I have NO excuse for vanishing for...four years apparently. Have this chapter that was three sentences from being posted for two years.

And wash your damn hands.


"No, no, no!" Natsu's voice was agonized. His fingers were buried deep into his hair and there was something wild in his face.

Lucy simply couldn't process what she was seeing. It was huge. Bigger than the drakon they'd fought. It simply couldn't be real. It couldn't be. Her heart sank. They'd been so close to winning the day. So close to going home victors. Ivan was left to be defeated but with Jose down they'd been so close. But now...now they had to fight a dragon? Lucy wished it would vanish. Wished the emotion that stabbed her heart didn't feel like despair. Wished it would fade into nothing and cease to exist. They had enough to deal with, they'd been through enough. There had been enough grief and war and strife. They didn't need this. They didn't deserve this, not after everything they'd gone through.

She still couldn't believe it was real.

And then it roared.

The sound cracked rock and shook the earth.

The sky shattered.

The world narrowed down to the beast, it's hungry eyes and snarling mouth. It was real and it was coming for them.

"No!" Natsu said again, his eyes locking onto the dragon.

His eyes gleamed with unshed tears and reflected the dragon. Lucy swore the dragon locked its eyes on Natsu like it was personal.

"Dad beat you!" Natsu screamed it. "HE KILLED YOU. HE DIED FIGHTING YOU." Natsu's knees went out, slamming against the ground as tears rolled unashamedly down his cheeks. His arms were wrapped around his chest, rubble was strewn around him. He was covered in dust, bruises, and scratches. His fingers dug into flesh. "Dad died fighting you." He looked up at the dragon, back taught, limbs shaking, "you're DEAD."

A wing crashed through the portal, flapping wildly as the dragon seemed to laugh.

Behind her, Lucy heard Gajeel swear violently. Even Levy, who rarely swore, seemed to be doing so in several languages. Wendy stood stock still, like if she didn't move it couldn't see her. Lucy saw her swallow, hard.

But it was Natsu's reaction that her the most worried. He was staring at the ground uncomprehending as if he couldn't process what was before him. This dragon being alive meant his father had failed.

That Igneel had died for nothing.

The wing was black with blue patterns and it told Lucy they had very little time until it broke free completely. They needed Natsu. They needed all of Fairy Tail. But especially the dragon-demons. They were the only ones that could inflict real damage onto this thing.

But Natsu didn't move, he seemed incapable of comprehending what was before him. Lucy couldn't force her feet to move either.

Lucy closed her eyes, her grip on her keys tightening unconsciously, and accepted one simple fact.

They could die here today.

Sure, it had always been a possibility. Neither Jose nor Ivan were exactly easy opponents to defeat and there was no way they were going to fight fairly. But for as strong as they were it was something they could process. It was something they knew they could defeat, not easily, but could nonetheless.

This was on an entirely different level, like something out of a movie. She half expected someone to shout 'Cut!' and the dragon would dematerialize, and she'd realize it had just been bad CGI.

She knew that wasn't the case. It was real. It was going to attack them and they would die if they didn't do something about it.

She slammed a foot to the ground, turned sharply, and made herself walk to Natsu. She stood in front of him, blocking the dragon from sight. She was not going to stand here and die.

And by the gods neither was he.

"Natsu Dragneel." She said. She remembered every time Natsu helped her, every time he'd given her hope when she'd felt there was none. Natsu was the king of the motivational speech. Well, this was her turn. "Are you going to just sit there?" He looked up at her, blinking and refocusing. "Listen, the Natsu I know would've already thrown himself into battle. You don't give up, you never have and you are not about to start now. I know this is hard, I know what this means to you. But Igneel didn't fail and he didn't die for nothing. He kept this prick of a dragon locked up for hundreds of years and he injured him. Igneel gave us a chance. What would he want you to do right now? I can already tell you. He'd tell you to get up and fight. You are the Son of Igneel, King of the Fire Dragons. You are Natsu of Fairy Tail." She bent, pressed her forehead to his, put her hands to his cheeks. Held them there, for three solid heartbeats. "You are my best friend." She stood again, held out a hand.

"I'm going to fight." Just saying the words made her hands shake, made fear tremble in her belly. "I'm going to fight." She made herself say it again. "Come with me." She smiled at him, wiggled her fingers.

"Don't you know it's more fun when we're together?"

The roar echoed across the land and the world seemed to shudder. Magick long slumbering stirred, and ancient beings peered out of various holes and dimensions. The structures that held these places apart trembled for a moment. Something had broken and the rest of the worlds could feel it. The barriers held, as they had and would for millennia, but they were weaker for the breach. The worlds were interconnected, some more tightly than others, and when one world suffered so did the rest.

