Chapter 10 - Utopia

A/N: Anyone still remember this? It's been so long, so I don't really expect anyone to still be reading, but… here's a new chapter.

"How did you get in here, who are you, who are you working for? Is this the work of the dissidents? It is, isn't it? What nefarious plot are they-" A voice behind her started blabbering.

"Please. Calm yourself", a second voice interjected. "We've been over this. There are no dissidents, that claim is ridiculous."

They were both still behind Lucy and though she tried to twist around to see them she wasn't particularly successful, as a strong grip on her upper arm prevented her from moving too much.

"There's two of them, now! And who knows how many more working from the shadows."

"There are no shadows. Making sure of that is the entire point of working here, or have you forgotten?"

"What, so you're janitors or something?", Lucy snapped. Which probably wasn't smart, but dammit, she was having a horrible day and getting captured for no discernible reason was just the rotten cherry upon the shit sundae.

But if they were janitors they were probably very good at it, the entire hallway was entirely spotless.

Except for the muddy footprints Lucy had left and the moisture that was still dripping off her from being in that miserable pit for too long.

"No we're not janitors", the second guy said, sounding somewhere between puzzled and slightly offended. "What we do is only available to you on a certain clearance level. Doranbolt, would you scan her number, please?"

"Yeah sure-" the first guy made a choked noise suddenly and then continued in a voice about two octaves higher, "it's not there! There's no number!"

"Don't be ridiculous, there's always a number", the other guy said, and Lucy vaguely wondered what number they were talking about. The only thing that came to mind would be her measurements, but somehow she doubted that's what they were talking about.

Really she was way too tired to take this crap seriously.

"No, look", the first guy said, and Lucy felt a tug on her right hand. Which was still cuffed to the left, so that was pulled along and and forced Lucy to turn if she didn't want her shoulder dislocated. Which she didn't want, incidentally.

"What? This is impossible", the second guy said, and then there was a click and Lucy felt her right hand be released from the handcuff. Her arm was wrenched forward, so she could see the back of her own hand and the much larger hand grabbing her wrist.

"What is the meaning of this? What is that symbol, where's your identification?" Finally the second guy had entered her field of vision and she could see he was wearing a uniform of white with some blue and gold embroidery. He was tall and skinny, wearing glasses and his black hair done up in a strange imitation of top knot…

And Lucy knew him!

Before she could quite place where she's met him, though the other guy stepped in front of her, too. He was wearing the same uniform, but his hair was cropped short and there was a pattern of scars crisscrossing down the side of his face.

"Mest!", Lucy burst out, surprised. It had been a while, but she was sure. It was that guy that had pretended to be a Fairy Tail magician during the S-class exam but he was actually working for the council.

Council, right, that's where she knew the other guy from, too. Lars… Lancelot… Lame… no, but something with L, definitely.

"Mest? What does that mean? Is that a secret code? Is it the name of the symbol? What is a Mest?", Mest asked curiously, staring down at Lucy's right hand in awe. Oh right, Mest was just an alias, his real name was… Doranbolt, right?

"If it were a secret, it would probably not be the first thing she said to you, now would it?", Leorio… no wait, Laharl! - interjected calmly. "But please, do answer, why is there no identification tag on the back of your hand? Was the pink symbol tattooed there in hopes of hiding your identity?"

"No, it's a guild mark, it's not for hiding anything", Lucy snapped. "It's there to show which guild I belong to."

"Guilt? So you admit to your crimes?", Doranbolt asked eagerly.

"What?", Lucy screeched. "That's not what I said at all. Guild. It's a group of people, not a feeling."

"See?", Doranbolt said, looking up at his partner with a gleam in his eyes. "A group! I told you there were more dissidents."

"That would be most unfortunate", Laharl noted, pushing up his glasses. He pushed up his glasses and fixed Lucy with a stern look. "If you are willing to inform us about the people working with you we might be able to negotiate a deal in your favor."

"Look, there's been a misunderstanding", Lucy said. "I'm not working with anyone I just sort of stumbled into here. I'm not a dissident or whatever, I don't even really know what you're talking about with numbers and symbols and stuff."

At that they both stared at her, wide eyed. While the back of her hand had been the center of attention before it was now her face and that was making her feel a little self conscious. She'd pretty much just stopped crying after leaving the other world, she was muddy and wet and her hair was probably a mess, too.

