Green With Genuine Brightness

by LucyMabely

Lucy & the rest of Team Natsu get beaten by a thief named Kotomi. The dark mage also uses a powerful spell to swap bodies with Lucy, and she steals her keys while fooling the team about her identity. The real Lucy is found by Sting, but Natsu's team believes Kotomi instead. Can Sting comfort Lucy & help her get her life back? Will their friendship lead to something more? StiCy.

42. Chapter 42

Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail.

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Chapter 41: Outsmarting The Smart Mages! Psychic Evolution of Spells & Enhanced Brightness! Lucy & Sting vs. Ayane & Fūsoku! Fusion of Feelings!

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Lucy and Sting watched the white clouds of smoke clear up to reveal that their opponents only had minor bruises from Sting's sneaky attack, their faces displaying a bit of surprise at how Sting used a combination of spells that they weren't expecting to see. However, the surprised look that Fūsoku had on his face only seemed to be a mocking expression before he smiled in a clumsy and carefree way. Fūsoku's apparent clumsiness came from how he thought that Sting's Holy Ray attack was mainly meant for bombarding opponents who wouldn't have expected him to turn the rays of light into drills, since Sting previously did that.

Sting had previously done that in a tag-team battle that he and Lucy had against Shizue Momoiro and Miru Itsuki in the area of Parmanie Town that had pink tiled ruins, and Fūsoku even pulled out the dark green notebook from the left pocket of his pine green jeans to reference that fight. He even quietly mumbled words about the twenty-fourth page in the notebook correctly having a list of gathered details on that fight for him to make generalizations about Sting's attacks, so Fūsoku felt like he made a minor error with his research.

The seemingly minor error caused him to still remain very carefree, even to the point of tossing the dark green notebook to Ayane for her to just open it up to specific pages pertaining to Lucy's magic, and Ayane smirked with arrogance at how she could possibly predict every single one of Lucy's attacks. Even if Lucy wanted to use her eighth and most powerful spell of Psychic Magic right now, Ayane could still have the knowledge on a specific spell that was meant to perfectly counter Lucy's attack.

That high amount of knowledge even made Ayane feel like turning some pages in the notebook as if she was going to read them aloud to her opponents, but she thought that it would be good to frustrate an emotional mage like Lucy. She could see the green-haired girl starting to look disgruntled at how Sting's spell only did a small amount of damage, and Lucy was starting to create a pink aura in her left hand. Lucy was preparing to use her fifth spell in this fight, which would probably be powerful, but it would also be quite obvious to Ayane.

"Is your next spell going to be Psi Spatial Slash, Lucy Heartfilia? Will Psychic Mystifying Rings, Psychotic Meditation, and Pink Psychic Astral Soul of The Clairvoyant Foreseer come after that in the predicted order, too?" Ayane asked Lucy in a stern manner, before smiling with a bit of smugness while her eyes displayed some arrogance.

Fūsoku spoke for Lucy while seeing her eyes widen in shock with her teeth clenched in shock and frustration, before he turned his attention to Ayane, "Sorry if Ayane asked such... hurtful questions, Lucy Heartfilia. Although, it's a fact that you would use Psychotic Meditation... to give you the opportunity for a finishing blow with Pink Psychic Astral Soul of The Clairvoyant Foreseer. Ayane, your interpretations overlooked that generalization about Lucy."

"Despite my partner's meager oversight, it doesn't even matter... if you try to use other types of magic. The fiery abilities... of the Crimson Ring, the earthy abilities... of the Sherbet Ring, and the lightning abilities of the Saffron Gold Ring... are all known to us. If you're wondering... how we know so much about you, Ayane can tell you before our fact of winning this fight occurs." Fūsoku continued, his face looking relaxed as he spoke in a slow and calm tone.

Ayane explained to Lucy with a stern facial expression, as a leaf flew in the wind to be in her hand during the seconds where her eyes glowed in a jungle green color, "My Plant Magic allows me to use a special little spell called Leaf Radar, which tells me the locations of mages. When your victory against Akai Hinotama in Cramoisi reached Sorcerer Magazine, my teammates and I researched extensively about you and the other wizards of Sabertooth. Whether it was a strong mage like Sting or a defector like the former master's daughter, gathering information was important. That also applies to my fellow researchers, who spent their time researching on your friends. That also required us to look into situations involving most or all of you, such as Vemilion Sunset's guild master being defeated in Kuchiba and the surprising news of Yamabuki's cultist priestess finally dying. Of course, those are different situations than how any news of Parmanie was quite obscure until five months ago."

Even though Ayane had basically just told Lucy that the research on Psychic Magic was still seemingly recent because of how Risa's actions mainly brought the town out of its tendency to let itself have some obscurity, Lucy began to frown at something her foe mentioned right before briefly talking about Parmanie Town. The place before that where Lucy and her friends were heroes had been Yamabuki Town, the place where wizards who wielded Lightning Magic were contrastingly in a very dark atmosphere involving a religious cult. Despite how Lucy took down Kanata Luster to free the living cult members from her magic, Ayane claimed how Kanata finally died.

To Lucy, it seemed like Ayane was saying that she and the other researchers knew about the religious cult's child hunts and brainwashing with Lightning Magic while the perfume-making wizards had simply been waiting around for the cult to be taken down without making any efforts themselves to fight Kanata. The insane priestess never mentioned seeing any mages from Ryokufū Town, which probably meant that the researchers were stealthy enough to be capable of spying on Kanata and her cult without ever getting caught, but Lucy looked quite angered at how that group cared more for their personal research instead of researching on how to handle the problem of the cult.

Since Ayane's Leaf Radar spell could detect the locations of mages who were in Yamabuki Town, Lucy tightly clenched her fists at how Ayane's group of researchers literally knew how that intense fight was occurring while they had done nothing. They likely sensed Yukino in that town when she was being brainwashed, but they didn't lift a finger to help her or even make their sweet-scented perfume get some of the other temporary cult members sick when they were using high-level magic that was fueled by Kanata influencing them to have no other emotions besides malice. Fighting against those people on an S-Class mission that produced tragic results was something Lucy couldn't forget, and she wouldn't let someone as self-interested as Ayane avoid the look of displeasure in her orange eyes.

"You knew about Kanata's Lightning Magic and her evil cult, you never did anything to stop her or even thought about quickly showing up to help us when we were there?!" Lucy angrily asked while the Psychic Magic engulfed both her hands from how she felt quite emotional.

Ayane replied to Lucy with a question of her own while remaining stern, as she viewed an interpretation as a fact, "Why would any of us get involved in a battle that we couldn't win?! Based on my hypotheses pertaining to your group's skills, you had a three percent chance of winning!"

"That cult was full of innocent people who were being brainwashed to do horrible things, especially when they conducted child hunts, and a client even died to sacrifice her life for one of us to still be alive!" Lucy retorted with a fierce look on her face, feeling more anger.

Ayane answered back in a stern manner, as a juniper green aura engulfed her body, "I don't care! Those manipulated people have nothing to do with our research involving the green ring, Lucy Heartfilia! When you all were busy letting your emotions make you get involved with situations where you must've used your brains to look more powerful than you actually were for ties or victories to occur, all of us researchers were being logical by storing up power and training during our research studies on how to have flawless victories against all of you!"

Ayane proceeded to activate a spell known as Leaf's Verdant Grass Cannon, and she fired a juniper green beam from her mouth. The beam was quite large while it spun in the clockwise direction, its power increasing with the amount of plants that were around to make their energy be sent into its Plant Magic through juniper green auras, and Ayane thought that Lucy's spell of slashing the air would create several blasts that were the perfect distraction for Ayane to activate her sixth spell. Her plan seemed good and very logical, but Lucy was ready to prove that emotions could outweigh calculations.

She felt a high amount of fierceness while dodging to the right at the very last second, watching Ayane's spell create a juniper green blast that was quite large, and Lucy used the waves of air to slide herself away from the blast. The attack ultimately failed to hit Lucy, prompting Ayane to use it again for Lucy to hopefully unleash Psi Spatial Slash, and Lucy simply moved her feet quite fast to get herself ready for dodging the attack. She ended up evading it by sliding to the left again, letting her feet move much faster from more air surrounding them, and Lucy even slid forward at high speeds to dodge a third beam of Ayane's spell.

The researcher wondered why her attacks weren't successfully hitting Lucy, especially since she wasn't applying Psychic Magic to her feet or even using a spell to increase her speed, and she watched Lucy continue to just enhance her speed by using the blasts' air for strong boosts in acceleration. That strategy was very unfamiliar to Ayane, but Sting began to smile in a proud manner from realizing what Lucy was doing. She was merely following her enemy's attacks in a simple and tactical manner, not playing into Ayane's hands, and this approach got Lucy close enough to her opponent for the purpose of attempting to strike her in the face with a high amount of Psychic Magic. She chose to hit Ayane with the Psychic Meditation spell, creating a pink sphere in her left hand while grabbing Ayane's left wrist with her right hand, and Lucy simply hit Ayane's left fist with the pink sphere that had a pink aura lightly swirling out of it to form a pinwheel.

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When the pink sphere hit Ayane's fist, she ended up being surrounded by a pink aura that swirled around her body in a spiraling formation. Ayane was aware of that aftereffect, prompting her to leap several feet away from Lucy while she interpreted this as Lucy's stepping stone that would obviously create a way for her to use an enhanced version of her final spell. That was an ideal plan for Lucy, but Ayane didn't want it to come to fruition. Therefore, she got close to Fūsoku and prepared to activate a powerful spell that would be a strong equivalent to go up against the ultimate spell that Lucy perceived to be a trump card.

Lucy's trump card would be rivaled by the spell known as Juniper Petal Storm, and it required Ayane to put both of her hands next to each other while aiming them at her opponent. Lucy got to see an extremely large amount of juniper green cherry blossoms swirl around Ayane's body right before the plant-wielding wizard fired all of the petals at her in the form of an enormous cyclone, and the cyclone spun in a clockwise manner at high speeds. Upon looking at the high-speed attack and glancing at Ayane for a moment to see her smirk in a triumphant manner like Lucy's moves were still easy to predict, Lucy looked troubled about what to do next.

