Lucy - POV
The golden light exploded from within the mass of water that imprisoned me.
For a moment, everything stopped. The entire world seemed to freeze in a bizarre photograph: Vidaldus with his imaginary guitar in mid-solo, Juvia's liquid body paralysed around me, and me, the future bestselling novelist (I hope!), with my lungs burning for air.
And then, with a violence that shook the very structure of the tower, the water containing me was pushed aside.
With a painful gasp, I fell to the stone floor, coughing, spitting water, desperately trying to breathe. My vision was blurred by tears and water (Juvia's? The sea's?), but I could make out an imposing silhouette forming in the middle of the room. A distinctly female silhouette, with a long and powerful fish's tail and a facial expression that, I knew from personal experience, promised pain.
A lot, a lot of pain. For everyone involved, probably.
"INCOMPETENT BLONDIE!"
The voice of Aquarius, my most powerful and, without a shadow of a doubt, most bad-tempered celestial spirit, echoed through the room like a furious thunderclap. With my vision still a bit blurry, I wiped my eyes in time to see her floating in the air, majestic and terrible, her golden urn already in hand, and her blue eyes shining with a divine fury that I, unfortunately, knew all too well.
"A-Aquarius!" I coughed, my whole body still trembling, trying to catch my breath. "Y-you came! You really came!"
"OF COURSE I CAME, YOU USELESS BLONDE TART! YOU SUMMONED ME! IT WASN'T By CHOICE!"
(Oh. Brilliant. Here we go.)
"DO YOU HAVE THE SLIGHTEST, MOST REMOTE IDEA OF WHERE I WAS FIVE SECONDS AGO?!" Aquarius advanced furiously towards me, the air around her growing cold with pure irritation. "I WAS AT A SPA! A LUXURY SPA IN THE CELESTIAL WORLD! WITH HOT SPRINGS IMPORTED FROM A RARE NEBULA! AND CELESTIAL ROSE PETALS THAT COST A FORTUNE! AND SCORPIO," her voice reached a dangerous level, "MY BOYFRIEND, WAS GIVING ME A DIVINE BACK MASSAGE!"
"I-I know, I'm so sorry, but it was an emergen—"
"AN EMERGENCY?! AN EMERGENCY IS WHEN YOU'RE BEING DEVOURED BY A DEMON OF THE APOCALYPSE! YOU WEREN'T ACTUALLY DYING!"
"I WAS LITERALLY DROWNING IN SLOW MOTION!"
"SO WHAT?! YOU COULD HAVE HELD YOUR BREATH A LITTLE LONGER! DEVELOP YOUR LUNG CAPACITY, FOR THE GODS' SAKE!"
That woman, I swear by all my future rent payments, would still be the cause of my death one day. If Juvia, or the goth rocker, didn't do it first.
"AND ON TOP OF THAT," Aquarius continued, clearly not having finished her list of complaints, "YOU, YOU UNNATURAL WRETCH, SUMMONED ME INSIDE A BLUE-HAIRED TART!"
She pointed disdainfully at the semi-liquid form of Juvia, water splashing everywhere with the abrupt movement of her urn.
"I HAD TO MATERIALISE MY BEAUTIFUL AND SCULPTED BODY INSIDE THAT ONE'S DISGUSTING BODY OF WATER! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW NASTY AND INVASIVE THAT IS?! IT'S LIKE BEING BORN AGAIN, ONLY WORSE AND WETTER!"
"J-Juvia is not nasty…" Juvia muttered, her voice a confused mixture of her own personality and Vidaldus's control, but the insult had clearly hit her.
"SHUT UP, YOU AMATEUR BLUE TART! NO ONE ASKED FOR YOUR OPINION!"
Vidaldus, who had been completely paralysed and dumbfounded since my surprise summoning, finally seemed to find his voice. And, like any self-respecting megalomaniacal idiot, he chose the worst, most offensive, and most suicidal words possible for that moment.
"Ooooh, yeah!" he said, a slow, smug smile spreading across his overly made-up face. "A hot mermaid with an attitude has appeared at my show! Now that's what I call ROCK'N'ROLL, baby!"
The silence that followed that declaration was so thick and so cold that I felt the air begin to freeze.
