Once Upon A Fairy Tail

by Shadow Master

(BtVS/Fairy Tail/Marvel Comics/Bleach/AtLA) [YAHF so fair warning]. Ethan Rayne was always up for making a little mischief but this time around he decided to go one step further than he normally would. Unexpected twists cause a ripple in fate's plans and so four brave souls are cast across the multiversal expanse only to land in a world where magic rules.

4. A Moonlit Hunt

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the copyrighted material contained herein. They are they rightful property of their respective creators and associated companies. I make no profit off of this whatsoever and have no intention of changing this at any point in the future. I write fanfic because it's fun and because there are those that enjoy reading my works. Therefore I would appreciate it if no legal action was taken against me because I can assure you that what you get from me won't even cover a tenth of your legal fees.

Crimson Cloud Inn, Room 13, Second Floor, A Few Minutes Before One in the Morning

Xander's POV

Focus… focus… block out all other sensory input. He cross-legged on the hotel room bed. All that exists is spiritual energy… all that matters are anomalies… find them!

During the moments in his training when his body was too sore to continue for a few days, he hadn't just been laying on his back doing nothing. He'd been working on another aspect of his shinigami abilities and that was being able to sense the spiritual energy of others and be able to track a person by their specific soul energy. He'd gotten pretty good at it after a couple of months but then again tracking someone from the guild was relatively easy since, in this dimension, being powerful magically translated to having above average spiritual energy. It didn't mean they were shinigami strong, though, but it did make them easier to pick out of the crowd and therefore tracking them was easy. Trying to keep track of an ordinary person's spiritual energy was harder since it was easy to lose it in the crowd of similar spiritual signals.

It was his hope that whoever was behind the abductions and the contamination would be a mage of some kind, or at least have a unique quality to their spiritual energy that he could pick up on.

When his mind was focused enough on what he wanted it to do, he stretched out with his senses as wide as he could manage without a loss of clarity. It wouldn't do him much good to stretch his mind to its limits, only to perceive seriously fuzzy signals instead of sharp crystal clear signals. One by one the spirits of the people in the town popped up like stars in the pitch black midnight sky and, before he knew it, he could sense what he presumed was everyone he possibly could. Locking into place this view of the people, he waited and watched for any sign of something strange approaching the building the children were being kept at. He didn't know what it'd be but he hoped it'd give off evil or unnatural vibes that'd help him know what to look for. Just the same, though, he'd do what he could to look for something else out of the ordinary.

Maybe it'd be something similar to what he sensed from the souls of the children, albeit more concentrated.

It was one of the things he'd picked up on when his mind stretched far enough to perceive their souls and he didn't like what he picked up on. Their souls were still mostly normal from what he could sense but there was a… a… stink of sorts that made them different from everyone else that let him know something deep was going on. Some had the soul stink worse than others and he figured they must be the ones that been ill the longest, so he made sure to keep a sharp lock on them since they'd likely be abducted sooner rather than later. If the abductor had the same sort of stink as what he was picking up off of the children, he'd pick them up easily and be able to move to intercept the scumbags.

Time lost meaning after a while with his focus so centered on keeping track of soul traffic throughout the city but he didn't mind. He'd already told N'atrina to notify him when the sun rose so he could get a few hours of sleep to make up for the long night awake. When added to the fact that he made sure his bladder was empty and he didn't foresee having to move for quite some time.

Hopefully.

Though that meal that the inn cook gave him was a bit suspect.

Best not to think about that at the moment.

An amount of time he wasn't aware of later he got his first bite of the night when he sensed a trio of odd signals approaching the children's building from the north. Each of them had the same stink to them as what was coming from the children but several times more potent and it was almost so bad that he had trouble classifying them as human anymore. They were making good time but he'd still be able to get to them before they got too close to their objective. Reducing his focus to just the three signals that mattered, he opened his eyes and got to his feet as quickly as he could reaching for his staff a minute later.

"You picked something up?" N'atrina asked from her place on the pillows as she raised her head.

"Yep. Three blips heading for the children from the north," he replied, moving to the window in his room and opening it. "If we're quick enough we can get to them before they get to the kids."

"Then let's get to it." She hopped to the floor and trotted over to his side, "The sooner we stop them, the quicker we can put an end to this mess and collect the reward."

A leap to the rooftop of the building opposite the inn and they were both running along the most direct route to the three signals he still had a firm lock on. Peripherally he was a little impressed by how N'atrina was able to keep up with him even though her small form shouldn't have been capable of leaping as far as he could. Almost of its own volition his mind produced an image of a chocolate skinned woman with purple hair and he wondered if something similar was going on in this case. He suddenly hoped that it wasn't because the cat had been around him enough to have quite the pile of blackmail material and his luck with not-completely-human women sucked.

A few minutes later when he figured they were close enough he switched from speed to stealth as he advanced on his targets. As his eyes peeked up over the edge of the roof, he instantly spotted the trio clad in tattered hooded cloaks as they sneakily made their way down the street, sticking to the shadows as much as possible. They weren't very big, probably only coming up to his shoulders at best, but he could also tell that they had some distinctly inhuman proportions to their bodies. It made him think of people who'd tried to get a body upgrade but could only afford to change either a single limb or one pair of limbs alone. Whether it be a grossly muscled arm, two large powerful legs or a seriously ripped torso being carried around by four small limbs like a dog, it was clear that these could not be considered successes.

I guess the only thing they'd be good for would be retrieval, he thought as he got a bit ahead of them and dropped to the ground in an alleyway between buildings. Don't think they'd be very good as soldiers.

Deciding it was time to make his presence known, he stepped out in the path of the trio, trying to effect the whole badass 'turn around and walk away' vibe that'd worked out so well for Batman. He got half of what he wanted when they froze still while trying to make sense of him, like a nervous animal would an unfamiliar creature. Their eyes glowed with purple light and had pupils that were distinctly reptilian in shape, but whatever intelligence he could perceive in them was transient at best. His quipping sense of humor compared it to how he'd been in math class back in Sunnydale High when all the numbers and calculations just kept freezing his mind due to lack of comprehension.

Hopefully they'll be smart enough to have a conversation with. "Sorry, boys, but you won't be grabbing anymore kids EVER again, much less tonight. Still, if you lead me back to your base of operations, I'll think about telling the judge to go easy on you three. What do you say?"

The one with ridiculously muscled legs chose to reply for the group by charging forward at a speed that was easily double what he'd been expecting.

Still, it was nothing he couldn't handle.

A burst of shunpo got him out of the minion's path but, surprisingly, set him up for the one with disproportionally large arms to take a swing at him. Bringing up his staff to block the blow, he was almost literally floored by the strength behind the blow but digging his feet into the ground allowed him to bring his own strength to bear, stopping his movement. Movement out of the corner of his eye warned him of trouble just in time to flip backwards and out of the way just as the final one tried to use its muscled torso to tackle him. Over and over again the trio used one of their number as an attacker, who switched to decoy status upon failure, to allow another of their number to attack from the right angle. It was an effective plan when fighting three on one but in his case it was only working because he didn't see a reason to take these guys seriously. Sure their limbs gave them enhanced physical abilities but he was confident that his shunpo could keep him safe and he knew if he got serious, he could take all three of them down in as many seconds. However that would not allow him to find the abducted children or figure out the real reason why the douche bags were harming kids in the first place, so it'd be better to trick them into running away so he could follow them.

"Bakudo number one: Sho!" he pointed at the minion that had tried to set up him for a friend to hit.

