It had been only 2 days since our trio collected the reward for their first set of jobs, and for one of the first time in his life Natsu received a fully payed cash out at such a large amount. Currently the group was staying at an inn in the middle of a mountain forest located a few miles away from Halcion on their way to complete the next cluster of jobs in a nearby village.
However, contrary to what Natsu thought not so long ago, it was proving very difficult to restrain himself from literally jumping on Sorano at every given opportunity possible. Despite having actually got himself a separate room he found his mind making frequent return trips to the gutter which really didn't help when it came to keeping himself in check as it only spurred his dragon side on more. In fact, if Natsu could sum up what he was feeling in words it would be like when he got stuck in the dragonoid with two little versions of himself on his shoulders, one depicted as an 'angel' but the other instead of the appropriate devil was depicted as a dragon.
"SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!" currently the dragonslayer was locked in his room screaming in his thoughts for the voices of deterrence and encouragement to be silent. He was sprawled out over the single bed in his room and the headboard had various cracks and dent marks in it. He felt like he was split into two people and they were currently fighting one another over what to do with his body. His normal half just wanted the season to pass, he didn't want to get anyone involved in this especially Sorano. Now this half of Natsu wasn't going to deny that he felt something for the stellar spirit mage, something beyond friendship akin to what he felt for Igneel just on a deeper more complicated level. But that was exactly the problem he didn't know what this feeling was, Natsu definitely wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed but he knew a beautiful woman when he seen one but that was just it he knew nothing more than that or the values of family.
Now Natsu's other half well that's a different story, if he was to sum up what this side of him felt like it was just overall very horny and possessive, especially when his thoughts were occupied by Sorano it really made the dragonslayer wonder how much longer he could hold out. He didn't want to have Sorano put in that position because he couldn't keep it in his pants. "This isn't going to happen" "Oh yes it is"
"No it won't"
"Come on I know you wanna tap that"
"Yeah...I mean no I don't"
If his argument with himself was anything to go by you could tell the dragonslayer had it rough practically to the point of insanity, and things were just going to get worse. "Natsu are you in there?" there it was the sweet melodic voice of the temptress herself. "Y-yeah" he answered shakily puzzling the stellar mage slightly. "Me and Happy were thinking we should get to the clients place pretty soon, remember we need to get these missions done in time for the trials if you want to compete" Sorano reminded the dragonslayer.
Now he had another internal battle, risk waiting out a couple of days a possibly miss the trials just to make sure his doesn't do something he'll regret or finish up these missions on schedule for the S-class trials. His promise to Gildarts about becoming S-class this year and having a serious fight with him after he had done so won him over but it didn't mean he wasn't going to take precautions.
"Yeah you're right, go wait for me in the lobby I'll be down in a few minutes" Natsu said in a recomposed tone, "Okay just don't take too long" was Sorano's response before she went to get her things and Happy who had decided to stay in her room.
At the client's house
Currently our team of three are sitting on a medium sized couch opposite their client who was an elderly short stubby man with shoulder length black hair. "So you see our current predicaments don't you?" the short man asked the trio who only nodded. Depending on how you looked at it, it was either lucky or unlucky for them that this client had another cluster of the jobs they had taken, on the bright side if they could do these jobs without getting complaints then it increased Natsu odds of being allowed to compete a lot but on the other hand they weren't that long after a cluster of jobs so they could easily end up magically exhausted at the end of things.
"Yes sir, so these three jobs consist of a rescue mission, the taking out of a group of bandits and an item retrieval, correct?" Sorano clarified earing a nod from the client. "I see then if there are any other details for any of the missions could you please tell us before we depart" Sorano asked the man who thought carefully for a second before getting a pen and a piece of paper and writing any individual facts about each job that may help the mages. "Here, this is all the information I've managed to gather from our small village myself as well as anything I myself found suspicious over the last few weeks" he said in a neutral tone as he handed the piece of paper over to the stellar spirit mage.
