A/N: CHA! New chapter!

I don't own Fairy Tail!

Please enjoy!

Chapter 3: Kiss With a Fist

February 7, X803

Heavy rock music blasted through a large garage containing several sleek looking cars, trucks, and SUVs. There was one black and chrome colored motorcycle up on a perch of stone, glistening and shining and knowing it was its owner's favorite vehicle. A black SUV was parked away from the other cars near a work bench with a tall and nicely muscled man staring at intently.

Diesel Evander may not have been the smartest man around, but he knew cars and mechanics like the back of his hand. He had started detailing the SUV as soon as Maddox had returned it to him and now he was putting the finishing touches on it.

He had washed it twice and put a coat of wax over it. He had made sure all dirt and grime had been cleaned from the tires and windows. He had cleaned out the inside of the car several times until he could see himself gleaming off of every surface. He made sure to refill the gas tank, checked the engine, the car battery, and even the air filter. Everything seemed as pristine as it ever was when he finished with one of his cars, but he still could not shake a horrible feeling in his stomach.

"I know that idiot drove you, Lola," he grumbled, running a hand through his dark blue hair to slick it back out of his face, "But you gotta tell me, baby, you gotta show me that he did."

"Don't you think you're taking it too far this time?" a calm voice asked.

Diesel looked up at the little cat that almost blended in with the black SUV he sat atop of. What gave the cat away was the strikingly bright orange stripe up along his back that moved up into a mohawk on top of his head. The orange line was broken by a tiny, gray leather jacket that had the guild symbol in white on the back of it – a mountain split in half by a lightning bolt.

His black tail swished back and forth, his black eyes matching those of his partner's, "Can't you just believe that Titan didn't drive the car?"

"Hell no!" Diesel said, "I know that loser drove this car! You saw that stupid grin on his face when he and Tejil left here to go pick up Maddox!"

"He could have just been excited about going to get the master."

"No one has an infuriatingly smug smirk like that going to pick up the old man, Ink!"

"You know, you could have just drove the car yourself to get Maddox and you wouldn't be here losing your mind over it."

"I had other cars to work on!"

"Mmhmm," Ink said, "Well you've been working on this car for about two days now and you haven't found anything yet. Can't you just call it a day already? We missed out on going on a mission with the others because you had to do your monthly car cleaning."

"That mission wasn't worth much anyways," Diesel waved off the comment, his attention turning back to the interior of the SUV, "We wouldn't have gotten many jewels with it being cut fours ways."

"Yeah, but it's better than sitting here for three days watching you go crazy," Ink mumbled under his breath.

"What was that?!"

"I said, it's been three days and they still aren't back. I thought it was going to be an easy clean up of a nest of cliff cats that had gotten too close to Wintergreen?"

Silence was the little cat's only answer. He looked down to see Diesel's eyes wide open in horror as they focused on something in the driver's seat that he could not see.

But Diesel saw it. And now that he saw it, it was like a giant, burning stain in his car. There embedded into the seat, in between the back and bottom of the seat where one could barely see it, was a red string. Diesel reached out and pulled it out of the seat, staring at it in between his fingers with an inferno raging in his eyes.

"Aaaaand I lost him," Ink said with a sigh. He counted down on his paw, "Three, two, one."

"I'm gonna fucking kill him," Diesel said lowly before that raging inferno was released, "I'm gonna do it this time! I will, Ink! You can bet your ass, all our savings, and all my cars that I'm gonna fucking kill him!"

His words were practically roars, echoing through the garage over the music. He shot up out of the room, on the hunt for Titan.

It did not take him long to find the large man as he threw open the doors of The Thunderdome. There stood Titan at one of the tall black tables, locked in an intense arm-wrestling match with a young woman with a mess of wild black hair.

"Titan, you asshole!" Diesel shouted as soon as he saw him, marching right up to the table.

Titan jumped at the shout and looked up, giving the woman he was struggling against the advantage she needed. A hard thump was heard next, Titan's arm being slammed against the table.

"Kokou wins!" she announced, a crooked smile covering her face.

"What?! No fair! There was interference!" he said, motioning to Diesel.

"No excuses!" she said, "Rock monster lost to Kokou again! That makes it fifty-seven wins for Kokou and negative twenty-six wins for the rock monster!"

"Negative…?" Titan mumbled in confusion, counting along his fingers, "That doesn't make any sense! I can't have negative wins!"

"That's how badly the rock monster is at this game!"

"Whatever," he said with a huff, turning his irritation onto Diesel, who was now standing in front of him with rage pouring off of him. Titan took a moment to step back from the man, wanting some breathing room if he actually needed to make an escape, "What the hell is your problem?! You made me lose the match!"

"Like I care," Diesel snapped before he lifted the red string to eye level in between them, "Do you know what this is?"

Titan stared at it before cocking an eyebrow at the other man.

"Oooohhhh!" Kokou said as she popped up in between them to intensely study the string, "Kokou knows! That's a string from the rock monster's skirt!"

"It's a kilt!"

