as in Konoha, he had been ostracized and called a demon brat! This is exactly what he had gone through as a child, except it was worse this time for him, because it wasn't directed at him, but people he cherished! He would have been mad at the villagers if it had been Naruto himself they had been talking about, but they were doing it to Mira and her siblings and it drove them away! How dare they! These fools would not even be alive if Mira and him had not stepped up and defeated the demon living in the church. Fucking hypocrites! He was so angry he didn't see that he bumped into some drunk fool.
"Hey, watch where you're going, kid!" The drunk man said.
"Why don't you watch it, you drunk shithead!?" Naruto growled.
"What did you say!?" The drunk villager said, getting in Naruto's face. "You better apologize right now punk!"
"You want an apology!?" Naruto said as his fist tightened. Without warning, he slammed his fist into the fool's face, causing blood and teeth to spill out of his mouth, sending him flying through the air, crashing into a stand where music was playing. The loss of music caused all the celebration to cease and turn their attention to him.
Some of the villagers gasped, recognizing Naruto as the demon child's friend. Others were drunk and got angry.
"Hey, it's the demon brats friend!"
"What's he doing here?"
"Lets kill him like we were gonna do with the demon brat!"
"You fucking animals!" Naruto shouted as he was coated in an aura of black flame, shocking those present. "You wouldn't even have your lives if Mirajane and I had not defeated the demon that took up residency in the church. And what did she get for troubles? You people fucking ostracized her, treated her like a pariah, and made her run away!"
"But she was starting to exhibit demonic traits! She had clearly been taken over by the demon!" One courageous/ stupid villager shouted and the rest of the villagers hooted and hollered in agreement.
"Wrong! Mira did accidentally absorb some of the demons energy, but I had already killed it and chopped it into tiny bits by the time that happened! Mira absorbed some of it's power and made it her own. She started to show a demon's arm because she couldn't control it yet!" Naruto explained, shocking the villagers. "But did you fools bother asking someone who knew anything or seek a professional opinion? NO! You just showed yourselves as closed-minded bigots who hate anything that's even remotely different from you!"
"You tormented an orphan and her siblings for saving your lives, selling her rotten food and ripping her off whenever she needed to buy something to feed her siblings. You insulted her, called her names, and treated her like an outsider when she'd been here her whole life! And that is unforgivable!" Naruto shouted, his flames becoming hotter as his rage grew.
Thunder crashed over head again, the black clouds swirling above them as the heat in the air rose.
"I may have saved this village once but now I'm going to DESTROY IT MYSELF!" Naruto screamed, his voice louder and more ferocious than the thunder above. They caught a glimpse of his eyes, the shining blue had been replaced with a malicious red. "I WILL TAKE MY VENGEANCE ON THIS VILLAGE! FOR TAKING AWAY MY BEST FRIEND WITHOUT EVEN GIVING HER A CHANCE!"
Villagers began panicking and some started running while others tried to plead with him.
"Please, we're sorry. We didn't know!"
"Please show mercy!"
"We'll be better. Won't give us another chance!?"
"NO! You fuckers made it personal when you planned to murder my loved ones!" Naruto shouted at them psychotically. He brought the flames in his hands together, forming them into a black scythe made of flames.
"FLAME GOD'S SEVERING FLAME!" And there was where the screams began.
Flashback End
The entire group went white with shock as Naruto took a pause in his story. Those who were more light-hearted like Lucy and Levy were shocked and horrified at his brutality.
Mirajane had her hands buried in her face. She felt responsible for what happened. If only she had went and gotten him when she ran away with her siblings, this wouldn't have happened.
Lisanna covered her mouth with a gasp. She had always wondered why Naruto had not come with them when they ran away. She had no idea that Mirajane hadn't told him because the villagers actually wanted to kill them. She knew it had been bad, but not this bad! Mirajane and Naruto really had shielded her and Elfman from the true nature of the village. And Naruto had lost his temper when he found out.
Makarov was silent as he carefully observed Naruto's description of his past. So, this is what the young man went when he said he had killed many people before Hades. Makarov knew a thing or two about losing his temper, though he had never killed anyone for it either.
"I had no idea the three of you had it that bad." Erza said. She had gone through some bad shit in her childhood too. What with being enslaved, tortured, having her best friend/childhood crush go insane, and having to fight for her life at 10 years old. That was rough, but having the village that raised you ostracize you to the point they wanted you dead and forced you to run away, just for helping out, was pretty bad too.
"How come you guys never talk about it?" Lucy wondered.
"It's not manly to drudge up the past." Elfman as he looked away.
"Plus, it's not really a period in our lives you want to bring up in casual conversation." Mira added sadly, wiping her tears away.
"After all, who wants to remember the place that raised them, demonized them just because your big sis lended a helping hand?" Lisanna said, her voice also sad.