She was about to use her ultimate spell of Psychic Magic out of desperation, as it was the safest option for countering Ayane's large attack, but Lucy widened her eyes while experiencing a strong feeling of realization. Spells were usually effective against other spells to cancel them out, or at least be capable of weakening them. Therefore, Lucy felt like she would have to take a huge risk with her next strategic decision. She waited for the cyclone to get very close to her, before even shocking Sting by using the Psychotic Meditation spell against Ayane's cyclone, and Lucy proceeded to use the spell called Psychic Mystifying Rings.

That spell caused Lucy to shoot out a pink orb from her right hand, and the orb had three pink rings surrounding it. Lucy moved her right hand in a clockwise direction while her left hand moved in a counterclockwise direction, and the contrasting rotations of the rings caused the other one to alternate between spinning in both directions at a rapid pace. The top ring that changed directions ended up being the first one to clash with Ayane's spell, before it suddenly became powered up enough to be twice its size while sending more energy into the two bottom rings, They soon grew to be the same size as the top ring, before all three rings continuously rotated positions while the orb spun in the counterclockwise direction during the moments where its psychic power was now pushing the spell towards the cyclone at a very fast pace. The spell quickly went into the cyclone, going far into it to where the pink aura around Ayane starting looking like it was about to detonate around her, but Lucy's spell soon exploded to create three pink blasts that spun outward in different rotational directions. The first blast spun outward in a clockwise direction, the second one spinning in a counterclockwise direction while third blast's spinning shifted between those directions, and the pink blasts were massive enough to make the cyclone blow up in a juniper green explosion that had enough power to cancel it out. Upon seeing what had happened, Ayane was quite shocked.

"She fired Psychic Meditation at my spell, and then blasted through it with Psychic Mystifying Rings?! From my perceptions, how could a spell at the same level of power as Shizue Momoiro's Fuchsia Psi Astral Rings get beaten?! Even after interpreting Shizue to have strengthened her spell by thirty percent to where I rightfully increased my spell's power by sixty percent over the past five months, how is this possible?!" Ayane asked aloud in a stunned manner, trying to find the error in her calculations.

Lucy replied to her with a serious look on her face, after widening her eyes at the sight of the pink aura not be so small anymore, "It's possible because of how I just decided to test out a theory I developed in the midst of battle!"

Lucy asked Sting with a confident smile forming on her face, having an idea about how they could shift this fight in their favor, "Sting, do you mind lending me some of your spells for us to make these researchers be taken down?"

As Sting nodded in approval with a proud smile on his face at Lucy for finding a flaw in the enemy's perfect plan, Ayane asked Fūsoku with an irked look on her face from seeing him smile joyfully and comically spin around on one leg in a carefree manner, "Fūsoku, were you seriously absent-minded during these recent moments to see what Lucy Heartfilia did?! Why are you dancing again?!"

"Hmmmm... how interesting! Ayane, I... thought you had it all under control. However, you seem... to have severely miscalculated the percentage of your plan's effectiveness." Fūsoku told her in a surprised manner from seeing Lucy still be alive, as he felt like not taking her battle with Lucy or taking Sting's spells seriously.

As Ayane sighed in a frustrated manner at her partner for being so laid-back, she soon saw Lucy activate the Psychic Sanctum spell again. Lucy relaxed her mind while closing her eyes, and making her mind feel quite calm with a strong feeling of peace made an orb in the plain shade of pink in her right hand. The orb had pink beams of light starting to emanate from it when Lucy made her thoughts only involve things that she deemed to be peaceful, each peaceful thought making the orb brightly shine in accord with those joyful thoughts, and her spell was actually gaining much more power from the Psychic Magic that left her calmed mind to touch the sphere.

The sphere seemed to use Lucy's peaceful thoughts as a source of energy that could boost its own power while its pink beams of light continued to shimmer quite brightly, but the spell's light was quickly accompanied by White Dragon's Holy Blinding, which involved Sting shooting out a large twister of white light from his mouth, and Sting watched his twister start to coat Lucy's sphere with its light. Both of the attacks quickly ended up bursting, creating an aurora of white light that went up into the sky to move like a snake while the light started to become pink, but the bursting light aimed towards Ayane and Fūsoku made them be caught in a white aura that slowly became light pink.

The pink aura pertained to the pink aurora that was created by Lucy and Sting fusing their spells together, and Ayane was quite surprised by that. She hadn't expected Lucy to use her spell in a creative way that involved creating a pink aura around her enemies for enhancing her attacks that would hit them, along with how Ayane found herself to be immobilized. She and Fūsoku could no longer move fast to avoid Lucy's psychic spells or Sting's attacks pertaining to White Dragon Slayer Magic, and the makeshift fusion spell of the Sabertooth mages actually gained enough power to where the effects of their combined spells would last for a longer duration of time.

Fūsoku stated aloud with a calm look on his face while building up magical power, a light green aura heavily surrounding his body, "Hmmm... How interesting. Lucy Heartfilia, you and that Psychic Magic... are definitely helping Sting Eucliffe's moves be full of surprises. Although, I wonder if you can... use more than eight spells in a battle."

"We definitely have the energy to use more than eight spells in a battle, so your generalized information on us is about to be very outdated!" Lucy responded to him with a stern facial expression, as she made a pink aura heavily engulf her hands.

Sting told Fūsoku with a confident facial expression, recalling something important, "Since none of us ever trained together, you hardly have the necessary information about our fusion spells. In fact, I'd call this next technique a Sacred Psychic spell."

He was referring to combining his White Dragon's Tilting Light with Lucy's fifth spell, which had been Psi Spatial Slash. Lucy ran forward to aggressively slash the air around Fūsoku and Ayane with her nails to create a pink crescent-shaped blade that rotated. before it even twisted in different directions while the air was being cut. The act of the air getting sliced was quickly followed up by Sting's spell, which made him fire several white beams of light from his hands while the beams of light went up the aurora of pink lights, and the white beams bounced off of the radiant light. They ended up bouncing in different directions, before the pink aura engulfed them to strengthen their power, and they were redirected towards the rooftop that had been covered in the pink aurora. When the beams struck the spot where Ayane and Fūsoku were standing, they didn't just create one pink blast that spread outward for their light to create more pink blasts.

The blast combined with the Psychic Magic of Lucy's spell to distort the first blast while Fūsoku and Ayane felt slashes being dealt to their bodies, before each slash twisted the space around them to the point where their bodies began to bend in very bizarre ways that made both researchers feel an intense amount of pain, and Lucy watched her opponents get caught in pink explosions. When Ayane was screaming in pain during the moments where Fūsoku stayed relaxed, Lucy took notice of how the makeshift fusion spell seemed to increase in power for a few seconds by strengthening the blasts and explosions.

That boost in power caused Ayane to scream in pain, almost as if she was getting hit by Lucy's ultimate spell at its regular level of power, and Fūsoku simply groaned in pain from being caught in this attack that involved an enhanced level of Psychic Magic. The attack making Fūsoku groan in pain was something that made Lucy happy, as he hadn't been acting serious in this fight, but seeing the pink clouds of smoke quickly disappear from gusts of Wind Magic that were being released through the light green aura made Lucy see that this fight was still not over. In fact, it seemed like Fūsoku subtly activated a spell to make his body be back in its regular form again.

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Fūsoku was able to subtly activate a spell called Aero Regeneration by lightly snapping the fingers of his hand during moments where he had built up magical power, and the wielder of Wind Magic only seemed mildly pained by the combination of his foes' spells because of the fact that their loud blasts actually provided the perfect type of concealment for him to activate his own spell without anyone being alarmed. He wanted Lucy and Sting to feel like they finally gained an advantage in this fight, since their cockiness would make them lower their guard for him to use a spell that could make the winds erase spells' secondary effects on his body, and Fūsoku felt like they wouldn't be able to distort his body parts anymore.

He wanted to be the one who would make their bodies be slashed into several pieces, however. Fūsoku lightly chuckled at the thought of doing that while activating a spell called Massive Winds of Aeroja, and he shot out six large projectiles of light green winds that were shaped like sickle blades. When one of the projectiles aimed at Lucy ended up striking her at very high speeds from gathering wind on its path to her, the spell exploded to trap Lucy in the tornado! She screamed in pain from feeling the immense power of the light green explosion, before dealing with painful explosions occurring around her after the tornado sucked in two more blades to make its Wind Magic rise to a much higher level, and Lucy let out more screams of pain right before she coughed up some blood.

The sound of her coughing up blood prompted Sting to activate his sixth newest spell of White Dragon Slayer Magic, which was known as White Dragon's Dispersed Light, and this spell made a white aura engulf Sting's body. The aura looked similar to when Sting would activate his spell called White Drive, but the difference was that Sting had to spin around rapidly for this spell to show its effect. Sting purposely spun towards the large tornado that was sucking in its nearby projectiles of wind to create explosions of Wind Magic that were much more powerful for Lucy to experience even more pain, and Sting let the aura be concentrated into his hands while he used his magic to jump up quite high.

"If you were planning to make this spell be used against me, then just know that I'm the best dragon slayer because of how I can use my spells to do things like this!" Sting confidently exclaimed to Fūsoku, who watched him aim his hands down at the swirling tornado while the aura began to release itself from his hands.

Fūsoku responded with a somewhat intrigued look on his face, as his eyes still showed signs of being relaxed, "Oh, how clever."

"I'm definitely more clever than you, since I can form strategies much faster than your ability to move winds!" Sting responded to his opponent with a stern and confident facial expression, sounding quite sure about how his choice for a strategy was made at the right time.

Sting's quick strategy involved making his spell's aura go down towards Lucy's body, glad that she was the only person or object in the tornado because of Fūsoku's great control over his Wind Magic, and the white aura touched Lucy's body to give her more strength. She could soon feel the pain fading away while she also felt much stronger, almost like she was a damaged tree that perfectly regrew itself without feeling any previous damage, and Lucy raised her right hand into the air. Sting grabbed her hand to pull her upward, before only holding Lucy with one harm while the Holy Nova spell was being activated in his other hand, and Sting was focusing his magic into the center of his right hand.

Sting's right hand ended up being surrounded by a white sphere of light, before he aggressively struck the tornado that had a small bit of the white aura still in it, and he ended up enhancing his own spell to where striking Fūsoku's attack created an intense blast of white light that even smashed through the ground. Several chunks of the rooftop rose up from the ground, before falling back down while the light blinded Fūsoku, and the immense force of Sting's attack even broke the grassy parts of the ground apart to expose some juniper green plant roots.

