Chapter fourteen

There was a moment after she broke through the darkness that Lucy could only gasp for air on her hands and knees, her lungs aching and her ears ringing. She quickly studied her new surroundings- she was sure she was no longer by her comrades, but she still craved their comfort. Instead, she only found more men around her than before, and, to her dismay, her friends far past the crowd of their enemies; she could barely see their striking red and rose hair in the distance.

"What a pity for you little flies," Kageyama chuckled, standing above the blonde. He lifted the celestial mage, his hands latching on to her, probably bruising her biceps in the process, and snaked his shadows around her. "You'll all die without getting to glimpse at the dark age!" His lips moved forward, pressing against Lucy's ear to whisper, "Too bad you can't summon that dragon again."

"She didn't control the fire," the blonde growled. "Harq!" It was a tiny flame, but that was enough to sever one of his grasping shadows and give her the room she needed to knock her elbow against the man's ribs. She didn't get far before Erigor was behind her with his fingers threading through her hair and tugging as a silent way of warning. But, in true Fairy Tail fashion, she didn't listen, instead turning her head to sneer at the wind mage. "You're facing the strongest team in Fairy Tail. There's no way you could win."

"Well, if I go out," Erigor purred, holding up his scythe and jingling the keys he had hung on the top of the weapon, "I'm taking you with me."

"Those are Lucy's keys!" Happy shrieked while Natsu attempted to reach the blonde by throwing himself head first into the barrier of dark mages.

"I leave the rest to you all while I go get the flute. Let these clueless flies feel the power of Eisenwald's darkness!" the silver haired man cheered once more as he dragged their celestial mage away.

"I would rather die of magic deprivation than hand Lullaby over to you!" Lucy cried out, shivering from the loss of her own body heat- at least, she hoped it was that and not her fear. Erza felt a fondness for the blonde; her stubborn determination made the requip mage proud- not to mention that the way Natsu fought for Lucy said a lot about her character.

"Get back here! Ya ain't takin' Luce nowhere!" Natsu shouted as he sent yet another dark mage flying.

"Gray, our current objective is to either give Natsu a clearing to go rescue Lucy or to do so ourselves," the redhead said quickly and quietly. The ice mage mage nodded as the two threw themselves into the fray.

Erigor was a vile man, throwing Lucy by her hair the moment they were in a closed off room and leaving her to lay on the floor. He circled her, staring at her hungrily like she was his next meal; he certainly felt like a vulture with his legs crossed easily as he slowly floated around her from his place in the air. "This doesn't have to go poorly, you know," he drawled tauntingly.

"I didn't think I could convince you to turn yourself in that easily," she spat in response, rubbing her collar bone gingerly as she sat up. The handle of his scythe came down, slamming against the back of her head and sending her face crashing into the floor once more. She whimpered as her nose cracked, warmth covering both the back of her skull and her lip. Great, more blood- as if her clothes weren't stained enough already.

"Just give up Lullaby. We've been here a while, so you must be running low on magic by now," he practically sang out, thrilled by this game of cat and mouse that he'd set up. "You don't have your keys, so you won't be able to defend yourself. Do you really want to be needlessly slaughtered?"

"That would be a lot more threatening if you hadn't already told us you planned on using Lullaby here at the station. We'd all still die anyways," the blonde reminded him with a sneer. "Besides, Lullaby isn't somewhere you can get it, and my death will send it even further from your hands."

"Then I'll break every bone in your body," he compromised, bringing the butt of his scythe onto her leg and easily snapping her tibia. The scream that tore out of her lips was completely involuntary on her part, one of her hands coming up to muffle the noise as it became a string of hoarse sobs.

Faintly, both mages heard Natsu shout, "Don't worry, Luce! I'm comin'!" The wicked smile that formed on Erigor's face took any comfort Lucy might have found from her friend's voice away in an instant.

"Seems we'll have to speed this up a bit," he cackled as he swung the blade of the scythe making it catch on Lucy's ribcage. The blood that poured from her new laceration slickened her skin and the ground, the pain making her head spin until she was forced to lower herself to the pavement.

"Seems we will," she wheezed, agony in her tone. She turned her head, cheek pressed into the ground, and he felt a small flicker of amusement at how dark her brown eyes became. "Dwilo." As if he was struck with a battering ram, Erigor found himself soaring back until he slammed against the wall. Lucy sat up slowly and cried out when her side seared in protest, her bloody hands applying pressure to the gash.

"That's it," he snarled, pulling himself up and stomping towards her. His knuckles had lost their colors from how tightly he was holding his weapon. "You're going to give me the flute or I'll break your keys one by one and kill you, Lullaby be damned!"

