Written because one of the greatest feats of strength ever seen in Fairy Tail happened off-screen.

Dedicated to the wonderful Fried and Bixlow cosplayers I met at MCM ComicCon London back in October 2014 - most likely you will never see this, but thank you anyway from the bottom of my heart. I must have confused you so much with my babbling, but you were still kind enough to let a very excited Katniss Everdeen take pictures of the two characters I had been hunting down the entire day. After the worst Saturday I can remember, you two in particular helped make the best Sunday ever, and truly saved the weekend - and my very first experience of a convention - for me. Thank you.

Of Poison And Gold

Dialogue and scene paraphrased and adapted from chapter 358.

Chapter 1 - Under Attack

"You picked the wrong opponent."

Fried firmly squashed his embarrassment at being so easily ambushed by this strange goat-like man as he carefully got to his feet and dusted the front of his apron off. Honestly, what sort of person attacked someone out of the blue in a restaurant of all places? Even if he was after Yajima, that was pushing the bounds of propriety. Thank goodness for Laxus' impeccable sense of timing, even if he had come back with a strange selection of vegetables and without the fish Fried had actually sent him off to get.

Hopeless, that man. Hopeless.

Laxus himself was now looking around the destroyed restaurant, shaking his head at the destruction, which was somewhat redundant as he had be the one to cause a fair bit of it. "Hey, Yajima? What should I do with him?" He nudged the still body of Tempesta with the toe of one boot.

Yajima had picked up a piece of wood shredded from the roof and was looking at it sadly. "My restaurant," he lamented. "My poor, poor restaurant." Then he seemed to realise that Laxus had been addressing him. "I don't know..." he said. "The Council isn't working any more, so we can't go there."

"Not the main HQ, of course," Bixlow snorted. "But there must be branches of it nearby, or the Rune Knights or something."

But Yajima shook his head. "The Council is a very weak organisation," he admitted. "If the top stops working, so do the others. There won't be anywhere official we can take him."

Honestly, Fried thought to himself. What kind of Council fell apart at the first sign of trouble? Especially a magical Council with the rights to disband any legal guild and order the extermination of a whole country with Etherion. But who else could they take their fugitive to? Where else could he find wizards powerful enough to contain the threat that this strange man posed?

"Maybe we should take him to Fairy Tail," he suggested as the obvious solution presented itself. "We can question him there."

To Fried's mild alarm, Evergreen's eyes lit up with almost malicious glee. "Oh, I'd love to," she purred, giggling and wielding – was that a rope of sausages?

Fried decided that the wisest course of action was, as usual, to ignore her. "I want to know their motive," he said, taking a step away from his insane female comrade. "If they're trying to kill the ex-council members as well, then we're in trouble. We need more information."

"Fairy Tail."

The voice sent involuntary shivers down his spine even before he realised who owned it. It had risen up from the depths of the crater Laxus' last attack had made, slightly muffled as its owner's face was still pressed into the ground.

"We didn't calculate that there could be humans so powerful," the strange, almost echoing voice continued. "I couldn't predict this damage. I'll have to die once."

Die?

Laxus got there just before him. "Die?" he asked, eyes snapping, back on guard. "What are you talking about?"

For a second, Fried thought he heard Tempesta laughing. "You picked the wrong opponent. That's what I meant, foolish human."

Fried was about to open his mouth and berate the strange creature – how dare he use Laxus' own words to mock him? - when the air around him screamed.

Everything was suddenly too hot, too sharp, too bright, too strong, pressure pushing in at them from every side with no relief – but only for a second. Then the force on every sense decreased, rolling the world back into place with only the body of Tempesta missing.

In the brilliant wake of the explosion, darkness began to rise.

"What on earth?" Bixlow exclaimed.

"He blew himself up?" Evergreen added in shock, looking around at the devastation and trying to work out where Laxus' crater ended and Tempesta's explosion had begun. "And what's this black stuff? It's getting thicker!"

It was like fog, but it was too thick, too dark. It was like water, but it moved too freely, flowing upwards in places where it had no right to do so. It clung to clothes and feet and the shattered bricks, darkening everything it touched. Fried instinctively pressed his sleeve over his nose and mouth as it rose to waist height, chest height, up and up until it filled all the air. If this stuff was from that monstrous thing that had immobilised him and Bixlow with a touch, then he didn't want to see what it could do to his lungs. He had no intention of suddenly discovering that all the muscles in his chest were refusing to draw breath. Beside him, Bixlow dissolved into sharp coughs.

You can't win against a natural disaster.

The voice came out of thin air, or maybe out of the blackness itself. Startled, Fried took an incautious breath. Even through the shield of his sleeve, the mist burned like fire in his lungs, a pain so deep it seemed to seep into his blood.

This is Mashou Ryuushi, magic barrier particles. They destroy Ethernano in the atmosphere. What they can't destroy, they poison.

"An anti-Ethernano zone?" Fried choked, before the lack of oxygen grew too much and he started coughing helplessly. It was even worse than he had thought. What kind of creature contained such an evil strength? A chill ran through him as he realised that he had no idea what he could do to defend against this rising wall of death, and that with every cough, every slightest breath, he was introducing more of the poison to his system. Terror flooded him. It was already at work, darkness clawing great scoops of his magic away and turning them to acid. He was a mage whose life was his magic, and it hurt - he'd never felt such pain, as if his very blood was boiling in his veins. Evergreen was coughing as well now, and he thought he could hear Yajima too, though the old man was hidden from him by the black mist.

