Break Him

Chapter 9

PrinceyAtNight28

The next time Natsu woke up, he did not smell sea water. Yet, the world was still spinning and swaying and doing things that the world should not be doing. He groaned. His head hurt. He licked his lips but they stung painfully when he found that they were still chapped and cracked; they started to bleed. His stomach was churning painfully.

Creaking could be heard. Clicking. A rhythmic clip-clop that only hooves could make. Natsu knew these sounds. The scent of foliage. Sweat. Blood. Himself. Others. Wood. Dirt. Winter. Natsu knew these smells.

He was on a form of transportation. A wagon.

His eyelids slowly slid open to reveal olive eyes with rounded off irises. Wood on all sides—above him, below him. It was dark, but his keen sight found that to be no problem. He was crammed between crates stacked to the ceiling of the carriage so that he could barely move left or right without bumping into them. He was lying down on his side, his face centimeters away from a wooden crate. His cheek rested on the rough timber floor. Cold seeped into his naked body. He shivered. The chains on his wrists and ankles tinkled as he shook. His body ached all over—

'Wait a second,' Natsu thought, and his irises grew sharp, again, as his eyes widened, and he carefully clenched and unclenched his fists. He immediately flinched—his wrists hurt (and Natsu did not use that word lightly). Yet, his restraints did not tighten. He rotated his ankles. They hurt, too, but his shackles… They did not tighten. His heart skipped a beat. Could he use his magic? It had been a while, and most of it had been depleted, but… 'Aha!' There it was; the familiar singe of heat that flared in his belly. He inhaled deeply. His throat did not hurt anymore. Neither did his chest. The heat still in his ribcage, he exhaled, and saw steam drift in front of his face as he did so. 'Heck yeah!'

However, his mental celebration was interrupted when his stomach gave a sickening lurch. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, trying to take his mind off of the swaying of the wagon.

His magic. He needed to focus.

Natsu swallowed hard and tried his best to breathe evenly. He could feel the cold of winter crawling over him, and that was a bad sign; his magic allowed him to be resistant to most weather, but he could clearly feel the frigidness around him. His magic was not nearly replenished enough to prove useful.

But he was chained up naked in a wagon, led by strange people in a place that his nose could not place.

'No, thanks!'

Natsu took a deep breath and, using his bloodied shoulder, pushed his body upwards. He managed to prop himself up on an elbow before the wagon swayed again, his stomach tossed, and his arm shuddered and gave out.

He hated carriages.

Taking a few deep breaths, he tried again and was met with a sickening wave of dizziness as he sat up. Motion-sickness aside, he felt awful. However long he had been asleep had terribly disoriented him. It had been days since he had even stood. His body could barely sit still for two minutes, never mind a day pinned to the wall and two days on a boat. Preposterous. He was going to have a serious workout once he was out of the swaying death trap.

With what little space he had to work with, he managed to lean his back against some crates and his knees on those opposite of him before shimmying his way carefully upwards. He had almost been on his feet when the wagon lurched abruptly, and he tipped over, hitting his head hard on a crate and landing even harder on the floor.

Natsu took a moment to let the stars clear from his vision before he cursed loudly and made to sit up, again. Suddenly, the wagon stopped moving. A rock dropped into his stomach. The drivers of the carriage had heard him; his heart started hammering—he was in no condition to fight! He was chained, naked, and—

Blinking, he quickly shifted his hands and grabbed the chains linking his hands together, which sent pain singeing down his arms. He was not as skilled as Gajeel was at this, but—'Oh. Never mind,' he thought as the metal chains cracked underneath his strength, and then shattered behind him. Though the chain had been broken, thick metal rings were still solidly around his injured wrists, and the chains that had not been broken dragged and knocked on wood as he moved his hands. He quickly pulled his hands around to do the same to his ankles, but paused and inhaled sharply through his teeth as he caught sight of his hands for the first time since he'd been captured. His hands were—

'Not the time,' He shook his head, and broke the chains connecting his feet (with a hiss of pain) at the same time that light flooded into the wagon through the door in front of him.

Natsu heard a voice curse, and he stiffened. "I told yee' I heard somethin'!"

He knew that voice. He hated that voice.

At that moment, Natsu hit his last resort button.

