Meeting Brain

Brain decided to get close to Lucy. He's in need of powerful mages and for most of adults is needed to say that their magic and potential is not very satisfying. They don't have that kind of spirituality one needs to become a powerful mage. Yes they are able to sacrifice others to get something for themselves. They're doing it most of the time. Politics is the perfect example. They sacrifice fates of entire nations to obtain power money and sometimes to achieve some kind of order. Nevertheless in their lives there's no suffering for what they sacrificed. They don't even understand the value of things they sacrificed. No. They don't even recognize those as real values. How so easy sacrifice can become meaningful magic? It cannot. So politics have a tendency to become weak in terms of their individual strength. Real magic has both characteristics of sacrificing ritual and honest prayers. If one guides his development with those two principles he can become as powerful mage as possible. The problem is as people get older it's harder for them to really believe in something. If you want to have real believers the best you can do is to find some children and raise them to become zealous followers of something.

That's why he set his eyes on Lucy. Lucy is young so she should be prone to indoctrination. As beautiful it can become it's really ugly about people. The only thing he must to do is to make her taste some despair and the moment later she will be ready to base her worldview on it deciding to call this world heartless. Then you need to comfort her a bit and voila!

So the first step is to make her parents dead. He sent his best assassin to do so. Second step is to make friendly contact with her. Otherwise what can guarantee she will come to him? Third step is to find her and 'help' her overcome her despair. He heard about Lucy being Gran Doma's disciple but for God's sake it started only a few days ago. She didn't form any real bond with him. Now first step is nearly completed. It's time for second step. He came close to her.

"Good morning."

"Huh? Good mo..."

Lucy turned her head to see and good-morning seen person but she saw Brain activating her battle instincts. She jumped back and placed her hand on the handle of her whip preparing herself to activate it. Brain for a moment felt like he pressed some random buttons and one of those happened to be a button of autodestruction.

"So cagey..."

"What are you doing here?"

Her whip started giving a little gold glow.

"Me? Well... I'm a known researcher here. I have new kind of magic to study and look for inspiration. I thought I would find something useful in the library."

Ren didn't know what happened in her head but it's inappropriate.

"Lucy stop! Do you know who he is?"

"I'm not sure but I think I know. I explain later."

She turned to Brain.

"It's fair. I'm sorry for my overreacting. But what does Mr well-known-researcher would want from a mere student like me?

"I just saw some youngsters studying here. It's not a common sight. It would be a waste if no one supported them."

Lucy didn't know what to say. Brain? Here? Looking after her? It can't be a good omen. If not cautious she would be kidnaped by him or worse.

Brain's face didn't even twitched. Only a drop of sweat started to form on his face.

'Are kids harder that I knew? Or maybe she knows what I'm planning? No it's impossible. It's just her instincts right? Deep in her guts she knows that being with me is risky. What a drag! And I have to work with that.'

"Okay. I'm sure you can help. So..."

She quickly explained her actual problem including the gap between theory and practice she need to cross.

'If you really want me at least pay the price.'

Brain was not troubled at all. Letter enchatments? Not that he could perform but sure he knew a lot.

"I think I can help. My magic is somewhat similar. Did you heard about organic link magic?"

"Yes it's an old kind of magic. Probably known in Zeref's time."

"That's one of my magic. I can build connections with living beings. In some ways it can be considered as a branch of enchantment art. However it's more centered around something being between things than forms of things itself."

Brain decided to share some important aspects of organic link magic excluding characteristics of his spells.

"The most important thing in organic link magic is to use one connection with an object to create another. We use it as a temporary path for our magic and..."

After spending some time Lucy was able to place inactive hardening on her whip. She looked with mixed feelings on her benefactor. Ren couldn't benefit that much. He heard explanations but mostly was unable to understand anything.

"You are genius! I can swear that finding a solution on my own would take several days!"

"It's good that you are happy. Continue your studies. I have some things to do."

They exchanged good-byes and Brain made his way. Ren and Lucy started to talk.

"How did you understand this?"

"Long story. In short I worked hard enough in the past. However I should warn you about this guy."

"Why? He seems to be doing a good job here. He's friendly even."

"That's the problem. He's paying a very high price for this 'good job'. He conducts involuntary experiments on humans."

"Whaaat? And they let him do that?"

"They don't know and without good evidences authorities won't believe me. Even if they'll believe me my accusations can give him signal to cover most of traces and use his connections to avoid consequences. In short for now there's no point. First I need to become strong enought to get evidences of his crimes and gain trust of Gran Doma."

"And Brain just helped you now?"

"Yep."

Ren started to ask with suspicious tone some questions for answers without content but soon he gave up on questioning her. 'What are you?'? She's just Lucy. She has some knowledge and is able to think and read a bit faster than him but can he expect more? She's new made friend and his naivety prompted him to believe Lucy. He made expected decision.