Aquarius turned slowly, very, very slowly, in his direction.
"…What… did you… say?" Her voice was a dangerously calm whisper.
"I said you're very hot, kitten!" Vidaldus, in his infinite and arrogant stupidity, struck a pose he probably thought was sexy and irresistible, but which was just disturbing and pitiable. "How about you ditch these two loser tarts and become my private groupie? I promise I know how to treat a woman like—"
"HOT?!"
The temperature in the room, which was already low, dropped at least another ten degrees. Frost began to form on the walls.
"YOU…" Aquarius pointed at him with a finger that was trembling with pure, crystalline fury. "YOU, WITH YOUR FACE OF A RECENTLY UNEARTHED AND BADLY MADE-UP
CORPSE, WITH THAT HAIR THAT LOOKS LIKE A GIANT RAT DIED, DECOMPOSED, AND THEN CAME BACK TO LIFE, WITH THAT RIDICULOUS AND TACKY TATTOO ON YOUR CHEST… YOU HAVE THE AUDACITY TO CALL ME HOT?!"
"Uh… yes? It was a compliment," he tried to argue, his idiotic smile beginning to falter.
"I HAVE A BOYFRIEND, YOU DISGUSTING WORM WITH TERRIBLE TASTE IN MUSIC! A BEAUTIFUL, WONDERFUL, RIPPED BOYFRIEND WHO IS A THOUSAND TIMES MORE HANDSOME AND STYLISH THAN YOU WILL EVER BE IN YOUR FUTURE LIVES! AND EVEN IF I DIDN'T, I WOULD RATHER DATE A DEAD, STINKING, DECOMPOSING FISH THAN EVEN LET YOU COME NEAR ME, YOU WALKING CORPSE!"
I almost, almost, felt a shred of pity for the poor, deluded Vidaldus.
But only almost.
"Aquarius, listen," I tried, getting up with difficulty, my whole body aching. "We need to defeat him and save Juvia. That disgusting hair of his absorbs water, so direct attacks—"
"I KNOW WHAT HIS HAIR DOES, YOU USELESS AND MEDDLING WRETCH! I'M NOT BLIND! DO YOU THINK I WASN'T WATCHING YOUR PATHETIC FIGHT WHILE YOU WERE BOTHERING ME AT MY SPA?!"
"So what do we do?!"
"LEAVE IT TO ME, YOU UNPREPARED BLONDIE!"
With a cry of fury, Aquarius raised her golden urn, and I saw the water around us, the water from Juvia's body that was still scattered, begin to spin and concentrate at her command.
"No one pulls me out of my relaxing spa, makes me be born humiliatingly inside a blue-haired tart, and then lets a CLUELESS WALKING CORPSE call me hot without suffering the proper and painful consequences!"
An overwhelming torrent of water exploded from Aquarius's urn.
It wasn't a normal attack, like the ones she usually used to hit me. It was a tsunami. A pure and furious force of nature, compressed into a single, absolutely devastating blow that swept the entire room with the force of a hurricane.
With a scream of panic, I clung desperately to one of the torches on the wall, feeling the violent current pass by me with enough force to rip trees from their roots, let alone a poor, exhausted celestial mage. Aquarius, as always, was not in the least concerned about whether I would be carried away in the flood.
"HAHAHA! YOU IDIOT MERMAID!" Vidaldus screamed amidst the aquatic chaos, his hair expanding like a giant, thirsty sponge, absorbing the water with an impressive speed. "MY HAIR ABSORBS ANY KIND OF LIQUID! THE MORE YOU ATTACK, THE STRONGER AND MORE HYDRATED I—"
He stopped mid-sentence.
His hair, indeed, continued to absorb. And grow.
And grow.
And grow even more.
"H-hang on a minute…" he looked up, his eyes wide, at his own immense head of hair that had already reached the high ceiling of the room and was now beginning to accumulate, heavy and soaked, on top of him. "This is… this is a bit too much water…"
"DID YOU REALLY THINK YOU COULD ABSORB THE ENTIRE OCEAN WITH THAT FIFTH-RATE HAIR OF YOURS, YOU PRETENTIOUS IMBECILE?!" Aquarius, clearly enjoying herself, did not stop the attack. "I'M GOING TO DROWN YOU IN THAT RIDICULOUS AND BADLY-CARED-FOR HAIR OF YOURS!"
