Chapter 14

Anger

"Gajeel, I think we should continue to the buyer," Lily suggested. "Maybe they can help."

Gajeel looked at the cat like he'd lost his mind. "You're suggesting I leave Levy here?!"

"Wherever she is, she's not here. I'm sure she's fine. Sitting around being angry won't solve anything."

"I'm not fucking leaving," Gajeel roared as he punched a tree down. Remo and the enemies had disappeared after they snatched Levy away, so he couldn't fight his anger away. Even though he was out of options, he couldn't just leave her there.

Gajeel sat there for some time and thought about everything. He wanted to blame Lily for picking such a terrible job, but it wasn't his fault. He was just trying to get those two together, and he'd succeeded, but Gajeel felt useless. He couldn't protect the only person in the world that he cared about, aside from Pantherlily of course.

"Don't blame yourself," Lily says, putting a paw on his friend's shoulder. The exceed was very wise, and it was like he was in Gajeel's head sometimes. Most of the time, he knew the right thing to say.

"I'm fucking useless," The dragon slayer said, his head hanging low.

"Now, you know that's not true," Lily said.

He wished she was there with him. He hated feeling this way. Even though Lily was good at being comforting, it just wasn't the same as it was when Levy did it. He needed to hear it from her lips that he wasn't useless. That he was good at being her protector. He was a mess without her.

A gust of wind suddenly caught them off guard.

"Worry not, young dragon slayer," A voice said from within the trees.

Gajeel and Lily tensed up and whipped around, the voice coming from behind them. They saw an older woman with long lavender-colored hair. They sensed an amazing amount of power radiating from the woman, but sensed no danger.

"I am Kaomi Rin. I believe you are coming to meet me?" She asked, glancing around. She felt the energy around them. Something was off. "Where's the translator?"

"She was taken!" Lily blurted out.

Kaomi suspected as much, as she didn't sense the tablets or the translator's presence. "I do apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced on your journey," she said, inspecting the area. Gajeel and Lily were confused.

"How did you know we were here?" Gajeel asked, straightforwardly.

"Aren't we still a few miles away?" Lily chimed in.

"You are correct, small exceed, my home is about three and a half miles south from here, but I own a large amount of land that surrounds the home. I keep my area very well monitored, and I detected movement. I also felt a rather large disturbance in the area and decided to give it my attention." She paused and glanced at the area Levy was taken from. "I assume the disturbance has something to do with the missing translator?"

Gajeel and Lily nodded, surprised at how much the elder knew.

She continued her visual sweep of the area, noticing the pair looking at her with confusion.

"All for good reason, I assure you," Kaomi said, finishing her inspection. "Now, tell me what happened to your mate."

Gajeel's eyes widened. 'How did she know Levy was my mate?'

Levy watched with fear as the unstable spatial mage walked toward her with murderous intent. Tears fell to the back of her hands as she closed her eyes and hung her head. She was still on her hands and knees from being weakened. She wished her knight in shining armor would come to her rescue, but with Remo's spatial magic, she knew that was impossible.

Levy opened her eyes to see Remo standing in front of her, his face contorted with anger.

"Don't fucking cry!" He yelled. He hated seeing girls cry, but that something had already snapped in his head, removing all sanity from his mind. Her cries would not have stopped him, not this time.

"How do you want to die?" He asked hoisting her up by the collar.

Levy saw this as an opportunity. She scanned his hair for the charm. She wanted to lift her hand to remove it but with a lot of the energy and magic gone from her body, she could barely move.

Remo chuckled at her attempt to move. "I know, I'll drain all the magic from your body and leave you here to rot." He dropped her to the ground and bent over her, the palm of his hand on her forehead. Levy watched, her vision slowly fading along with her magic power. She knew if he left her there in that universe with no magic or strength, she would die a slow and very uncomfortable death.

