Throughout Time
Chapter 1: Ambush

"NATSU!" Lucy screamed. Gold chains clamped her body down, resisting any type of struggling she put up, and she put up a lot. Stone ground against the bare skin on her back, turning it from pale to a raw red. "LET ME GO!" She continued to scream, desperately throwing her body forwards and backwards in an attempt to escape. Her teeth gritted so hard down on her jaw that they threatened to snap.

How the hell did this happen? It wasn't supposed to happen like this! They were supposed to simply investigate some disturbed sounds coming from a shrine deep within the forest. How could it go so wrong?

Lucy didn't know how she had ended up that way. They had arrived, but as soon as they did, a small army of men had appeared from nowhere. Their surprise attack overpowered everyone; Erza, Gray, Wendy, Happy, Carla…Natsu. Each and every one of them had fought so hard, all trying to let Lucy escape so she could inform the guild and get help…such an effort merely wasted.

And how they had tried… Lucy had managed to slip their grips at last, racing and racing so hard her bones ached. But she didn't slow down, she couldn't. In the end, whether she did or did not, hardly mattered. They ambushed her at the forest edge, dragging her back by the hair kicking and screaming.

The temple-like architecture, with its beautifully engraved pillars, wrapped with carvings of golden dragons with numbers dragon into their scales, and deep red wood, had awed the stellar mage so much at first. But rather than a shrine, Lucy couldn't help but think it was more of a memorial.

Dragged back to the rest of them, Lucy arrived just in time to see Erza finally taken down. Her face crashed against the hard earth with enough force to shatter bones. Blood choked from her lips, staining the dirt a scarlet red. She looked tired, and exhausted, but it soon changed as soon as she noticed the stellar mage.

Pure disappointment, mixed with a heavy clot of fear, pasted over her colourless face. Lucy's face despaired at the red haired mage, managing to barely mouth the words 'I'm sorry' from her cut lips. Erza's face filled with compassion for the blonde, wanting to tell her how she didn't need to apologise. But she never had the chance. A second fist crashed against the woman's skull. Erza let out a harsh choke of a growl through her clenched teeth, closing her eyes tight in an attempt to fight off the pain. It proved too difficult in the end, and the equip mage succumbed to her consciousness.

Anguished, enraged eyes snapped down on the sight of her friends, restrained, bruised and beaten to unconsciousness. Every single one of them had been taken down, and no matter how hard they fought, their enemies were just too much. At the hands of a single person and their army, the strongest team in Fairy Tail had been defeated.

Worst of all, Lucy could do nothing about it.

Like pouring salt into the raw wounds of her heart, she caught a flicker of pink in the corner of her eye. Natsu's black and blue skin, contrasted the bright scarlet blood slipping from the wounds covering his body. Only the very faint dust of the dirt told her that he was still alive, even if it was just barely.

Big, heavy-built soldiers crowded around his body, blocking off most of the view from the celestial wizard's angle, but just the faint glimpse of pink let her know it was definitely him.

"NATSU!" She screamed, throwing her body backwards. A sharp elbow caught the man behind her with more strength than she ever knew she had. Despite the fact it barely injured his abs, built like a plaque of steel, it was enough to catch him by surprise. The two meaty hands clamping down on her arms relaxed for a split second and she ripped free of his grasp before he could react, breaking into a desperate sprint forwards.

Maybe it was the adrenalin pumping through her body that made her run so fast, maybe not, either way the what-seemed-like a thousand miles between them was torn up in less than ten seconds.

She charged straight at the men without hesitation so that when her body collided with their huge figures, they broke apart in surprise. Lucy stumbled forwards, collapsing down at the ground besides the limp body fallen on his chest.

The bruises didn't look as bad as she had first thought, but the blood slipping from his wounds was no illusion. His face strained in pain, showing that the pain must have been sever enough to even haunt him down into his unconsciousness.

"Natsu…" Lucy choked, uncontrollable tears streaming from her eyes. Short, heavy breaths squeezed passed the lump clasping her throat. "I'm so sorry…" She cried. "I couldn't escape." All the strength in her seemed to wash out of her in that moment, her head falling weakly onto his chest, the soft warm scent of smoke and meat, emanating from his lukewarm skin. His simply white scarf brushed against her damp cheeks, rising and falling with the shaking breaths of Natsu's chest. Faint sounds of a heart beat thumped calmly inside his torso, filling Lucy with a burst of hope, breaking through her despair. Even if his breathing struggled, he was still alive. Natsu was still alive.

Footsteps echoed through her emotional ignorance, a female voice cutting through poison through the air. "Take her inside."

Lucy's body stiffened, her fists clamping around a handful of the slayer's scarf. The heavy men who had just been stood watching empathetically suddenly began to close in around her, their large hands falling on her shoulders.

