Fairy Tail: Journeyman

Chapter 27: I May Be Old

The sun burnt like hot coals as I felt the beads of sweat prick against my skin. I let the back of my hand run across my brow.

"Ugh. It's days like this that I wish I owned a car." I complained to no one in particular, as I continued my trek against the harsh silver concrete.

Cars. They were similar to the magic mobiles that we used back in Earth Land, however you didn't need magic power to operate them. Well maybe that wasn't entirely true. In fact, the more I thought about it the science that governed people's lives here wasn't all that dissimilar from what we called magic back home. Our type of magic perhaps was just a little more free-flowing and regenerative.

I groaned as my face fell.

Who was I kidding? I would need Levy if I wanted to start drawing comparisons between the two systems. After all, even without knowing about the existence of other worlds let alone magic she had already started drawing those conclusions herself.

I sighed. This would be so much easier if I could just bring everyone's memories back.

My footsteps halted. Slowly I brought up my gaze to be level with the shop window on my right. I saw my reflection staring back at me. Blonde hair half pulled back behind my head, and my brown eyes weighed down.

No matter how hard I tried I couldn't remember the rest of what had happened on that last mission. But this memory block was different than the one I had experienced as a result of the gate. There were no headaches when I thought hard about it, in fact the migraines had all but disappeared now. This was more like someone had blown a great big fog over those events in my life. A dark mist that I couldn't see through except for vague shadows and echoes of shapes.

Between that and having no clue where to even start looking for the gate pieces caused my heart to tremble. And if only to add insult to injury, I couldn't even get my keys back without arousing Zeref's suspicion, notwithstanding that he was already on to me.

It was a relief to know that the others hadn't completely written me off when I told them my ridiculous story. At least I could only imagine how ridiculous it must sound to them. Heck, even I had to see it to believe it.

"Hmm... this is rather complex it seems." Erza hummed as she closed her eyes and processed. She was dressed in a solid blue short-sleeve shirt, her hair left to hang loose around her shoulders. As she crossed her arms, I couldn't help but notice the absence of her guild mark.

I snuck a peek at Natsu who still wore his stark red hoodie. I held in a grimace as it crossed my mind he had likely never washed it. But besides that, somehow I knew his guild mark wouldn't be present either.

I rubbed the back of my left hand, thankful that my pink tattoo was still there.

I nodded, drawing my attention back to the group. "I know. But I promise I wouldn't make any of this up." I pleaded with them desperately as we gathered around Grey's kitchen table.

"None of us think you are." Levy reaffirmed. "It's just hard to accept that all of the memories...our memories, and relationships aren't..." She trailed off, and I felt her anxiety peak.

I softened my expression as I laid a hand down on her shoulder. "You won't lose him."

She gave me a weak smile.

"So...what do we do now?" Grey moved the conversation forward.

"We need to find the gate pieces." Jellal countered. "But obviously that remains difficult given that we don't know if they are even still intact, let alone nearby."

A great silence fell across the table.

That was the question. How would we find pieces of a gate that none of us remembered seeing before? And even then, that was assuming there were gate pieces to find.