A/N: Lemme tell you, 100% of last chapter WAS NOT PLANNED. INCLUDING the ending. The next mindscape visit was supposed to be in Inoichi's first lesson. But I already had a thing in my head where Natsu would visit the mindscape every time he fell unconscious and the idiot just HAD to ignore all my plans and do so last chapter. And people always used to wonder why I hated writing summaries as a kid/in school.
There is no such thing as a summary that survives the finished product. Every time I write one it only ends up half accurate. I literally had to REWRITE this story's summary because Natsu derailed my first plot three chapters in. Thanks Natsu.
My sister refuses to believe that characters can and DO write themselves. She seems to think that as the author I can just make them stick to my summary. I do not know how to explain to her. I START WRITING NATSU AND THEN EVERYTHING JUST FLOWS. THE WRONG WAY MAYBE BUT STILL FLOWS. STORY FLOW GOOD. STORY NOT FLOW BAD. LET STORY FLOW EVEN IF NOT WHAT EXPECTED.
There. My best attempt. Also, there MIGHT NOT be a chapter update on Dec. 15th. That entire weekend is pokemon go community weekend, so unless I manage to write two chapters next week or the week after, I won't have anything to post for you guys because DAMMIT I WANT MY SHINY TOTODILE AND NOTHING WILL STOP ME.
So yeah. I will try to double-up my writing one weekend so I can post that day like normal, but just in case I fail, I want you guys to know in advance that Shiny Crocodile Boi is the most important thing in my life right now. My (other) sister has one and I'm so jealous. I refuse to tolerate it! I will have one of my own, mark my words you boiled potato!
Anyway. Sorry for the long A/N! And thanks for reading!
Natsu opens his eyes slowly, taking in the pink canopy that is quickly becoming familiar. There's no sun in the sky of Sakura's mind, just an omnipresent light that doesn't fade or change, the shadows all in the same place all the time and it's a wonder Natsu ever thought this was the real world, when he first woke up here.
The pinkette pushes himself up after another minute, rising smoothly to his feet, and once again all the pain he felt before is entirely gone, not a trace to be found. Natsu turns to head toward Sakura-chan's cabin, only...
"Eh?! W-where is it?"
The pinkette freezes barely two steps in, because ahead of him is a thick cluster of trees, some of the trunks interwoven with each other, a near-impenetrable border. He spins around, but the trees are like that on all sides, tightly pushed together, in a way no real trees could be and hope to live.
"What the hell?" the pinkette mutters, walking up to the wall of trunks and running his hands over their smooth wood. If there's any bark present, he can't feel it, an odd lack of texture real trees should have is all that exists under his questing fingers.
He turns back toward where the cabin should be, and the trees are… slightly further apart, enough that he could maybe squeeze between them if he tries, as clear a path as anything in this unreal place. Natsu sighs, taking off his scarf and vest and tying them securely around his hips so they don't get snagged and pulled off, before twisting sideways and sidling through the trunks.
The wood should scrape, Natsu knows, as he forces himself between two more tightly-packed trunks, that he should be covered in scratches. All there is, though, is a quick phantom pain that fades almost before he processes it, until the next branch or closely-packed trunk, repeating in an endless cycle.
Natsu finds himself wondering how much damage it might do to Sakura-chan if he lights the entire forest on fire.
His magic bubbles inside him, as wild and powerful as ever, almost taunting him with how accessible it is in this place, when he can't even feel it in the outside world, only Sakura's odd, strangely-heavy chakra.
Muttering curses under his breath as the trees become impassable again, Natsu turns slowly, peering into the forest until he finds the new direction this... path... heads.
"If you can even call it a path! Paths are supposed to be flat, seriously, what in the blazes is this!?"
Shoving his way through the newest batch of trees, Natsu finds himself wondering why Sakura's mindscape changed in the first place.
