Fairy Tail: Lost One

Chapter 54: This Isn’t What It Looks Like

Rudra, still sitting on the bench, looked at the boy standing in front of him and blinked. "...Are you talking to me?"

The boy tilted his head, something like nervous amusement flickering across his face despite everything. "Is there anyone else sitting in front of me?"

Fair point. Rudra glanced left, then right, confirming the bench was, in fact, empty except for himself.

"Alright." He straightened slightly, curiosity creeping past the laziness. "So what is it you need from me?"

The boy hesitated — just a flicker, a breath — before bowing low, formal in a way that felt rehearsed, like he’d practiced this moment the whole walk over just to work up the nerve.

"Can you help me, sir?"

Rudra studied him for a long moment, genuinely at a loss. Other than accidentally saving this kid’s life a week ago — purely as a side effect of robbing three men who happened to be standing on top of him at the time — he hadn’t done anything particularly noteworthy. Nothing that should’ve earned a return visit, let alone this much desperation in a stranger’s eyes.

"Why exactly are you asking me for help?"

Then it clicked, and something in his chest sank slightly.

Wait. "Is this because I saved him?"

"Maybe," System offered, entirely unhelpfully.

I wasn’t even there to save him, Rudra thought, faintly exasperated. I was there to rob some guys who happened to be standing on top of him.

"You did, technically, save him," System pointed out, an edge of amusement creeping into its tone. "And now he’s here, hoping you’ll do it again. Rather touching, really."

Rudra sighed internally, long and heavy, already feeling the peaceful afternoon slipping further away.

"It’s because you’re strong," the boy said, straightening back up. His voice wavered slightly, but his eyes — wide, earnest, carrying a weight far too heavy for someone his age — didn’t waver at all.

Rudra raised both hands quickly, forcing an easy, dismissive smile. "Sorry to burst your bubble, kid, but I’m actually pretty weak. Last time I only managed to beat those guys because I caught them off guard. Ambushed them from behind, more or less." He shrugged, aiming for harmless and unremarkable. "Wouldn’t stand much of a chance in a real fight."

"Stop the cap."

Shut up, Rudra shot back internally, expression perfectly composed, not a single muscle betraying the lie.

The boy didn’t look convinced. If anything, something in his face tightened — the particular quiet devastation of a kid who’d clearly run out of other options, and had been counting, more than he probably should have, on this one working.

"Please, sir." His voice dropped, smaller now, stripped of the earlier rehearsed formality. "I don’t have anyone else to ask."

Rudra, who’d already been halfway through crafting some excuse to send the kid on his way, found the words dying in his throat. He studied the boy’s face for a moment, then let out a quiet breath.

"Fine. Tell me what you need help with."

The reaction was immediate. The boy dropped to both knees right there on the ground, clasping Rudra’s hand between both of his own, repeating "thank you, sir, thank you" in a rapid, breathless stream.

"Don’t thank me yet, kid." Rudra pulled his hand back, mildly alarmed by the sheer intensity of gratitude. "I haven’t agreed to actually help. I’ll decide that after I hear you out."

The boy either didn’t register the warning or simply didn’t care, continuing to mutter his thanks regardless.

Rudra sighed, stood, and grabbed the kid by the collar, hauling him up off the ground and depositing him unceremoniously onto the bench beside him. He took his own seat again a moment later.

"Alright," he said. "Start talking."

___________

By the time the sun slowly began setting, it cast a long shadow stretching out from the bench and across the empty street.

Rudra sat quietly, gaze fixed on the sinking light, letting the boy talk himself out. Beside him, the sound of quiet crying filled the silence — hitched breaths, the occasional muffled sob the kid was clearly trying, and failing, to hold back.

He didn’t interrupt. Didn’t offer empty reassurances either. Just sat there, watching the sky bleed orange, giving the boy the time he needed.

A few more minutes passed before the crying finally subsided into shaky, uneven breaths. The boy wiped his face roughly with his sleeve and looked up at Rudra, eyes red-rimmed, voice cracking on every word.

"Please. Save my sister."

Rudra didn’t respond immediately. He simply rose from the bench, brushing off his coat.

"Give me a picture of her," he said, holding out a hand.

The boy fumbled through his pocket with trembling fingers and produced a small, worn photograph, pressing it into Rudra’s palm like it was the last solid thing he had left.

Rudra glanced at it once, expression unreadable, then tucked it away and turned to leave.

He paused after only a few steps, not bothering to look back.

"Go home. Start making dinner." His voice was flat, almost bored. "By the time you’re done, your sister will be home."

Before the boy could respond, his outline had already blurred at the edges, dissolving into the dimming light of the street — and then he was simply gone.

A moment later, his figure reappeared atop a tall bell tower overlooking the city, the horizon painted in fading orange and violet. He pulled a bottle of alcohol from inside his coat, uncorked it with his thumb, and took a slow drink, eyes fixed on the small, worn photograph in his other hand.

A girl. Kind eyes. A tired but genuine smile.

His mind drifted back to everything the boy had told him.

The kid’s name was Kai. His sister, Mia, was the only family he had left — their parents gone years ago, leaving the two of them to fend for themselves in a city that had never once made that easy. Mia had raised him since he was small, working whatever jobs the slums allowed, making sure he ate even on nights she didn’t.

Things had held together, more or less, until Kai fell seriously ill. The kind of illness that required medicine neither of them could afford. Mia, desperate and out of options, had taken a loan from men who didn’t lend money out of kindness — the kind of men who always collected, one way or another.

