Fire Dragon's Solar Rain -Nalu4ever Contest Entry-

Summer is special. It has the power to warm even the coldest of souls, promote friends to gather around and partake in all kinds of things together and conjure up joy and great times. It is the time life's at its fullest, the soft exhale that comes after the endurance of the fall, winter and eventual spring back to life. Relaxed, easy going, warm and sweet...

But somehow, on the eve of its arrival, the supposed 'soft exhale' summer was supposed to be, ended up as a hacked, wheezed choke.

Lucy stood there listening to the weather report on the radio, with a gloom permeating from her thick enough to appear as a foreboding and shadowy fog.

Why? Why on the eve of summer's arrival was there going to be a huge cold front moving into Magnolia? Why after such a bitterly cold winter and unreasonably cool spring did summer also have to forsake her? Why? Why? Why?

Lucy sank onto the table, her arms and hands leaking forward to the radio and shut it off in a dead, zombie like manner; her face bleak and just as lifeless.  

"L-Lucy...you're making a really scary face" Wendy acknowledged, her own face looking very much so nervous.

A clear shiver ran up her small body as Lucy's eyes lazily shifted towards her, and stared at her with a look similar to one who's entirely lost the will to live another day.

"Really? I don't see a difference." Happy said, floating over to Wendy's side, snickering mischievously.

"What's wrong with you?" Grey asked, casually sliding into the table and poking her half melted face "you look really creepy"

"You guys suck at consoling somebody..." Lucy groaned, shifted her head that lay on the tabletop to forwardly squish her face onto.

"There's a cold front headed in tomorrow of all days, it'll be cloudy and it might even rain..."

"I don't know why you're complaining, it's been a nice season so far" Grey stated giddily "I like it that it’s been rather cool for a change instead of blisteringly hot"

"Speak for yourself! You're an ice wizard! Unlike you, I could really use a little heat in my life!" Lucy wailed at him. "I hate this!"

"Eh, whatcha poutin’ about, Luce?" A familiar voice interrupted.

Lucy loosely looked up at the curious fire mage before lowering her head back down to the table. In accordance to Lucy's failure of an explanation, Wendy stepped up and explained solemnly.

"It seems Lucy was really looking forward to the first day of summer tomorrow...but it seems like even though it'll be the first day, it's going to be abnormally cold and stormy out...so she's sad"

"I can relate" Natsu grumbled "All this cold weather lately has been pretty shitty..."

Grey scoffed and crossed his arms "It's a good change of pace if ya ask me!"

Natsu shot him a deadly glare "Yea? And who the hell asked ya, huh?"

"Who the hell do you think you're talkin to, ash breath!?"

"You, ya brain slushie snowman!"

"I'll show you some cold..."

Grey's hands came together to prep for an ice attack when a hand reached out suddenly and vice gripped his wrist. Grey nervously looked back onto Lucy's zombieish body as it rose awkwardly much like it really did pertain to the walking dead. A single, crimson glazed eye looked up at him through the mess of tousled blonde hair nearly seeping murderous intent. His blood froze.

"If you make it a single degree lower in this guild I swear, I will boil you alive..."

Grey nodded his head rapidly and took off running in terror as soon as she released him, Wendy quick on his tail.  

Happy chuckled as Lucy plopped back down onto the table with a depressed thud. "Well...she did say she wanted more heat in her life...Grey should have been more sensible than to provoke Lucy"

"More heat in her life?" Natsu repeated slowly "Ehhhh, I see"

Natsu placed his hands on the table before her, leaning over to slightly hover above her smiled brightly, causing her to look up at him with a less dead expression.

"If it’s just heat you're lookin for, leave it to me Luce! I'm here for ya!"

Lucy smiled a bit towards him. "Natsu...thank you...but you see,"

Before she could finish her thought, he had already stood up and looked at her with a new expression, the one he made right before a major landmark or building was about to come tumbling down in flames. Knowingly, Lucy quickly evaded the incoming combustion and hopped over her seat hiding behind it with comically wide watering eyes in terror as flames spouted around her. When they at last died down, she peered over at his face from behind the remnants of the table and chair, gleaming brightly within the pride of what he felt to be success.

"How about it, Luce? That enough heat for ya? I can turn it up higher if ya want!"

"You demon!" Lucy cried at him "That's not it at all! If I wanted to be roasted alive, I would've set myself on fire!"

"...What do you mean?" Natsu asked ignorantly

'This pyromaniac! Doesn't he even realize what he does half the time with that fire of his!?!'

