Author's response
to all the people who got mad about Minerva's power play last chapter: Keep reading and keep leaving reviews. I'll tell you now that pretty much any fic I write always has a larger picture in mind. The subplot of Minerva's character arc was already laid out in Chapter 2; you probably just didn't realize it at the time. I would tell you to go back and read their mid- and post-coitus conversation in that chapter, really read it, both the text and between the lines. I would tell you to consider everything, the totality and individual pieces, of what is implied by Minerva's dialogue, actions, reactions, all of it...
...but I really don't think that would make you less mad, since you wouldn't know how the subplot pays off for both the larger picture and Minerva's character.
So, as I said, keep reading and leaving reviews. Rest assured, if I didn't think you'd like the payoff or knew another way to set it up, I wouldn't have written Chapter 9 the way I did. Your anger was both anticipated and accepted before I published the chapter.
What Comes with the Job
Natsu pulled Ultear's purple sweater down her body, tracing her hourglass figure with his hands on the way back up. Immediately, Ultear's hands slapped over his own and pushed them into her sides, surprising the fiery Dragon Slayer.
With a coy smile, Ultear looked over her shoulder at him, her top bun swiping the tip of his nose. "The sooner we finish this job, the sooner we get to know each other." She rolled her sweater bunnies around in her hands, before hip-checking him with her curvy side-haunch and pushing herself free. "So let's go."
Down in the village, Minerva and Lucy had just finished making themselves look decent. Well, as decent as Minerva could look when all she wore was a bikini and the suggestion of blue gloves and matching leggings.
"Tell me, Lucy, what do you think?"
The blonde, still a little dazed from the multi-hour fuck-marathon she'd run with Minerva's baton inside of her, stumbled around to look at her.
"Think of what?"
Minerva's cloak was open, revealing her irresistible body. Lucy's mouth began to water as Minerva's thigh-high leggings lost their opacity, becoming a pair of fishnet stockings. The top bands shrunk, causing her thighs to bulge around the fabric and drawing the eye further to her soft flesh and amazingly bouncy ass.
"Should I keep them solid or go out like this?" Minerva asked, knowing full well the effect she now had on her little blonde pet.
"I… Uh…" Lucy swallowed. "They're a little distracting…"
Minerva closed her cloak around herself. "You're right. We wouldn't want the wrong person to ogle me in battle."
Whether she meant herself or Natsu, Lucy couldn't be sure and Minerva knew it. Minerva walked up to Lucy and put an arm around her waist, pulling her close. Their breasts mashed together and the two ladies looked into each other's eyes. One was hungry, the other was nervous. Closing her eyes, Minerva mentally retraced her steps back to the spot where she'd parted ways with Natsu, recalling the time and path she'd taken to reach the inn. Her power surged, and in a moment the two ladies had joined Natsu and Ultear outside.
"Good, you're back," Natsu said. "Sorry you had to wait."
Minerva chuckled and released Lucy. "We didn't."
Natsu frowned at that… and Ultear released a chuckle of her own for some reason. Minerva made a note to ask her about that later.
"Okay, troops." Natsu leapt atop the rock and pointed to the dip between the mountains, where lay the road to the bridge. "Let's go get paid!"
"Yeah!... Okay!..." Lucy shouted, pumping her fist in the air. "Finally, a job where I don't need to worry about property damage!"
Minerva smiled at the blonde. She seemed fine, but Minerva knew she could reduce Lucy to a nervous wreck all over again, the moment the two were left alone together.
"Shall I take us there?" Minerva asked.
Natsu shook his head. "Take me and you there, to the bottom of that canyon. Lucy and Ultear? You go to the other side and start to cross. When you're halfway across, that's when the bridge'll catch fire."
"Wait, why?!" Lucy squawked.
"What are you worried about?" Natsu asked. "You know we can catch you if you fall."
Lucy looked at Natsu, then Minerva, then sighed. "You're right. I'm an idiot."
"Nah, you're not an idiot, Luce!" Natsu jumped down in front of Lucy. Her brown eyes bugged out when he snagged her waist and pulled her tight. "You're just new at this. Happy used to catch me all the time; you'll get used to it."
There was a blush on the blonde's cheeks as she stammered, "I-I guess." She wiped her brow as Natsu put her down (when had he picked her up?) and said, "I feel a lot better."
