As Roy and Erza shared a moment, Lucy felt a strange tightness in her chest. *What's going on with me?* she wondered, genuinely confused by this new feeling.
After regaining her composure, Erza, to everyone's shock, pulled the train's emergency lever, stopping Natsu's train in its tracks. Lucy's earlier discomfort was replaced with wide-eyed amazement.
*So bold! But... she's kind of cool like this!*
"Let's go! We need to catch up to Natsu!" Erza commanded, exuding a powerful aura that made Lucy admire her even more. Someday, she wanted to be a confident and strong mage like Erza.
Due to the limited seats on Roy's dragon-themed motorbike, Roy took Lucy along, while Erza summoned a magic-powered car to carry Gray and Happy. Together, they sped off to chase down the train.
With Erza pushing her magic to the limit, they soon caught up. By then, Natsu had already encountered Kageyama from Iron Forest.
Seeing them arrive, Natsu immediately complained, "I was just on the train, and some weirdo—something about Iron Forest?—wouldn't leave me alone!"
"Iron Forest?" Erza's eyes widened, and with a scolding tone, she punched Natsu down. "Idiot! Iron Forest is our mission target! Why did you let him get away?"
Natsu, clutching his stomach in pain, looked up with a pained expression. "I didn't know anything about that!"
At that moment, Erza realized Natsu had been unconscious and hadn't heard their mission briefing. Just as she began to feel self-critical, Roy quickly intervened, not wanting her to sink into self-blame again.
"The priority is catching that guy who escaped!" Roy reminded her. "You said the artifact they have, LULLABY, is very dangerous, right? We can't let them take it to the guild masters' meeting!"
Revitalized by Roy's words, Erza returned to her usual confident self, her determination radiating. "Yes! That artifact, rumored to be enhanced by the dark mage Zeref, is a powerful curse spell for mass destruction."
As she spoke, a fierce, uncharacteristic rage filled her expression. No one present understood the weight of Zeref's name more than Erza. Memories of the Tower of Heaven—a place created in twisted worship of Zeref, leaving dark scars on her childhood—filled her mind, rekindling her anger.
"Get in the car. We're going after them!" Erza commanded with an aura of uncontainable fury, causing Natsu and Gray to shiver and rush to the car with Happy. Their fear of Erza even made Natsu forget his motion sickness.
With a roar, Erza's car shot forward like an arrow.
Watching them disappear, Roy sighed beside his dragon-themed motorbike. Unlike Lucy and the others, he noticed Erza's intense shift in emotion. *It's clear that her past still weighs heavily on her. Those memories keep dragging her back.*
But people needed to look forward, not stay stuck in the mire of their past. At that moment, Roy resolved to help Erza overcome her inner shadows. That was his sense of justice.
"Aren't we going to catch up?" Lucy, seated on the bike's back seat, tilted her head in confusion at Roy's contemplative look.
Roy shook off his thoughts, gave Lucy a reassuring smile, and said softly, "Let's go, catch up with them."
After a wild chase, they finally arrived at Oshibana Station just as Erza was running out of magic. From a distance, they could see thick black smoke rising from the station, as if a fire had broken out.
Roy and Erza immediately sensed trouble and led Lucy and the others to investigate.
Outside the station, they found numerous passengers and curious onlookers gathered, craning their necks to look inside. Impatient, Erza quickly questioned some attendants and learned that the station had been taken over by mages claiming to be from Iron Forest.
Sharing a determined look with Roy, Erza nodded, and together they headed inside, with Lucy, Natsu, and Gray following close behind.