The trio immediately left to decide what would be the best mission to go on first and which to leave to last, of course this was going to be left up to Sorano. After a few minutes of well thought out planning the group decided to do the rescue mission first because there was no telling what could or was happening to the prisoner currently so that took priority, the bandit mission could prove tricky enough so it would be done last so that they could recover their magic on the item recovery mission before moving onto the bandit mission
"That's the plan got it?" Sorano asked after having explained her plain to the pinkette and his adoptive son. "Yeah, if it's your plan then it's bound to work" Natsu answered giving the female mage a bright beaming smile, but of course he never noticed the blush on her face and continued to walk on. They continued on towards their destination in relative silence seeing as Happy was too busy stuffing his face with fish to comment on anything. This gave Sorano some much needed reflection time even if it was only brief.
"I told him what the council wanted me to do and he acts like nothing is out of the ordinary" the white haired mage thought to herself as she looked over at Natsu with an amused expression on her face at seeing how upbeat he was, kind of like a child. "Well they weren't wrong he certainly is one in a million, I just hope he doesn't think anything weird of me after 'that'" the stellar mage continued to think to herself, referring to when she spontaneously kissed the dragonslayer out of nowhere. She honestly didn't know what came over her herself it was all spur of the moment but she would be lying to herself if she said she felt nothing from it. If she were to tell the truth you'd be listening for quite a while.
"So...no"
"Sor....no
"Yo Sorano you okay you've been really quite this last while with a distant look in your eyes?" Natsu asked finally getting bored of the silence. "What...uh yeah I'm fine just thinking" She replied in a slightly embarrassed tone but this only made the dragonslayer curious "Really about what?" he asked with a grin "Nothing" the stellar mage answered a little too quickly which only made Natsu's grin widen.
"Oh come on you gotta tell me now, why is it embarrassing? That why you don't want to tell me?" Natsu continued to pile on the questions, "Hmph Girls have their own secrets, not like I have to tell you or anything" was all Sorano said before walking ahead of the pinkette making sure he didn't see the blush on her face.
"Man girls can be so weird sometimes"
The rescue mission
Our trio re currently positioned roughly 200 metres from the entrance to a mountainside network of caves, their target is the captured client's daughter that is being held captive by a band of rogue mages who have issued a ransom to the village as well as other who may be interested and if the village doesn't come out with the highest bid she will be sold off to the highest bidder and god only knows what will happen to her after that.
"Natsu can you tell how many are in there?" Happy asked curiously while sat perched on top of Sorano's head, the stellar spirit mage didn't seem all to bothered by this and had brought out Caelum to use in sniper mode to check for any rogue mages on the outside. "Not exactly there's too much air flowing through the caves, it's carrying one scent in and another out. At most I can make out at least ten in the caves" Natsu huffed out in a fed up tone.
"Ten combine that with the fifteen on the outside that I can see, that's twenty five altogether" Sorano said while sending Caelum back to the celestial spirit world to conserve magic before she bit the end of her thumb, "Hhm not good, that's only what we can take as an average of wizards at varying skill levels this could be tricky" Sorano knew this mission would be the hardest out of the lot but with the lack of info on exactly how many mages they were going up against that only increase the difficulty of the job.
"Don't worry, you stay here and recover your magic some more I'll take care of the mages, if it looks like I'm have bother summon Draco for as long as you can and tell him to bombard the mountain, I'm resistant to fire plus if I'm getting tired it gives me a snack to regain my energy, if Draco can't hold out for too long just use Caelum like you did last time you were really awesome then I bet you'd give Bisca a run for her money on the shooting range" Natsu cheered out in a mildly loud voice although the tone was very childish.
It took a while for Sorano to actually consider going through with the plan, first off she was processing all the compliments through her head which caused her to blush slightly but after recomposing herself she began weighing up the pros and cons of Natsu's plan, it certainly had merit in that he could use Draco to take out opponents while also using the dragon constellation's power to replenish his own. Going in alone also reduced the risk of being spotted in contrast to going in a big group.