Kai recovered. The debt didn’t disappear with him.

When the collectors came and found no payment waiting, they didn’t bother negotiating. They simply took Mia instead, dragging her off while Kai screamed himself hoarse, too small and too powerless to do anything but watch.

It took him weeks to learn what had actually happened to her — that she hadn’t been taken as a hostage or a worker, but sold. Sold like property, into slavery, passed somewhere further into the city’s underbelly than someone like Kai could ever hope to reach on his own.

So he’d done the only thing he could think of. He scraped together every coin he had — begging, working, scavenging — and hired an A-rank adventurer, someone with the strength to actually get her back.

It hadn’t gone well. Not even close.

Rudra took another slow sip from the bottle, exhaling as the memory settled.

And today, of all days, Kai had learned there was a slave auction happening somewhere in the city. Soon. Possibly tonight. And with it, the very real, gut-wrenching possibility that his sister — the only family he had left in the entire world — would disappear into it, sold off to whoever bid the highest, gone for good.

So the kid had come looking for him. Not because Rudra had done anything heroic. Not because he’d earned any reputation worth seeking out.

Just because, purely by accident, Kai had watched him effortlessly take down three A-rank adventurers...

Rudra stared down at the photograph a moment longer, thumb brushing lightly over the worn edge of the paper.

"Well," he murmured to no one in particular, corking the bottle again. "If I were an illegal slave auction, where would I be?"

He let his observation haki expand, the range stretching outward until it swallowed the entire city beneath him — streets, alleys, rooftops, every flicker of life within reach. Slowly, he turned, letting his senses guide his body until he was facing a specific direction on the horizon.

There.

A large gathering of people, concentrated around a sprawling mansion on the city’s outskirts, surrounded by a conspicuously heavy presence of armored guards, all converging toward the same location.

Rudra’s grin spread slowly across his face.

"Jackpot."

He was moving before the word had even fully left his mouth, launching off the bell tower and into the city below, parkouring across rooftops, vaulting between buildings in a blur of motion too fast for any normal eye to track.

By the time night had fully settled over the city, Rudra arrived at the mansion — and found the entire area already in chaos.

Soldiers moved through the grounds hauling people out in restraints, their tattered, mismatched clothing marking them clearly as captives rather than guests. Shouting. Scattered resistance quickly and brutally put down. The unmistakable atmosphere of an operation already well underway.

Rudra’s eyes swept the crowd methodically, searching each face for the one from the photograph.

She wasn’t there.

Then, just at the edge of his senses, something caught his attention — a faint signature, distinct from the rest, coming from somewhere up on the rooftop.

His grin returned, sharper this time.

A second later, he was gone from where he’d been standing,

At the same time, atop the mansion rooftop, Scarlet stood over the kneeling Prime Minister Godwin, her chest heaving from exertion. Moments earlier, she had hurled the Crown Prince of the Vankish Empire clean off the rooftop, sending him flying all the way back to his own kingdom.

Moments ago, she’d learned something that still hadn’t fully settled in her mind. Teresa Himemiya. Kyle’s mistress. The woman he’d humiliated her for. Apparently — according to the man currently talking far too much beside her — Teresa wasn’t simply some ambitious noblewoman.

She was supposedly reincarnated. From another world entirely.

Scarlet didn’t believe a word of it.

"You have to understand, Lady Scarlet." Prime Minister Godwin Bene Carmine’s voice was pitched high with panic, hands raised placatingly as he continued talking despite every instinct in his body probably screaming at him to stop. "Everything I arranged — the funding, the introductions, all of it — was done under Lady Teresa’s direction. I was merely following—"

"You’re the Prime Minister of Pallistan." Scarlet’s voice was flat, dangerously controlled. "And you expect me to believe you took orders from some woman claiming she’s from another world?"

"It’s the truth, I swear it, her knowledge of things she shouldn’t possibly know, the way she predicted—"

Scarlet’s hands curled into fists at her sides, patience finally snapping entirely.

That was it. That was the last straw. She drew back her fist, more than ready to send Godwin flying the same direction as the prince currently groaning on the floor behind her—

"Hmm." A voice, far too close and far too casual, murmured. "This guy looks kind of important."

Scarlet’s entire body reacted on instinct, hurling her several feet backward as her heart slammed violently against her ribs. She hadn’t sensed anything—no presence, no warning, not even the slightest shift in the air. And yet there he was, standing right beside Godwin, close enough that she should have sensed him from a mile away.

She hadn’t felt anything at all.

That terrified her more than she wanted to admit.

Rudra turned toward her, tilting his head with mild curiosity. "Did I interrupt something important?"

Scarlet’s guard didn’t drop, every muscle still coiled tight, though a dozen frantic questions crowded behind her teeth — how did you get here, how did I not sense you,

Her vision blurred before she could ask any of them.

"Shit." The word slipped out, barely a whisper. "I used too much blessing."

Her knees buckled beneath her.

Rudra was there before she hit the ground, closing the distance in an instant, one arm catching her weight as her body sagged against him, consciousness slipping away entirely.

The rooftop door slammed open.

Leonardo entered first, his soldiers pouring in behind him, weapons instinctively half-raised as they assessed the room. His gaze locked onto the scene before him. Rudra stood in the center of the wreckage, Scarlet lying limp and unconscious in his arms. For a brief, taut moment, no one moved.

His gaze moved slowly.

Rudra.

His sister.

Rudra again.

The silence stretched, thick and heavy, nobody in the doorway moving an inch.

Rudra raised his free hand slowly, expression carefully neutral.

"I can explain."