Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail.
Chapter 47: Strong Bonds of Trust Can Become Dense Like Heavy Water & Glacial Ice! Tempered Emerald Winds & Vicious Mint Blue Snow! Lucy vs. Fubuki!
After watching Risa fire that Esper Ball attack at Fubuki, Lucy kept staring at the pink blast while building up a high amount of magical power. She was getting ready to use a spell at the right moment, but Lucy also gave herself another important task. She needed to keep her eyes on the enemy, making sure that the antagonist wouldn't try to launch any surprise attacks, and Lucy intensely stared at the blast. As its light started to fade away and leave behind pink clouds of smoke, Lucy heard Aoiumi turn around to go to Samui.
Samui slowly started to open her eyes, along with slowly getting on her knees to where she could see Aoiumi running towards her, and she simply glanced at the situation. The girl with the green hair had come back, bringing her teammates into this battle, and Samui turned her head to see Risa walking towards her. She started to recognize Risa from the fashion show, having seen her in the auditorium, but she did look more familiar like they had crossed paths at an earlier point in time. Samui couldn't recall the specific moment where she met Risa, but the pink-haired girl did look very familiar.
Risa stood over Samui, before squatting down again to be in front of her with a very kind smile on her face, and Risa fired a thin pink beam of Psychic Magic from her mouth. She aimed it directly at Samui, healing the fashion model's wounds to where it seemed like they never even occurred, and Risa smiled at her. Not only was Parmanie Town's princess feeling quite glad to be helping out a fashion model, but Risa was also very happy that Lucy informed her in the auditorium about how she could sense someone's unfamiliar magic fighting alongside Aoiumi's spells.
From Risa's perspective, she was very glad that Samui and Aoiumi were able to give her some time to heal up Lucy. The time that Risa spent with healing Lucy's injuries also gave Kusabue a chance to absorb more sound waves in the auditorium, whether she let her hands take in sound waves of people talking or loudly eating. Any people who were also eating had a habit of walking to some seats, allowing Kusabue to absorb the sound waves of their footsteps, and the sight of Kusabue building up so much magical power had prompted the other Sabertooth mages to also build up magical power. Risa was feeling quite strong, but she also wanted to show some nice moments of being supportive.
"Don't worry about the fashion show. It's going to be fine, and we'll handle the rest of this fight for you. I'm Risa Ryusei, and it's nice to meet you." Risa told Samui while still smiling kindly, before subtly using Stellar Psi to levitate black shadows of small ice chunks across the ground for them to very close by.
Samui responded with a relieved smile on her face, as she looked at Risa, "Nice to meet you, Risa. I'm Samui Shimoyake, and my partner is Aoiumi Sansui. Thank you for your help."
Fubuki exclaimed in an irritated manner, looking quite annoyed while ignoring how Risa ate some shadows from off the floor for her pink hair to slowly become magenta pink, "Just because you're some helpers, don't think you can just easily interfere with this business!"
Risa told Lucy in a stern tone with fierceness in her magenta eyes while hearing Lucy mimic Aoiumi's earlier task of breaking off a chunk of mint blue ice, "Lucy, absorb all the frosty air from that chunk of ice. After you do that, turn around and aim your weakest spell at Fubuki."
Lucy followed Risa's directions with ease, absorbing the cold air that heavily engulfed the ice chunk, and she quickly absorbed it into her right hand. After that, Lucy placed her right hand under her left hand while her hands formed the shape of a fanged mouth. She aimed it directly at Fubuki while the fanged mouth absorbed a high amount of cold air and clouds of hot steam from earlier in the fight, but Lucy surprised Fubuki and Aoiumi by turnng around to face her allies. Despite facing them, Lucy aggressively swung the fanged mouth upward for it to be a few feet above her right shoulder.
She could feel the large burst of winds going towards her opponent, who watched the emerald green winds become mint blue for only a few seconds before they became emerald green again, and Lucy soon heard the attack strike Fubuki! The antagonist screamed in pain while being engulfed in an emerald green blast that was larger than before, the blast becoming mint blue for about two seconds, and the winds that hit Fubuki were quite dense. Combining the denseness of the Ice Magic's air with her own winds was a good strategy from Lucy, and the blast even destroyed the back door while leaving a gaping hole in the building.
