Chapter 53: Captured
The gunshot echoed through the casino like a thunderclap, loud enough to freeze every heart in the room and sharp enough to cut through the chaos of fleeing patrons and screaming dealers. The sound seemed to hang in the air forever, a single moment stretched into an eternity of dread.
In the darkness where Simon's spell had swallowed all light, no one could see what had happened. No one could see Natsu fall. No one could see the blood that might be spreading across the floor. There was only the echo of that single shot and the terrible silence that followed.
Lucy's heart stopped.
"Natsu," she screamed into the void. "NATSU!"
But there was no answer. Only the darkness, thick and suffocating, pressing against her eyes like a blindfold made of shadow itself.
And then, as suddenly as it had fallen, the darkness lifted.
The casino lights blazed back to life, revealing a scene of utter chaos. Tables overturned, chips scattered like fallen leaves, and in the center of it all, Natsu Dragneel lay on the floor with a bullet hole clean through his cheek. He was already sitting up, already cursing, already spitting blood onto the expensive carpet, very much alive and very, very angry.
"SON OF A BITCH," he roared, clutching his face. "THAT HURT, YOU BASTARD! DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH THAT HURT?!"
Wally Buchanan stood across the room, his gun still smoking, his expression caught somewhere between satisfaction and genuine surprise that his target was still conscious. He had aimed for the mouth specifically, a cruel shot designed to wound without killing, to send a message rather than end a life. And yet the pink-haired idiot was already on his feet, flames flickering at the edges of his fists.
"You should have aimed better," Natsu growled.
"I aimed perfectly," Wally replied. "The message was received, was it not?"
Before Natsu could respond, Sho appeared behind Erza as if he had simply stepped through a door that existed only for him. His hands moved in that same fluid motion from before, and suddenly he was holding a deck of cards that seemed to shimmer with an inner light. He fanned them out for Erza to see, and her blood ran cold at the images trapped within each one.
Within the cards, tiny figures moved in miniature prisons. Dozens of people, patrons and staff alike, frozen in moments of terror, their faces pressed against the invisible barriers of their paper-thin cells. They were alive, she could see that much, their chests rising and falling in the shallow breaths of the magically imprisoned, but they were utterly helpless, utterly trapped.
"I learned to use magic too, nee-san," Sho said, his voice carrying that same fractured quality from before. "My Card Conversion Spell. Handy, is it not? I can carry an entire crowd in my pocket."
Erza's hand moved toward her key, toward the armor that would let her fight, but before she could summon anything, a flash of green and white shot past her vision. A rope, living and moving like a serpent, shot out from somewhere to her left and wrapped itself around Lucy with unerring accuracy.
"MILLIANNA, NO!" Erza shouted, spinning toward the source of the attack.
A girl emerged from behind a pillar, and she was impossible to look at without a strange twist of recognition and disbelief. Millianna had always been the gentlest of them, the most innocent, the one who found joy in the smallest things. Now she stood before Erza with catlike grace, her green hair falling in waves around a face that still held echoes of the child Erza had known. Cat ears twitched atop her head, genuine cat ears, not a costume or an affectation, and her smile was wide and predatory and utterly unlike the girl who had once clung to Erza's hand in the darkness of the tower.
"Nee-san," she meowed, the sound carrying a playful edge that was somehow more terrifying than any threat. "It has been so long. Do you like my new look? The tubes on my arms are called NEKOSOKU. They can grab anything I want them to."
Lucy thrashed against the glowing tubes wrapped around her body, but they held fast, squeezing just tightly enough to immobilize without causing real harm. "LUCY," Erza called out, stepping toward her, "SHE IS MY FRIEND, MILLIANNA. SHE HAS DONE NOTHING TO YOU. LET HER GO."
"Friend?" Sho's voice cracked on the word, his expression twisting into something ugly. "Friend? You call HER friend, nee-san? After everything we went through together, after everything we survived, after all the years we spent believing you had abandoned us to die, you call this stranger friend?"
Erza's heart clenched. "Sho, please, you have to understand, I never abandoned anyone. Jellal lied to you, he lied to all of you, he told me he would let you go free if I stayed and fought him, and I believed him, I believed"
"You believed a liar," Sho interrupted, "and now you expect us to believe you?" The cards in his hand seemed to pulse with angry light. "We were children, Erza. We were children in that tower, and you were the strongest of us, the one we all looked up to, the one we thought would save us. Instead you left us there for eight years. EIGHT YEARS."
The weight of his words hung in the air between them, a chasm of pain and betrayal that no explanation could bridge.
Wally, who had been watching the exchange with an expression of mild amusement, suddenly convulsed. His body jerked, his eyes rolled back, and then he collapsed to the floor in a heap. Before anyone could react, a shimmering light emerged from his fallen form, and Wally himself, the real Wally, stepped out of his own dead body as if shedding an old coat.
