The tension in the village smelt of sweat, fear, and the unmistakable aroma of imminent disaster. On one side, the trio of pantomime villains who had survived the spectacular fall of the flying rat, posing as if they were about to star on the cover of some album of dubious quality. On the other, my glorious team of dysfunctional heroes. What a spectacle. I almost needed more tea to endure it.
Gray, with the stubbornness of someone who thinks a defined abdomen can solve all problems, and probably with several ribs still complaining from the previous fight, took a step forward, ice already crackling at his fists. "I'll handle them, Azra'il. You've done enough." Oh, how noble. How heroic. And what a stupid idea. There was gratitude in his voice, yes, but it was suffocated by a thick layer of wounded pride, the desperate need not to appear as the team's semi-naked deadweight.
Natsu, however, who apparently interprets any act of bravery from others as a personal offence, was quicker. With the subtlety of a meteor entering the atmosphere, he shoved Gray back. "You can barely stand, you frozen idiot! Stay out of this!" The argument was short, sharp, and, as always between them, a bizarre display of brotherly affection disguised as a threat of violence. He finished with, "Don't make me have to knock you out again to keep you safe, you walking ice-lolly!", which, for Natsu, was practically a love poem. The threat worked, and Gray retreated, grinding his teeth more from humiliation than from pain.
With a war cry that probably made the island's birds reconsider their migratory routes, Natsu, our pink-haired wrecking ball, charged at Yuka and Toby like a comet of fury and zero strategic planning.
[And here we go...,] Eos's voice sounded in my mind, with the tone of someone about to watch their favourite rerun of "Idiots Doing Idiot Things". [Initiating 'Calculation of Collateral Damage Caused by Natsu' protocol. Initial forecast: high. And very, very expensive.]
The "fight," if one could even call that pandemonium a fight, was exactly as I had predicted: a glorious and utterly ineffective chaos. Natsu tried to incinerate the fellow called Yuka with a "Fire Dragon's Iron Fist," but the magic, with a disappointing and anticlimactic "puff" sound, simply evaporated into thin air inches from his opponent's smug face.
Yuka laughed, a nasal and deeply irritating sound. "How pathetic, Dragon Slayer. My 'Wave Invalidation' cancels out any kind of magic. You're useless."
While Natsu stood there, probably trying to understand the complex concept of "anti-magic" with his single functioning neuron, Toby, the chap with claws and a dog-like face, attacked him from behind, scratching him with a cry of "Taste my poison!". The fight became a frustrating and somewhat humiliating game, with Natsu causing more damage to the poor village huts than to his irritatingly evasive enemies.
On the other side of the village, the drama was unfolding with equal predictability. "Open, Gate of the Golden Bull, Taurus!" Lucy shouted, and her bovine, muscular spirit appeared, spouting his usual and wholly inappropriate comments about his master's "beautiful curves." The battle began, but Sherry just smiled with venom.
"Oh, what a... robust celestial spirit. I think I'll keep him for myself."
And, as if from the script of a cheap soap opera, Taurus's eyes turned a vacant purple, and he turned slowly towards a horrified Lucy. Predictable. And a little pathetic. The poor celestial mage was screaming his name, desperately trying to appeal to the reason of a magical bull with a giant axe that was now actively trying to turn her into mincemeat.
[Current situation: Unfavourable, bordering on comical catastrophe. 'Team Fairy Tail' is demonstrating a remarkable and almost artistic inefficiency in combat. The property destruction factor, however, is within normal and expected parameters for any operation involving Natsu Dragneel,] Eos's voice sounded again, cold as ever.
I observed the scene with a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of millennia of disappointment in the incompetence of others. The village, which I had so generously saved from an acid bath just minutes before, was now being systematically demolished by my own idiotic companions. And, worst of all, the noise from that mediocre battle was starting to give me a throbbing headache and interfere with my peaceful contemplation of mortality.
