A/N: Writer's block is killing my fics! I have 3 that need to be finished and 3 new ideas waiting to be written. Hope writing this one will help me get over this funk.

GrayLu if you wanna look at it that way, and hints of LoLu to come.

ONE: Punished Princess

The ground felt cold against his bare skin—coldness unlike the one he was trained to endure. It was almost as cold as the expression the woman sported. Her soulless eyes turned crimson, and he felt as though his torso would be sawed in half. The jagged stones buried themselves deep into his ribcage, prompting him to let out a grunt of agony.

"Gray!" a familiar voice echoed from behind him.

"Stay back, Lucy!" he yelled. "You won't stand a chance without your magic. Besides, I don't think… you have the heart to hurt her."

The stellar spirit mage stifled a sob as she let her hand, which had been hesitantly gripping the handle of her whip, fall weakly to her side. She turned her misty gaze towards the woman, trying to find the tiniest hint of her former friend through those bloodshot eyes. She found none.

"Hey, Lucy," Gray suddenly called out to her. "Get outta here! Run while she's still busy with me."

"A Fairy Tail mage never leaves behind a comrade!" she said with all the determination her shaky voice could muster. "Hear that?" she asked, turning to the woman. "One way or another, you're a part of the guild too, aren't you? So, please stop this!"

Her pleas fell on deaf ears though. The woman brushed a few stray strands of her pink locks from her face, the chains on her wrists rustling as she did, and shot Lucy a blank expression.

"Give it up!" Gray said. "Whatever happened, it must have been pretty bad for her to ignore her own master. Forget me and…" He trailed off when he felt himself sinking deeper into the ground. The stones ripped open more wounds on his sides, and his face was the only thing that has yet to be swallowed up by the soil.

"Gray! No! Virgo, please! Stop this!"

"You… shall be punished," was her only reply.

"Punish me all you want, but don't hurt my friends. I…" The blunt end of the maiden's chain cut the mage's statement short. Lucy reeled in pain and was forced down on her knees. Another blow sent her, face first, into the ground.

"If you care so much about your 'comrade', suffer the same fate as him, Princess," Virgo dryly declared. "Spica Sinkhole!"

The earth beneath her turned soft and Lucy's body was literally being absorbed. The more she struggled to get free, the faster she sank. Not content with merely burying her alive, Virgo wrung one of her chains around her master's neck and proceeded to strangle her.

"Vir…go…"

"A punishment befitting of you, Princess," the stellar spirit mocked. "Go on, cry for help. Brother Leo won't come to your rescue. No one will. We are all no longer yours to do with as you please. Let us end the contract, Princess, once and for all."

"Is…this…really what you want, Virgo?" Lucy struggled for words in-between choking gasps.

"If I did not want this, I would not be doing it."

"No! You…don't want this, Virgo. You don't…want any of this. You…could never hurt your master. That's… why you…couldn't hurt Duke… Everlue no matter… how horribly he…treated you."

"You're just a puppet! Can't you see that?" the ice mage interrupted. Staying conscious had clearly become an endeavour for him.

"A puppet? Wasn't I a puppet to begin with? I am a stellar spirit—nothing more than a puppet that can't do anything without a master pulling the strings. What am I supposed to understand from your statement?"

"You're not like this! No one among you is like this! You all love Lucy and Lucy loves you just as much, maybe even more. You hurting her… It's just not right!"

"I am…" Virgo's concentration began to waver, and the ground loosened its grip on the two mages. That momentary lapse of magic was all Gray needed to encase the stellar spirit in ice. With his hands free, he began to materialize his magic seal and shape the ice crystals.

"Now, Ice Make… Cannon!"

Having knocked the maiden out, Gray ran over to a barely conscious Lucy and cradled her in his arms. "Lucy, wake up! Hey, Lucy! Damn, no good."

A sadistic laughter filled the air, looming over them like a plague. It was a man, clearly no one they knew from the sound of his voice, and he paused as if to consider his words.

"We can bend space. We can bend emotions. We are invincible! Fairy Tail shall now start on its downward spiral into oblivion! And the first to fall shall be you two! What are you gonna do, Mr. Fool-buster? That girl is a dead weight now that we've warped her spirits' thoughts and feelings. This whole area we made allows them to materialize even without her; amazing, isn't it? To be killed by your friend's own magic, how ironic!"

"Shut up!" Gray snapped. "You twisted bastards! Using Lucy's own spirits against her, that's just sick. Stop being cowards and face us!"

"Now, now, I'd stay calm if I were you. You never know who might be watching."

Suddenly, something shot through the air and pierced the ice mage's left shoulder. He pulled it loose and realized it was an arrow. His reflexes kicked in and he used his body to shield Lucy's as more arrows came raining down, and a sequence of anguished groans resounded all throughout.

The man burst into another fit of sadistic laughter. "See what I mean? We make the rules around here. And we say: If you wanna fight us, take out all of her pathetic spirits first. You've done in the masochistic maid, so there's only nine more to go. Nine amped up spirits left."

"Amped up?"

"You'll know what I mean. Horsie's waiting for you, Mr. Fool-buster." With that, his voice disappeared.

"Damn it," Gray grumbled, "this was supposed to be another ordinary mission. How the hell did it turn out like this?"

TO BE CONTINUED