It was at times like these when Natsu's body took hold over his mind, for he knew how to fight without thinking. It was instinct. Unfortunately, when he stood to bolt forward to attack, he gasped in pain as his feet screamed in agony, and dizziness swamped him once more.

"'bout time yee' woke up, Rosy."

The wagon bounced when the voice's owner stepped into the wooden box of a carriage. Natsu stumbled backwards, tripped, and fell. He had not even heard him speak.

His feet.

"Ack!" He hissed, and leaned his back heavily against the crates. His ankles were screaming in pain—blood was trickling from underneath the metal cuffs he still wore around them. Something in Natsu's mind said that he did not have a chance of getting past the man; he could not touch him without being paid back tenfold. But then, Natsu's mind raced back to the giant room of the stone tunnels. When he had erupted into flames near Spud, before the man used defense magic, Natsu had not felt a retaliation of magic afterwards—at least, not from his onslaught of fire. His body had still been in pain from the torrent of physical attacks he had launched at Spud, but it had never gotten worse—his body had just grown numb…

…Were physical attacks the limit of the man's drain magic?

'Only one way to find out.'

He was yanked from his thoughts when the voice whistled, "Yer paws look awful, boy. Yee' shouldn't be walkin' on 'em." Natsu looked up with a grimace to see a large figure looming over him. Fear seeped through his haze of pain. The air inside the wagon was suddenly warm. Steam rose from Natsu's body.

No, that was not fear in the mage's eyes.

It was anger.

Spud's face, however, morphed into horror one second too late.

Instinct kicked in for both of the wizards. Spud scrambled backwards; Natsu was happy to help him leave.

"Get… awaaaay!" Natsu boomed, and his words were followed by a torrent of fire so wide and so hot that the crates behind Natsu started to heat up to a near-flame. The top to the wagon flew off, and the walls and crates in front of him and beside him were careened, indeed, away from the dragon slayer in splinters and cinders.

To put it simply, the cart would have been better off spontaneously combusting.

Wild snorts and whines bellowed out as the two giant purple boars pulling the cart galloped away, the two wooden shafts connecting them to the wagon burned and splintered into fragments. Shouts rang out as the giant pigs barreled away, running into foliage and scrambling over the mud and snow, connected by the remains of their restraints but still trying to escape the hell that had erupted out from behind them.

Once Natsu had finished, he sat for a moment, panting hard. His irises were mere slits, and his eyes were wide. He had been right! He was not in pain! He took a deep breath—his body was shaking from exertion. He blinked and found black edging into his vision. He cursed, more softly this time.

He had used up too much energy.

He could not faint now. He had to get up—now was his chance; he could escape. Natsu hauled himself to his feet, ignoring the pain pounding through his body, and took in his surroundings briefly. He was in the absolute middle of the woods, standing on a cart surrounded by manymore carts, which had all stopped after the carriage he was in had very well exploded. The boars that stood well over six feet tall were shifting and stomping the ground anxiously after the scene that had taken place. The drivers were staring at him, mouths agape and eyes wide open. It was daytime—it was noon. A light dusting of snow covered everything around him. Except, of course, the snow on the ground near his wagon, which had melted.

Natsu looked down to see Spud and another figure groaning in a sizzling, smoking heap. The one he could not name was the one that had a weird voice and smell—the one who had landed the first blow on him back at the Hoods' hideout. Other voices started to call out to them. They would be coming after him. Natsu inhaled deeply through his nose. He did not recognize anything, so he chose the most logical choice that came to his mind:

Pick a direction and run.

They had been traveling northeast. On a whim, Natsu chose to go south.

He jumped off of the cart, and suddenly regretted it. His feet ignited in pain, so much so that he cried out and stumbled, paused, and took a deep breath before he took off at a sprint. Well, more like a limping jog, but it was something. His legs ached from the span of time they had gone without being used. The chains still connected to the cuffs on his wrists and ankles flailed wildly as he pumped his body—one even whapped him right in the face—but he had not even noticed. He had to go.

He made it about six steps from the destroyed cart before calls rang out.

"Runner!" different voices cried.

Natsu ignored them, drove his legs as hard as he could, and grit his teeth through his pain. He swerved around a tree, twisting his body hard in order to avoid it, hearing a solid thock as a chain on his wrist hit it.

