Chapter Text
Lucy knew that this job could be a tricky one (and important, and exciting!), but she didn’t realize that it would be so simply because she couldn’t find the back entrance. Lucy expected that the biggest problem would be just being allowed into the place, and that she would have to use all of her lady-reporter-charms to convince the circus management to let her in for an interview with the performers. She was prepared to give the best and most convincing spiel ever, and yet, she didn’t need it at all! She had only gotten halfway through asking the guy posting flyers if she could talk to his manager about an interview when the ringmaster himself showed up and told her that she could help herself! Have a whole backstage tour! Except, what that really meant was that she had a special reporter’s pass so that she could go backstage, with the trick being that she had absolutely no further guidance whatsoever and was now going to get absolutely lost. She wove through a maze of cars and trailers and boxes and fencing set up all over the place on a sea of broken asphalt, and she wished that she had asked the staff for directions when she had the chance.
Was this a trap? This could definitely be a trap.
She was starting to think that there really weren’t that many staff on hand here at all, as she peaked around the corner and saw the flyer guy now dressed in a clown costume and selling balloons to the crowd forming around the entrance. He looked very bored, but the squealing children did not appear to notice. Lucy contemplated either going to ask him for help or just entering through the front entrance and getting to the back that way. Or maybe she should interview the performers after the show instead? But what if they started packing up to leave again! Would they think she’s a nuisance? Would she be more of a nuisance before the show or after it? She didn’t know! No, she should get a hold of herself! She was a reporter! She had experience! She could do this!
She was admittedly…a little nervous, though. She thought back to her first meeting with Ringmaster Acnologia and remembered his sharp eyes and equally sharp smile. There were rumors about him, she knew. Made sense that there would be, considering the sheer novelty of what he started. Five years ago, Acnologia announced to the world his “family” of “dragon slayers,” the stars of the brand-new Dragon Force Circus Extravaganza. It was a show unlike any other, solely because all of the “dragon slayers” in question were magic users. That was the thing that shocked everybody, when the show first came out—what made people nervous, even. Everyone knew that magic was dangerous, and that it could destroy towns in seconds or even blow up the user from the inside out or something like that, and that it could also make people lose their minds and turn even good people evil. Well, Lucy was never so sure about that last rumor, but she still heard plenty growing up about how bad it was, except from her mom who always told her to not judge a craft by its troublemakers. Not that there were any counterexamples then; every now and again, you would hear on the news about some mage or two causing trouble somewhere, but no one had ever heard of someone making a circus out of them, just openly putting themselves out there for the world to see. They had a slow start, probably because people were scared to check it out, but then, at some point, their business just exploded! Popularity-wise, that is. Everyone was so amazed that they came back for more. Magic made for some really good tricks, apparently. Lucy as well decided to check it out for herself a couple of years ago, and she thought that they were absolutely amazing! It even made her curious enough to check out some of her mother’s old books…but, that was besides the point! She was a huge fan of the show now, so it was no wonder that Jason asked her to take on the project of getting a special behind-the-scenes interview with the dragon slayers themselves.
Honestly, Lucy did feel a little starstruck, which was definitely part of why she felt nervous and not because of the rumors about Acnologia actually being a mysterious underworld mob boss or super-dangerous mage or guy-trying-for-world-domination-via-circus or something equally crazy like that. Sure, no one knew who he was, and the fact that he rarely showed off his magic made many people curious, but there was no proof anything bad was going about. Of course, if there was, Lucy would be sure to find out! Because that was what reporters did!
Lucy decided to just slip in through the front entrance and find the backstage area that way, because she felt weird poking around all their stuff without anyone else around like she was. She showed a security guard her pass and started weaving her way through the crowded front grounds, assaulted by a new wave of smells and sounds as she did so, all of the people talking and laughing accompanied by the crisp smell of popcorn collided with the musty smell of the animals currently being petted and awed over by the patrons. It was all so noisy and confusing, and Lucy loved it. It was just so lively and exciting! It wasn’t like Dragon Force was the only circus out there or anything, but still, it felt like Lucy was seeing the kind of spectacle she used to only read about in books, about some time long before the Great War when people would put out big shows with lights and fireworks and hundreds of dancers in big, grand halls that would get packed with visitors from all around. This circus wasn’t anywhere near the scale of the stuff she would read about, but still, it was really cool regardless.
