A/N: So sorry this is late! I promised to be on time this week, but alas, life!
Another short for Wandering Fairies might show up next week, my brain's been getting ideas for that (poor Laxus doesn't deserve the company he got stuck with…).
And talking about Wandering Fairies, one of the guest reviewers actually did guess who Zeref is! (Itachi, because mass-murdering brothers who actually just want to commit suicide-by-otouto have to stick together, ya know?!)
Happy as Konohamaru would be fun, but nope! It's even worse. That poor cat… Your comment on Sakura sneaking into Naruto's bedroom made me laugh, I could just imagine say, Ino (if she hadn't been taken over by Gray) spreading it around the gossip and poor Sakura-chan just weeping in her mind. But nope, Lucy isn't gonna be Naruto.
And as for Erza... heh. Right now she's the one whose introduction I really want to write, I can practically hear her say, "Enough. I'm your mother now." And I'm just like, gee, it'd be nice if I could write my actual chapter instead of Erza's POV in Wandering! She just really wants to have her turn…
As always, thanks for reading!
Making handsigns is weird. Not the actual physical act of it, but the way it seems to twist and pull Sakura-chan's chakra is just wrong. The first attempt fumbles into a small explosion that has Inoichi staring, wide-eyed, at the smoke trailing up from Natsu's laced fingers. The pinkette grimaces.
While gestures and handsigns are used for magic too, it's… nothing like what the ones Inoichi-san wants him to do. When he brings his hands together before going in for a fiery punch, it's just to stabilize the magic, more a quick-check to make sure he didn't mess up than a motion designed to actually do something. Making even the first handsign with Sakura-chan's chakra threading through his fingers though… just the act of shaping the first sign causes the chakra to twist, and change, somehow, and Natsu panics, yanking the chakra back.
Causing a small explosion that doesn't hurt, but leaves puffs of white smoke to drift from his palms.
"I-is it supposed to feel like that?"
"Like what, Natsu-san?"
"Like it's gotta mind of its own, just changing by itself?"
Inoichi tilts his head. "It isn't changing by itself. You use handsigns to shape the chakra into specific patterns, nothing is moving in any way you don't tell it to."
Natsu stares down at his hands, hesitantly bringing them together again as he pulls up Sakura-chan's chakra.
He gets to the second handsign but can't bring himself to shape the third, it feels so weird, magic isn't supposed to move like that and he doesn't like it, and the energy dissipates when he can't quite manage to move his fingers in time.
Inoichi leans forward. "What's wrong? Is it hurting you?"
Natsu shakes his head, feeling Sakura-chan's chakra as it settles back into its slow cycle through her body. "I just… don't like the way the handsigns feel… M-maybe it's cause my chakra is so different from Sakura-chan's, but I've never had it feel like it was moving on its own like that before. Even if you say I'm the one controlling it, it doesn't feel that way, ya know? I guess I'll probably have to get used to it… 'specially if I gotta start learning to fight with Sakura-chan's chakra since I can't feel mine too well…"
Inoichi's eyes widen. "You can feel your own chakra?"
Natsu looks up from his hands, confused. "Yeah? Course I can, it's mine. I mean, it's easier for me to feel when I'm in Sakura-chan's mindscape, then I can only feel mine and can't feel hers at all. But out here, I can sorta feel it? It's buried, and I can't grab it cause I keep grabbing Sakura-chan's instead, but it's there. It's just like, blocked or something."
"Hmm…" Inoichi offers a considering look. "So you don't feel it as threads connecting you to your body, but an actual secondary energy which flows naturally… that's unusual. After all, possession doesn't give someone's body the ability to maintain two separate chakra systems, which is why we can't use our own chakra when we take control of someone. It should be physically impossible for you to feel your own chakra in Sakura-chan's body."
"It can't be completely impossible for someone to have two different chakras, though, cause if it was I wouldn't be here! Or Sakura-chan would be dead or something…" Natsu grimaces, looking down in discomfort, and completely missing the look of horrified realization that strikes across Inoichi's face.
"Is Natsu-san entirely human?"
"Huh?" Natsu jerks his head up, looking over to his companion. Inoichi sits comfortably, completely casual, and the pinkette just shrugs. "I mean, yeah? Why wouldn't I be? S'not like Igneel's my birth dad, he just adopted me. Why's everyone always ask?"