Those plant roots were displayed because of the shattering ground having enough intensity to make the trees start falling over, and the white blast that even engulfed the trees managed to make the winds blow off some of the leaves. One of the leaves landed on the right hand of Ayane, whose body was still twisted up from earlier when Lucy's spell distorted the space around her, but managing to get her hand and the leaf into her dark green miniskirt's right pocket caused something interesting to occur. Ayane's index finger got the ring on it at the same time that the leaf infused with Plant Magic touched the legendary ring, and the verdant green lights of the ring's magic began to radiantly shine from her pocket. The verdant green light of the ring's magic was bright enough to obscure the mint green aura that started to surround Ayane's body, and she felt herself have more magical power to where absorbing the leaf's Plant Magic made her pained body no longer be distorted. As Ayane felt somewhat better now, she looked at the situation involving her crafty opponents seeming to have an advantage against Fūsoku right now.

Ayane stated to her partner with an irritated facial expression, feeling like this shift in the battle came from them not being serious at the very beginning, "Fūsoku. we have to use our three trump cards! There's probably nothing else left that will defeat these mages!"

"Now that you... have that ring, Ayane, which trump card will we use first?" Fūsoku asked in a calm manner, as he spoke slowly with the sound of slight interest in his voice.

Sting told Lucy in a concerned tone while they landed on the rooftop, seeing Ayane's ring cease with glowing after the researchers had their brief conversation, "Watch out, Lucy! They have that ring, and I have a feeling like that we're finally about to see what happens when an opponent's wearing it in a battle against us!"

"What strategy are they going to use?" Lucy silently asked herself while looking a bit anxious, her eyes glancing at Ayane's green ring for a moment.

Ayane proceeded to activate her next spell of Plant Magic, which was simply called Juniper Moss Rock, and building up a high amount of magical power for a juniper green aura to engulf her body caused the green ring to brightly shine in accord. She aggressively slammed her left fist down on the ground, causing a large rock with juniper green moss on it to rise up from the ground for the rock to be situated between the two groups of mages, and Ayane aimed her left hand at the rock for the moss to jump off of it. It jumped into her hand, before forming a juniper green sphere that was somewhat larger than the palm of her hand. Fūsoku merely caught a glimpse of the sphere, before unleashing a spell called Zephyr Aero Strike, and he fired a light green sphere of wind up into the air. During its ascent into the sky, the sphere gained more wind right before it began to bounce around four corners of a wind square that Fūsoku created by making his hands briefly form the shape of a square, and the sphere kept bouncing in midair.

As it bounced, the sphere absorbed more wind for its speed to continuously increase at a rapid pace. Neither Lucy or Sting could keep track of it, but Fūsoku had his eyes fixated on the sphere's positions in the wind square. He lowered both hands down to his sides for the square to dissipate, before gesturing with his right hand for Ayane to step back, and Fūsoku watched his partner step back for her juniper green sphere to be perfectly aligned with his attack that was coming down from the sky. As it descended from the sky, the attack gained more power and speed to where green streaks of light surrounded it in a spinning formation. The light and the sphere quickly touched the mossy sphere, prompting Ayane to fire the attack at Lucy.

Lucy watched her opponent's attack become a stream of mossy green leaves that zigzagged in midair while a light green twister started to surround it from the beginning point of the spell, and the vortex of wind quickly coated the attack. This spell was called Juniper Aero Wind Moss Scythe, since it was even slicing the air that was in its path, and Lucy ended up being struck by the fast-moving spell while it also hurt Sting. The spell engulfed them both in a very large juniper green blast that was quite powerful, having enough energy to create a large crater in the ground, and that blast was followed by a light green blast. That particular blast was larger in size, even having just as much winds to rival Ayane's blast for blowing leaves all over the rooftop, but both attacks were harshly cutting the air to where Lucy and Sting were both screaming in pain.

"That was only your first trump card? No wonder it's just the first one, since it's so weak." Sting stated to his enemies with a pained look slightly being on his face while some blood dripped from his body's wounds, the light dragon slayer trying to look very tough right now.

Lucy added with a fierce look on her face, as she came out of the green smoke with several bloody wounds on her body, "Yeah, that was nothing! Compared to what everyone else has had to endure because of your unethical research, the damage that we're taking is very minimal in comparison!"

Ayane responded to her with a serious question, her eyes taking offense to Lucy's words, "You're really prepared to go up against our second trump card, Lucy Heartfilia?!"

"Hmmm... I wonder how you'll fare against our second trump card, especially... when I use a spell such as this one." Fūsoku calmly added, still speaking slowly with a bit of arrogance in his voice.

He proceeded to activate a spell called Windy Air Lance, and Fūsoku fired a light green beam of Wind Magic up into the air. It went up very high into the sky, before bursting to create several smaller beams that resembled light green lances, and the projectiles strangely all converged to be precisely aiming down at Ayane's right hand. She slammed her right hand down on the ground to create another rock with juniper green moss on it, making this one be larger, and touching the rock with the ring made it completely turn juniper green before becoming moss green powder that went into Ayane's hand. It hastily formed a juniper green cyclone of Plant Magic that stayed on her hand while the large cyclone was aimed up at the sky, and Ayane's cyclone was soon struck by the lances!

They were quickly repelled to become moss green rings that spun out of the cyclone in a clockwise direction, and the newly formed rings landed on the ground to create juniper green blasts that were quite large. Lucy and Sting found themselves having to quickly dodge some of the rings, since Ayane aimed her right hand at them for the rings to land near the Sabertooth mages, and Sting ran in a zigzag manner to avoid several of the blasts! They were quite powerful while leaving behind juniper green powder that filled the air, the powder being dark and glittery, but the wind from the blasts seemed to benefit Ayane.

She used the gusts of air from the ground to aggressively propel herself forward while the ring's power allowed her to have an immense amount of Plant Magic engulf her legs in a juniper green aura, and Ayane moved at very high speeds. She made herself be even faster from smartly using the gusts of wind to propel herself in certain directions to make the remaining rings and the cyclone be in closer proximity to her foes, but Ayane definitely had to smirk from seeing Sting take Lucy to a seemingly distant corner of the rooftop that only had a few trees near it. Not only could the trees benefit Ayane's Plant Magic, but she felt like her enemies were truly being dumb right now.

"You've literally backed yourselves into a corner, so I hope you're ready to die for trying to think that you could win against us!" Ayane arrogantly told her foes, as she was getting closer to them.

Sting thought to himself with a confident facial expression, as he had a plan in mind, "If backing ourselves into a corner is interpreted to be dumb, then I interpret that you're even dumber for not thinking about the space of this area."

Sting shouted with a stern look on his face, as he made a white aura engulf his hands right before placing them against the air in front of him, "White Dragon's Holy Shield of Judgment!"

"Do you really think that all my speed will make me slam into your stupid shield?!" Ayane asked him in a mocking manner, smiling arrogantly at the sight of Sting's white wall of light that had the symbol for White Dragon's Claw in its center, seeing the symbol to be a shining white square with spearheaded beams of light going diagonally outward.

Ayane proceeded to jump up high as a way of getting herself over the shield, only to suddenly find herself immobilized by the white beams of light that shined out from the shield itself, and Sting had been glad to create that seventh new spell of White Dragon Slayer Magic. He hadn't made this effect be displayed in training, due to Sting himself being surprised at how aerial enemies were affected by the defensive shield's secondary ability, Since Ayane couldn't move in midair, Sting considered this to be very beneficial for him and Lucy to have a massive advantage in this battle.

Lucy chose to fire the Psychic Meditation spell up at Ayane, watching it only graze her while the pink blast still made a pink aura surround the researcher's body, and this seemed like a good stepping stone for Lucy's newest plan. That was interrupted by Ayane purposely making her moss green cyclone explode in midair, the rings detonating with it to create more juniper green explosions, and the strong amount of power in those attacks propelled Ayane away from the mages. They could no longer fire any attacks at her while she was immobilized, stopping Lucy from activating Pink Psychic Astral Soul of The Clairvoyant Foreseer for a finishing blow.

Lucy looked frustrated about that while she also experienced the feeling of frustration from how Sting's shield began to fade away, and she got to see the sight of Fūsoku using his right hand to create a twister of light green winds in front of him. The average-sized twister simply blew Ayane on to the grass for her to be near some plant roots, but Fūsoku's haste in helping his ally prompted Lucy to apply Psychic Magic to her feet. She ran towards Fūsoku at high speeds, making him look a bit curious as to why she seemed to be taking such an opportunistic approach against someone who was no longer affected by the Psychic Meditation spell, and waited until she got within point-blank range.

He made light green winds surround his left fist while thinking that Lucy was going use Pink Psychic Astral Soul of The Clairvoyant Foreseer on him like she'd be taking a direct shot after building up all of her power to possibly set off a close-range explosion, and Fūsoku tried to hit Lucy with his wind-covered fist. That fist ended up striking the Psychic Meditation spell that she created in her right hand near the very last second to block Fūsoku's fist, and he was quickly caught in a pink blast! The blast sent Lucy flying all the way back to be near Sting while Fūsoku merely slid back a few feet, but Lucy slightly smiled at the sight of a pink aura surrounding Fūsoku's body again. That was part of her plan, which Ayane intended to intercept while she looked quite irked at Lucy for trying to control the flow of this fight.

"Fūsoku, that girl and the guild master have endured dealing with two of our trump cards! Therefore, we'll have to risk everything on the third trump card! Fūsoku, I absolutely interpret this next move as an all-or-nothing gamble!" Ayane sternly shouted to her partner while getting up from the ground, her hands touching the trees to absorb their energy.

That prompted Fūsoku to reply in a carefree and sarcastic tone, smiling a bit at this decision, "Ayane, you're definitely not frazzled. Still, it's... very interesting that you're wanting to use this spell against people who had the simple job of guarding that perfume shop owner. If they're just as... petty as she is about not wanting our perfume to exist, then... we may indeed have to use that last-resort spell that was developed from hours of research."

"I wanted to further prepare it for more formidable opponents such as Seigan's best tag-team, but it can't be helped. Besides, we know how Lucy Heartfilia and Sting Eucliffe usually only activate eight spells in their battles. They're at their limit, so we can obliterate them with this spell!" Ayane stated to Fūsoku with a somewhat regretful look on her face, disliking how they were the ones who now seemed to be strategically backed into a corner.