"Listen Natsu! The heat I wanted is gentler and sweet...like the rays of the sun on a summer day! Or the warm wind on a summer night! Brute force can't make it! It's the kind of thing only summer can create!"

Natsu gave her a half surprised and half uncertain look before Lucy gave up.

"Whatever. Summer is special is all I'm trying to say...it's late, so I'm going home."

Lucy picked herself up off the floor and headed for the door wearily, passing by Natsu who remained in his pensive speechlessness even as he turned and watched her leave the guild.

'Gentle...sweet...and special?'

The next day, Lucy stared up at the miserably cloudy sky with a solemn expression.

"I wish I had accepted some job that took me to some tropical paradise today...but even if I had found one, I couldn't possibly go without Erza...she's going to be on that job of hers till at least the end of this week..."

Lucy's cheeks puffed up and she threw herself back into bed, staring up at the far away clouds lying lifelessly on her back, feet placed onto her sill.

"It's so gloomy...I don't want to be outside...but being shacked up inside isn't all that much better..."

Lucy shook her head and renewed her determination.

"No! If I'm not satisfied with my first day of summer, then I'll just make it more satisfying! I'll have my own little summer in here!"

Lucy hopped out of bed and walked over to her room’s climate controlling oven, after much work, she got it working up major heat and soon the entire apartment was filled with summer like warmth.

"Alright!" Lucy then strode over to her dresser and began tossing up and onto her bed anything she deemed 'summer like' from bathing suits, to dresses, to skirts and shorts and tanks and Tees. When she'd pulled out all the clothing, she gathered up as many mirrors as she could find and created a make shift cornucopia of mirrors to model her summer clothes.

Piece by piece Lucy tried on countless combinations, modeling before the mirrors in sweet, sexy or all around silly poses, tossing the clothing around freely as she moved on to the next strike of fashion genius. Her head filled with the sounds of seagulls at the beach, and the crashing waves upon their shores, countless laughs and cries from her fellow guild mates as they wreaked havoc in their tropical environment. A big, happy smile spread across her face at these thoughts, trying on a second swimsuit while simultaneously blowing up an inflatable ball.

"I can make a beach day for myself too!"

Modeling for a bit in her current suit, she finally drifted, ball in hand, to the bathroom. Where she filled the tub with cool water and hopped in. She splashed around and played with the beach ball and some other water toys she kept until she was entirely tuckered out and walked out, drying her hair and shooting a couple more poses at the mirror.

"This was fun. It's too bad no one could be with me to do these things in nicer weather for real...but I made the best of a crappy first day of summer!"

As she looked around for something comfortable to retire in, she stopped abruptly, remembering a certain outfit she bought a while back that she hadn't had the chance to use.
She hurriedly made her way to where she kept it; messily kicking clothes out if her way on the way, and picking up some matching accessories.

She found it, neatly tucked away and pulled it up delicately.

It was her summer yukata.

It was very special to her, though she'd not had the opportunity to wear it last summer due to the sheer amount of craziness from her jobs then, she'd missed out on several festivals where she could’ve worn it.

She dropped her current, soaked bathing suit and put it on, along with her accessories and tied her hair up formally. She approached the mirror and smiled sweetly at her reflection, smoothing out the beautiful cloth and giggling to herself.

'It looks great. If I get the chance to wear it, what do you think my friends would say, huh Mom?'

Lucy sighed dreamily, her smile persisting 'what would HE say...?'  

"Uh, Lucy?"

Her eyes snapped open from her delusion and onto the real, flesh and blood representation, staring at her in a shocked, puzzled look from his perch on the window sill. "What're ya wearin that for?"

Lucy felt a fume of heat rise from her face as, almost on cue, Happy fluttered in with his trademark roll of snickers.

"Bit old to be playing dress up all by yourself, dontcha think?"

Lucy glared daggers at him past her humiliation, but Natsu caught her attention once again, waving his hand back and forth between a slight shake of his head, "Whatever. Just come with me, ok?"

"Huh?" Lucy asked, near dumbly "Go where? I'd have to change and..."

"No time! What you’re wearing is fine, come on!" Natsu insisted and urged her to come towards the window.

"I'm not ruining my special yukata in that rain! And if I'm going somewhere, I'll be going out the door like a normal person!"

"A normal person who plays dress up at this age..."

"Cram it cat!" Lucy hissed impertinently towards Happy.