Inoichi sighs. "I was just wondering, since your chakra is so different from Sakura-chan's, but you insist you don't have a bloodline so I thought perhaps there was another reason. But if you're certain… anyway, you realize that you'll need to get over your discomfort with Sakura-chan's chakra sooner rather than later, if we're to find you a way home. Ready to try again?"
Natsu groans a bit, but sits straight again, staring at his hands for a moment before pulling up Sakura-chan's chakra once more. The chakra flows easily, slipping through odd patterns as he moves from one sign to the next. Natsu grits his teeth against the uncomfortable sensation, letting the chakra moves as it wants, and brings his hands together for the final seal without hesitation.
He realizes he misaligned his fingers mere seconds before everything -tilts-
Lunging to the edge of the couch, Natsu leans over the armrest and vomits, head spinning dizzily and arms burning. Stabbing needle-pins prickle up and down his flesh as he trembles.
Afamiliarshadow-ghostingthroughthecornersofhisvision-whydoesheknowit?
Eyesopenslowly-hecannotwatch-cannotseetheeyes-havetolookaway-!
Natsu wipes at his chin, hand trembling fierce enough he nearly slaps himself in the face. He closes his eyes, taking deep breaths and trying to ignore the taste of bile that lingers on his tongue.
"Ow…"
Hearing comes back in a rush as he groans, Inoichi's voice in the background offering reassurances as the man's hand rests gently against Natsu's shoulders.
He's pretty glad he took the time to get his hair pulled up now, cause Natsu really doesn't think having puke all over it would be fun.
"Are you back with me?" Inoichi asks, as the pinkette starts chuckling at the random direction of his thoughts.
"Y-yeah… owww, that wasn't fun…"
"I would have expected an explosion like the first time. Are you alright, Natsu-san?"
Natsu opens his eyes, wondering when he closed them. "I'm fine. Ugh. You got any water or somethin'?"
Inoichi nods as he stands and walks over toward the coffee pot. He opens the cabinet above it, and pulls out a water bottle that he tosses to Natsu. The pinkette slides to the other end of the couch and gets up, walking to the trashcan and rinsing out his mouth before chugging the rest of the bottle.
Once the taste of sick is gone, he gives a narrow-eyed glance to the mess on the ground, before once again walking a wide berth around it before sitting back down. Inoichi comes over with a wet rag and roll of paper towels.
"Take a moment to settle down while I clean this up - perhaps go through the signs without chakra a couple more times, to make certain you don't mess it up again?"
Natsu glares at the blond's back, sticking out his tongue before turning his eyes down to Sakura-chan's delicate hands. He runs through the handsigns slowly, but doesn't make any mistakes. Picking up speed, he runs through the set faster and faster.
He never makes a mistake.
Tch. It's the chakra and its weird movements that're the problem! It's so hard to focus…
Natsu stops running through the handsigns, instead feeling out Sakura-chan's chakra. Maybe if it were actually his, it wouldn't feel so disconcerting when it moved on its own, but perhaps if he gets more used to it…
He's practically in a meditative trance, by the time Inoichi puts a hand on his shoulder and calls his name. Natsu shakes his head, making himself focus as he looks up at the blond.
"Ready to try again?" The man asks, and Natsu nods.
He fully expects something to go wrong again, and finds himself completely blindsided when it doesn't.
One moment, he's making the final sign of the jutsu, and the next there's a tug, pulling inwards and not at all the disorienting yank of before, and he just-
Closes his eyes, and opens them somewhere else. The feel of Sakura-chan's chakra instantly disappears, only his own magic coiling through his body, and while the place he's in is pitch-black, Natsu knows without even looking that his body is his, taller and broader and older. The callouses on his hands are familiar, and his magic surges almost joyfully as he calls it up to make light.
The fire dances brightly over his palms, and with only a little bit of effort it spreads beyond that, flickering around the place he's in, lighting everything aflame but not burning anything except the air.
He finds himself standing at the start of an intersection between three paths. He glances behind himself, sees Sakura-chan's linked hands glowing faintly, and Inoichi himself, settled on the ground and watching what Natsu realizes must be his-Sakura's face, because the path behind him leads back to Sakura-chan's body, and he can see out her eyes.
The other two paths, ahead of him…
The right-hand path is a simple dirt road, with sakura petals scattered across the ground, a bright blue sky speckled with clouds above it.
