Hamuko had decided to let Gray accompany them to the temple so he could try to stop his estranged surrogate brother (as Hamuko would describe him since 'boy who Gray shared a teacher with' was a bit of a mouthful) from resurrecting Deliora. Erza would also accompany them until they found Natsu so she could drag him back to their temporary lodgings in the village. Lucy would stay behind with the villagers because Hamuko didn't want the blonde anywhere near any possible combat situations for fear she'd decide nuking the island was a sound strategy. Fuuka would stay behind as her magic was almost entirely support based. If the village was attacked, she was to send a message to Hamuko with Telepathy and untie Lucy and the cat so she could help with defense.

On heading to the temple where Deliora was and where the Moon Drip was being used, they heard a loud sound like that of a building being destroyed in the direction of the temple. When it eventually came into view over the trees, it looked... off.

"Was the temple... always at an angle like that? Because that's a weird design if it was." Hamuko quipped.

"No." Gray answered. "I guess we found out where Natsu went. He must've knocked out the supports on one side so the Moon Drip wouldn't work. The light can't reach Deliora anymore."

Everyone was stunned into silence by that revelation. Natsu Dragneel, the Salamander, one of the most unthinking mages in Fiore history actually had a good idea.

"Fine, fine! That's one mark in his favour." Hamuko conceded. "With hundreds against."

"It's a start." Erza commented, glad that the Butterfly girl was finding worth in Natsu after all the naysaying she was doing. The girl was right though. 'Maybe if we could get Natsu to think things through that well all the time he really could be an S-Class mage.' she added in her mind.

"Well, either way, Lyon's plan for Deliora is pretty much shot to hell now. I don't see them fixing that any time soon. So let's go kick your big bro's ass and put an end to this mess."

"He's not my brother." Gray denied.

"Close enough." Hamuko shrugged.

"Get down!" Erza ordered, a split-second before crescent shaped blades flew out of the forest followed by their attackers wearing purple robes. The three women dodged easily enough. Junpei being less agile chose to use his Crush magic on the one blade that got too close, shattering it. Gray opted for a quick ice shield.

"We finally found you, Fairy Tail!", one of the robed figures shouted.

"We won't allow you to interfere with Reitei's plans!" proclaimed another.

"Lyon's followers?" Erza asked Gray.

"Yeah." Gray answered, assessing their opponents.

"And you just know they will follow if we don't deal with them here." Mitsuru drawled.

"Go on ahead, boss." Junpei suggested. "Mitsuru and I can handle these guys, easy! Right, Mitsuru?"

"Of course." Mitsuru agreed, tossing her hair over her shoulder.

As much as Erza wanted to go with Hamuko, strategically she knew it would be better for her to help hold the line here. 'This must be almost, if not, all of his followers. All Hamuko and Gray would need to do is beat Lyon and whatever stragglers remain and the day would be ours.' "I will remain as well."

Hamuko nodded. "All right. Come on, Gray."

"Yeah." Gray agreed, and the two ran on towards the temple in the distance.

Mitsuru pressed one hand to a nearby tree and used her water manipulation magic to draw the water out of it. Thinking it the start of an attack rather than gathering necessary resources, one of the purple clad minions attacked. Manipulating the ball of green-tinted water surrounding her hand to form a sickle, she made a lazy swing at her attacker with it to cover her free hand reaching for his neck. Draining enough from him to disable but not to kill, she watched as Erza used her Requip magic to summon swords that would fly at Lyon's minions.

'Hm. I'm being upstaged. Well, I'll have to do something about that.' "Iori! Guard me." Mitsuru ordered as she began preparing a more... efficient spell. The water she had gathered was sent high into the air in one large sphere. It then split into twenty smaller spheres before they began to change shape and then freeze solid. Twenty ice spears floated in the air and with a shout of "Mabufu!", they each shot towards one of the robed minions, over half hitting their targets. That was in addition to the five Junpei had defeated while guarding Mitsuru.

That made sixteen to the duo versus eighteen to Erza.

Mitsuru sighed. 'I suppose Fairy Tail's S-Class are that rank for a reason. Just like ours.'

-(-)-

Night had just fallen by the time Hamuko and Gray had reached the temple. "So... Just to be sure... You wouldn't be planning to use Iced Shell on Lyon to make sure he doesn't unfreeze Deliora, would you?"

Gray stared, wide-eyed at Hamuko, doing his very best to look horrified at the implication. "What? No! Why would you think that?"

Hamuko shrugged. "I 'unno. You seemed like the stupid self-sacrificing type, I guess. Glad to know I'm just being weird though." Hamuko smiled. "I mean it's not like that plan would work anyway. He has like, hundreds of followers and he'd already be exactly where he'd need to be to get unfrozen."

"R-right..." Gray agreed nervously. 'Oh, crap, that's right! Man, I'd've looked so stupid if I'd tried what I was planning when I woke up!'

"So you just kick this guy's ass and we can get out of here, I get the mission done and we go ho-" she was interrupted by the sounds of explosions and shattering ice. "I'm getting really tired of being interrupted by sounds of violence."

Finding the location of the fight was easy. The room with ice covering it was hard to miss. Gray busted his way through a wall to get in. Hamuko opted to just lean against the opposite wall and let him do his thing.

"Gray." Natsu spoke in realisation of who it was that interrupted his fight.

"Natsu, let me take this guy down." Gray half-requested, half-demanded.