Mythics of all types felt the change in the air, many of them fleeing to different realms or pocket dimensions, for the little good it would do. The memory of this power hadn't faded, time worked differently across the realms and their collective memories were long. It would a long time before Acnologia faded into a forgotten tale rather than a terrible reality. With this new uprising, it would be longer still.

Shuddering with the force of the magick, two beings tucked into a mountainous realm growled in unison. Another slipping between dimensions felt the crash of this lost power slap across their body, sending them out of the dimensional rift.

The human realm, which was both tightly and loosely bound to the demon realm was both unaffected and sent reeling. Magick, always low in the human realm, crackled and sparked.

The world changed.

"Well, shit." Was Gray's assessment of the situation. He literally couldn't think of anything else to say. Was else was there to say? Their odds of winning had gone from pretty great to dismal in ten seconds flat. Everyone was focused on the dragon, and some were literally shaking in their boots. Most had never seen a dragon, let alone imagined facing one down.

"Acnologia," Jellal whispered. Gray managed to tear his eyes away from the dragon and focus on Jellal because he could not have heard that right.

"It's not-"

"It is," Jellal was grim, bloody and serious. Erza was practically holding him up, and her face was unnaturally pale. Something rattled in Gray's gut, something unsettling and sharp.

Acnologia. The Dragon of the Apocalypse. The dragon that had nearly destroyed...well, everything. If Zeref was the darkest wizard to have ever lived...well, Acnologia was the darkest dragon to have lived. All this dragon thirsted for was death, especially the death of his greatest rival, Igneel, King of the Fire Dragons.

And with Igneel dead…

"That thing is going to go straight for Natsu," Gray snarled. And gods and demons, just what was going on in Natsu's head right now? This dragon had killed his father, and in the wake of that loss, Natsu himself had been lost. Could he even handle seeing this dragon again? Let alone face it down?

"He will not take Natsu," Erza's voice was a study in fury.

"Our magick doesn't work on dragons, Erza," Gray reminded her. He'd take the fucker down right now if he thought it would actually do something. It was frustrating to stand here, staring at an enemy that not even his most powerful attack could harm. There was nothing he could do. Natsu and the dragon-demons were the only ones that could harm it, and this dragon would not be easy to take down.

"Then we close the portal," Erza snapped. "We trap it between dimensions, we choke it on dimensional energy for all I care. But it. Will. Not. Get. Natsu."

"Is it...possible to close a portal of that size?" Juvia asked, but she seemed willing to try. Gray knew they'd all try because they were crazy and did the impossible before breakfast most days...but this was interdimensional magick, which was fussy and prone to explosions or just plain not working even when you knew what you were doing. And Gray definitely didn't know what he was doing. Portals and interdimensional magick was a lost magick, a lost knowledge.

They really didn't have a choice but to try.

Luckily, Freed was still around. Levy was with Natsu's group, last Gray knew so that bit of information wasn't available. Freed, with his nose forever lost in ancient tomes and deciphering lost languages, would be the best bet they had to have a chance at this. Even Freed, though, for all his knowledge, couldn't know everything.

"Dimensional magick like this is called Lost Magick for a reason," Freed said, but Gray could see his mind working to dig up anything that could help them.

"If this is Acnologia," Laxus said, "We're gonna need more than me to have a chance."

"Wendy, Gajeel, and Natsu are up where Jose was," Juvia said. It was hard to see the tower now since most of it had been blasted away. Plus, looking away from the dragon breaking the sky was almost as terrifying as looking at it.

"Gajeel's pretty beat up too," Erza said, mostly to herself. All of them were, to an extent. They'd been fighting for a while now. It was impossible to tell time on the mountain, as the light never seemed to change. But magick levels were running low, along with morale.

"Freed?" Gray asked. Maybe they couldn't beat this thing, maybe they didn't have the firepower. But something had to be done.

"The edges of the portal are made of raw magick," Freed said. "Raw magick has no designation, it's simply magick. It's not fire, or ice, or rune. It's magick unformed. That's what makes portals so unpredictable. No one knows how to control it, or how to make a portal without influencing the magick. If we can change it, force it to take on an element, the portal should become unstable, and collapse on itself."

"Should?" Bixlow asked, his eyes, although unactivated, still seemed to glow.

"It could also explode," Freed said. "Or open completely."

