Magic is a part of everyday life in Fairy Tail’s world of Fiore. It can be used for everything from powering vehicles, to changing the colors of one's clothing and battling enemies. Some people live their lives largely without the use of it, some use it in business settings, and others use it as a sort of mercenary taking whatever jobs come their way. But even with this largely ubiquitous use of magic, there are still some categories: some people know how to use intrinsic magic, others purchase magical tools that do magic for them, and some use magic that is augmented by tools. Lucy is one such person as a celestial wizard.
Fairy Tail follows the story of Lucy and Natsu as the latter attempts to relocate his foster father. In the process, Natsu helps Lucy accomplish her goal of joining Fairy Tail, one of the more powerful, if immature, magical guilds in Fiore. Along the way with the help of Gray, Erza, and Happy, their team takes on a variety of different jobs creating friendships and alliances along the way.
Lucy’s Background
Lucy comes from an influential family, but she chose to leave it in order to make her own way. Sometime before she joined Fairy Tail she had already acquired 3 golden keys and 4 silver keys. She meets Natsu in a small town and tells him about her desire to join Fairy Tail, one of the most exclusive guilds there is. He happily obliges and brings her to the Guild Hall where she is quickly accepted into the guild. Beyond Natsu introducing her there was no evidence of harsh selection or exclusivity. The members of Fairy Tail did not even ask her to display her magic.
Celestial Magic
Lucy’s magic is not inherent to herself, instead, any mage who purchases spirit keys can ostensibly summon the spirits within. The spirits will not follow the directions of just any mage who attempts to summon them however, they will only work for a mage with whom they have a contract. The contracts must be mutually acceptable to both parties. Although the consequences for a spirit who breaks their contract are unclear, when a mage breaks their end of a contract the spirit who is summoned by the key is no longer beholden to them.
There are quite a few different applications of this type of magic and skills that a creative mage can employ when utilizing spirit magic. However, the general rules are that in order to summon a spirit a certain amount of the mage's magic is consumed, somewhat proportionate to the power of the spirit. This magic can be recouped with rest, but puts a hard limit on the amount of spirit and duration of summoning that most mages can execute.
Is Lucy Worthy of Fairy Tail?
Fairy Tail is introduced to the viewers as a guild that soars above all others and that has created many legends. The members of the guild are incredibly powerful, and even Natsu who does not hold the highest rank (S class) initially is shown to easily defeat many mages and nearly level a city. While Natsu is fairly strong within the guild there are plenty of stronger mages than him, and few of the weaker mages are shown, potentially due to that not being interesting to the show overall.
Lucy, however, initially does not seem to have the same caliber as the rest of the Fairy Tail mages. While she does hold three of twelve golden keys, it seems as though any mage could do what she does. Throughout the show, she does grow, but this only implies that her acceptance into Fairy Tail was perhaps premature. On one particular mission when the team has stolen an S-class mission, she stalemates with one lackey magician and is saved by Erza. Natsu defeated two others by himself while saving the entire village, and Gray was more than holding his own against the big bad, although he was eventually defeated due to emotional baggage.
She is demonstrated to be exceptionally good at working out contracts with her spirits, with her treatment of them even causing some spirits to seek her out in order to create a contract, as with Virgo. This has nothing to do with her magic though, and far more to do with who she is as a person. For example, her contracts with spirits seem to be a lot fairer than those of many celestial mages, with her taking into consideration all of the spirits' requests and seemingly imposing none of her own will upon them. Not many people could do that.
While Lucy is an awesome audience stand-in and a good tempering foil to Natsu, she doesn’t quite seem to have what it takes to be a member of Fairy Tail initially. This seems especially true since it is made out to be one of the most exclusive and powerful guilds that exist. During most of the combat scenes, Lucy simply calls on someone else to do everything for her, and there is no indication that if any other mage had a contract with those spirits they couldn’t do the same thing. That being said it takes a special kind of personality to deal with the widely varied personalities of the celestial spirits. But even this ultimately makes Lucy more of an impressive lawyer than an impressive Mage.