Eventually his plan along with a pleading look won over the celestial spirit user who gave a reluctant sigh before giving in to Natsu's request and to say Natsu over reacted was a bit of an understatement when he pulled her into a hug and said "Yes, you're the best Sorano I love you so much...eh"
"Eh"
"EEHHHH"
"EEEEEEHHHHHHHH!?"
Even Natsu didn't know why he did it, he had completely forgot his precaution of trying to make as little contact with the white haired female as possible and out of the blue was hugged her and telling her he loved her, he didn't even know what he meant when he said it. Happy while he would have loved to use this opportunity to tease the two but was shocked beyond words and could only utter sounds.
Sorano by far had it the worse her brain was literally trying to process what the pinkette had just said, her face was beet red she had no way of responding yes she had feelings for the pinkette, yes she kissed him spontaneously out of nowhere after only knowing for literally a day but did she know what all of that amounted to, the answer was no. While it was a bit of a shock, okay a very big shock to hear those words come from the slayer's mouth she wasn't going to lie it sounded nice and the comfort she felt in his embrace was just as nice too.
"HHHHEEEEE LLLLOOOOVVVVEESSS YOU" after finally recomposing himself happy uttered one of his signature catchphrases. Which caused the two to jump back from one another and dare not make eye contact with one another. Meanwhile in Natsu's head "MARK HER, MARK HER NOW, MAKE HER OURS FOREVER!" that same voice from earlier this morning was calling out in Natsu head except this time it sounded more feral and was actually causing the dragonslayer quite the headache. Natsu could only think to himself that whatever was inside him wanted Sorano and wanted her bad...and part of him wanted that too.
"Let's get this underway" Natsu said in a hurried voice before he went off towards the cave entrance leaving a giggling Happy and an embarrassed Sorano who sat on the ground twiddling her fingers as she watched the dragonslayer walked away while she muttered incoherent sentences that Happy couldn't quite make out.
Natsu was mentally kicking himself, he didn't exactly know what he meant when he said that, part of him felt that it was right and the truth but the other part didn't know what that meant but knew that he somehow screwed up by saying that.
Right now he was as skilfully as possible moving from one position to the next without being noticed, Sorano just watched in the distance with both her keys ready to use if the slayer got spotted at any given moment. While the pair were a bit flustered from Natsu's surprise revelation there was a life on the line and they needed to focus. Sadly, Natsu wasn't able to do that as he knocked over a bunch of stacked boxes sitting just outside the entrance drawing all the rogue mages attention.
"Looky what we have here boys, somebody trespassing on our turf. Let's give'm a warm welcome" one of the rogue mages said he reequipped two pistols into his hands. The other mages followed suite and readied there magics; fire, water, earth and lightning as well as plenty other magic types the group seemed to consist of a multitude of different elements and attributes which made sense considering the amount of the mages that had started pouring out of the cave, at least forty in total although none of them gave off a leader-like vibe.
Natsu could only grit his teeth in frustration as his opponents laughed and smirked at his misfortune, but just as the gun user was about to put a bullet sized hole in the dragonslayer a feminine voice shouted out that halted them all "HEADS UP!" responding to the voice everyone and looked up only for their jaws to drop or in Natsu's case to turn into a smirk as they saw a large fireball of crimson and orange flames descend swiftly towards them.
"WHAT THE...AAAAARRRGGGHH!"
The mages couldn't utter many words before the fireball collided with the mountainside resulting in a large explosion that engulfed a majority of the mages, some of the earth and water mages were able to create shield for themselves and some of their 'allies' but that one attack greatly reduced the number of mages by at least half.
When the shields of earth and water dissipated the mages left standing were actually able to see the scale of destruction the explosion caused. "Damn what the hell caused this, the pink haired guy must have had someone with him so spilt up we need to find them, pinkie probably died in the explosion." a surviving mage said as he dusted himself off. The others were about to do as he said until they heard what sounded like slurping coming from within a large burning column of flames.