With a bit more force than he'd intended, the one with the body builder's legs went flying until it impacted with the front of one of the buildings lining the street. The remaining two minions paused in their assault as their ally seemed incapable of getting back to its feet for the time being and he knew that one more scare would cause them to turn tail.

"Ye lord! Mask of blood and flesh, all creation, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of Man! Inferno and pandemonium, the sea barrier surges, march on to the south!" he chanted, causing a sphere of bright red energy to manifest a few inches in front of his right hand. "Hado number thirty-one: Shakkahō!"

The sphere shot forward and hit the street just in front of the two minions, shattering stone and sending it flying. There wasn't much damage considering it had only half the power a proper Red Fire Cannon spell had but apparently it was enough to get a single message through to the minions.

With purpose, fear and speed they picked up their still dazed comrade and ran into a nearby alleyway, clearly intending to escape. Running after them, he made sure to keep a randomly changing distance between them and him right up until they were about to leave the town itself. When they were at the final turn that'd take them to the edge of the town, he stopped completely, relying on his ability to sense their spiritual energy to keep track of where they were in relation to him.

"What're you doing?" N'atrina asked, clearly not knowing why he wasn't still in pursuit.

"The only thing that's better than catching the minions is tricking the minions into leading you to their boss so you can catch'em all."

"And if they get away because you're greedy?" N'atrina asked, sounding like the cat didn't like the potential for backfire.

"Then at least we stopped them from grabbing any kids tonight and found out how they're getting the kids out of the town," he replied just as the three signals got far enough away for him to pursue without being spotted.

Darting around the corner, he began to run for the minions matching his pace to theirs so that they wouldn't notice someone getting closer to them. Throughout the pursuit he made sure not to lose his lock on their spiritual signals because, while he did have consolation prizes, he didn't want to give up going for the grand prize just yet. If he could find the ringleader, the missing kids and all the minions, he could wrap things up all in one night rather than the week he'd been expecting it to take. A bit ambitious, perhaps, but he felt it was worth taking a risk over.

He just hoped it wasn't a risk that the children would have to pay the price for in the end.

An Unknown Location Underground, An Hour and a Half Later

"Those fools! Do they not realize that they're being followed?" he growled angrily as he looked at the images being shown in his crystal ball. "Clearly I will need to improve my training methods with all future 'employees' but for now I need to tend to this meddler."

Indeed it was a bit of a surprise to learn that a mage from a legitimate guild had answered the town chief's request for aid given the pitiful reward, but he wasn't worried. He had long ago taken precautions against being found by the Magic Council and the talismans he'd taken from his former allies in Grimoire Heart would ensure that his lair would never be found. Nevertheless, the longer the mage was in Ruby Town, the harder it'd be for him to complete his work and he would tolerate no interference in that area.

He would eliminate the mage and then send a painful message to the town's chief discouraging further requests for aid.

I believe the old man has a sister at the Crimson Cloud Inn, he thought as he prepared to put an end to the outsider's interference. She'll do nicely as an object lesson.

Putting the messy form his lesson would take aside, he placed a hand on the crystal ball, focusing it on the three pieces of trash he'd sent out to acquire the latest object of his focus before speaking the incantation that would nip this little problem in the bud. The sphere pulsed red three times before the eyes of his minions did the same and, once he designated the pursuing mage as the target, he left them to do what he'd programmed them to do. They would ensure that the mage would not live to see the sun rise and dispose of themselves at the same time since trash such as they were easily replaceable.

Indeed, a few were almost ready deeper in his lair and required only a little more in the way of improvements before he could deem them acceptable.

One in particular held great promise.

He hoped the weakness of her gender would not bring about failure when the time came for the more… aggressive body modification spells.

That would be disappointing.

A Patch of Rocky Plains North of Ruby Town, A Short Time Later, N'atrina's POV

"Where are they?" she asked as they stood atop a large grass-mired boulder looking for their quarry.

"If I knew I'd tell you but about five minutes back their signals… dispersed." Xander said as he closed his eyes once more to try and find the spiritual energy blips that he'd lost.

"Is it possible they were killed? Maybe their master caught onto your plan and hit some kind of self-destruct?" she asked, going with the most logical possibility.

"Maybe, but I doubt it. It didn't feel like they'd been destroyed," he replied as he continued his mental search for their foes. "It was more like a strong wind came along and blew them away, like they were made of dry sand."

"WHATEVER!" she hissed as the animal senses she had as a cat told her something threatening was in the air. "I'm getting some bad vibes here."

"Oh, good! I wouldn't want to be the only one getting a case of the heebie jeebies," he said with heightened concern in his voice. "Minions pulling a disappearing act after they've lured you out in the middle of nowhere usually means you've just walked into a trap."

"You think they knew we were following them?" she asked, not believing that to be the case given how far back they'd been.

"No, but someone did," he replied even as he brought his staff up into a relaxed defensive position, "Be ready."

The more she thought on it, the more she believed her partner might be onto something with the whole trap scenario, so she prepared her body to move the instant trouble revealed itself. In cat form she would be useful only as a distraction or maybe an extra set of eyes but that was dependent on the three abominations focusing on Xander while ignoring her. If both of them came under attack, she'd have no choice but to flee or perish and she doubted that Janus' little rules would allow her to get very far before dumping her right into the mix again.

I hope my theory about why I was partnered with this human was right.

Danger, it seemed, was listening to her because three forms exploded from the ground at three separate spots around their position. However, when enough of the displaced dirt cleared, she saw that there were some very big differences in the three minions from how they'd looked before in town. The parts of their body that'd been enlarged and strengthened were now easily twice their previous size and the parts of them that were previously too small seemed to be convulsing as some unnatural force attempted to enlarge them to match the rest. This unnatural force, however, was asking for more than the bodies of the minions could provide as evidenced by flesh popping under the strain, gushing blood with every movement. That was all she was able to perceive because, as fast or as strong as they'd been in town, they were easily three times as powerful now and it was instinct that caused her to leap clear of the boulder.

Good thing, too, since not only was the lump of stone obliterated but also a fair bit of the dirt beneath it was displaced by the force behind the blow of the one with overly muscled arms. However no sooner did they escape one then another showed up in the form of the one with overly large legs, whose speed was now at a level that made tracking with the eyes quite difficult. Alexander's shunpo was able to keep him clear of danger for the most part but it was clear that he was having more difficulty than he should have evading the Legged One's attacks. It took her only a minute to realize that even though the minions were right in front of them, their spiritual signal was still hidden from his senses. Without that form of perception, the young shinigami was forced to rely on the same senses that everyone other ordinary person had.

In her mind that was enough to keep them alive but not enough to give them victory in this fight, so unless one of them got a bright idea, attrition would decide things.

"Their attacks, their movements, have no soul behind them," Xander declared as he evaded a kick from the Legged One by inches. "I…I think that these cars might be running but there's no one at the controls. They're all on automatic pilot!"

"Makes sense!" she thought as the one with an overly large torso tried to do a belly flop landing on her. "Living things have a survival instinct no matter what you do to them. Machines or, in this case, soulless bodies do not."

Using every bit of feline speed, strength and agility she could muster, she managed to get out of the way of the attack aimed at flattening her but, as soon as the abomination got its limbs under it again, it pursued her. With creepy eyes devoid of all life but burning with the unnatural forces within it, the creature chased after her and only its limited battle options were keeping her alive. Using a tactic favored by matadors, she waited until the last minute before sidestepping an attempt by her sparring partner to tackle her. Looking over at Xander, she could see that with the theory that their foes were soulless automated corpses the young man was now willing to take the proverbial kid gloves off.

Leaping over a swing of the Armed One so that he was upside down, he pointed his flat palm at the abomination's face and raised his power level, if only a little.