"S…Stumbled?", Doranbolt repeated, thunderstruck.

"And… and you expect us to believe that? The highest security institution in the world, and you say you don''t know why you're here?", Laharl asked breathlessly. Neither of them sounded like their brains were even capable of understanding what she was saying.

Highest security institution in the world… Great. Of course that had to happen. She could've ended up on a meadow full of frolicking sheep and unicorns but no. Of course she just had to turn herself into a criminal in a world she knew nothing of except that their highest security institution was very clean and well lit. Awesome.

"Well I don't really expect you to, because I know that it doesn't sound very probable, but you could try?", Lucy suggested hopefully, batting her eyelashes at them. "How about you just let me go, and I promise never to come back here again?"

Of course they hadn't taken that suggestion. They'd taken her to an interrogation room and then proceeded to stare at her incredulously as she described her travels through different worlds and how that had just sort of randomly led to her ending up here and couldn't they just be nice and let her go?

Turns out they couldn't.

They both seemed incredibly flummoxed about the whole situation and had told her they needed to look up her identification about a million times, and kept staring at her hand and Lucy really didn't have any clue what to tell them.

So twenty minutes after their interrogation found Lucy dressed in some shapeless baby blue clothes that were hideous, but dry and mud free so she was willing to accept them as an improvement. And she was locked up in a cell, that wasn't really an improvement.

Especially since they'd confiscated all of her belongings, including her keys, so she had no way to get herself out of this mess. Her portalling power would still need a few days, too.

But as long as she didn't have her keys she couldn't leave, so that didn't really matter much.

The cell was oddly shaped, not quite rectangular, but with rounded corners everywhere, making it look a little as though it had been carved out of an egg. There was a small bunk in one corner, which was made out of surprisingly soft material and a toilet with buttons that reacted to just a light dusting of her fingers over them.

But she was not here to admire these asshole's plumbing. Especially considering that the cell had three walls with gigantic holes in them that were covered by some sort of energy field. That was completely see through. So, if she wanted to try out the fancy toilet she'd have to do so in plain view of everyone.

And to think a few short days ago she'd yelled at her friends for going into her bathroom… no, not her bathroom. Not really her friends either…

Don't focus on that.

Instead she chose to look around, trying to see if there was anything helpful around. The biggest gap in the wall was the one she'd come in through, facing the corridor. The energy field was a light blue blur, but it was pretty easy to see through. The other two energy fields were more difficult to see out of, but seemed to lead to other cells similar to hers. The fields were darker, and reflected oddly which made them almost opaque.

The reaction upon touching them was pretty much the same for all of them. Which was a bit unsatisfactory, too, since she'd expected to be zapped or singed by it. Instead, she just bumped off it, as if she was a same poled magnet approaching. There was always a slight cushion of air between her and it, and no matter how hard she pushed she could never touch the barrier itself.

Pounding on it with her fists had a similar effect as a trampoline, and even though it didn't help her at all she did it a few more times because it was actually sort of funny.

For a while she'd been wondering if she felt more like screaming or crying, but now she'd discovered it. She felt like laughing like a crazy person.

"This sucks", she announced out loud to no one in particular.

"That's true", someone answered. She jumped a little when she realized the voice had come from the cell on her left and there was actually someone sitting in there, observing her with something like a smirk. Or maybe that was just the light refracting.

"Were you there the entire time?", Lucy asked cautiously.

"Yes, actually. Don't worry, it takes a bit of practice to see through the barriers. You'll get used to it."

"I don't want to get used to it. I don't want to stay here long enough for me to get used to it." She turned away from the force field she'd been pounding it, but not before giving it another swat for good measure.

"Well, in that case you're very unfortunate. You're never leaving here. Same as me", the other prisoner announced. For some reason his voice seemed familiar, but she had trouble placing it. Was that an effect of the barrier, too?

"What do you mean by that? I'm here because of a misunderstanding, as soon as it's sorted I'll be on my way", she declared.

"I sincerely doubt that. Once you're in here, there's no way out."

"But this isn't a prison. They wouldn't make such a big deal about breaking in if the main purpose was to keep people from breaking out", Lucy said with suspicion and closed in on the other cell. She could make out a man sitting on a bunk, but not much else. Who did he remind her of?

