Chapter Text
“Natsu is dead.”
So said Happy, teary-eyed, as he stood over the corpse of his longtime companion.
Gray leaned over his sometime friend, sometime rival, and checked his neck for a pulse. Never mind the gaping, blackened hole where Natsu’s heart used to be.
“Ah. Dead,” said Gray, nodding.
“Dead as a dragon,” Gildarts added with a shrug.
“Hoy hoy hoy! Don’t disrespect the dead like that!” Laxus snapped.
The great oaken doors of the Sacred Hall wrenched open. A booming voice reached out into the chamber.
“That’s an old, old saying Laxus. Gildarts knows what he’s talking about. Gather round, my children.” Makorov entered the hall, bound to his wheelchair and helped along by Mest.
The senior mages of Fairy Tail flocked to their master like sheep to a shepherd. Grief, anger, shock, despair, all the usual sentiments of loss hung over them. But most of all, confusion. When the summons went out and the news spread, it came with odd caveats. Something was not right, beyond the obvious loss of their dear comrade.
Makarov crawled atop the table and examined Natsu’s body. He put a finger to the man’s wound, withdrew, sniffed the remnants, and frowned.
“Hmph! Nothing.”
His hand slid down and reached under Natsu’s vest, pulling out a book.
“Lucy’s novel,” Erza noted. “He actually read it.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This was Natsu we’re talking about,” Mirajane countered.
“How are we going to tell her?” Erza wondered. The guild had waited so long for this couple, and then to have it stripped away so soon after... it was too cruel.
Makarov opened the novel to the final page, affirmed the message written there, and laid it out for all to read.
“His final words. This is what I summoned all of you here to see,” Makarov announced.
Upon the page, beneath the novel’s final lines and scrawled in what could only be Natsu’s atrocious handwriting, was written:
‘Great story Lucy. Loved it. Love you. Tell Yoko love her too. Gotta die for a little bit now, see you again soon.’
In the space of a sentence faces went from teary sentimentality to utter shock and outrage.
“The hell did he mean by that?!”
“Natsu, you son of a...!”
“Oh Lucy is gonna kill you... again!”
“Hahahaha!”
At least Gildarts found it funny.
Makarov silenced them with a raised hand.
“Laxus, Gildarts, the original saying goes like this: ‘If you think you’ve killed a dragon, you had better stab it again, because death is merely a temporary inconvenience to them.’ Natsu may lie here hole in his chest, but I have no reason to believe he is lost to us. And I don’t mean metaphorically.”
“Master. What happened? What’s going on?” multiple guild members asked.
Makarov shook his head.
“I can’t say for sure. But I will tell you this. Natsu took up a quest that I had forbidden. He went alone, and ended up like this. Let that be a warning to the rest of you.”
“But we’re talking about Natsu here. What kind of quest could do... this?” Wendy asked.
They were all thinking the same thing. This was the man who stopped Zeref, who felled Acnologia, who sealed the Five Great Calamity Dragons. He had an argument for being the most powerful mage on the planet. Just what the hell could’ve killed him?!
“The Thousand Year Quest. The original quest our guild was founded to achieve,” Makarov answered.
“Eh? Wah?! Thousand Year Quest?!?!” Eyes popped. Jaws fell open.
“Do fairies have tails? An unanswered riddle, an eternal adventure! Does that not ring a bell?” Makarov asked aloud.
“The guild motto?”
“It’s not a motto! It’s a quest, taken up by our first guild master!”
Makarov crossed his arms.
“It’s about time we worked on this quest in earnest. Our client has been waiting patiently for a very long time. And I think we now have a man in place to do the dirty work.”
“A man in place...” All eyes drifted to the corpse of the dragon slayer. Whispers under breath came pouring forth, excitement and apprehension began bubbling just under the surface. Eyes widened, raised, stared at one another. Grief dissipated. Smiles broke out. This was it!
“Ahaha. But first, we’ve got to get everything ready. First thing’s first. Demolish the guild hall. Bury it. We’ve got to bury all memory of this guild, like it never existed. Oh, and Erza, please fetch Arleos and Mio. I’ve got a special assignment for them.”
Deep beneath the guild hall, the rumblings of a new adventure began stirring. Fairy Tail was on the move!
But this isn’t a story about Fairy Tail and their grand quest. It’s a lesser story, a side-story, one that follows less important people on a less important quest. A side-quest, so to speak. It began shortly after this prologue, in Makarov’s office while the rest of the guild was cheerily tearing the building apart.
“Sir?”
Fairy Tail’s two youngest, newest members blinked in unison shock.
“Natsu is dead, and that’s convenient to us right now,” Makarov stated plainly. He pushed a scroll towards the pair of pupils. “But after this is over, we’ll need to do something about his “death”. You’re to take this scroll and find a small guild in the northeast mountains of Fiore. Ask them for help.”
Arleos and Mio gazed at the guild master, then at one another, and gulped.
“They are called Phoenix Feather.”