"Enough of this mess. Playtime is over," I muttered to myself, my voice lost in the chaos, as I walked with the reluctance of one forced to intervene in a nursery school squabble.
My first move was towards Natsu's fight. I appeared like a spectre of blue and white, a silent blur that positioned itself between him and the smug Yuka, who was already preparing to launch another undulating and probably useless spell.
"Excuse me, Natsu. I think you've had enough of a 'warm-up'," I commented, with a calm that made them both pause for an instant.
The fellow Yuka smirked, an arrogant and entirely misguided expression. "It's no use switching opponents, wolf-woman. My magic nullifies any kind of magical power. You, with your whole scary 'apathetic mystery girl' aura, can't touch me with your spells."
I yawned. An audible, exaggerated yawn, filled with a boredom so profound it was almost an existential insult in itself. "Oh, how cliché. Another one-trick pony mage with an ego the size of a watermelon. You rely so heavily, with such blind, childish faith, on that little, limited nullification ability of yours that you've completely forgotten the most basic, most fundamental, and most painful lesson of any combat."
Before he could even process my words, the depth of my contempt, or the veiled threat, I moved. There was no gleam of magic, no incantation, not even a change in my power aura. Just speed. Pure, simple, brutal, and terrifying speed.
I delivered a single, unpretentious punch, with a closed fist, right into his solar plexus. The sound was dry, brutal, and terribly final. A hollow "thump." Yuka folded in half like a piece of paper being crumpled by an invisible hand, the air forced from his lungs in a painful, wet gasp. His eyes, once so arrogant, were now wide with the absolute shock of being defeated, not by a grand spell, but by pure, simple brute force, by a physical blow he never even saw coming. He collapsed to the ground like a sack of old potatoes, unconscious before his body even hit the dirt.
Toby, the guard dog with claws and the brain of an amoeba, seeing his partner fall in such a pathetic and anticlimactic fashion, charged me in a fit of primal and utterly brainless rage. His claws, coated in a suspicious purple sheen, raked across my forearm in a swift motion. "Taste my powerful paralysing poison! No one escapes!"
I looked down at the superficial scratches on my forearm with the clinical curiosity of a botanist examining a new and uninteresting species of fern. Then, a slow, cold, and terribly frightening smile formed on my lips. I began to laugh. A low sound, devoid of any humour or joy, that made even the noise from Lucy's battle quieten and the air around me seem colder.
"Poison? Oh, my dear, naive, and overrated pet," my voice was soft, almost affectionate, which, I knew, made it all the more terrifying. "The herbal tea I drink to sleep every night, harvested from the poison gardens of ancient realms and brewed with the care of one who doesn't much mind if they wake up the next day, is considerably more lethal and interesting than this... pathetic secretion of yours. I have tasted, for sheer scientific curiosity and existential boredom, toxins that could dissolve a minor god in a matter of seconds. This thing you dare call poison..." I gestured with almost palpable disdain at the scratches on my arm, which, to his growing horror, were already beginning to heal and disappear, "...barely tickles."
In a blink of an eye that was faster than he could even process, I seized Toby's wrist, which was still extended towards me in a gesture of misguided triumph. A sickening, loud, nauseating crack echoed through the clearing as I, with a precise, efficient, and seemingly effortless movement, dislocated his wrist joint.
With equally impressive speed, I did the same to his other wrist before he could even process the agonising pain from the first. Toby let out a high, thin shriek of absolute pain and surprise, falling to his knees before me like a supplicant.
With the calm of one about to crush a particularly annoying insect, I leaned in and whispered in his ear, my voice a cold breath of dark promises: "Every single choice we make in this life, however insignificant or impulsive it may seem, has a consequence. Perhaps, in your next, and hopefully more intelligent and less violent, life, you will choose to be a simple farmer. Or perhaps a baker. Something less... prone to having the bones in your limbs broken and your dignity shattered." And with a small, almost gentle, and utterly humiliating push, I made him fall face-first onto the ground, sobbing with a pain and terror that I knew, with a secret satisfaction, would haunt him for many, many long years.