Minerva's eyes narrowed, which Ultear took notice of. She made sure to correct her expression when Minerva almost caught her look.
I need to be careful with her, they both thought simultaneously.
The plan was simple enough. Natsu and Minerva waited… No, they didn't wait. They did something else.
Ultear and Lucy had been placed a fair way away from the bridge, so they could actually approach it without looking like they'd popped out of thin air. Naturally, with time to spare and Natsu on hand to play with, Minerva just couldn't keep her hands off of her lover's chiseled body and knew full well how to get his dick harder than the rocks they were standing on.
"Mmmmh, you can barely wait to fuck me, Natsu," Minerva purred. Her bubble-shaped ass sloshed back and forth as Natsu humped her from behind. His hands were all over her big, ripe titties as he kept her bent over a hip-tall boulder. Talk about pitching a tent, for that's what Minerva was doing thanks to the cloak covering her body.
"How about…" She felt his breath on her ear. "No."
Minerva moaned as he squeezed her tits harder, pushing and rolling them around in his hands.
"Like I'd believe that," Minerva whispered seductively. "Your long, fat cock is so hard, I bet it aches."
"Speak for yourself," Natsu murmured back. "I can feel your tight little asshole trying to get at me. I bet it feels empty without my load inside it."
"As if you could resist shooting it into me," Minerva countered, twerking her ass against him. "Go on. Take the plunge. Or are you afraid you won't be able to stop?"
"I can stop whenever I want to."
"But you won't want to."
"You won't want me to." It was at that moment that one of Ultear's orbs, her favored weapon of choice when paired with her Arc of Time, zoomed past the couple's perch and crashed somewhere below.
"Besides," Natsu said, "we got a job to do." He said that, yet his hands and silhouetted sausage didn't stop egging her on.
"'Business before pleasure' is for weaklings," Minerva hummed, straightening up and leaning back against Natsu. His dick was still snuggled against her jelly-like ass, which ballooned itself against his pelvis. "So, who's going first?"
"I got the spark, you got the oil," Natsu said. Minerva took off her cloak, flashing the desolate tundra of the canyon with her bountiful body, before slinging it around Natsu's back and wrapping it around them both.
"Mmmm, so warm," she purred, arching her body into the curve of Natsu's. She felt his arms criss cross around her stomach, squishing her huge tits between his bulging biceps.
Copping a feel on her pussy with one hand, Natsu stuck his other hand out between the folds of the cloak. He blasted a line of blue fire along the bottom of the wooden arch bridge's support rails, on the side furthest from the village. His hot fire melted the wood into ashen slag and set the rest ablaze around it; he was honestly a little surprised at how fast it lit up.
So were Lucy and Ultear, their eyes widening as they saw the huge plume of smoke billow to life behind them.
"Run!" Lucy shouted, quickly following her own advice. She waved her arms at a trio of villagers in heavy furs and rock climbing gear that were starting to cross. "Get back! The bridge is on fire!"
"It's what?!" one of them shouted, a tall mustachioed man with his hood pulled up on his parka. His two companions turned back and sprinted towards the village, shouting about a fire brigade (as if it would help).
"Water won't put this out!" Ultear shouted, pointing back at the flames which had already spread to the entirety of the bridge's height. "Look at those flames! They're not normal!"
"We have to try something!" the man shouted as the bridge suddenly lurched.
Lucy stumbled and fell, recovering as Ultear scrambled up the tilting bridge. Tilting back, that is: the fire had paradoxically consumed the upper parts and collapsed the walkway onto a lower set of support beams. At least, that's what most thought. In reality, something, which Lucy strongly suspected was Minerva's explosive magic, had detonated among the support beams.
"Try getting to safety first," Ultear said calmly, picking Lucy up one-handed and setting her on her feet. Lucy crawled up the slope and helped the tall man to his feet, using her magically strong legs to hold him steady as the slope lurched again and got steeper.
What are they thinking down there?! Lucy thought.
Truthfully, Minerva was thinking about how much better it felt to have Natsu give in and jostle her cunt on top of his bulbous head.
"AAAH, yes!" Minerva's legs bounced beneath her cloak as Natsu held her up by her thighs. "Just like that! Stretch me out with your fat fucking cock!"