"Ye lord! Mask of flesh and bone, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of Man! Truth and temperance, upon this sinless wall of dreams unleash but slightly the wrath of your claws," he chanted as neon blue energy gathered before his palm. "Hado number thirty-three: Sōkatsui!"

For a moment it looked as though it'd work like a charm but then the Legged One attacked, managing to land a glancing blow given that Xander reoriented his body at the last minute to avoid the majority of the blow. As a result, instead of a direct hit, all her partner's attack managed to do was blow off one of the Armed One's arms, leaving a bloody stump behind to indicate that an arm had ever been there in the first place. The shinigami recovered from the glancing blow well enough but, judging from the way he was shielding his left side, it was clear some damage had been done.

"Xander! You are you alright?" she asked, evading another attack from her sparring partner.

"I'm definitely going to be dipping into the pain meds when we get back to the inn but I can still fight." He blurred with shunpo as he put some distance between him and his two foes. "Fighting both of them at the same time, though, is tough. I need to think of a way to take them both out at the same time rather than one-on-one."

"You got a spell for that?" she asked as she began to deke and doge amidst the rocky outcroppings to evade her opponent.

"Not one that'll let me skip the incantations and they'll take too long." He used his staff to parry a blow rather than match power with power. "Guess I'll have to let things get a bit messy!"

The wooden disguise wrapped around Alexander's zanpakuto began to rapidly peel away and disappear, leaving only the deadly but sheathed weapon behind. The moment this happened she could feel her partner's power rise as one of the restraints on it was removed but there were no telltale flames just yet, so the young man still had a solid grip on his power. With the sound of blade scraping against sheath, he pulled his deadly weapon free and, with its exposure to moonlight, the tide of battle turned. A primal roundhouse kick from the Legged One was evaded and then, with speed honed from many sparring matches with Erza, Xander slashed, cutting deep into the vulnerable limb. This had the satisfying effect of making it impossible for the Legged One to stand on it but there was no scream of pain or even the expression of suffering on the creature's face. When the young shinigami did the same to the Armed One when it attacked him next, the results were the same albeit with a different limb, causing the damaged arm to hang limp and bloody.

"Great! They can be hurt but they either can't feel it or don't care." He dodged the Legged One when it pushed off the ground with its remaining good foot and then, using its hips, it brought its injured leg around like a loose belt.

"I'm thinking it's more a case of there not being a mind to feel or care about being hurt," she said as she lashed out with her claws when the Torso focus abomination tried to grab her with its hands. "You said their soul signals seemed to blow away, right? Maybe when they changed into these things their souls and their minds were destroyed. They're not much better than animals now."

"If your right then the only thing left to do is put them down so that their souls, wherever they are, can rest in peace." Xander used shunpo to close the distance between himself and the Armed One.

Before the mindless beast could act, the young shinigami brought his blade up and across, cutting a deep laceration from the thing's hip to its shoulder. For a moment she thought that the thing was tougher than she'd thought it was but the Armed One dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. As Xander evaded another sloppy attack by the Legged One, she kept an eye on the downed foe for any signs that it might be getting back up anytime soon. After thirty long seconds of no movement and no signs of regeneration, she concluded that massive trauma definitely would do as a means of ending the fight for good. Her partner would have to realize this on his own, though, because the sound of movement caught her attention and she knew her opponent had just leapt at her again. With feline speed and agility she dodged but that was about all she could do though since, in her cat form, her claws weren't anywhere near long enough or sharp enough to do the required amount of damage.

C'mon! Surely self-preservation is one of the conditions where I can go back to my true form for a bit! she thought as she continued to evade the thing that'd been hell bent on killing since the beginning of this fight.

Apparently not as a near miss with another attack didn't trigger any change in her body, leaving her to continue to run in order to stay in one piece. Fortunately Xander was quick to act now that he knew of a way to end the fight permanently and a blade sprouted from the chest of her pursuer, then cutting it's way free via the left shoulder. With the requirement met, her foe dropped lifelessly to the ground, putting end to a rather unpleasant experience and hopefully it'd be enough to motivate her partner to calling it a night.

"Looks like we hit a dead end, Xander," she said as she watched him wipe the blood off of his blade. "There's no way we can follow them back to their master's base now."

"Maybe… maybe not," Xander said as he closed his eyes to focus. "If these three didn't know we were following them then a fourth person spotted us somehow. That means some sort of surveillance spells spotted us and you don't set those too far from your main base. The lair must be somewhere close by."

With that the young man sat down on the ground and devoted the majority of his focus on his spiritual senses in an effort to find out where the now-deceased trio had been running to before losing their souls. Sitting down herself in order to catch her breath, she immediately tried to cover her nose with one of her paws as the stench of decaying flesh hit her. Looking at their fallen foes, she was disgusted when she saw that both bone and flesh began to lose form as accelerated organic decay began to take place.

It's probably a self-destruct feature meant to ensure that the victor wouldn't be able examine the remains for clues.

However just as the body of the Legged One was about to leave her field of vision, she spotted something that caused her to look back in their direction with renewed focus. For a moment she thought that her eyes were deceiving her but, as she watched more and more organic tendrils reach out from the bodies, she knew something bad was going to happen.

Her feeling proved to be true when the tendrils met and what she saw happening made it clear what she had to do.

"XANDER! TROUBLE!" she yelled in order to snap him out of his focused state.

Trouble, it turned out, might very well be something of an understatement as she saw things worsen by the second.

Xander's POV

"XANDER! TROUBLE!" N'atrina yelled, causing his mind to snap open to see what was the matter.

He almost wished that he'd kept his eyes shut when he saw the flesh of the three slain foes come together into a sickening soup of organic matter. Yet, despite the fact that it was making him sick, he could see that it was moving with purpose and this was proven when the merger was completed. At a steady pace the goop rose up from the ground, going from a blob to what looked to be a column but then the bottom began to split and protrusions grew from near the top. At first he thought he'd be facing tentacles but, when they proved to be humanoid-like limbs, he realized that an abomination similar to the three before was going to form, albeit with all their strengths as one being.

In short, 'not good' about covered it.

This was proven true when the changes finished, leaving an eight foot tall monstrosity that looked to possess power enough to make defeating it even harder than beating its component selves. The difficulty was shown to be quite accurately estimated when it seemed to disappear from sight only to reappear mere inches from him, a fist ready to say 'hello' to his face. On instinct he used shunpo to get away but, with great shock, the creature was able to keep up with him, closing the distance to a little under two feet. Deciding to get a better grip on how fast his foe was, he performed a series of flash steps that took him in completely random directions that could not be predicted.

Let's see that monster keep up with me now!

With great shock and pain it something slammed into him from behind, knocking the air from his lungs and sending him to the ground below. His mind dazed, it was pure luck that he sensed danger approaching in time to roll quickly to the right several feet before a fist cratered the ground completely. Once his mind cleared enough, he got back to his feet, taking on a defensive posture, believing that not taking this thing seriously would be a fatal flaw.

When it came at him again he was prepared for it and, even though it managed to get the drop on him with speed a few times, his focus allowed him to sense its presence in time to evade or parry its blows. One blow in particular made it clear that the monster's physical strength was easily triple what the Armed One's had been when the trio existed but thankfully the sheath to his sword was able to endure it. Nevertheless, it became clear that in a contest of physical abilities, he either needed to raise his game or use his foe's own power against it in order to gain victory.

He chose the former.

