chapter 11 is looong (by my standards at least)

real men are yellow, yes indeed...;)

...nothin' much else to say. please r&r!

Chapter 11

Elfman was seriously pissed.

No, pissed didn't even begin to describe it. What he was feeling was more akin to however Natsu had felt when he had seen what Gajeel had done to the Fairy Tail guild hall at the beginning of the Phantom War.

Now, down by the start of the maze, he glanced around at the others.

There was Sherry from Lamia, Risley from Mermaid, Hibiki from Blue Pegasus, and Rogue from Sabertooth. A good team.

A man allied with the Dark Guilds was holding one of the teleportation mages at gunpoint, a snarl pasted onto his features.

"You guys try any funny business and this guy's dead. Same goes for you, Telepotty. You send them anywhere 'cept where you was told, you ain't gonna be nothin' but a greasy spot, ya hear?"

"Y-yessir!" the teleportation mage squeaked, sweating buckets with fear.

"Real men don't take hostages." Elfman spat. The man cocked the gun for emphasis.

"You say somethin' Fatso?"

"What did you call me?"

"Don't look down on the chubby." Risley butted in. Sherry put a hand on her arm.

"Let's take it easy, guys. We're not here to pick a fight with this man, unlovable as he is."

"Does everyone know the plan?" Hibiki asked quietly. The team nodded.

"Good. Stay where you are teleported until I contact you. Now let's go."

"Wait, Rogue." Elfman pointed at Rogue, "Natsu says to tell you to take care of Frosch."

"What the heck does he think I'm doing?" Rogue snapped.

Elfman shrugged, "He just said to tell you…that's all."

Elfman found himself teleported to a stone passageway, about three times as tall as he was and twice as wide, lit by torches lining the walls. He immediately felt the claustrophobia set in, but reminded himself what sort of situation he was in.

Mirajane. They have Mirajane.

Spurred on by the familiar presence of his old friend, rage, Elfman stepped forward as he heard Hibiki's voice in his head.

"Good news, guys. I managed to hack the system and get a crude map of this place. Here, I'll download it into all of your heads."

"Do I even want to know what kind of system you were hacking into?" Sherry asked dryly.

"No." was the curt reply.

Suddenly, a maze appeared in Elfman's head, with five dots in various places.

"Okay," Hibiki explained, "Sherry, you're the pink dot. Rogue, you're blue, Elfman yellow, Risley green, and I am purple."

"Real men are yellow." Elfman agreed.

"I wasn't able to locate our friends but I'd assume they'd have placed us all equal distances from them, so let's try to head for the center of the maze."

"That seems reasonable." Rogue replied "But we should try not to show that we're in contact with each other or the Dark Alliance might suspect 'funny business'"

"Sabertooth is right." Risley spoke up, "Pegasus, can you maintain your telepathy link without your fingers on your forehead?"

"I can but it takes much more magic energy and I'm using up a lot just keeping the map up to date." Hibiki answered.

"Very well," Risley's dot had already started moving forward, and Elfman decided that he had better get going too. "Just pretend you're talking to Master Pegasus, or something."

"Risley, do you call everyone by their guild name so that you won't have to remember their individual names?"

"Don't look down on those with short-term memory, Lamia."

{}{}{}{}{}{}

Elfman could tell by his placement on the map that he was getting close to the center of the maze.

Mira-nee, I'm coming – hold on!

Stupid torches. They allowed for little light in the stone tunnels, and Elfman couldn't shake the feeling that he was underground somewhere. Every sound was magnified by a thousand in the tunnels, so every little drip of water, every step could be heard several yards away.

A sudden excited voice broke into his musings.

"I've found them!" Sherry announced, "Sheila!"

"Don't show yourself!" Hibiki warned her, "Remember the plan!"

"Yeah, yeah. I remember." Sherry griped, "Come fast, you guys. I want to rescue them!"

Elfman found Sherry on the map and altered his course a little to the right. It wasn't long before he arrived in the same spot.

Several passageways led into an open square-shaped area with a stone structure in the middle, to which the five hostages had been chained. Elfman spotted Mirajane at once, slumped as she had been on the Lacrima-vision.

"At least they didn't do anything to them while we were in the maze." Rogue commented, following Elfman's line of thought.

"Don't jinx it." Risley cautioned in response.

"I can't keep this up," Hibiki, last to arrive, broke in irritably over the telepathy link. "I'm going to have to shut down the map and then the telepathy link."

Elfman's mental vision of the map abruptly winked out of existence.

"Is everyone here? Yes? Good. Then we'll all step into the open on three. Ready? One. Two. Three."

Elfman stepped out and Hibiki terminated the telepathy link.

"We're all here. We all got here at the same time." Rogue shouted into the sky, "We all get to live."

Elfman started as five shapes materialized around the hostages; the result of a teleportation.

"Now, Now." The blue-striped one – Katsuko, chided, "You all didn't play by the rules. And didn't we agree that if you didn't comply, then our dear friends here would bear the brunt of your mistake?"

"You planned for this, didn't you? You expected us to work as a team." Hibiki asked. Katsuko nodded.