"Those are celestial keys," she panted around labored breaths. "You can't break them."

"You think I haven't studied celestial fuckin' magic?" he yelled. "I know enough to know that an outside mage using a contracted spirit's key too many times will shatter it!"

Happy had never seen so much blood from someone Fairy Tail considered an ally, and, despite not personally liking Lucy, he felt a pang of fear for the frightfully pale blonde. She was on her back, her left leg rolled awkwardly to the side, and she had blood smeared from her hair to her shoes- not to mention the blood of crimson liquid surrounding her.

"Luce," Natsu mouthed, horrified. He inched towards her, afraid to reach her and find out that she was as injured as she looked. "Erza, can ya do anythin'?" His shaky tone made even Gray's heart drop and a sick feeling welled up in the pit of his stomach when a gasped sob tore through Lucy's lips.

"I… I don't know," Erza stuttered as she cautiously moved towards the blonde.

"I'm fine," Lucy whispered, but the way her voice cracked gave away her obvious lie. "Natsu, Gray, find Erigor. He has Lullaby." She turned hazy eyes towards them, and, for a moment, Gray thought she looked like a corpse speaking to them. "Erza will stay and keep me safe. Go." The redhead nodded when she found Natsu's eyes on her, moving closer and kneeling next to the celestial mage.

"You'll be fine," he croaked, though if he was assuring Lucy or himself, Erza couldn't tell. Without another word, the pair of males took off out of the room, leaving Lucy, Erza, and Happy in an awkward stretch of silence.

"I'm sorry for trapping you here," the blonde began, sitting up weakly, "but I didn't think Natsu would sit and watch me give myself stitches. He needs to release some pent up anger." The requip mage stored her gloves back in her armory so her bare hands could support the blonde as she began digging through her bag. "I'm… also sorry that I lost Lullaby."

"I will hear none of it," Erza said softly, her voice kind but firm. "No one would have expected you to fight off Erigor without your primary magic. I'm sorry you had to endure that." The cut looked even worse when Lucy cleaned it, and Happy had to turn his eyes away as bile rose in the back of his throat. The blonde didn't even flinch as she stuck the needle into her skin and her stitching was neat and experienced in a way that Erza admired; as much as she didn't mind gore, she didn't think it was possible to be so professional about stitching one's own wound, especially one at such an awkward angle. "I'm not sure how I would have fared if it was me facing Erigor as you had."

"You would have done fine," the blonde assured, sorrow ruining the gentle expression she wore. "I was foolish to think I could hold him off, to think I could fight. I only made him so much angrier." She shuddered, tears rising to her eyes again and racing down the leftover trails. "I should have just let him kill me to save whoever he intends to use Lullaby on."

"Hey, don't say that," Happy argued weakly. He was still shaken- from seeing the bloodlust in Erigor's eyes as he dragged Lucy out of the room, from the intense way Natsu barreled through the dark guild, from how dead the blonde's eyes looked right then, from the way Erza had to hold her up so she could stop the lazy flow of blood- from everything. "Listen, Natsu or Gray will find Erigor and they'll stop him. No one's gonna die because of that flute."

"That just doesn't make sense, though," Lucy argued. "Why would he gather his whole guild here to kill everyone nearby? I can't imagine even a dark mage being that stupid, thinking he can defeat the world without anyone on his side. Not to mention, why would they stick around when their deaths were guaranteed?"

"You're right," Erza said suddenly as the clues started to line up. She watched the blonde tie off her last stitch and slather some salve on the wound before pulling on a loose fitting shirt to replace her blood soaked one. "If that's the case, then it must be something about this station specifically." Realization came to Erza like a shock and the redhead gasped so hard she jostled the blonde currently splinting her leg. "This is the only station that leads directly to Clover, which is where the guild masters are having their annual meeting!"

Gray found himself falling behind Natsu, and he was honestly thankful for the distance. Seeing as they were lifelong rivals, the ice mage would never admit it, but the temper Natsu had in him was something Gray was pretty sure only a demon could house without it destroying him, and it sort of freaked him out. If the dragon slayer found that out, he would never hear the end of it.

"Stupid fuckin' bastard beatin' on Luce," said dragon slayer snarled, his voice more animal than human at this point. "I'mma fuckin' break both his legs an' see how he likes it. Fuckin' pound his nose in." If Lucy's resilience didn't already creep Gray out (really, how did someone get beat nearly to death and keep their head on their shoulders while everyone else freaked out?) the weird possessively protective streak Natsu had going for her sure did. "Play that flute for him my damn self."