Leaning her head back, Minerva savagely kissed Natsu and felt him swell for a climax. With Lucy wrapped around her thumb, Minerva knew she'd get all that thick, creamy nut for herself, as much as she wanted. Her pussy and stacked body were just too fucking sexy to resist and Natsu wouldn't go to anyone else to empty his giant balls.
Biting his lip, Minerva smiled and said, "Well, what are you waiting for, lover?"
Natsu doubled over, forcing his mighty demon phallus as far inside her as it would go, and blew his load right as Minerva blew up the bridge. The fire had spread halfway across and Lucy and Ultear were well on the other side by this point, so there were plenty of witnesses to see the massive explosion scatter the flaming pieces and send them tumbling into the seven-story canyon below.
Ultear turned to the horrified villager, who was staring not at the ruined bridge but at Ultear. Specifically, her forehead.
"Y-You're...!"
Frowning, Ultear reached up to where his trembling finger pointed. Ah yes, her horns. She'd forgotten about those.
She smiled at him and pulled at her sweater. "Alluring and well-dressed? I know." Her smile quickly faded. "Are there any other ways around this canyon?"
"But-!"
"Sir?" Lucy quickly raced to the rescue, leaning forward and giving the man a side view of herself while pretending to look over the edge of the canyon.
"It's important we figure this out now," Lucy insisted, turning her big, brown puppy eyes on the man. "Otherwise, how will we get home?"
The man wasn't looking, but Ultear had to force another smile off of her face. Lucy, it seemed, was downright cutthroat when she wanted to be. No wonder Natsu had asked her to join the guild.
Lucy was thinking the same thing. After all, if she was going to have to haul around two gigantic jugs for the rest of her half-demon life, then they were going to earn their keep, by keeping her out of jail.
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Unbeknownst to any of the four Tartaros members, their activities were being watched by a mind with nothing but ill intent. When he saw that bridge blow up, when that blonde convinced the villagers to turn back and lead her into the village, he knew it was time. He was safely hidden high up the mountainside, looking down at the village with his Eagle Eye magic, far from the deadly things he intended to cause.
He'd been very deliberate, very careful, with setting up this scheme. Nearly eighteen months of planning, from the lobbying of King Animus to install an arch bridge instead of a drawbridge for this village, to the trade incentives he'd used to lure merchants' and commoners' caravans into this otherwise useless trappers' congregation. He'd been planning to use one of Fiore's dark guilds to do this last part, but then one of his infiltrated agents had reported her partner as killed by, of all things, the infamous Goddess of the Chill Moon.
The reemergence of Tartaros had been too perfect. It would be one thing for the minister of state to be tied to a dark guild. It would be quite another for him to be tied to literal demons from the Books of Zeref.
The cloaked figure checked in with his twin agents, listening in with a Spy Lacrima each carried with them.
With one, he heard the unmistakable sound of his operation's victim being seduced by what was doubtless a busty barfly. Agent Zeed knew enough to know how to present herself.
With the other, he heard his own voice, followed soon by that of King Animus. Excellent.
Taking one last drag on his cigar, he gave the signal to begin the ritual.
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Fuck, he's making me shake, Minerva thought as she squeezed her legs tighter around Natsu's waist.
Strangely, her man pulled his lips back and stopped bottoming out inside of her.
"That can't be good," Natsu said, putting her down and putting his cock back in his pants.
"Earthquakes rarely are," Minerva agreed, "especially if they keep going when you pull out."
Closing her cloak around herself, Minerva turned and pressed her back to Natsu, looking at the top of the cliff. In a moment, both of them were in front of Lucy.
"There's an avalanche at the other end of town!" she shouted. "Ultear went to try and hold it back!"
"What? No…" Natsu snarled.
"'No?!'" Lucy squawked. "Innocent people could be in trouble!"
"No time. Stay here and stand by! Minerva, you're in charge!"
With that, Natsu raced off into the village, not caring who saw his claws or black-crimson scales. Crashing through a hay wagon was when he decided to hit the rooftops and avoid the confused people milling about. Sure enough, he spied a herd of boulders stampeding down the mountainside, with several at the bottom having stopped and begun to roll back up.
"Ultear!" Natsu shouted.
There she was: the purple-clad, soon-to-be-his muscle girl with her arms outstretched and forcing time to reverse. She was surrounded by a small crowd of people, unsure of what to make of her appearance or her actions.
"Can't talk," Ultear said, her voice strained. "This is harder than it should be."