Most of his wounds tore right open, again.

Blood dribbled from his naked body and left a trail behind him—he cursed, again, as he realized they would be able to follow him. Through his pain, he tried to focus on running, but from his starvation, dehydration and terribly low energy levels, his mind was beginning to grow fuzzy. The edges of his vision were growing hazy and black, again.

'Just run,' a voice in his head said, and run Natsu did.

He had covered about fifty feet through the frozen forest before he abruptly erupted into pure, hot, white agony. He screwed his eyes shut and threw his face towards the sky, yelling. He tripped over something in the forest and landed hard on his face below a pine tree.

His skin was tearing. His eyes were burning. His bones were breaking. His hair was being ripped out. His stomach lurched and was pierced by a blade all at once, and he gagged as the nothingness in his insides tried to come up. He was being frozen and burned at the same time. Veins and muscles bulged from the strain on his body, and his hands clawed wildly for the ground in agony.

After a few seconds—they might as well have been years—Natsu vaguely realized that he was hollering in strangled cries.

His body was tearing itself apart.

He briefly was reminded of Ultear using the Arc of Time to forcibly tap into his Second Origin, before all thoughts were ignited in pure anguish.

His head was pounding—no, exploding. His stomach was cleaving open. His heart was stopping. His feet and hands were shattering. His backside was being peeled off of him. And then, his body detonated as if a bomb had gone off inside of him. There was nothing but agony. There was nothing but pain.

And then it was gone.

Natsu audibly gasped for the air that he realized he had not had access to moments prior. He found himself on his knees, which he immediately fell from, and landed hard on his side. His body shook—no, trembled. He felt wet—all of his cuts had been opened and sweat was coating him. He vaguely noted that the wetness on his face may have included fluid from his eyes as well as his blood. He did not care. It was over. The pain was gone.

Until something slammed into his back, and he cried out in surprise and pain.

He was rolled onto his stomach, and a hard, leather object stomped on his head and stayed there. Natsu groaned as the side of his face was forced into pine needles, dirt and snow.

"Boy—" A voice boomed in rage, "—I 'ought'ta tear yee' apart!"

Spud. They had caught him.

The boot was gone, and Natsu opened his eyes for the first time since his first wave of pain. They were bloodshot, and, yes, tears were slipping from them. But he had not willed them. No, they were simply tears of pain—not defeat.

He was hauled to his feet by several pairs of hands, and his grimy hair was yanked backwards, forcing his face to meet that of a southern man's. Natsu did not say anything, and his knees trembled from exhaustion. Had Spud's lackeys not been holding him upright, Natsu would have collapsed all over again.

But Natsu's bleeding mouth turned into a weak, lopsided smirk.

Spud's face was black and was sizzling around his eye as red glowed starkly in patches on his face and neck. Natsu had burned the man when he had blown him away from the cart.

Spud caught the pink-now-dull-pale-purple haired teenager's smile, and promptly raised a hand.

Black edged into Natsu's vision again, and all of his muscles strained at once as a kind of fire he was not used to coursed throughout his body. His back arched and his chest puffed outwards, his arms involuntarily yanking forward and pulling the five or six people holding him with them.

Seeing this, Spud released his magic, and the black faded away from Natsu's vision. Instead, the man took the large hand that had been casting his spell, and grabbed Natsu's face, turning his head so that their gazes met.

The dragon-slayer stared into Spud's brown eyes, and Spud almost hit the boy in frustration.

Natsu's body was completely limp and trembled violently from his exertion, while his chest heaved and shuddered for air. Blood nearly coated the boy, and his large, dark bruises seemed to have grown a shade blacker. But his eyes…

…His eyes were chips of pure green fire, burning with a determination and fierceness that Spud could clearly see from behind the boy's marred face.

Spud snarled something akin to an animal backed into a corner, and he released his hold on Natsu's face and stepped away.

"Get them weight ball thingies and tie 'em suckers on 'im. He's walkin' the rest of the day," Spud smiled wickedly. "If he wants'ta walk so bad, he won't stop 'till the cows come on home."