Ayane activated a spell that was known as Juniper Green Blooming Leaves while Fūsoku simultaneously activated a spell called Wind's Turbulent Feather's of Aeroja's Hurricane, and they respectively had the juniper green aura and light green auras surrounding their bodies. Ayane gathered a high amount of leaves into her right hand while Fūsoku gathered a high amount of wind into his left hand, and they shot out those spells as half-created large vortexes pertaining to their different hands. Ayane shot out a juniper green half-made vortex of Plant Magic with leaves circling around what appeared to be the right half of the vortex, and Fūsoku shot out a light green half-made vortex of Wind Magic with feathers of wind circling around what appeared to be the left half of the vortex. This was their version of a Unison Raid, which involved two mages combining their two compatible types of magic for a powerful attack, and aiming both halves of the spell at their opponents caused the halves to soon merge into one larger vortex that alternated between their colors. This fusion spell was called Juniper Green Turbulence of the Feathery Blooming Leaf Windstorm

Sting wanted to destroy that attack by using White Dragon's Holy Breath, but all of the damage that he had taken in this fight started to accumulate with the fact that he was nearly out of magical power. Sting had used up most of his magical power from using several strong spells throughout this fight, as that was the only way for him to ensure that he would make himself and Lucy both be safe, and he soon fell to his knees. Sting didn't even have the energy to charge up a weakened Holy Nova or a weakened White Dragon's Holy Breath, and he groaned in frustration from seeing the fusion spell go towards him after Lucy slightly slid to her right in attempt to dodge it.

Lucy's decision to dodge the spell only left Sting defenseless against the attack, causing her to look quite worried about him, and Lucy quickly made the pink aura of Psychic Magic surround her body. She ran in front of the spell at high speeds, being quick enough to even stretch her arms out in opposite directions, and Lucy was harshly struck in the chest by the spell that created a powerful dark green explosion! That explosion occurred at the same time as the light green explosion, but Lucy engulfed herself with more of her Psychic Magic to give herself somewhat of a shield while also using one hand to psychically push the strongest parts of the explosion slightly backwards to reduce the impact. Despite how Lucy was still trying to stand up with her skin charred and more wounds dealt to her body that already had bloody bruises, Sting wasn't exactly smiling.

"Lucy, you shouldn't do something so insane! Why would you shield me like a crazy mage?!" Sting asked her in a stern tone, after scolding her with a disapproving look on his face.

His words prompted Lucy to keep getting off her knees, able to push through some of the pain to stand up and speak to him in an equally stern manner with her back turned to him while green hair covered her eyes, "Sting, your memory must be bad. Your spell from earlier rejuvenated my body's energy, so I'm strong enough to jump in front of a spell to protect you. Sting, you've helped me so much on this adventure to get my body back from Kotomi and we work so well together. If you're going to put up a shield for me, then there's unity between us from how I'll also be shielding you until we take down these researchers for being uncaring people who made a deadly perfume! You even said that you'd make them get sprayed with their own sickly perfume, Sting, and we're going to accomplish that goal! We'll win this fight, even if we have to use spells until our willpower runs out!"

"Lucy, you..." Sting responded softly with a slight bit of amazement in his eyes, perfectly grasping her feelings from that passionate speech.

She told Sting in a fierce tone while the stern look in her orange eyes went well with how she scowled at their enemies, "I believe in you, Sting, and you always believed in me! Well, fully believe with me that we can beat these guys! I know that we can beat these researchers who move similar to Kotomi using Kaze's Feather Dance, so we can definitely stop their feet and put a halt to their evil research!"

Lucy demonstrated her determination to win by charging head-on towards Fūsoku, who merely looked at the fading green smoke while he hadn't paid much mind to his green-haired opponent, and Lucy jumped high into the air. Even though Fūsoku could absorb Wind Magic, he remained relaxed while not having much power left for anymore fusion spells. On top of that, Lucy and Sting already survived against the powerful spells that had been perceived as three prominent trump cards. Therefore, Fūsoku and Ayane both felt like Lucy was making this fight now come down to a battle of sheer willpower.

Fūsoku jumped up high to kick Lucy down towards Sting, ignoring how she moved her hand to aim the Psychic Meditation spell at one of Ayane's mossy rocks, and that rock became engulfed in a pink blast. Instead of being obliterated, though, the rock remained intact from Lucy making her magic mainly destroy the area around it. The mossy rock was still getting covered in a pink aura, though, and Lucy simply smiled a bit before harshly falling down on to some grass. She quickly got up to run towards Fūsoku again, only to see Ayane stand in front of him to activate Juniper Moss Rock again as a barrier, and Lucy started looking concerned enough to seemingly activate Psychic Meditation as a way to keep herself from slamming into the rock. Her pink orb slammed against the rock, creating a pink blast while most of the rock was unintentionally decimated, but the bottom piece of it that remained was surrounded by a pink aura.

The pink aura didn't faze Fūsoku, who absorbed winds into his hands for him to create one of the light green tornadoes that surrounded the research lab, and he made a light green tornado circle around him at high speeds. The tornado was in an average size, but it soon grew from Fūsoku punching it with air surrounding his right fist. He struck the tornado with a high amount of power, before directing it at Sting, and Lucy quickly ran to protect her friend. She got in front of the tornado to activate the Psychic Meditation spell, making the tornado be surrounded by a pink aura, and Lucy made a look of hopelessness blatantly be on her face for Fūsoku to clearly notice it.

"Hmmm... Based on that expression, we've truly made Lucy Heartfilia be exhausted... to the point where she can only use Psychic Meditation." Fūsoku stated aloud to Ayane, who merely looked baffled at how Lucy went from giving a speech with determination to now just using one spell on whatever she was near.

Ayane thought to herself in a confused manner, as she observed Fūsoku unintentionally putting the tornado in line with the mossy rocks when he made it try to chase Lucy for his enjoyment, "No, it's utterly strange to me. Lucy's only using Psychic Meditation, even if she's far away. That spell would be meaningless to use on a projectile, unless it somehow hit Fūsoku. He and I both know Lucy's not as smart as us, but she should be able to at least interpret something so obvious."

Lucy stated aloud with a scheming look in her eyes, as she used her Psychic Magic to sense something, "That's perfect for the final spell!"

"That look in her eyes... She's honed in on something important!" Ayane thought to herself with a shocked facial expression, as Fūsoku got in front o her to calmly observe the situation.

Even though Ayane could tell that Lucy's Psychic Magic gave her a crucial bit of wisdom in this moment, it was too late for the antagonist to do anything. Lucy aimed the index and middle fingers at the tornado, and she activated her final spell that was known as Pink Psychic Astral Soul of The Clairvoyant Foreseer. The spell caused the pink aura around Lucy's body to grow much larger while the psychic energy that was still in the air from earlier began to enter her body, and Lucy closed her eyes for a moment. She started to envision the path for this spell, carefully creating that thought in her mind, and Lucy's eyes became pink when she opened them.

She looked at the tornado in front of her while her eyes began to brightly glow pink, her vision being quite clear, and the aura left Lucy's body in the form of a pulsating wave of psychic energy! It had been somewhat large, and the aura glided across the ground. It proceeded to tear through Fūsoku's tornado, creating an average-sized pink blast while somewhat growing in size, before easily destroying the broken moss rock to make itself grow even more. The wave of energy grew to have three rings circling around it in the form of a triangle, before gaining a fourth ring from smashing through the mossy rock that Lucy had deliberately left intact earlier, and the spell immensely grew. Ayane and Fūsoku could both see that each link in the chain was increasing the spell's psychic power, almost like it was converting an absorbing the energy of a psychically-charged object, and the wave's intense psychic energy even immobilized Lucy's opponents! Neither one of them could move while the pink aura from Psychic Meditation began to expand like it was explosively detonating around them, and Fūsoku was the first one to get struck by the attack! He was hit right before Ayane was struck by Lucy's attack, the spell growing to a very huge size with six rings circling around it in a hexagonal formation while six pink stars of Psychic Magic began to form from the space around them, and having to end things after striking Ayane caused the spell to burst in an immensely massive pink blast of Psychic Magic that had six layers to it!

The attack's energy spread outward in the form of star-shaped beams that rose up from the powerful blasts to come down upon the rooftop, striking eight different areas around the blasts to create large pink explosions that damaged the rooftop even more to where the ground wasn't stable, and that aftereffect was meant to hit nearby enemies with psychic energy that would spread outward to just levitate the space around them. Several chunks of the broken rooftop began to come up from the ground, before loudly falling back into place to conceal the top floor of the research lab. The top floor of the lab was mainly the sector overseen by Fūsoku, who had been screaming in intense pain with Ayane from dealing with that extremely strong spell, and the light of the blasts faded away for him to be seen falling to the ground with his partner.

Upon seeing that Fūsoku and Ayane were motionless for a few minutes while not activating any spells, Lucy exclaimed with a happy smile on her face, "Sting, we won! We beat those researchers! We put an end to their misdeeds!"

"Yeah, Lucy. That's definitely our best victory as a team. Although, you were more awesome." Sting responded while nicely smiling, feeling very impressed with Lucy's determination and how she was definitely very strong after five months of training.

Lucy giggled as she responded, before speaking with a shocked look of realization appearing on her face, "Thanks, Sting. Although, I couldn't have defeated the problematic researchers without your help. Wait... Sting, that's right! There's still the problem of the perfume still being in the air above Ryokufū Town, and we need to get rid of it!"

As Lucy attempted to run towards Sting, her legs were a bit shaky from how she used up almost all of her magical power. The pink aura of Psychic Magic lightly surrounded her legs while she even stumbled towards Sting, but he quickly walked over to Lucy to keep her from tripping over her own feet. She felt him tightly wrap his arms around her waist while hugging her, not planning on letting Lucy possibly fall through the rooftop's floor that had enough cracks in it for the floor to be quite sensitive, and Sting looked into Lucy's eyes that returned to being orange.

Seeing the sunlight come down on them both to brighten up Lucy's orange eyes seemed beautiful to Sting, almost as beautiful as Lucy, and Sting was so very proud of her. Not only did she get the chance to defeat the enemies with an unpredictable strategy, but Lucy had worked so well with Sting to where he'd want to attempt another fusion spell with her someday. He also hoped that the fusion spell would foreshadow the feelings in his heart fusing more with the feelings in Lucy's heart for them to become more unified, since they won this battle by believing in each other and having good chemistry as a team.