"Do you truly not know what this is? Then you're even more unfortunate than I thought. Stumbling into the one place it's absolutely forbidden to be, only to find out that once you've been here you can never be allowed to leave."

"Isn't that a tad too dramatic? So they caught me accidentally trespassing. I didn't do anything, it'll clear itself up." Not too mention that as soon as her portaling powers were regenerated she could just zap out of here. Only trouble was getting her keys back.

He let out a snort. "No, this will not sort itself out. No matter how you happened to get here, and it's hard to believe anyone could get here of all places on accident, once there's a chance you could've seen what's hidden inside of here there is no way they could ever let you walk free again." He bowed his head down, blue hair obscuring his face as he added, barely above a whisper, "At least I was aware of the danger when I chose to walk this path."

"Look, this is going to sound strange, but I'm not from this world." He looked up sharply at her, his features still too blurred for her to make out, but from his posture it was clear that he was listening intently. "I really don't know where we are, or what's so special about being here. What am I supposed to have seen that's so incredibly secret?"

"Not from this world…" he repeated, as if trying to taste the words for himself. "So you're either something beyond all of mine, all of everyone's imagination… or you're not of sound mind. Amnesiac, perhaps…?"

"Yeah, fine, let's go with amnesia. I don't know anything about this world and I need you to explain it to me. What could I be seeing here that would be worth taking away my freedom for?" Lucy conceded. The amnesia story might be good to remember. It would take a lot less time to get people to explain what the hell was going on if she just stuck with that.

"Freedom? Something like Freedom doesn't exist in this world", he said in sort of a wry tone. And in that moment Lucy knew exactly who she was talking to.

"What do you mean by that?", Lucy asked cautiously. Now that she knew what she was looking for, the blue hair and the red facial markings were pretty unmistakable, even through the barriers odd distortions. She really hoped he wasn't crazy.

"So you really don't know? Seems hard to fathom." He looked away wistfully for a moment, but then turned back. "I'll do my best to explain, then."

Of course assuming he might be crazy wasn't a nice thing to do, she reminded herself. She herself had barely interacted with Gerard, and not a whole lot with Mistgun either, knew both of them mostly from stories. But the things she'd heard about the tower of heaven, and then his amnesia… it was sort of ironic he'd supply her with that excuse.

"I'm not sure what you remember, or where it is you come from, but I have the suspicion you might know things working a little differently. Tell me, did you choose your own path in life?"

Lucy raised her eyebrows at the odd question. Thinking about her current situation, traveling through different worlds without any direction she'd have to say no. But everything leading up to that…

"Yes. I mean there's always unforeseen things that throw you off, but overall I picked what I wanted. Why do you ask?"

"Because I didn't. Because nobody I know did. Because there isn't a way to choose around here. Because all we can do is follow someone else's script and hope that there's some rhyme or reason to what we're doing."

"What script?", Lucy asked, stepping closer to the barrier, so that she was almost leaning on the invisible air cushion.

"That's the question, isn't it? The big one, the one that led me here…" Lucy must've been close enough to the barrier for him to make out her confused expression when he looked up. "I'm sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I?"

"When we're born, every single one of us, we get an ID tattooed on the back of our hand. And that number defines everything we are and everything we're going to be right from the start on." He held up his right hand for her to see. The string of numbers looked indistinct and blurred.

"Everything is defined from the start. Which school you're going to attend, what higher education you get, which job you're going to have one day, even how far up the hierarchy you can go. We're assigned hobbies and activities as well. And because it's defined that way for everyone, it's clear from the get go who you're going to meet, who your friends are going to be… when you apply for a marriage license they scan both your IDs and tell you if you're a match. I suspect that means they calculate who you're supposed to end up with, too, and make sure there are no deviations."

Lucy gaped at him through the force field and only realized how close she'd gotten when her nose was touching the repelling cushion of air.

"Seriously? And people are allowing that to happen?" Some shady government trying to tell you what to do… she doubted any of her opinionated friends would accept that for even a day. And nevermind them, she would never allow that, either. She remembered very clearly how her father had tried to control her, tried to decide who she should marry… It was no coincidence she'd run from that house with barely a glance back.

"They're encouraging it."

