Replaced

Lisanna's back and Lucy feels left out. Natsu wants Lisanna back on his team. What about Lucy?

I only had the chapter half typed last week because I missed a whole day spending the night at my nieces' house so I could take one to school. That and I was being a little lazy last week. Thanks for being so patient for me. Please read and review! I love you all so much.

Chapter 10- Missions Begin

After three different trains, six hours worth of delay, and twenty more hours of travel, Erza Scarlet was finally at her destination, well, almost. She just had to walk five miles unless she found an SE Carriage. She didn't want to waste her magical energy, so she decided to walk. The scarlet haired mage soon realized about a mile in that it was a bad decision. Walking gave her the time to think and the relatively quiet surroundings didn't help the situation. It would be pointless to turn back now, so she just kept on walking grudgingly. She kicked up stones as she walked and tried her best to think of anything other than Lucy, but no matter how hard she tried, everything she thought of seemed to have something to do with Lucy.

Why did she let Lucy go? They had been a perfect team before Lisanna came back and messed everything up. Oh. That was why she let Lucy go. She'd been blinded by the joy of having a long lost friend come home. Erza cursed, something that she never did, and kicked at a large stone in the dirt road. It broke and flew down the hill she was approaching. Erza hopped onto her luggage wagon and used the handle to steer as she rolled down the hill. She hit the bottom and started to slow as she went up. This was the part when she jumped off and ran the rest of the way up the hill before she lost the momentum.

When she was over the rise, she spotted the village. It was smaller than she had imagined. The S-class qualification fee wasn't cheap and small towns this size usually weren't able to afford the price of one, unless it was some kind of mining town. Was it a mining town? There didn't seem to be anything worth mining up in this secluded border area. Boarder territory always seemed to have no profitable value, though they always seemed to be the first defense against raiders. What was wrong with this picture?

"Everything. That's what's wrong with this picture." She answered her own question. Erza would have to be cautious. Pulling out the sheet of paper that had the briefing of the job, she read it. She started frowning halfway through the text and by the time she was done, she was scowling. What kind of job was this? Who asks for help to find a ruby sapphire that probably didn't even exist? The ruby sapphire was a thing of myth and fantasy. Exactly how cracked were these mountain folk? Right about now she was wishing that she'd paid more attention what the jobs were rather than how long they lasted.

After a frustrated sigh, she crumpled the paper and shoved it back into the pocket she'd taken it out of. There was no use in complaining now, she'd already signed up to do the job, so she was going to do it as beast she could; though she doubted that the ruby sapphire would be found since it was nothing but a myth. In six months, she would be gone.

Gray had walked most of the way to his destination in a matter of a single day by taking the shortest routes he could find, including over mountain passes. Many that he took directions from said that he should take the long way instead because the passes were still snowed in and melting fast, so there were a lot of avalanches happening. He took them anyway, if only to be in his favorite environment than to avoid people. He got caught in two different avalanches and crawled out both times to continued on like nothing happened. The first inn that he'd come across up in the mountains was the worst because when he arrived covered from head to toe in ice and snow and shirtless, everyone there went into a frenzy and he was crowded with women. The men were instructed to hold him and warm him with wool blankets while the women got a hot bath ready and dried his wet clothes.

He really didn't want to be warm at the moment because he was sweating bullets from the wool blankets, so he cooled the bath and felt better. When he finished his bath, dressed and came down for some food, the women were waiting to take his temperature. One fainted when they saw the result.

"Seventy-three degrees?" One screeched and then there was a flurry as more blankets were piled onto him. His sighed. Gray knew that his body temperature was unnatural; anybody else would be dead. The reason for the unusual temperature was because he was an ice mage. Conveniently, there was an attack of wolves -food was that was this scarce during the melting season was usually when wolves turned on people; it was called a Wolf Winter. Gray was the only mage there, so he pulled some ice mage stunts and drove off the canines.

"You're an ice mage?" One of the men asked when he'd finished.

"Yeah." He answered, taking his shirt and pants off. He then flopped down in the snow and signed in relief. One could see the steam that rose from his body as it cooled off and melted the snow around him. "Ah, that's better." he'd said. They left him alone after that, but he could still hear them talking about him. From then on, whenever he went into an inn, he made it a point to be wearing his clothes and be free of snow and ice so that the doting wouldn't happen again. One thing he hated more than Natsu was fussy women.

Now, he was sick of walking and took the train and an SE Carriage the rest of the way to the boarder. When he arrived there, he was in awe, or was it disbelief? How could a village be so. . . small? The biggest building in the whole place was probably the tavern slash inn, and it was only two stories tall. This was nothing at all like Magnolia. There were no places to clothes shop or anything, not even a hair salon. As he approached, he saw the wooden signs of bakers and butcher and cobblers and blacksmiths. It was like he stepped through a time barrier right back into the middle ages. This was almost a fourth rate village if it was like this, or could it be qualified as fifth rate?

Gray shrugged the questions aside to ask a more important one: Where was everybody? Surely they knew he'd been coming. The ice mage stopped in the small town square and listened for life. There was no stirring that he heard. He frowned and looked around again. The fountain had laundry left undone floating in it and there were baskets containing dirty and wet clothes set beside the fountain. Gray glanced at a building and found a water barrel that had been tipped over. Turning around, he caught a glimpse of a curtain falling back into place and being still. Quickly, he went to the door and thrust it open. There were shrill screams and a scrambling of feet, but there was nowhere the children could run to. Gray stared at them as they huddled in the corner and stared fearfully at him. What was wrong with this picture?