"It doesn't make any sense." he mutters under his breath, pushing a pink-laden branch out of his face. "I mean, sure, I don't know shit about this mindscape stuff in the first place, but I'm pretty sure this can't be normal! If I didn't know better I'd say these stupid trees were angry at me!" Natsu kicks the trunk of the nearest tree, earning another ephemeral impression of pain against his foot and not much else. Groaning, the pinkette drops his forehead against the trunk and focuses very heavily on the fact that burning down Sakura's mindscape is a Bad Idea.
"Okay Natsu, let's think this through," he mutters, taking a deep breath, then letting it back out slowly. "The first time we ended up here, it was cause of that killer headache that Inoichi-san thinks is because Sakura-chan's body can't handle my enhanced senses. Or maybe the headache was from my sudden presence. Who knows!" Natsu spins around, leaning his back against the trunk and looking up at the pink canopy above him. "And then, of course the second time I came with Inoichi-san. And I still had a bit of a headache, but that was it."
Natsu scowls up at nothing, thudding his head against the trunk.
"This time I was just sparring! And sure, maybe I forgot Sakura-chan's body was weaker than mine, but I don't understand how this happened! Ugh, this isn't helping!" Sliding to the ground, Natsu props his arms on his knees as he leans back against the trunk.
The forest is carpeted in sakura petals, but as long as he's been here, Natsu's never seen a single blossom fall.
The pinkette groans at his wandering thoughts, thumping his head against the trunk again in exasperation. His eyes trace back up to the canopy above his head, interlocking branches making veins of brown against the soft pink.
An idea strikes him suddenly.
Maybe if I… climb the trees?
Suddenly determined, the dragon slayer surges to his feet, spinning around to look at the tree he'd been leaning against. The lowest branches are out of reach of his arms, but the trees are packed so close together…
Walking around the trunk, Natsu finds another tree pressed close to the first, and he quickly wedges himself between them.
"Not much room to maneuver," he grumbles as he lifts a leg and presses it into the tree's trunk. The lack of bark is a blessing and a curse as he struggles to ascend. His shoes find little purchase, constantly slipping off the trunk if he lets back on the pressure even a bit, but his back glides smoothly up the opposing tree, nothing to snag on and halt his progress.
And once again, for the first time in this trip into Sakura-chan's mind, time… slips. It takes an age, or maybe an instant, some sensation of time passing and yet no time at all, before Natsu finds himself steadily perched on a branch, looking down at the forest floor from above. Time… hesitates… while Natsu looks down, is the only way to describe it ahesitationlikeadrawnbreathwaitingforrelease, before resuming its odd tempo when he turns to continue his ascent.
The tree is far taller than it looked from the ground, far taller than any tree has a right to be, and time remains an unusually tight band about him, leaving the pinkette to wonder if the tree is unusually tall or if he's just moving unusually slowly?
But time hesitates when he looks down again, and there's no ground to be seen, just endless branches of pink and brown aflickerofsomethingdancingbetweentheveins.
Only it's unstable somehow, trembling and shaking even as he feels perfectly steady itsthumpingpulsingandeyesstareupbutwhywhyarethereeyesinthesea, and Natsu jerks his gaze back to the branches above him, strangely worried about what would happen if he stares too long into the pink sea beneath him, and its pulsating instability, hungry somehow, though he couldn't say how he knows that ashadowdoesitlookslikesomeoneheknowsbutwhohecannottell.
He doesn't look down again, doesn't hesitate or take a break, climbing with a fierce determination, up and up and up and up andupandupandupandupandup until, suddenly…
Natsu isn't sure when he stopped climbing trees and started swimming through petals dotheymakefacesinthedeep, and he's even less sure when those petals slowly turned to pinkish water butnotbloodheknowswhatbloodlookslikeanditsnotthis- he chokes on the next breath he takes drowningdrowningdrowningbuthesneverdrownedbeforehashe, and that's when he notices - he breathes out, trying to expel the water and swims faster, ignoring the urge to breathe because if he doesn't feel pain surely he won't feel suffocation, but something feels tight in his chest, and time still slips unsteadily around him - has he been holding his breath for an hour? A minute? When did the trees become water, anyway, or has it always been like this and he just didn't realize- theshadowlikesomoeneheknowsisstillthereisitfollowinghim?