"What?", Lucy's shriek sounded annoying even to her own ears, but she just couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"People are telling their computers what they like to eat, so they just need to scan their IDs to decide where to go when they go out, or which food to buy. They're picking out music they like so the system can give them more to listen to. The less they have to decide on their own, the happier they are."

"That… doesn't sound true." But she knew he wasn't lying to her. "Are there rebellions? Resistance movements? Anarchists trying to bring down the oppression?"

"It's odd you'd assume that. Except for novels I've never even heard those words used. As far as I know the world has always been this way, and no one has ever been unsatisfied with it before."

"That doesn't make any sense. There has to be a time in history before they came up with that system, at least. And I can't believe no one's tried to break free before. Humans don't just accept it when someone's trying to restrain their free will."

"You're assuming this is happening against people's wills", he said, looking at her intently. The longer they were talking the easier it was getting for her to see him through the barrier. He seemed to be watching for her reactions closely.

"Isn't it? I mean, I guess some people would like the convenience, if they don't have to make the difficult decisions on their own, but that just can't be true for everybody."

"According to everything I've ever been taught, it is. People are happy with the way things are. No one I've talked to ever thought to question the wisdom of having everything decided for them. No one's ever understood why I'm questioning the system, or why anyone ever would. You're the first person I've talked to who seems to have a problem with the idea."

"For real? Maybe you've just been talking to the wrong people."

"I don't think that's the issue. I don't know anyone who has a job he doesn't love, no one who hasn't found friends they're very fond of, barely anyone who even knows people they don't like. The system puts everyone where they'd want to be, anyway, or at least that's what everyone seems to think. I have to admit, I like my job, too, I have a girlfriend whom I love, there's not really anything going wrong in my life, or anyone else's."

"There has to be a lie in there, somewhere, because I can't imagine you're too happy sitting in that prison cell, no matter how cool the buttons on that toilet are. And happily following the perfect plan to lead the perfect life the perfect system that puts everyone exactly where they want to be shouldn't land you here, either."

Gerard put his head down and let out a chuckle. "Very observant of you, yes. I'm something of an aberration within this world. Because I'm questioning it."

"And they locked you up for questioning?"

"No, they locked me up for coming here. Same as you."

"And what's so special about this place? Why did you go here if like you said, once you're here you can never leave?", Lucy asked.

"This is where they do it. This is where the IDs come from, this is where all the predictions come from, this is where they calculate everyone's life. And I had to find out how they do it, how they control it, where all this data comes from…" There was a somewhat manic glint in Gerard's eyes as he said that and Lucy wasn't sure she was comfortable with him looking like hta.t

"So, did you find it? How do they do it?", Lucy asked. At that question his face fell and he stared down at the ground.

"I don't know, I never got far enough", Gerard admitted. "I messed up my only chance, and now I'll never know. But at least I can live out my days here knowing that I'm not following their script anymore. That's something, at least."

"Well you don't really know that, maybe they caught you before you got anywhere because they'd calculated you'd be coming", Lucy said. As she heard herself say it she realized that was a pretty mean thing to say. But then another thought struck her before she could apologize. "Wait, you said you had a girlfriend that you love? Did you know you might never come back to her if you went here before you did it?"

"I did know that", Gerard said. "But I just couldn't keep living like that."

"Like what? Happily?"

"No… Ever since I've been little and told about this system I've been questioning it. And questioning myself. Do you have any idea how unsettling it is to make decisions and never know if they're really yours? Falling in love and never knowing if you love them because you choose to, or because someone calculated that you should? It's been driving me crazy, bit by bit. And knowing that no one else feels this way really did make me feel like I was losing my mind."

He stood up at that point and started pacing his cell.

"I had everything planned out so well. Years of preparation went into this, because I had to do it on my own, because not a single person I've talked to about this could understand my worries."

"All my life I've been surrounded by people, but still alone. I love my girlfriend, but even she didn't understand me when I talked to her about it." He gave a bark of laughter that didn't sound happy at all. "Maybe I'm defective. She's probably better off this way, without me…"

Lucy felt like she should say something to that, but she wasn't sure what. Telling him he wasn't right meant his girlfriend wasn't better off without him, and thus it was cruel of him to leave her this way, and he couldn't do anything about it, now, and telling him he was right and she was better off without him was just as wrong.