Natsu nodded impatiently "Fine, Fine, take the stairs; I've got an umbrella so just come down already!"

Without giving her the time to protest, Natsu let himself fall back and landed easily onto the street below, shouting for her to hurry.
Lucy shot a single glimpse at her special yukata in one of the several mirrors before brushing it off and walking downstairs to her awaiting friend. As she opened the door, she couldn't help but blush at him standing there, under an umbrella and holding his hand out to her.

"Come on Lucy"

She took a hold of his hand as she clopped down the single step from her door and walked beside him under the umbrella. Although, the moment she did, he handed it to her and walked out from beneath it, sighing happily as he let the light rain soak him.

"Natsu....you're going to catch a cold" Lucy said in a disappoint grumble.

Natsu turned to her, catching her off guard with a brilliant smile, and soaked hair and face.

"Nah! My body is really strong against cold rain, I just heat up and it doesn't matter! I usually don't even own an umbrella. I just got it on the way here"

Lucy watched him comb back his wet hair, revealing his face from his bangs that had previously been covering his forehead.

Somehow, this look made her heart race. It kinda gave him a delinquent, bad boy sorta look. And it suited her pyromaniac friend all too perfectly, besides knowing he could never truly be a real bad boy with his kind of heart.

"Where's Happy?" Lucy asked, trying to reestablish conversation.

"Told him to take a hike" Natsu responded casually

"Eh? Why?"

"He was actually really tired already from earlier today. So I didn't want to drag him out here with us"

Lucy inwardly chuckled at how dead on her 'bad boy' image of him was.

"Um...speaking of 'here' where are we going?"

A sly smile appeared across his features.

"It's a secret"

With a slight swallow of worry, Lucy continued to walk behind him, though this time, entirely quiet as lost to her thoughts. After a while of walking as well as a bit if hiking assistance from Natsu as they tread a rather steep part, they arrived at their apparent destination, a hill top overlooking Magnolia.

"Wow..." Lucy breathed out in wonder "This is a fantastic view"

"This is the place I stood when I first came here" Natsu loosely reminisced "Compared to then; it looks a little smaller now...I think I can see Fairy Tale actually"

Lucy scoped the city but couldn't find it.

"Where do you see that?"

"Over here" Natsu said as he gently wound his arm around her shoulders and casually pulled her closer.

"N-Natsu!"

"Follow the finger" he persisted ignorantly, pointing at the Cathedral first, then slowly moved across the landscape until reaching the guild in the distance. "See it?"

Lucy nodded vigorously and pushed away from him, clutching the umbrella tightly as her heart pounded away. It was moments like these that unnerved her...after all; Natsu's senses were peaked way higher than the average human being. She always feared he could hear her heartbeat rocketing away at times, and sometimes it seemed to be the case, the way he stared at her puzzlingly, but would then appear to have not heard it after all as he turned away near immediately to address some silly joke or pick a fight. She was also overly conscious of how she smelled since meeting him. Since one day he recited exactly what she’d eaten that same morning like reading it off her face, she learned to get into the habit of mouth washing after eating every single time.

She stared off tensely at the city, with an awkward smile etched on her face. "Haha...it really is such a nice view"

"Lucy" Natsu, rather coldly interjected, earning her interested gaze. "I didn't take you here to stare at Magnolia this whole time"

'Why does he sound...so bothered....by a thing like that?'

Natsu stared at her with serious, piercing eyes and she found herself lost to them once again.
Her face all but blew into flames as he continued with a single statement.

"Keep your eyes on me now..."

Her heart rocketed again as he took a few steps closer to her frozen form, his hand ghosted above her chin, like wanting to tilt it, but not allowing himself the touch. His eyes peered so deeply into hers, she couldn't possibly turn away.

"Don't ever stop looking at me no matter what"

Lucy let loose a shivering sigh as his fingers that had been hovering around her chin and jaw, slightly hovered by her lips for a mere second, feeling the warmth of his shadows caress before he stepped back and away from her, his eyes closing and his body standing entirely still.

All at once the area around him and himself ignited and she hopped back in alarm.

His eyes snapped open at hers only briefly before launching himself with immense power up, higher and higher into the sky.

She gaped at him, unable to stop as he reached a certain altitude and sent a single orb of what looked like very condensed flame into the clouds and he came back down with a none too graceful splat.

She ran over to him and helped him sit up; searching him for any significant wounds or bruises, but his hand stopped her.

"Look up Luce...”