The water turns to a normal shade of blue the moment he breaks the surface - or perhaps he only notices the change in color after he's above it? Or maybe it was always blue, and his vision was just overwhelmed by the sea of pink he saw before...
Time evens out into something stable and measurable again, and Natsu treads water as he looks around, breath coming easy as though everything before never happened. Already the clearing and the forest and the water blur together, one hazy recollection of pink, as Natsu's eyes finally land on the cabin he knows he was looking for.
It's about time!
The pinkette turns toward the building, swimming across the lake and pulling himself out. He goes to shake himself off, but the water is already gone, and when he turns back around the water is perfectly clear, yet black at the same time? in a way that unsettles him too much to contemplate- but why? istheresomethinghesforgetting?- and he quickly faces the cabin again, breaking into a jog until he reaches the porch.
Somehow, when he looks into the cracked-open window, the insides of Sakura's cabin are darker than normal, though they slowly brighten as he watches. The girl inside is rubbing her eyes blearily as she sits up, blankets sliding down her shoulders with the movement. She takes a moment to stretch her arms out, yawning widely, before she begins to look around the cabin. Her eyes land on Natsu after a couple moments, and her pajamas turn into her normal outfit more quickly and smoothly than any requip Erza's ever done, as she hops out of bed and bounces over to the window.
"Natsu!" She comes to a stop just steps away, hands clasped behind her back as she leans forward a little. "You're back! Have you guys found a solution?"
Natsu shrugs, leaning against the porch rail. "Not yet, that I know of. I just ended up here again after screwing up a spar."
"A spar? With who? Was it Sasuke-kun? Oh, did he catch me dramatically as I fell, he must have been so worried-"
"Uh." Natsu can't help but interrupt, desperate to stop her. "N-no, after Inoichi-san spoke to your team, tha- Sasuke went home. Your uh… mom dragged me shopping, because she said it was easier to look at me if I didn't dress like you or something, and after that I somehow got roped into hanging out with Naruto… but when we were sparring I forgot that your body isn't as strong as what I'm used to, and I pushed too hard and passed out… And then I was here."
"You let me get caught by Naruto-baka?! What would Sasuke-kun think if he saw…" Sakura shuffles nervously, and Natsu can't think of a single girl he knows who acts like this, the other girls in Fairy Tail were nothing like Sakura-chan at twelve-
Though.
On second thought.
Erza and Mirajane, sparks flying between their eyes, and all Natsu can feel is a sense of pervading DOOM, a creeping dread like the certainty of his eternal torment lurking in the shadows between them, and it doesn't matter WHO wins that glaring match because he can't even try to guess which one is worse than the other and he's so dead either way-
They both turn to look at him, and Natsu's never really wondered what a deer feels like before Igneel swoops down, but it's gotta be something like this, he knew he shouldn't have listened to Happy, that traitor cat flew off and left him alone-!
On second thought, twelve-year-old Sakura is much better than the alternative, and he'll take all the fangirling she can dish out, because it could be so much worse, she could be like…
"Brr!" Natsu shudders intensely, a cold draft down his spine, he doesn't even want to finish the thought, as though Erza's shade might creep out from between the trees to unleash divine judgement against him for such a thing.
"Ah? Natsu-san? If it's cold, shouldn't you put your scarf back on?"
"Eh?" Natsu glances down, to see his vest and scarf tied around his waist. There's a vague impression of a memory in his head, of tying them like that to keep them from getting pulled off, but the dragonslayer can't remember why for the life of him, just a blurry impression of pink. He quickly puts everything back on like normal, even though he wasn't cold, because he has the vague impression he saw something he wasn't supposed to see, and the proof needs to vanish, now, quickly beforebeforebefore-
"A-are you okay?" Natsu looks up, feels his hands trembling from where they hold his scarf, secured around his throat once more, and he can't quite remember why.
"Yeah, I'm fine," he says, dropping his arms to cross them over his chest, "guess it's just cold here. Anyway, I'm not sure what we can do, 'cept wait to wake up, or for Inoichi-san to come I guess. I'm not sure how to get out of here on my own…"
Sakura looks at him doubtfully, genuine worry on her face, maybe something more potent, but Natsu can't, for the life of him, guess what's troubling her even though it almost looks like fear, but why?
