This job wasn't supposed to end up in a battle situation. If it was, he would never have allowed her to come along. Or he would have brought more back up, or… something. There was no use going over ifs and buts now, anyway. He had made a mistake, and now he was paying for it. Shit. The gun mage he was facing fired out another shot that rang just left of his ear and he swore, shooting out a pole made of pure iron and aiming it at his attacker. It missed, just like every other attack he had sent over at the man. Whatever magic he used it obviously allowed him to see whatever move Gajeel was about to make before he even made it. But he didn't have to beat him. He just had to hold him off long enough for Levy to escape. Lily was fighting another mage to his right, and Jet and Droy were battling one to his left. He'd sent his little shrimp away from the mansion as soon as the dark guild had appeared, instructing her to leave the translated book there. These men weren't after her, they were after the book. And this would all be in vain if they followed her as she tried to escape with the book.

Gajeel feinted right as he tried to get up closer to the dark mage, using another pole to try and hit him but again the man dodged and jumped backwards. Gajeel planted his feet, preparing to use his breath attack but the man took another shot before he could even build it up. How did the Salamander beat that other Dragon Slayer that could hear his thoughts? Fuck, he could never remember. Dodging another bullet aimed at his head he planted his feet to shoot demon logs at the mage before something came barrelling from his right and pushed him to the floor. Opening his eyes from the impact he saw the wood-make mage Lily had been fighting had gotten an attack past the exceed, which had collided with Gajeel to stop the Dragon Slayer's attack. Fuck. He didn't have long before the gun mage reloaded…

His ears picked up the click of the trigger and the small explosion that sent the bullet firing towards him. He had mere seconds to get up off the floor before the bullet collided with him, and he had a feeling this time the other mage wasn't going to miss. He was a sitting duck here. A small voice told him in the back of his head that he wasn't going to make it up in time so he took defensive maneuvers instead. Shifting his skin to iron scales that he hoped were bullet proof he instinctively closed his eyes and waited for the shot to hit him.

"Solid Script: Guard!"

He didn't have time to open his eyes before he heard what sounded like glass shattering, and then the indescribable tone of metal piercing flesh. He had heard it many times before, he knew what it sounded like. Next came the noise of metal hitting bone, chipping off a shard before it exited skin the other side. The last noise was paired with a sharp pain in his stomach. He finally opened his eyes, looking down to see where the bullet lay lodged in his scales. Looked like they were bullet proof after all, but only when Levy's solid script lessened the impact. He grinned, looking up to his little Shrimp to thank her, before chastising her for coming back.

Levy was stood in front of him, the remains of a word flickering out of existence around her. The noises had obviously been the word breaking down, but it was odd that it sounded like the bullet hit a person. Until he noticed the slow spread of red across her orange dress. The next noise to enter his ears was the cackling laughter of the dark mage as Levy took two steps back and collapsed to the floor.

Blood was already leaking from her mouth when Gajeel had made his way over to her, and she looked up at him with tears in her hazel eyes.

"Huh, guess I miscalculated that one, eh?"

A chuckle escaped her mouth before her eyes closed and Gajeel heard her heartbeat slow. Rage encompassed him and he was about to stand up and attack the dark mage again before a flash of orange appeared in front of his vision and he looked up to see Jet standing between him and the gun magician.

"Gajeel! What are you doing, get her out of there! We'll handle things here!"

The end of the sentence was almost inaudible even to his sensitive ears as Gajeel pulled himself and Levy into shadows, and shot across the landscape to the nearest town.

He knew why he wasn't allowed into the operating theatre, but that didn't make it any better. He could still hear the beeping of machinery mirroring the steady heart beat deep in Levy's chest as the surgeons operated on her, beating out a steady rhythm to his thoughts. He had tried to close his eyes, but all that he could see behind his eyelids was Levy lying in the mud, eyes closed and a red river of blood streaming from her mouth. He tried not to think of how he was going to tell her that her two best friends hadn't made it out of the battle, or that Lily was lay in a hospital bed in another part of the hospital after collapsing when he made it back with the news. He would cross that bridge when he came to it.

He watched the clock at the other end of the corridor, counting how many heartbeats came in each second. It hypnotised him to the point he didn't even notice they were slowing down until a high pitched wail coming from one of the machines in the wall behind him forced him to cover his ears with his hands and grunt in pain. Behind his closed eyelids he could see nothing but a white light as that noise blocked his consciousness, stopping him from hearing Levy's heartbeat, stopping his one life line to her. He heard the shouting of surgeons over the top of the wail before they all died down, and finally after felt like hours the wail cut off.

He sharpened his hearing to try and pick out that heartbeat, regain that link to the small bluenette in the room behind him. The siren must have done some pretty irreparable damage to his ears because he couldn't pick it up. The loudest noise he could hear was the steps of one of the nurses heading to the door. It was then he realised that he could hear all of their heartbeats just fine through the wall, and tears started to fill his eyes as the nurse opened the door to look at him.

She didn't need to say a word. Gajeel had already heard everything that had happened.