Vidaldus's hair, now weighing the equivalent of several tonnes of water, began to pull him down. He staggered, desperately trying to stay on his feet as the crushing weight of his own soaked hair crushed him. The weight was so much that he finally fell to his knees with a cry of pain.
"S-STOP! I'M BEGGING YOU, STOP!"
But there was a problem. A serious problem.
Juvia, in her half-water, half-solid form, was also being dragged by Aquarius's violent current. With a muffled cry, I saw her body collide hard against a stone wall. And the scream she let out… it sounded different. Less controlled. More… human.
"AQUARIUS, STOP! JUVIA IS GETTING HURT!"
"SO WHAT?! SHE'S AN IRRITATING TART WHO TRIED TO DROWN YOU!"
"BUT SHE WAS BEING CONTROLLED!"
"AND I'M ANGRY! IN THE END, IT'S THE SAME THING!"
Her logic was, as always, absurd, but I had no time to argue theology or morality with a furious celestial spirit. Vidaldus was weakening under the weight of his own hair, but Juvia was getting hurt in the process. And if this continued for much longer…
With one last, satisfied "Hmph!", Aquarius finally stopped the attack.
The room was now completely flooded. Water up to our necks. The torches, obviously, were out, leaving us in a sinister gloom. Vidaldus's hair was now a soaked, heavy, and pathetic mass that pinned him to the floor as if by hundreds of anchors. And Juvia…
Juvia was getting up. Slowly. Her eyes were blinking, alternating between a frightening emptiness and a painful confusion.
"His control… it's weakened," I realised, a small flame of hope lighting in my chest. "It's because he can't concentrate on controlling her with that whole ocean on his head!"
"Obviously, you slow-witted thing," Aquarius rolled her eyes. "It's hard to maintain sophisticated mind control when you're being crushed by the weight of your own ridiculous hair."
"So, if we can completely overwhelm him with more water, maybe—"
"More water?" Aquarius stared at me as if I were the most stupid creature in the universe. "Tart, please, look around. The room is ALREADY flooded."
"Then use the water that's already here! Amplify the power!"
"It's not that simple, you third-rate mage," Aquarius crossed her arms, looking genuinely annoyed at having to give me a magic lesson in the middle of a battle. "To generate a wave of water with enough power to finish off that hair and break the spell, I would need much more magical power. A power that I, alone, do not possess at this moment."
"So what do we—"
"You two. Together."
"What? What do you mean, the two of us?"
"You and your little friend, the blue tart," Aquarius gestured with her chin at the staggering figure of Juvia. "If she, a water mage, joins her power with mine, we might be able to do it. What you call a Unison Raid."
Unison Raid.
(I'd read about that. A legendary magic combination technique, where two compatible mages unite their hearts and their magics to create a unique and incredibly powerful spell. But it was extremely rare. And extremely difficult to execute, requiring a perfect attunement and trust between the mages.)
"But Juvia is still half-controlled! How am I going to convince her to—"
"THAT'S YOUR PROBLEM, NOT MINE," Aquarius cut in, impatiently. "I'll do my part, providing the base of the power. You do yours, getting the other half. And you'd better hurry up, because you have maybe… a minute, before my patience runs out and I simply decide to leave. My boyfriend, Scorpio, is waiting for me for a romantic dinner, you know?"
"A MINUTE?! THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!"
"Fifty-eight seconds now. Do you want to keep complaining or are you going to save your little blue friend and shut up?"
Fifty-eight seconds.
I had fifty-eight seconds to reach Juvia, who was still in an unstable mental state, to completely break the mind control of that mad rocker, to convince her to trust me, her supposed "love rival," and to perform a legendary spell I had only ever read about in books.
(No pressure, Lucy. None at all.)
"SUCCUBUS!" Vidaldus screamed from the floor, his voice shrill and full of effort. "A-ATTACK HER! DESTROY THOSE TWO TARTS!"
Juvia flinched violently. Her eyes went vacant again for a frightening moment.
But, to my relief, it was only for a moment.
