Finally! I'm done! This chapter didn't flow out of my keyboard like the previous ones. I actually rewrote it twice. Aaaargggg! Sorry if I overlooked some stupid mistakes. I was really tired while checking this, but I didn't want to wait another day to upload it.

Enjoy!

"Juvia!"

What was this? Juvia was floating in a sort of sphere. (A small version from the one in the naval battle at the Grand Magic Games) Her hair was still black, and her skin was slowly turning black too. Behind the sphere stood the woman, who was still reciting the same spell. The man was taking notes in his little notebook.

At the moment we came rushing in, he looked up alarmed. He shouted something to the woman, but I couldn't hear what he said. She stopped her spell and ran around the sphere so she could defend it. For a moment we all stared at each other and tried to imagine the others next move.

Erza was the one to break the silence: "What are you doing to Juvia?" she asked with a stern tone. The kidnappers didn't answer. Erza took a step forward. "I'll ask you again: What are you doing to Juvia?" Silence.

Then, as if we had rehearsed it, we all attacked.

You would expect that it isn't that hard for five (six, sorry Happy) wizards to beat two of them. But then you can of course overlook the fact that your enemy is very good at creating stuff out of stone.

"Stone make: Soldiers!" The man slammed his fists together and then to the ground. Five stone creatures rose up from the ground.

I recoiled. They were exact copies of us. It was man against stone. Erza fought against stone Erza, Natsu against stone Natsu and so on. There was even a stone Happy, flying around and dropping stones on the head of the real Happy.

I looked around, ready to fight. But there was no one to fight. Everyone had a stone duplica, except for me. Didn't the man notice me? But if the kidnappers didn't know I was here, that meant that maybe I could rescue Juvia.

As silent as a mouse and with my pencils ready, I walked towards the sphere. The kidnappers were too busy watching my friends fight that they didn't notice me. I tried if I could enter the sphere. Nope, the outside was as hard as glass. Then a little magic circle underneath the sphere caught my eye.

Damn it! The woman had locked the sphere before she ran towards the fight. It was highly probable that she would be the only that could enter the sphere. Great. That meant that I had to defeat her so the lock could be destroyed. Well, I wasn't strong. But if I could suprise her, I had a chance of defeating her.

I sneaked around the sphere until I stood right behind her. Was she so distracted that she didn't even notice that someone was sneaking up to her? I'm not exactly what you call a ninja. For a moment I got distracted too, because the fight wasn't going well.

Lucy had summoned Virgo, who tried to break the stone Lucy. But every time she damaged the stone copy, she fell apart and was replaced with a new one. Erza also seemed to have gained some serious damage. Her attacks were still pretty fierce, but I could see she was limping. Natsu and Gray stood back to back while they tried to burn/freeze their stone copies. But the stone soldiers were imune to almost everything. The only way to win this fight, was to free Juvia and get the hell out of here. I focused on the woman again. I had to end this quick.

"Ink magic: Double cross!"

She reacted really fast.

"Ink magic: shield!"

She used the same magic as me. Of course. As if this wasn't difficult enough for me yet. I kept attacking. Unfortunately, the only attacks I knew so far were 'cross' and 'binding'. But she had far more spells. Not only could she summon a shield out of ink, but also things like "Arrow rain" (Where she drew an arrow in the air, and I had to jump around to not be pierced by one) and "Darkness" (Whereby I got blinded for a few very annoying and confusing seconds).

But there was something wrong with this fight. I realised it when I hid myself behind the sphere to catch my breath. She didn't come after me. She just gave me the time to rest.

She was holding back.

Was she playing a game with me? Or was it somthing else? The man hadn't attacked me either. They just let me be. And the woman only attacked for the show. Didn't they want me to get hurt? I had to test this.

I took a deep breath... and rushed back towards the woman. When she saw me, she summoned a shield again. This confirmed my suspicions. Every other enemy had probably attacked me by now, and the only thing she did was defend herself. I had to exploit this further.

"Ink magic: Double cross!" I yelled. I kept firing crosses until her shield started to break down and she had to attack me. If only to keep me away for a moment and have the time to summon a new shield.

"Ink magic: Lance!" she screamed. A black lance flew towards me. I stayed in my place and started counting to 10, while I stared the woman in her eyes.

When she realised that I didn't intend to dodge the lance, her eyes widened. "Ohredos!" she screamed. The man looked our way. He too watched in terror when he saw what was happening. But he couldn't really do anything from 10 metre away. But he still tried to save me. He broke the arm off the stone Natsu that came running by and threw it at the lance.

It didn't work that well. The lance did change direction, but not far enough to miss me. It pierced my left shoulder.