"Everything. That's what's wrong with it." He muttered to himself. If the children heard, they weren't saying anything. Gray counted and counted again. There were thirteen children, the oldest looking to be about twelve, the youngest a toddler of maybe two. "Where are your parents? And the other villagers?" He demanded of the children. The toddler began to cry and clung to the skirt of a girl who looked eight or nine. She clung back.

"The raiders took 'em." Said the oldest, clutching the others as close to him as possible. They didn't know who he was or if he was friend or foe. Gray saw that the boy was shaking, and badly. The corners of his mouth twitched foe a second.

"Ease up kids, I'm the mage who took the job you offered. My name is Gray Fullbuster." Gray paused and gave them a moment to take it in before he continued. "When did this happen?" He gestured outside, but kept his eyes on the children.

"This mornin'. They's hit 'bout milkin' time when ev'ryone else's a dreamin'." The boy then added, "Sir." as an after thought. Gray frowned. Milking time was generally considered around dawn and that was about ten hours passed. He turned around in the door frame and examined his surroundings again, this time with a skilled eye to things. The ground was trampled and the dirt thinner than anywhere else down the alley that had the barrel knocked down in front of it. That was how an expert would examine it, but he really didn't need an expert eye, the bandits left enough of a trail that even an idiot could follow them. What with all the food and other things that she dropped along the way?

How could these people be so easily overtaken by. . . amateurs? Any smart raiders knew better than to leave such an obvious trail. These guys wouldn't even be a warm up. Gray followed the trail all the way up the mountain cliff until he spotted a cove. Of course, the cliche cave for the bandits. That's where they always go. As he approached, he noticed that there was no one keeping watching. That was two fatal mistakes so far: an obvious trail, and no sentries posted. How stupid were these raiders? Gray climbed to the entrance of the cave and went in. There were voices echoing harshly against the walls and the flickering on the stone walls. Mistake number three: they picked a simple cave. These were the worst idiots he'd ever encountered and he didn't bother hiding his presence because they would be less than cake, they would be muffins.

The voices immediately stopped and there was a loud scramble as they took up weapons. "Really, you people are the worst excuse for raiders I have ever seen." He said, rounding the corner. No one was there. A little suspicious now, he started to rapidly cool the cave, freezing the fire and the ground. It wasn't long before the cave was covered in ice. Where were the people? Gray was getting a bad feeling and couldn't decide whether or not to continue on. It was rare that he felt this way, and it was usually best to heed the feeling. The club to his head made the choice for him.

Back and forth, back and forth the pink haired dragon slayer paced. He was trying to decide on whether or not he should abandon his job and go after Lucy, or to stay and finish the job quickly so he could go after Lucy. If he just left, the Master would hear of it and know he'd gone after Lucy, but if he stayed there was less of a chance that the guild would come after him, but that would also mean he had to wait longer to find Lucy. So there was leave and be hunted or finish the job and not be hunted, but live longer with a guilty conscious. He was still dwelling on it when his train pulled into the train station of the town his job was located at. As luck had it, the train station was being attacked, though he wasn't really paying attention, so when one bandit put a gun to his head and told him to get on the ground like everyone else, he didn't take too kindly.

Natsu slowly turned his head to glare -for he was not in the best of moods right now- and grabbed the gun by one hand. The heat of his irritation started to make the weapon drip onto the floor. "I don't know what you think you're doing to these poor people, but I won't stand for it. Have a nice day in the hospital." And with that, he set the guy on fire and turned to take care of the rest of them. By the time he was done, every bandit in the station was down with burns of all degrees. For once, there was very little damage done to the station itself. Natsu went to the guy nearest him and helped him to his feet. The man was not quite middle aged, but not old-looking enough to be called old man.

"Do you happen to know where the mayor of this town is?" He asked, not looking at the man directly, but at his surroundings.

"That would be me. I'm Heed Newtons." He introduced, sticking his hand out. Natsu took it and returned the pressure.

"I'm Natsu Dragoneel. I came to help wipe out your bandit population." Natsu still wasn't looking at the man, he was looking at the people who were getting up and to put it plainly, he wasn't happy. Most of the people were wearing rags and they all looked like they'd hadn't had a decent meal for months. "Why is everyone so skinny?" he finally asked.

"The bandits have been taking everything of value and driving them all out of their homes. We can't do anything to help because winter just ended and we're low on provisions. I don't know how the bandit populace got so big over the winter." The man explained. Natsu finally looked at him and noticed that his clothes hung from his body, indicating that he used to be more fit to his clothes at one point.

"Do you have any idea where they hide?" Natsu asked. It was best for the people and for him to get this done ASAP so the people could get their stuff back and he could be on his way.

The man shook his head. "They just raid and leave towards the mountains. They never let us follow them long enough to find out where they go. They hide somewhere in the mountains, that's all we know and nothing more."

"Great." Natsu said, looking at the mountains the mayor had indicated. If only Happy were here. The flying cat had disappeared several weeks ago and had told nobody where he was headed. Natsu wasn't too worried about him because he could take care of himself quite well, better than he let on. "I've got a lot of work to do, so I'd better start now." He mumbled to himself as he hauled his backpack onto his back and snapped the clip in front so that his shoulders wouldn't be carrying all the weight. The dragon slayer started hiking in the direction of the mountains, ready for a long stay.

Random Fact- Goldfish don't have stomachs

That's about moderate. The next chapter is about everyone's favorite blue flying kitty! I know you've all been wondering where Happy was. Thanks for reading and please review! Thanks! ^/ . \^