Bringing his zanpakuto to bear, he delivered a vicious slash to his foe that actually succeeded in staggering it and he took that opportunity to put fifty yards between them with a burst of shunpo. Sadly it was with increasing concern that he watched the split flesh begin to knit itself back together with impressive speed. Knowing that the clock was ticking, he immediately began to raise his power, causing flames to soon violently flicker around his body and down the length of his zanpakuto. Once he reached roughly sixty percent of his maximum, he decided to see if this would be enough to finally put an end to things.

Pushing his shunpo, he went straight at the monstrosity and with a single swing of his sword severed one of its arms from its body, sending the limb flying. Looking over his shoulder, he was pleased to see that, much like the man from whom his powers came from, his spiritual energy burned like real fire did. As it had coated his blade when he struck, it had succeeded in cauterizing the wound, if only just barely, but hopefully it'd be enough to at least hinder regeneration for some time. Looking to where the severed limb landed, he waited to see if it would retain any kind of unlife but, when nothing happened, he concluded that, separated from the main aberration, the limb did not possess regeneration capabilities.

Then I guess dismemberment is the order of the day. Makes things easier for me.

Deciding to end the fight before his foe could turn things back to its advantage somehow, he used the speed provided by his charged up shunpo to attack the creature, darting back and forth from multiple directions. With every pass he made he made a deep slice and, while some didn't go deep enough to completely sever his target, his return pass managed to finish the job nicely. By the time he finally came to a stop in order to catch his breath, there wasn't enough of the creature to identify what it'd been when it had been whole.

"If it can pull itself back together after all that, then I'm seriously worried about what else the Big Bad here is cooking in his lair." He reigned in his spiritual energy and sheathed his zanpakuto. "If these are expendable minions then his right hand thing must be pretty badass."

"Indeed. I think we just might be a little over our heads here," N'atrina said, walking over to his side before sitting down. "Maybe we should send a message back to Fairy Tail asking for some help."

"No. This is my first job without anyone else from the guild backing me up," he said as his pride rejected the cat's suggestion. "I've got to handle this without backup. Besides, just because it's going to be tougher it doesn't mean I can't handle it. It just means I have to go that extra mile."

Sure, he might be understating things a bit but he still believed that he could handle this assignment on his own. The asshole behind the whole mess couldn't have been expecting a mage to respond to the request and, given how low profile the guy (at least he assumed it was a guy) was doing things, he obviously didn't have the resources to handle a large enemy force. Meaning, if he could find the lair and charge it before any additional preparations could be made, then he stood a decent enough chance at ending this tonight.

With that in mind he resumed his sitting, focused position on the ground and stretched out with his senses to find the location of the enemy lair. It'd be easier than back in Ruby Town since there wouldn't be anything human or magical out in the middle of nowhere to get in the way of his search. It took a minute or two in order to push aside all distractions but, once he succeeded, he began to examine every signal in turn for any link to the creatures he'd just defeated. He was pretty sure that the strongest signal would be the mastermind and it would be towards that location that he'd go with all due speed.

No… no… no this isn't it, he thought as he examined each potential suspect in turn. No… JACKPOT!

Just like he'd figured, the lair was just a little under an hour further on in the direction the minions had been going before their souls had been destroyed. He hadn't picked up on it earlier because he'd been focused on maintaining the lock on the trio rather than looking ahead of them to find their destination. Now that he no longer had them to distract him, it wasn't hard to find at all and, with its location locked in, it was time to put an end to the suffering the town had been put through.

"Time to fly, N'atrina!" he declared as he picked her up off the ground before using flash step to get to the likely location of the lair ASAP.

For his first time using shunpo to cross great distances rather than maneuver around a battlefield, he thought he was doing a fairly good job of using his spiritual power efficiently. It wasn't one hundred percent efficient like his Yamamoto memories showed him but it was definitely much better than his first flash step all those months ago. As a result it took only forty flash steps for him to cross the distance between the scene of the fight and the location he believed to be the lair of the mastermind behind the whole scheme afflicting Ruby Town.

When he arrived all he found was a hole in the ground that was surrounded by an array of spiky rocks that'd make it difficult to spot for someone not looking for the place.

Unless they use their nose, of course. His nose wrinkled at the odor rising from the hole. Gross! Not sure anyone or anything would want to come within half a mile of this place.

"I am NOT going down there!" N'atrina declared, squirming out of his grasp and moving a good distance away from the hole. "Nevermind that I can't help you in a fight but if you think your nose is burning, my cat nose feels like it's been dunked in acid!"

Turning his nose away from the repulsive smell, he had to admit that the stench was only likely to get worse the deeper he went and, if it was that painful to the cat outside, there'd be no enduring it inside.

"No problem then. You stay out here and hopefully I'll be back sometime in the next hour or two. Until then you'll be ALL ALONE!"

With those words he leapt into the hole and about halfway to the stone floor at the bottom, he heard precisely what he expected to hear.

"On second thought, I'm coming with you!" N'atrina yelled down at him, causing him to use the air walking technique to stop his descent.

Heh! There's not a person in one dimension or another that wants to be left alone, at night, near a place where crimes against nature are being committed.

Deep Within the Suspected Lair

He survived? Interesting, he thought as a light signifying that an unauthorized person had entered the lair and it provided an image at the same time. Not that I expected those three pieces of trash to be anything approaching competent but they still should've been up to disposing a single mage.

With a sigh he put down the needle he'd been about to inject into his most promising test subject and powered down all but the restraint spells. As much as he hated leaving an experiment in progress, he knew that if he didn't deal with the intruder, it was likely that he'd only be violently interrupted later and that just wouldn't do. His experiments were of great importance to him for they would be the instruments through which he would gain his vengeance against his former comrades. The fools who dared scoff at his theories, who BETRAYED HIM, calling them a waste of guild resources before repurposing his resources to another project.

Like that foolish external organ plan will actually work out! he thought full of certainty involving his position. Any fool worth giving a brain to could tell you that an organ is placed in the body to protect it. To place it in some vat only makes it that easier to target and hit.

His experiments would instead focus on strengthening the subject's existing body until no weapon or spell in existence could hurt, much less kill. He was even considering incorporating a feature that would allow the body to evolve in order to render it impervious to any attack previously used on it. It would be difficult, considering the numerous different types of magic that existed in the world, but he'd heard enough stories about how all magic was derived from one pure source of magic centuries ago that he'd start there. It'd take time but it'd be one more way he could show up his former Master and make the old fool regret the day he dared look down on such important experiments.

With that thought in mind he took hold of his mage staff and moved to deal with the intruder before the commoner made too big a mess of things.

I'll stop by the pens first, he thought with a cruel smile. My pets have been too long without fresh meat!

The Tunnels of the Lair, N'atrina's POV

"Dammit! I told you not to burn that stuff!" she hissed at her partner as they continued to search the network of tunnels at the bottom of the hole.

"Hey! It was the source of the stink so I figured turning it to ash would get rid of the smell and make things easier on you."

"NEWSFLASH, IDIOT!" she yelled at him while fighting the temptation to scratch him with her claws. "Stinking things only smell worse when they're burning!"

"Well, thanks for the info!" he snapped at her before speeding up a bit to put a couple of feet between them. "Now let's focus on finding the missing children and the bastard behind all this! Then we can leave all this behind!"

It had been this way since they'd begun their search of the tunnels but he really was in the wrong as far as she was concerned. When they'd finally arrived at the bottom of the hole they'd found the source of the stench and it was as disgusting to look at as it was to smell. Apparently the source was a pile of shit, piss and decaying body parts that was easily big enough to fill every bathtub in Magnolia twice over. It was revolting and she'd already made a mental note that after Xander pounded the creep in charge of the place into paste, she'd give him an earful about how the place violated countless health codes in multiple dimensions. It'd been so bad that she'd gotten more than a little dizzy and so, in a moment of BRILLIANCE (note the sarcasm), Xander had used a red fireball spell of destruction to burn it all to ash. Sadly this had only made the stink all the more pungent, resulting in the current bit of friction between the two of them. Oh, it'd wear off by tomorrow but until then she didn't intend to give the young shinigami so much as an inch of breathing room where his actions were concerned.