"Great," Evergreen deadpanned. "So either we shut it away or we all die. That sounds like our usual odds."

"I know we got more of the serious injuries out of here already, but anyone who can't fight or doesn't have the magickal endurance for this should evacuate. This isn't a fight against minions anymore." Mira said her Take Over deactivated.

"Right," Gildarts, looking markedly untouched, scanned the crowd. His voice boomed out. "Fairy Tail! All members who feel they can't keep up with this fight should leave, now!" He paused for a moment, seeming to gather his thoughts. "I won't lie, this isn't going to be easy. We're fighting something that most of our magick can't touch. The plan we've got has no guarantee of working. But if we don't do something, then that dragon won't stop. It'll keep coming until it's rage is satisfied. This is our only chance to stop it.

"We're Fairy Tail. We're a family. We're not going to let something like a dragon stop us."

Fairy Tail roared in response, as loud as the dragon.

In the end, only a few people left. Those so low on magick that they couldn't conjure a spell strong enough to affect the portal, along with those whose physical injuries slowed them too much. Against Ivan's cannon fodder and the dwindling experiments, they could use the terrain and their friends to their advantage, without slowing anyone down. Against a dragon? A wall wouldn't stop a blast, and if Acnologia decided to roar, with something other than sound, no one could afford to slow down enough to help someone else up, lest they both perish.

"Should someone go check on Natsu's group?" Lisanna asked, looking up at where the tower had been.

"We need to start closing that portal," Ultear said. "But if any of them are still able to fight, we need all the people we can get."

"Um?"

Gray whirled, surprised to see Levy and Lucy standing up on a shattered wall. They were dirty, their hair in disarray, with cuts and bruises littering their bodies.

"I can't believe your upright, Heartfilia," Ultear said, in a tone that could be either impressed or condescending.

"Thanks?" Lucy said, eyes fixed on the sky.

"Where the hell are the dragon trio you had with you?" Laxus asked.

Lucy simply pointed.

Once they pried their eyes away from the dragon, seeing the three dragon-demons heading towards Acnologia was pretty obvious. Natsu was already on fire, Wendy was bright blue against the gray sky and Gajeel was shouting profanity. They had found their exceeds and were working their way up to the portal. Laxus simply closed his eyes and breathed for a moment. Gray thought he was trying to calm himself down, that their antics were finally giving Laxus stress headaches or something-Gray himself was torn between yelling at the idiots or laughing hysterically-when something rippled across his skin. The hairs on Gray's arms stood straight up, and Gray realized that Laxus was simply building up his magick.

"How the fuck are you not tapped out?" Bixlow muttered, his own hair growing wilder from the static in the air. Gray could smell ozone.

Laxus rolled his shoulders. "After the raijuu, I felt like I could summon enough lightning to destroy this mountain." Sparks shot off his shoulder, and lightning danced in his hair. "I had enough energy in me that I thought I was going to fry from the inside." Gray could hear energy humming, a thousand bolts of power all coursing in the same direction. "Right now, I feel like I could destroy half this mountain. I'm going to make this fucker of a dragon feel like he's roasting from the inside."

Electricity crashed and screamed. In a finger snap and a burst of bright light, Laxus was gone, streaking through the sky in a bolt of power.

"He's going to sleep for a year if he keeps this shit up." Evergreen declared.

"Probably, but it doesn't matter now," Gray said. "We need to close that portal. Those four should keep Acno busy while we get into position."

Freed started shouting orders, directing people to different locations in order to most effectively distribute power.

"Gray, can you create an ice tower to get your group the right height? We don't need to be wasting power because you're in a low spot."

"You got it," Gray said, pulling another guild member with him to Freed's coordinates. It was organized chaos, with guild members running in different directions and spreading the word to those who hadn't heard the entire plan. People were gathering magick, throwing bits of food at other people, and bandaging minor wounds on the run. Supplies were passed out with wild abandon and spells that might work best on the portal were shouted across the compound.

Gray made his way out of the ruins of the castle, not tasting the sandwich someone had squirreled away in a storage pocket. He honestly had no idea who gave it to him. Juvia was in a different group, both of their elements were flexible and were more useful on opposite sides of the field. He silently wished her luck and locked away the worry that gnawed at his guts. Fairy Tail dealt in impossibility, he refused to believe they could not win this.

In the sky, fire sparked and crackled, fueled by the rising wind. The screech of metal was lost under the sound of a thousand lightning bolts crackling all at once.

Gray grinned, watching lightning rip across the sky and slam Acnologia right on the snout.

They were going to fry this bastard alive.