Erza wasn't sure what she expected of the person she was meeting. Every client she'd ever worked with had been different. Some had been distraught, others angry, others impatient or even nervous. She'd never met someone indifferent though. The woman across from him barely looked like she wanted to be there. She clearly thought it was a waste of her time to talk to Erza.

Erza was trying to see if the woman had any pertinent information that would help their team take down the threat to this town, but the woman was supplying any new information and seemed put out to even have to repeat what Erza did know. On top of the indifference the woman kept checking her watch like she had an appointment Erza was keeping her from. It was the height of rudeness and it took every ounce of restraint in the red heads body not to say something.

"If that's everything." Erza nodded to the woman curtly and stood. She wouldn't waste any more time here. She'd meet back up with her team and see if they'd gleaned any information from the townspeople. The woman bid her a lackluster farewell and Erza was shown back to the entrance hall by a maid who disappeared the minuted Erza turned around. Not paying the odd behavior of the people much mind she made to move for the door only to collide with a small body.

A small boy, no older than perhaps ten bounced off her armored waist immediately rubbing his head.

"Are you alright?" Erza knelt to assess the damage she might have caused the boy. He looked up at her for a second in confusion before something seemed to click in his mind and he looked frightened. "Is everythin-"

She extended a hand to help the boy up but he swatted it away and tears pooled in his eyes. "It's all your fault!" he yelled before bolting out of the house.

Thoroughly confused Erza bolted after him. She was gaining ground until the kid started ducking through short cuts he'd obviously practiced a million times. He ducked through a small opening in a fence then he cut through some narrow hedges. Each time Erza had to take a moment the hurdle the obstacle and the boy got a little further away until she was barely keeping him in her sights as he wove through back alley after back alley. She lost him when he ducked into a large shed. She paused by the padlocked doors and wondered if she should even bother chasing the kid further. It was pure instinct that had carried her this far and it was nearing the time to meet up with the others.

She sighed. Surely she had the kid cornered. It couldn't hurt to figure out what all of this was about. She requipped a sword and easily broke the lock on the shed. Inside was what looked like a little kid's club house. There were drawings and pictures tacked to the walls. Several of the pictures showed the blonde boy she'd run into. With him in two was a similar looking kid, though he was obviously just a bit older.

Her eyes slipped from the pictures to a covered hole in the back wall. The kid had given her the slip. She sighed and turned to leave, but something in the corner caught her eye. There was a glint of scissors and a heap of bandages, some dirty some clean. And strewn amongst them were odd translucent scales. She picked one up and examined it. It was about the size of a soft ball and curved except on one side. A small bit of blood clung to the one edge like it had been hastily pulled off of something. It was larger than any scale she could recall seeing in her life. She dabbed off the blood with a frown. Her determination to find the strange boy had renewed. She exited the small building and jumped the fence the building had nestled against. She requipped into armor more appropriate for speed and zipped off in search of the boy.


Kosmos stared, horror struck. The thing had pulled free of her strongest roots and was retreating alarmingly fast. She dropped to her knees. She didn't think even the dragons that had ravaged Crocus had been strong enough to break those roots. She felt outclassed.

"Thanks for your help." Lucy was telling a large bull as she dismissed him. Kosmos wondered if the other girl had been able to make a difference in the fight. She'd been so busy trying to keep the thing held down she hadn't really been able to watch what everyone else was doing.

The shield Harry had cast was still glowing brightly in the midday sun. This was the first time she'd witnessed something Harry wasn't capable of taking down by himself in just a spell or two also. It was odd to her. If someone as strong as Harry couldn't do it, what chance did she have?

"Are you okay?"

Kosmos glanced up to see Lucy offering her a warm smile and a hand to pull herself up with. Kosmos accepted the offer, pulling herself out of her self pity for the moment. "I'm fine." she assured the girl, brushing off her dress.

"Those were some crazy strong roots." Lucy commented as the boys made their way back over. "You're really powerful!"

Kosmos wanted to ask the girl on what planet she would consider her magic powerful when it was snapped like a brittle twig, but at that moment Harry's shield decided to shatter. It was like glass breaking. Kosmos took a startled step back. She'd never seen one of Harry's spells shatter like that before. Usually they just vanished when he finished casting them.

She looked beyond the vanishing remnants of the shield to see a stoic Gray and frowning Natsu heading their way. Kosmos didn't like the serious look on Natsu's face. She'd never seen him do anything but grin. She figured after the fight they'd just had he'd be even more 'fired up'. Something was wrong.

"Where's Harry?" Lucy asked.

Kosmos eyed the boys. Then the space behind them. Her blood ran cold.