Her face clears after a moment though, and she drags over a chair, settling into it easily. "So, you went shopping with kaa-san? How is she, is… is she okay? She was always so worried about me becoming a shinobi, this must be so hard for her…" Sakura bites her lip, looking down at her lap, fingers twining around each other in clear nerves.
Natsu leans back against the rail again and shrugs. "She… she's not taking it as well as your dad, that's for sure. But she's… she's strong. I don't think I could have handled it half as well in her place. Though I'm pretty sure dragging me to that Mikki's place was her own form of revenge…" the elder pinkette shudders violently. "Never again…"
Sakura laughs, bright and easy, and she definitely got that from her mother.
"He is a bit crazy, isn't he?" she says between giggles, and Natsu makes a face at her that only makes her laugh more.
"So what did you get?" she asks, after she calms down, and Natsu stops scowling.
"Honestly I don't mind your kipo or whatever that much, they're pretty easy to move in and that's good enough for me. And Inoichi-san and your hokage-guy want to keep this all hushed up, so I just got some in different colors." Natsu waves one of his arms downward, encompassing his outfit, "These, since they're the colors I usually wear and it just… felt familiar. Heh, that sounds so pathetic to say out loud!"
Sakura smiles. "I wish I could see them, Mikki's a crazy old man but all his clothes are so beautiful!"
Natsu side-eyes his companion, making a face. "Beautiful is not the word I'd use to describe the monstrosities he tried to pass off as acceptable clothing! I'm just lucky I found something remotely tolerable in that rainbow… vomit!"
Sakura laughs again, covering her mouth with her hand. "It's not that bad, Natsu-san! He just has colorful clothes to match his colorful personality!"
"Oh? You like going there a lot then? I should send him a thank-you letter then!"
"I-I didn't say that! Y-You'd have to deal with him more too then!"
"Ah, but not for the rest of my life!"
"An-y-waaaaaaaaay," Sakura drawls, arms crossed as she stubbornly changes the topic, "do you think if you picture the outfits they might show up?"
Natsu shrugs. "Maybe, but they'd probably look awful on me. Pretty sure guys like me don't look that good in tiny dresses."
Sakura stares at him for a moment, clearly not comprehending, before she bursts out laughing so hard she tumbles off the chair.
"O-oi!" Natsu stumbles up to the window, pointing at her dramatically, "I'll have you know I actually can look good in a dress dammit! Just 'cause your style is weird doesn't mean I look that ridiculous! Sakura-chaaaaaaan!"
It takes ages for the girl's laughter to die down, and Natsu glares at the window that stops him from wrestling her into silence as though it's an offence against life itself until the twelve-year-old finally composes herself enough to sit back up.
She takes one look at him and starts giggling again, and Natsu has never understood the Master's expression of looking up to the heavens and sighing the way he does right now, because it feels like the only reaction he could offer that suits the situation he finds himself in, waiting through three more rounds of giggle-snorts before the younger pinkette finally manages to compose herself.
"Sooo," Sakura says, mischief in her voice, and Natsu knows what her next words will be before she speaks them, "You've worn dresses before? As yourself?"
He groans, fighting the urge to just bury his face in his palms. "You try teaming with Erza… 'oh Natsu, I need someone to model this for me real quick, I have to see how it falls on a real human, this mannequin isn't good enough, hold still would you,' and then she smiles like the king of hell himself and what was I supposed to do? Say no?! She'd beat me to a pulp and then hang the dress off my semi-conscious body! And then she'd take blackmail pictures as punishment for refusing! It was just better to go along with it!"
Shuddering, Natsu pushes down the memories, as deep as they can go. Sometimes Natsu thinks that even if he managed to beat her in a fight she'd still find a way to terrify him.
"She was your teammate?"
