You don’t know how much the Lucy vs Brandish scene means to me.
It might be normal for Natsu, Erza, or some other OP characters to fight their enemies head-to-head seriously, but not Lucy. Lucy doesn’t like fighting, AT ALL. Even at times the guild members were fighting with each other, she would only stand on the sidelines waiting for things to cool down.
On most occassions, she only fell victim from others’ fights and get hit. Even then, she didn’t try to fight back or call on her spirits to help her. She would just tell her friends to “cut it off” or wait until they finished their fights.
For someone like Lucy, it was almost impossible to fight from impulse or anger. Unlike most characters in Fairy Tail (like Natsu, Gray, Erza, or even Juvia), she doesn’t fight because she wants to. She fights because she HAS to. If the situation calls for it, like the GMG or Tartaros arc, she will fight. However, most times the people she fought with were from the opposing side from the guild, but not Brandish.
Such as Angel, Flare, or Jackal, she had a clear objective to fight. It was clear they meant evil for the guild. That was why she could fight using her full power with no hesitation.
But that wasn’t the case for Brandish. Lucy KNEW Brandish didn’t want to fight either. To top it off, Brandish knew about Layla, Lucy’s mother — her only weakness except of Fairy Tail. Brandish also knew Aquarius, another sore spot of Lucy, and were wiling to negotiate with August for the sake of ending the war. Lucy regarded Brandish like her friend.
It was very hard for Lucy to actually fight, but seeing Brandish turning Natsu’s tumor to its original size? She was sooo desperate to save Natsu, that she was wiling to use all of her strength to fight what seemed like a losing battle. It was clear how much she didn’t want to fight, but she needed to, and she was WILLING to use her full power, even using Aquarius’s star dress, for the sake of protecting her friend.
This isn’t a simple “NaLu” scene. We all see how many times Natsu had protected Lucy, but we could barely see the moments Lucy could actually did the same. It’s not because Lucy is weak, per se, it’s just that Lucy doesn’t like to fight. Because of her personality, Mashima usually made Lucy to be the one preventing Natsu to launch an impulsive attack.
The show mostly highlights Natsu’s battle scene and willness to protect his family because he’s the male protagonist, but sometimes we forget that Lucy is the FEMALE protagonist of the manga, and deserves the recognition regarding her willness to fight despite not being a crazy strong, God-mode character like most strong people in the story.
It showed how much she grew as a person, as a wizard, and as someone who would do ANYTHING to keep her friends safe. If that’s not character development, then I don’t know what is.