Now, all attention—and when I say all, I mean absolutely every living soul in that clearing, probably including the squirrels in the trees—was, to my slight annoyance and secret delight, completely and utterly focused on me. Natsu, with his fiery brain and his usually wide-open mouth, was now gaping, an expression of shock and perhaps a little fear that was almost comical. And Lucy, our poor, traumatised Lucy, was paralysed with fear and disbelief, still being threatened, though now with considerably less conviction, by her own celestial spirit, who looked just as confused and shocked as she was.
Everyone's attention, including that of the hysterical Sherry, now turned to the only battle that was still, pathetically, underway. Lucy, pale, breathless, and clearly panicked, was still dodging, by a hair's breadth, the massive axe of Taurus, whose muscular and imposing body moved with a brutal grace that, under Sherry's nefarious control, was now simply and utterly terrifying.
"Taurus, please, please stop it! Remember me!" she cried, her voice thick with urgency, desperation, and betrayal. "It's me, Lucy! Your contractor! Your friend! Remember the steaks I promised you?!"
"The love of my new, beautiful, and powerful Mistress Sherry is much stronger, much truer, than any old contract and any promise of beef, moo-lady!" the deep, resonant, and now thoroughly irritating voice of the celestial spirit boomed across the courtyard. But there was a clear dissonance in his voice, an underlying confusion I could feel, an ancestral loyalty that Sherry's cheap magic was struggling to suppress.
The pink-haired mage, for her part, either oblivious to my recent display of power or perhaps just too stupid to care, continued to laugh hysterically from her safe position, revelling in Lucy's despair, pain, and imminent defeat. What a lack of originality. And what an irritating laugh.
I watched the pathetic scene with an impassive gaze, but I felt a small, stubborn vein throb at my temple. "Playing with sacred bonds, with a spirit's loyalty, and with a mage's heart," I murmured to myself, my tone dangerously low, cold, and laden with a contempt that was almost palpable. "How tasteless. How vulgar. What a lack of creativity."
Taurus, driven by Sherry's increasingly desperate magic, raised his gigantic two-handed axe to deliver what would undoubtedly be the final, devastating blow. Lucy, exhausted and out of options, tripped backwards over a protruding root and fell into a sitting position on the ground, her large brown eyes closing in a gesture of pure, absolute resignation, awaiting the inevitable impact that would surely crush her and put a tragic end to her short and dramatic career as a mage.
But the blow, of course, never came.
A dull, resonant, and almost impossible metallic sound, like a church bell being struck by a feather, echoed through the silent square. Lucy opened her eyes slowly, hesitantly, and gasped, her mouth forming an "o" of pure, absolute, and total astonishment and disbelief. Me. I was there. Standing in front of her like an impenetrable shield of pure, crystalline indifference, with a single, delicate hand raised, holding the massive, two-tonne blade of Taurus's gigantic axe as if it were a simple, light, and utterly harmless child's toy, a mere piece of plastic. My feet had not moved a single, paltry millimetre from their spot. The earth beneath me had not even trembled from the impact.
"You..." my voice, when I finally broke the shocked silence, was as cold as the vacuum of space, devoid of any emotion, but it was not addressed to Sherry or any other insignificant human present. My words, heavy with the weight of ages, were directed at the powerful and confused celestial entity before me. "Spirit of the Golden Bull. One of the Twelve Golden Gates of the Zodiac. Your noble purpose is to protect your master, to serve your key. This bond that you, mage and spirit, share is a pact of honour, a sacred promise woven with magic and trust, not a pathetic slave's chain to be pulled, twisted, and manipulated by anyone with a mediocre power and a weak will who wants to play puppet master."
Taurus grunted, the sick, purple energy of Sherry's magic pulsing in his empty eyes, forcing him to press the axe against my hand with all his supernatural strength, but, to his astonishment and that of everyone else, without the slightest, most insignificant success. The axe did not move a single centimetre. "I... I serve the great, the mighty, and the irresistible love of my new and true Mistress Sherry!" he growled, with a conviction that sounded increasingly false and desperate.