Once inside, she saw her target at last—a curtain dividing some other part of the tent with stage of the show, this large ring encircled by stands just starting to fill up with people. She scooted around to make her way to the back.
“Hmm, where are you going?”
“Ah—I have a pass!” Lucy whirled around to face the new voice in a moment of panic, showing the pass around her neck as she did so, only to find that the person in question was not dressed like a security guard at all. Well, something about the red-haired woman did make it seem like she was strong enough to take her out in one punch, if she wanted to, but Lucy didn’t think that she had any intention of doing so. She just seemed curious.
The red-haired woman nodded, appearing to be in serious thought for some reason. “Oh, I see. You have a reporter’s pass for going backstage?”
“Y-Yeah, I’m with Schrodinger Weekly,” she explained. “I have an interview with the performers.” Wait, they knew she was coming, right?
“I see, so if you’re a reporter, you get special access to speak with them,” the red-haired woman mused as she nodded again. “Yes, thank you very much for this information.”
“Uhhh…you’re welcome? I mean, they might be around after the show to talk with the guests, I think? But anyways, gotta go now, bye!”
Well that was weird.
Anyways, now to talk to them! Lucy’s nervousness grew. Now that she thought about it, she did think she remembered seeing a few of them milling about a little after the show to talk to fans when she went to their performances in the past, but Lucy had never even thought to attempt to approach them then. She guessed she was just too shy then—but not now! She had purpose! And a badge!
With just one more showing of her pass and a brief explanation to the bouncer at the backstage entrance, she was finally in.
“Hey, you have a reporter person!” the bouncer shouted unceremoniously at the backstage scene.
“What do you mean you haven’t seen the—hi-hiiii, what’s up?” A guy who appeared to be frantically looking for something stopped short of that instantly to greet Lucy with a suave-ish lean against the nearest crate, never mind that he was only wearing one shoe at the moment. Lucy didn’t need an introduction to know exactly who he was—Sting Eucliffe, trapeze performer and one of the legendary Twin Dragons act along with Rogue Cheney. Lucy felt her breath grow short with the shock of stardom, but she quickly got a hold of herself.
“You are—! I mean, hello!” She cleared her throat loudly. “I’m Lucy Heartfilia, from Schrodinger’s Weekly. Would you guys be free for a few questions? If you’re not too busy, of course!”
“Oh, really? Yeah, we got time!” Sting responded with confidence, accompanied by a long stretch. “We were just doing a little final prep, no big deal.”
“What, not too busy freaking out because you can’t find your slippers?”
Lucy’s eyes darted over to Sting’s companion, a man with metal studs for eyebrows making a circle motion with his finger while smirking teasingly, his other hand engaged in casually twirling a throwing knife. Gajeel Redfox! The “Man of Iron” who once swallowed forty knives in five minutes! Well, allegedly, but still!
Glancing around the room, she saw Wendy Marvell lacing up her shoes, and off in a corner a short distance away Erik petting his…snake. Wait, Cubellios!? She was here and not, like, in a cage somewhere or a terrarium or wherever you keep a, um, giant python? Lucy almost got completely distracted from the present conversation, feeling a little weak-kneed and very out-of-place, but she knew that Erik was of course an extremely talented snake charmer, so it wasn’t like she had anything to worry about, right? (Unless the snake was trained to eat intruders on purpose, which was obviously not applicable with her, right?) But now Lucy was distracted on a different problem, because she realized she had no idea what Erik’s last name was. She knew his stage name, Cobra, but he supposed to have a full, well, real name too? And she was supposed to be the expert on all of them! Should she ask? Would it be rude to ask?
Either way, she really hoped she would have a chance to talk with all of the “dragon slayers” before she had to leave. Natsu Dragneel, Rogue Cheney, and Laxus Dreyar were surely around here somewhere too.
“What, why would I be worried about something like my left shoe when I am absolutely sure of where it is? Or, might be? Mostly?” Sting responded to Gajeel with a tight smile, earning only the laughter of the latter.
“Gihi, so you don’t need my help, right?”
“Wait, do you know where it is!?” Sting entire expression lit up with both hope and anxious desperation. “Come on man, help me out!”