Turning her attention to the tunnels in an effort to bring their stay there to a swifter conclusion, she tried to find any sign of what happened to the abducted children. From what she could see, whoever had made this underground lair had only done a basic job of carving familiar fixtures into the rough rock. Alcoves for bottles, tools and boxes popped up every once and a while, with stone benches also showing up fairly regularly, but what Xander seemed to be following was the trail of blood splotches likely left by some of the crap he'd burned earlier. A reasonable course of action since it'd lead them to where ever it all came from and it was better than wandering aimlessly through the tunnels with no idea where to go.

"Any luck sensing the spiritual energy of the children?" she asked, hoping that the useful ability would help speed up their search.

"No. Whatever stink was on the souls of the minions is flowing throughout the place," he replied with a shake of his head. "I might be able to sense them if we got within a dozen or two feet of them but that's the best I can do."

"It's better than nothing," she said as they continued to follow the trail.

It was about nine turns later that they finally seemed to reach the room where the decaying organs had come from and, with all due caution, her partner pulled open the surprisingly unlocked door.

What they found inside was a chamber of horrors that put anything Hollywood had created to shame and almost surpassed anything she'd seen in her time travelling through the multi-verse. In the center of the room was a metal table fitted with a mix of metal restraints, magic inscriptions and blades that'd no doubt be hazardous to anyone laying on it. A table close by had several tools on it that looked like a mix of surgeons tools, a mage scientist's implements and stuff that could only be used to torture someone to the extreme. Thankfully no one was on the table at the moment but, judging by the bits of blood and flesh that littered its surface, something had been done on it within the last twelve hours or so. The truly horrifying thing though was the cages arrayed at the far end of the room with most containing various animals but three containing children ranging from four to seven years old.

Wearing nothing more than crude shorts for the boys and shabby dress for the one girl, they all looked like they'd been traumatized to the extreme. Curled up into little balls, they watched with fearful eyes from the corner of their cages furthest from the entrance to the crude jail cells, no doubt expecting the renewal of the horrors they'd witnessed. Deciding to take the spooked animal approach to things, apparently, Xander tucked his staff under his white captain's coat and approached the cages slowly and gently.

"Hey… hey take it easy," Xander said at a volume a little below normal speaking level. "I'm not here to hurt you. You're all from Ruby Town, right? Well, the chief there hired me to find you guys and put a stop to all that bad stuff."

Her eyes narrowed as she watched the children scramble back trying to find some way to get even further away than they already were, only to be stopped by cold rock. These three couldn't have been there for more than three weeks yet they looked like some of the slaves a few of her demonic associates had been in possession of for two years. Whatever the madman behind all this had done to them, it was a small miracle that their minds hadn't completely broken from what they'd seen. Nevertheless they needed to get the children out of this horrible place first and then they could return to deal with the person in charge without worrying about innocents getting caught in the crossfire.

"I've got an idea but first you have to swear not to breath a word of what you're about to see or hear to anyone. ANYONE!" she said, giving him a look that universally got across to men that not obeying them would be resoundingly unwise. "ANYONE! You understand!?"

"My lips are sealed," Xander said with unusual seriousness. "Do whatever you have to do. I'll keep an eye on the door."

For a moment she simply looked at him and she wondered why he hadn't answered with his usual sense of humor but then decided that it could wait until after the job was done.

Closing her eyes for a moment, she prepared herself to do something she'd sworn she'd never do while in this feline form. It'd be difficult and completely against her usual way of behaving but they were on a time limit and had to move fast if they were to succeed. Filling her mind with images necessary for what she'd be doing, she did her best to hold back the nauseous feeling in her stomach.

"Hello! My name is N'atrina," she said in a sickeningly sweet and cutesy voice. "What's your name?"

She could tell without looking that Xander's head had snapped around but she ignored what was almost certainly a dumbfounded expression since she had an act to keep up. Taking a few tentative steps forward, she did her best to milk the whole 'cute cat' routine, putting on an appropriate look on her face that she hoped had the desired effect. It took about a minute but finally the only girl of the group took a few metaphorical steps away from her fear and looked at her with something other than fear.

"T-T-Tamara…" the seven year old girl replied, her courage hanging by a hair. "Are you really a talking cat?"

I believe I just proved that I am kiddo! She thought snippily before replying, "You betcha, Tamara! My friend and I are here to take you home. Wanna come?"

She could see the warring desires and emotions on the little girl's face and so decided to go for broke since she was already humiliating herself with this cavity-giving routine.

"Meow! I'll let you carry me back to Ruby Town. Doesn't that sound nice?" she asked sweetly, batting her ear like she was scratching it or something.

It was worth it in the end as a smile that oh so belonged on the face of a child blossomed on Tamara's face as she moved towards the door to the cage and nodded happily.

"Alexander? If you would be so kind as to open her cage?" she asked, maintaining her cutesy façade no matter how much it chafed.

"Sure thing," Xander replied before going over to the cage in question.

Surprisingly enough the cage didn't have a complex lock on it so it was easy for the young shinigami to undo and open the cage. It opened with a screech of hinges that hadn't had any oil or lubricant applied in a very long time but hadn't gotten messed up enough to keep it from working. Almost like there was a raging fire in the cage, the little girl ran out, ran too her and then scooped her up in arms that were almost too small to successfully carry her. It wasn't too… unpleasant… but she knew that they couldn't let things drag out too much or else the monster behind the horror show around them would show up.

Fortunately, once the other two prisoners saw the little girl cuddling her, their fear dropped enough that they wanted out of their cages as well. The second they were free, though, they swarmed her and the little girl, making things spiral quickly towards smothering territory.

"Now, now, little ones!" Xander said gently and somehow with a grandfatherly flavor despite his young age. "N'atrina needs to breath and all, so don't squeeze her too tightly."

She was half satisfied when the trio of kids loosened their death grip enough that, while still a little too clingy for her liking, would be bearable for the time being. Still, she had to wonder where Xander pulled his grandfatherly-ness but wrote it off as something from the Commander-General that chose to pop up just then. Despite the old fool's inflexibility when it came to change, Genryūsai Shigekuni Yamamoto really did care about those under his command as well as the non-combatants that he saw every day.

Personally, though, she was concerned about what might happen when they finally did meet the mastermind behind the whole scheme because, in her opinion, it'd be akin to a volcano popping its cork. Whoever was behind this was as bad as any Hollow she'd ever heard of and, from what she'd learned hanging around Xander, the young man had to have a fire of anger crackling within him beneath the pleasant mask he had on his face.

Put the two of them together and it spelled doom for the one responsible for so much suffering.

She just hoped that he'd wait until they got the children someplace safe before cutting loose because she had a feeling what he planned on doing would only traumatize the kids even more.

Xander's POV

"It's not much further," he said as they continued back along the route they'd taken to the hole that led to the surface. "Be brave just a little bit longer."

Seeing the old fear threatening to take hold of them, it was with no small effort that he kept his fury from showing up on his face. The… the monster responsible for this preview of hell had scarred the kids mentally and probably for life, so in his mind there'd be no reason that could possible justify the damage done. He would be sure to get his opinion across to the bastard once the children were safely in Ruby Town and being hugged by their parents. Until then he'd keep up the act of a nice grandfather person, just like N'atrina was keeping her surprisingly good cute cat routine going for the children.