"Juvia…" she murmured, her voice choked, gripping her own head. "Juvia doesn't want to… Juvia doesn't…"
She was fighting. From the inside out, with all her strength, she was fighting against his control.
With my heart beating wildly, I pushed through the heavy water that hindered my movements, my legs burning with the effort.
"JUVIA! IT'S ME! LISTEN TO ME!"
She turned in my direction. Her eyes, in a silent agony, were alternating between a frightening emptiness and a deep, confused pain. Between the controlled Succubus and the sensitive girl who was crying on the inside.
"I know you're still in there, Juvia!" I continued, getting closer and closer. "I heard you! When I was drowning, when I was trapped inside you… I heard your voice!"
"…Love rival…" her voice was a broken whisper, full of guilt. "…Juvia doesn't want to… doesn't want to hurt…"
"And you're not going to hurt me! Because you're stronger than this! You're stronger than him!"
"SUCCUBUS, OBEY MY VOICE!" Vidaldus bellowed, desperate.
Juvia screamed, a sound of pure mental agony, her hands clutching her head as if it were going to explode.
"You told me, remember?! You said you love Fairy Tail!" I continued, completely ignoring the screams of the defeated rocker. "You said that you finally found a place where people really care about each other! A place to call home!"
"…Fairy… Tail…" she repeated, the word seeming like a spell of awakening.
"That's right! Fairy Tail! Gray, Erza, Natsu, Azra'il, all of us! We're all fighting right now to protect that place! And you're a part of it too, Juvia! You're one of us now!"
Tears. Real tears, not made of magical water, began to stream down her face, mixing with the water that soaked her.
"…Is Juvia… is she one of you… really…?" her voice was that of a lost and insecure child.
"Of course you are, you silly thing!" I finally reached her, the water up to my waist, and held out my hand to her with a smile I hoped was encouraging. "You're my nakama! My friend! Even if you call me 'love rival' all the time and have a completely unfounded jealousy about things that don't exist!"
"…Friend…" the word seemed to resonate within her.
"SHUT UP, YOU MEDDLING BLONDE!" Vidaldus was completely hysterical now, struggling uselessly under the weight of his soaked hair. "SHE IS MINE! MY SUCCUBUS! SHE ONLY OBEYS ME! ONLY ME!"
"SHE IS NOT YOURS! SHE IS NOT AN OBJECT!" I shouted back, with a fury that surprised me, without taking my eyes off Juvia's. "SHE IS NOT ANYONE'S! SHE IS FROM FAIRY TAIL! AND SHE IS OUR FRIEND!"
And Juvia's hand, slowly, rose.
Trembling.
Hesitant.
And finally met mine.
The exact moment our fingers touched, I felt it. A connection. A wave of pure, resonant power that was not just mine, not just hers, but the sum of us both, amplified by trust and emotion.
And Juvia's eyes, finally, with one last blink, became clear, blue, and full of
life.
"…Lucy-san."
She said my name. Not "love rival." Not "blonde tart." My name.
I smiled, a wide, relieved smile.
"Welcome back, Juvia."
"THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE! UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE!" Vidaldus bellowed, his voice full of disbelief and panic. "NO ONE HAS EVER ESCAPED MY ROCK OF SUCCUBUS! NO ONE!"
"Oh, for the gods' sake, just shut up already, you failed rock star wannabe,"Aquarius grumbled from the other side of the room, with a palpable boredom. "You two, less chit-chat and more action. Thirty seconds left. And the clock is ticking."
"Juvia…" I squeezed her hand tighter. "Do you trust me?"
She looked me in the eyes. For a moment, I saw a flash of doubt there. Of fear. Of uncertainty.
And then, to my surprise, she smiled. A small, shy, but absolutely genuine smile, full of a new strength.
"…Juvia… Juvia trusts Lucy-san."
"Then let's finish off this noisy bloke, together!"
With a roar, Aquarius raised her urn to the heavens. All the water in the room, tonnes and tonnes of it, began to spin around us, forming a gigantic and furious whirlpool that reached the ceiling.
Juvia closed her eyes, concentrating, and her body began to glow with an intense blue light. The water that was part of her being detached itself and joined Aquarius's whirlpool, amplifying it, strengthening it, making it something larger, more powerful, more… primordial than either of them could have created alone.