She stared at him for a minute longer before hesitantly looking up at the sky. She watched in amaze as the cloud cover about them instantly shot open and light began to pour out. Around the major breech in the sky cover, similar smaller ones opened up nearby, flooding the night sky with a vibrant, warm and beautiful red-orange fiery glow, akin to the light from a summer’s sun set.

Her eyes nearly closed in bliss at the feeling of warm, dry air now raining onto them from the spectacle above and tiny harmless cinders rained down like fireflies falling from the heavens.
It was everything she could ever have hoped, no, dreamed for out of a fantastic summer day wrapped together in a single explosion. Her eyes nearly watered as she turned to Natsu with glossy thankful eyes, he in turn reciprocating onto her his own kind expression.

As the fire died down and the glorious sky show came to an end the large hole in the cloud cover acted as a window to the bejeweled night sky that lie behind. She sighed dreamily at the sky, unsure how to even begin to say a thing in response to what she'd just witnessed.

"It's the foundation for a new attack ya know?" Natsu said interrupting the silence. "Though it’s never strong enough when it comes down from the sky, I thought you'd like to see it"
She turned to him as a childlike expression invaded his face and his elbow nudged her side. "It's too gentle to be an attack for now...but since it’s the first time anyone else other than me or Happy has seen it, that's pretty special huh?"

Lucy giggled a bit as he held his head up in pride. "I'd say that's pretty sweet of me..."

"Natsu...”

He stood up and held his hand out to her with a cocky grin on his face.

"Not bad for brute force, huh?"

Lucy shook her head "Not bad at all"

She took his hand and he helped her up, as she did, she could feel a small drop of water fall onto her forehead.

"Oh no, the rain" Lucy realized, remembering the umbrella to have been blown from her hand in the spectacle.

"Stay here, I'll get it back" Natsu said, running off to retrieve it. After a while he returned and held the umbrella out over her head.

"Thanks Natsu"

But as she tried to take it from him his hand pulled back. Her eyes met his and he looked down and sneezed.

'That...was so fake...' she thought with an unimpressed look, smeared across her face.

Natsu grinned at her, "Guess I'm catching a cold"

Lucy blushed as she scooted closer to him and placed her hand onto his, gripping the umbrella.

"I guess we'll have to share then"

The two walked shoulder to shoulder and somewhat hand in hand back to Lucy's house in a welcomed and sweet silence.

'Standing this close to him reminds me of the warmth from that amazing attack... It's really hard to believe something so pretty could actually be used to harm someone'

"Say, Natsu?"

"Hmm?"

"What's the name of that attack anyway?"

"What attack?"

Lucy stared at him with wide eyes as realization dawned upon both of them. Natsu turned to Lucy in a mild panic and she stared back at him in close proximity within the umbrella.

"What I meant to say was that it’s an original move! So it doesn't have a name!"

"Uh huh..." Lucy said through an impish smirk "That right?"

Natsu turned away from her a bit "I'm not good at naming things...so you do it"

"Me?"

"Yea, you saw it just now, so what'll it be?"

Lucy thought on it for a bit and looked back at him excitedly "Fire Dragon’s Solar Rain!"

Natsu blinked at her in obvious impression.

"I actually really like the sound of that"

"No need to say it like that" Lucy grumbled a bit.

As they reached her front door, Natsu handed the now closed umbrella to her.

"Didn't you say you felt like you were catching a cold?" Lucy asked mischievously, only to receive an equally sly smile in response to hers.

"I know what I said..."

Lucy took the umbrella, looking down on it after losing her nerve to his comeback.

"Thanks...not just for this, but for everything...it was really special"

Natsu grinned "Think nothing of it!"

As he turned to walk away, Lucy sneered a bit and called out to him.

"Hey!"

He turned to her mischievous face as she continued "I...am totally in love...with 'summer'!"

He gawked at her as the insinuation sunk in quick and quite visually. His face lit up in a pink and his mouth twitched like he'd wanted to say something, but was lost to the shock.

"Night!" Lucy twittered at him and slammed the door behind her.

Summer had a special power indeed. How it managed to make people happy just by thinking about it, even stormy summer days had an inviting allure to them. Because stormy summer days offered the opportunity to become closer than ever thought possible.

Lucy thought this as she placed her special yukata away.

'Hey Mom...was it raining like today the day you met Dad when you wore this? Did he make it up to you like my summer did for me?'

Lucy giggled

'Sorry Mom, but my summer is infinitely more Gentle, Sweet and Special than any other'