Natsu shifted the sleeping celestial so he could get a better grip on her legs. The six of them- Lucy, Natsu, Gray, Juvia, Gajeel, and Levy- were walking away from what had to be the most disappointing mission of Natsu's life. All he had gotten to punch out were some low level lackeys before the mage they had been sent to defeat got to him. Turns out "Temptress" hadn't been a vain self-given title, it was literally the woman's magic.
The job had started out so promising too, just Lucy, Natsu, and Gray since Happy had taken time to go visit the Exceeds and Erza had already planned to meet up with Sho for lunch that weekend. Then Mira mentioned something about males having a harder time with this type of demon magic and Levy offered to come as well. He wasn't even sure how Gajeel and Juvia ended up on the mission.
That women's singing was the last thing he remembered, he and Gray were on one side of the hall and Lucy and Levy on the other, but according to Levy that was when things got ruff. Gray, Gajeel, and Natsu had all become Temptress's puppets, and if the burn marks on Lucy's arms were any indicator, they had then proceeded to attack the girls. Lucy and Levy had figured out that they were still competitive morons and Levy had spent the entire battle pitting the boys against each other while Lucy and Juvia finished off Temptress's male demon bodyguard things and the mage herself. Levy had bragged that the celestial and water mages had pulled off a unison raid, and Natsu had no reason to doubt her. Despite the rarity of the move, since around the time Lucy joined Fairy Tail, it had become a more common occurrence. They couldn't actually attribute all of them to Lucy, but they couldn't deny it started around the same time she joined either.
He remembered waking up from the spell after giving Gray a nice fire dragon iron fist, and it had taken him a while to figure out he wasn't at the guild after burning up a bunch of alcohol. Natsu was a little weird in that his body would burn alcohol off soon after it entered his system, making it so he never actually got hangovers. It wouldn't be the first time he got drunk and then sober in the middle of punching Gray.
As soon as he figured out he was on a battlefield, he got the basics from Levy and then followed his nose to Lucy and found her breathing heavily in a pile of debris.
"Hey Luce, mind telling me what happened?" he asked, squatting in front of her. She let out a cry and threw herself into hugging him. There may have been some blushing that no one saw, but once again, Lucy's clothes seemed to be their side's biggest casualty. It really didn't help that she was whispering his name in his ear over and over again.
"Yeah, it's me, last I remember Gray and I took out that snake boy. Mind filling in the blanks?" he asked. A familiar smell had him looking at her arms. "Did I hurt you?" Natsu's voice started to break, there shouldn't have been a force in this world that could make him hurt her.
"You were under a mind control spell by Temptress. Juvia and I took care of it."
"You're out of magic? I haven't seen you this empty since the Games and that jerk from Raven Tail zapped you." More tears started falling down her face, but these weren't the happy tears anymore, these were tears of pain.
"I used a lot of energy calling Loke and Capricorn at the same time in the beginning of the fight, without you there fighting I wanted to start out strong, but that stupid, illegal, magic affected even male celestial spirits. I had to fight them Natsu, I had to hurt them until they were weak enough to for me to enact a force gate closure. We were fighting." Here Lucy choked up and Natsu just held her tighter. She valued her spirits so much, the emotional trauma probably hurt worse than her physical injuries. "The rest of the battle I used Gemini and Aries, Virgo when Aries was defeated, but I am so tired. Let's just go home." Lucy had to physically fight off her strongest and most trusted spirits and then defeat the bad guy, no wonder she was beat. Natsu was willing to bet Loke and Capricorn weren't going 100%, but those spirits had the ability to reflect Lucy's personal strength, and that was nothing to make light of.
He tried to help her up, but after her legs gave out the third time he realized that Lucy wasn't going anywhere, chances were the only reason she was still awake was because of the pain of her injuries. The two of them would be taking a long nap in her bed as soon as they got home. She needed to be taken care of till her strength came back, and as soon as she was strong enough to kick him out he would know she was fine. He smiled tightly at the extended Lucy time he was getting, wishing it hadn't come with her pain.
"Here, climb on my back, I'm nowhere near as tired as you and it'll help make up for all the times you dragged my sorry body back home." Lucy tried to protest, but she didn't have the energy to keep it up for long. Plus, it wasn't like it was the first time he helped her like this. He would probably even enjoy the feeling of Lucy pressed up against his back and her legs around his waist if it wasn't for the fact she was so hurt. Pulling Lucy onto his back, he followed his nose to Gray's icy scent and Gajeel's iron tang a short distance away.
"You guys ready?" Natsu called as he got closer. As soon as Juvia saw how he was carrying Lucy, she clamped onto Gray in a similar fashion. Gray just sighed and nodded in response to Natsu's question. The two of them started walking to where the Fiore police was arresting Temptress, and Natsu took a moment to appreciate the complete destruction they had caused. The five-story mansion now had only two walls visible from the bottom two floors and it looked like one large slab of stone was only being held up by one of Gray's ice-make walls. He just wished he could remember going all out on these guys, it must have been one heck of a fight. Oh well, he looked over his shoulder to make sure his friends were keeping up.
"Could you at least carry her right? She fought hard too," Natsu demanded. Juvia had just fought one hell of a battle and Gray wasn't bothering to try and support her at all.
"Nahh, she is honestly more like a backpack at this point." Juvia sighed when she heard her beloved talking about her and Natsu gave up. It wasn't his job to teach the emotionless ice prick some manners. Behind him he heard Levy protesting.
"Put me down! I can walk by myself you know, and this is really uncomfortable. Don't hold me like that!" He felt Lucy turn her head at the same time as him and both of them choked back a laugh when they saw Gajeel had Levy slung over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes as she hit him on back. When Gajeel noticed their stare, he grunted at them while looking away.
"No way am I going to be the only one not carrying a woman." Levy continued to protest from time to time, but seemed to have accepted her fate.
It might not be Natsu's problem how his comrades treated their partners, but Erza might just be paying Gray and Gajeel a little visit after this adventure. The strongest woman in Fairy Tail definitely considered it her problem with how the girls were treated by their male nakama.
A/N: So there was a hilarious comic circling tumblr a while ago and I felt the need to write the story behind it. Here it is. Some Nalu to make up for the lack of in my ongoing story "Never Soloing Again". Please review!