It'd been a bit of a shock seeing her slip into the act in the first place but it'd been an amusing change from her usual behavior. He was sorely tempted to store this moment away as primo blackmail material but upon reflection he realized that she wasn't really all that bad to be around. Sure, she was distant and only spoke when necessary but at least she wasn't like Cordy at her worst or, heaven forbid, like Principal Snyder. Basically nothing she did really made him angry but, at the same time, nothing she did made him feel like they'd be best buds anytime soon, either. He supposed this was all because she'd been forced to come with them as punishment for her role in the whole Halloween mess. He knew he'd have some problems warming up to a stranger he'd met under those circumstances. Still, depending on how long it took for the Scoobies to hook up and then find a way back to their native dimension, he was confident that he'd be able to pull her into the friend category eventually.

As they turned the final corner he could see the moonlight streaming down from the hole that led to the surface and felt some relief that they were practically free already. A dozen or more feet plus some quick use of shunpo to ascend and they'd be out of the horrible tunnels and in the free air, something he knew the kids would enjoy. It was with this to look forward to that he quickened the pace of their little group and thankfully the children did not protest, but rather would likely have run on ahead if fear hadn't kept them chained so close to him. Still, it'd probably best if they did stick close just in case trouble found them before they could get outside. He hadn't put the wooden seal back on his zanpakuto so if trouble did pop up he'd be able to draw his blade easily enough but it was proving to be a bit of bother using his willpower to keep down the power the seal usually handled.

I guess I'll have to spend more time without the seal and get used to it. Don't want to slack off too much.

Slacking off, though, became the least of his worries when a trio of strong spiritual signals popped up in his mind and somehow they were at the base of the hole in front of them without him having sensed them well before. The foul energy, the stench that had permeated the trio he'd fought as well as the entire tunnel network, had made it difficult to sense things but he should've picked up on such strong signals a good twenty feet back. Had the signals been hidden from him somehow? With a single gesture and a look he told the children to stop moving. Once he was sure they'd obey, he doubled his level of focus and directed it ahead of himself to discern more about the three unknowns waiting for them.

Yuck! These guys have the stink far worse than anything else I've sensed before! he thought with revulsion as he pulled his senses back a step. I can sense… traces of human souls within them but there probably isn't enough between the three of them to fill a pill bottle. Did they sell parts of their soul for power or were those fragments stolen from them?

Whatever the case, the most powerful of the signals he was sensing could still be said to be half-human in how he felt but the other two barely had a ghost of humanity left to them.

All in all this was NOT good.

"I know you are there, mage, and I know you have my specimens with you," came an oily and mockingly polite voice further down the tunnel. "Come out where I can see you all. It's only polite, after all, and if you choose to be impolite… well, I'll have to get cross with you."

Thinking quickly, he tried to figure out what they should do in response to this oh so kind (sarcastically, of course) invitation. If their unknown host knew where they were, that meant he had some sort of monitoring system in the tunnels, though how sophisticated it was he could not determine. Could be something akin to motion sensors or it could be the magical equivalent of security cameras? Whatever the case, security plus intimate knowledge of the tunnel network meant that running away, hoping to find another way out wouldn't work. They'd either get lost or get caught long before they found a safe way out into the open air.

Plus the guy doesn't sound like the kind of guy that a long lecture would satisfy him for making him cross, he thought with a grim look as he realized that there was only one thing to do. "Stay with the kids, N'atrina. Keep them safe and be ready for anything," he ordered before he began to walk towards the only known way out of the tunnels.

When he saw what awaited him, he found himself wishing it'd taken forever because the three that stood in the way of him accomplishing his mission were not pretty to look at. The main concern and the obvious leader of the enemy group was a man that looked to be a cross between a Marilyn Manson fan and someone with Deadboy's taste in leather clothing items. Add to that some obviously magical bling and a mage's staff and you had someone who fit this place like a glove but there was something about the man's eyes that made his fury tick up. These weren't the eyes of someone who, for one reason or another, kept himself emotionally detached from the things he did or the people he hurt. These were the eyes of someone who loved his job, who saw others as things rather than people more often than not and would sit back to watch the world burn on the condition that he was spared.

As such the madman had probably enjoyed every ounce of suffering he caused the children and perhaps even went further than he strictly had to just for that little bit more.

"So nice of you to step into the moonlight, young man," Manson Junior said with a casual glance at the tunnel he'd come from. "So nice of you to leave my specimens back a ways. It'll make it easier to put them back in their cages once we've concluded our discussion."

"Somehow I don't think it'll be much of a discussion considering your two friends there."

"Yes, I suppose Nyoka and Sierpe do tend to imply an impending bout of violence," Manson said, petting the two demonic looking anaconda snakes coiled up behind their master. "Still, I suppose we should get the pleasantries out of the way. I am Antonio Matia and this, as you no doubt know, is my laboratory."

"Alexander Yamamoto, Fairy Tail mage," he said as a way of introducing himself without giving anything important away. "Now I think this is the part where you summarize what it is you're up to here and how only fools wouldn't see the brilliance of it all."

"Yes, I suppose that would be the cliché, wouldn't it. Very well, the objective behind my acquisition of specimens is to create something better than what nature has seen fit to provide for millennia." Antonio said with the usual villain arrogance. "Across the world there are those who consider themselves to be 'strong' or 'powerful' but the truth of the matter is that they all possess exploitable weaknesses, thus explaining why they are inevitably defeated. Why, you might ask? Because nature is random, chaotic and altogether unrefined, at least as far as I am concerned. That is why I intend to show the world what a deliberate and brilliant mind is capable of producing."

"And abducting kids? Where does that come in?" he asked, trying to push things past the usual ego stroking all baddies do.

"Young specimens are more accepting of my procedures than adults. They are pliable, adaptive and far easier to control than their adult counterparts," Matia replied before turning to one of his pets. "Yet even then I must locate the truly promising subjects and separate them from their kind and that is where the additive I placed in their water supply and crops comes in. Only those possessing the desirable genetic material fall ill and, if they remain ill for five days, then I send my underlings to retrieve them. In fact you bested three of my early prototypes before arriving here. They weren't the successes I'd hoped they'd be but their death's will not inconvenience my work in the slightest."

A sick feeling surged through him as his mind put the pieces of the puzzle together. The minions he'd killed… used to be children!

Fury rose soon after and, as a result, his power rose until a visible aura of flame rose up from his skin, dancing with the emotions thrumming through him. Fury kept the sick feeling in his stomach from overwhelming him but he was pretty sure he'd be tossing his cookies into the nearest toilet once circumstances allowed it.

"Ah… there it is. You might not know it but the moment you entered my underground laboratory a basic scanning spell was activated. Mere minutes before you arrived here I looked at the results and I have to say you intrigue me, young man," Antonio said with mad scientist fascination in his eyes. "Your power bears some similarities to conventional magic but it is not the same. I wonder what I could learn from examining you that might further my goal."

"You want to examine my power? I'll give you a demonstration of it then!" He pulled his zanpakuto from its sheath, the blade singing with joy as it was freed, and charged the man, intent on defeating him as swiftly as possible but keeping his list of tricks close to the chest for the moment. He didn't know what the pet snakes could do or how they'd been modified but if they were anything like the modified children he'd fought, he was in for one serious fight. Normal snakes were deadly enough but if their speed had been amped up like the Legged One he'd fought, then he was going to need some serious speed shortly.