"Love?" I laughed. A sound devoid of any joy, a cold, cutting sound filled with a contempt so profound that it made even the hysterical Sherry flinch and take a step back. "That, my dear, naive magical bovine, is not love. It is domination. It is violation. It is the purest, most crystalline, and most pathetic form of disrespect and abuse of power. You are a celestial warrior of the Zodiac, a guardian of one of the Twelve Golden Gates, not a stupid guard dog, a mindless slave, or a will-less puppet with exaggerated muscles. Where, in the name of all celestial spirits, is your pride? Your warrior's honour?"
My words, I knew, were not a conventional spell; they carried no obvious or destructive magical power, but they carried the crushing weight of aeons of knowledge, an ancestral authority, and an understanding of the nature of pacts and bonds that transcended the simple, limited magic of this particular world. And, with a slow, deliberate pressure, I tightened my fingers around the axe blade, and thin, almost invisible cracks, like spiderwebs of ice, began to form and spread across the surface of the enchanted, magical metal.
"Your contract, your loyalty, your power... they belong to her," I inclined my head subtly towards the still-fallen and shocked figure of Lucy. "Her power flows into you to give you form in this world, and your power flows into her to protect her from her enemies. Remember, spirit. Remember your oath. Remember your true master."
For a brief, fleeting, and almost imperceptible instant, the sickly purple light that dominated Taurus's eyes flickered, wavered, like a candle flame in a gale. He looked over my shoulder and, for a moment, seemed to truly see the pale, frightened, yet still faithful face of Lucy. The primal connection between spirit and mage. Sherry's mind control, for a single, fatal fraction of a second, weakened, her cheap magic proving incapable of overpowering a true bond reinforced by his Mistress and by my own will. And for me, a veteran of countless battles, a fraction of a second was far more than enough to declare victory.
"Your time playing with other people's toys... is over, child," I declared with a finality that brooked no argument.
With an almost disdainful gesture, I not only pushed Taurus's axe back, but I did so with a sudden and overwhelming force that sent the enormous battle spirit staggering clumsily backwards, nearly falling and letting out a grunt of pure surprise and pain. His hands let go of the axe, which fell to the ground with a heavy thud, and he brought his hands to his head, his eyes now flickering between the purple of domination and his normal state. He was free. Free, but confused.
Sherry screamed in fury and frustration, trying to reconnect her magic, but it was too late. The link had been broken.
I turned to Lucy, who was looking at me with wide, astonished eyes, still on the ground. "Now, Lucy," my voice was calm, but with a hint of impatience. "Do your job. Close the gate."
My words seemed to jolt Lucy from her trance. She looked at Taurus, who was now staring at her with eyes full of guilt and confusion, and a new determination dawned on her face. She got to her feet, brushing the dust from her skirt.
"Thank you, Taurus. You fought well," she said, with a voice that, though trembling, carried the authority of a true celestial mage. She raised her golden key, its light shining with renewed strength. "You may rest now. Close, Gate of the Golden Bull!"
At his true master's words, Taurus's massive body glowed with a warm, golden light. He gave me one last, respectful nod before dissolving into thousands of shimmering particles of light, returning to the safety and sanity of the Celestial Spirit World, probably with a terrible headache and a new respect for soft-spoken, white-haired mages.
The silence that followed was almost total, broken only by Sherry's furious, hysterical, and utterly impotent scream. "HOW DARE YOU?! HOW DARE YOU UNDO MY CONTROL?! I'LL TURN YOU INTO MY MOST PRECIOUS DOLL, I'LL DRESS YOU IN LACE GOWNS AND KEEP YOU IN A BOX FOR ALL ETERNITY!" Her threat was so childish in its conception, and so deeply disturbing in its essence, that it almost made me laugh. Almost.