"But", he said as he suddenly spun around and stalked back to the barrier separating their cells. "You understand, don't you? What's wrong with this world? You see it, too, right? Free will isn't fiction, is it?"

He came at her so intently that Lucy was glad there was a barrier between them. Even so she had to fight the urge to take a step back. He'd been feeling ostracized from everyone else his entire life, and he'd spent who knew how long in this cell, he was allowed to come across slightly unhinged, that didn't invalidate what he was saying.

"If it's really like you say then this is really weird", Lucy agreed tentatively. "Where I come from it's not like that at all, and I don't think I'd want to live in a world where I didn't get to decide my own destiny."

He froze for a moment as she talked, but then a large smile spread across his face as he listened to her. "Thank you", he said breathlessly and took a few steps back from the barrier. "Thank you. You don't even know how much it means to me to hear someone say that. Thank you."

He plopped bonelessly back onto his cot, just grinning into the open air as though he couldn't believe his luck of finally having found someone who agreed with him.

"So now I want to hear your story", he said, looking at her expectantly, now in a much brighter mood then when she'd first noticed him.

"Okay well you might have trouble believing it, but let's see…"

"So, if you can create portals to other worlds, can't you create a portal from the world inside the cell to the world out in the hallway?", he asked curiously after she was done.

"What? Don't be ridiculous, that's not how it works!", Lucy protested.

"I see. Well it would've been nice", he said with a disappointed sigh, dropping the topic.

But maybe… Lucy looked at her right hand thoughtfully.

The next few days passed relatively uneventfully. Doranbolt and Laharl both came back several times each to look at her hand, trying to find her identification code even though she kept telling them that she'd never had one so they wouldn't be able to find any remnants or anything. Apparently it was difficult to decide how to deal with her when they didn't know who she was.

She refrained from telling them her name, because she didn't want to cause trouble for her counterpart in this world if there was one. She might have a different name, anyway, but Lucy didn't want to risk it.

Some other people that Lucy didn't know came by to bring food, too, and they were all incredibly interested in her hand, too, because apparently seeing a hand that didn't have a number on it was the most amazing thing ever. She allowed it because they got her extra treats.

Who knew the back of her hand could be more successfull than all of her feminine wiles combined? To be honest she was a little miffed about that.

She'd asked Gerard if he had any genius plan for escaping and it turned out that no. Apparently he'd been stuck thinking that he was just going to stay here and spend the rest of his days sitting in a cell thinking he was crazy for criticizing the way things were going.

For a "dissenter" he was a bit lacking in initiative if you asked Lucy.

If Lucy wanted to start a revolution she'd do way better. She'd write passionate speeches and then tell her friends to go wreck some shit. Well she'd participate in the wrecking herself, too, of course.

By summoning spirits to do some wrecking for her…

But she wasn't really here to start a revolution. All she really knew about this world was what Gerard had told her, and while it was evidently true that everyone had a number on their hand that didn't necessarily mean he wasn't crazy, anyway. Maybe letting him out would be a bad idea anyway, and Lucy was in absolutely no position to judge.

Still, if she found a way to get out of here it would be pretty horrible of her to just leave him in his cell since he'd been really nice to her and everything. But letting a revolutionary out might not be completely beneficial to this world…

Her biggest concern was getting her keys back, though. She could already feel her portal magic returning. It was getting quicker in every world, and she would probably be able to make one pretty soon. But leaving her keys behind was a horrifying thing to consider.

Finding her spirits again had been the first hint of normality, and without their intervention she'd have been in big trouble already. She thought of the smell of her own burning skin and tried not to think too hard of how she'd heard Loke scream back in that one world.

So she definitely had to get out of that cell and couldn't just leave into the next world.

Gerard hadn't asked her about his idea of portaling to the hallway again, because he just took everything she said at face value. And considering that he was apparently one of the most critically thinking people in this entire world Lucy couldn't help but wonder how easy it would be to con everyone here. Not that she would ever con people, it was just a thought experiment.

The portalling power wasn't fully loaded yet, she knew she couldn't get to another world this way. So really now was the only time to try unless she wanted to risk leaving without her keys.

It was a simple idea, but Lucy was embarrassed to admit that it never would've occurred to her if Gerard hadn't mentioned it. But she wasn't sure she'd be able to control it enough. Thus far she'd always tried to tell her powers to get her home and that hadn't worked out at all, but the hallway had to be an easier target than a whole other world.