"Man now I've got a fire in my belly!" Natsu grinned as he walked out of the flames unscathed and bashing his flaming fists together making some of the rogue mages take a few steps back in fear. "No way it can't be, the cherry pink hair, the scale scarf and he's immune to fire, it him.... the Salamander!" a different mage shouted out as he began sweating bullets due who stood before him. "Thanks Sorano that helped a lot!" Natsu shouted in appreciation back to the hill behind him, however when he didn't hear a shout comeback he narrowed his eyes in suspicion.
Back with Sorano just after the Fireball
"I'm afraid that is all I can do for today Lady Sorano, at your current strength your magic will not be able to last long enough to sustain me here so I shall leave you know in the care of Sir Happy and Caelum" Draco said in a respectful tone accompanied by a formal bow followed by him returning to the celestial spirit world.
Sorano could only think briefly about what Draco had said about her strength, she knew she was going to have to get stronger, she also knew that she would need a variety of Keys to do so. Currently Lucy now had 9 of the Zodiac keys, the ones she was aware the blonde didn't have were Capricorn, Pisces and Libra and there was also the fabled 13th key said to be stronger than the rest. "At present I only have a silver key plus Draco whatever kind of key his is, I'm going to need more if I want to get stronger" Sorano needed it, strength she wanted it badly as in her own eyes she was nothing but weak. However, she didn't want this strength for selfish reasons, nothing of the sort; it seemed that her time with Natsu had caused his Fairy tail way to rub off on her as she wanted power to protect her sister when she reunites with her again.
Sorano knew that Urano Metria curtesy of Lucy and Hibiki from her first-hand experience the most powerful spell a Celestial spirit user could cast themselves but that required a serious mastery and level of magic power to do by oneself, thinking back on it she realised if she hand knowledge of the spell at the time she could have used Gemini to transform into her and cast it with her. But she also knew there was another spell per say that Celestial spirit wizards could use...the star dress. It was a spell that the caster could use along with a spirit's key and the dress would adapt to the spirits power, she could only wonder if she could get to the level required for it as well as if it was compatible with Draco.
Happy seemed too busy in taking a sense of pride from the fact that he was referred to as 'Sir' Happy, that he didn't sense the presence sneak up from behind them, as Sorano finally noticed the presence it was too late "SLEEP" instantly a wave of magic hit both of them putting them into a deep sleep before the figure revealed himself. He was a middle age tall well-built man who had slicked back black hair and tanned skin. He wore a chain mail vest which had gold plated shoulder plates and a black cloak over the top. Clutched in his hand was a large staff roughly six feet the same height as him that donned an animal skull at the top. On the man's face there was a diagonal scar running from one side of to the other.
The man's eyes traced over Sorano's body and to say a few ideas popped into his evil mind after he would deal with the pink haired wizard was an understatement. It was then the man heard the shouts of the pinkette from down below causing him to smirk. "Thanks Sorano that helped a lot!"
"Well I never would have thought I get a former Baram alliance member and Fairy tail's infamous Salamander working together on same mission like this. If you actually mean anything to that idiot, then this will be entertaining to say the least" the man said before he picked up Sorano and disappeared in a wisp of black smoke leaving an unconscious happy behind.
One hour later
"Happy, Happy wake up little buddy" Natsu had returned to where he had Left Sorano and the blue cat after he had finally dealt with all the remaining mages but when he came back Sorano was nowhere to be found. Slowly the blue feline started coming to, "Natsu I'm sorry someone put me and Sorano to sleep, I don't know where she is" Happy cried out in depression.
Taking a sniff of the air Natsu got the residual scent of shadow magic accompanied by its owner's scent, he could pick up Sorano's as well. All the scents lead inside the caves on the mountainside causing him to snarl, but it was the shadow users scent that was causing him snarl, the scent was heavily similar to that of Marco's. It made the dragonslayers blood boil and his magic surge as something unconsciously snapped within him, something had been taken from him, something that was....
"MINE!"