Walk Through The Fire (Fairy Tail) [Book 1] [Discontinued]

Arc 1- Chapter 1

Lucy Heartfilia

~One Year Later~

"Uuwaah! I don't know what to write!" Lucy lamented and leaned back in her chair in frustration. God, she only has one, stupid, lame paragraph written out of the minimum of twelve! And her deadline is quickly coming up! Uughhh, she really needs that money to pay for her new house, and without this money, she could kiss the air conditioning goodbye, which would definitely not be a good thing since it's the middle of the summer! Just thinking about it made her stomach churn grossly under her skin. Why on Earth did she decide that becoming a journalist was a good idea!?

Lucy plopped her head down on her desk and began crying anime tears. "I should have just become a teacher or something..." she whined.

Happy, who was sitting on her bed with a fish in his paws, stopped his merry munching to frown at Lucy. "Hey, Lushee, don't be too hard on yourself," he said and extended the half-eaten fish out to her with that cute little grin of his. "Have a fish! It always calms me down whenever I'm having a hard day!"

The smell alone was enough for Lucy to turn up her nose. "Ugh, no thanks, Happy. Thank you anyway," she said and buried her nose in the crook of her arm to block out the stench. Happy shrugged and took another bite of his fish.

"What type of article are you writing again?" he asked with a full mouth.

Lucy lifted her head with a sigh. "I'm writing about the new top guild in Fiore," she said. "Honestly, I don't get what's so exciting about this new guild. They seem like a bunch of jerks." She knew how biased that sounded, but it was true. The guild Skull Milione was strong, sure, but they were brutish and were notorious for their bad tempers and lack of mercy to enemies. Writing anything promoting their guild was physically sickening her.

She sighed again, "They're becoming so famous now that writing this article is absolutely mandatory and necessary for my career."

Happy hummed and took another thoughtful bite out of his fish. For a moment, they were quiet, but when Happy spoke next, his voice was almost a whisper, "I wonder how everyone is doing."

Lucy's heart dropped painfully at the thought. She'd gone a solid week without thinking about everyone, but as always, the memory came back to kick her out of the blue (literally). Not even a day after the Tartaros incident, Master announced that Fairy Tail was to be disbanding. As if the disbandment of her home wasn't bad enough, Gray was sullen faced as he limply held Natsu's scarf in his hands and revealed the true identity of their beloved slayer. She still couldn't believe Natsu was the infamous E.N.D., the thing everyone-- even Acnologia!-- feared.

It didn't make sense, but at the same time it did.

The reason why Natsu was unable to pass through the runes during the Fairy Tail Civil War, the reason he never seemed unable to run out of energy, why almost every enemy they've ever faced called him a "demon" or a "monster"... It was all because Natsu was some ancient evil. Nobody knows where Natsu-- or E.N.D.-- was now, only that he disappeared after killing Mard Geer in an apparent brutal way (Lucy never quite believed that last part). There were some reported incidents some months ago about cities burning to the ground by some sorts of flying monster, though Lucy held onto hope that it wasn't Natsu. Sure, he was destructive, and reckless, and maybe a little bit crazy, but he would never incinerate an entire city of civilians. Right?

Natsu's scarf was wrapped around Happy's neck, now, and Happy would never go anywhere without it. He was almost as protective as Natsu was, maybe even more.

"I wish we can get the guild back together again," Happy continued. "I still have so many questions, like why Master disbanded the guild, and..." he paused with a gulp, "... where Natsu went..."