The left…
He thinks, at first, that the ground is paved with gravel. But when Natsu takes a couple steps forward, he realizes it's the white of bone, not rock, that glints up from the earth. The ground is unusually dark, and moist when he touches it.
His fingers come back with a film of red, and Natsu jerks away.
"Wha-?!" Wiping his hand vigorously, Natsu takes a few more steps back, before turning a confused look toward the right-hand path.
"I'd sorta thought maybe… one would lead to Sakura-chan and one to me? But I guess that doesn't make sense, cause going back to Sakura-chan's body is the one behind me… so where does this even lead?!"
Casting a glare at the blood-and-bone path, Natsu looks around.
"If… right leads to Sakura-chan's mind, and back leads to her body, and left leads… someplace weird… maybe I could just go straight?"
There's no path, when Natsu looks, but the pinkette's not about to let something like that stop him. Striding forward, he doesn't look left or right and just walks into the black.
He walks for what feels like an eternity, or maybe two, before he sees light. Picking up the pace, Natsu bursts into a lit area that… has a left-hand path of sakura-petals, and a right-hand path of blood, and straight ahead he sees Inoichi glance at a timer before looking back up.
"Wh-wha?! I was walking a straight line, there's no way I got turned around this much!"
The scene doesn't change though, no matter how much he glares, and in the end Natsu's shoulders droop in resignation.
His eyes turn towards the blood-and-bone path, wondering for a moment whose mind it would lead to, who he'd meet at the end of such a scary-looking tread. He turns towards it fully, torn between curiosity and wariness, and takes a few steps down the path. He tries to ignore the squelching as he walks.
"You don't want to go that way."
"Huh?" Natsu spins, looking into the black off the path. For a second, he could have sworn he saw a flash of pink…
"Sakura-chan?"
"You should turn back - that path, you shouldn't walk down it yet."
He squints, turns around and looks to the other side, but can't see anyone. The voice doesn't sound like Sakura-chan's either, but it's a girl so it has to be.
"Why not yet?"
The voice doesn't say anything, but he feels like something is trying to push him away. Further down the path, he sees firelight glinting off metal, but he can't tell what it is.
"Please don't look anymore."
The voice is familiar, and they sound so sad, Natsu steps back almost without thinking. There's blood all the way up past his ankle, and Natsu hadn't even realized he was sinking.
"Go back. Please! Natsu…"
It's the way the voice says his name that eventually convinces him, full of love and worry and concern, and Natsu turns around and runs back to the intersection, ignoring all the sounds that follow.
His legs are splattered in blood, the white of his pants tainted with bright red droplets everywhere the half-skirt doesn't protect them, and Natsu grimaces. Turning back, he glances for a moment at the bloody path, still curious but even more wary. After a moment, he firmly turns away from it and starts walking down the petal-strewn track that he knows leads to Sakura-chan's mindscape.
Time slips, quick and littered with impressions - a bird taking flight, a flower sprouting from the earth, vines that twine with the sakura petals and vanish just as quickly as they appeared, and suddenly he's at a door he's never seen before. There's nothing else, just a door with a handle framed by black, right at the edge of the path.
Natsu doesn't hesitate this time, just turns the handle and walks in.
He trips.
Someone grunts in pain, and Natsu scrambles to get off them, rolling away until his back hits a wall, and he sits up looking down at-
"Sakura-chan?!"
"Wha- Natsu-san!"
Sakura bolts upright, staring wide-eyed between Natsu and the door that slams closed as they both watch.
A lock clicks.
"Well, that didn't sound ominous at all." Natsu narrows his eyes as he stands, moving forward to poke at the door. It doesn't budge, though the handle turns just slightly when he tests it, unlike the one that leads into Sakura-chan's Heart-
"Wait, am I in your Heart?!" Natsu looks around, and- yeah, down one of the hallways he sees the bedroom Sakura-chan is always in when he talks to her, with its partially-opened window that looks out into the Field of her mind.
"Yeah… How did you get here?" Sakura pushes herself to her feet, brushing off her skirt as she rises.
"Inoichi-san started teaching me those techniques he promised… I got taken to some intersection with two different paths I could take, and I tried to take the other one, but someone who I thought was you at first? Warned me away from it, so I took the other one and it lead me here…"
"Huh." Sakura-chan puts her hands on her hips, looking at the door he came from. "It wasn't locked before- it's actually been unlocked this entire time. But now you came through, and that changed… I wonder why. The person who warned you, maybe?"