That was all he needed to hear. As an experiment, he lit a ball of orange fire in his hand. Sure enough, he felt magic leak out of it and spiral off somewhere, hopefully nearby.
"Save your energy," Natsu said.
"What?!"
He stepped in front of her. His expression hardened. "Did I stutter?"
"They'll be trapped here!" she protested.
Fire flared around Natsu's form, startling all the villagers back.
"It's a demon!"
"It's here to swallow our souls!"
"Save the children!"
"Quick, to the bridge!"
How quickly the unwashed masses began to panic. Natsu paid it no mind. He stared down Ultear, his eyes blazing with fury as his blue demon fire raged around him.
"I'M NOT GOING TO TELL YOU AGAIN," came the heat-warped snarl. "Let the avalanche happen or-"
"Or what?" Ultear hissed, her limbs beginning to tremble. "You'll force me to?"
His fire vanished, leaving a smoking demon with a scowl on his face. "Let me put this in a way you'll understand."
He approached her, ignoring the pointed fingers and cries of terror as the villagers identified him as the antagonist to the current situation. Natsu ignored them and weaved his way between Ultear's arms.
Leaning close, his scowl firmly fixed, he quietly rattled off a few biting remarks to his insubordinate subordinate. By the end of it, a blush had appeared on Ultear's cheeks and she did as she was told. The avalanche resumed, more and more falling rocks sealing the only other entrance into town, ensuring no one would be leaving. At least, not with ease.
Natsu nodded silently. His nose twitched. He surged forward and grabbed Ultear for a fiery kiss. Her hands clenched at her sides but, slowly, with great resistance, began to reach for Natsu.
He pulled away just as he felt her tongue begin to slide forward. "Save your good advice for when I need it."
Still blushing, Ultear said, "Shut up and let's do this."
"When we get back, I'll do that as much as you want me to," Natsu said. "For now, let's sort this crap out."
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From his perch, the architect of the atrocities to come watched the other two demons abandon their attempt to stop him. He was suspicious, but was content to not need his trump card to deal with them.
Still, he was glad he'd accounted for Seilah's powers. Based on what his agents told him, that raven-haired, horned demoness could've cut into the profits of this venture significantly, thanks to her telekinetic abilities. His deceased agent's final service was telling her partner the extent of Seilah's powers, how she could manipulate people on a whim and even move objects around. Strange, though, that she wouldn't use the former on the people of this village…
"Lord Zedd," said a voice in his collar, "it's begun."
Using his Inverse Eye to spot the magical energy in the area, he saw that the ritual lines were forming. They intersected to form an eight-pointed, star-like sigil, with the town square at the center. The magical energy from each began building, drawing in ethernano from the area. Like water, with so much energy meeting in one spot, trying to find an outlet, trying to reconcile the different directions of vectors pushing at each other, the result was exactly what the man had hoped.
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"Is that a freaking cyclone?!" Lucy squawked, pointed at the gathering black funnel cloud at the center of town.
Minerva stared. The fact her brain had described it that way pretty much confirmed Lucy's theory.
"But where did it come from?" Lucy said. "Woah!"
The wind had begun to pull at her. It built up quickly, far stronger than any normal twister should be capable of in such a short period of time. The buildings closest to it were torn up and crumbled instantly, with the rest following in a rapidly expanding circle of wind and detritus.
However, what was a mere pull for Lucy was a night-irresistible force to the normal townspeople, having congregated near the wreckage of the bridge. They had, in their fear, done the sensible thing and hugged each other close, increasing the mass and giving themselves better means of resisting the pull from their current distance.
Not all were so lucky, though.
"Mommy!" screamed a little girl as the sleeve of her jacket tore and she was pulled from her mother's arms.
"My baby! NO!"
Minerva rolled her eyes. Child's play, forgiving herself for the pun. With a flick of her "gloved" fingers, she first put the mother at the back of the huddled mass, near the bridge, then snared the girl in a Territory sphere and floated her back into the crowd where her tiny body could get some better protection.
"Who…? What happened?!"
Minerva said nothing. Instead, she spared Lucy a glance and smiled. The intrigue would build and they could reveal themselves as saviors once they'd actually saved people. Doing so now would mean they'd be crying and wailing and begging for their help, which could complicate things if this situation was beyond salvaging.