"Hades and Ultear found me in the aftermath of destroying the village." Naruto said, bringing their attention back to his story.
Flashback
An hour later, two people could be seen walking through the remains of the village. One was a man, advanced in age, clad in black armor, a long grey beard coming from the bottom, only one of his eyes were visible, the right one covered by an eye patch. A large cloak hung behind him as he walked powerfully down the road. The small black haired girl walked next to him, wearing formal attire. She walked softly next to the man.
"Master Hades, what are we doing here?" She asked the man curiously.
"We are looking for the 3rd member of the Kin of Purgatory." He replied bluntly, but not coldly. Caprico had joined them recently and he desired more elites for his guild. The power he felt coming from this village, and the darkness he sensed as well, should make an excellent addition.
Ultear looked around, seeing the black flames still burning hot, despite it raining out. In fact, the rain drops themselves were evaporating when they hit the flames. "What will we find here?" Ultear wondered, as she had never seen flames burn so hot that rain could not douse their heat or intensity.
"One who possesses powerful lost magic. Very likely, the kind purported to be able to slay the gods themselves." Hades told her as they walked, knowing from his research that those with black colored elements was a sign they were dealing with a god slayer.
They continued their walk until they reached the center of the village. All around them were ashes, bodies slowly burning to ash, burning buildings, mortar that was slowly melting, the repugnant smell of freshly charred corpses. Basically, anything that could be set on fire, had been. And in the center of the village, was Naruto himself. On his knees, sobs ringing through the air.
'A young boy, about the same age as Ultear,' Hades noted internally, feeling the magic in the air and sensing the same power coming from the boy. 'And he has a tremendous amount of magic energy as well. He would make an excellent addition to the 7 Kin.'
Naruto finally noticed their presence as he was brought out of whatever his internal thoughts were, thinking he had missed some of the villagers. He got on his feet and rounded on them, and they both saw his red eyes. Naruto very nearly attacked them but then he sensed their magic power. They both had ridiculous amounts of it, the older man more so than the small girl. As far as he knew, he was the only one in the village with power that high.
"Who are you? You two couldn't have been members of this village. I would have been able to sense your power before now and this is the first time I've met you." Naruto stated, holding himself back from attacking them, sensing how big their magic power was, his curiosity piqued.
"We are not. We are mages, traveling here because we felt your power from where we were. What happened to this village that made you destroy them?" Ultear asked, unafraid by the slaughter around her, having already committed a number of gruesome acts for Hades and Grimiore Heart. Although, she admittedly had not committed slaughter on this scale.
Naruto told them what happened, though he left some stuff out, like how he was from another world. Hades couldn't help but smile at the boy's tragic story. 'Good, this means no one will miss him, since everyone who knew him has been wiped out,' Hades thought.
"I'd like to extend you an offer to join my guild, Grimoire Heart." Hades said, with Ultear not surprised, having seen this coming.
"You've only just met me? Why do you want me in your guild? And why should I join you?" Naruto asked, suspicious of this man and girl. They were both powerful, he could sense that. And this Hades had so much power that Naruto felt like he was drowning in darkness but he would not falter in the face of it. He would stand his ground and not show any fear.
"You are clearly a powerful mage and I want only the strongest in my guild. And, my boy, you are one of the strongest young men I have ever met." Hades said truthfully. "If you join, you will have access to more magic than you could possibly know what to do with. You will have the power to do whatever you want. The only tradeoff, is you have to do what I tell you."
Naruto thought about it for a minute, before getting up and delivering the two a shit-eating grin. "Well, what are we waiting for then? Let's get out of here." Naruto said, while hiding his real thoughts. He had nowhere to go, and Hades probably would have killed him right there had he refused to join, so he really didn't have a choice. And until he found Mira, he needed to get stronger so next time, he could protect her and her siblings. And no one could drive them away from him again.
Flashback End
"It's not like I really wanted to join him, but the vibes I was getting from him, made me think he would kill me if I had refused, so really, I had little choice." Naruto said.
"I thought I could use Grimoire Heart to get stronger while I searched for you, Elfman, and Lisanna, Mira. And at first, I did, learning and mastering a number of magics by the time I was 16. But I had to commit acts of evil for Grimoire Heart to keep up the act. Like I told gramps over there, I've stolen, I've killed, and tortured, and I've murdered longer before I became the form you saw me in. He somehow figured out the connection between me and you, and that I was planning to leave to come find you when I realized where you had gone. He assaulted me while my guard was down, stole most of my power and split it amongst 4 others, and then sealed my true personality away with that fake Zancrow." Naruto informed them.
"When I was inside of Zancrow, it was like watching my life unfold through a lens, but I had no control over my body, my voice or my magic. I was a slave, a passenger in my own body. Without the real me in control, Zancrow did whatever Hades wanted, killing hundreds from the sheer glee, because Zancrow was meant to be a maniac."