“Ha, nope, you got this, remember? Besides, it’s Rogue’s job to help you.”
“Hey, you know where it is or not!?”
“Nope.”
“Argh! Fine, I have other shoes! So what if those have the best grip and are the only ones that match this outfit—I don’t care about stuff like that! I can do this act in my bare feet! It’s fine!”
“Cool, so, Lucy, right? Whatcha want to know?” Just when Lucy thought she was about to be ignored completely, Gajeel turned back to her with the question, leading her to hurriedly look back to her notes to remember what she was even talking about.
“Uh, oh, yes!” What was the first thing on her list? “What is your typical routine before a show?” Huh, that suddenly felt a lot more boring than it did when she was writing it. Especially now that she was literally watching them do their thing as they spoke. “Well…” She laughed nervously, partially as a deliberate aim to break the ice. “I guess I’m watching a bit of it right now, right? Oh, what is with the knife you’re twirling? Is that going to be used in your act?”
“Yep, you wanna see? Here, catch!”
“EEEEP!”
Lucy flinched dramatically (not helpfully) out of the way when it looked like Gajeel was going to throw the knife at her unsuspecting (untrained, not particularly athletic) self. Except he didn’t. Which just made her look like an idiot for believing it.
“Gajeel, don’t be mean!” Wendy chastised while the aforementioned started laughing.
“You should have seen your face!”
“Hey guys! Oh, hi? Who are you?”
A new voice burst into the room suddenly, prompting Lucy to twirl around just as quickly to face none other than Natsu “The Flame Dragon” Dragneel as he made his appearance with a cat in his arms, and…is that whipped cream in his hair?
“Ah, hello!” she fumbled into her greeting to a dragon slayer yet again. “I’m Lucy, from Schrodinger’s Weekly! I was just here to interview you guys!” She lifted up her pass again as a way of explaining who she was.
“Do I want to know why there’s cream all over your hair?” Erik questioned in a bored tone, effectively derailing Lucy’s not-yet-quite-existent conversation once again. “And…?”
“Is that lemon meringue?” Wendy questioned as a completion to Erik’s thoughts.
“What? Oh, right! Hey, you guessed it!” Natsu congratulated with a wide grin and seemingly not a care in the world. He then touched his finger to his cream-and-lemon-laden hair as if to remind himself of its existence…and then promptly tasting the cream off of said finger. “Still good, too! Oh, but don’t worry, these were extras! I think.”
“So you stole a pie,” Erik concluded, his tone suggesting that he was both completely unsurprised by the fact and also somehow not at all in doubt that his guess for the story was correct.
Natsu snickered with all the appearance of an “evil” laugh, fingers strumming together, before just as promptly dropping the act and smiling like his natural self. “I just wanted to surprise Gray! The kids would have loved it, too! Except, well, he saw me coming and threw the pie at me instead, but…the kids still liked it, so that works, right? But I’ll get him next time!” he ended with a bold proclamation, pointing dramatically towards the tent’s “doorway” that he just came in through, as if Gray was still there on the other side of it.
Lucy paused for a moment, trying to remember. Who was Gray? She felt like she should know. He wasn’t one of the dragon slayers, but…wait, wasn’t a ‘Gray Fullbuster’ one of the clowns!? Oh, no, the only clown now! The other two left! And, hold on, could he have been the one that she was talking with earlier, with the flyers? She spotted him in the crowd passing out balloons earlier. She didn’t make the connection then, but yeah, that had to be him! And this could be good material, too! One of the dragon slayers is good friends with the clown boy (well, or rivals? But pranks like that were usually more of a friendship thing, right?). She’ll have to ask him about that.
“Natsu, do you need a towel?” Wendy asked, pulling one from her own assortment of things (she seemed to be rather well-organized, or relatively so, anyways).
“Yeah, thanks Wendy!” Natsu accepted the towel thrown to him and ruffled it through his hair accordingly. “So, Lucy, right?” he addressed her again with a friendly grin, breaking her from her train of thought. “What do you wanna know?”
