Chapter 7

I'm sorry it's been a while, and I apologize in advance that it's short. I say this at the bottom, but I'll put it here too: there are several events that I wanted to show in quick succession, so I wanted them all in the same chapter. I ended this chapter a tad prematurely because I want that one chapter to be the next.

Gray watched as the blue-haired water mage made her way to speak to the master, watched the various expression changes of the three involved in that conversation, and even watched as Juvia walked away with more determination than he'd ever seen for anything that wasn't him. And it confused him and excited him and worried him all at once. And when she started to turn into Erza before his eyes, it sent ice through his veins.

She could not be mistaken as anyone other than Erza by someone who had not seen her transform.

And the ice mage couldn't help but wonder—for what purpose did she wear that expression?

It wasn't solely for him. That was the only part of it that he was absolutely certain of. As for the rest, he believed he had started to understand some of how she thought. Not much, that was for sure, because Juvia only outwardly showed someone she was not and barely even let him see the real her. Only recently had he been able to see part of what she hid underneath her spacey exterior. Her true intelligence, that secret genius that he wondered at and suspected was of near Lucy or Levy caliber, was a rare sight and he felt like this was one of the moments it shined.

Perhaps what piqued his attention most, however, was that she didn't even seek him out for one parting glance, or even a nod for luck in his direction. As her team morphed around her, Gajeel to Natsu and Levy to Lucy, and as Gray watched his own double take the place of Lily, the Erza that Juvia had become was complete, and she still didn't look at him.

And then…she was gone.

Juvia was gone, and Gray found himself wishing she had spared him one more glance. He didn't know what was going to happen out there, and he didn't know if they'd ever get to see each other again. It didn't sit well with him, not knowing.

"Gray!" a voice that sent terror through him barked, and he turned towards the real readhead.

"A-aye!" he answered reflexively, then blinked and shook his head as Erza gestured him over.

"Master wants to talk to us. He called you, but you were distracted by something," she eyed him owlishly before scolding, "although now isn't a time to be distracted, you know."

The ice mage murmured his acknowledgement, not really feeling up to arguing with the intimidating redhead. His worry for Juvia had somehow taken over and completely pulled his attention away from what he should have been focusing on. It wasn't often that it happened to him—he'd expect this kind of reaction from Natsu, that space-case, but he didn't expect it of himself.

Gray followed her back to where the deceptively diminutive master stood, surveying his children running around and preparing for the task at hand.

"Sorry," was the first word Gray spoke, but he didn't elaborate. From the look in the master's eyes, he knew he didn't need to. Instead, he continued, "You wanted to talk to us?"

The ice mage made an attempt at his usual, bored manner, but in light of the situation he knew it wasn't a very good one.

"I've decided," he looked like he didn't want to say whatever it was, but continued anyway, "that the two of you will make up another two man team. Gray, you will pass as Natsu, and you, Erza, will take on Lucy's form. I know I didn't tell the others this when I announced groups, and that was partly because I wanted it to be a secret. If, Mavis forbid, anyone gets captured, I don't want them to know that you two are out there, as well. Do you understand?"

For the first time, he seemed a little unsure of his decision, and as Gray opened his mouth to reassure the older man that it was a great choice, Erza had beat him to it. He was thankful that she took it on herself to initiate that conversation, though her approach could, as always, use a little bit of tact.

"We understand, Master," she said firmly. "I was going to go out alone if you didn't assign me to a group or give me another mission. I'm glad you caught me before I did so, though I still think another solo Natsu or two would be excellent decoys. With the situation being as it is, however…numbers may be our strong suit."

Gray put a hand on her shoulder, which he wouldn't have ever done before. "We do understand, like she said. And it's fine that you don't want to tell everyone. I get that, too. And I know you don't wanna think about others getting captured, but we don't know anything about the enemy right now, so it's a possibility you can't rule out."

Makarov Dreyar nodded mutely, unable to find words to express how he was feeling for a few moments, but then quickly gathered himself together. He was the master of Fairy Tail, after all.