They say your whole life flashes before your eyes right before death, but for Levy, her future with Gajeel was what she saw, or what it would have –no, should have been. She saw her finding out she was pregnant with their first child, she saw him proposing to her, she saw them getting married and buying their first home together, and she saw the birth of their child. She wasn't supposed to go out like this. She was supposed to experience all of those things. She loved Gajeel and Lily with all her heart. They were her family now and she was about to leave them all alone. She thought about how Gajeel would cope with her death. She was dying and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

"I'm going to fucking kill you," Remo grinned evilly as he watched the life slowly drain from the girl in his hands. Almost immediately after the words left his lips, he felt a very sharp blade breaking skin against his neck.

"No," a voice in his ear growled. "I'm going to fucking kill you."

Remo dropped a near-dead Levy on the ground and cackled uncontrollably as he whipped around, facing the dragon slayer, not caring how he managed to get into his fabricated universe. Gajeel was barely Gajeel anymore, his dragon had just about taken over his body out of pure rage. He'd never experienced this much anger before, and it would later take a toll on his body, but now, all he wanted to do was put Levy out of harm's way and kill the dick that did this to her.

"Do it!" Remo laughed.

"Say no more," Gajeel lunged at the spatial mage, the blade plunging through his stomach. As Remo fell to the ground, the body disappeared.

"Don't fucking hide from me!" Gajeel's dragon roared. His now bright golden eyes that resembled those of a snake, darted around, in search of the real Remo.

"Why don't you use some of those dragon slayer techniques you wannabe dragons enjoy so much?" Remo egged him on, accepting his eventual death.

Tuning into his currently enhanced senses, Gajeel found Remo. Coming out of a shadow behind him, he grabbed the orange-haired mage by the neck. "I'd rather kill you with my bare hands," he growled as he slammed him onto the ground, face first, only for the body to disappear.

Gajeel was livid. He only saw blood red as he darted around, in search of Remo. He came across what he assumed to be another clone, and put the palm of his hand on Remo's face, slamming and dragging his head across a rather large and jagged tree trunk, the body disappearing again afterwards.

Gajeel smirked, his hunting instincts kicking in. He loved a good hunt; he wanted to paint this sepia earth with Remo's blood, but he needed to quickly wipe this asshole off the face of this universe and tend to Levy. He blended with the shadows, waiting for his prey to show himself and make himself vulnerable.

"There's no use in hiding from me," Gajeel said with a devilish grin.

Suddenly, several clones of Remo appeared, causing him to come out from the shadows. "I will end each and every last one of you fuckers!"

Gajeel knew it was pointless to waste his physical energy on the clones, so he used his 'Iron Dragon Roar' technique to wipe them away.

"SHOW YOURSELF!" Gajeel demanded, punching the ground around him causing it to crack in several places.

"What fun would that be?" Remo's voice echoed around him.

Remo knew the dragon slayer was going to catch up to him eventually, but he'd be damned if he made it easy for him.

"You're just going to have to find me first," he cackled.

Gajeel was growing angrier and angrier, his inner dragon almost fully out. As much as he'd love to play hide and seek with this douche bag, he wanted to take care of Levy more. He glanced at the blue-haired woman, adding fuel to the fire seeing her lying on the ground like that. He was going to have to do this the easy way. He punched the ground again, much harder this time, making huge iron rods uproot every tree he could see, until everything around him was leveled. Doing so, he found Remo, the real Remo.

Finally knowing where he was, Gajeel made all the iron rods go back into the ground so the spatial image had nowhere to hide.

"Looks like you found me," he said with a shrug.

Gajeel was through with words. It was time to waste this dick. He slithered into the shadows quickly creeping up on Remo, ready to form his arms into iron daggers and skin him alive. He materialized when he was within arms reach, turning his body into iron, his golden eyes shining brightly against the dark gray metal.

"First, let's get you on a flat surface," the iron dragon growled, as he punched Remo square in his face, sending him flying into a tree trunk in the distance flat on his back.