"But those types of runic seals don't last for very long. They are meant to be temporary, so how were they able to last for 3 years? Makarov asked.
"Because the ones he used fed off of my magic to power themselves. Hades obviously would have known that the seals wouldn't hold me back for long, so he altered them to feed off of magic to power themselves, leaving me with only ⅓ of the total magic power I had left after he stole most of my magics from me." Naruto said.
"I thought I'd never be able to break free, but then I fought dragon boy over here." Naruto said as he pointed to Natsu. "Somehow, when he successfully absorbed my flames, the unique mix of the two magics disrupted the drain of the seals on my magic, allowing me to force Zancrow out and put me back in control, breaking the seals. I don't think he appreciates just how impossible what he did is." Naruto said as he pointed to Natsu.
"What? It was no big deal. It just took a little bit to figure out the trick to eating your flames." Natsu said as he crossed his arms behind his head.
"You don't get it. What you did is impossible for a human to do, dragon boy. You're not the first dragonslayer who's tried what you did to beat a godslayer by eating their element, the only difference, they all died when they made the attempt." Naruto said, shocking the others. "It's all recorded in the tome I learned God Slayer magic from. There have been several Devil Slayers and Dragon Slayers that tried to eat our flames, only to burn up from the inside out because they couldn't digest them. If I had been in control from the beginning, you wouldn't have been able to eat them at all. Zancrow didn't have complete control over the flames like I do, but the fact remains, you should not have been able to eat them at all. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful you were able to, because I've regained control of my body thanks to that, but the fact remains, it should not have been possible in the first place."
"So, anyway, thats my story." Naruto said as he turned to Makarov. "Are you sure you still want me in your guild, old man? I wouldn't blame you if you didn't anymore after hearing about what I had done." His tone was wary and while Makarov had said that he had never turned a mage away, Makarov had also never extended the offer to a murderer like himself either. So, this was a test, to see if the stubborn old man would stick with his ideals and principles he proclaimed earlier.
Makarov was quiet for a moment, the smile he had previously and the warmth in his eyes returning. "What you did to your village… what you while in Grimoire Heart… I am willing to forgive and forget about." He paused, "You are in need and I have never let a wizard, no matter their history, go without help if I'm able. For me, letting someone stay in the darkness when I could have helped them is the most unforgivable sin of all." The members of Fairy Tail smiled at Makarov's sentiment. That was Gramps for ya. Without fail, he'd always offer everyone a place at Fairy Tail.
Naruto let out a sigh, releasing the breath he hadn't realized he was holding. He figured it would take some time for them to get used to them, since he technically was the enemy until recently. But he could be patient. He could wait. It would be worth it in the end. "Thank you, Makarov." Naruto said with a smile.
"I'm afraid you will have to wait until we return to Magnolia to receive the Fairy Tail mark, though. I left the Guild Stamper back at the Guild Hall." Makarov said.
"That's fine." Naruto said. "I'm more than willing to wait."
"I should probably get back to healing. There's quite a line that's forming." Wendy said, noticing a line forming.
"How about I take some of them for you?" Erza said and everyone looked to see her in a hot nurse's outfit.
"You look amazing, Erza, but why are you dressed like a nurse?" Wendy asked, eyes bugged out and wondering what was going on.
"Wait a minute, you're not a healer." Carla accused Erza.
"That's true, but differences in ability don't matter in battle. It's our hearts that will be tested." Erza said passionately, even though he confidence was misplaced.
"What do you mean, what battle!?" Wendy said, now nervous and scared.
"Look what you did, you scared the poor girl half to death!" Carla criticized.
"...I'm more curious why you have a hot nurse outfit in the first place? Do you like roleplaying for your boyfriend or something?" Naruto asked, wondering if she was a closet perv.
"Well, uhm…" Erza said with a flustered face, not used to being called out on her habits. "...I don't actually have a boyfriend."
"Doesn't answer the question of why you have it in the first place." Naruto pointed out, noticing she was dodging the question. "Regardless, leave the healing to the actual healers. You, not knowing what your doing, are more likely than to make their injuries worse."
"And nobody needs that." Naruto said as he cast his Flame God's Blessing of Apollo on the Fairy Tail mages in Wendy's line.
Markarov stared at Naruto as he healed his new comrades, smiling as he watched the young man develop a sense of camaraderie with his new guildmates.
"Master, what should we do about the S-Class trials?" Mira asked as she watched Naruto heal the others.
"I think we'll let young Naruto and Wendy finish healing everyone first while I decide what we shall do next." Makraov said, as he decided whether or not to cancel the trial, or continue it.
Meanwhile, Naruto got a weird feeling, a sense of foreboding that something bad was going to happen soon. 'I hope my creation got Zeref away from the island. Because if it didn't…best not think about it. Wouldn't want to jinx myself.' Naruto thought, not knowing how right he would end up being.
Chapter End