"Is." Natsu corrects Sakura firmly, refusing to even consider the idea that Fairy Sphere hadn't worked because surely they're all safe, I just got swept up in the magic somehow, they're safe they have to be-
He shakes the thoughts off, choosing to distract himself by talking. "I mean, in Fairy Tail we don't have concrete teams, anyone can pair up with anyone they want, if a certain job might require a different skill set, but the four of us formed a semi-permanent team, me with Erza, Lucy, and Gray. And Happy, of course. Happy's a cat, and he's my partner! But for everyone else, Lucy's pretty smart, and she was practically nobility or somethin', I was never sure on the details but I know she was really really rich at one point, so she knows all sorts of cool things the rest of us never even heard of, and Erza's strong of course, but she's also super versatile. Her fighting style can accommodate just about anything, she's got a weapon for all occasions really! Gray is… Gray." Natsu scowls, but Sakura-chan looks so curious, genuinely interested in his friends, and it's not like the ice-pervert is here to listen anyway, so…
"Gray is… better at long-range fighting than I am." Natsu grimaces, crossing his arms. "Erza can fight at all ranges but she prefers close, and Lucy-chan's mostly a support-type, cause she summons, but she can hold her own if she has to, and I'm a close-to-mid I guess, but Gray's more mid-to-long, so he's… useful. I guess. Even though we'd totally be fine without him stripping all over the place the stupid icy pervert." Natsu's words devolve into a grumble, and he feels a deep need to scrub his mouth out because saying nice things about each other is not what they do dammit!
Sakura's leaning forwards, elbows on the windowsill and chin in her palms though, smiling a bit. "They sound pretty awesome. I wish we'd got someone other than Naruto-baka on our team, then maybe we could be like that too…"
Natsu nearly says that Sasuke's the one that'd need to be replaced, but he stops himself.
"Why does everyone hate Naruto-kun anyway?" he asks instead. "I hung out with him today, and he's… nice. Lonely, honestly, but even Kakashi-san and Inoichi-san seemed kinda worried around him, and when we went to lunch, the other customers got up and walked away when he came in! I don't get it, he doesn't seem like he's that bad, even if he is a bit careless."
Sakura sits up, arms dropping, and she looks… confused.
"I… don't know. Kaa-san doesn't like him too much, and even tou-san was a bit nervous when I said he'd be on my team… I hadn't really thought about why… I just find him annoying because he keeps asking me to date him no matter how much I say no! He just asks and asks and asks and he never leaves me alone!" She crosses her arms with a humph, and Natsu feels an intense sensation of deja vu.
"But… doesn't Sakura-chan do the same to that Sasuke kid?"
Sakura opens her mouth, outraged, as she surges from her seat.
She closes it without saying anything, shuffling and looking anywhere but at Natsu as she stutters.
"S-Sasuke-kun's never said no to anything though… so it's different!"
Natsu looks at her oddly, because it doesn't seem different, but what does he know about girls anyway! Shrugging, the elder pinkette leans back against the railing. "If you say so, Sakura-chan. Anyway, wanna play a word game or something to pass the tim-"
Natsu yelps as the railing disappears behind him, Sakura-chan's mindscape flickering insubstantial around him, and once again he finds himself falling down, down, down.
He wakes up to burning pain in his leg, hands that hurt like he pummeled them into concrete walls for an hour straight, and Inoichi's disappointed face staring down at him, haloed by hospital-bright lights.
Natsu does the only thing that seems even remotely appropriate in that situation.
He punches the long-haired blond full in the face.
Inoichi stumbles back, clutching his nose, and Natsu's already-abused hand screams a litany of curses at his impulsive decision-making, but the pinkette finds himself strangely satisfied. As if he's gonna lay down and let Inoichi lecture him, just like that!
Pity I didn't manage to break his nose… maybe he'd have to take time getting it healed and I coulda snuck out…
Rolling his eyes to stare at the ceiling, the pinkette does his best to drown out the world. If he can't sneak away, at least no one can force him to listen!
Hopefully.
…
There's no way techniques exist that could do something like that, is there? Ehehehe….
