*A/N- I GOT GOOD NEWS! I actually graduated! I'm sorry this update took so long! I'm afraid you all are going to be a little disappointed with the way I'm taking this, but honestly I think it's going to be the only way I can finish this story, which I really want to do.

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For the second time in his short term memory, Natsu woke up in Porlyusica's cabin. Panicking, he looked around, and relaxed when he saw Lucy asleep with her head on his bed.

"Silly," he mumbled, "you'll hurt your neck like that." He reached out and brushed a hand through her hair, and smiled when she sighed in her sleep.

It was early morning, and he wasn't alone in here with Lucy, though things were a little different this time. Jellal was next to him for one, which was new, and Erza was curled up next to him. The two looked...happy, despite being covered in bandages. He wondered how long he'd been out. The last thing he remembered was...Natsu shot upright in bed, displacing Lucy and startling her awake.

"T-the war!" He stammered, his tongue working slowly.

"W-what?" Lucy slurred, rubbing her eyes. "Natsu, go back to sleep."

"What happened? The last thing I remember was finding that big monster! What happened?"

"Natsu lie down you're wounded," Erza said, sitting up and keeping a hand on Jellal's shoulder so he couldn't do the same.

"H-how did I get here? Where's everyone else?"

"Everyone else is in the guild hall," Jellal said, trying to sit up, then grimacing at the glare Erza shot him. "Porlyusica is only keeping those of us who were wounded the worst here. You nearly died, more than once."

"Yeah but Wendy fixed that!"

"No, you overworked yourself, exactly like Wendy told you not to," Lucy said coldly, now looking angry. "Right after we found that really big monster you decided to go to town on it and reopened some of your internal wounds!"

"I-I don't remember."

"I may have knocked you out when you refused to stop," Erza commented.

"I told you you hit him too hard," Jellal said.

"It would seem so, my apologies Natsu."

"But what happened?" Natsu asked again, "did we win?"

"Yeah we won," Lucy beamed. "All thanks to Dad-I mean Igneel." Natsu blinked several times in shock. Had Lucy just...called Igneel Dad? Her cheeks were flaming. "You know what, shut up. Igneel asked me to call him dad. Shut up."

"He… what?"

"You heard me!"

"He actually told all of us we could call him 'Uncle Igneel' except Lucy," Erza said, "he told Lucy to call him dad."

"...okay," Natsu said, "so what did he do?"

"Okay, so it went like this…

The building started shaking, and magic circles appeared around all of the plinths that held the recently massacred monsters. None of the corpses oozing black blood stirred, however, the giant monster with No Known Weaknesses began to tremble.

"We've got to get out of here!" Erza cried. Gray and I had your unconscious body suspended between us. We all rushed out, Crime Sorciere bringing up the rear. We were nearly out of the building when we began to hear its roars. I could feel it in my bones, and the air was filled with an evil like I've never felt before, evil, and wrongness, like the source of the aura was something that shouldn't exist.

"What do we do now?" I shouted, though I could barely hear my own voice over all the noise.

"We are going to bring down the building on top of him!" Erza said.

"Do you really think that's going to work?" Sorono asked.

"I don't know but it's worth a shot!" I made an exasperated sound. Only in Fairy Tail is our first course of action is to destroy buildings, although this time we were dragging Jellal's guild into it, so that was fun and new. Also, you were asleep, so that was different too.

When we made it outside the ground was shaking, and we saw Master in his gargantuan form gripping Longbottom in his hands.

"Master!" Erza cried, "We need to take down the castle, can you help?" He looked over, seeming surprised to see us.

"Why?" He asked.

"There is a monster that we can't kill in there, and we are going to try and crush it!"

"Alright, Just wait one moment." He bent over and placed Longbottom out of sight he then reached in the building and pulled out two people.

"Umm," one of them said, and I recognized the voice as belonging to Jellal. "What are you doing?"

"We are going to bring down the building, I thought you would appreciate us not crushing you."

"Thank you, then," he replied.

"You're going to help too," Makarov commanded. He placed Jellal on the ground near his feet and we all prepared to attack. Well, everyone else did, I still didn't have enough magical power to help, so I took you from Gray and watched over you while the others brought down the castle.

There was dirt and rubble everywhere, I couldn't see a thing. There was quiet for a few seconds after the rubble settled, then there was a terrible roar, and the rubble exploded in every direction. I took cover, shielding you from any falling bits, but when I turned around the monsters form loomed from the dust, and I felt that aura again. I could see Master preparing for a hand to hand brawl, but another roar filled the air, I looked up, and all I could see was scarlet. Igneel had arrived, and he took a massive chunk out of the monster in one go.

Black blood rained everywhere, staining the earth like the night sky and the rock like obsidian. The monster fell in slow motion back, back, back until it crashed into the earth, sending the birds into the skies and stirring up more dust. Igneel spat out the piece of monster he'd taken.

"Uagh, revolting. I feel like I've just eaten sewer sludge."

Those words broke the heavy atmosphere, and the rest of us were laughing so hard tears were streaming down our faces.

"Thank you so much, Igneel," I said.

"Please," he replied, "call me Dad. And as for the rest of you, I think 'Uncle Igneel' has a nice ring too it." We all grinned.

"Sure thing, Dad." I said.