Minerva's eyes widened. "Salvage…"
"Salvage what?" Ultear shouted, wading her way through the ground to reach them. Literally, as she appeared to be using her Time Magic to sink her legs into the hardened tundra.
"I was just thinking," Minerva shouted coyly, "how inconvenient it is that the bridge can't simply… put itself back together."
"Where's Natsu?" Lucy demanded, falling to her well-padded posterior as the pull carried her legs out from beneath her.
"On the other side; he'll meet us on the other side of the canyon once this is- Ah!"
Something, and it was definitely a thing, yanked at her arm and caused her to lurch.
"That's no normal cyclone! We need to get everyone out of here!" Lucy said.
"Minerva, put me over there!" Ultear shouted, the wind now howling around them like a horde of angry ghosts.
Minerva silently obliged, transporting Ultear to stand near the woman whose child she'd saved. After taking a moment to reassure the frightened mother, Ultear faced the bridge.
"Tell everyone not to move until I give the word," she said to the woman. "Do you understand?"
After receiving a nod and the beginning of a message chain, Ultear worked her magic, literally. Restore was the most basic and yet most useful spell she'd learned in her studies of the Arc of Time. It only required time to move one way, with none of the infinite possible futures of an object to account for when shunting it along its personal time continuum. The only drawback was that all of the parts of the object needed to be present. Otherwise, Ultear would be attempting to pull in matter that was absent from the field of effect, "restoring" an object without all of its components and thus dooming it to break again. It would be the equivalent of trying to restore a pile of stones with none of the stones that formed the foundation, thus creating a floating plateau that would fall down and scatter itself once the spell ended.
Fortunately for Ultear, she could most definitely restore matter past chemical changes, such as burning it.
The broken planks and gnarled, blackened beams began to hover at the bottom of the crevice. Ultear once again felt like this was more difficult than it should've been, but powered through regardless.
Just as well, because by the time the bridge was restored, the people were already ready to trample each other, and her, to get across. Minerva had to pull double-duty to both keep them from both killing one another and falling off. Lucy was off to one side, having summoned her spirit Taurus and taken on his Star Dress. Each flanked the mouth of the bridge, bracing themselves to force people back who tried to go around and rush right off the cliff.
Ultear, meanwhile, suddenly found herself yoinked into the air.
"What?!"
"Ultear!" Lucy shouted. "Minerva, you need to get her back!"
"Busy," Minerva said simply. "She'll survive."
Ultear, who was tumbling through the air and looking for something solid to fling at herself, was not feeling the same confidence. Her magic was rapidly draining out of her and taking her physical strength with it, along with her consciousness. Magical Deficiency Disease was already setting in by the sudden loss of her ethernano, with no Curse Power like Kyoka or Minerva possessed to fill the void. A body used to operating under certain conditions was bound to suffer if those conditions rapidly changed.
She opened her mouth to cry out as she was pulled into the howling black vortex, but all the air was immediately sucked out of her lungs. It's as if the cyclone was reaching into her being and pulling out everything that gave her life: her breath, her magic, even her thoughts were seized by the magical disaster unfolding.
Useless paper muscles, she mentally hissed at herself before unconsciousness claimed her.
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The man grinned around his cigar. He'd been looking to sacrifice the people of the village, but since that accursed Time wizard made that a fool's errand, he'd decided to go for the problem directly. Frankly, he blamed himself. He'd seen that "Seilah" had possessed a large reservoir of magic despite allegedly being a Curse user, yet he'd brushed it off as simply his spell's interpretation of unnatural power. So, since his Inverse Eagle Eye saw that she had plenty of magic to spare, the literal invisible hands of his dark magical cyclone seized her and pulled her into its clutches. The panicked villagers worked to his advantage: her two friends were too busy being heroes to help her. It reminded him of a relatively modern adage about the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few, or in this case the one.
He also recalled something he'd learned as a politician: the needs of the many were not always so direct. Thus, the many would happily trample their means of filling those needs, if given enough chaotic uncertainty followed by the right pitch.
Case and point: his pawns knew he'd wanted the bridge destroyed. It's what he'd hired them to do, after all. Thus, they had no response should it collapse again. The only person who could stop the bridge from disintegrating into kindling was currently flying and dying about forty feet in the air, and rising. Letting a few people fall would've been the true "needs of the many" move, to guarantee the rest made it to safety. Not anymore.