Speaking of having good chemistry as a team, the smiles of Sting and Lucy both changed to frowns of concern during the moments where they both began to think about the other members of their group. Risa never managed to catch up with them, along with how Rogue had promised Risa that he'd also catch up with the group, and Yukino also didn't physically appear in front of the duo. Yukino's fight had been the first one to begin, happening around the same time that Kūkiatsu and Kusabue separated from the group, and Sting hoped that those siblings were safe with the other members of his team or a way to get rid of the deadly perfume.

---

Meanwhile, in the Verdure Forest...

Kūkiatsu had gone to the deepest areas of the forest with Kusabue, the duo going into very deep parts of the forest to find certain plants that were highly effective for countering the various plants that were on Harui's list, and Kūkiatsu had found several useful plants. The different plants that he found were either on bushes, or they were found by going up or down steep slopes in the Verdure Forest. The different areas of the forest were all easy for him to get to, though, and Kūkiatsu was helping Kusabue get through certain areas of the forest without alerting any possible researchers to her location.

He had helped her quietly skip across the rocks in the moss-covered area of the forest after she had to retrieve light blue flowers that interestingly grew near the town's little lake that had always been cold, and getting those blue flowers made Kūkiatsu happy because of the fact that they were now done with collecting plants. He had collected some cherry red hybrid roses that had cherry red syrup on their petals while they appropriately smelled like cherries, and he had also picked up some orange cosmos hybrid flowers that had a sweet scent. Those were contrasted with some yellow tulips that smelled awful, due to how they were grown with Plant Magic for them to be quite bitter.

Those bitter flowers were picked before Kūkiatsu went to a different area of the forest to find the Midori Medicinal Leaves, which were the leaves that had the dark green syrup on them, and Kūkiatsu kept his sister from eating them. He had instructed her with the task of getting the Frost Blue Roses without making a sound, due to how the water in the lake would just amplify the sound of her voice when she had Sound Magic in her mouth, and Kūkiatsu was glad that Kusabue could get near the lake's edge without getting the attention of a blue-haired female researcher who had been on the other side of the lake.

After they went away from the lake, Kūkiatsu had taken Kusabue back to where she found those dark magenta flowers. She decided to pick a few more of them for the possible situation of one flower not being sufficient enough for Kūkiatsu to reverse the formula of the perfume, since the perfume had been composed of the Wind Magic and Plant Magic, and Kusabue thought that having more flowers converted by Risa's magic or infused with other kinds of magic could possibly lead to a successful reversal of the deadly perfume that had its aroma spreading into the forest again.

"It looks like the winds from all of those distant blasts are making that perfume's scent go from the town to be in the forest! We've got to get out of here, Kusabue!" Kūkiatsu told his sister with an alarmed look on his face, as he could strongly smell the perfume to the point of where he started letting out sickly coughs.

Kusabue replied to her older brother while looking concerned, wondering how they could actually escape this predicament, "Even if we can get some masks, then we'll still have to run through the strong aroma and that could make us get really sick!"

"There has to be a way for us to get out of here! If we end up getting severely sick before ever becoming mages in a guild, then I'd definitely scream about how fate made things hard for us ever since the day that stupid ring was found!" Kūkiatsu responded to his sister with an aggravated look on his face, as he couldn't think of a methodical plan so easily in this situation.

Kusabue replied to Kūkiatsu with a nice smile on her face, as she suddenly had a delighted look in her Kelly green eyes, "If that ring got us into this mess involving the perfume, then one of us can definitely scream about it and try to get the ring back!"

Kusabue walked away from the scent of the perfume to inhale some air, before building up the shamrock green aura of Sound Magic in her mouth, and she let out a high pitched scream. Kusabue screamed down at the ground, screaming at a very high volume like she had encountered a researcher who wanted to end her life. The loud sound of her voice created shamrock green blasts, and Kusabue felt Kūkiatsu grab her for them to both jump upward. He applied the mint green aura of Wind Magic to his feet right before the sound waves detonated, causing him and his sister to both be propelled up into the sky.

They both looked glad to have evaded the perfume, only to realize that they were now in the sky without any Sky Garden Clouds nearby for them to easily get to the lab, and Kūkiatsu hoped that they wouldn't fall back down into the forest. He looked worried about how they were starting to descend towards the ground, but Kūkiatsu heard Kusabue inhale more air. She let out another high-pitched scream, creating a powerful blast of Sound Magic in midair, and the blast's heavy winds sent the siblings flying towards the research lab.

The winds were quickly absorbed into one of Kūkiatsu's hands, and he began to apply a high amount of Wind Magic to his feet. Kūkiatsu's feet were engulfed in a larger mint green aura, and he started to jump up quite high while running. This was actually his first time going through the air in this manner, since the citizens usually deemed it to be too dangerous for people to get to different parts of the town by walking across the air, but Kūkiatsu didn't care. What mattered the most to him right now was getting to the research lab, and he pushed off the air with one foot to propel himself forward.

"Woo-hoo! Kūkiatsu, it's like we're flying incredibly fast! This is so cool!" Kusabue purposely shouted with a large amount of Sound Magic gathered into her mouth, creating two shamrock green blasts at the same time like she had just learned a spell that made her voice seem to be echoed.

Kūkiatsu replied to his sister with a confident smile on his face, having an idea while he used the blasts to propel himself forward during the moments where his left hand was absorbing wind, "Keep on laughing about how this is so cool. Kusabue! Feel that it's cool enough to where we can go faster!"

"This is just too cool! Kūkiatsu, we're moving so fast and getting past the rest of the perfume! The people who made that perfume were just very dumb, especially since they're all probably smelling the aroma now!" Kusabue stated excitedly with a very happy look on her face, as she turned around to loudly laugh for several waves of Sound Magic to all be unleashed simultaneously.

Kūkiatsu thought about how there were still researchers in the forest, most of them being cocky enough to keep on working while thinking that managing to make it back to the lab that had purified air relating to Wind Magic would keep them safe. That couldn't last forever, since the head researchers in different departments were all viewed as being deceased by Kūkiatsu, and he narrowed his eyes at the fact of how the research lab couldn't function without new head researchers who were going to make the entire town be free of the perfume pandemic.

Getting the town free from that deadly perfume would also require the research lab's front doors to no longer be barricaded by the barrier of tornadoes, which was a prominent blockade that made researchers either use the secret entrance or the less popular entrance that could be found in different parts of Ryokufū Town, but Kūkiatsu widened his eyes in shock from noticing something important while running alongside Kusabue. She and her brother got to see the barrier of tornadoes fully fade away, almost as if the person who had given them so much power was now defeated.

That prompted Kūkiatsu to run towards the rooftop, as that was where he had been sensing the high amounts of magic that pertained to the powerful blasts, and he soon smiled from seeing Lucy standing near Sting. The Sabertooth mages soon noticed Kūkiatsu running in their direction, seeing him running with several plants slightly sticking out of his pants pockets, and he jumped up quite high. As Kūkiatsu looked down at his friends, Kusabue noticed that the two researchers who were the remaining members of the Green Meadow's Five Groves were both knocked out. That prompted her to loudly cheer while sending a strong wave of Sound Magic down to the ground, creating a shamrock green explosion that majorly broke through the immensely-damaged rooftop to expose the fifth floor, and the surprise from seeing that made Kūkiatsu quickly go down towards the researchers. He could see that Fūsoku and Ayane fell down into the hole while the ring was still on Ayane's right hand, and Kūkiatsu was determined to get that ring back from the antagonist. She and her partner fell down to the sole room of the fifth floor, prompting Kūkiatsu to hastily go down into that room with his sister. Kusabue watched Kūkiatsu float down into the room with her, as he still tightly held her hand, but she wondered if any of the Sabertooth wizards would make it here soon.

---

Meanwhile, on a different floor of the research lab...

Risa and her friends were carefully walking around the fourth floor of the research lab, which had juniper green floor tiles matching the dark green walls, and everyone on this floor had to walk slowly because of how the blasts from the fight that hit the rooftop made everyone feel tremors. They felt like earthquakes were happening, even though they were at a high floor in the lab, and Risa did her best to not fall on to the floor. She felt like it was important for her to remain standing, since her psychic abilities allowed her to clearly memorize what she was seeing, and this floor's rooms were showing her some sadistic things that had to be exposed.

One act of sadism that went on in a room involved researchers spraying different perfumes directly into the faces of the people who were their test subjects while harshly telling them to endure the strong scents, and the researchers were simply trying to find out how those people reacted to different scents. Those different aromas didn't seem like the deadly perfume that Risa and her friends had been smelling in Ryokufū Town, since taking the Master Key from Yukino to open the juniper green door allowed Risa and her friends to smell the various scents.

They all reacted in a pleasant manner to the scents, before the stenches of the aromas started to smell quite horrible like they needed more testing, and Risa was repulsed enough by the researchers in this room to where she fired an Esper Ball from her hand at them. She struck the three employees with a pink orb, causing them to scream in pain from how they were engulfed in a pink blast, and Risa quickly ran over to some juniper green tables where the harmed people were chained to chairs with their hands behind their backs.

Risa quickly created a smaller version of the Esper Ball spell to set fire to the grey metal chains of black handcuffs that were locked to the table, before destroying the handcuffs themselves, and Risa hastily freed some people who looked disheveled. Some of them were terrified individuals with dark green hair who wondered if Risa was a higher-ranked researcher who would take them elsewhere for experimentation, but some people who recognized her from months-old newspapers looked extremely overjoyed to see her.

"Risa Ryusei, you saved us! You're our hero!" A woman with pale green hair tied in a ponytail told her with a very appreciative facial expression, as joy was in her plain green eyes.

That prompted Risa to calmly reply with a soft smile, "Thank you, but I'm just here to help a friend who's fighting very hard against some researchers. Those tremors have come from their battle, so please leave this lab immediately."

"If you're investigating this lab, then please be aware that this floor has other people who are being treated as experiments in very cruel ways." A man with short green hair calmly told Risa, as he shuddered and looked fearful about other experiments.

Risa started to look stern while nodding silently at the man, letting him know that she would gladly help those people escape, and Risa walked away from the room to see that this floor resembled a large office space with juniper green cubicles. Some of the researchers who worked at those cubicles were attempting to sell the newest perfumes at high prices, sounding manipulative to unsuspecting people who appeared in Communications Lacrima Crystals that were on those researchers' juniper green desks. Several of those desks were empty, though.