"Predictable, as always. You proper guilds always have to be so noble and chivalrous, don't you? But when it comes to us Dark Guilds, you don't even give us a second thought, not even a chance."

"There's a reason you're labeled 'Dark Guild', Manticore." Risley growled threateningly. Her tone was not missed by the young blond man, who stepped forward.

"You don't seem to be very happy with the turn in the situation." He smirked. His arrogance was painfully obvious, which only served to feed Elfman's anger.

"Of course I'm not happy!" Risley snapped, "You've kidnapped Millianna and the others and now you're forcing us against one another when we should be fighting you; the real enemy."

"Oh, so you want to fight?" it was plain to see that this was exactly the opportunity that Manticore Emerald had been waiting for.

"No, that's not –"

"Very well, then." The blond man cut her off, "It's high time we put our plan into action. You five will be the first to die for our cause, and after that, your friends here and then everyone else."

"You try that. See what happens!" Elfman snarled, morphing into his Full-Body-Takeover.

"I want this one." The raven-haired teenager pointed at Elfman, looking to the blond man and Katsuko, who seemed to be the leaders of the group.

"Okay, Hira." Katsuko confirmed with a nod.

"And I'm taking him." Risley indicated the fat man, a gravity mage as well as she if Elfman's memory served him.

"Why do I have to battle a weakling like her?" the fat man glared irritably.

"Hey! Don't look down on mermaids!"

"Any other claims before we begin?" the blond one looked around mildly.

"Yeah." Rogue nodded, eyes flicking over to Frosch, who seemed to be stirring, "I'm gonna battle you."

"I'm not waiting any longer!" Elfman broke in, having completed his Beast Form and growing twice his size, "You don't. Touch. My. SISTER!"

As if his challenge was a cue, the battle began, confidence written all over the faces of the Dark Mages. Elfman faced his opponent – Hira.

"Your sisters are very important to you, aren't they?" Hira asked, mock admiration filling her voice as she dodged Elfman's swing.

"Why do you care?" the growl from Elfman's bestial vocal cords was hardly decipherable, but the girl seemed to understand.

"Do you know what kind of magic I use?"

"Frankly, I don't give a shit." he answered, "Anyone who hurts my Nee-chan will not live to tell the tale."

"Ooh, talking big, are we?"Hira laughed. A fleeting thought crossed Elfman's mind as to what could've happened to this girl to make her this way, but was discarded as he was distracted by her bolt of magic.

"I use Fear magic," she explained, "It allows me to see a person's worst fears…and twist them to my advantage. Now, let's see what you are afraid of, Elfman."

"No." Elfman growled quietly as Hira's black energy caught him square in the chest, throwing his huge body to the ground. Already, he could hear her voice in his head as he regained his balance.

"Ah, you fear for the safety of your sisters." Hira commented in an interested tone, "A noble sentiment, but predictable. Let's see…" she paused. "I wonder what might happen if…say, you lost control of your Beast Takeover, hm?"

"NO!" he repeated, louder this time. Out of the corner of his eye, Elfman saw Hibiki, already unconscious after a short battle, and Sherry's Marionette magic was being reduced to nothing as she battled Katsuko. Risley was stuck in place, her gravitational pull increased so much by the fat man's magic that she had been rendered immobile. Rogue seemed to be doing better, going blow for blow with the blond man.

Elfman's concentration on his comrades was broken as the Fear Magic took effect. He saw the images from his past.

Lisanna!

"I know you're in there, Nii-chan. Somewhere deep down, Elf-nii is in there." Lisanna spread her arms wide in a welcoming gesture as Mira sprinted forward.

"Lisanna, get away!" she shrieked. But she was too late. Already, Elfman's arm was swinging forward, much as he fought against it.

"She's not dead! She's not dead!" Elfman shouted aloud, dropping to his knees, picturing Lisanna's face when he had last seen her, hours ago.

"Not enough, is it?" Hira asked, "Well, let's crank it up a notch."

Elfman's arms swung in and out of view again and again. Lisanna and Mira were hardly recognizable through the blood that ran down their faces, staining their clothes. Glassy-eyed, the Strauss sisters stared into space, unseeing.

"Stop! Elfman stop it!" tears poured down Evergreen's face as she watched from the other side of a glass wall. Makarov was there, as was Natsu, Gray, Laxus, Erza, and the rest of Fairy Tail. Half of them were crying uncontrollably as they watched Elfman bloody his sisters, and half of them were seething with anger.

"That's not…happening!" Elfman told Hira, "You're just making that up! It's not real!"

"They're your fears, Elfman, not mine." The teenager shrugged apologetically, not an ounce of remorse in her tone.

"Real men…aren't afraid." Yet even as he said it, Elfman's conscious faded into blissful oblivion.

I've…lost.

okay, just to clarify about Hira: for hira's magic to work, she has to strike the target with a bolt of her black magic, which allows her to detect the victim's fears and then mess with them. when she struck mirajane in the Evergreen pov chapter, mira was unresponsive because she was in shock from the images hira was showing her before she passed out. in the battle w/ elfman, the first thing she showed him was his memories of the s-class job where lisanna 'died', and the second scene she showed him she made up to torture him further.

next chapter...heehee you just wait... :) *evil laugh*

~ice