Igneel offered to take the rest of us back to Porlyusica's cabin, because you, as well as the rest of us, were injured pretty badly.

"WHAT?" Natsu protested. "I missed Dad's fight again? No fair!"

"Well it's what you get for over exerting yourself like that!"

"Hey, that's not fair!"

"What's not fair is you keep nearly dying and scaring the life out me! So there!" There were a few seconds of silence in which Natsu stared, shocked, at Lucy.

He remembered how upset he'd been when he'd nearly killed Lucy, and how she must be feeling the same as he had been, minus the guilt over being the cause.

"Sorry," he said. Lucy looked shocked that he had actually apologized. Natsu reached out and took her hand, then turned and grinned at Erza and Jellal. "But Lucy was so amazing you should have seen her! She totally saved my ass!"

Lucy blushed slightly and looked away as Erza and Jellal's eyes turned to her.

"Yes, you told me about the unison raid."

"You don't understand! She was amazing! She was fighting two people at once basically alone, and she came up with the idea for the unison raid all alone, and she was bleeding almost as bad as me! I was all out of it but she was all calm and collected and she came up with this genius plan and she OBLITERATED those guys it was amazing!"

"It sounds quite impressive," Jellal said. "A unison raid between your two magics would be quite a sight to behold."

"I was half dead, but it looked to cool to me!" Natsu said. Lucy rolled her eyes.

"Whatever, Natsu, Just lay down. You need rest."

"Where's Dad?" Natsu asked suddenly.

"Oh, he's with Grandeeney, I think he ingested some of that blood and he's feeling a bit under the weather."

"What?" Natsu said sharply, his entire demeanor changing.

"Don't worry Natsu," Erza said, "he's fine, just a little stomach ache. Grandeeney said that he would be alright in no time." Natsu relaxed slightly, then laid back down, but not before dragging Lucy into the bed with him, like Erza was with Jellal.

"Alright, but you know I can't sleep without you anymore," he said.

"Damn it," Gajeel growled, trying and failing to sit up.

"No," Levy said. "I already told you that you had to stay in bed! I had to do my time on the mattress now so do you!

"But I'm fine!"

"No, you're not!"

"Ugh, it's so boring just laying here!"

"So I'll read you a book!" Gajeel failed to conceal his groan. "Don't worry, you'll like this one, there's lots of fighting."

Gajeel son discovered he enjoyed being read too.

x

"You mean there was an indestructible one at your outpost too?" Natsu cried. Mira nodded.

"Although it wasn't nearly as big as what you described yours as," she said. Mira had come with gifts of food to check on everyone.

"How did you beat it?"

"Well, there was a creator error, Just as the creators didn't consider a dragon might come to tear apart their monsters, they didn't consider the possibility that someone using curse power would be fighting their monsters."

"WHAT?" The three of them shouted together.

"Oh, after Tartaros there were plenty of souls there, all ripe for the taking, so I devoured them all?" Mirajane smiled pleasantly, while Lucy edged away from her. Feeling the slightest hint of fear seeping into the edges of her mind.

"You ate all of them?"

"All of them I could find."

"Impressive," Erza said.

"Y-yeah," Lucy stammered.

About a week later everyone was released by Porlyusica as healthy enough to go out and about. So naturally, we did what Fairy Tail does best.

"PAR-TAY!" Natsu shouted, from his perch on the table. I rolled my eyes and looked over at Jellal, who was looking more than a little concerned for Natsu's mental health.

"Don't worry," I told him, "he's always like this."

"Uh-huh."

"Fairy Tail parties are always like this, they'll tire themselves out eventually."

"It's always like this?" I looked up at where Natsu was dancing, and over to where and Gray and Gajeel were getting visibly more annoyed.

"Pretty much. There's going to be a brawl in a minute."

"A brawl?"

"Yeah, like a fight. They always do it. I hope you're up to fighting Natsu."

"Why me?" Jellal asked, alarmed.

"Because you've never fought him recreationally before. He's gonna want to challenge you."

"Uh…"

"Erza might knock him out for you if you asked."

Jellal was silent for a few more moments, giving her a look that said he sincerely hoped that she was joking. Unfortunately for him, she wasn't.

"Would you shut up?" Gray cried, getting to his feet and glaring at Natsu.

"Here we go," Lucy told Jellal.

"WHY DON'T YOU MAKE ME?"

Fire and Ice flew in every direction, and eventually Jellal got knocked out by Natsu. Natsu was knocked out by Erza as revenge, who used Gray to knock Natsu out. The three of them lay in a heap in the wreckage of a table. Master Makarov was livid.

"YOU IDIOTS QUIT DESTROYING THE GUILD HALL WE JUST FINISHED REBUILDING!"

*A/N- Alright, so I'm sorry if this is a disappointing ending, but I think this fic is finished. I may write a one chapter epilogue, but that's it. Honestly, I just burnt myself out on this fic, stressing about it too much.

Other than that, thank you so much to everyone who read and reviewed/ followed and favorited. This fic has been a journey. So much has changed in my life in the little over a year that I've been writing this. It's been a blessing on my life, even though it caused me a great deal of stress XD XD. I must say, that writing this fic was probably one of the hardest to describe experiences of my life, but I can say that overall, I love it so much. It's the longest thing I've ever written and it, and it's followers, will always have a special place in my heart. Thank you again.