I didn't even deign to look at Sherry immediately, with a haste she certainly didn't deserve. First, and with a deliberate slowness calculated to increase her suffering and anxiety, I turned to our poor, still-trembling blonde. Lucy was still standing there, processing everything, her eyes darting from me to the furious mage before me.
"Lucy," my voice came out cold, cutting, devoid of any superficial compassion. A bucket of cold water on her confusion. "Pay attention. The crying and desperation just now? That hesitation? That weakness? That is what gave this woman the opening she needed to play with your bonds. On the battlefield, sentimentalism is an open invitation, a glowing neon sign, for your own defeat and that of your friends. Remember that very well next time."
My words were, I knew, cruel. Harsh. But for someone with a heart as soft as Lucy's, living in a world that did not forgive weakness, and worse still, in a guild like ours, they were absolutely necessary for her future survival.
Before the poor, and now thoroughly confused, Lucy could even think of formulating a reply, or simply start screaming again, I had already moved. In a blur of speed that defied logic, human perception, and probably a few fundamental laws of physics, I was already positioned directly in front of a completely shocked, unprepared, and jaw-dropped Sherry.
One of my hands, moving with the speed of a serpent, seized the lace collar of her flashy pink dress with merciless force, lifting her off the ground as if she weighed no more than a feather, until her small feet, shod in equally ridiculous shoes, dangled uselessly and pathetically in the air, inches from the ground.
SLAP!
The sound of my slap cracked through the silent air like the whip of a thunderclap, echoing across the clearing and making even Natsu flinch. Sherry's head was thrown violently to the side by the contained, yet brutal, force of the impact, and a small but significant trickle of scarlet blood ran slowly from the corner of her mouth. She hung there in my grasp like a broken, lifeless rag doll, her eyes wide with absolute shock, the throbbing, humiliating pain in her now red and swollen cheek overshadowing everything else.
"I could, with the same ease and far less effort, have broken your neck just now, you pathetic little puppet mage," my voice, now, was a lethal whisper, low, cold, and dangerously close to Sherry's ear, each word a promise of pain and annihilation.
"It would be easy. Silent. Quick. And, frankly, quite satisfying. So understand one thing, you spoiled child. Understand it very well, because I will not repeat myself. I am not like them." My gaze, for a brief instant, flickered past Natsu, past Gray, past Lucy, past all the soft, idealistic hearts of Fairy Tail. "I do not see the 'potential for good' in worms like you. I do not believe in second chances for those who deliberately choose the path of cruelty and malice. And I most definitely do not offer mercy to those who hurt the ones I have, for some inexplicable and utterly illogical reason, decided to protect. I am the final consequence, the line that must not be crossed. And you, you grovelling worms with delusions of grandeur, are, at this very moment, seriously, dangerously, and almost suicidally testing my ancestral patience and my already limited self-control."
With a sharp, disdainful movement, I released the collar of Sherry's dress and, with the same deliberate and terrifying calm, pressed the tip of my index finger, now glowing with a subtle, icy blue light, right into the middle of her forehead. "You enjoy playing with the lives, minds, and feelings of others so much, don't you, my dear? So, how about we play with your mind for a little while now?"
"What... what are you... doing to me...?!" Sherry stammered, pure, absolute fear finally overcoming her hysterical rage and arrogance, as her eyes widened in terror at the cold light on my finger.
"I'm teaching you a lesson. An unforgettable lesson in empathy," I replied, my eyes shining with an equally icy and emotionless blue light. "It's a very old spell. Very educational. From a language you've never heard, it's called... Genjutsu: The Infinite Cycle of Personal Nightmare."
Sherry's eyes widened in mute terror, and then, suddenly, they became completely empty, opaque, like those of a glass doll. Her body, still on the ground, began to tremble violently, uncontrollably. And then, to the horror of everyone present, she began to scream. Shrill, blood-curdling screams, filled with a primal terror and an agony that did not seem to belong to this world.
