Fairy Tail: Lost One

Rudra stood amid the wrecked plaza, raising his hand to trigger the Flying Thunder God mark and hunt down Nullpudding once more. Before he could vanish, the cobblestones right beside him exploded upward.

"I got you!"

Beth popped out of the ground, her voice ringing with triumphant energy as she launched a dense barrage of massive carrots using her Vegetable Magic. The projectiles shot toward him at incredible speed, whistling through the air.

Rudra didn’t even bother to dodge. He simply stood there, hands in his pockets, staring lazily at the incoming assault.

Watching him stand completely still, Beth’s eyes lit up. I caught him off guard! This is way too easy!

Her victory smile didn’t last long.

In utter horror, she watched the massive carrots pass cleanly through Rudra’s body as if he were nothing more than a ghost. The projectiles struck the stone wall behind him with heavy thuds, embedding themselves deep into the masonry.

Silence fell over the plaza. Beth froze, her jaw hanging wide open as her mind struggled to process what just happened.

Rudra let out a tired sigh, shaking his head slightly. "Thank Kagura for this."

Beth blinked, clutching her magic spell in confusion. "Wait... what do you mean by—"

She didn’t get to finish. Before she could process the movement, Rudra was already standing directly in front of her. Raising his right hand, he delivered a sharp, casual flick to her forehead.

"Ouch!" Beth squeaked, stumbling backward from the impact before tumbling onto her rear.

"Next time, choose your opponents more carefully, little girl," Rudra said with a faint smile, looking down at her.

"A clean hit! Rudra scores another point!" Lola’s voice boomed across the stadium speakers as the arena’s automated system engulfed Beth in a pillar of light, teleporting her to a random sector of the city.

With Beth gone, Rudra slowly turned his head toward a nearby dark alley. His eyes narrowed slightly as he spoke into the quiet air.

"And that advice applies to you—and everyone else in this game."

The next second, Rudra vanished into thin air.

Silence returned to the plaza. A moment later, Jäger stepped out from the shadows of the alley, his face pale and drenched in nervous sweat. He stared at the empty spot where Rudra had just been standing, swallowing hard as he wiped his brow.

"Monster..." Jäger muttered under his breath, spinning around and sprinting in the opposite direction before he could end up on the receiving end of that strength.

High in the spectator stands, Kagura Mikazuchi watched the massive floating lacrima screens with a quiet sigh. In a far corner of the artificial city, a thoroughly disoriented Beth sat in the dirt, furiously rubbing the bright red mark on her forehead.

"I really should have warned her to stay away from him," Kagura thought, shaking her head. Yet, despite his insufferable teasing earlier, a small, genuine smile tugged at the corner of her lips.

He had kept his word.

Across the stadium, the Fairy Tail stands were a chaotic mess of roaring cheers and sloshing mugs.

"Hey, is it just me, or is Rudra completely ignoring the actual game just to beat the absolute hell out of that jaw guy from Raven Tail?" Macao asked, squinting down over the balcony railing.

Wakaba took a slow drag from his pipe, his eyes glued to the broadcast screen. On the screen, Rudra materialized on a rooftop, grabbed a screaming Nullpudding by the face, and casually hurled him down through three consecutive canvas awnings. "Now that you mention it... yeah. He’s treating the guy like a human ping-pong ball."

"That’s because my master is a professional hater," Romeo chimed in, crossing his arms with a fiercely proud grin.

Macao and Wakaba both blinked, looking down at him. "A what now?"

"Think about it," Romeo said, pointing up at the lacrima screens. "Wendy got ambushed in the gardens last night, right? Master definitely figured out Raven Tail was behind it. He isn’t just playing a match right now—he’s making a public example out of them. He’s showing the whole kingdom what happens when you touch one of us."

Right on cue, the screen flashed as the automated system respawned Nullpudding in a quiet alley, only for Rudra to instantly step out of thin air behind him and dropkick him straight through a bakery window.

Macao rubbed the back of his neck, half-impressed and half-terrified. "So... he’s using a nationally televised broadcast just to repeatedly jump a guy?"

"And he’s racking up our score while doing it!" Romeo cheered, pumping his fist in the air.

A collective, wicked grin spread across the Fairy Tail bleachers. Erupting into a fresh wave of deafening applause, the guild roared at the top of their lungs—cheering wildly for Gray’s tactical precision across the map, and laughing maniacally at Rudra’s one-man demolition tour.

Not far from the Fairy Tail section, Ivan Dreyar and the Raven Tail team stared at the main lacrima screen with expressions that suggested someone had just forced them to swallow raw sewage.

They glared at the scoreboard, where their points were plummeting into deep negative numbers, then at Nullpudding, curled into a trembling ball on screen. Nobody in the Raven Tail box said a word. They just stood there, jaws locked, watching the humiliation play out in real time.

Elsewhere in the artificial city, the match hadn’t stopped for any of this. While Rudra took his sweet time tormenting his target, Gray had racked up a few solid hits of his own, trading points back and forth with Eve and Lyon. Atop a distant church spire, Rufus of Sabertooth remained perched motionless, serenely taking in the entire field.

None of that reached the cramped storage yard on the far edge of the map, where the quiet was anything but peaceful. Nullpudding cowered inside a wooden crate, squeezed between a mountain of identical barrels and boxes, holding his breath and waiting for the nightmare to end.

Five minutes passed. Then ten. No flash of magic. No crashing footsteps. No sudden beatdowns.

He lost me, Nullpudding thought, tears of sheer joy stinging his eyes. I’m free! I’m actually—

"Man... where the hell did that bastard go?"

