Lucy smelt the pub before she saw it. The stench of beer and blood bled into her nose and triggered her gag reflex. The pathetic little building was leaning slightly to the right, which didn't give her any confidence about her father's attempts in purchasing it. 'What is he thinking? This place won't make more than my weekly allowance in one year.'

She smiled bitterly. Her father was the head of the Heartfilia family and business, and had been trying to buy this pub for months. The owner, however, refused to fork over the missing piece to her father's real estate empire. Lucy didn't care one bit, but her father had demanded that she go and try to persuade the owner on his behalf. After an hour of begging and negotiating, he finally wore her down, and she left fuming. There was only one problem: Lucy still had no intention of persuading anyone to do anything. She just wanted to finish her senior year of high school, go to college, and leave for a place the Heartfilia name couldn't reach.

Lucy was still working on that last part.

As she neared the doors, a body flew through a window, nearly toppling her to the ground. She shrieked and leapt out of its trajectory. It groaned and shot back through a second window before she could get a good look at it, yelling loud enough to make her own throat hurt. Loud cheers screamed back, enticing Lucy to enter. 'Now that I think about it, I don't know anything about this place,' she realized, feeling almost embarrassed. 'No,' she scolded herself. This was her father's problem, not her's.

The inside was packed with people, easily exceeding two hundred. They swarmed around a space in the middle of the room, or hovering around a small bar pushed in the corner. Everyone was cheering and yelling. Money, food, and alcohol was littered across the floor, upturned chairs and overturned tables scattered in the corner. The walls slanted just as noticeably as they did outside, and the roof leaked what Lucy hoped was water. More shouts rang out from the crowd, piquing her curiosity.

She shoved and jostled her a path through the crowd, ignoring the wolf whistles and hungry eyes focused on her chest, which was straining against her blue halter top. "Perverts," she grumbled to herself, feeling her cheeks flush.

After what seemed like hours, she reached the inner ring of the horde of people. Two people danced across a raised platform, and it took a moment for her to recognize that they were fighting. One of the fighters was the man who had crashed through the window. His opponent, however, was too fast for her to see clearly. His body moved so fluidly it was like he had been put on fast-forward. The window crasher didn't stand a chance, his opponent's fists cracking against his ribs, his shoulder, his face. In the blink of an eye, his legs were swept out from under him and he was kicked off the mat. A bell signaled the end of the match, bringing the cheers to their climax.

Ignoring the writhing drunkards, Lucy forced her way closer to the mysterious winner. The celebrators' jerky movements hid him from her view, simultaneously pushing her away. 'It's like tug-of-war,' she thought miserably.

Sirens wailed in her ears, silencing and stilling the hub of activity and noise. 'Oh, great,' Lucy thought. 'Of course, I had to come to an illegally operating fight club.' The pub became a realm of organized panic, with people filing through exits that Lucy hadn't noticed when she'd walked in. She watched in awe as the room emptied in less than a minute. Only a few passed out drunks and bartenders remained, excluding herself.

A rough hand latched around her wrist and tugged, nearly scaring Lucy out of her wits. She spun around to see a boy around her age with no shirt on and scars on his muscled chest. She blushed, trying to look up and failing miserably. "Hey, I'm guessing you're new here, but we gotta go. They'll be here any second, and they don't exactly smile upon organized bar fights." She nodded dumbly, not noticing his mischievous smirk. He looped his arm around her waist and threw her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, eliciting a shriek that shredded her throat and hopefully his ears. She pounded on his back as he raced through the streets like she weighed nothing. Giving up on trying to stop him, she allowed herself to be carried to wherever he was taking her. She hung from his shoulder, swaying to the steady pace of his feet.