"That is disgusting," Lucy managed, still struggling against Millianna's tubes. "That is absolutely disgusting."
Wally ignored her completely, his attention fixed on Erza with an appreciation that was almost admiring in its intensity. "You have grown beautiful, Erza," he said, his voice carrying none of the madness that colored Sho's words. "Truly beautiful. It is a shame we have to do this."
Simon materialized from the shadows beside Millianna, his dark eyes fixed on Erza with an intensity that spoke of years of waiting. Lucy, still struggling, finally lost her balance and fell to the floor with a thump that knocked the wind from her lungs. The tubes held her fast, leaving her sprawled on the expensive carpet like a caught fish.
"Lucy," Erza began, but Lucy cut her off.
"Erza, why are they calling you sister? What is happening? Who are these people?"
Erza's throat tightened. "They are... they are old friends. From before Fairy Tail. From a place I have not spoken of, a place I hoped never to speak of again."
"Old friends?" Wally laughed, the sound hollow and cold. "Is that what we are to you now? Just old friends?" He raised his gun, and before Erza could react, he had aimed it directly at Lucy's head.
"NO!" Erza screamed. "WALLY, DO NOT"
The gun fired.
But the bullet never reached Lucy.
Behind Erza, Wally's disembodied hand had reanimated itself, creeping up her back like a spider made of flesh and bone. Before she could even register its presence, it pressed a small object against her neck, and something sharp pricked her skin. A tranquilizer, fast acting and powerful, flooded her system.
Erza's eyes went wide. Her knees buckled. The world swam and tilted and began to fade at the edges.
"NO," she tried to say, but her lips would not form the word. "NO, PLEASE, NOT THEM, NOT LUCY, NOT"
Simon caught her before she hit the ground, his arms wrapping around her with a gentleness that seemed entirely at odds with everything that had just happened. His dark eyes met hers for just a moment, and in them she saw something she could not name, something that might have been regret or might have been resolve or might have been nothing at all.
"Forgive us, nee-san," he murmured. "But this is how it has to be."
"LUCY!" Gray's voice rang out across the casino, and suddenly he was there, Juvia beside him, both of them frozen at the edge of the scene taking in the chaos with expressions of horror. "LUCY, ERZA, WHAT"
Millianna giggled, a sound so incongruous with the situation that it made Gray's skin crawl. "The kitty will be cat food in a few minutes if anyone tries anything." Her tubes tightened around Lucy just enough to draw a pained gasp from the celestial mage.
"Lucy," Gray called out, "I am coming, just hold on"
"Stay back, Juvia," Simon commanded, his voice carrying an authority that made Juvia hesitate. "This does not concern you."
Juvia's water form rippled with indecision. She looked at Gray, at Lucy, at the strange people holding her new friend captive, and for a terrible moment she did not know what to do.
Wally, meanwhile, had produced something from his pocket. A small, squirming, very familiar blue creature. Happy kicked and struggled in his grip, his tiny wings beating uselessly against the iron hold of Wally's fingers.
"I brought you a gift, Millianna," Wally said, holding Happy out toward the cat girl. "I know how much you like cats."
Millianna's eyes went wide with delight. "A KITTY! A REAL KITTY!" She clapped her hands together, momentarily forgetting the tubes wrapped around Lucy, forgetting the gravity of the situation entirely in her joy at the tiny blue creature wriggling in Wally's grasp.
"HAPPY!" Lucy screamed. "PUT HIM DOWN, YOU MONSTER!"
"Aye!" Happy added, his voice muffled by Wally's grip. "PUT ME DOWN! I AM NOT A TOY, I AM A PROUD WIZARD AND I DEMAND TO BE TREATED WITH RESPECT!"
Millianna giggled again, scooping Happy from Wally's hands and cradling him against her chest like the most precious treasure in the world. "So fluffy," she cooed. "So soft. I am going to keep you forever."
Sho stepped forward, his cards still glowing, his expression settling into something that was almost peaceful in its certainty. He looked at Erza, limp and unconscious in Simon's arms, and for just a moment the madness faded from his eyes, leaving only the wounded child he had once been.
"Erza will be returning to the Tower of Heaven," he announced, his voice carrying across the silent casino. "Jellal is waiting for her arrival. And this time, nee-san, this time you will not escape."
The words hung in the air like a death sentence.
The Tower of Heaven.
The place where Erza's nightmares were born.
The place Jellal waited with godhood in his eyes and destruction in his heart.
And Natsu, still bleeding from the hole in his cheek, still burning with fury and pain and a desperate need to protect, watched from across the room as everything he had trained for, everything he had prepared for, everything he had dreaded and anticipated in equal measure, began to unfold exactly as he had known it would.