And I felt it. I felt their power flowing through me, through my connection with Aquarius as her master, through my hand holding Juvia's firmly. In that moment, the three of us, the celestial mage, the celestial mermaid, and the water mage, were as one.
"Th-that is…" Vidaldus, now with terror written on his pale face, widened his eyes. "A Unison Raid?! No! You can't… you're not compatible… it's impossible…!"
"YES, WE CAN, YOU IDIOT!" I shouted, feeling the energy explode from us.
And the water exploded.
It was no longer a wave. It was no longer a tsunami.
It was a deluge. A cataclysm.
A colossal wall of water, infused with the power of the stars and the force of the ocean, so massive, so powerful, that the entire room seemed to dissolve in a whirlwind of blue and white. Vidaldus's hair, his great and pathetic defence, tried to absorb the torrent, tried desperately to suck up all that water, but it was simply too much. Too late.
The strands of his hair, overwhelmed, broke with snapping sounds.
His hair, his pride and his weapon, shattered into nothing.
And Vidaldus Taka, the self-proclaimed most "rock'n'roll" guitarist of the Trinity Raven, was dragged and swallowed by the current like a mere leaf in a devastating storm.
"NOOOOOOOO! MY HAIIIIIIIIIR!"
And his pathetic, hair-agony-filled scream was lost forever in the deafening roar of the water.
When everything, at last, calmed down, I was on my knees on the wet floor, panting, trembling, and completely, absolutely soaked.
Juvia was collapsed beside me, equally exhausted, her face pale, but with an expression of relief and peace. Her hair had returned to normal, blue and gently wavy, with no rebellious black strands in sight.
And in the furthest corner of the room, almost unrecognisable amidst the debris, Vidaldus lay unconscious, his hair now a limp, short, and utterly pathetic mass around his head. The 'SKELETON' tattoo on his chest, now exposed and lonely, looked particularly ridiculous.
"We… we actually did it…" I murmured, my voice a thread, barely believing what we had done.
"Juvia and Lucy-san did it together," Juvia agreed, with a weak but victorious smile on her face.
"Hmph."
With a start, we looked up. Aquarius, to my surprise, was still there, floating gracefully with her arms crossed and an expression of bored superiority.
"Not bad. For two amateur tarts."
"Thank you, Aquarius," I said, with a sincerity and a gratitude I rarely felt. "Thank you… for everything."
"Don't thank me," she said, her body already beginning to fade, to dissolve into thousands of particles of golden light. "And don't summon me again for at least two weeks. I have a romantic trip planned with Scorpio to the stardust beaches of Canis Minor, and I do not intend to be interrupted by your teenage dramas."
"TWO WEEKS?! BUT WHAT IF I NEED—"
"TWO. WEEKS."
And with that final, unquestionable order, she was gone, leaving behind an almost deafening silence.
The silence that followed was almost more overwhelming than all the water and all the chaos from before.
With a groan, I tried to stand up.
And my legs, simply, would not obey.
"Ah…" I murmured, feeling the full weight of exhaustion hit me all at once, like a runaway train. "I think… I used a little too much magic…"
"Juvia… Juvia too…" Her voice was weak, almost a whisper, slurred with weariness. "Juvia cannot… move…"
With a Herculean effort, I looked at her. Juvia had completely collapsed on the wet floor, her eyes half-closed, her breathing heavy and shallow. I probably wasn't in much better shape.
(So this is what a Unison Raid does to you…) It was powerful, yes, but it took a very heavy toll on the body. And the two of us, clearly, had given absolutely everything we had, and perhaps a little more.
"Juvia…" I called, with the last of my strength, crawling pathetically across the wet floor until I was a little closer to her.
"Hm… Lucy-san…?"
"That… that thing I said before… about you being my friend… my nakama…" My voice was failing, the exhaustion threatening to pull me into unconsciousness. "I… I meant every word. Truly."
With a visible effort, Juvia turned her head in my direction. Her blue eyes, now clear and full of a new emotion, were watering.
"…It's the first time," she whispered, her voice trembling.
"First time what?"