Natsu tugged weakly at the arms that dragged him forward. He could not go back. He had almost gotten away—he had been so close. He tried digging his heels into the cold ground but his ankles screamed in protest and his knees buckled. He was roughly slapped across the face (which hurt more than it should have, considering the many wounds decorating the dragon slayer's mug), and was lugged back to his feet, pulled forward by hands that squeezed too hard and pulled too crudely.

"St-stop," He croaked, but his voice was nothing more than a high-pitched rasp, and he doubted anyone had even heard him. Natsu's eyebrows furrowed furthermore as he protested again, stronger this time, which earned him a punch to the gut that had his bruises screaming and his lungs gasping for air. He wheezed and was straightened up, and then practically dragged back in the direction opposite that of which he had ran.

Natsu was brought back to the haphazard line of carts he had so desperately darted from, and he gritted his teeth and screwed his eyes shut. He could not even stand on his own. He had missed his chance to escape. Who knew when he would get another one? He cursed softly and looked up to the afternoon sun as he was shoved forward.

'Sorry, guys,' He thought, knowing his friends could not hear him but trying, anyways (maybe Warren was listening in), 'But I'll definitely get back to you. Soon.'

An hour later found Natsu with new shackles on his wrists and ankles. He had been given the past hour to rest and even got a drink of water from a canister (only because someone had argued with Spud that he would die if he did not get fluids soon), before he had been forced to his feet once again as soon as he could stand. His hands were chained in front of him, while his right ankle was chained to a single ball of solid metal. It was heavy enough and he was tired enough that his right leg was dragging behind him as he pulled it forward. The chains (they were thicker, this time, and there were two links instead of one as a precaution) on his wrists were connected to the cart in front of him so that he was pulled onward if he started lagging, which threw him off-balance multiple times. If that happened, a certain sadist would use his magic to send Natsu's body into a brief fit of pain—and drain away his magic.

Apparently, that was how they had caught him. Spud had a 'Tag' on Natsu (whatever that meant), so he could throw Natsu into a fit of pain from a distance—even track him for miles, as Spud had bragged. The pink-haired mage supposed that this was what had happened back in the hideout, when Natsu had still had his clothes and Spud had sent him into a torrent of pain without them even touching one another. Spud had a type of magic other than his drain magic—he had something more deadly. But what was it?

Behind him, Spud and the weird smelling man watched him from where they drove a different cart than the one he had burned up. Its remains were still an hour southwest of where they currently were.

Speaking of carts, there were dozens of them with either people chained to them just as Natsu was (minus the ball and chain) or inside the carts themselves as he had been earlier. None of them were daring to speak, from what Natsu's oversensitive ears could tell. They simply marched on in silence, their feet crunching in the currently-falling snow or squelching in the slush of mud and snow that was created by the line of hooves, wheels and feet ahead of them.

A frigid gust of wind rushed out of nowhere, ruffling Natsu's filthy hair and causing the nineteen-year-old's naked body to shiver. He was eventually numbed to both the feeling and pain in his feet, and the metal cuffs on his wrists were starting to freeze the blood on them and cause them to cling to his skin. Every breath came with a plume of frost, and his muscles strained with every step forward he took. Yet, the line of carts marched on.

Five hours in, Natsu collapsed.

At Spud's order, the carts stopped, and the burly man stomped up to the mage.

"Git up, boy," The man snarled, and grabbed a fistful of Natsu's hair, pulling his face towards the sky. Natsu was panting, his body shaking and his eyes half-lidded in exhaustion. He did not reply. "Boy, I said—"

"Spud," a voice interrupted, and the man dropped Natsu's head as if he had been burned. The mage simply gave a deep inhale and tried to ignore the ache in his body. His mind drifted in and out of consciousness. Somehow, Natsu found that his eyes had closed. His body was being shaken, but he found that he could not move. Numbness crawled through his body.

The dragon slayer sighed.

And then everything faded to nothing.

Me: Heyyyyyy I'm not dead! Sorry guys, I've sort of been in another country for the summer ^^; I meant to post before I left, buuut it didn't happen XD I am so sorry! Updates will hopefully pick up a little speed from here. Thank you for waiting on me, guys! Review if you want, I don't really care, lol (but, really, who DOESN'T like reviews?). Peace out and Pizza, guys :)