That was because of how some researchers were in rooms with the juniper green doors being shut, and Risa went over to a path that led to some other rooms. In one room, she got to see researchers making some of the more privileged members with light green hair hand over their high amounts of jewels. People with dark green hair had to hand over their most valuable gems as payment for bottles of new perfumes that were being sold to people. They didn't want to buy the perfumes, but they only had the choices of buying perfume bottles or getting destroyed by powerful Plant Magic.

Risa and her friends could even sense strong spells of Plant Magic coming from an adjacent room, and peeking into that room allowed them to see people being pinned to walls with thorns that were fired from researchers' hands. Those researchers were testing the wills of people who refused to buy their perfume, wondering how long it would take for them to die or just give in to purchasing bottles of the newest fragrances. Risa even saw one woman with dark green hair getting constricted by vines, before her legs harshly got whipped by juniper green plant roots that rose up from the ground, and the researchers even made carnivorous Venus Flytraps in a juniper shade of green emerge from the ground to viciously bite that woman's legs. Upon seeing that, Risa kept those images in her mind while feeling like there was only one way to end the madness of the research experiments.

"We've got to get to the highest floor of this research lab, everyone! We'll get there, and we'll find an antidote for that perfume formula! After that, we can fire all of these researchers!" Risa told her friends and Haruna in a stern tone, looking displeased at the lab's experiments.

Haruna interrupted Risa in a shocked manner, looking baffled, "If you were to fire all of the researchers, then there would be no one to help my perfume scents thrive after my name is cleared!"

Rogue told Haruna and Risa while stepping in between them, looking relaxed, "Before we make any hasty decisions, we should probably get to the stairs that will take us to the fifth floor. It's better to go up there, since staying here after freeing their test subjects will only make those wounded researchers report that there's been an intrusion."

His words made Haruna and Risa simply look at each other in a stern manner, before they decided to run towards the stairs that were near Ayane's office. That researcher's office didn't have anything noteworthy besides plants, but Rogue did recall how Yukino took a light blue envelope off of Ayane's juniper green desk after searching her office for any major clues on an antidote for the perfume. The light blue envelope didn't contain information on an antidote, but it actually contained something important that Yukino would probably be interested to read about on the fifth floor.

She went over to the stairs with Rogue, who hastily went up the juniper green steps of stairs that started to become light green as a way of signifying that the group was going up to the next floor. They reached the fifth floor very quickly to see that there were light green walls and emerald green tiles in this area, but there was strangely only one door. Yukino and Rogue watched Risa open the door with the Master Key, only to see some clouds of dust come out, and everyone got to see what had happened to make the tremors suddenly stop.

The tremors ceased because of how there were large pieces of rubble in what appeared to be the production room, which was a large room featuring a giant machine. The large machine had an emerald green piston smashing down on the top part of it, the pace of the smashing going quite fast to correspond with perfume bottles quickly being placed on the circular black conveyor belt with the perfume's liquid quickly descending down into them to get filled with the formula, and the researchers were trying to remove pieces of rubble that could damage the machine. Well, not all of the town's researchers were doing that. Haruna took notice of Kūkiatsu using his Wind Magic to jump up to a circular door that was near the highest point of the machine that had been in five different shades of green with different levels respectively pertaining to the different shades of green representing the different researchers.

The juniper green and light green circular door was in between the highest and second-highest levels, and Kūkiatsu pulled the light green door handle outward to open the machine's core part containing the deadly perfume's liquid. The smell of the liquid made him hold his breath, since inhaling the liquid's scent was just a bad as when it had been sprayed, and he took all of the flowers out of his pants pockets. He placed his hands into the hot compartment of the machine, the high temperature making him drop the flowers in there all at once, and Kūkiatsu saw the Light Blue Frost flowers sink into the mixture right after dark magenta flowers went down into it.

"We just have to add one last ingredient!" Kūkiatsu shouted sternly down to Kusabue, ignoring the aerologists who held their heads in shock at their work being ruined.

Kusabue asked him in a curious manner, wondering about the perfume, "What about adding more Plant Magic to possibly make your perfume formula override theirs?"

"Darn it, Kusabue! I don't have any Plant Magic to-" Kūkiatsu shouted down to his sister in an irked manner, looking annoyed at that setback while continuing to feel sick to the point of coughing more and feeling somewhat feverish.

Haruna interrupted him with a stern look on her face, after charging up a dark green sphere in her right hand, "You're about to get the Plant Magic that you need, so get your hands ready to catch my Botanical Verdant Sphere!"

Haruna threw the attack up at Kūkiatsu, who managed to catch it with his right hand, ad Kūkiatsu threw the sphere into the liquid. He proceeded to create a mint green tornado in his left hand, before throwing that into the liquid's compartment, and Kūkiatsu closed the door to just watch the tornado surround the sphere like a fusion spell. It quickly sunk down into the mixture, causing it to glow in a turquoise shade of green right before the mixture briefly turned turquoise blue for a split second, and the mixture had bubbles coming up to only make very tiny explosions.

The sound of the fifth explosion occurred at the same time as Kūkiatsu giving a thumbs-up to Kusabue, who pushed the red button that was on a metallic square-shaped panel for the heated new mixture in the machine to have its conveyor belt stop right now. The conveyor belt stopped, allowing the mixture to have a few minutes to make itself seem completed while Kūkiatsu came back down to the ground for the purpose of getting one of the perfume's glass bottles from the dispenser that was near the conveyor belt. Kūkiatsu pushed the light green button that was above the dispenser, causing a glass bottle to slowly come forward on a small pale green platform, and Kūkiatsu positioned that bottle right under one of the holes for the perfume to fall into it.

With that task done, Kusabue smiled happily while her left hand pressed the moss green button on the square-shaped panel to restart the machine. The restarted machine began to pour the new mixture into the bottle, and Kusabue's right hand was firmly down on the juniper green button for it to only fill the most recent beaker. All of the beakers would be filled with the new mixture when Kusabue pressed the matcha green button, but she couldn't do that yet. She and all of her other friends, as well as the other researchers waited for the mixture to fill up to the very top of this first bottle. When the highest point of the bottle had liquid reach it, Kūkiatsu walked over to Kusabue. He pushed a turquoise green button, which made two thin metal poles come down from the metal bar above the conveyor belt with a turqouise green nozzle for the perfume. They put it on the bottle, before twisting it to the right as a way to tighten the sprayer. When the metal arms retracted themselves back into the machine, Kūkiatsu picked up the bottle. He himself had been feeling sick earlier in the forest, making himself be the new perfume's first test subject, and he sprayed himself with one burst of it. The perfume surrounded him in a turquoise green cloud that turned turquoise blue, before expanding outward several feet like it involved an explosion,

"Wow, I feel better now!" Kūkiatsu stated to everyone with a nice smile on his face, glad that he picked the right flowers for the perfect antidote.

Ayane stated aloud while she had slightly regained consciousness, getting out of the rubble to see the machine's core have Kūkiatsu's mixture in it, "You... you jerk! All of our hard work is now destroyed! Damn you..."

"Speaking of things being destroyed, it looks like Lucy and Sting totally wrecked your whole roof." Risa stated in a snarky manner while smiling, as she saw her friends approach part of the gaping hole.

Upon seeing Risa and the other Sabertooth mages helping out Kūkiatsu and Kusabue, she exclaimed in a shocked manner, "Risa Ryusei and the others are still alive, so that means the other researchers are dead!"

Risa and Rogue merely nodded at that statement, along with Yukino, and Sting jumped down with Lucy holding his hand while Kusabue approached Ayane with a very stern facial expression. The researcher nudged at Fūsoku, who was just starting to regain consciousness, and Ayane watched Kusabue make a shamrock green aura surround her hands. That prompted Ayane to close her eyes, thinking that Kusabue was going to kill her, but Kusabue smashed some pieces of rubble that were on Ayane. The smashed rubble revealed that Ayane had the ring, which was an accessory that Kusabue noticed Yaeko to be lacking, and Kusabue aggressively pulled it off of her hand.

After getting the ring, Kusabue narrowed her eyes at Ayane and Fusoku right before she simply mouthed her brother's words about their research being terminated. Kusabue officially made Ayane and Fūsoku be fired, since Lucy and Sting had beaten them to make Ayane feel stupid about her words of the Green Meadow's Five Groves being the strongest mages in Ryokufū Town. The wizards of Ryokufū Town could now respect Lucy and Sting, who even saw the disheveled people who Risa rescued start to enter the room because of how they were a bit worried for her. They were glad to see that Risa was fine, but the people were very shocked to clearly see the sight of Haruna being back in Ryokufū Town. She had been trying her best to avoid the townspeople who were still alive, putting her arms over her face purely out of fear.

That prompted Lucy to narrow her orange eyes at the situation, and she picked up one of the perfume bottles that contained the previous version of the finished product. She picked up the bottle of deadly perfume that was made right here in the research lab, and Lucy wasted no time with shaking it while she walked towards Ayane. The female with juniper green hair widened her eyes in fear, not wanting to have to go through the trouble of very sick from that deadly perfume, but Lucy made sure to put her feet on Ayane's arms to restrain her. Now that Ayane and Fūsoku could not move, Lucy sprayed them with a strong amount of that deadly perfume. She immediately held her breath while quickly backing away from it, letting the aroma surround her enemies, and Ayane began to cough just as much as Fūsoku in a sickly manner from how they were getting a whiff of their own horrible scent.

"Do you now have an idea of how those sickly and pained people have been feeling because of the pain that you caused? Do you now have an idea of how sickened Haruna felt when you framed her shop for your crimes?" Lucy asked Ayane and Fūsoku with a serious look on her face while Sting walked up to her with his arms folded.

The man from earlier spoke to Haruna with an apologetic look on his face, looking deeply sorry after seeing the makers of the deadly perfume with his own eyes, "Haruna, I'm truly sorry for blaming you for this perfume pandemic."

The woman with pale green hair tied back in a ponytail stated to Haruna with a guilty look on her face, an apologetic feeling in her eyes, "I'm so sorry for also accusing you of making the deadly perfume, Haruna! If there's anything we can do to make amends with you, we'll gladly do it!"

