[Fanfic] [Fairy Tail] Moonbows

Chapter 14: Eclipse Celestial Spirits

After consulting with Mirajane, who squealed with joy at hearing they were finally going on a date and proceed to drill Erza for all the details about Lucy's confession, and various magazines for good first date activities, Erza settled for a dinner at a restaurant and then a visit to her favorite bakery in Magnolia.

It gave them ample time to talk and learn new things about each other. Plus, there were cakes, too. Erza was kind of nervous at the beginning until Lucy took hold of her hand and reassured the redhead that she was doing fine. And that the blonde found her behaviors entirely endearing, which almost made Erza trip on thin air and fall flat on her face.

Lucy kissed her on the cheek when the Requip mage took her back to her apartment at the end of the date, and Erza could feel the heat linger there all the way back to her own place, burning up to the tips of her ears.

Their next few weeks were swarmed with work. Due to the strange weather lately, almost everyone in the guild was out on various missions from nearby villages and towns. Mira received a request for a Celestial mage which she kept specifically for Lucy, and Natsu wanted to tag along with the blonde. Erza took another mission at a reconstruction site in the next town over, helping villagers rebuild their houses after a disastrous earthquake.

It was a relatively easy mission, simply requiring a decent amount of physical strength which Erza had in spades. When she got back to the guild three days later, Lucy and Natsu hadn't gotten back from their job yet.

Erza frowned, wondering what exactly was prolonging their mission since their normal ones usually only last for two days at most. Mirajane pulled up their record of official missions and informed the redhead about Lucy's job, which was to research the causes behind the unusual weather at a seaside village named Seabellus.

Erza was troubled at hearing this, because she was sure there was no village with that name in the region. She had done many jobs in that area, and there was no village there, only giant sea slugs. Gray suggested they went after them in case the job request was actually a trap and Lucy's group might be in danger, and Erza was inclined to agree with him.

However, right when Erza, Gray, Wendy, and Carla were ready to go, Yukino suddenly appeared at Fairy Tail, out of breath from basically running all the way here and immediately asked to see Lucy. The young mage explained the situation with her own Celestial keys, saying that both Libra and Pisces had stopped answering her summons.

Celestial Spirits are supposed to obey the Celestial mages they had contracts with, so it should be impossible for them to ignore her calls. Yukino had researched into the cause of this behavior but had come up empty. And now, she was worried that Lucy's keys no longer work, too.

Erza's bad feelings got worse with this new development. If that was the case, Lucy couldn't use her magic during their mission, which put them in a vulnerable position against any attack that might come their way.

Lucy and Natsu chose that moment to burst through the door, soaked to their bones from the heavy rain outside. Mirajane gave Erza a clean towel which the redhead used to wrap around Lucy and quickly dry out her hair, all the while listening intensely as the blonde explained their encounter with her Spirits.

That job request was a fake one, a trap the Celestial Spirits set to lure Lucy to their position. What the Celestial Spirits were searching for was something called Complete Freedom. Leo, who was the leader of the Twelve Zodiac Spirits, claimed that their contracts with the Celestial mages were now void and there was nothing the blonde could do to reverse that, not until they knew the reason behind their actions.

Gray had to punch Natsu to shut up his rambling about the Celestial Spirits' aggression towards them, completely ignorant of Lucy's disheartened expression just a few feet away from him. Erza gave the towel back to Mira after she was done and put a reassuring hand on the Lucy's shoulder, silently conveying her strength and sympathy at the situation.