"I'm gonna try something", Lucy announced. "Keep a look out, tell me if anyone comes."

"Of course. But what do you want to try, I thought you'd figured out the plumbing by now?", Gerard inquired. She'd asked him to keep watch every time she used the toilet, because she really didn't want anyone to stare at her while she did that.

"It's not about the toilet", Lucy said, but didn't elaborate further on what it was about. She didn't want to get his hopes up when she had no clue if she could deliver.

She took a deep breath and concentrated on the magic she could feel running through her hand. It felt like it was pulsing, well not quite as regular as that, more like, flowing? Dancing? She tried to separate the power, not call upon all of it at once, to minimize the risk of getting somewhere else.

A few steps took her to the only solid wall of the cell. Her portals didn't really need walls to stand, but she still wasn't sure what that force field did and if it might interfere with her magic. No one here seemed to know anything about magic so they probably hadn't taken any precautions for it, but it always payed to be careful.

Unless your preferred method of getting stuff done was just bursting in and smashing everything, of course.

Lucy took a lose stance, centered herself, and focused with all her might on the hallway in front of her cell. And then she released part of the power, painting her hand in a circle in front of her in the familiar motion.

And it turned into a glowing circle in front of her, through which she could see the outside of her cell and herself through the forcefield, looking at the cell and herself through the forcefield looking at the… it kept recurring like that, and it was a bit dizzying to see.

She spun around and saw almost she same picture through the force field where a second glowing circle reflected her and her view through she cell.

She couldn't suppress an excited squeal and held her hand through the portal, which waved at her through the wall as she looked back out at the hallway.

This was quite possibly one of the coolest things she'd ever done.

She stepped through the portal and found herself outside, looking back at the cell she'd spent the last two days in. Looking to her right she saw Gerard stare at her through the force field. His features were a lot easier to make out through the front force field than the side one and Lucy had to snort at his dropped jaw and gigantic eyes.

"But… I thought you couldn't do that!", he gasped out completely perplexed.

"Don't underestimate me", Lucy said with a wink.

"You underestimated you!", he protested.

Lucy waved it off. "Well I'm always open to learning new things", she said. "Now let's see if I can get you out of there, too."

"You… you would? Really?" His eyes grew even bigger and he looked so mesmerized with hr that Lucy felt a bit uncomfortable at that.

"Not if you don't want me to. But I thought you wanted to start a revolution?"

"Not… necessarily."

"Well anyway I don't know if I can, so don't thank me yet", Lucy said. She wasn't quite sure how to go about this, but she still had some power left.

Concentrating on the wall behind him she grabbed the side of the portal she was standing in front of. An instant later the portal in her old cell vanished, and there was a strange feeling of airlessness at Lucy's fingertips.

But another moment later the door reappeared behind Gerard and he blinked at it.

And then blinked some more.

Before blinking again.

"Uh… you know it's not gonna just suck you out here", Lucy said. "You do kind of have to step through it."

"I just, I….", He stammered, still frozen to the spot. "All the time we were talking, everything you said, I never realized… Magic it never… I wanted to believe, but it sounded to far fetched, so… How truly small my mind has always been, I never knew."

"Okay, I guess, but, you know we should probably get going before anyone finds us", Lucy suggested. She could sort of understand that he needed a moment to be overwhelmed, after all who wouldn't be overwhelmed by her amazing powers? Still she knew her powers wouldn't be all that helpful if someone found them, because she didn't have her keys back yet, so that needed to be the first order of business.

"…Right", he said and finally went over to the portal. He tentatively stretched out his hand which promptly appeared behind Lucy.

If left to his own devices this would probably still take a while because he was so star struck by the magic, Lucy reasoned.

She grabbed the hand and yanked him through, elegantly sidestepping when he stumbled and landed on the corridor floor face first.

"Sorry, we really need to get going", Lucy explained and then pulled him up. "Do you have any idea where they might have put my stuff, I really need it back?"

"I don't know exactly, but I have a theory, at least", he said, dusting off his pants. That were the same boring baby blue material as the ones Lucy was wearing right now.

"Okay let's hope you're right. Lead the way", Lucy instructed. Gerard nodded and then took off down the corridor.