Haruna looked at Risa, before looking at the woman and calmly closing her eyes for a moment as she spoke with selflessness in her voice, "Well, you're the citizens in my town now. Therefore, obey my first order. Show me that you care for others by freeing all of the test subjects here, and make sure that every researcher on this floor goes with you to every room in this facility. After that, return here to gather up as many bottles of Kūkiatsu's perfume formula and spray every part of the town! Spray sick people, spray the forests, and even spray each other if you feel anxious around someone who coughs! Protect our town, if that helps you with helping yourselves!"

The freed people gladly nodded, prompting them to leave the room with the researchers who also obeyed Haruna's order, and they would help their new leader with making Ryokufū Town thrive again. They would probably also make the research lab be better by making this room's office become Haruna's office, and Yukino chose to just unlock one last door with the Master Key. She unlocked the door to Fūsoku's office to see that it was filled with light green grass matching the juniper green walls while his light green desk stood a few feet away from a round pine green table that had chairs in different shades of green around it. The pale green chair was in front of a dark green bookcase that had several books on Wind Magic and Plant Magic, even having books on Sound Magic, and there were also some brown bags on the bookcase.

Yukino took two of the bags off of the bookcase, seeing them to be filled with high amounts of jewels, and it seemed like the researchers were collecting cash before they would distribute the deadly perfume to other towns. They were practically scamming people out of their money, since demanding money for deadly products was a scheme where no one could probably be healthy enough to ask the researchers for refunds, and Yukino quickly left the office to go show this little discovery to Rogue. He'd definitely want to see why the researchers had been creating the perfume, as well as read any papers on Fūsoku's desk that pertained to plans of hurting any mages such as Kusabue.

Kusabue now had the green ring, still unable to fit it on her hand, and she looked frustrated while struggling with this task again. Kūkiatsu looked over at his sister's dilemma, prompting him to put one hand over his eyes while being anxious about this moment being the restarting point of a horrible cycle, and he decided to take the ring away from her. Kusabue looked at her brother with a saddened facial expression, wondering if she'd ever get fingers that were large enough for the ring, and Kūkiatsu started to have a clever idea on his face. He could tell that Kusabue wanted to be around the ring, but someone near her could still wear it. Therefore, he went over to Lucy and tapped her on her right shoulder.

"Kotomi-san, would you mind wearing this? Kusabue can't fit that favorite ring of hers from the moss rock on her finger, so would you at least want it? The ring's a nice reward for helping us bring peace back to Ryokufū Town, right?" Kūkiatsu asked Lucy with a curious look on his face, as he held the ring in his right hand.

Lucy responded with a shocked facial expression, as it sounded like Kūkiatsu and Kusabue were giving up the ring, "Kūkiatsu, I... I can't just take that from you two!"

Kusabue nicely replied while placing her left hand next to her brother's hand for the ring to be situated in between their hands, "Kotomi-san, it's best that you have the ring. By having the ring on your hand, nothing like this situation will ever happen again."

After a few more seconds of thinking, Lucy smiled kindly and happily stated with the ring in her left hand, "I managed to get the fifth legendary ring!"

Kūkiatsu explained to her in a very calm tone, having studied up on this from one of the lab's books on items pertaining to Holder Magic and Wind Magic, "The ring that's in your hands is the Emerald Green Ring, which allows you to use Wind Magic or Plant Magic, and it will also massively strengthen wind-based spells or plant-based spells that you've already mastered. I personally can't teach you any exciting spells, but you can find ways to learn them."

Upon hearing Kūkiatsu's explanation of the Emerald Green Ring, Lucy started to think about how there was one important spell of Wind Magic that she felt was very necessary for her to know. The spell that came to mind wasn't an attack spell, but it was part of Wind Magic and it led to her team's downfall before her body was stolen by Kotomi Takeuchi. Kotomi's feet were the main problem in that battle, since Lucy remembered how that criminal could move so fast as if she was teleporting, and Lucy needed to fight against her again someday to reclaim her body.

However, fighting against Kotomi to get her body back would require Lucy to be on even footing with her in a battle. That would require Lucy to learn that exact speed-boosting spell, or another spell that could greatly boost her speed to where she could move just as fast as Kotomi. Becoming just as strong as thief did mean that Lucy would need to train up to a very high level, having to get herself to be even stronger, and recalling how Miru was her mentor during the five-month training period with Shizue as her assistant caused Lucy to look stern about getting help from the most unexpected choices of individuals.

Lucy decided that she would get help from Ayane and Fūsoku, who were both letting out sick coughs while feeling ill, but their sicknesses didn't stop her from walking over to them. She proceeded to respectively grab Ayane and Fūsoku by their midriff shirt and T-shirt for a moment, pulling them both up off the ground with her hands for them to start looking worried that she was going to hurt them even more severely than before, and the pink aura around Lucy's hands did make Ayane perceive Lucy to be quite threatening with something definitely on her mind.

"Is the fastest spell from this town's mages going to be Kaze's Zephyr Wind Dance, Juniper Petal Dance, or Kaze's Feather's Dance? Whichever one is the fastest, will you teach it to me or give me your research notes on it?!" Lucy aggressively asked her foes, sternness in her eyes.

Ayane asked her in a curious and pained manner, trying to suppress her coughs, "Which one is the fastest?! I can't determine that, but why do you want to know about those spells?!"

Lucy explained to Ayane with fierceness in her voice, as she glared at her, "I want to take down the girl who made me be stuck like this with her teleportation-like speed, so teach it to me! Kaze's Feather Dance shouldn't be difficult for you or your partner to show it to me!"

Fūsoku replied to Lucy in a calm tone, seeming carefree as he tried to associate that spell with Lucy's current strength, "Kaze's Feather Dance... is a spell that can make the user move very fast, and immense running with that spell... can make a person appear to teleport. If you wanted to teleport, then it would take at least... three years of training."

As she could see Lucy groan in an aggravated manner from hearing that news, Risa calmly stated to her friend with an unintentional choice of words, "We'll just train hard, and everything will be okay. Before you know it, you'll be back to genuinely being Lucy Heartfilia and being in your body again instead of being in Kotomi Takeuchi's body."

Haruna exclaimed with an extremely shocked facial expression, taken aback by Risa's words, "What?! What did you say?! You called her Lucy?! She's not Kotomi Takeuchi, my friend from long ago?! What do you mean?! Doesn't she look just like Kotomi Takeuchi?!"

Kūkiatsu merely folded his arms while staying silent with Kusabue, noticing how Lucy realized that she dropped the ring on the floor, and Lucy dropped her enemies to quickly pick up the ring. She placed it on her left hand's ring finger, before looking at all the rings to see that she definitely had a total of five rings now, and it seemed like this adventure for Lucy had been part of a quest to find the ring. She absolutely needed to wear the ring that Kusabue had been trying to have for herself, since getting all of the rings would probably reverse a potent body-switching spell, and Kūkiatsu widened his eyes from realizing that this wasn't just a myth from the town's older books on research pertaining to magic.

That research was outdated, and this was reality. Lucy had been the victim of a body-switching spell, and she was determined to rectify that problem. That involved having friends to help her fix that issue, but Lucy herself didn't seem to whine so much about it or care for it more than her task of helping Haruna or helping siblings such as Kūkiatsu and Kusabue. She put all of their problems before hers, fighting so hard for them in a situation where Kūkiatsu's assumption of the group being mages didn't matter to him when he spoke about the troubles that he was facing with Kusabue, and mages such as Lucy had shown Kūkiatsu that there was a way for him to help his family thrive after being fired from his job as a researcher.

He didn't want to be an official researcher in this town anymore, since he wondered if Haruna would be a good leader while Haruna would also probably have to spend tons of time undoing most of the damage that the researchers brought upon Ryokufū Town. The researchers still hadn't damaged one place, though, and that area was where Kūkiatsu felt like he and Kusabue could later talk with their new friends. In fact, he hoped that they would be friendly enough to listen to some words not involving a battle. Kūkiatsu turned away from Haruna to look at Lucy, who seemed to be in a battle of finding the solution for getting over frustrating news that Fūsoku shared with her. Lucy saw Sring comforting come over to her with Risa, followed by Yukino and Rogue coming out of the office with Yukino carrying money, and Kūkiatsu joined the group with Kusabue by his side. The siblings looked down at Ayane, who merely chuckled at how the group truly left her feeling outmatched, and the researcher with juniper green hair felt like they all deserved a reward.

"As a great prize for defeating the Green Meadow's Five Groves, I'll give you all some information. In fact, it's very useful information." Ayane told the group with a pained look on her face, before turning to some rubble and coughing on it several times.

Lucy asked her with a curious look starting to form on her face, "What type of information are you talking about?"

Ayane explained while looking very sick, recalling a certain incident, "Five days ago, I detected something very strange when I used my Leaf Radar spell. The bizarreness was pinpointed up north near the town of Seigan, and that located mage feels like a mage while it's impossible to be a mage."

"Someone seems to be a mage, but it's not possible for them to be a mage?" Risa asked in a confused tone, looking puzzled as she turned to Rogue and saw his face also showing confusion.

Ayane told the group in a worried tone, genuinely looking unsettled at the thought of it, "You may want to prepare quite carefully for whatever that turns out to be. I have a bad feeling about it."

Ayane merely chuckled from thinking about how she and her partner definitely needed to get strong enough to fight the people who lived in Seigan, since they tended to just appear normal on the surface while hiding something about their culture, but Ayane felt like she and Fūsoku would still get beaten down if they displayed the tendency of overestimating enemies like how they did with the Sabertooth mages. The wizards from Sabertooth even defeated their three teammates, making Ayane wonder if she could've been a stronger mage and stronger aromachologist from fighting in tense atmospheres.

The atmosphere in this room had definitely been tense, since the Sabertooth mages were now having their minds worry about one thing while Haruna still seemed to be processing that her friend Kotomi Takeuchi had taken over someone else's body like a villainous thief, and the only person who was now thinking about making things less tense had been Kūkiatsu. He glanced down at Kusabue, who smiled at him while mouthing words about working with him to take down a mage who wasn't one, and that only made Kūkiatsu smile back softly. He appreciated Kusabue for sticking by his side during this whole adventure, and he hoped that showing his new friends something beautiful would make them appreciate something he had to say as his way of thanking them.

---

Two hours later, in the Lostlorn Meadow...