"Dunno. He was on that things back." Gray motioned in the direction of the far off forest. "He got a good hit in and I thought he jumped off, but I didn't see him anywhere."

"You don't think...he's still on it?" Lucy had paled a bit.

"Why wouldn't he just jump off?" Natsu asked still frowning though it seemed more like confusion at that moment.

"That thing is going super fast!" Lucy shouted. "We're not all equipped with flying cats!"

"You should be." Happy muttered.

"What do we do?" Lucy asked looking at every person in turn.

"We gotta find Erza." Gray suggested. "She helped him take down that dragon in Crocus right? Maybe she can take down this thing. My ice wasn't doing much. Neither were hot head's attacks."

"Were too!" Natsu countered angrily.

Kosmos didn't wait for a decision. She started walking toward the forest.

"Kosmos!" Lucy called. "Wait!"

Kosmos didn't wait. Harry would go after her. She knew he would. He was that kind of person. A hand on her shoulder gave her pause. Gray was looking at her levelly. She didn't know the boy very well. She'd heard he was nearly as much of a hot head as Natsu was from other guild members, but he seemed rather reserved now.

"I know how you feel, but you can't take that thing on your own." he said calmly. She could see he wouldn't stop her if she fought him, but there was something else in his gaze. It was like he was talking from experience. "We need Erza's help."

Her knees went wobbly and she felt her legs give out under her.

"Kosmos!" Lucy was at her side in a moment.

Her eyes burned. She felt like crying she was so frustrated. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so powerless.


Harry peeled his eyes open slowly. His head HURT. His face was sticky with what he was sure was blood. His surroundings were dim. Light was almost nonexistent. He drew his arms to him slowly, wincing as broken bones dragged over cold stones. His arm was broken at least twice, but that honestly could've been from Harry's unconscious body flipping around during the ride to this place. He was lucky the hair like stuff that had grabbed him hadn't just dropped him mid flight. He wasn't a hundred percent sure he could've recovered from a fall from that height.

He gritted his teeth and pulled the arm straight. He tried not to yell as bones slid back into their proper places. Holding the arm steady he muttered, "Episkey" under his breath and groaned as the healing spell knit the bone back together loosely. He'd have to be careful with that arm for awhile. He took stock of the rest of his body and, save his face, didn't find any notable damage.

Immediate problem taken care of he took a moment to examine his surroundings. He was in a cave. Considering he could see both walls even in the gloom they had to be much too narrow for the beast to have come through this way. Which kind of raised the question of how he'd ended up there in the first place. He forced himself to wobbly legs. He needed to find his way out and back to the others. He didn't really want to try to take that damned thing on by himself. He'd gotten the crap knocked out of him even with help.

"Lumos."

The cave brightened as a small glowing orb floated just above Harry's head. He was in a narrower passage that seemed to branch in two directions. He couldn't feel any significant air flow which meant he probably wasn't particularly close to the cave mouth. He grabbed a small stone and willed it into a better shape for a point me spell.

"Point me, exit." The stone stone and spun and continued spinning, gaining speed. He cancelled the spell with a huff. "Point me, Clover." No luck. "Point me Kosmos." Endless spinning.

Great. The point me spell was on the fritz again. He glared at the stone for a long moment before he transfigured it into chalk. He made a mark on the wall in front of him signifying that this was his starting point and then marked out an arrow to the left so he'd know which direction he'd traveled in.

He set off in the direction of his arrow, massaging his nose gently. He made a quick note not to touch his face again until he could find a mirror when he hit wet blood and some rather sharp pain. Ahead of him the passage narrowed and widened sporadically and branched several times. Harry marked his direction every time and the uncertainty of finding an exit grew a bit more each time. After a the fifth split path he stopped and took a moment to catch his breath. He was having a hard time getting enough air. He found that unsettling but he tried not to let it make him panic. Instead he took a seat and swung his backpack around. He didn't have nearly as much in it now as he'd had when he was traveling indefinitely. He did have a lot of water though. He uncapped a canteen and took a moment to rinse his face. The cool water stung against open skin, but when he was done he felt less like his face was one giant scab. He took a few long drinks before putting away the canteen. His head spun for a moment.

Was this a lack of oxygen, or had he simply hit his head that hard? He couldn't tell. He stood back up and trudged a bit further down the path. His lumos started to flicker, not the greatest sign. He walked a bit further and the spell died entirely. He put a hand to the stone on his right. Was the dizziness getting worse? He took another that light? Had he somehow managed to find the exit?