"It's the first time a girl… that someone… has treated Juvia with such kindness," her voice trembled, a solitary tear running down her temple. "Juvia… Juvia has always been avoided by everyone. Because of the rain. Because of the sadness Juvia carried wherever she went. But Lucy-san… Lucy-san said that Juvia is her friend. Her nakama."
My already exhausted heart clenched painfully in my chest.
"Because you are, you silly thing."
More tears streamed down her face, silently mixing with the water that still covered the floor.
"Juvia… Juvia is… so happy…"
With the last of my strength, I reached out my hand. With trembling fingers, I found hers.
"Rest now, Juvia," I murmured, my own eyes as heavy as lead. "We… we did it…
together…"
"Lucy-san too… rest well…"
The high, dark ceiling of the room seemed to be spinning slowly above me. Or maybe it was just my vision going dark. I no longer knew.
The last thought I had before the darkness completely swallowed me was that, despite all the pain, all the tower, the mad rocker, and the near-drowning, I had, somehow, inexplicably and entirely unexpectedly, made a new and true friend.
And that… that, with absolute certainty, was worth it.
I don't know exactly how much time had passed.
It could have been mere minutes. Or perhaps hours. Time, as I was learning, didn't make much sense when you were completely unconscious and lying on the stone floor of a magical and evil tower.
What finally woke me, slowly, were voices. Distant and muffled at first, but then, gradually, closer and clearer.
"—I've found them! They're here, in this flooded room!"
"Meow! They look very hurt, Wally! Do you think they're alright?!"
With a pained groan, I forced my eyes to open. Everything around me was blurry and spinning, but I managed, with difficulty, to make out two silhouettes approaching quickly.
One of the silhouettes was… strangely square. And the other had… cat ears?
"Oi, blondie! Wake up! You're alive, aren't you?"
(I… I knew that voice. From somewhere…)
"…Wally…?" I murmured, my throat scratching as if I had swallowed sand.
"She remembers me! Oh, what an honour, what an honour! For a lady to remember my name!" The strangely square-faced man knelt beside me, a wide, relieved smile on his face. "That is very dandy! And yes, you've survived! And you've wrecked this place!"
"And the water girl is alive too, meow!" the other voice, that of Millianna, the cheerful cat-girl, confirmed, as she checked Juvia's pulse with a surprising gentleness. "She's just passed out, same as you!"
"What… what are you two doing here…?" I asked, trying to sit up and failing miserably, my entire body protesting with a sharp pain. "I thought you were with Jellal…"
At the sound of Jellal's name, Wally and Millianna exchanged a quick glance. And there was something there. Guilt, perhaps? Or shame?
"We… we… we found out the truth, Lucy," Wally said, his voice losing all its previous flamboyant animation and becoming dark and heavy. "About Jellal. About what he did. About… everything."
"Truth…?"
"We found Simon and Shô in the tower, meow," Millianna explained, her cat ears drooping in a clear sign of sadness. "They told us everything, meow. That Jellal lied. That he lied to us for all these years. That nee-san… that Erza… that she never betrayed us."
My brain, still slow and foggy from exhaustion and lack of oxygen, was struggling to process all of this.
Wally sighed, a heavy sound full of regret.
"We've hated Erza for years, Lucy. YEARS. We blamed her, called her a traitor. And it was all… all a lie." He ran a hand over his square face, an expression of deep and painful self-deprecation in his eyes. "We were… we are a bunch of idiots."
"We cried a lot when we found out, meow," Millianna added, her voice now small and choked. "When we thought we had really hurt nee-san… that we had treated her like an enemy… all because of the lies of that… of that monster that was Jellal…"
I thought of Erza. Of the silent pain I always saw in her eyes when the past was mentioned. Of the terrible weight she carried alone, in silence, for all these long and lonely years.
And these were the people she loved. Her friends. Her family. Manipulated and turned against her by a man she, one day, had also loved deeply.
(What a horrible and tragic mess.)
"Where… where are they now?" I asked, my voice still weak. "Simon and Shô? Are they alright?"
"Simon and Shô have gone ahead, to help your guild friends," Wally replied, with a new glint of determination in his eyes. "That big, pink-haired bloke and the other one, the dark-haired one. It seems they were having trouble. After they help finish off the remaining guards, we've arranged to meet them all at the pier, on the east side of the island. There's a small escape boat waiting for us there."