Lucy ran after him, hoping very very hard that they wouldn't meet anyone. He seemed to be very determined as to where he wanted to go, at least.

After several twists and turns they arrived at the glowing doorway that Lucy had arrived at, where she'd been captured only a few moments after arriving, and going there didn't really seem to be a great idea after just having escaped her cell.

Just as Gerard slid to a stop in front of that doorway Doranbolt and Laharl came out of there.

Perfect.

Gerard stared at them, and they stared back, everyone frozen for a moment. Lucy decided to take that chance and to turn around and escape, but unfortunately she found herself face to chest with a large guy in the same uniform as the other two. Shit.

"Halt!", Laharl called out, sounding pretty stunned. "How is this possible, how did you escape?"

"Uh… guard left the key?", Lucy suggested. Which was of course completely ridiculous because there had never been a single key involved not in locking her up and certainly not in escaping.

"Which guard?", Doranbolt asked confused.

"There are no keys!", Laharl interjected.

"Just like there are no dissenters? Look at them, they definitely exist", he said, gesturing at Lucy and Gerard.

"I'd never assumed out facilities wouldn't be sufficient to hold them, what do we do now?", Laharl wondered out loud.

Lucy was half tempted to suggest they just let them go, since they couldn't hold them anyway, but before she had a chance to say anything the glowing from the room behind the two guards or whatever they really were intensified and a distorted voice called out,

"Is that the girl you were talking about? The one the items you just showed me belong to?"

Everyone in the hallway froze, Gerard with wide eyes as if a gigantic revelation had just occurred and the guards all stared at the door with something like reverence in their eyes. Lucy herself lit up at the mention of items, because if her items were there maybe there was a chance that she could get them back now.

If she could get past the guards and whoever was behind that door, of course, but hey, being a Fairy Tail magician was all about positive thinking. Also friendship and property destruction but these didn't matter so much at the moment.

"Yes, sir, ma'm it is her", Laharl responded, and Doranbolt next to him nodded enthusiastically even though at the angle he was standing whoever was in that room had no hope of seeing him.

"Bring her inside, I want to talk to her", the mysterious voice said. Now that Laharl had called it "ma'm" Lucy realized it did sound vaguely female,

"Of course, right away, it'll take but a moment", Laharl said, and Doranbolt grabbed her arm and pushed her through the doorway.

"You should really work on your manners, I would've come if you'd asked!", Lucy yelled at him, but before he had any chance of answering a door suddenly materialized out of thin air, cutting her inside the room off from the people in the corridor.

A second after it appeared it looked as though the door had always been a part of the wall, if she hadn't been staring at it Lucy never would've been able to tell where the doorway had even been.

"These items are not from this world, and neither are you", the voice stated. It sounded clearer now, but it was still ringing oddly.

Lucy was suddenly filled with trepidation, because she really wasn't sure she wanted to face whoever was behind her in that room now, especially considering how all the guys outside had acted at hearing her voice.

But there was no way around it now.

Lucy slowly turned around to survey the room. It wasn't as well lit as the rest of the complex, the only light coming from a gigantic glowing contraption in the middle of the room that seemed to consist of blue strings of light moving from the ceiling down to the floor. It painted a striped pattern of light and shadow on the contents of the room. There was a strange sensation coming of it, one that Lucy found familiar but she couldn't quite place.

Next to the column of light there was a table on top of which Lucy saw her belt and her etoile fleuve and most importantly her keys. She lit up as she saw that, but her enthusiasm was curbed when she finally spotted the owner of the voice.

It was less of a person and more of an outline of one, a woman apparently, slightly smaller than Lucy herself. The stellar mage could see right through the shape of the woman, whose edges seemed to be illuminated with the same blue light as the contraption in the room while the rest of her was slightly darker, making the wall behind her appear as though Lucy was looking at it through sunglasses.

"How did you get here, who sent you? From the nature of the items I assume you're somewhere from the epsilon world cluster, sending you here would use a tremendous amount of energy. All to sabotage this project?"

"I… don't really know what you're talking about, to be honest. I've been sort of lost between different worlds for a while, I just ended up here on accident", Lucy tried to explain.