Erza frowned intently at the kid in front of her. It had taken more time than she would've liked to track him down and apprehend him, but here they were now. She'd have to apologize to the others. She was the only S class wizard on this mission and she'd left the others alone. It wasn't proper etiquette, and it was doubly bad she'd abandoned the guild's newbies. They might be powerful wizards in their own right, but they didn't have the teamwork figured out with their new guild mates yet.

Erza took a breath. One step at a time. "What's your name?" she asked the boy calmly. He was crying profusely and she was having a hard time getting straight answers out of him.

After a minute of hiccuping and rubbing fiercly at his swollen eyes the kid finally managed an answer. "What...does it...matter?"

She sat down across from him and gave him a level look, trying to give him the message that she wasn't upset with him. "My name's Erza." she offered. "I want to help you."

His eyes narrowed further. His suspicion did seem to help him get his hysterics under control. "Help me?" he spat back. "Why...would you?"

Erza folded her arms across her chest and frowned slightly. "I was hired to help the people in this town and you live here." she offered. It wasn't a lie. Maybe not exactly the truth, but not a lie.

"You weren't... hired to help me." he said between hitched breaths. "They hired you to..."

Erxa's frown deepened. So he knew why she was here. Her own suspicions were confirmed. He knew more than a kid really should. Had his family been involved with one of the attacks? "Can you tell me about this?" she got straight to the point, removing the odd scale from her pocket and showing it to the boy. He tensed. His eyes darted about like he was looking for an escape. "I came here to help."

"You can't help!" the boy protested, tears threatening to spill again. "You want to kill him!"

Erza blinked at the anger in the boy's voice. Kill who? The monster? She didn't get to ask.

"It's my fault." the boy sobbed, something breaking through the anger.

Erza reached forward tentatively. "What's your fault?"

Eyes red from crying met her own and she could see so many emotions warring in them. "I told him to go to the cave."

She took a deep breath, and then slapped her hands down heavily onto the boy's shoulders startling a yelp out of him.

"Start over." she said sternly. "What cave are you talking about? And who went there?"


Harry peeled his eyes open for the second time for what he could only assume was that same day. He groaned as he made to stand, but he did feel somewhat better. His face ached a little less and the newly healed bones in his arm seemed less fragile. The cave was brighter than it had been when he... well, he had passed out. He took stock of his situation. He had felt very dizzy when he'd started seeing the light. It was odd. He didn't really feel dizzy now. Maybe it had been the blow to his head.

He moved further down the path. Bioluminescent growth covered the walls of the cave, sporadically at first, but as he moved further in it grew thicker. Eventually the cave mouth widened into a huge cavern. There had to be at least twelve or more paths branching from the room ranging from kid sized to the large enough to fit the dragon like creature Harry had been fighting before. And Harry was certain at least one of the caverns. was big enough to fit the thing because he was standing no more than thirty feet from it.

Harry froze in the entryway, watching the thing closely. It appeared to be asleep. He kept a respectable distance as he edged around the room looking for clues on where the exit might be. The thing nearly gave him a heart attack when it whimpered and shifted. It sounded like a kicked dog. He wasn't really sure how he felt about that. Almost like it could sense his thoughts about it the thing lifted its massive head.

Harry's eyes darted around for cover. There was nothing. Nothing. He was a good ten feet from the nearest passage and there was nothing free standing to hide behind. Great. He swallowed back the mild panic he felt just looking at the thing and started flipping through his mental repertoire. He'd need harder hitting spells than last time, clearly. Unless he wanted to end up crushed against a cavern wall.

The thing's head swiveled his direction and froze. Gold eyes locked onto his and they just stared at each other. Harry wasn't getting the same 'murdery' vibe from the thing that he had been getting outside of Clover. It seemed almost docile now.

He chanced moving an arm and gave the thing a wave. A huff that could almost be mistaken for laughter snorted from it. Harry let just a bit of the tension fall from his stance. He was still poised to jump to the side if the thing decided he'd look better as a smear on the wall, but he let his upper body loosen up. "Uh... hi?" he tried.

Another huff was his response. Okay... it knew enough to know he was talking to it. Or, that's what it seemed like. A good start.

"I'm Harry." No sound. If it had just been responding to noise it should have huffed again, or tried to eat him or something. "I don't suppose you can... talk?" He felt ridiculous even asking.

The thing huffed again and lowered its head so they were more on level. He could see intelligence shining behind those eyes. He'd seen rage there before, outside of Clover, but he wouldn't have called it intelligence. This was different. Like they were two completely different beings. He tried not to think of the possibility of two of these things.

"Okay... uh..." It couldn't talk, but they were sort of communicating, right? "One snort for yes, two snorts for no?"

He almost felt like he should just hightail it back the direction he'd come from and consider himself lucky not to have been blasted with fire. After a long moment the thing huffed again and Harry breathed a sigh of relief.