"You already lost to him once, remember?" Natsu reminded him.

"I won't this time. I'll finish this."

"That's some confidence you have there." Lyon commented on Gray's bravado.

"It was my fault that Ul died ten years ago. But... ", Gray paused as he settled into a fighting stance. "Hurting my friends, hurting the village, trying to melt that ice... I can't forgive you for that. I'll punish you for all of it, Lyon-"

He was interrupted by a rumbling sound and the whole temple starting to shake. Gray glanced at Hamuko. "You're right. That is kind of irritating."

Slowly, the formerly slanted room flattened out, indicating the temple had somehow been repaired, a fact that Natsu instantly picked up on, indicated by his stomping on the floor and screaming 'what the hell is going on'.

"This means the moonlight can shine on Deliora again!" Gray realised aloud.

"Sorry! I was busy!" an odd man in a red mask shouted jovially as he ran into the ice-covered room.

"Zalty, is this your doing?" Lyon asked.

"The moon will be coming out soon so I decided to restore the temple." 'Zalty' confirmed.

"W-what the hell is this guy?" Gray asked incredulously.

"After all my work to ruin it!" Natsu said, equally shocked. "How did you fix it!"

"Doesn't matter." Hamuko said coldly, glaring at the strange old man as she entered the room. "Do it again. He'll be too busy to fix it a second time."

"No way!" Natsu shouted, not caring who this new girl was. "I'm gonna kick that guy's ass for messing up my hard work!"

"No..." Hamuko said, grabbing Natsu's vest with one hand. "You are going to break the temple again to make sure Deliora doesn't get awakened and slaughter everyone on the island. And if you don't I'll make sure Erza knows exactly why it is we'll all be about to die. Clear?"

"A-aye!" Natsu nodded, reflexively acting like Happy at the thought of Erza's wrath.

"Great!" she smiled sweetly as she let him go and he immediately bolted off, saying something about a disgrace to Fairy Tail to Gray before leaving. "So Zalty, was it? I'm very curious about how you repaired this temple. Must be some impressive magic."

'Zalty' was a bit unsure what to do. What 'he' needed to do was stop Natsu from destroying the temple supports again, maybe test his abilities while doing so. But this new girl mage would probably have something to say about that. And from seeing how Titania had deferred to her when they first arrived on the island, she would be a capable opponent, supposedly S-Class. An enemy of that strength at 'his' back would be... problematic. Especially when trying to bring down the Salamander.

Deciding 'his' course of action, 'Zalty' ran from the room, laughing all the way, knowing the girl would chase 'him'.

Hamuko sighed. "Don't lose, Gray. It'd make me look really stupid for letting you do this your way." she told him as she ran off to chase the fleeing masked man.

-(-)-

While Hamuko had no trouble keeping up with the masked mage, he was clearly not as out of shape as his appearance suggested. She was getting slightly annoyed by his constant attempts to feel out her magic by dropping sections of wall and ceiling on her. He learned nothing. Her magic was difficult to recognise unless you were the direct target or she got really serious but that didn't stop the masked mage from trying. All he found out from it was that she could knock away any hazards he sent her way without even breaking stride.

After a long chase through the halls of the temple, the masked man stopped in an enormous cavern below the building itself. A cavern with a large form encased in ice at its centre and currently bathed in an odd, magical, purple glow.

Deliora. Moon Drip.

'Better hurry it up, Salamander.' Hamuko thought to herself. 'We're running out of time.'

-(-)-

A/N: This chapter took a few days. Not sure why. Still fun.

Hey, I was wondering. If I were to make Natsu suddenly and inexplicably romantic and fawning all over Lucy, then name them as central characters, would I get more readers? Just curious. I'm actually more a fan of Natsu/Lisanna myself.

So we get a taste of Mitsuru's specific brand of magic in this one. Water manipulation like Juvia. Two differences. One: She is nowhere near as capable with it so can't make it rain wherever she goes, forcing her to use more... local water sources. Two: Juvia makes water boil when she's angry. Why not go in the other direction? So Mitsuru can freeze water. However, she can not straight up make ice out of nothing like Gray does. It has to be water first.

Also, might've noticed the name Mitsuru used for her attack. It's an SMT ice spell that attacks all enemies. Other characters will probably use similar naming terms so here's a quick naming guide. It's not rocket science so don't worry.

Agi = fire

Bufu = ice

Garu = wind

Zio = electricity

Tera = earth

Zan = force

Hama = light

Mudo = dark

Megido = almighty

Probably not important enough that you need to memorise them or anything. Just thought I'd mention it just in case. Next we have...

REVIEWS!

Xafnir: Fair question. For now, I'm focused on this. Why? Because it's fun to write. Rest assured, I will be going back to FEShadow soon enough but expect a couple changes. More details on that when I actually post a new chapter of it.

Engineer4ever: I think I might've been unclear on something. Seta isn't a direct enemy to Fairy Tail. He sees them as a menace to society but knows that they are technically the good guys. Attacking them would make Fate look like villains. So instead when he hears of Fairy Tail doing something praiseworthy, he tries to one-up them by doing something better. That's what he meant when he left in chapter 6.

Reviews done.

Alright. I would like to wish Hamuko and Minato Arisato both a happy birthday. And a happy Lie Day to all you folks out there in ffnet land!

Thanks for reading!

PS: RIP Toby's sock. Friend, brother, garment. He will be missed.