"Aargnnnnnn!" I grinned my teeth. It hurt like hell, but I tried to get new energy from this pain. I still couldn't help it that my legs turned into marshmallows and I fell on the ground. I could hear that Lucy screamed my name, but I didn't turn around to see her. I still stared at the woman. The man had focused himself on the fight between my friends and their copies again, but he looked my way from time to time.

Slowely and with lots of groaning I sat up straight. My shoulder screamed for attention, but my thoughts were somewhere else: I can use this in my advantage.

The lance was gone, but I still had my own pencils. I took one, and drew a spiral around my neck. The woman saw what I was going to do and ran towards me. I looked at her furiously and hissed:

"I can finish this spell with ease and strangle myself. Then your idiotic try to save me just now is useless." She looked at me in horror. Why? "But," I continued. "if you free Juvia and make sure that your stone wielding boyfriend stops attacking my friends, I'll let myself live. That's the deal."

I was serious. I really was prepared to kill myself for the sake of my friends. Even though they would hate me for that.

She hesitated. Lose Juvia, or lose me. Why was I so important for them? Finally, to my amazement, she nodded. She snapped her fingers and the magic circle underneath the sphere disappeared. Despite of the pain in my shoulder I was able to get up and stand straight.

For a moment we looked at each other. Then I raised my pencil and yelled "Ink magic: Binding." Since I couldn't trust her. It could be a bluff. She fell on the ground while my black ropes wrapped themselves around her body. The man wanted to help her, but he was to busy with his own fight. Because while he had been distracted by me, my friends had been at advantage and were able to beat the stone soldiers, who didn't resurrect anymore.

I ran towards the sphere, while I supported my shoulder with my right hand. I threw myself in the inky water and pulled Juvia out. Her body was numb, but she was still breathing. "Gray!" I yelled. He ran towards me and lifted Juvia. I almost collapsed again, but was able to maintain myself. Meanwhile the rest of the team had joined us.

"The man?" I asked Erza.

"Unconscious." she panted. I looked at him. He was indeed unconscious and was lying on the ground. I sighed in relief and started collapsing again. But this time Lucy was able to catch me.

"Ilse, what happened? I saw how the lance hit you, but then the stone puppet was in the way." I groaned. My breathing went faster. I did lose a lot of blood. All this action had distracted me from the real pain, which I now felt in all its intensity.

"Come on, let's get out of here. We need to bring Juvia and Ilse to the infirmary." Erza said. I tried to walk, but my legs didn't work anymore. Natsu lifted me. Gray had Juvia in his arms, and we walked out of the cave.

"Call Wendy! And send someone to get Poluchka! We have wounded!" Erza shouted when we entered the guild. Wendy rushed to us. She first wanted to help me, since my wound looked far more worse because of all the blood. But I pushed her away with my good arm and nodded towards Juvia. She needed more help than me right now.

We were carried to the infirmary, where we were layed down in beds. I watched as everyone crowded around Juvia.

"I feel almost nothing!" Mirajane yelled as she took Juvia's pulse. Wendy layed her hands on Juvia's chest and started mumbling. I could tell that she was using really powerful healing magic. She continued until Mira sighed in relief and said that Juvia's pulse was normal again. Wendy also casted a pain-killing spell for Juvia before she came to me.

She inspected my shoulder. "Ilse, there is ink in the wound. So I need to clean it first before I can heal you. And that's going to hurt. A lot." I nodded, but started trembling. I hated these kinds of things. I'm really bad at dealing with pain when there is no action to distract me from it. With trembling hands I made a ball from my t-shirt and put it in my mouth.

I expected Wendy to use magic, but instead she took a bowl water and a clean towel. She dipped the towel in the water and started dabbing the wound. I groaned. It stung like hell. When she dipped the towel in water again, I saw it was coloured black from the ink. She kept dabbing the wound and cleaning the towel until no more ink came out of the wound. I didn't realise I was biting really hard on my t-shirt until Wendy started healing the wound with magic and I could relax my stiff jaws. Grrr.

While Wendy was busy with me, I looked at Juvia. She was breathing normally now, but her skin was still gray and her hair still black like ink. Did they put ink in her body? And why? And why did they want to spare me so badly? Was it because I used ink magic too? What the hell?

"Is the pain gone now, Ilse?" Wendy asked while removing her hands from my shoulder.

"Yes, thank you. It's much better." I replied. I tried to stand up, because I wanted to sit next to Juvia. But Wendy pushed me back into my bed.

"Ilse, I know you want to watch over Juvia. But you really need to rest. Not only because of your shoulder. You have also used up a lot of magic energy. It takes much longer to restore if you don't rest." I shrugged (Ouch! Not a good idea) and layed down. Wendy stayed with me until I fell asleep, while she checked Juvia's heartbeat and breathing from time to time.