"You understand me?"

One huff.

"But you can't talk?"

Two huffs. Good, two huffs meant it wasn't a fluke right? Now he just needed some good questions.

"Okay..." he muttered to himself more than anything. He wanted to ask detailed questions. Why was it attacking Clover? Why wasn't it attacking him? IT was frustrated to be limited to yes or no questions. He wracked his brain. "Did Clover do something to you?"

Two huffs. No? Then why was it attacking? Harry frowned.

"Do you want to attack Clover?"

Two huffs. It wasn't doing it because it wanted to attack?

"Do you have to attack Clover?"

A long pause. It was like it was thinking about the question. Like there wasn't a clear cut answer. Eventually it gave a short huff. That was a curious answer. It just raised more questions of course.

Convinced he wasn't about to be fried alive or crushed Harry dropped to the floor to sit. He considered the beast in front of him and it watched him intently in return.

"So you're attacking Clover because you have to, not because you want to. But Clover didn't actually do anything to bring it on themselves."

Another huff. It was agreeing. Harry looked up and caught its eye. Did it look... almost hopeful?

"Can I help you?"

No response. It just stared.

"You're attacking Clover, but you don't want to. There has to be a reason. Surely I can help you so that your problem is resolved and the people of Clover are left alone as well."

The eye contact was unnerving and seemed to last an eternity before the thing huffed out a long breath. Was that a maybe? It lifted itself up on its massive legs and turned toward on of the large off shooting caves. Its head swung around to look at him, an obvious invitation for him to follow.

He stood back up, ignoring the pain still lacing through his face and arm. He followed. The thing moved slowly enough that he could keep pace without having to flat out run, which was nice. They hadn't been travelling very long at all when the thing stopped and just laid down in the hall. Harry carefully made his way up to the head. It gave him a long look and then nodded to a passageway on the left. More of the glowing moss lit the tunnel.

"You want me to go this way?"

A huff.

With mental shrug he proceeded further in. He didn't have to go far. The passage was short, and at the end was a roughly circular room. In the center of the room was a teenaged boy, perhaps around fourteen. He was knelt on the floor, blonde head bowed and eyes shut like he was praying. In his hand was some sort of circular disk.

Harry moved forward and gently shook the boy's shoulder. There was no resistance. Once he was disturbed the boy collapsed. The disk fell from his hands and his mouth went slack as he fell backward. Harry was just able to catch him before he hit the floor. He checked the boy's pulse. It was faint, but there. He heaved a sigh of relief. He laid the boy gently down and ginglery lifted the disk the boy'd been holding. It was golden and ornate. Small pictures of a dragonish figure were interwoven with words Harry definitely couldn't read. In the center was a pale scale, much like the ones all over the beast outside. He pocketed the disk for later observation and lifted the boy easily into a fireman's hold.

He carried the boy back out. The beast was watching him intently.

"You wanted me to help this kid?" he asked, unsure. He'd help the kid anyway. He was just unsure what the creature would gain from it.

A huff was his answer. So yes, that was what it wanted.

"I'll do what I can. Can you lead me back to the big cave? There was more light there."

It didn't just lead him. He nearly shot out a stunner out of pure instinct as some of that weird hair stuff reached out and lifted him and the boy onto the thing's back. He couldn't help the undignified yelp at his sudden relocation. He focused on his grip on the boy. The kid wouldn't survive a dead fall from this height.

It took less time than before to retrace their steps since the thing didn't have to match Harry's sedate pace. In no time Harry found himself being unloaded in the large cavern. Harry shifted the kid onto a relatively flat piece of rock before checking his vitals again. Steady, but weak heartbeat. He pulled back his eyelids. Gold eyes. Pupils showed no reaction to the light all around them. Harry sighed. "Rennervate." The kid seemed to jerk just a bit, but he didn't rouse. So it wasn't just some normal sleep. His guess was that it was magically induced somehow.

"Do you know this kid?" he asked out curiosity.

A huff, followed by some weird throaty noise. Harry glanced up. The thing was giving him some sort of meaningful look he couldn't understand. It was looking at the kid, then Harry, then swishing its tail and making the noise. Harry gave it a confused look for a long minute.

Then the pieces lined up. He retrieved the disk and looked between the thing and the kid. "Is this... you?"

One huff. Yes.


Don't get too used to this update pace. This has just been trapped in my mind for awhile and I've been wanting to write it so it came out super easily.

The next chapter will most likely come out soon also. Hopefully, lol.

Thanks for the reviews. You guys are fantastic. Hope you enjoyed.

Til Next Time

~Kanathia