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I Leave You, My Pride	By : Rhov Category: +. to F > Fairy Tail Views: 5780 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: Fairy Tail is the property of Hiro Mashima. I make no money, I just do this for my own pleasure.

Chapter List
- 3
- 4
- 5
Chapter 4

Belo and Harto
Gray was a man with a mission now. He gave the news to the guild and stayed only long enough to watch the reactions. Reasonably, Levy broke into tears at hearing the fate of her best friend. Natsu raged furiously until Erza had to hold him before he destroyed the entire house on Strawberry Street. Then the Dragon Slayer ran off to the bathroom with tears in his eyes, screaming that he would somehow get her back. He stayed locked in there for a while, and people just pretended they did not hear Natsu sobbing curses. It hurt even worse when Gray saw Master Makarov slowly turn away, but not before a tear got caught in a wrinkle on the side of the old man's eyes. Then Juvia nearly washed them all away with a sobbing flood.
Gray just stood to the side. He even let Juvia hang onto his arm, not comforting her as she begged—"Please, Gray-sama, hold Juvia."—but not pushing her away either. He could hardly look at anyone, but their reactions, the tears, the shouts and oaths that somehow, someway, Fairy Tail would get Lucy back, reaffirmed in his heart that he had to do his best.
It was Mirajane who had the sense to ask, "Who has Lucy's keys?"
At that, Gray pushed himself off the wall, sliding Juvia's hands off of him, and walked forward. He reached to a leather pouch that now stayed on his side. "She gave them to me. Apparently, I somehow ended up as Lucy's owner."
Juvia shrieked, "Lucy owns Gray-sama? Juvia won't accept that!"
"She doesn't own me," Gray snapped. He growled when he realized he had shouted rather fiercely at the poor woman, and he tried to rein in his emotions. "I have her key." He pulled out the Key to the Gate of the Lion. "Like she explained in her letters, she's the Spirit of the Lion now. Somehow, I ended up contracted with her."
Natsu's mouth dropped. "You own her key? Shit, we're never gonna see Lucy again."
"Hey!" Gray sneered at him. "Do you think I'm gonna leave it at this?"
"You're not a Celestial Spirit wizard, droopy-eyes."
"I know," Gray yelled. "So I'll learn."
Erza looked concerned. "Learning a whole new form of magic? Perhaps it would be better to find a powerful and kind celestial summoner and…"
"No!" Gray shouted. "I'm not giving her up. I'll find someone to teach me. I'll train how to use this key."
Happy laughed softly. "That's only if you can train yourself not to lose your pants and the keys with them."
Gray knew someone would mention that. "There's no way in hell I'd lose her!"
The people standing around looked over in surprise, and Juvia gulped down her sobs.
"I mean … I mean, lose her key," he corrected softly, but he knew it was useless to hide the emotions that played out on his face. "You'll see. I'll learn, and I'm gonna bring her back."
With that oath, Gray ran out the door and raced back home in tears.

