Natsu was the one who found the scrap of paper on the floor. Lucy had just rushed out of the guild a minute earlier, mumbling about needing to take care of something, and the paper was settled on the ground just beneath the bench she'd been sitting on. So obviously Natsu was going to read it. Who would pass up an opportunity like that?
He leaned over to snatch the page from the ground and unfolded it.
"What do you have there?" Erza asked, raising an eyebrow.
Natsu frowned. "I…don't know, exactly. Lucy dropped it, but…"
"If she dropped it, do you really think you should be reading it?"
"Yeah, obviously you don't understand boundaries," Gray said a little snidely, the smirk coloring his voice.
"Shut up, dumbass," Natsu grumbled. "Like you're one to talk. But seriously…I'm not reading it, because I can't."
"See?" Gray said. "I kept telling you all he was illiterate."
"Am not! Here, I'd like to see you do any better."
Natsu thrust the note at Gray with a scowl. Gray squinted at it.
"What the hell?" he asked.
"Uh-huh."
The writing on the note was entirely illegible, just a mess of scribbles that hardly looked like writing at all. Even doctors could write more neatly than that.
"That's not even her writing," Natsu said. "She writes way neater than that." A thought hit him and he straightened up. "You don't think…?"
"Don't think what?" Erza asked. She leaned over to look at the page over Gray's shoulder.
Natsu cast a worried look at the door Lucy had disappeared out of just a couple minutes before. "You don't think she's in trouble, do you?"
Everyone looked up from trying to decipher the mysterious missive to stare at him blankly.
"Trouble?" Happy repeated.
"Yeah. I mean, she left in a real hurry, and here's a note from a mysterious stranger. Do you think someone is threatening her?"
"Like blackmail?" Erza asked.
"Exactly!"
He leaned across the table to get another look. The page was torn in half none too neatly and then folded over itself the other way, and the writing was an angry snarl of black scratches. It looked vaguely threatening.
"I think blackmail would be more effective if you could read the demands," Erza said. "And this is totally unreadable. Maybe it's some kind of code."
"Code?" Happy repeated.
"Yes," Erza said, warming to her theme. "There's no way to read this normally, so all the different squiggles must stand for different things. I mean, it's not even proper writing."
"Code for what?" Natsu asked skeptically. "And who wrote it?"
Erza tapped her finger against her lips, brows furrowed in thought. Then her eyes lit up.
"Maybe she has a secret boyfriend?"
"Excuse me?" Natsu said, bristling. He didn't like the idea of Lucy having secret friends or boyfriends without telling the team.
"Yeah! And he's writing her love notes in the code he created just for them! How sweet! She was probably rushing out on a romantic tryst to meet up with him. Maybe he's going to take her to a bakery and buy her cake for them to share!"