"Or, what if we cool down and keep being legal mages?" Gray suggested awkwardly, jogging a good distance behind the fire mage. The look the roset shot him made him really wish he stayed with the girls. "Hey look, a split in the path. I'll go left, you go right." Natsu rolled his dark eyes, already turning around the bend when he whispered, "Don't die."

Gray brushed off the faint, "You too," he heard as he took off down the corridor, unsure where he wanted to go. His midnight eyes lingered for a few moments on each sign that he passed, just long enough to register what the room was labeled as.

"If he's gonna broadcast the death curse melody, it'll be a mess," he mumbled to himself, Fiorean easier to think in when he spoke the words aloud. His eyes widened suddenly, the teenager skidding to a stop as he glanced back down the hallway. "Broadcast! That's right! If he's gonna broadcast Lullaby, Erigor must be in the room with the broadcasting system!"

It wasn't hard to find the studio; Gray had passed the door labeled as such not too far back. He kicked the locked door off its hinges and entered the room- but, instead of finding the mage like he expected, he found only an empty room.

"Why isn't he here? This is the only room to broadcast from," Gray mumbled to himself. The bandaged man above him twisted his mouth into a sick grin; apparently, the teen hadn't noticed him yet. The man's grin widened as he slowly lowered himself towards the ice mage. "If he's not here, does that mean he never planned to broadcast Lullaby?" Luckily, Gray felt the magic in the nick of time to see the bandages racing towards him from the corner of his eye. He barely lunged out of the way, ending up flopping ungracefully onto the floor as dust and debris occupied where he once stood.

"Your instincts too good. You'll be a nuisance to our plan," the bizarrely dressed dark mage cackled. Gray thought he looked like a Desiertan mummy straight out of a museum, from the bandages wrapped around his rather modern outfit to the headpiece high standing citizens were buried in. An icy smirk crossed his face.

"So there really is something going on," he taunted. "Geez, and you were complaining about not having any real work to do." Taking up a fighting stance, the ice mage called his magic to his fingertips, the familiar feeling of drawing in water from his body, the air, the stream that ran eight kilometers below him relaxing his taut muscles. "Your luck's just changed."

"Makarov-chan," an unnaturally high pitched voice drawled, making the tiny old man cringe at the grating noise despite the smile that curled across his lips. "I like the mages at your guild. They're all so lively!" Pouring a shot of some high end liquor or another- he didn't bother with names since Mirajane kept tabs of what he liked and disliked- for Bob, the Blue Pegasus guild master, Makarov nodded. "I heard that they beat up an influential aristocrat from somewhere."

"Yep! That's Lucy, our newest member!" the Fairy Tail guild master supplied eagerly- he was always willing to brag about his brats. "She's a good mage! And her boobs are huge!"

"It's good to be lively and all, but don't you guys think you're overdoing things?" Goldmine, the guild master of Quatro Cerberus, asked. The trio had been friends since their youth, and the tawny haired man had always been the most level headed in the group; he kept them out of trouble when they were younger and limited their trouble now that they were grown. "I keep hearing that council members are worried you guys might smash an entire town to smithereens one day."

"Lucy can smash me to smithereens with her boobs!" Makarov cheered drunkenly, completely ignoring his logical friend.

"Don't hit on your own mage, okay?" Bob wheezed as he stifled his laughter. He knew if he laughed, he would only spur on their foolish friend's antics, and they had been trying to break him of his perverse habits for years now.

"Makarov-sama, you have a letter from Mirajane-sama," a small golden bird chirped, hovering by the tiny guild master's head. All eyes snapped to the letter as Makarov opened it; all of these old men loved Fairy Tail's cover girl and wouldn't miss a chance to see her for anything.

"Hello, Master," Mirajane's hologram sang. "Thank you for attending the regular meeting!"

"Look! This is our drawing card!" the old man was yelling over the message instead of listening. "Isn't she so cute?"

"Something wonderful happened since you left," the model continued. "Erza formed a team with Natsu and Gray, and of course Natsu dragged Lucy and Happy with them, too. Though, it did look more like Lucy doing the dragging." She cut off her musings, the prerecorded message leaving Makarov no time to process what he had heard. "That hardly matters though. Isn't it wonderful? I think they might very well be the strongest team in Fairy Tail history! Anyways, I just thought I'd better inform you of this, so I wrote you a letter. See you soon!" The moment she disappeared, Makarov tumbled off of the table he had been sitting on with a ghastly pale complexion and a horrified look on his face.

"Makarov!"

"What happened?"

"Oh dear…"

First of all, bare with me! I know Happy doesn't really hate Lucy, but it's a slow process! Secondly, it was pointed out to me that my replies to the reviews are outrageously long, so starting this week, I'll be replying to reviews in PMs! Other than that, I almost broke my finger today and I still got two more days of work! Yay!