The following day, he left Magnolia. He had research to do, and only a few of Lucy's personal papers to go off of. Unfortunately, she took almost all of her journals with her, but there was a name he found in an address book. He had heard Lucy mention him before. Grandpa Belo: the man who taught Lucy how to perform Celestial Spirit magic. If anyone could train Gray, it was this man.
He went to the address, but Grandpa Belo had moved. He followed some vague guesses which took him north, and then west to the sea. After weeks of traveling, he came to a quaint coastal town reeking of fish and drying seaweed. The streets were filled with salt barrels for the fishing industry that barely supported the town. The docks had a mishmash of tiny boats with tangles of nets hanging anywhere that could be spared, as if hundreds of spiders had spun their webs.
The very first local he talked to knew precisely who he wanted and gave him directions to Grandpa Belo's house. Gray stomped through a mud and gravel road heading up from the salty coast to a hill high above. There lived the people who had retired from harsh fisherman work, and a few who escaped to the coast for a quieter life. That was one of the people he was seeking, someone retired who now wanted peace, a slow life, and the tranquility of the ocean.
The house was colorful, navy blue with gold stars painted on the walls. If Gray had been uncertain which house he wanted, that alone would have told him. Gray walked up to the golden arched door and gave it a firm knock. He waited a minute, and then knocked again. Although he had come unannounced, it still felt disappointing to have traveled all this way just to find the house empty.
He turned and looked back down the hill. From the house porch, he could see the sea and the silver fog that hung in the air. He would also be able to see any person coming up the hill, that way he would know the instant Grandpa Belo returned. Gray sat on the steps and rested his chin in his hands. He was impatient, but he had no other choice now but to wait.
After a half hour of sitting there, he got bored. He pulled out Lucy's keys and flipped through them. He chuckled as he wondered how long it would take for him to stop thinking of them as belonging to Lucy and admit they were now his keys. Probably never. They would always be Lucy's.
He held the Lion's key tightly and wondered if there was any sort of connection between him and her. Loke used to say that he could sense when Lucy needed him, and sometimes Lucy got telepathic communications from her Celestial Spirits while they were still in the Spirit World. That happened with both Loke and Crux.
Could she feel his emotions now, and how much he wanted her?
He stroked the key tenderly and tried to pour all of his feelings into it. He wanted her to know he was thinking about her.
"My, my! Will you look at that?"
Gray jumped at the voice and spun around. A tiny man had somehow slipped out of the house, amazingly silent for his advanced years, especially considering he shook where he stood, leaning on a knobby wooden staff. His nose and his earlobes both drooped to his chin, surprisingly longer than the white mustache he sported. He wore the blue robe of a scholar with a pink wizard's hat marked by a yellow heart. His half-closed eyes were focused on the golden key in Gray's hand.
"Key to the Gate of the Lion. I never thought I'd get to see it. You must be quite a wizard to have come into possession of that."
"Are you Grandpa Belo?" asked Gray.
"Aye, that's me. And who might you be, sonny?"
"Gray Fullbuster. Were you here this whole time?"
"Well, sure. Sorry for not answering the door. I thought you were one of the local boys here to sell me fish. They come by around this time of day, thinking a former employee of the Heartfilia Konzern must be rich. They definitely overestimate me," he chuckled, half coughing as he did so. "So, you're a Celestial Spirit wizard, eh? How many units?"
"Huh? Units? Oh!" He recalled Lucy saying that Celestial Spirit wizards were noted for their units, how many keys they owned, in both gold and silver. He pulled out the keyring and began to count.
"You have to count? Then again, that's a lot of keys." Grandpa Belo's mouth suddenly drew down as Gray began to count the gold keys. Softly, he exclaimed, "Key to the Gate of the Golden Bull!" Then his wrinkly face swung up with a glint in his squinted eyes. "Sonny, you're either a friend to someone I think of as family, or you are an enemy of mine."
Gray paused in counting. The ancient man suddenly looked furious. "Oh right, you'd know some of her Celestial Spirits. These … they belonged to my friend, Lucy Heartfilia. She's … not here anymore." He wondered if the man would even believe him if he said Lucy was the new Leo the Lion. "She gave me her keys to protect, but I want to do more than guard them. She spoke about you, so that's why I came all this way to find you." Gray tried to look as humble as possible. "Grandpa Belo, sir, this might seem rather sudden, but can you train me to become a Celestial Spirit wizard?"
The man was silent for a moment, looking at the keys as he weighed the request. "You seem to be of adult age. To learn magic this late…"
"I'm an Ice-Make wizard of Fairy Tail."
"Ah, Fairy Tail! Lucy-chan joined them, as I recall. Your mark?"
Gray threw off his shirt, revealing the guild symbol on his chest.
"I asked to see it, not have you strip, sonny. Very well, then you must have truly known Lucy-chan. And she gave you her keys, eh? I'm sorry to hear about her. She's like a granddaughter to me. I love her dearly."
"As do I," Gray muttered, feeling his eyes beginning to sting with the pain of missing her.
"I can teach you, but the training is long and hard. Even if you are already a wizard, to learn a completely new form of magic is no small feat."
"It's something I'm willing to dedicate the rest of my life to doing," Gray said adamantly.