Since his plan had originally called for the "dark wizard conspirators" to cause the avalanche rather than the bridge collapse, the charges his agents had set within the bridge's structure were still present, even if a few had gone off prematurely due to the fire. Wait… That time mage would've unknowingly reassembled them.
"Blow it," he muttered into his collar.
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Just when Minerva thought she was nearly finished, for enough people had fallen off and thus been transported across to thin the mob… The bridge had the audacity to destroy itself.
Not with warning, either. A series of compact explosions rippled through the structure and downed it like a sand castle under a child's foot.
"Lucy, some help here!" Minerva shouted. Her hands flicked and snapped at the people, catching each one and dumping them on the other side in a pile. She had no time to be gentle, not with so many people to catch and so much debris to not catch.
"Get the closest ones!" Lucy responded, who Minerva saw had switched to a new dress. This was a new one, never before seen nor used in any of the kinky fucks Minerva had watched her do with Natsu.
Rather than demand details, Minerva washed her hands of responsibility and let Lucy take the rap if her idea was a bad one. She focused instead on those closest to their edge, which meant about halfway across the canyon. She caught each of them in turn, seeing arrows the size of ballista bolts fly through the air and expertly snag people out of the air, pinning them to the far side of the canyon. Again, their landings were rough, but that was far better than fatal.
She was too distracted to notice how the winds from the cyclone seemed to be less… "clawing" than before.
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Now the man's smile had tightened into a grimace, biting into his half-smoked cigar. They were going to do it. Those two sluts down there were actually going to save everyone, even the household pets that children, parents, and adult virgins had scooped up to flee with. Who the fuck were these people? He'd accounted for every possibility, even asked his agents for their opinions, and not one fucking person had been sacrificed. How the hell was he supposed to frame this as a national concern if they had no bodies on the pile?
Still… He'd get one. That woman who he'd thought was the problem was still inside the cyclone. The magic from inside was flowing from the top of the funnel and into the various lacrima hidden in the mountains around. His secondary goal was now his consolation prize: gathering power to boost his greatest spell, his Evil Eye, for operations he was planning down the road. Normally blood sacrifices were mere scraps and he needed at least one per potential target for his spell, but with the amazing amount of magic flowing from the flying bitch, he was sure to get at least a platoon's worth.
Make that two, he thought smugly. A blue fireball had suddenly flared to life and smashed into the side of the cyclone, disappearing into its clutches. Ah yes, he'd forgotten: that pink-haired demon who'd frightened everyone into panicking. Why he'd allowed the avalanche to happen when his companion had tried to stop it… Eh, it didn't matter.
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Inside the cyclone, feeling tendrils of dark magic clawing and biting at his strength, Natsu was forced to get real good, real fast, with his Nova Curse.
He told himself he'd needed more practice. He'd said to himself, "Natsu, you never know when you might need to know how to shoot fire from your feet and fly through the air like a bird."
But, since he still got motion sick from anything besides his own two feet, plus his little buddy Happy, he'd kept putting it off and now, here he was.
"I'M GONNA HURL-!"
Fighting to keep his stomach from escaping out of his mouth, Natsu blasted himself upwards with short, controlled bursts of Nova Flame. When that got him nowhere, when he was still being tossed around like a handful of spaghetti inside a volleyball, he threw caution to the wind and returned to Plan A, Plan "All-Out".
Like a shooting star, Natsu's brilliant blue fire engulfed him and propelled him through the center of the cyclone, disintegrating any piece of debris or rogue wind fool enough to try him out. It worked, too: there she was. Ultear looked like she was in bad shape as she was ragdolled around the air. He had to time this right, because turning around and going back down was like ordering pineapple slices on a pizza: completely out of the question.
At the last second, when he realized he'd be too soon, he slammed on the brakes and cut the power, causing Ultear to collide with his ribs and sweep him back up into the whirling wind. Now what, though? She wasn't fireproof and seemed to be losing the meat off her bones, shrinking inside her own skin.
Unless…
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Ultear suddenly awoke to feel a mouth pressed to hers. Power flooded her body, her atrophying muscles tensing up as the parasitic cyclone found something else to draw from her.
It was Natsu who held her, albeit looking a little blue in the face.
Pulling back, he croaked something which Ultear lip-read as, "Rr-luh… Hang on."