She fell to the floor, writhing in a silent convulsion, her hands desperately scratching at her own face, her lips moving in inaudible pleas. "NO! STOP! PLEASE, I'M BEGGING YOU! HELP! NOT AGAIN! NO MORE!"
Lucy, recovering from her initial shock, rushed forward with the intention of intervening, but stopped at a safe distance, her hands covering her mouth in pure, absolute horror. "Azra'il! For God's sake! What have you done to her?! Stop it right now! You'll kill her!"
With a calm that bordered on the monstrous, I let Sherry's body thrash pathetically on the ground for a few more long, excruciating seconds, until, finally, with one last, guttural silent scream, she passed out, exhausted, her body twitching spasmodically like a puppet with its strings cut. A dark, damp patch, to complete the humiliation, spread slowly across her pink trousers.
"I merely taught her, in the most effective way possible, what true fear is," I replied, my voice returning to its usual monotonous, calm, and terribly disinterested tone, as I wiped the tip of my index finger on my hanfu with a gesture of disdain, as if removing some invisible speck of dirt. "In her mind, in that brief instant, she has just lived and died thirty-seven different times, each death slower, more painful, and more solitary than the last. It was a very effective and memorable lesson on the consequences of her actions, I would say. And with a high rate of learning retention."
Lucy stared at me, her large brown eyes filled with tears of shock, fear, and an incomprehension that was almost palpable. She was trying to process what she had just witnessed—the contained brutality, the calculated cruelty, the utter lack of mercy.
"That... that's not normal magic..." Lucy whispered, more to herself than to me, her voice trembling with horror. "What was that? What kind of terrible magic does that to a person's mind?"
I shrugged, a casual, indifferent gesture that contrasted violently with the horrific scene of the fainted and traumatised girl at my feet. "It's just an illusion technique. Very old and very efficient. Where I learned to use it, they call it Genjutsu."
Lucy frowned, confusion momentarily overcoming the fear on her face. "Genjutsu?" she repeated, the term sounding strange, exotic, and dangerous on her tongue. "I've read about many different types of magic... Creation Magic, Requip Magic, Ancient Magic, Lost Magic... but I have never, ever heard of something called 'Genjutsu'. Where in the name of all the spirits is that from?"
I met Lucy's curious and frightened gaze, and a small, almost imperceptible smile touched my lips for the first time since the battle had begun. "Let's just say, my dear and curious celestial mage, that it's from a place very, very, very far from here." I turned, my gaze sweeping over the three now-unconscious and pathetic bodies of our enemies, and the general mess around us. "They use techniques like this to break an enemy's spirit quickly and efficiently, without the need to dirty a blade or cause unnecessary material damage. It's... much more efficient. And it leaves less evidence."
My explanation, as clear as swamp water and as comforting as a cactus hug, hung in the heavy air. Lucy, poor thing, just stared at me, her logical writer's mind probably short-circuiting as she tried to fit "Genjutsu" into any known magical category. The confusion and fear on her face were almost comical. If she didn't look like she was about to faint, I might even have laughed.
The silence that followed my little, enigmatic revelation was an entity in itself. Heavy, dense, and as uncomfortable as wearing wet clothes on a cold day. The fight had, finally and to my relief, ended. The village was safe, at least for now. But this victory had a strange, bitter taste, like tea that had been left to steep for too long.
I watched my team of dysfunctional heroes. Their silence was far more eloquent than any shout. Natsu, for the first time since I'd met him, was quiet. Utterly quiet. His fists, normally so ready for a brawl, were clenched at his sides, but not with anger. He looked at the ground, at the unconscious bodies, then at me, his face a mask of conflict, of confusion, of something he clearly couldn't process.
Gray, still leaning against the wall of one of the huts with his "I'm too cool to feel pain" pose, just watched me with a dark, intense, and utterly unreadable expression behind his facade of indifference. His eyes weren't judging me, but analysing me, as if he were trying to recalculate all his previous notions about me. He was probably remembering every stupid fight he'd ever had with me and thinking that, maybe, just maybe, he'd been very lucky until now.