+++
Natsu technically didn’t have a lot of time before the show, but it wasn’t like he had to do anything fancy to prepare for his act (he normally just winged it anyways), so he didn’t mind talking to Lucy at all! He liked her; she was nice. She just asked a bunch of questions about what their daily lives were like, how they came up with and trained for their acts, and what their favorite things to do and places to visit were and stuff. The others were in and out of the conversation as they continued getting ready, but Natsu just stuck around and periodically ran through his hair and scarf with the towel to ensure that they were pie-free.
“…and that’s why we have a rule now that I can only cook with my flames if I am at least thirty feet away from the tent,” Natsu explained in response to a question about favorite foods. “I can use fire wherever I want, because that’s how I train! But no cooking,” he admitted with a slight tone of regret.
“You really…can cook pizza that way?” Lucy sounded both very curious and very confused.
“Kind of?” Wendy supplied. “If it’s the frozen kind.”
“…ah.”
“But it tastes great!” Natsu insisted.
“Oh, no, don’t worry, I like frozen pizza too!” Lucy explained with a laugh. “So is that your favorite food?”
“Nope! Huh, but what is my favorite food? Cake? Or, wait, would fire count? Yeah, maybe just that! Fire!”
“Uh, what?”
“So yeah! What’s the next question?”
“Oh…right! How did you get started?” Lucy looked between Natsu and Wendy, since they were the ones here at the moment. “Well, you don’t have to go back too far if you don’t want to, but I mean, how did the ringmaster find you?”
“Hmm, the day I met Acnologia? Yeah, I remember that! It was at the train station! I was trying to get a ticket, but they told me that cats weren’t allowed, so I was stuck.” He motioned to Happy, currently lying contentedly by his feet, looking from side to side while his tail swished back and forth. “I couldn’t leave Happy behind! So I kept trying to ask them to let Happy in, and that’s when Acno saw me. We started talking, he asked about my magic, and, uh, yeah! He said if I joined the circus, we would travel a lot, so, worked for me!” It definitely was better than riding the train, anyways. Natsu hated trains. Trucks like the ones they used for transporting the circus made him motion sick too, but it usually wasn’t quite as bad.
“Wow, sounds like quite a, uh, coincidence! So…that was it?” Lucy appeared confused.
“Oh, I showed him what I could do, too! He didn’t just—oh, right!” Now he realized what detail he was leaving out. “Yeah, Acno can sense magic like that. He can always tell if someone is a mage even if he hadn’t seen them do anything yet.” That was why Acnologia approached him, from the looks of it. Long story short, Natsu just thought it sounded like a great idea. He needed to travel, and he needed, well, food and stuff, too…it had been kind of tough, ever since Igneel disappeared. Natsu just kept criss-crossing the whole continent trying to find him. For the most part, he was fine on his own (not to mention Happy was with him, too!), but the whole not having a job thing was making it hard to have money. It was getting way too lonely, too. That’s the big reason why Natsu wouldn’t ever regret joining this—he found so many friends, way more than he even thought he would. Unfortunately, he still hasn’t found Igneel, but, well…he’ll just keep trying!
“Yeah, it was a bit like that for me, too,” Wendy mused. “I used to do little tricks in the streets for fun that people would sometimes come watch, but I never used magic in public.” She shook her head. “But he just knew anyway. Of course, I was nervous at first! But, well, he convinced me after a while.” She shrugged.
“Oh, that’s interesting! So where did you live before coming here?”
“A haunted house.”
“Uhhhhhh…” Lucy’s eyes immediately went wide. “I meant to say where your hometown was, but…what?”
“STARTING IN FIVE!”
“Oh! That’s our cue!” Natsu, previously bent down to pet Happy a little, bounced up on his toes. “Thanks, Lucy! But we’re about to get started now! We can talk more after!”
“Oh, y-yeah! Thank you!”
Lucy hastily slipped out through the curtain towards the audience stands. Natsu stared at the curtain divider in front of him and grinned like he always did, rolling out his shoulders and then slamming his fists together with a fiery flash. “I’m all fired up!”