Grandpa Belo hummed and nodded slowly. "Well, come in. Might as well give you some tea and get you out of this moist coldness."
The old man turned and shook as he slowly toddled forward, his walking staff clacking with each step. Gray wondered how in the world he could have missed hearing the old man come outside, unless his thoughts had distracted him that much. As Gray followed after Grandpa Belo, he tightened his grip on the Lion's key.
I'll bring you back, Lucy. I swear, I'll bring you back home to Fairy Tail.
The tiny old man was surprisingly nimble around his cluttered house. He weaved between piles of books and models of constellations. Gray looked around, not sure whether to feel disgusted by such clutter or in awe at the tiny tutor's vast knowledge that must have led to such an impressive—albeit chaotic—collection.
While his eyes were focused on a model of stars in the same shape as the symbol on the Lion's key, he suddenly stepped on something soft. Gray leaped back, fearing he had stepped on a pet, and knocked over one of the book stacks. Then he heard "Puun." Where he had stepped sat a tiny creature with a round head and cone-like nose.
"Plue?" As Gray squinted, he saw the tiny Nikora was pink, not white, and the nose was yellow, making him look a little similar to Grandpa Belo's pink and yellow pointy hat.
"His name is Harto," the old man called back as he clanked some pans in the kitchen. "He was my very first Celestial Spirit, and he has stayed by me for decades."
"Pu-puun," Harto nodded in agreement.
"Do you have a Key to the Lesser Dog, Gray Fullbuster?" Grandpa Belo asked as he put a kettle on the stove.
"Yes, Lucy named him Plue."
"Then she got one, eh? When that girl was a child, she loved to play with Harto. Every year on her birthday, she asked for a Key to the Lesser Dog, and every year Mister Heartfilia refused to buy her one. He said a lady of her stature should have a pure-bred dog, not a Celestial Spirit as a pet. I trained her with Harto. I will have to use the same approach with you, if you are to learn how to make a contract."
"Contract?" Gray muttered, and again his hand drifted to the Lion's key. "But I have a contract with … with Leo." He still was not sure if this man would believe him about Lucy.
"With Leo, eh? Have you called him out?"
"N-no," he muttered. "The contract was made while Leo was already in the Human World."
"That happens sometimes," Grandpa Belo nodded, pouring the boiling water out for tea. "It's the biggest dilemma in training a Celestial Spirit wizard: to use a key, the wizard must first call out the Spirit and make a contract. To call out the Spirit, the wizard must first know how to summon a Celestial Spirit. The initial summons is always the hardest, since there is no rapport between Spirit and Owner. It's easier to call out a Spirit one already knows, and with time even the incantation becomes unneeded. Thus, how does a student learn simple summoning if one does not have a contracted Spirit? That's why Jude Heartfilia hired me to train his daughter. Her mother, bless her soul, had possessed both Silver and Gold Keys, yet she did not have a Lesser Dog, the easiest Spirit to summons. I trained little Lucy on Harto, since she got to know him first, and Harto trusted her. That's the most important thing for an owner: trust! If you have the trust of Leo the Lion, you likely have the trust of any other Zodiac Spirit, since he is their leader."
"Will that make it easier?" Gray asked eagerly.
"Easier, yes. Would you be able to do it now? Heavens no! It takes many years before a Celestial Spirit wizard graduates from Silver Keys to Gold Keys. The change in magic consumption is night and day, sonny. Little Lucy was ten years old when I began her lessons, and even then she had numerous years of training under the guidance of her mother, bless her soul. Layla had her using minor keys almost as soon as the girl could speak, all done behind Jude's back, of course. Lucy made her first contract with the Spirit Crux when she was ten years old. She was unable to open a gate to one of the Zodiac Spirits until she was fifteen. Five years, sonny!" Grandpa Belo emphasized. "Are you willing to dedicate that much time to this pursuit?"
Gray's eyes remained firm, and his determination did not waver in the least. "I swore I'd dedicate my entire life to her, and I don't go back on my promises. Whether if it's five years or fifty, I'm bringing her back."
The old man's half-closed eyes squinted even more. "Bringing who back?" he asked suspiciously.
Gray froze as he realized he had said too much. The two stared at each other while a clock somewhere ticked away the seconds.
"Tell me, what precisely happened to Lucy?" Grandpa Belo asked warily.
Gray gave a little sigh. "It's a long story."
The old man shrugged and set down a tea tray. "I have all the time in the world. You're the one who seems to be in a rush. So tell me … what happened to Lucy Heartfilia? How is it that you, an Ice-Make wizard, came to possess all of her keys? Lucy wouldn't have done such a thoughtless thing unless she knew her time was short and she had no other choice. Also, a normal person would simply find an owner for these keys, not be so determined to use them. So before I teach you anything at all, I want to hear what's your story."
Gray sipped some of the weakly brewed tea. He supposed that being honest with Grandpa Belo was best anyway. It might even make the old man more willing to help. "It started while we were on a mission…"

End of Chapter 4

A/N: When I first posted this, many people thought Grandpa Belo was an OC. Nope, he's canon, one of the staff at the Heartfilia mansion, said to have been Lucy's magic tutor. We see him and the other Heartfilia Konzern workers when Lucy returns home. Harto is an OC, though. His name comes from Lucy's Romanji surname.
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I Leave You, My Pride