'Shortly' proved to be less than two seconds as both serpents shot forth, their fangs bared in preparation for biting him though, given the size of said fangs, he didn't know how the venom was going to get into him. They were easily long enough that they'd go in one side of his body and out the other, presuming he got sloppy enough for them to sink into his skin in the first place. His suspicion about their speed being increased proved true but thankfully his training with Erza had pretty much left him with near instinctive use of shunpo so, while his mind was still surprised, his body moved. However, just like the previous foe where speed had been the method of competition, the snakes proved up to the task of keeping up with him and unless he was mistaken he had a feeling they were holding back.

Time to let them know that won't fly with me!

Raising his spiritual energies, his speed increased accordingly and soon he reached what he measured to be about seventy percent of his maximum speed with shunpo. This proved to be enough to just about put him even with the snakes as they raised their speed to catch up to him and, while tempted to go all out in an effort to end this quickly, he chose to keep the remaining thirty percent in reserve.

The snakes were either very well trained or possessed enough human level intelligence to use their bodies to maximum effectiveness. They used their speed to close the gap of distance, the length of their bodies to limit maneuvering room and made sure that the only free space was where their master was waiting with a glowing mage staff in his hands.

Time to dip into the magic pool a bit, he thought as he quickly sifted through his list of binding spells.

He knew he could've used them earlier with the… prototypes… but he'd been operating under the theory that, since the souls were gone, the binding spells wouldn't work. After all they'd been intended for use against Hollows, souls and humans not soulless abominations that used to be human children. In this case, however, he could feel souls within the snakes so he was fairly sure Bakudō spells would work fine.

"Bakudō number sixty-two: Hyapporankan!" A rod of neon blue energy manifested in his free hand with a bit of surprise but he threw it at the snake to his right. It was the first time he'd used this spell without speaking the full incantation. Before using it he'd given himself a sixty-five percent chance of everything working out fine but even that'd been a bit optimistic. Still there was no sense in questioning his good fortune for luck was definitely in his favor as he watched the single rod turn into a hundred after reaching the halfway point to its target. One after another the rods slammed into the walls of the stone tube leading to the surface and luckily a little under half of them succeeded in piercing the body of the snake he'd been aiming for, pinning it nicely. Then, to take advantage of the likely shock Antonio and the other snake were feeling, he used shunpo to get to the pinned serpent's head.

"In the end there won't even be One!" he declared, editing a quote from the 'Highlander' flick before executing a slash that almost took the snake's head off.

"Nyoka!" Matia exclaimed with pain and rage.

"One more time!" he yelled as he prepared to finish his decapitation attempt.

"NO! RENSA MAHO!" Antonio declared before something clamped down on both his wrists, preventing him from finishing his slash.

Looking to see what was going on, he was surprised to find chains of light with clamps on the end latched onto his wrists. He didn't have time to follow them back to their source though, since whatever it was yanked hard on them, throwing him back down to the floor of the stone shaft. He managed to reorient his body so that he landed on his feet but it was still jarring and, before he could fully recover, the source of the chains pulled again, sending him into the wall.

"How dare you hurt Nyoka! You novice of a mage!" Antonio bellowed, rage in his voice. "I'll see you suffer a hundred fold for what you've done!"

"Sorry but I got kicked out of the masochist club a long time ago and I don't plan on going back!" He channeled the flames that were the manifestation of his spiritual energy to the chains of light and watched with satisfaction as his power burned through the chains just like his predecessor often used his spiritual energy could burn through spells from the way of binding. Once he was free, though, he knew he needed to adjust his strategy to account for a mage now since that'd make things significantly harder on him. Snakes, regardless of how they'd been modified, still used standard serpent methods of attack, albeit greatly enhanced from anything you'd find in nature.

Fighting a mage, on the other hand… he was in a serious fight now that would put what he'd learned thus far to the test like never before.

Maybe I can use his anger to my advantage.

"I'm happy to say, though, my membership card in being a lousy guest still has a couple years on it." He flashed a devil-may-care smile on his face, "Let's see just how much of this place I can mess up in the next half hour, eh?"

With that he ran off down the tunnel opposite the one that N'atrina and the children were in, keeping himself slow enough so that Antonio Matia wouldn't have trouble keeping up with him.

"YOU WILL NOT RUIN MY WORK!" Antonio bellowed as the sound of running feet became paired. "SIERPE! AFTER HIM!"

The sound of slithering scales caused him to grin as his plan for providing N'atrina an opening through which she could help the kids seemed to be working. While it hadn't been a part of his plan in the beginning, it'd still work out fine. The holes left behind by the now dismissed binding spell would provide ample hand holds for the children to use in climbing their way to the surface and he very much doubted the injured serpent was a threat anymore. He might not have succeeded in decapitating it but the wounds he'd dealt it both with his spell and with his sword had to make staying still pretty attractive to the creature. It was likely that, without orders from its master, it wouldn't make a hostile move against them, leaving only the climb to stand between the children and freedom.

They'd make it.

N'atrina would make sure of it.

He had faith in her.

N'atrina's POV

Well, that idiot's lured the guards away, so I guess it's time to get outta here! She thought with a shake of her head before looking at Tamara and saying, "My friend has tricked them into following him. Now we must climb out of here. C'mon!"

With nods that still had a lingering aura of fear in them, the trio of children ran out into the shaft from the tunnel they'd been hiding in and began to scale the walls using whatever they could as a place to put their hands or feet. She'd repositioned herself from Tamara's arms to a fireman carry's position on her shoulder to allow the girl to climb with relative ease but it was somewhat hard to keep from falling off. Nevertheless it was the only way things would work since it was a safe bet that what courage the children had would weaken the farther they travelled from her and they'd need all they could get in order to get back home.

Up and up they went, progress being stalled only a few times when one of the kids needed to choose a new place to put their hands or feet due to the previous selection crumbling. She wouldn't say that there were no close calls but it looked like she'd lucked out by getting stuck with the children who must've spent some time climbing trees. Looking back down the shaft every few minutes, she hoped that Alexander would be able to keep Antonio busy long enough to give them a head start back to Ruby Town. With a head start it'd be easy for the young shinigami to catch up to them and then carry all of them using shunpo the rest of the way to their destination.

Once we're back there we can send a message to the Magic Council and get them to swarm this place, she thought as the top of the shaft got closer and closer. Our job was to solve the sickness and put a stop to the abduction of children. We've done both and we're getting three of their kids back for them. No need to go any further.

Of course she knew what Xander would do.

He'd insist on taking care of the whole thing and beating the crap out of Antonio for what the sicko did here but the teenager had to realize that he was still a beginner. It'd only been a little over a year since they'd arrived in this dimension and, while the young man might be strong enough and skilled enough to do jobs from the request board, he still had a long way to going with his training. He hadn't even managed shikai yet and, given the little, if any, deviation between Xander's powers and the Commander-General's powers, it should've been easy to do. She could only presume that just knowing the name of the zanpakuto from inherited memories wasn't enough and that actual communication and harmonization with the spirit of HIS zanpakuto was required for Xander to do shikai.

Until he can cast at least half of the kido spells without the full incantation and has achieved shikai, I won't consider him good enough to handle big jobs all on his own, she thought as Tamara finally reached the top of the shaft.

It was a bit iffy, given the arrangement of the rocky outcroppings obscuring the hole, but with a couple of well-chosen hand holds the girl made it out and the boys soon followed. Stepping a few paces away from the hole, the children seemed to marvel at the sight of the starlit night sky, making it seem as though they'd never expected to see it again. This only made her wonder just what horrors Antonio had put them through to change them happy normal kids to humans that had almost resigned themselves to their horrible fates.