All the warmth vanished from Nullpudding’s soul. His heart slammed against his ribs so hard it felt like a hammer, and he frantically clamped both hands over his mouth, afraid to even breathe.

"I could’ve sworn my sensing caught him right around here," Rudra’s voice echoed through the narrow yard, sound of footsteps crunching slowly over loose gravel. "Where did he go?"

Inside the darkness of the crate, Nullpudding closed his eyes, furiously praying to every god, ancient demon, and high-ranking magic council member he could think of. Please keep walking. Please keep walking. Don’t look down.

"Hmm... nothing over here except a bunch of oddly placed barrels and crates," Rudra mused aloud, stopping right in front of Nullpudding’s hiding spot.

Nullpudding’s breath hitched.

"Nah, there’s no way he’s hiding in one of these," Rudra continued, tossing his head back with a loud, theatrical sigh. "That would be shockingly stupid, even for him."

Nullpudding froze completely, his lungs burning as he refused to inhale.

"Come on, Rudra, get a grip," the voice said, sounding like a man scolding himself. "Nobody is that brain-dead. Let’s go check the east plaza."

The crunching footsteps began to fade into the distance, growing fainter and fainter until total silence washed over the alleyway.

Nullpudding waited. One minute. Two minutes. Three long, agonizing minutes.

Slowly, carefully, he pushed open the lid of the crate. He poked his head out, his dark eyes darting frantically to the left, then to the right. The alley was completely deserted.

"Thank God..." he whimpered, letting out the breath he’d been holding forever.

"So," a smooth voice whispered right behind his ear, "you really are stupid enough to hide in a crate."

Nullpudding let out a high-pitched, pathetic shriek. The pure shock sent him scrambling out of the box so fast he tangled his own legs, tumbling headfirst into the surrounding stack of barrels and collapsing in a disastrous cascade of splinters, wooden hoops.

Lying among the splinters and shattered hoops, Nullpudding scrambled backward, his face pale with horror as he stared up at the specter towering over him.

"Why are you doing this?!" Nullpudding shrieked, his voice cracking. "What the hell is your problem?!"

Rudra didn’t answer right away. He casually strolled over, kicking a stray barrel out of his path, and crouched down until he was looking the Raven Tail mage dead in the eye.

"Why do you think?" Rudra asked, his tone deceptively mild.

"How the hell should I know?!"

"Hey," Rudra snapped, raising his right hand just an inch. "Who are you getting loud with?"

Nullpudding instantly flinched, snapping his arms over his face and curling into a defensive ball. "I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Just stop!"

"You know exactly why this is happening to you," Rudra said quietly, his hand hovering over the trembling mage.

Nullpudding’s eyes darted wildly as his brain frantically connected the dots. The ambush. The gardens. Obra’s doll. "...Is this about what Obra did to that little girl last night?!"

"Oh, look at that," Rudra sneered, a cold, mocking edge coating his words. "You do know. And yet you had the nerve to ask."

"But why target me?!" Nullpudding yelled, tears of frustration streaming down his bruised face. "I wasn’t even there! I had no hand in that!"

"Right, because if I weren’t here doing this, your guild wasn’t planning on jumping our players during the games anyway?" Rudra asked smoothly.

Nullpudding choked on his words, failing to find a single lie that would save him.

Rudra let out a dark chuckle, slowly standing back up to his full height. He raised a boot.

"Fine! YES!" Nullpudding screamed, scrambling backward on his elbows. "Yes, okay?! We were going to target Fairy Tail! We’re the ones who attacked that dragon slayer girl last night, alright?! I admitted it! I confessed! Now let me go!"

Rudra paused, his raised boot hovering mid-air. "Let you go? Without an apology?"

Before the words fully left Rudra’s mouth, Nullpudding slammed his forehead directly onto the cobblestones, trembling violently. "I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Please!"

"Don’t apologize to me, you spineless rat," Rudra said coldly, looking down at the back of his neck. "Her name is Wendy. You apologize to her."

"I’m sorry, Wendy! I’m sorry!" Nullpudding practically wept into the dirt. "We’re sorry for attacking you!"

Rudra stared at him for a quiet beat, then gave a slow, approving nod. "Good. See? That wasn’t so hard."

Nullpudding raised his tear-stained face, a faint flicker of hope returning to his eyes. "Can... can I leave now?"

"Sure. You can fuck off now," Rudra replied smoothly.

Nullpudding scrambled to his feet, barely turning to run when Rudra’s foot snapped forward like a whip. His boot caught Nullpudding straight under the jaw with maximum, brutal force.

The impact echoed across the arena like a cannon shot. Nullpudding was launched thirty feet through the air, crashing onto the pavement thoroughly unconscious before his body dissolved into a blinding pillar of elimination light.

"A-And that’s it!" Chapati Lola’s voice stuttered over the lacrima broadcast, shocked into momentary silence. "Nullpudding of Raven Tail has been knocked unconscious and is officially eliminated from the round!"

High above in the grandstands, the entire stadium had heard every single word through the arena’s sensitive audio lacrimas.

A heavy, suffocating beat of silence washed over the crowd—followed immediately by an absolute explosion of fury. Tens of thousands of spectators stood up, pointing aggressively at the Raven Tail section, their voices rising into a deafening wall of boos and curses.

"Cowards!"

"Attacking a little girl before the tournament even started?!"

"Get Raven Tail out of the games!"

Food, empty cups, and trash began raining down on Ivan Dreyar and his team. Ivan sat stiffly in the guild box, his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists as he stared at the screen, his jaw working in furious, silent rage while Fairy Tail’s side of the stadium erupted into triumphant, mocking cheers.