I had a nightmare where my own body was made out of ink. I was tied up to a chair while someone without eyes yelled at me. He kept ordering me to change the future, and I could only cry and whisper that I wasn't able to. But my voice was so weak that he didn't hear me. I felt so helpless and scared while he hit me and kept shouting. It went on and on, and with every slap I recieved I felt my body going numb more. In the end I was nothing more but a puddle of ink. I couldn't move anymore. Suddenly the sun started shining and I felt myself drying up. I tried to scream. No sound. The sun burned and burned me.

Finally I woke up and hobbled to the sink. For a while I could only drink drink drink. Then I went back to bed. But I couldn't sleep anymore. I looked at Juvia. She looked better than before. She had a pained face, but that was better than having no expression at all. There was still ink in her body. Why had the kidnappers done that? Had she felt like I did in my dream just now? Helpless and scared?

"Oh Juvia. Please get better."

It would take a while for Juvia to get better. Poluchka and Wendy had layed her in a bath to soak all the ink out of her body. They had to refresh the water every 10 minutes. Every time they did that the water was black from the ink, but it didn't seem to help. It looked like the water itself turned into ink instead of the ink coming out of Juvia. Every day they thought of new methods to help her. Levy spent long hours in the library reading about ink magic, while Gray and Erza went to Lamia Scale to ask Cheria for help. But even the Sky god slayer couldn't do anything for Juvia. And all the time the guild was in a grim mood. Everybody was worried about the water wizard.

Gray was, even though he would kill me if I said so, the most worried of all. He didn't say much as he helped Levy with researching ink magic and how ink infected wounds should be treated. Even when Natsu was looking for a fight as always, he only reacted with a growl and walked away. And the most shocking: he left his clothes on. It looked like he had forgotten completely about his stripping habit.

One night, when I couldn't sleep again because of the pain in my shoulder and the irritation about Poluchka ordering me to stay in bed while I wanted to help searching for a cure for Juvia, I heard the door of the infirmary opening softly. I closed my eyes and acted as if I was sleeping. Since I incidentaly told Poluchka that I was having sleeping problems, she started cheking if I was asleep every night. Wich meant that she would check me every ten minutes when she had to refresh Juvia's water.

The door closed. Why had Poluchka come back? She had checked on me a minute ago. I could hear footsteps towards Juvia. Cautiously I glared through my fingers. Someone sat down on the bed next to Juvia's bath. Carefully the person placed a hand on her forehead. I couldn't see who it was because of the dark. The person was too robust to be Poluchka, so it had to be a man. But who would visit Juvia in the middle of the night and...

Oh.

I smiled. He was so predictable.

He started speaking, really softly: "Juvia... I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I was unkind to you. I don't want you to stay in a coma without me having said sorry to you. So errr, sorry. I-I I want you to know that I like you. I don't know in what way yet. And the way you're dreaming of is maybe a little too much. But when you get better I will be nicer to you. I just didn't realise until now that I maybe have feelings for you. But please don't go crazy about it. So err... Just get better, okay? And yeah... That's what I wanted to say to you."

Gray got up from the bed. But before he could walk away something special happened. The moon came out from its hiding spot behind the clouds and shone its light through the curtains on Juvia's face. And instead of the pained face she had before, she smiled a little. Gray's voice did reach her. He smiled too, and walked out of the infirmary. He wanted to be gone before Poluchka and Wendy came to refresh the water and check if I was asleep. Grinning because of this special event I fell asleep.

Since that day Juvia started to actually get better. Her hair and skin slowly got their normal colour back. Maybe Gray's encouragement was all she needed to find a way to expel the ink out of her body. Everyone was relieved and happy, and the cheerful, usual mood returned to Fairy Tail.

After a few days I could finally leave the infirmary and move in with Lucy. (I never thought I was happy to see my couch again.) I resumed my magic studies and went on jobs with team Natsu again. Although Gray didn't always come because he wanted to do some solojobs. (Everyone knew that he was always helping caring for Juvia at those moments. As I said: predictable)Life was good again.

Of course we kept wondering why the kidnappers wanted to turn Juvia into ink, but we couldn't think of anything. I thought a lot about the fact that they wanted to spare me. I still hadn't told anybody, and I didn't really know why not.

Until the night that I met the kidnappers, of course.

And, how was this chapter? The fighting part was really hard to write. It's the first time I wrote about a fight this long. You like my little Gruvia hints? I really like writing in English. It learns me so much more than the boring lessons at school. Please post a review, it would really help me out. What do you think is going to happen?

Thanks for reading!

-IamInk