Not that she particularly cared about them.

It was just Xander's job to find them and bring them home.

She was just doing her job as his partner and helping out where she could.

Before the punishment handed down by the Powers That Be, humans had never really been anything but potential clients or a people to use as entertainment when the itch made itself known. Aside from those two uses, she didn't trouble herself with the world of humans any more than she had to. Her species had a pretty decent lifespan, spanning a few centuries, so compared to her humans were little more than children to her or teenagers at best no matter how old they were. There was no real sense in getting to know them, much less becoming friends or worse, lovers, like she'd heard some of the more benign demons did in certain parts of the world. She'd outlive any human she got friendly with by decades, if not centuries, so she'd just as soon avoid the whole painful separation and mourning process.

Since arriving in Fiore with Xander she'd not been given the option of distancing herself from humans since in her cat form she couldn't very well get food for herself unless she wanted to hunt rats or steal milk and that was something her pride rejected. She might be stuck in a cat form but she refused to be reduced to cat behavior, so she stayed with Xander and picked food off of his plate to eat. That added to the magic that kept them from getting to far apart and she was getting to know Alexander and his friends whether she wanted to or not. She did her best to not let it change who she was and what she did but it was inevitable that certain compromises needed to be made in order to keep her life from being more difficult than it needed to be.

So as far as the kids were concerned, she'd do the job Xander was hired to do and what he'd asked her to do but no more than that.

"Let us get going, little ones," she said, keeping up her cute cat routine. "Your homes are in this direction."

"What about your friend?" Tamara asked, looking back at the hole.

"He'll be fine. He's very strong and will catch up with us soon," she said with confidence she only partially had. "Now let's hurry! I am sure your parents are worried about you."

Mentioning their parents proved to be the right call as the kids began to follow her in the direction Ruby Town lay but their pace wasn't quite as fast as she'd have liked. It was clear that despite their newfound hope driving them onward, their bodies had been weakened by their time in their cages as well as the illness they'd suffered before being kidnapped. If they'd been given a full meal and a couple of hours rest she was sure they'd have been able to run pretty fast but reality was not so kind so as to allow them such things.

We'll just have to make do with this pace then.

BOOOOMMMM!

HHHSSSSS!

Turning around, she was shocked to find that the snake of science and sorcery shooting up out of the ground with an angry look on its face, both of its eyes firmly focused on them. Looking at the thing, she saw with dismay that its wounds were healing in a similar yet slower manner than the merged minions from earlier. None of the holes or the slash wound near its head had fully healed but apparently they were healed enough that it felt it could pursue escapees. Hissing angrily, it lunged at them and only sheer luck allowed the children and her to dive out of the way in time to avoid getting hurt.

The kids aren't going to be able to do that again, she thought as she saw the children frozen in horror at the beast attacking them. But what can I do?! I'M A CAT!

Despite the hopelessness of the situation, her desire to keep them safe did not fade and so she continued to look for a way to achieve her desire. Darting forward, she put herself between the kids and the large, unnatural snake, baring her fangs at it in a ridiculous effort to intimidate it into leaving them alone. After all, what reason did a badass lab created snake like it have to be scared of a little fluff ball like her who didn't have anything that could penetrate its scales? No reason, that's what! The smart move would be to leave, Xander would understand, because it made no sense to commit suicide when the children would only get killed anyway.

Despite these perfectly practical thoughts, though, she couldn't bring herself to abandon the terrified pre-teens to their fate.

Obviously Xander's brand of crazy has rubbed off on me! "YOU WANT THESE KIDS, YOU OVERGROWN WORM!? YOU'RE GONNA HAVE TO GO THROUGH ME FIRST!"

At a moment like this she fully expected the universe to laugh at her along with the snake glaring down at her but instead she felt something she hadn't felt in a long time.

Magical power.

Out of nowhere a magical circle appeared beneath her four feet, shining its light over her and up into the air a couple of feet but she didn't care about the light show. With every second that passed she could feel her body changing and the sensations her mind was receiving caused joy to soar through her soul. However it was only when the light faded that she saw the finished product and did it improve her mood.

SHE WAS BACK IN HER OLD BODY!

The clothes were different than what she'd worn the day she'd been summoned before the Powers That Be but she didn't care about that because all that mattered to her was the fact she wasn't a cat anymore. Black, skintight biking shorts that stopped just above the knees, a sports bra of the same color and a long sleeved jacket that stopped a good couple of inches above the waist made up the outfit but she didn't care.

"Guess what, fang face? IT'S A WHOLE NEW BALLGAME!" she said, charged it using the basic skills that all her species of demon could employ.

Bringing back her right hand, she willed the claws that tipped each of her fingers to lengthen a good three inches and sliced into the snake with manageable resistance from its scales. As soon as she landed she leapt back up again, this time extending the claws on her right foot's toes before executing a slash that tore up a good stretch of flesh under the snake's lower jaw. It keened with pain as she landed on the ground to admire her work and, while still full of anger, she felt it was safe to say it now considered her a higher priority target than the children.

Guess I'll see if I'm completely back to normal or just halfway there, she thought as she drew upon the power of her demonic breed, just as her mother had taught her all those years ago.

One might think that attractive female demons with extendable claws were a dime a dozen and one would be right in that regard but, thankfully, her species had an ability that set them apart from the rest. Indeed it was what caused them to have something of a reputation among those who chose to go with the flow of their culture and become assassins.

They had the ability to manipulate the shadows into weapons.

Oh, there were limitations such as the size of the shadow being used, the distance from the shadow that the target was and the complexity of the weapon being made but, if her mother was to be believed, that only meant that the assassin had to use their brains rather than rely on the power alone. Willing spiked chains to shoot out from the shadows created by the rocky outcroppings and by the snake itself, she manipulated them into wrapping around the serpent, hurting it while at the same time restraining it. Every time it tried to free itself from the chains, the creature only wound up hurting itself even more but, as intelligent as it might have been, it apparently was too full of rage to see the wisdom of stopping.

Clearly a design flaw if there ever was one, she thought as an idea came to her. Now, should I leave it to writhe in agony or finish this quickly so I can escort the kids back to Ruby Town? Decisions, decisions!

She decided it'd be best to end the matter quickly if only because of how messed up the children were probably after seeing her little display. With upward swing of her arms, she summoned a single spike to shoot up from the shadow directly beneath the serpent, impaling its head completely. From there only spasms came from the beast and she was just about to turn to the children and advise them to follow her to Ruby Town when she felt something horrible.

Her power was leaving her!

She fought this, tried to hold onto what was hers by birthright, but the spell placed on her by Janus was just too strong so it was with great frustration that she was forced back into her cat form. As her true form receded, so too did the powers that went with it, causing the chained and impaled serpent to crash to the ground a bloody mess. As the magic circle faded away beneath her PAWS, she cursed the Roman god in her mind for the punishment forced upon her and swore to find a way to exact her revenge.

It took a minute or three to get her temper under control but, once done, she turned to the children putting back on the cutesy cat face.

"Mean old snake! It won't hurt you anymore children." She took a few tentative steps towards them, "Now let us be off before more trouble finds us. Your parents are waiting for you!"

They were still giving her a somewhat wary look, to be expected given how vicious she'd been, but fortunately repression of bad memories that kids often employed kicked in and they began to run once more in the direction of Ruby Town. Keeping up with them easily, she took one final look back at the hole before it disappeared from sight and hoped that Xander wouldn't be too long in catching up with them.

He'll be fine. Even without shikai, the Commander-General was formidable and, with no innocent bystanders, Xander'll be able to cut loose on the sicko mage.