What the hell had happened to her promising day? Lucy Heartfilia found herself asking. When she had woken up that morning she had felt refreshed and rearing to go and coupled with the feeling that something good would be happening today, she had had high hopes.
Initially it was going to be a relaxing day off but of course it didn't take long for Natsu and Happy to come barging in brandishing a request sheet. She'd been in such a good mood that she didn't even wail at them, instead she said good morning and offered them some breakfast. They had both looked at her surprised and sceptically but then neither of them were the type to look a gift horse in the mouth and accepted her offer heartily.
The request had been a fairly simple one, search for a missing item, she was surprised Natsu had picked this kind mission since there was no mention of fighting but she wasn't about to question it, these kind of simple missions they rarely went on.
The reward wasn't too bad either.
And since she had been in such a good mood she had agreed to walk to their destination which fortunately was only a town over.
But where had that promise of a good day gone, she wandered as she sifted through pools of muddy water. The client had been less then helpful... they'd been walking in the woods one afternoon and slipped on the river bank, and a family heirloom, a ring, had come off and fallen into the murky water.
Of course they hadn't wanted to do the dirty work themselves and had figured that Fairy Tail would have some fancy magic that would help them find a lost ring, which of course they didn't have but a mission was a mission and they never backed out... so here they were knee deep in filthy water looking for a tiny object they'd probably never find.
It didn't help that the river was several miles long and the client couldn't quite remember how far along they were when they slipped.
It was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
She grumbled and moaned as she dug through filth and mud, searching blindly for a ring they didn't even have a description of. She was appalled that her new skirt was getting dirty and shivers of disgust ran through her as mud and grit coated her fingernails... she'd be washing mud and Mavis knows what else out of her pores for weeks to come.
She was fairly certain that on several occasions she'd felt something slimy brush past her legs.
This wasn't how she had envisioned her day.
'Lucy's slacking Natsu!' Happy yelled from the trees above them. She gritted her teeth and threw the blue exceed a glare.
'I don't want to hear that from you, why aren't you down here helping?' She growled up.
'Because I'm a cat.' He responded promptly and with a straight face.
'Yeah Luce,' Natsu chimed in, 'cat's don't like water.' He was looking at her in that way that made her feel like she'd said something stupid. 'And anyways this is pretty fun, I don't see why you're complaining.' He shrugged.
'How is this fun,' She all but yelled, 'we've been wading through filthy water, which is probably riddled with all kinds of parasites and insects, for hours, my back hurts, my new skirt is ruined and ... and this wasn't how I wanted my day to be!'
'It's not that bad...' He mumbled. 'I found a pretty neat bug,' He grinned turning around to face her. 'Wanna see?' He thrust his hand up in her face and there between his fingers was a gigantic centipede wriggling around for dear life.
Naturally she found herself reeling back, a squeal of disgust escaping her before a cry of panic when she realised her foot connected with something and she was falling backwards. Natsu dropped the bug and lunged forwards but it was too late. She fell into the water and only just managed to stop herself from being completely submerged.