+++
Wendy waited by the entrance to the ring for her cue, hidden out of sight by the curtain behind the stands, listening to Gray do the last of his pre-show clownery, which would be followed by Acnologia’s appearance. She would make her appearance right after Acnologia made the official introductions. Even now, after being here for years, she always felt her heart flutter a little bit when the lights went down and the noise of the crowd turned silent.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” the ringmaster’s voice boomed throughout the whole tent. Even without seeing him Wendy could picture his sharp smile and outstretched hands, welcoming the audience and making their hearts flutter too with excitement and a vague sense of danger. “It is a pleasure to have you here tonight, to the Dragon Force Circus Extravaganza!”
The crowd roared with applause at the name. Wendy let out a steadying breath.
“I hope you left your doubt at the door, because here, you will see things never before believed!”
Wendy had always dreamed of flying, ever since she was small. She guessed that was natural for someone with a sky magic affinity, right? Grandeeny taught her everything she knew about how to use that magic, and it made her want to fly even more, even though she couldn’t, exactly. At least, not outside. Grandeeny warned her about using magic around strangers; people got scared when you did that. She realized that truth too, too well after what happened to Mystogan… So, Wendy learned how to fly without magic. She would do little tricks using the skills she was taught and also what she taught herself. She would tumble on the ground and then flip into the sky and felt weightless, if only for half a second. She wasn’t trying to do anything special; it just felt good.
“So allow me to present, my fantastic family of dragon slayers! Give it up, for the conqueror of the heavens, the Great Sky Dragon, Wendy!”
The crowd roared again, and Wendy moved. She didn’t step out of the curtain; she tumbled forward into a handstand that turned into a cartwheel that turned into a backflip and then two and then three. She landed the last flip with perfect precision into the ring’s center, and with a smile and a very small pause let the ether gather under her feet. She jumped from where she stood, the magic carrying her much higher into the air than her feet alone ever could have, as she twirled into its flow with ethereal grace. She descended back to the ground, and with that, her performance would begin.
Wendy had practiced this so much, she could probably do it in her sleep. Which might be fitting, considering the “dreamy” theme they were going for. She would dance with the aerial silks with the spotlight on her toned a cool blue, the music light and drifting, and then, the music would steadily speed up, the beats growing stronger, and Wendy’s moves would speed up with it, her jumps growing higher and the tricks more elaborate. “With you as the first act, your job is to fool them a little,” Acnologia had told her long ago with a knowing smirk. “Make them think they know where this is going, but then, show them just how wrong they really are. Leave them in awe—I’m sure you can pull that off.”
Acnologia had discovered her because of some people talking about those acrobatic stunts she would do for fun in the streets. She was so nervous when he showed up and asked about her—but then, she would be nervous about anyone showing up on her doorstep at all. She didn’t exactly live in what they called a “good” part of town; there was a lot of fighting between the gangs, but…it was fine. People didn’t bother her much. The abandoned house that she had found to live in kind of had ghosts living in it, which scared most people, but they were nice to her, so it was fine. Roubaul was like a grandpa to her, and it was good to have him to talk to, especially when she was missing Mystogan, hoping for the day he would come back for her like he promised. She was so sad to leave them there when she left that house behind for the circus, but Roubaul told her that it would be good for her to be with humans—well, living ones, that is. And, he was right! Wendy was very grateful for her new family.
The crowd roared with applause as Wendy spun into the air, a whirlwind of her own making rushing into a ring around her as the music pounded faster. Then, the noise changed into gasps when Wendy turned the whirlwind into shapes, making patterns and images dance across the air, telling the story of a pair of dragons dancing through the air and flying to the sun. Her heart swelled with joy at the applause that erupted the moment she descended to ground again and let the pictures disappear. That part was new to the show—only for the past few months, so some people who have seen the show before might not have seen that trick before. After she got the idea, it took so, so long to get right. It was a little different than what an acrobat’s act was usually, but, well, she could be both now, right? She did acrobatics, and she did magic. She didn’t have to hide anymore.
“I don’t know…” Wendy hesitated, looking into the floor while sitting cross-legged on her faded and torn little red couch. It wasn’t a great place for guests—Grandeeny had always kept the place so clean, so when Wendy moved into this house, she tried to clean it up, too, but she could only do so much without any money or anything like that. “You really want me to use magic…for a show? Wouldn’t some people not like that very much?” She gave him a demonstration like he asked, but she wondered if she revealed too much too soon. Still, even if he didn’t have a problem with it, it wasn’t exactly that impressive. Sky magic wasn’t very flashy.