"An escape boat…?"
"For us to escape this cursed tower before it turns into a big pile of magic dust, meow," Millianna completed, with an urgency that worried me.
"Jellal's gone completely mad," Wally continued, his tone now growing lower and more urgent. "He's going to do something terrible. We need to get everyone, all our old friends, out of this tower, before the Magic Council's Etherion hits."
Etherion.
The Magic Council's ultimate weapon.
The countdown.
I, with all the confusion and the fight for my life, had completely forgotten about that threat.
"How much time… do we still have…?"
"Not much. Not at all. We need to get out of here. NOW."
With a gentleness I wouldn't have expected from his flamboyant exterior, Wally put my arm over his shoulder, lifting me with a surprising care. On the other side, I saw Millianna, despite her small size, doing the same with the still-unconscious Juvia, with the help of her magic tube.
"Can you walk, blondie?" Wally asked.
"I think so… with your help…"
"Then let's go. This tower is about to become history. And we don't want to be here to see the premiere."
As we were practically carried through the dark and now surprisingly silent corridors of the Tower of Heaven, my mind, still confused and exhausted, drifted between consciousness and sleep, between reality and memories.
(Erza. Azra'il. Gray. Natsu. Happy. Simon. Shô.)
They were all still inside. Still fighting. Still in danger.
And I… I was here. Being carried. Unable to move. Unable to help.
(Useless.)
I wanted to help. I wanted to go back to the fight. I wanted to do something.
But my body, traitor that it was, simply no longer obeyed my commands.
"Oi," Wally said suddenly, as if he were reading my thoughts or perhaps just my expression of frustration. "Don't worry about them. Your friends are strong. They'll get out of this."
"…How can you know?"
"Because they, those two madmen, came to this hell for one single person," he said, with a small smile. "And because our nee-san… our Erza… she is, without a shadow of a doubt, the strongest person I have ever met in my entire life. And not just in magic. In everything."
"Nee-san never, ever gave up on us, meow," Millianna added, her voice now choked with a genuine emotion. "Even when we gave up on her. Even when we hated her and treated her like a traitor. She… she continued to love us from a distance."
I thought of the Erza I knew. The frightening and imposing woman who ate her strawberry cake with an almost religious seriousness. The woman who wore ridiculous, and sometimes a little too revealing, armours without a shred of shame. The woman who protected her friends, her family, with a ferocity that bordered on the insane and the self-destructive.
And underneath it all… I knew, now with more certainty than ever, that there was a girl who had suffered more than any person, in any world, should ever have to suffer.
"She… she'll be alright," I murmured, more to myself, like a prayer, than to them. "She has to be alright."
Wally squeezed my shoulder gently, in a gesture of silent comfort.
"She will be, blondie. She will. And when this is all finally over… we, all of us, will have a lot, a lot of making up to do with her."
My heavy eyes closed again, the sway of Wally's steps lulling me into unconsciousness, the sound of Millianna's worried meows in the background.
(Please, Natsu… Gray… Erza… Azra'il…) I thought, in one last, desperate plea before the darkness took me completely. (Please, be alright.)
(All of you.)
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💬 Author's Notes
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Well… I think after this chapter, one thing has become very clear:
NEVER interrupt Aquarius during a spa day. Seriously. That is more dangerous than any villain in this entire tower.
I love writing Lucy's point of view, because writing her in this kind of situation is simply chaotic in the best possible way; she's on the verge of death and yet she still finds time to complain, think about her writing career, and mentally curse everyone. Priorities.
It was also a very important chapter for Juvia. I wanted this connection with Fairy Tail, and especially with Lucy, not to be something just thrown in, but built in the middle of the chaos itself.
Now, speaking seriously for a moment:
I've been feeling that the comments have been a bit quiet lately 🤨 And I'm not going to lie, they are what motivate me the most to keep writing and come up with new ideas, especially when you comment on what you thought of the scenes, characters, and decisions.
So tell me:
What did you think of the Lucy + Juvia dynamic? And of Aquarius completely freaking out?
Until the next chapter 👀