Blue light blinded her and suddenly she was flying, tearing free of the tendrils drawing her power away. Outside of the cyclone, which is clearly where they were, she realized she was engulfed in bright blue flames. Natsu was streaking through the air, shooting fire out of his body and around hers to fly through the air like a comet. In moments, they'd left the town behind and were sailing over the canyon. Ultear could see the townspeople gathered on the other side, the bridge once again in shambles. Lucy was among the crowd, while Minerva stood on the other side where the cyclone still raged. That is, until she violently lurched towards the funnel cloud. The next moment, she was on the other side with Lucy.
…who they were rapidly approaching.
"Natsu," Ultear said, a note of worry entering her voice, "don't you think we're coming in a LITTLE TOO-"
BOOM.
Their comet struck the ground, about ten yards beyond the edge of the crowd. The dirt and rock it kicked up showered the townspeople, driving them instinctively away but towards the cliff.
"No, no, stop it!" Lucy barked, her form shimmering as she returned to the cow-bikini pattern of her Star Dress Taurus. Her muscles had almost as much definition as Ultear's in that form; she was far stronger now than she'd been before her transformation. Thus, pushing a crowd back was simply down to her feet finding enough friction.
Ultear found herself lowered at Natsu's side (how long had he been holding her?) and surveyed the situation. The town? Destroyed. The people?
Lucy jogged up to Natsu, her gigantic udders flopping up and down in her bikini top. "I think that's everyone," she said.
Safe, it seemed.
Natsu snagged Lucy with his other arm and pulled her close to his body. He watched her face, as did Ultear, and when a blush appeared beneath her big brown eyes, he kissed her.
To which, Minerva snickered, probably thinking Ultear wouldn't see it from the distance and crowd between the two.
After Natsu finished with Lucy, a young boy nervously walked up to Ultear. "Um, Miss?"
"Yes? What is it?" Ultear did her best to smile. She didn't notice Natsu's nose twitch.
"Were you the one who fixed the bridge?" he asked.
Ultear nodded. "It was my magic."
He pointed across the debris field that used to be his home. "Do you think you could also clear the rocks that fell so people can find and help us?"
Natsu still clung to her, but she tested her weakened legs and found that she could still stand on her own power.
"I could, but your neighbors will need to find what caused them to fall in the first place. I can't do that for you."
The boy nodded. "I figured. Thanks."
While he turned around and began spreading the word, Ultear caught Natsu's look.
Lucy looked at them both. "Something wrong?"
"With that boy," said Ultear.
"Smells wrong," Natsu agreed. "Let's keep doing what we've been doing."
"...Okay?" Lucy said hesitantly. "What's that?"
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The situation now went thusly:
The town? Still ruined.
The people? Still safe.
The rocks? Cleared and/or melted. Between Lucy, Minerva, Ultear, and Natsu, the avalanche had never stood a chance.
The help? On its way. Some merchants had happened upon the town just now and were sending word back to the capitol.
The culprit? Still at large, for the four knew their client was almost certainly the one behind this.
Still, that left little more to do than to collect their payment and celebrate a job well done. For Minerva and Lucy, this meant-
"My suitcase!" Lucy wailed, looking over the rubble. "Some of my favorite clothes were in there! Dammit, now I have to- Natsu, what are you doing?"
Her guildmaster and sole male lover was dragging his mouth down her arm, sniffing her. "Got it. Follow me."
"What?" Lucy obeyed, despite knowing better. "Natsu, my suitcase was only magical for storage. All that stuff inside of it wouldn't stand up to a tornado that could've done all this."
"Found it!"
Lucy opened her mouth and closed it like a fish. Her eyes must've been playing tricks on her, because she thought she saw the handle of her suitcase poking out from a pile of dirt and broken timber, no more than twenty yards away.
One dig session later, Lucy opened the object to find that yes, this was her suitcase, intact with its contents more or less secure, despite some dirt and wood chips getting inside. That wasn't all that had gotten in. Somehow, a note had inserted itself into the net mesh lining the lip, where she kept her socks. How had she not seen it? She'd brought her suitcase from her old apartment right to this job they were on.
The note was only as big as the palm of her hand. Some weird symbols on it led her to believe it was imbued with magic, or maybe Curse power. It read, in cursive (ha ha),
You're welcome.
-Ravenlord