“That’s the point,” Acnologia answered simply, knowing smile unfazed.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you guessed it. Think—why don’t people like it very much? Well, they’re scared of it, aren’t they? Because the acts of destruction and violence are all they see. But you can change that. Show them something better. Show them that your craft is something better than that.”
He shrugged, but still his eyes seemed to look straight into her heart. “That is what Grandeeny would have wanted, isn’t it?”
+++
Gajeel made his grand entrance by jumping through a ring of fire, relishing that pulsing-energy feeling as synchronized bursts of flame shot up all around the ring. Five knives were spinning up into the air by the time he hit the ground. It was the perfect entrance, in his humble opinion. He still laughed when he remembered Natsu’s initial offended reaction to the idea because “fire was his thing” or something like that, but hey, it was the least these guys could do to let him have this after everyone kept repeatedly shooting down his idea to sing and play the guitar in the show. They wouldn’t even let him do it as a sideshow! (Even though he still did, sometimes). Everyone around here just had no taste. But, such was the grueling path of an artist. Anyways, Natsu didn’t object to the fire entrance idea for long, since it dawned on him that it just meant having more fire in the show, so he helped him set it up. They went so big with it! And then they almost burned the tent down again. So, had to cut it back a bit.
Gajeel spun knives through the air, juggled them, and hit targets set up around the ring without even looking at them. He waited just long enough to keep everyone on their toes before catching a flying knife with his teeth, and then swallowing it in one gulp. A mix of cheers and horrified gasps spread throughout the audience, just like always. Then Gajeel would do it again and again, then swallowing knives in rapid succession until there were none. That was the part when he started having fun with it, pantomiming confusion like he was looking for the knives he swallowed until a few kids in the audience who knew what was up shouted his trademark “where’d the knives go?” to which he would look up and grin. Then, he would turn his arm into a chainsaw, and then a pillar, and then “break” that pillar into a million little knives once again.
It was fun making it look like he just “produced” that metal effect using all the knives in his stomach, even if technically he could have done that any time. It looked cool, even if sometimes annoyed him that everyone knew him as the “knife-swallowing” guy when that wasn’t anywhere near the hardest part of his act. Consuming metal was literally just his magic, almost more side effect than the main thing, although the metal did make him stronger.
Anyways, he just had to keep pushing himself harder, putting more tricks into his act that really showed off his pure skill. Every year, the act got more elaborate and more dangerous, so, he thinks he’s doing pretty good!
His act ended with a fun little tie-in to Erik’s, as he made a pillar so long it shot through the aisle and into the backstage entrance, and then he would fake a bit of resistance in calling the pillar back, like something was pulling on him, and then be “surprised” when a giant snake showed up on top of it. Cubellios would then slither over his head and to the ground, and Erik would come in chasing after her while Gajeel made his way out.
He would then stick around backstage, watching little bits and pieces of everyone else doing their thing, although he knew the acts pretty well even without looking at them. Erik would go play the “snake charmer” role with Cubellios and a dozen other smaller snakes, freaking the audience out every ten seconds as if they were actually going to bit him or something even after he had been doing this for years. Then, after a little break, the “mystery” portion of the night would continue as Laxus went in and did his magician illusionist thingy, ending that by throwing lightning around the rafters like little lights, and then making the lights burst to make it look like he materialized the Twin Dragons out of thin air. Sting and Rogue would then do their flying trapeze act together, and then, Natsu would come in with his big burst of fire. Waiting around backstage, Gajeel grinned in anticipation. Soon, it would be his time to “crash” the show.
Gajeel could feel the aura of heat from Natsu’s fire-breathing even from behind the curtain. He watched as Natsu went and did fancy things with the fire—he had gotten inspired by Wendy wanting to branch out and do air magic art during her act, so he too was learning to make pictures with flames. Well, his was a little less “art” and more “Look I made a stick figure but with fire!” but hey, not everyone can be an artist like Gajeel and Wendy. (Gajeel’s art was with his voice and guitar skills, of course, but it was the same thing, really).
Gajeel waited for his cue before bursting through the stage entrance once again, throwing a single knife from all the way outside the ring towards Natsu’s head—but really, towards the pole behind him.
“Gihi, having fun, flame-brain?”