"I will help you."

...

In the dark basement the man tied to chair and having cactus needles in his head was suffering his fall. His hair was dirty from dust and some blood that started flowing out. Despite being alone some rats gathered around him to give him his pity. He didn't want pity. Getting pity is not different from being insulted.

'Damn knife! It was a trap and I fell for it. A knife? Who would expect that? I'll die here. Damn!'

"You have more will to fight than I expected."

"Eeeh... Mrs Layla?"

"As you see your head is hurt. I don't even have to Layla-punch you. Let's get over this. Give me answers and I'll release you."

'She don't want to kill me? All of this for nothing?'

"Aren't you afraid I will try again or something?"

"You still think you're able to kill me?"

"Ehh... No."

"So you can't complete your mission. If I'm not wrong it won't be enough to kill me or Jude. Your mission is to kill both of us. Killing only one is a failure. Killing first one and leaving second with that knowledge is a great failure."

"How do you know that?"

'She's right. There's no point. I can't defeat her in my state. No even after recovery she would just outsmart me again. I have cooperate.'

"Brain is looking for talented kids to turn them into his best followers. Lucy is talented."

"And how do you know that Brain is involved?"

"Because you appeared just when I started to think of this bastard."

"What?"

"Am I wrong?"

"No you right. It's just..."

"Irrational?"

"Yes very irrational."

"It's your opinion. I respect that but don't agree at all. Anyway. I know that Brain is after my daughter but I don't know why. Let's assume that he has his army of golden kids able to cast etherion for example. What's next? Another try to destroy this world? Fame? It doesn't make any sense. Wouldn't be easier to get those things playing a good guy?"

He looked at her pondering about answers. Who is Brain? Why is he even looking for the? For strong soldiers? No, it would be too easy. Brain doesn't care for soldiers. He cares only about himself. So...

"It's about individual power. Most of us don't have that something. You know. We have to work really hard to become strong mages and even then we can't guarantee results. Even then usually we don't even have a chance to compete with real talents. Our magic affinities tie us to some kind of magic making us unable to perform different. Brain is just frustrated about this. He can speculate about various kinds of magic but in the end he can't perform those to confirm them. Because of this his work isn't treated as good as he wants. To prove the value of his work he's going to become strong himself. Kids are only a tool to do this."

"And what can strong kids do?"

"They can use their magic to supply a great spell with magic power."

"So do you mean he wants to cast spell permanently increasing his power?"

"Yes. You quickly getting what's up with him."

"There's a catch, right? It's not like being blessed by a powerful being or obtaining great artifact known from legends or having a wonderful training method. What's the price?"

"I don't know it yet but I suspect the same. Power is not that easy to get. Probably the price is doing something to his body maybe even to his spirit. It won't be good for him. Maybe it kill him? That would be great so to speak."

"If you really believe it's like that why do you work for him?"

"He has my son. He says that if I won't do what he says he's going to use him for experiments. Now it doesn't matter. I failed. My Severin will die. I wasn't able to protect him after all. But there was a chance that he will fail this ritual and while failing it would be impossible for him to stop me from taking back my son."

"Do you at least understand that you're falling into the darkness? How your Severin would look at you?"

"I can stand that much. What kind of father would not be able to sacrifice anything for his children? Even if he's going to hate me later I'm not going to let him die."

"You missunderstood. I mean something different. Can you stand that your son would have such a bad example? No I should ask more about your son. Can he stand that you murder innocent people for him?"

"..."

'Damn. Hard questions.'

"I'm not going to tell you that I know your feelings. I have my own past but my past is not your past. However I want to remind you that your doings make things worse. Brain can actually succeed and I think he will if we won't do something. And even if he won't succeed it doesn't mean that your child is saved."

"What can I do?"

"Did you try to tell someone about your problem?"

"No. I don't even have such good friends. And even if I had I can't think about the way they can help. Brain is keeping Severin in a well-guarded place. Bringing loving peace people with me to fight with bunch of guards is a suicide for them. I'm not going to sacrifice more life than necessary. My idea was more about being sneaky. It will be nothing strange if I'll go alone to Brain's base and then I can use my assassin's skills to sneakily get my son out of this mess. To do that I spend time polishing my skills."

"*sigh* Your plan makes sense. Most likely it should work. You have the patience and resolve required to do so."

Layla paused for a moment thinking about something. Silence was here but it really wanted to run away. Next words were sound like a bell.

"In short words you're destined to fail."

"..."

"..."

"Why? It's so irra..."

"I respect that but..."

"...don't agree at all."

"Oh. You're slowly getting the surface of it. Now let's do something about your wounds and then we're going to talk about my 'irrationality'. My trap was a bit too effective."

Then he realized that there is his blood on the floor around his ankle is twisted and pieces of the chair are in places not any better to mention.