A/N II (totally skippable unless you really wanna know where that first bit came from): Whoooo-boy. If this chapter was 100% unplanned, then the INTRO to this chapter was like, 200% unplanned. It all started like this:
I started by describing what Natsu was seeing, mostly to write while also stalling for time as I scramble to figure out how this chapter's gonna go. Then I wasn't sure what else to describe without boring everyone, so I had Natsu stand up and head toward the cabin. And then my brain was like: Natsu runs into a wall of trees. And I was like. Wait. What? WHY? And my brain refused to budge, so Natsu runs into a wall of trees. And I was sorta like, maybe Natsu started at the edge of Sakura's mindscape, and that's what the outsides are like? So he just needs to go the other way? And that seemed fun, I could build some interesting mechanics off of that later, but nooooooo my brain/muse/WHATEVER wasn't satisfied, and demand the OTHER side be a wall of trees too.
And I was like. WHY? But anyway, I rolled with it, sorta wondered if maybe Sakura wanted to be alone so Natsu was being blocked from her heart, and eventually the trees would just part into the cabin. So I had Natsu go through the trees.
Only, my brain/muse/writing-half-of-my-soul decided that was not what was going to happen. And so it was like, make Natsu climb the trees to look around
And I was like, okay, that makes sense, let's do it.
And then the time-slipping happened and I was like. WHY?
And my brain/muse thing was like 'time always slips when Natsu's going the right way'. And I was like, yeah, sure that makes sense, good idea.
And then Natsu looked down, and my brain was like. Okay. Destabilize everything, looking-into-the-abyss style. And I was like (you can see where this is going) W H Y?!
But I did it. And then my brain was like 'okay, now Natsu is gonna swim up until he breaks through a lake and then he'll find the cabin' and I was like FINALLY YES PLEASE.
Only then it was like 'but first he's gonna swim through petals'. I didn't even ask why that time, I was so done with my wanna-be-muse. And when he FINALLY got out of the water, my brain was like 'now he's gonna look back and be scared'. And then I was like WHY again because HOW ELSE DO YOU RESPOND TO THAT? But I did it, cause I figured maybe my subconscious had an idea that was just trying to make itself known.
So la dee da, Natsu makes it to the cabin and starts chatting with Sakura. Sakura comments on the fact that he isn't wearing his vest and scarf like normal, so I have him put them back on. Brain/Muse suddenly goes 'Natsu puts it on as fast as possible because there cannot be proof'. And I was like. What the !%#&? Proof of what, nothing happened!
And my brain was like.
Go back and add things! Because there cannot be proof!
And I was like… why.
Not even a capital why, just a lowercase why because I was that done with my muse's shit.
But I went back to the intro, specifically to the part where Natsu looks down and everything's unstable, and I added in the italicized word vomit. It just came to me. Suddenly. I just knew what I wanted to add, and how I wanted to add it. Then I hopped around that whole intro, adding some new word vomits, rephrasing a few things, and now instead of Natsu just being generally confused with Sakura's mindscape, we have trippy nightmare fuel.
Some plot ideas are popping around my head now to work with from this too, so this won't be the last we see of that, but it won't affect Natsu in the waking world I don't think. He CERTAINLY won't be having like, psychotic episodes or anything. I don't like those sorts of clearly-contrived-ways-of-crippling-characters-for-plot-convenience. But we WILL be seeing more of this.
Now if only I knew EXACTLY what was going on… instead of relying on vague impressions…
Sorry for making you guys think this chapter was 1200 words longer than it really is. But I figured at least one person might be curious as to where that intro came from, and I want you guys to know that your guess is as good as mine.
So yep. Normally I'm not much for 'going on about my muse' and all that, but this chapter reminded me why people normally give their muses names and stuff.
I used to call mine Darky, back in my self-insert and OC main character days. Over a decade ago.
Gods I feel so old.
Thanks again for reading, and double-thanks if you sat through this extra-long author's note. I won't make this a regular thing, I just really felt the need to explain how this chapter happened.
Happy Thanksgiving to the American readers, since this'll be the last update before the holiday! Happy fun times to everyone else who will just enjoy a normal week without 6+ hours of driving in their future! You guys might just be the lucky ones.