"Ridiculous. One does not get lost between worlds travelling from one to the other is an incredibly complicated and draining task, you had to be aiming for this one. Why? Where did you get the energy? Who seeks to disturb this mission? I will personally see them crushed. No one else should have the required resources."

Lucy really didn't like the sound of that. "Look, I'm sorry I messed with your project or whatever, it really wasn't my intention, I don't want to be here at all, I just want to go home. If you just give me a few more days I can leave and I'll be out of your hair." If she had hair, that was. The outline looked like it at least.

"Not good enough", the woman's shape said frostily. Every now and then strips of light meandered from her to the contraption and Lucy realized that she seemed to be tethered to it. "Who put you here, what exactly is your mission, and how much damage did you cause before you were caught? You should not try to test my patience."

"I didn't do anything, they caught me the second I got here", Lucy tried to defend herself. Her right hand was itching and the rubbed it on the side of her leg. "No one put me here, well I sort of did myself, but I really didn't mean any harm by it!"

"No one put themselves anywhere. You see how much energy is needed just to transfer my image into this world? You expect me to believe that you, without any help, jumped here?"

"You're not really here", Lucy realized, staring at the connection between the glowing column and the woman's shape. "You're a projection!"

"Of course I am. Don't try to pretend that an agent of an organization with the means to transport you this far only recognized that fact just now."

"I keep telling you, I'm not an agent of anything", Lucy said. Her hand wasn't really itching anymore, now it felt more like a tingling. But it felt like it was getting stronger, demanding more of her attention when she really didn't have any to spare on that.

"Saying something ridiculous several times doesn't make it any more true", the woman said haughtily. Lucy couldn't see her face, but she was doing a good job conveying her sneer by sound alone.

"And covering your ears saying lalala really loud doesn't mean all other sound go away. I'm sorry you don't like what I'm saying, but that doesn't make it any less true, and I'm not going to start inventing a story to make you feel better", Lucy said. She looked down at her tingling hand and finally realized what was going on. And why that contraption looked so familiar.

It hadn't looked exactly like this at that time, it had been unstable, glowing and spinning madly, but she recognized the feel of it. She'd been using the energy of a similar device for all her travels thus far, a similar device had thrown her into this mess to begin with.

And that meant…

"Well if you'll excuse me I don't really have time to be arguing with you, I need to get home", Lucy announced and sauntered over to the desk where her things were. She took them without any opposition from the woman's projection that probably couldn't interfere with her physically even if she wanted to.

"We're not done with this conversation and this room has no doors, you're not going anywhere", the projection spat venomously.

"Well, if it doesn't have any doors", Lucy said, strapping her belt around herself and attaching her pouch of keys to it after having made sure they were all there. "Then I just need to make one myself, don't I?"

She attached the etoile fleuve to her belt, and knew she probably looked ridiculous with that damned blue outfit, but it didn't matter all that much.

"That's not within your power."

"Guess you're going to be surprised then", Lucy said, and went to touch the contraption. The energy hummed, responding to the power she'd aquired and it was hers for the taking with barely any need to concentrate on it.

"What are you doing? That's impossible how is that…" The projection screeched.

But Lucy just winked at her and swung her hand in the air, creating a new portal ready to take her to whichever world it happened to take her.

"You're not getting away that easily!", the woman roared and just as Lucy stepped through the portal there was a weird noise and shaking, but it was too late for her to turn around and see what was going on there.

Despite whatever had just happened she arrived at the next world unscathed, as far as she could tell. She was in a room full of machines and blinking lights, some chairs were scattered about, but she couldn't see anyone.

"Hello?", she asked tentatively. Hopefully there was no one there…

Was her last thought before something heavy hit her over the back of the head and she lost consciousness.

A/N: It's been a while since I've really had anything to do with Fairy Tail, I sincerely hope this isn't too bad.

I'm not making any promises on when the next chapter is coming, but I've started a rhythm of updating something each week (mostly One Piece) and I'm including this in that so hopefully it won't be as long till the next chapter.

Thanks to everyone who supported this, and special thanks for taking the time to read this far after so long.

Title inspiration comes from "Utopia" by Within Temptation (and also the fact that it's a utopic setting…). Also fitting are the songs "Still Alive" and "Want you gone" by Ellen McLain, for reasons that should be obvious if you know those songs.

Let me know what you think and feel free to yell at me for how long this took…