It causes an illness that damages and destroys magic. Tempesta was laughing again, cruel and poisonous. Lethal for wizards. What a shame. It does have a weak point, though it won't help you much. I have to go back to HQ to restore my body. The mist swirled, and for a second Fried would have sworn that he had seen a savage, animalistic grin in the points of darkness. See you in Hell, dead ones.

And out of the heart of the mist, a ghostly shape shot upwards, fleeing westwards into the distance. In its wake, the poisonous fog roared, multiplying a hundred-fold in seconds, thickening until it was difficult even to see through.

"Don't inhale it!" Fried shouted, mind flickering from possibility to possibility as he desperately tried to calculate the best course of action. The mist was everywhere... oh no. There were other people in the town, other wizards, other innocent people who had nothing to do with this attack...

"At this rate, we'll all be..." Evergreen began.

"The whole town'll be poisoned!" Bixlow interrupted, proving that his mind had gone in exactly the same direction as Fried's. "What are we going to do?" He had a hand pressed to his throat, struggling to breathe through the pain.

"We have to get away!" That was Yajima's voice, somewhere to Fried's right. He could just make out the small shape through the shifting fog. "We need to get somewhere where the mist is thinner! Hurry, all of you!"

But it was already too late. Even as the old man took a step forwards, his knees buckled and he fell face-down on the ground, overwhelmed by the never-ending poison.

"Yajima!" Evergreen gasped, before Fried could stop her, and he heard the soft sound of distress she made as the mist claimed its second victim, sending her crashing to the ground to join Yajima. Mere seconds later, a clatter of metal confirmed that Fried and Laxus were the only ones left standing as Bixlow too succumbed to the darkness. Faint thuds announced the fall of the five wooden 'babies'.

"No," Fried whispered, fighting both fear and pain as the reality of the situation crashed around him. Three down in less than a minute. Three poisoned... no, five poisoned, for there was no way that he and Laxus would get out of this without a hefty dose of whatever it was in that mist. Three people unconscious, unable to move, unable to defend themselves as the poison drove on through their bodies, causing unimaginable damage. "Ever! Bixlow! Fight it!" They had to stand up! They had to come back!

"I won't let them die."

For a second, Fried was certain that the voice was inside his head, echoing his desperate thoughts. But then – painfully slowly, as the poison spread deeper, coiling around magic and breath and thoughts themselves – he realised that the familiar voice was coming from a little way off.

By chance, the mist shifted at that second, and Fried finally caught sight of where Laxus was standing. The Lightning Dragon had been at the heart of the explosion, and the deadly fog was thickest of all near to him. To Fried's horror, there was nothing but raw terror on Laxus' face. This wasn't something that lightning could strike. This wasn't a problem that power could solve.

"I can't let them die!" Laxus insisted, talking aloud as if words alone would push back the mist and free them from its stranglehold (Fried wished more than anything there was a barrier he could use that would do that, wished that there could be words that could hold back death itself, but there weren't). "I won't let anyone die. I won't!"

And Fried knew what Laxus was going to do the split second before he did it.

"Laxus, close your mouth!"

He'd seen it before, so many times. He'd stood in the heart of a storm with the man he pledged his allegiance to, and watched as lighting was drawn to him like the moon drew the tides. He'd watched bolt after bolt striking and never harming, pulled into Laxus in a swirl of brilliance and glory. That which would have killed an ordinary man in seconds merely empowered the only person Fried would ever call leader.

But this?

This was not lightning. This was pain and poison and terror and destruction and darkness and death all rolled into one, and Fried feared it as he had never feared anything before.

This would kill Laxus.

"Stop..." he breathed, not even realising he was speaking until Laxus looked up at him.

"I'm a Dragon Slayer, aren't I?" he growled, eyes burning the colour of the sun. "Our magic protects our lungs. We're not hurt by things that other people might be. If I can swallow lightning, I can swallow this. I'll suck it all up." He took another deep, deadly breath. "I'll save them. I'll save them all."

"Don't do it... please..."

Laxus was right, a tiny but very vocal part of his mind insisted. This was the only way to protect everyone, the only way to save everyone. But why, why, why was it once again Laxus who had to pay the price for everyone's safety? Couldn't it be someone else, maybe even Fried for once, finally managing to properly protect the man he had created a team of bodyguards for?

But even as he thought this, the mist was already thinning, emptying out of the air into a vessel so strong, yet unable to contain it without being destroyed. It was too late. There was nothing he could do.

Yet Laxus did not fall. Veins, blackened with poison, bubbled to the surface of his skin and bled pain into his eyes as he fixed Fried with a steady, calm stare. And Fried realised suddenly; Laxus had known all along exactly what he was doing. He had always known what price he was about to pay.

"Take everyone home," Laxus said, and his voice rang in Fried's ears even as it cracked under the strain of the poison. "That's your job."

Fried knew what that meant. He'd heard that tone before. It was a direct order, the sort that Laxus only gave when something was badly, badly wrong.

Take everyone home, Fried. That's the rule.

Fried never disobeyed direct orders.

Fried never broke the rules.

(Quick author's note – I know that 'Freed' is the official and/or usual spelling, and I do appreciate that, but I've been spelling it 'Fried' too long to change now. I spell it that way because I'm rather enamoured of the Germanic folk legend of Siegfried, pronounced "sig-freed", so I'm making my Fried into a Siegfried. Because he's that awesome, and because he is protected by a Dragon. Of sorts.)