"I don't care what the hell it is!" Diesel shouted over the both of them, "I found it in my car!"

"And? I rode in it with Tejil to go get the master."

"I found it in the driver's seat! Mind explaining that?!"

Titan paled at his words, little beads of sweat beginning to form on his forehead, "It probably just floated over to the driver's side."

The room was filled with deadpan stares upon hearing his explanation.

"Kokou thinks the rock monster should start running," she whispered, taking several steps away from the pair.

A heavy fist went swinging after she stepped away, causing the table they had been arm-wrestling on to go crashing to the ground.

"It floated?! I'll make you float right into unconsciousness!" Diesel shouted, just as his fist flew past Titan's nose, the large man barely being able to dodge the attack, "I knew I shouldn't have let you go to the train station with Tejil! Where is that loser anyways?! I'll knock him out with you for letting you drive!"

Outside the doors of the bar, Maddox stood pinching the bridge of nose. Beside him stood a young woman with striking silver eyes. She wore a smirk, though she did not look all that amused with the shouts and noises coming from the other side of the door.

Maddox then looked to the right of the red doors, seeing a mop of brown hair leaning up against the wall.

Tejil looked up at him with a nervous smile, "I guess right now isn't the best time for a drink."

Maddox gave him a look that said, 'You think?', causing the young man to give a small laugh before taking off across the front room and through one of the other doors attached to it.

"I guess we have to go in sooner or later," Maddox said with a sigh, the woman next to him nodding in agreement. He pushed open the red doors, revealing Diesel and Titan going at each other. They were throwing punches and kicks at each other while Kokou was egging them on with cheers and shouts of bets on who would win. He glanced down at the woman, "My money is on Diesel this time."

The woman shook her head, causing her lightly curled, dark blue hair to shake around her, "We aren't here to make bets, right?"

Maddox let out another sigh, "The least anyone could let me do is bet on them if they're going to tear up my bar room."

"Seriously? You would bet on your mages while we have more important matters to look into?"

Maddox stayed silent at her question, not wanting her to know how often he did that exact thing.

"Tch, I'll take care of things then," she said before walking straight towards the fighting pair.

Once right next to them, she crossed her arms in front of her to create an X before quickly slashing them downwards. Her arms were now glowing white as she lifted up her right hand to draw a circle in the air with two vertical tangent lines on either side of it.

"Snow Strike!" she shouted as she tapped the glowing symbol with her left hand. Instantly, rockets of snow pelted directly down on Titan and Diesel, and before long, they were both buried in the cold, heavy substance.

"What the hell, snowflake?!" Diesel said.

"Shut it, grease pit!" she retorted, "You shouldn't be fighting in the bar anyways. You remember the last time you two fought in here? Angelo gave you the wrong drinks on purpose for breaking three tables for three weeks!"

The group silently looked over at the bar to see the tall, handsome bartender smiling devilishly and waving in their direction.

'If the devil were a bartender…' was the resounding thought of the room.

"Fine," Diesel huffed as he dug himself out of the snow pile. He shook off the white powder before turning on Titan, who was still buried, "You and Tejil are banned from driving any of my babies!"

"Your bab-"

"Yes, my babies!" Diesel shouted, cutting Titan off, "If you so much as leave a fingerprint on any of them, you'll have a lot more to worry about than some wicked bartender!"

"Fine, whatever," Titan grumbled in return, getting more snow on top of his head as Kokou dove into the empty pile that Diesel had left behind.

"And you!" Diesel rounded on the snow woman, "You don't have any damn room to lecture me about fighting! Angelo wouldn't even serve you a drink for a month after your last brawl in here! So, can it!"

"This is who I have to go hunting down Quinn and the others with? I could just go on my own, you know," she said, rounding on Maddox with a hand on her hip.

Maddox wiped a hand down his face, 'It's like dealing with nine-year-olds every day,' he thought, "Yes…don't you two normally get along?"

Diesel and the woman stared each other up and down as if sizing each other up. They both looked back at Maddox with a shrug, "Sometimes."

"Lord, help me," he muttered under his breath, "Okay look, I need someone to go check on Quinn, Zander, and Walker. They took a fairly simple mission of clearing out a nest of cliff cats a few days ago, but they should have been back by yesterday at the latest. I want to make sure nothing's happened to them."

Both Diesel and the woman knew he was worried about the team being out in the mountains after the news of the murders. He would not usually send people out after a team until a few days went by after they should have been back. Maddox knew that some missions could take a couple days longer than intended, but it was easy to see the man was on edge about leaving them on their own for too long.

"Ink and I can go check on them ourselves. I don't need Andromeda tagging along."

The woman landed a swift jab into the back of Diesel's knee, instantly sending the man crashing to the ground.

'I don't know how I'm not on some sort of blood pressure medication,' Maddox thought, "You're both going. You and Andy," he said, looking over at Diesel, who was moving to stand up, "I want to make sure there's someone there to back you up and you're the best suited for this. You both know the other three quite well and you work well together…for the most part anyways. Ink should be enough to balance you two out."

