Nalu oneshots

shot 4: The Lady and the Dragon

ucy became more and more impressed with Fairy Tail University as the school year progressed. It wasn't just that the profs were interesting—they were, but they were also a little strange—it was the way that the practical things were handled so as to leave time and energy for clubs and hobbies. For example, the student medical clinic was well-staffed and made full use of experienced nurse practitioners as well as doctors in order to reduce wait times. The cafeteria served decent food, and while it wasn't the gourmet meals that Lucy had grown up with, somebody obviously cared enough to make sure that it tasted good and that students with the more common special dietary needs weren't forced to either eat the same thing each day or buy expensive food off-campus.

The best thing about FTU was that nobody was forced to participate in intramural or varsity activities, but somehow nobody got left out either. Even the shyest students got taken in by a senior student, or by another student in their year who was either more outgoing or had some reason to already know the place well—for example, there were several students whose parents or older siblings had been at FTU in the past.

By the end of the first six weeks, as Lucy started to gear up toward midterms and pay more attention to when various papers were due, she was beginning to wonder how the place functioned—how could they afford it all without charging much higher fees? She'd heard that they had special funding from the government, but in her more creative moments Lucy imagined all sorts of things, from acting as a front for money-laundering—criminal outfits did sometimes run proceeds of crime through charities like universities and hospitals—to bizarre experiments that required an unsuspecting, yet intelligent group of test subjects.

The truth turned out to be a little different: FTU took in students with the potential for "magic", like some sort of not-very-exciting Hogwarts. Nobody actually studied magic—at least, not until much later. So Lucy was left to wonder and speculate and come up with creative stories with working titles such as "The Mob is Running my School but I Don't Care Because They Have Great Health Care". Her friends Levy (English and Library Sciences) and Ev (English and Creative Writing) were still giggling over "My Life as a Lab Rat: Year One".

She got her first inkling of the truth shortly before her last midterm. Naturally, it involved running into Natsu. In fact, she had seen quite a lot of the guy after school had started, despite the fact that they were in different years and faculties. Lucy sometimes wondered if he ever attended his own classes, because he had developed a tendency to walk her to class and then stay for the lecture. Occasionally he'd even stayed awake.

It was shortly before ten at night, and Lucy was racing toward the grocery store, hoping to pick up one of the key ingredients to successful studying: chocolate. Unfortunately, Natsu was moving too fast for Lucy to avoid him. There was a muffled "thud" as the two crashed into each other, late fall outerwear reducing much of the impact. As usual, Natsu was completely impervious to damage, and his muscular, solid build was barely rocked by the collision, but Lucy got tossed about three or four meters sideways.

"You okay?!" Natsu called to Lucy, as she struggled to get up.

Of course I'm not okay, she thought angrily, you just hit me like a ton of bricks. Or a brick wall. Or whatever the hell the right metaphor is. And yet... Lucy wasn't really hurt. It was probably all the strength training she'd been doing with Erza.

"You should look where you're going!" Lucy shouted back at Natsu.

Natsu took this as a good sign—she was conscious, anyway—and he immediately went to the heart of the matter: "Look, I'd better get inside—that way at least one of us can pick up food for studying!"

Lucy watched in slight disbelief as he left her sitting where she was, scrapes and bruises and all, and rushed into the store. He was probably right that getting to the store was the priority. At the same time, she would have appreciated a bit of sympathy. Natsu was like that though—as long as you weren't dead or unconscious, you were pretty much good to go. In some ways it was a vote of confidence.