"Unfortunately, you're more correct than I'd like to think. And I'm afraid that, before this is all over, someone will be captured. What I fear even more, though, is that we will lose someone because of this. We don't know what they want Natsu and Lucy for, only that whoever these culprits are want to make them suffer. Once they find out we're sending dopplegangers around, how long will it take for the order to bring them back dead or alive to come?

"I've been thinking about every possibility since this entire situation arose, and each time, I have these fears that won't go away. And here I am, sending my children out to fight the unknown while I try to dig around and find out the truth. You are all being decoys, and I'm safely here, searching for answers," Gray didn't want to see the water welling up in the tiny man's eyes, or see the tortured expression on his features, but he couldn't look away. "I don't know which feels worse—that these children are out there facing the enemy, or that I am helpless to stop them until I find out why they are the enemy."

"Whatever you feel, Master," Erza spoke slowly and deliberately, as if choosing her words very carefully, "you must always believe in us. You have had a hand in raising us, in one way or another, and you know us better than most of our own parents had the chance to. You know what we are capable of, and you passed on your stubbornness to each and every one of us. When we are out there, fighting and protecting, it is because we learned it from you. It is because we are Fairy Tail. And no one can take that away."

And Gray, noticing a watchful Mirajane, nodded and after briefly gazing around the guild, raised his hand, pointer finger and thumb extended, and shouted above the muttering, "We are Fairy Tail!"

If at first people were shocked, it took only seconds for a roar to rise within the guild hall, despite the missing members. And that's when the Master let tears run unhindered down his cheeks, his chest swelling with pride as he joined in the chant that had begun.

It was a small thing, Gray knew, but it was raising morale, and that was what they needed.

A pained grunt alerted Juvia to the fact that Pantherlily—as Gray—had been hit, and hard. She could barely spare the time, but she did anyway, glancing back at him. And as irrational as it was, since she knew it was Lily and not Gray at all, she felt the panic grip her for a moment. And then a fist connected solidly with her jaw and sent her staggering back, lights blinding her vision temporarily from the pain. Juvia knew then that she had to pay more attention. Her left arm was almost useless already, and she knew she could only hold out for a few more minutes before she revealed to them that she wasn't truly Erza Scarlet.

"Erza!" her Gray managed to gasp out, even as she heard another sharp intake of breath from him to indicate another hit had landed.

"Don't worry about me, Gray," and she knew it was time, so she said in a meaningful voice, ''Show them what you've got!"

As a cackling man wielding a nasty dirk, the same one that had put her left arm out of commission temporarily, charged at her, she glared at him and let him come…and he fell right through her.

When he hit the ground on the other side, spluttering in confusion, she continued and with a smirk worthy of her old Phantom Lord days, she murmured, "Water Lock," and the man found himself rising off of the ground, suffocating, in her special ball of water meant to incapacitate her opponents. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that Lily had managed to hide his sword until now.

She couldn't dwell on it, however, as she sidestepped another approaching enemy and he bounced off of the watery prison his comrade was slowly losing consciousness inside. As he staggered up, he found himself encompassed by water as well.

Without realizing it, Juvia had allowed the rain to start pouring, and now it was to her advantage. She didn't have to waste time trying to draw water from the ground, or pull moisture from the air. All she had to do was use the standing water, and the falling rain, and she would be fine. She had to tell herself that she could do this, or she might have given up. She was sore and aching, but she would do whatever it took, just as she had promised the master she would.

"Who are you, really?" a woman with a dark look in her eyes asked, as the wind picked up around them. The clear signs of a wind mage were showing, and from her experiences as a member of Element Four, and sparring with their wind mage, she knew how to counter that. Now she just had to wait for the opportune moment…

"Erza Scarlet," she responded, stubbornly. Maybe she could somehow make them believe that Erza had even more abilities than the world knew about…? It was a foolish thought, but that crazy woman was always surprising people with her strength. "I thought you already knew that?"