And Happy... little, brave Happy, who was usually the first to celebrate a victory with a deafening "Aye!", had hidden himself completely behind Natsu's head, his small wings visibly trembling, without letting out a single, tiny peep. Apparently, the babysitter was scarier than the monsters. How ironic.
Lucy, our walking moral compass, was still clutching her golden keys so tightly that her knuckles were white, as if they were an anchor to sanity in the midst of this storm of cruelty. Her eyes jumped from me to the three inert bodies on the ground, then back to me, her mind clearly stuck in a loop between "the girl who tells jokes about goats" and "the cold creature who inflicts psychological nightmares."
It was then, in the midst of that heavy, questioning atmosphere, that the inevitable happened. And, as always in Fairy Tail, just when you think the chaos has finally decided to take a break, it was merely catching its breath for the next act, usually an even louder and more dramatic one.
First, it was an almost imperceptible shiver at the nape of my neck, an instinct I recognised well stirring. Then, a cold sweat broke out on Natsu's forehead. His Dragon Slayer instincts, usually so attuned to detecting nearby enemies or finding a good old-fashioned fight, were now screaming a completely different alarm, an alarm he hadn't heard in a very, very long time. It wasn't an alarm for "imminent battle danger." It was a much more visceral, much more terrifying alarm, for "IMMINENT DANGER OF DEATH, SEVERE PUNISHMENT, AND THE PROBABLE AND PAINFUL LOSS OF DESSERT PRIVILEGES FOR AT LEAST A MONTH."
Happy, who was perched nervously on Natsu's shoulder, felt his friend suddenly go as rigid as a wooden plank, his muscles as taut as steel cables. "N-Natsu? Are you alright? You're making your 'I've eaten a bad fish and I know with every fibre of my being that I'm going to be very, very sick' face."
"Shhh! Be quiet, Happy!" Natsu hissed, his previously confused eyes now wide with pure, abject panic, looking frantically around, at the trees, at the sky, everywhere, as if expecting an invisible but terribly familiar monster to pounce on them at any moment. "Can't... can't you feel it, you stupid cat? It's... it's coming."
"What's coming, Natsu? The giant ice monster sealed in the ice? Deliora?" asked Happy, his small voice trembling with fear.
"Worse, Happy. Much, much worse," Natsu swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing almost comically in his throat.
And then, we all heard it. Footsteps.
Deliberate. Rhythmic. The unmistakable and ominous sound of armoured boots treading with merciless firmness on the packed earth of the path leading to the village. Each step seemed perfectly synchronised with the accelerated and terrified heartbeats of Natsu, Gray, and Happy. They knew that sound. They knew that march. It was the sound of judgement day approaching, with hair as red as blood, armour that shone like justice itself, and a very, very bad temper when it came to unauthorised missions.
A silhouette appeared slowly at the entrance to the village, framed dramatically against the rising sun, which, in comparison to her imposing aura, seemed small, weak, and insignificant.
Lucy, still shaken by the previous events and completely oblivious to the new and growing source of panic for her teammates, asked in a weak, curious voice: "Who... who is that now?"
Natsu didn't answer. He simply began to sweat profusely, a cold, clammy sweat that beaded on every pore, while he repeatedly muttered to himself, like a desperate and utterly futile prayer: "We're so screwed. So completely and utterly screwed. It's all over. It was nice knowing you, Happy, my friend. Tell the guild I died a hero... or from indigestion, anything that doesn't involve her."
Lucy gasped, comprehension, shock, and terror finally hitting her with the force of a punch. "...It can't be... Erza." And indeed, it was her. With her armour gleaming menacingly, her sword at her hip, and an aura of contained fury that made even my actions from minutes before seem like a simple, innocent child's game. The real danger, it seemed, and the real babysitter, had just arrived. And she, most certainly, did not look the least bit happy.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE
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