Natsu was supposed to feign shock, but it never lasted that long. Nor did he remember the rest of his script (that Gajeel had written himself), either. He just skipped to the end. “Ha ha ha, you’re approaching me! Let’s fight!”
They erupted into a sparring match on the spot. The uninitiated in the crowd would gasp in shock, but of course everyone knew it was for show. It was just the perfect way to make them look even cooler, Gajeel throwing up big metal shields to block Natsu’s fire before turning around to punch him in the gut. Gajeel still remembers the long-suffering slow-blink Acnologia gave when he and Natsu came bursting into his trailer with the idea, like he was just surprised they were smart enough to think of it, but then, after making sure they weren’t going to hurt each other for real, he went back into that same-old casual slick smile as always and told them to go for it. And that was before they decided to roll it into the big finale, too.
Wendy burst into the scene, pretending to break up their fight by creating a little burst of air between them to knock them both back. Then Erik and Cubellios showed up, with Cubellios picking up Gajeel by his metalized arm with her tail and flinging him back. Gajeel would fly back a bit and then stick the landing. Similarly, Rogue and Sting would show up out of nowhere on the trapeze and snatch Natsu up from the ground, to which Natsu gave a startled yelp that sounded more like laughing.
That’s when Laxus would come in, sigh and shake his head, and then snap his fingers to make all the debris from the fight “disappear.” That was when the grand finale really started, with everyone bouncing off of each other and doing their thing all at once, ending in a huge burst of fire that, when dissipated, revealed all of them standing on the ground, waving at the crowd. They had been doing the finale like this for a while, starting with Sting and Natsu’s idea three years ago. It's kept changing every year since because, why wouldn’t it? They kept getting better at this. But Gajeel was pretty proud of the fighting idea himself.
Maybe next year, they’ll even let him get shot out of a cannon through the roof at the end of it.
+++
One week later…
Sting woke up drowsily that morning, tired from the show and all the cleanup the night before but not too tired for breakfast. It was the last show for a while—now, they were going to chill for a couple of days before moving on to the next place, and Sting was so ready to just do nothing today…besides more clean-up, of course. So much cleanup.
“I think I want to see that natural history center while we’re here,” Rogue brought up out of the blue while Sting was pouring his coffee.
“Huh? The what?”
“It’s a local place. They have a bearded dragon.”
“Uh, okay, I guess?” Yeah, Rogue would nerd out over that, but if the best thing they had was a pet bearded dragon, Sting doubted it was all that impressive. But hey, if Rogue liked it, power to him.
“Would you like to see it?”
“Eh, I’ll pass. Maybe ask Erik? Or, I don’t know—”
“HEY GUYS!”
Sting almost spilled his coffee when Natsu burst into the room like that. “What the—!?”
“Look!”
Natsu threw a magazine onto the table, “Schrodinger’s Weekly” in big letters on the cover, before turning it to a specific page and pointing. “That’s us!”
Sting looked down at the title and blinked a few times. “The Family Behind Earth’s Greatest Show: Meeting the Magical Dragons!” It was followed by these opening lines about how these “out-of-this-world fantastic performers” were strengthened by “bonds of friendship” and yadda yadda family, and stuff. Which was…nice? Sappy, maybe?
“This is what Lucy wrote!” Natsu announced with excitement. Sting then noticed Wendy, Laxus, and Gajeel loosely filing into the room as well, looking like they also had been notified likewise. Erik, looking sleepy, rolled in a few moments later and went straight for the coffee.
“Heh, tell them the part about you and Gray!” Gajeel prodded Natsu as soon as he came into the scene.
“Oh…yeah!” Natsu laughed nervously. “I mean, it’s not, uhhh…”
“The Flame Dragon Natsu even shares a close friendship with the circus’s last remaining clownboy, Gray Fullbuster,” Rogue started to read out loud, “even playing practical jokes on each other to ease tensions before the performance of the night. Meeting both of them, it’s easy to see that they share a lot in common…”
“Yeah, that! That I don’t get!” Natsu groaned in exasperation. “I’m nothing like him! I mean, he’s a friend, yeah, but…oh, whatever! Lucy still got a lot right about us!”