"Now, let's paint." Gajeel sped over to him, with the most sadistic grin he's ever had the pleasure of having on display, about to paint Remo's universe with his own blood. He turned his arms into very thin and very sharp blades, angling one of them at his jugular, and the other one pointing at one of his lungs.

Remo cackled as Gajeel's blade broke skin on his neck, his eyesight getting blurry at blood loss. He coughed up blood as the other blade plunged through his lung. Gajeel grinned evilly as he shoved the blade deeper into his body.

"We're not so different, you and I," the dying, orange-haired mage said weakly.

Gajeel's grin turned into a frown as he twisted the blade. "I will never be like you," he growled.

"You keep telling yourself that," he replied, chuckling as he spit up more blood, yanking the charm out of his braid, the sepia earth around them rumbling. Remo knew his powers were unstable. He's only tested it once before, but he knew removing the charm while in another universe would cause his body to implode along with whatever universe he was in if not replaced quickly. He figured if he was going to die, he'd rather do it himself and take out whoever his assailant was. Gajeel stepped back, letting the mage drop to the blood soaked ground and instinctively ran to Levy, holding her body to his for protection from whatever may happen.

Gajeel held Levy closely and watched, while Remo screamed, as if he were burning alive, a burning white light coming from his eyes and mouth, his body looked like it was ripping to shreds. He put two and two together and figured he was going to blow, and he needed to get out of there, fast. He carried Levy and quickly made his way to the location they all were before Remo took Levy and squeezed his eyes shut as the ground rumbled and cracked continuously around them. He just wanted this whole thing to be over. He wanted Levy safe. More importantly, he wanted her to open her eyes.

He looked around, seeing everything was back to how it should be, his anger subsiding and his eyes back to his normal red. He looked down at Levy, dragging the back of his hand gently down her cheek. She was barely alive. He picked her up and ran off toward Lily and Kaomi, hugging her flush against his body. 'Don't die, please, Levy! I need you! Lily needs you! I can't do this without you!' Gajeel pleaded internally, tears threatening to fall from his eyes.

"Gajeel!" Lily exclaimed as he saw the slayer quickly making his way to them, noticing a passed out Levy and a blood covered Gajeel. "What happened?"

"I dunno, when I got there, I saw that asshole doing something to her, I-I couldn't tell what he was doing though," he says as he gently lays her on the grass.

Kaomi kneels, her hands hovering over Levy's chest. "What was he doing when he you saw him?"

"He had his hand on her head," Gajeel said, pacing back and forth angrily. "I fucking lost it, man. I didn't know what else to do."

"So it is as I suspected," the lavender-haired woman said, gently placing her palm on Levy's forehead.

Gajeel was getting angry again. He didn't like not being able to help, and on top of that, he didn't know what was going on, so that made things worse.

"Someone better tell me what the hell is going on!"

"Gajeel," Lily floated over to his tall friend. "Calm down, I'm sure she will explain what's going on. I feel Levy will pull through."

"The exceed is right," Kaomi says, standing up. "Please, one of you carry her. I will go find the tablets and we will head to my home."

Lily would have carried Levy to make things easier on Gajeel, but he knew he would want to be close to her right now, so he just watched as Gajeel scooped her up in his arms.

He held her close, as Kaomi searched for the tablets. She even smelled differently, and he hated it. He just wanted her to be alright. There were so many things he didn't say to her or do for her. He had finally claimed her as his mate and he was about to lose her? "I guess this is my karma," he said quietly as he stroked her hair. "But why did it have to be you?"

Remo's words shook around in his head 'We're not so different, you and I.' He was right. Gajeel did find pleasure in seeing others suffer, at least he used to, until Levy unknowingly changed him to be a better him. But the actions of his past did still haunt him, even though she forgave him, he still hadn't forgiven himself.

"Alright," Kaomi came out of the bushes holding the bag that held the tablets. "Let's head over now."

Lily grabbed their luggage and Gajeel carried Levy, and they made their way to Kaomi's home.