Diesel and Andy stared each other down again before giving small nods to each other.

"So where in the mountains exactly were they headed?"

. : + : .

Three heavily panting people ran along the skinny ledge of the mountain side. A blur of red, green, and white flew around a corner, coming to a sliding stop out on an open ledge. They tried to listen for any sign of movement, but it was hard to hear anything over their heavy breathing.

"Why the hell did you come in screaming at us?!" a young woman shouted, turning on the short man being carried by one of her partners, being tucked under one arm. She pointed a sharpened sai prong at the man, her anger getting the better of her.

"Quinn, that's our employer," the blonde man holding the smaller man said with a nervous smile.

"She's right though, Walker," another man said, a redhead with a faded black beanie atop his head, "We were doing just fine until he came busting in."

"You can't touch the cliff cat chicks," the man huffed, not at all feeling shamed that Walker was carrying him, "The mother won't want to take care of them if you do."

"We should just leave you here. Maybe you can deal with all the damn animals chasing us with those warm fuzzies of yours!" Quinn snapped, placing her sai back into the its carrier at her hips. She flipped her loosely braided auburn hair back over her shoulder as she crossed her arms in front of her.

"Zander," Walker said, looking over at the redhead, "We shouldn't stay standing still for too long."

Before Zander could open his mouth to agree with him, screeching and loud thumping interrupted him. The group looked all around them to see the three animals they had just been running from coming for them.

A massive Wintergreen ram was charging towards them on the path they had just come from. Its dark green wool made it look quite beautiful, but its gnarly curled horns and huge size that stood above even Walker, who was over six feet, quickly tore that beauty apart as it rushed at them.

Above them a mountain wyvern was scaling the mountainside to reach them, its dark gray skin making it hard to see against the stone and its sharp teeth and claws looking deadly.

And in the sky was the mother cliff cat. She was quite large and had the odd, yet well put together appearance of a mountain lion and pterodactyl. Its body was long and lithe and covered in dirty sand colored fur. Leathery gray wings folded out from its back while a long, sharp beak took up most of its face. Its yellow cat eyes were gleaming in the sun while its long cat tail swished in the air.

"And that's our cue!" Walker said, taking off down the skinny trail in front of them, Quinn and Zander following behind him.

"Shit, shit, shit!" Quinn said, having to slide under a swipe from the wyvern, "Zander! Take these things out with a Point-Blank Shot!"

"You can't!" the man under Walker's arm shouted, "You might hurt the cliff cat, which is protected by the Fioran government! They're going extinct!"

"Yeah, well, we're gonna be extinct if we don't do something soon!" Zander said as a sword appeared in his hand. It had a steel blade with an ornate guard and a hilt that was wrapped in a burgundy cloth, "Load!" he said, a magic image of a gun trigger appearing on the handle while thirty ticks appeared along the hilt.

"No!" the man shouted upon seeing the sword.

"You two deal with the ram and the wyvern. I'll deal with mama bird!" Quinn said.

"Got it!" both men replied.

Quinn looked upwards at the cliff cat while Walker turned his attention towards the wyvern that had scurried across the mountainside to move in front of him, squeezing down on the brass knuckle covering his free hand. Zander turned on his heel, coming face to face with the charging ram.

"Wind Glider!"

"Heavy Weight!"

"Point-Blank Shot!"

And chaos ignited.

A/N: And there we are! Hope you enjoyed!

Credits

Diesel Evander and Ink - MyDearWatson

Kokou Enyo – Cat the Alien

Andromeda 'Andy' Kato Fox – musicaldreams89

Quinn Lohr – MyDearWatson

Walker Stokes – Joshua1277

Zander Ealdwine – Dreadburner94

So I know short chapter is short and there were a number of characters introduced, but some times that just happens. The last scene along with the characters will be expanded on much more next chapter that way it's not another load of characters being introduced. I don't want to drown you in characters so much so that you won't remember who has been introduced. Mostly I needed to get this chapter completed and so I decided to keep it a bit shorter. Still though, I had fun with it and enjoyed writing all these characters again and introducing a new one! CHA!

Thank you all again for your wonderful reviews, PMs, favorites, and follows! They all made me smile and made my day! So thank you!

I just realized that I should have put a disclaimer about spoilers for FT in the first chapter, but oh well. I was going on the assumption that most people were caught up on everything.

I don't know if Laxus and Bacchus would take over their guilds as guild masters, but that was my guess. They seem like the appropriate picks for those positions, so I went with them.

Also just as a note…I am not reading the 100 Year Mission story, but I do know that there are such things as 4th and 5th generation dragon slayers, and just no. None of those will be in this story and I will not be including that story line in this story. I suppose you could say that it's AU that way, but I'm not reading it and I don't want any other slayer types showing up in the story if anyone asks about it. Mostly that was me just venting about dragon eaters…come on, seriously?

Anyways…

Song Inspiration: Kiss With a Fist by Florence and The Machine

I don't have much else to say this time around.

See you all in a week!

Yours Truly,

MyDearWatson