The brunette's eyes darkened as Juvia noticed another man sneaking up to her left.

"Don't play coy with me, you stupid Fairy Tail wench. Who are you?"

Juvia let her expression darken in return, being careful to hold onto the transformation magic. She would hold that until the end, whether they were victorious or not.

"Scum that dares to insult Fairy Tail…" she breathed, her voice low and menacing and very convincingly Erza, "…don't deserve the truth."

And as the two unconscious mages fell from the water lock, Juvia swept her arms around quickly. Her water slicer slashed at the woman, distracting her, and then she turned her body to water as the man charged straight through. A moment later, she was blasting him against a tree with a nasty water nebula and once more focusing on the angry, recovering wind mage.

As the woman started to attack, Juvia felt a sensation she had never felt before. As the wind tore through her rain, she could feel the disturbance. Juvia just knew where the attacks were coming, and how quickly they would hit her. And with this knowledge, she slid to the right just as a nasty jet of wind rushed past. She could barely see the wind, and she thought she had the perfect counter for a wind mage already…but now? Juvia knew that this was even better. For the second time in just a few minutes, that devilish smirk from the old days crept across her face.

"Do you think we can find Le-Lucy and Natsu again?" Lily, still in Gray's form though rather battered, gasped out as they made their way as quietly as they could in the direction the two had gone. His worry for Levy and Gajeel was apparent, and Juvia couldn't blame him. She, however, was worried about how they would fare if they ran into more of the enemy. Neither of them were at their best—or even remotely capable of dealing with one or two more people, let alone another group.

"Natsu knows what he's doing," Juvia managed without a break in her voice. "He'll get them to a safe place. We won't be able to find them after that, so if we don't find them by nightfall, we must hope for the best. They'll take care of each other. We are Fairy Tail, after all. Isn't that what we do?"

Lily grunted his agreement in a very Gray-like manner, and Juvia let herself be satisfied. She herself wasn't sure she had been enough like Erza…but she hadn't been present in the guild just a few hours earlier to hear Erza say something very similar.

After walking and stumbling through the woods, hiding if they heard even the faintest sound from a distance, they came upon a tree with roots that formed a small shelter. The trees in this forest were abnormally large—part of the reason Juvia had chosen this direction in the first place—so it wasn't unusual to find a nook that two people could fit in fairly comfortably. Night was beginning to fall, and Juvia knew they couldn't go much farther.

"We'll stop here for tonight," she said softly. "We both need the rest if we're going to be able to hold our own against anyone else."

She didn't mention that the fight would have been much easier if they hadn't spent the first twenty minutes fighting hand-to-hand, or roughly in the style of the people they were imitating. She was certain that he knew it, too, with as quickly as they had managed to clean up the small fry once they had both started using their actual weapons and magic. But the words whatever it takes kept ringing in her mind, and she knew mentioning it would break the act if they had been followed.

She wouldn't break the act…not now.

"I'll take first watch while you rest," he suddenly spoke, and she looked sharply at him, having been about to say the same thing. She began to protest, but he cut her off. "You took more injuries than I did, and I'll be damned if I let you sit up while I rest when you look like hell."

If Juvia hadn't been so damn tired, she would have protested some more, but she rationalized that even Erza could listen to reason in dire situations, so she grudgingly accepted and curled up in the sleeping bag they'd managed to salvage from the campsite. She slumped down a little further than she normally would have, because she wasn't sure if her will was strong enough to hold the transformation in her sleep or not.

And then she was sleeping.

Okay. Don't kill me. I have a lot of ideas, but I wanted several of my big events to happen in the same chapter and I didn't want it to be THIS one. So they'll likely be next chapter! HAHA!

Anyway, I apologize for how short this chapter is and how long it's taken me. I just haven't had much motivation to write, and I hate that sooooo much because I honestly love writing. There really isn't any excuse for me to leave you guys hanging for so long, so my goal is to have at least one of my current ongoing stories completed by this December. Wish me luck!