"DON'T TOUCH ME!" Lucy screamed, smacking the hands away from her with an echoing slap. Red marks marred the skin she had touched, the hands jerking away in surprise. Dark brown eyes viciously glared at them, protectively hovering over the dragon slayer's body. Everything about her suddenly became overrun with her ferocious animal instincts. She couldn't let them hurt Natsu. She couldn't.

More men began to gather around, trying to get a good enough grip on her to tear her away from the body on the floor. Every time they thought they had her she would scratch and bite and slip free of their grasps. As her resistance towards them increased, the more force they began to use. In a unison attack on the girl, six men lunged down at her, hands tightening on her chest, both arms and legs, the white soft material of the scale scarf slipping free from her fingers.

"NO!" Lucy shrieked, kicking and screaming harder than before, jabbing her bleeding nails anywhere she could draw blood. At several points, she had managed to get a good kick or elbow in an attempt to break free, but the men didn't let go. "LET ME GO!" Lucy screamed, thrashing in their grip. "NATSU!"

Narrow eyes glared forwards at the wild animal of the girl being dragged with difficulty by the fully grown men towards the shrine. The woman stepped forwards, her black boots stepping onto something. Underneath her pointed toed shoe, sat a white scaled scarf. She grimaced, kicking it back from under the ground where she stepped.

A second man appeared besides her, stood with a straight back and respective body language, huge muscles carved from a life time of discipline. "What shall we do with him mam'?" He asked reproachfully, watching her stiletto heel press against the unconscious boy's face. A threaded whisper of a groan slipped from his bleeding lips. She jerked her foot away, her eyes turning back to the girl. Lucy temporarily froze, her dark vicious eyes snapped onto the woman's glare. A small sinister turn of the woman's lips parted just as her smile flattened again.

"We have no need for him." She said, sharp and clear as ice. "Kill him."

Every muscle in Lucy's body froze, her blood turning to ice in her veins, her eyes unable to turn away from her face. Disbelief leaked all the colour from her face, eyes stiffly falling onto the body, only a single man moving towards him. "No…" Lucy muttered, her body suddenly breaking out into violent shaking. The men stopped unsurely, watching the girl's change of panic and fear. "No…no…NO…NO!" Lucy screeched.

Her ice blood began to light with fire, blind fear overcoming her mind, fearsome rage bursting through her body. All her emotions suddenly began to rip through the seams of her control. "NATSU!" She screamed at the top of her lungs. Her body turned savage, indiscriminately attacking the men around her. They were caught off guard, but she still over powered them with or without their control. She was wild, and she was strong. Her moves were unpredictable, thrashing and tearing people to pieces, unafraid to slice her fingers over an eye or a throw punch in the throat.

Other men came rushing over desperately trying to overwhelm the girl and get her under control but failing desperately, she was too quick, too strong and unpredictable. Even as the numbers racked up to the twenties, she was wiping them all out. "I WON'T LET YOU!" She roared. "I WON'T LET YOU KILL HIM!" Her foot collided with a man's throat, making him gasp and stagger before falling onto his back.

The woman stared unflinching as the girl worked her way drastically fast through the men. A pathetic shake of her head fell on the faces of the underlings she employed. "Suppress her before she wastes too much energy. He can't have her falling asleep halfway through the experiment." Her cold, sharp voice growled with impatience at the nearby leader. A slight flinch moved through his body, gathering his personal battalion and racing over to join them.

Lucy was impossibly strong, that was for sure. However, it was still impossible for her to defeat almost forty men unarmed. Before long, she was eventually restrained, temporary cuffs around her limbs and chest. The stellar mage continued to put up a good fight, even as she was dragged away, screaming his name until her throat burned.

The constant shrill crying of his name cut through the forest echoing from the chamber she disappeared into, only smothering a fraction of her voice.

The woman heaved a deep groan, rubbing her two forefingers to her throbbing temples. "What was he thinking?" She grumbled. "Using a girl like that."

"She's the only suitable vessel." A black figure looming up at her side. The woman jumped in surprise, looking temporarily distraught and ashamed.

"Yes, Master." She replied reproachfully, recomposing herself. "Of course."

A black hood fell over the face of the short figure, no taller than her shoulders, and even with his higher pitched voice, his speech held superiority over her. "Indeed, she does have a lot of spirit." The short boy's lips crooked into a sinister smirk. "Nevertheless, make preparations for the experiment to begin."

"And what about the boy and the others?" The tall woman asked.

The boy gave a disappointed sigh. "It's just as you said." He said, sounding disappointed at her dependence. "We have no more need for them."

The woman's submissive eyes turned cold in the blink of an eye, her expression losing all emotion. "So you want us to-"

His head flashed onto her face, irritation crackling around him. His dark hood snapped upward, the darkness masking all of his face. But there was one thing that pierced that shielding darkness. Glass blue eyes burned through the black glared at the woman with enough intensity to kill her where she stood. Cold fear raced over every inch of her body.

"Kill them."