"I didn't see a lock on that side. And I don't see one on this side either… I guess that person definitely wasn't you then."
Sakura-chan shakes her head. "I haven't left at all, since Inoichi-san told me not to… The other path should have lead to your mind though, right? So why did someone warn you away?"
Natsu grimaces. "There's no way! I mean, I've never tried to imagine what my mind would look like, but all that blood, and the bones… pretty sure that's not right. That's not me. I tried to look for a hidden path or something, but didn't find any…"
Sakura looks considering for a minute. "There's another door besides this one that I haven't opened. Maybe that one leads to your mind… come on, it's this way." Sakura-chan leads him back up the hallway, and opens the first door on the left. It leads into a room with a second door covered in markings that-
"Hey, I know those runes! They're from back home!" Natsu leaps forward, Sakura-chan laughing a bit behind him, as he reaches for the handle.
His fingers slip through it.
"Wha-?" Natsu barely chokes out the question, before the feel of Inoichi's smooth chakra snaps around him and suddenly he's blinking, dazed, in Sakura-chan's too-small body and looking up at the blond's face.
"WHAT WAS THAT FOR?!" Natsu stands on the couch, legs trembling, as Inoichi lunges backwards to avoid a collision.
"It's been nearly three hours, Natsu-san. I was worried you had gotten stuck."
Natsu's legs give out, and he drops onto the couch again. "I was so close…"
"Hm? What happened in there, Natsu-san?"
The pinkette glares at him, crossing his arms. "I was in the Heart of Sakura-chan's mind! She showed me to the door that had runes I was familiar with from back home, cause we thought it'd lead back to me and I'd be able to go home… but you pulled me out before I could open the door!"
Inoichi's eyes widen. "You ended up… how?"
Natsu shrugs. "I dunno, I ended up in a weird place first, and in her Heart later. But the door locked when I went through it, so I don't really know what that means…"
"Try again."
Natsu nods, shifting around til he's more comfortable. He goes through the handsigns, and it feels just the same as the time before. Only, this time, when he opens his eyes-
He's staring down into a familiar lake, Inoichi's face on the other side, lips turned to a contemplative frown as he stares at Natsu-Sakura with something the pinkette can't read. He turns around, and sees the cabin in the distance. Cursing Inoichi's awful timing under his breath, Natsu turns and wades into the water.
Within a breath, he's blinking to awareness, back in Sakura-chan's body. He shakes his head before Inoichi can even speak.
"I was in the Field this time… That door locking probably meant I couldn't go back in that way as long as it stays locked… dammit!"
"I apologize, Natsu-san."
Natsu waves it away, face set in a scowl. "You couldn'ta known. Hell, maybe that door was locked too, and it'dve been useless either way. Ugh, we were so close! Why did that door even lock?" Natsu flops back, staring up at the ceiling.
He wonders, for a moment, if it was to keep him from going down that second path.
Somehow, he doesn't want to tell Inoichi about that, though. A feeling in his gut that he shouldn't mention it.
Was the lady who spoke then that familiar shadow I saw?
…
Natsu sits up straight, looking around the room and ignoring Inoichi's concerned "Natsu-san?".
Since when do I remember that shadow? Haven't I always been forgetting? The forest and the eyes too… and the fear. And now I remember all of it!
Why?
No matter how he looks, no shadows flicker in the corners of his vision.
Somehow Natsu gets the feeling something else is missing too, something important…
"Natsu-san?"
"Ah!" Natsu jumps a bit, startled from his intense searching. "Sorry, Inoichi-san."
The blond smiles. "It's no issue. I don't think it wise to do anything else for today, so you have maybe an extra hour for lunch before Hatake-san will expect you for missions. Would you like me to walk you out?"
Natsu shakes his head. "Nah, I'm good. Unless you wanna pay?"
Inoichi laughs, standing up. "Hardly."
Natsu offers him a bright grin, then slips out the door ahead of him.
"See you round, Inoichi-san!" Offering a quick wave, the pinkette slips out the building and turns toward Team 7's preferred training field.
He can't quite help the morbid curiosity that curls through him, wondering how Naruto and Sasuke faired in teamwork exercises without him.