notes: this is more serious. woo.

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" The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. " — HP Lovecraft

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v. poltergeist at denny's

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Gray sits at a back-corner booth at the local Denny's. Blearily, he checks the time on his phone—2:32 AM—and leans back in the seat with a heavy sigh. This was one of the things about being friends with Lucy Heartfilia. She was mostly oblivious to like, everything, but she was also weirdly paranoid about the most random shit. See, Gray was a simple man of 22 years. He liked his alcohol hard, his toaster strudel crisp, and he only owned three pairs of jeans that he rotated weekly to avoid suspicion from peers and family members. His friend Lucy, however, was a bit of a nut, bless her heart. His set ringtone for her just so happens to be the X-Files theme.

Recently, she had decided to take an interest in the spooky side of life. Why on God's green earth, he did not know, but it made her happy, so he was happy. Lucy has gone through a significant amount of Bad Things in her life, so if researching and investigating freaky as hell shit made her smile, then he was more than happy to support her weird endeavors. He had, however, failed to account for her calling him up in the unholy hours of the night to secretly meet her at a clandestine and nondescript location with one of his mom's books on the occult.

See, here was another thing about Gray Fullbuster: his adoptive mother was a professor of the occult at the University of Magnolia. His own major just so happened to be psychology, but growing up with Ur telling him about everything from pagan child sacrifices to lectures on symbology over breakfast had left him with a somewhat vast knowledge on the subject. Lucy had apparently decided to tap into him as a human resource, and she had not wanted to wait. So, here he was: alone in a booth at Denny's in the middle of the night in his pajama pants with nothing but a plate of half-eaten blueberry pancakes and a thick-ass reference guide to cult symbology to keep him company.

That is, until Lucy slides into the booth across from him. She eyes Gray, fork halfway to his mouth and glasses about to slide off his nose, then the ancient text on the table. "Thanks for meeting me here on such short notice. Listen, I need you to help me identify something."

Adjusting his glasses, Gray shoves the bite into his mouth and nods at her. "Ai'ight. Show me what you're packing." Apparently, whatever it was, Lucy had decided it was important to get straight down to business.

Glancing around, Lucy proceeds to pull a worn and torn piece of paper from her pocket and slides it across the table, face down. Raising a brow at her secretive antics, Gray discreetly opens the paper and peers down at the drawing inside. "This is some shitty symbolistic work," he comments as he chews. "It's a little weird that these are all drawn separately instead of together in some semblance of a creature or something. The detailing is spotty but it's pretty damn clear about its message. Where'd you find this?"

"In some boxes of stuff leftover from members of the Tower of Heaven," she admits, fidgeting. "But it doesn't fit with their usual belief system and stuff. Gray, have you ever seen anything like this before?"

He scratches at the stubble forming on his jawline. "Something about it seems familiar, but I ain't sure what exactly it's from. If you look a little closer at the wing here, there's markings that look to me like runes. They'll probably give us more insight into wherever the fuck this is from, or what it is. I can ask Ur, too. She's at that conference for a few days, but I can call her."

Lucy nods in response, eyeing his half-eaten pancakes. He snorts in amusement before sliding them across the table to her, and her eyes light up with delight. "So, can I ask what all this secrecy is about? You act like we're at a damn covert rendezvous for the government or something. Come on, Mulder. Talk to me."

While it was true that Gray had decided that this occult vlogging project of hers was a way to help her deal with all the absolute shit that had been going on in her life, something seemed off. He couldn't quite pinpoint the issue, but it sort of felt like he was in a shady fish restaurant that was secretly an underground drug operational base. On the surface things seemed normal, but deep down, he knew they were not. The question was: what had Lucy so freaked out that she had called him in the middle of the night to meet her at a restaurant on the outskirts of town? Because everyone knew that you don't just go to Denny's—you end up there. So, how had they ended up here?

She looks at him then, but it's a totally different way from how she's ever viewed him before. It almost seems like she's searching his very soul—like she could see right through him. She is staring up at him through her lashes and he has never felt so exposed. "Gray, do you think I'm crazy?"

Gray blinks at her, taken aback for a moment. The thought had never even once crossed his mind. Well, that wasn't entirely true, but sometimes he just questioned her judgment in befriending Natsu because he was, well, a bastard. "No? Lucy, why the hell would you even ask that?"

"Because," she sucks in a breath, and it slides between her teeth like a sheet of metal. "Because I think Natsu thinks I'm crazy. Like...he goes with me to places and he isn't afraid. He doesn't believe in anything except hot sauce and that the Mayans were ahead of their time. He's a freaking maniac. He shows no fear. Gray. We went to Phantom Lodge—you know, that place—but he wasn't fazed at all."

Yeah, that sounded about right. Gray rolls his eyes, but Lucy isn't done. "Gray, there was something there. The whole time I felt this heavy weight and fear and I couldn't shake it until we left. I...it was like something else was there—something other than us. But Natsu doesn't ever notice anything. He probably thinks I'm just afraid of everything. And then I found this symbol, and I don't know. Looking at it gives me this sense of overwhelming dread. Geez, I really do sound like a lunatic."

To be completely honest, Gray had questioned Lucy's choice in judgment when she had announced this little enterprise adventure of hers, and that was because she had always been pretty jumpy. She couldn't make it through any horror movie, and she had her eyes closed the entire time they went to a haunted maze on Halloween. However, he had never doubted her sanity.

Sighing, he reaches for her hand. "Lucy, listen. One time I witnessed Natsu crush ten aluminum cans using only his forehead and the wall of Gajeel's garage. Last week, Ur told Lyon, Ultear, and me about a cult that believed they could change the flow of time with a black bouncy ball. Trust me, you're not crazy. I think what you're doing is pretty cool."

"Thanks," she sniffs, then suddenly snaps a photo of him.

"What the hell? It's 3 am, don't tell me this is for your scrapbook."

Lucy grins at him, and it almost seems like she wasn't unsure of herself at all. "No. It's for your Tinder. Also, I called you here for another reason. Did you know this Denny's is supposedly haunted by the poltergeist of an angered worker who died a horrid death on the grill. They say you can still see his burned and batter-encrusted face as he haunts this place."

Gray squints at her through his glasses. "Now that does sound like bullshit to me. Hand over the phone, Lucy, or delete the photo."

"Don't think so!" she winks at him. "Have fun with the poltergeist! They say he's active around 3 am!"

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After Gray pays the bill and chases Lucy out of the goddamned Denny's to delete his picture, a figure in the booth behind them pulls out their phone.

"It's me. I have some information regarding the END."

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[ i've been facing trouble almost all my life ]

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tbc.