Breakaway

Desperate Measures

He didn't even know if Makarov would still stand for him if he asked. The way he'd left, all those things he said. He thought he'd thought all of this through. He just hadn't accounted for this. And heavens above knows he should have. He and Q had backed each other into a corner. He should have known that Q would lash out. He didn't have much of a choice now. Whether Fairy Tail accepted his plea or not he had to at least try. That meant throwing away what he'd worked for here.

He'd never be able to come back to Reklaw. The thought was almost sickening. He was going to be endangering his kids in trying to protect them; the last thing he ever wanted to do. And what about Tae? God, the man was dying already. How could he uphold his wife's dying wish when his world was falling apart at the seams?

He wondered about all of the death in his life so much it seemed more like a memory, wondering when his own was going to get him, on his feet or on his knees, in his sleep of seven feet ahead of him, wondering whether it was like a beat without a melody or just nothing at all, pondering whether he should run or let it be. Shaking his head he sighed and tried to clear his thoughts. Thinking about what his demise would be like was not going to help him solve the problem in front of him.

The answer to his question concerning what he was going to do with his father-in-law hit him suddenly. The very thought made him feel nauseous. The violent reaction surged through his body as he made his way to the bathroom and emptied the contents of his stomach into the toilet, the note still lying abandoned on the floor.

I'm afraid you were just a little too late this time. Perhaps if you were more focused on saving them than you are on trying to stop me, things like this wouldn't happen.
- Q

Desperate measures, he told himself as he washed his hands and tried desperately to get the taste of vomit out of his mouth. These were desperate measures. He cut the water flow and sighed. Natsu didn't want to resort to such drastic actions.

It seemed, though, that the world wasn't going to give him a choice.

"You're almost too nice, Natsu," that deceptively sweet and sickening voice echoed back at him. "You never did want anybody to get hurt. But such is the way of revolution, and you can't have your cake and eat it too. Pick one. Revolution or your own selfish conscience."

The Dragon Slayer growled at the memory. Jasper Sadie had been a thorn in his side almost as soon as he met the talented mage (he had, in the past, come to realise the feeling was very much mutual). Jasper was what Jamie and the other revolutionary intellectuals referred to as a BS Magician. Born Specialised. A test-tube child. It had something to do with the subconscious area of the brain - and anything to do with the brain was over Natsu's head - and a different matter of magic.  It was still a Caster Magic and mostly applied to all the theoretical laws that most Caster Magic did (of course anything and everything in their world had exceptions) but with whatever it was in her brain, Sadie didn't utilise her magic like any other mage.

She'd tried explaining what it was in her brain that made her ability to utilise her magic different from everybody else - it had been one of those rare days when Natsu and Jasper caught each other in a good mood - but she'd lost Natsu when she started explaining the very fundamentals of  Eidos Magic, quickly souring the good mood in both of their frustrations.

Moving back to the living room, he dropped down on the secondhand couch. It wasn't that he couldn't work with Jasper, he had in the past. And they had done exceptionally well. Fighting wise, they were compatible; out of the mission field, they were at each other's throats. Jasper was a walking theoretical encyclopaedia, able to spout off magic theories and supposed practices off the top of her head at light speed and then prove it. In contrast, Natsu was a battle powerhouse, built for gruelling battles and he didn't have to be the sharpest tool in the shed in order to do his job (though claiming that Natsu was unintelligent was like trying to tell Gildarts that it wasn't necessary to walk through walls). Brains and brawn supposedly would work together, and sometimes they did. Most of the time, though, they would spend the better part of an hour vehemently arguing over which mission approach was better - strategical or head on.