A Star Removed from the Sky

Lucy

It'd been five months since Natsu had first collapsed onto his floor, and ever since that day, his head was constantly waging a war against itself. Whenever he found something out about who was missing from his life, even the smallest bit of information, his brain would shut down and he'd collapse in a heap wherever he'd been thinking. There were bruises across his arms and legs from constantly falling on the floor, and he had a constant headache from the fall damage to his head.

The first time he collapsed, when he'd first found the maid dress in his house, he hadn't woken up for two days. Happy had woken up to find his best friend in an unconscious heap on the floor, not waking up despite how hard he yelled or shook his body. He'd grabbed Natsu and quickly rushed him to the guild, causing a panic within the guild members who jumped to the conclusion that he'd died somehow. Amid all the chaos, Wendy had taken a look at him and found that the problem was inside his head, informing everyone he was not dead, only unconscious. She tried to heal him, assuming he had a concussion based on the muddled activity in his brain, but she was unable to fix what was going on. Nobody knew what happened to him or why he wouldn't wake up, all they could do was keep an eye on him to see if he would come out of it himself.

During his two days of unconsciousness, Natsu had been dreaming, looking through all his memories where someone was missing. There were huge gaps in certain memories and smaller gaps in others, but all his memories from the last few years of his life were incomplete and blurry. When he finally woke up, he had a terrible headache that almost put him back to sleep again. Wendy was by his side, and immediately went to get his teammates once he tried to sit up from the infirmary bed. Everyone asked him what happened once they rushed into the room, but he couldn't keep his own thoughts clear enough to answer them. His headache only worsened, so Wendy told everyone he needed more rest while she tried to heal his headache. He was stuck in that bed until Porlyusica looked him over. Wendy had requested that she visit him because she couldn't figure out what was wrong with him.

When she arrived, she was upset at being dragged there, but agreed to look him over once she heard the details. Porlyusica told the guild members he was fine to go home, but she had to investigate more on what was actually going on. She found there was an outside force that was intruding in Natsu's mind, a powerful one at that, but she kept that bit of information between herself and Natsu.

Natsu wasn't surprised by Porlyusica's diagnosis in the least, in fact, he had nearly come to the same conclusion himself. With the confirmation from Porlyusica, he was even more motivated to figure out what was going on. After assuring all his friends that he was okay, he rushed home. The first thing he did was write down everything he could still remember from the night he collapsed, but all he could manage was that the missing person was a girl. The rest of the information had been torn away from him while he was asleep, but he knew he could get it back by retracing his steps. After that first incident, he made sure to keep a journal on hand whenever information came into his grasp. While he was researching on the person, he also worked on a timeline of how long he'd known them. He'd sorted through all his missions and memories to see when they first entered his life and when they had disappeared.

The more he researched, the more he found was screwy in his memories and his friends' too. He'd started to bring up the idea of someone missing with his guild. Everyone was wary of all his questions at first, thinking he'd suffered a harder blow to the head than they'd thought, but the more that he asked them, the more that everyone began to realize that he was right. It wasn't just him, everyone's memories were off, especially his team members'; they felt as though they were supposed to have another person with them. Wendy, Gray, Erza, and Happy, all started to see what Natsu was talking about, but they couldn't hold on to the information like he could. They'd collapse and wake up again with no memory of him talking about it with them. Natsu couldn't figure out why he was the only one who could fight back to keep his memories, so he decided to investigate on his own.