Kūkiatsu had instructed his friends to take a path on the right that was near the entrance to the research lab's underground path, and the Sabertooth mages went down that path with Princess Haruna. She now wore a strapless dark green dress with light green ruffles at the bottom, her high-heel wedges being new shoes that were in a juniper shade of green, and Haruna also wore two moss green bows on the left side of her head. She had purchased the clothing and accessories from Ryokufū Town after receiving her public coronation from the surviving elders in front of her father's dark green house that was somewhat larger than the other houses while it had five small light green roofs on top of the larger dark green roof, and Haruna was glad that Risa helped her pick out an outfit that would go well with her green crown. Haruna's crown had dark green leaves on one half, and mint green tornadoes were on the other half.

The mint green tornadoes were quite beautiful to Haruna, as they made her nicely smile about how her views towards people had definitely shifted like how the winds could constantly make their air currents change. She smiled nicely while feeling like people truly no longer needed to be sacrificed, and their lives definitely had meaning. Their lives were precious to where she would learn to have more of a protective heart that helped her care more for the people who either resided or were just taking tours through her town. She vowed to care for the citizens while using the town's new perfume to get back the reward money of 30 million jewels that she gave to Yukino, who wondered if Haruna would genuinely care for the townspeople instead of just making them sell perfume without her ever being friendly to all of them.

Haruna would gladly watch over the town's citizens, happy to stand over them like how she stood over the many beautiful flowers of the Lostlorn Meadow. She looked out at the flowers that were in many different colors while she perceived the most beautiful ones to be the patches of the dark green flowers that beautifully bloomed from getting their nutrients of Plant Magic from the perfume's scent, and that aroma had been bursting throughout Ryokufū Town when people began to spray more bottles of the new mixture into the air. Haruna looked up at the sky to even see Sky Garden Clouds going above this part of the town, people spraying the mixture that ended up bursting to purify a wide range of the air, and thinking about how Kūkiatsu had flown so high up to even put a dark magenta flower in his mixture made Haruna think about when she had been in the sky with Risa.

She honestly couldn't have learned to be such a caring ruler without assistance from Risa, the princess who she had been clashing with so much during this entire adventure, and Haruna was glad that Risa's decision to shield her friends from Yaeko's attacks had inspired her to help Kūkiatsu with nullifying and altering the perfume mixture for people to now have some form of protection against the deadly perfume that had been plaguing the town. In fact, Ryokufū Town would no longer be plagued by a perfume pandemic because of the high amount of influence from the Sabertooth mages. Haruna turned away from the meadow to just smile at them, glad that they crossed paths.

"If it hadn't been for all of your efforts, then I never would've been able to make my town be a better place. People are now getting cured of their sicknesses, and they're starting to feel much better. In fact, some of the wizards will even help me with research and take jobs from guilds to bring more money to Ryokufū Town. I'm very grateful to have met you." Haruna told the Sabertooth wizards with a happy smile on her face, feeling extremely joyful that they were able to make Ryokufū Town start to have glory again.

Lucy responded to Haruna with a kind smile on her face, grinning happily, "We're grateful that we got to have an amazing adventure, Haruna, and it definitely gave us some surprising enemies and other surprises to handle. In fact, we're all probably stronger mages now."

"Yes, and I know that you'll all become even stronger. Lucy Heartfilia, good luck in your quest to reclaim your body from my friend. The spell that she used is probably in the books of Ryokufū Town's library, but I'll be pleased if you have it. I'll be sure to send it to Sabertooth before we have our official festival to celebrate the complete elimination of the vile perfume, too. Heroes such as you deserve to partake in the festival without feeling ill, and I know that you'll see the ways to win the remaining fights for the rings." Haruna explained to Lucy with a proud smile on her face while shaking her hand, pleased to have met someone who wouldn't let their friends ever get hurt by another mage.

Haruna proceeded to look at Risa with a happy smile of gratitude appearing on her face, speaking nicely as she was glad to hear her wisdom on this adventure, "Thank you for helping me become a better leader of my town, Risa Ryusei. I acted as if I could see everything with absolute truth in my judgments, but your eyes are far better than mine. I won't ever be selfish or ever seem prejudice towards my people ever again, especially Kūkiatsu and his sister."

"You're welcome, Haruna. Good luck with being the leader of Ryokufū Town. By the way, I wonder where Kūkiatsu and Kusabue are. Maybe they just don't want to get emotional over goodbyes, so we may leave soon and hope to see them-" Risa replied to Haruna with a kind smile on her face, before looking curious about Kūkiatsu and his sister prior to the loud sound of a girl's scream.

Kusabue shouted with a pleading look on her face, running up the hill with Kūkiatsu and their parents as she made Sound Magic extend the range of her voice, "Wait, Sabertooth wizards! Wait, wait!" Please, just wait and don't leave!"

Everyone watched Kusabue run up to them with a shamrock green aura surrounding her feet while a mint green aura surrounded Kūkiatsu's feet, and they were both carrying several plain green shopping bags that looked similar to the shopping bag of fashionable green clothes that Risa held in her right hand. Although, her handbag only had clothes in it while the siblings were each carrying ten handbags that contained their clothes and food while also containing some picnic baskets that had other items such as some of Fūsoku's books on magic in them.

Those books on magic would be beneficial to Kūkiatsu and Kusabue, since they would both want to learn several advanced spells in their respective types of magic, but their other items made Lucy and her friends look quite curious. They looked up at the mother of the mages, who wore a pink baking apron over her plain green blouse that matched her dark green jeans and light green flat shoes. She merely took a step forward to be behind Kusabue while smiling happily, nodding at the mages to show them that she was grateful for helping her daughter survive, and her husband also took a step forward to nod in a grateful manner while he stood behind Kūkiatsu. Haruna and the others looked at Kūkiatsu, before looking at his father who wore a green sweater vest that matched his juniper green jeans while they also went well with his light green sneakers.

Kūkiatsu's father was quite happy that his son was making a great choice that could help the family have more money coming back to the house, and Kusabue's mother seemed to be highly supportive of how her daughter wanted to always be supportive of her older brother. The siblings also had their own good goal of becoming powerful mages who could be strong enough to make sure that their town was never going to be overtaken by evil researchers ever again, if anything ever happened to Haruna. Plus, the fact that the wizards from Sabertooth helped out him and his sister so much when they never had to get involved with their problems made Kūkiatsu feel like he and Kusabue needed to ask them something for helping the siblings work better as a team while they could work better with others.

"Lucy-san, is it? Listen, Lucy-san, is it okay if Kusabue and I go back with you to join the Sabertooth guild as mages? We can handle ourselves when working as a team, so will you please let us become guild mages after you helped us out so much on this adventure?" Kūkiatsu asked Lucy with a pleading look on his face, feeling like he and Kusabue weren't ready to say goodbye to the group of wizards for a long time.

Kusabue added with a nice smile on her face while looking at Sting, remembering how he mimicked her dancing earlier, "Please let us join, Sting-san! Not only would I get to help my big brother on jobs, but I can improve my dancing to where it'll help my singing attract enemies who will see that my big brother and I are the best tag-team ever!"

Lucy responded to Kūkiatsu with a kind smile on her face, glad to have worked with such a helpful pair of mages, "Of course, Kūkiatsu! Sabertooth is a friendly guild, and we'd be happy to have more members!"

"Lucy's right, you two. We'll be glad to have some more members take care of the overabundance of jobs, and you two will be an awesome team that helps Sabertooth have more cool members with awesome stories to tell after missions!" Sting told Kusabue and Kūkiatsu with a happy smile on his face, glad that the siblings enjoyed their first major adventure.

Upon getting approval by Lucy and Sting to join the Sabertooth guild, Kūkiatsu and Kusabue both had happy looks on their faces. They proceeded to hug each other tightly and jump up for joy, before sharing a high-five, and the two siblings even shook hands with Haruna to show her that they were very grateful for her assistance in making the town's new perfume formula be perfected. Haruna gladly shook hands with Kūkiatsu and Kusabue, feeling like the Sabertooth mages also did require their help on this adventure for the town to thrive, and Haruna even smiled happily at Kusabue making the playful gesture of protecting her brother.

The fact that the siblings also had a stronger desire to care for each other also made Haruna shake hands with Risa, feeling like she also helped the siblings be successful with gathering plants from how the dark magenta plants that grew came from her fusion magic, and Risa gladly accepted the handshake with a friendly smile on her face. The two mages shook hands while looking into each other's eyes, putting aside their differences to have some respect for each other, and Risa would make sure that Parmanie was an allied town of Ryokufū later on in the future.

Speaking of allies, Lucy and Sting started to walk away with their friends while happily looking into each other's eyes again. They were glad to have worked well together as a team, and Sting was also glad that Lucy so much for him like how he cared so much for her. He gently pulled her closer to him, smiling happily while his cheeks blushed, and Sting watched Lucy smile back. She watched the sunlight land on them both, even giving brightness to her green hair that looked just as beautiful as Sting's blond hair, and the brightness brought them warmth to where they felt warm and romantic feelings like a couple who wanted to merge those feelings into one romantic display of unity.

Sting's and Lucy's display of unity involved them both moving to press their lips againt each other for a soft kiss, closing their eyes while their hearts were beating in sync, and that soft kiss was brief. Even though it was a short kiss, they both still blushed and smiled in front of their happy friends. Risa would gladly want Lucy to tell her all of the details about how she felt about Sting while Rogue would simply congratulate Sting on finally kissing Lucy, and the newest couple simply had their faces blushing light pink. Sting and Lucy decided to just happily walk away while holding up one hand to wave goodbye to Haruna, causing the others to turn and wave goodbye, and Haruna waved goodbye in return to her new friends who were now feeling quite joyful.

How was Chapter 41? Feel free to tell me your thoughts on it. Lucy and Sting have defeated Ayane and Fūsoku to make the researchers' trouble for Ryokufū Town come to an end, and they even got Kūkiatsu and Kusabue to join them as Sabertooth's newest rookies! That doesn't mean they'll take the spotlight away from other characters, though. After all, Sting and Lucy finally shared a kiss after their feelings for each other were finally expressed! StiCy shipping! That doesn't mean they'll have an easy relationship, though. After all, there are emotions and questions that will come up for the circumstances after the kiss. Those shall be seen in the next mini-arc, which will happen soon! This is the final chapter of the Emerald Wind Arc, and this arc was quite heavy like wind while plots grew like plants. The post-Emerald Wind Arc will be interesting, though. I'll update soon. :)

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