“I like how she even included that little story you told about you trying to set frozen pizza on fire…and me failing to help!” Wendy shared with a self-conscious but light-hearted laugh. “I know it’s embarrassing, but I like how she shared like it was something good, and not something weird or faulty about us at all. Not like those reporters who just try to dig up dirt—she didn’t seem to think about it that way at all. It was really neat how she kept using the word ‘family’ over and over again. I know that’s kind of Acnologia’s tagline already—his ‘family of dragon slayers’ and all that—but I don’t know, I kind of liked the sound of it when Lucy said it.”
“Yeah, it’s sappy alright,” Erik commented with a shrug, “but not bad, I guess.”
“Huh…yeah, I guess so.” Sting wasn’t sure what to say without reading the whole thing, but he had to admit that it still surprised him how much things had changed. When they first started out, there was all kinds of trash about them in the papers and tabloids. It was all “oh look they’re deceiving you” this, or “they’re dangerous” that, or the show’s boring, or not good, or whatever. He remembered some people who really took it too far by starting to get all smart and comment on Rogue’s “dark, villainous aura” or Natsu’s “demon hellflame and inhuman teeth.” And that wasn’t even getting started with those who tried to poke at their pasts. It was true that it did take some time for the so-called dragon slayers to get used to each other at first and not fight and argue at every turn, but it didn’t take all too long for them to without even saying it lay out a ground rule or two about the past. They didn’t talk about Sabertooth, or Phantom Lord, or Ivan, and definitely not about the Oracion Seis. Unless the person in question wanted to (not Sting, he was fine, but some of the others probably needed to sort stuff out every once in a while). And yet, some people thought it’d be great to bring up stuff like that for them, as if half the country wasn’t literally run by gangs! What made it so special!?
Sting was always determined to change their image—singlehandedly if he had to. But then, well, it worked! Somehow. Yeah, they still had people talking trash about them—more people with the more popular they got, probably—but they also had people who thought they were cool, so…it all worked out?
“Well I think it’s awesome!” Natsu exulted. “Come on guys, read the whole thing! Read it!”
“Natsu, you are way too loud for this early in the morning,” Erik commented with a rub of his temples and another sip of coffee.
Natsu just responded with that loud kind of laugh that perfectly proved his point.
+++
“Family of dragons…” Erza muttered under her breath, reading through the article for the third time in a row, pushing aside all the other work papers on her desk in favor of studying the magazine. She recognized the author, she realized. The small icon image of the journalist at the end of the article perfectly matched that woman that Erza ran into at the site of the circus a week earlier, the one with the reporter’s pass that gave Erza the idea of also using a reporter’s pass for her work! Except, she didn’t have a journal to work with, exactly. Making a fake one might be too much effort, maybe? So, as genius an idea as it was, she might have to simply talk to them as herself.
“Please be more subtle,” Laharl had told her with a very obvious longsuffering sigh. He had been telling her not to barge into places for a while now—even though it was effective! Why dance around the issue when she can just kick the door down to the offending place of business or residence and just get them? But this time, Laharl really was firm with her about not being obvious, and Mest and Levy agreed so…Erza was going to try. She would prove that she could be subtle! She just needed to be patient and gather information. They didn’t know anything for certain yet. But, they said that the job could be dangerous, given how powerful the people involved were, so, that’s why it was perfect for Erza! She wouldn’t let them down.
Erza Scarlet was a detective for the RSPA, the Rune Security Policing Agency, or the “Rune Knights” as they had been nicknamed. It was their job to protect the people and punish evil. People told her way too often that law was dead, or that the government was a joke with the gangs holding all the real power—but they were wrong! Or, no, they were sort of correct, but they weren’t going to be correct forever!
Erza looked over again at the open case file on her desk, the one concerning the yet-to-be-solved murder of business tycoon “God” Serena. Two weeks prior to today, he had been killed by a magic-wielder, and although there was no proof, Erza knew who did it. And the answer lay right in this article.
It was a shame. The author talked about the “dragon slayers” in such glowing language, talking about their bonds even more than she talked about their skill as circus performers. She called them “family” and made it sound so real. A nice sentiment…but a lie, nonetheless.
But it was a lie that, so help her, Erza would bring to light, even she had to fight hand-to-hand with the great Acnologia himself.