As Aoiumi looked quite shocked at the sight of the building's gaping hole, she turned to Lucy and still looked very stunned. Aoiumi was in disbelief from seeing how a complete stranger in Kotomi's body could have access to such a strong amount of power, as well as work in sync with a teammate without even having to face the proper direction towards the enemy. Lucy kept looking straight ahead while she controlled the flow of her magic for it to start touching the Crimson Ring, causing the ring to glow with red beams of light shining from it, and Lucy accessed her Fire Magic for the purpose of simply picking up Fubuki's blue flames to eat them. The Crimson Ring allowed Lucy to use Fire Magic, which included picking up flames, but she quickly sent magical power back into the Emerald Green Ring to use Wind Magic again after consuming several flames. With the flames not being her main focus, Lucy picked up several chunks of ice to quickly absorb their frosty air for it to power up her Wind Magic. When her magic seemed to be quite powerful, Lucy turned around to face Aoiumi and Samui.
"You two should go find a safe place to hide while we take Fubuki down, and we'll keep her from getting back in the building!" Lucy explained to Aoiumi and Samui, who both gave her puzzled looks for a moments.
After overcoming her feelings of shock and disbelief, Aoiumi asked Lucy with a look of sheer distrust and anxiety on her face, "Why are you helping us? What selfish benefit do you gain from doing this?"
Upon hearing Aoiumi ask her those types of questions, Lucy widened her eyes in pure disbelief before frowning and turning to walk away in a disgusted manner, "I don't mean to be rude, but it really is bizarre that you're asking me those kinds of questions."
Aoiumi's questions caused Kusabue to quickly follow Lucy outside with a determined facial expression, as she was only focused on the task of defeating Fubuki, and Risa followed the two girls. They were all followed by Kūkiatsu, who turned to just give Aoiumi a very disapproving look. Even though Kūkiatsu had personally been in a situation where he struck Lucy with a sneak attack when she and Sting first met him and Kusabue, Kūkiatsu was able to make himself get past his assumption that all mages were like evil researchers.
He understood that not all mages were going to be like the researchers who purposely creating a sweet-smelling perfume that had been quite deadly, and Kūkiatsu thought that actions truly spoke much louder than words. The fact that Lucy defended Aoiumi with the usage of spells instead of arguing with words really said many things to Kūkiatsu, and one of those things involved how Lucy practically saved Aoiumi from possibly getting injured from another attack without acting as if there was any selfish motive involved.
Since Lucy wasn't behaving selfishly, she and the other Sabertooth mages could obviously be trusted. However, Kūkiatsu could see that earning Aoiumi's trust wouldn't be an easy task. She found it difficult to trust anyone besides Samui, which made Kūkiatsu feel like there was no point in working with either of the girls without any bit of trust from their side, and he ran out of the building. Sting, Rogue, and Yukino all ran behind Kūkiatsu, and they wanted to urgently help their friends. Samui noticed that Aoiumi wasn't helping them, now starting to look guilty at her own words, and Samui recalled Aoiumi's words about Kotomi's flaws. Kotomi was bad at fighting, or at least she had done too much thinking to not be skilled in an actual battle.
Lucy didn't waste any time with thinking while she activated the Zephyr Punch spell, tightening her fists with an intense amount of power in them to where the emerald green aura could engulf her fists, and she ran towards Fubuki. The antagonist quickly got up to activate the Winter Snow Water spell, firing six mint blue snowballs from her mouth while they were all aimed at Lucy, but Lucy activated Kaze's Feather Dance right before the snowballs could strike her body. She watched the two large mint green feathers fall from in front of her waist to go down to her feet, allowing her body to hastily become covered in a mint green aura, and Lucy veered to the left at rapid speeds!
She managed to evade the projectiles that hit the snowy ground, hearing them create six blasts that were quite large to where they aggressively blew several patches of snow across the ground, and Lucy could care less about the six large twisters of water that began to all spin around in counterclockwise directions while they all moved around in that particular direction. The twisters were quickly destroyed by Risa firing the spell called Shadowy Psychic's Psychokinetic Magenta Scream, and Risa unleashed a large burst of spiraling psychic energy in a magenta color from her mouth. This shade of pink was quite dark to where magenta pink beams emerged from the shadows of the spiraling burst, and Risa watched her attack head towards the twisters. The moment that it went past one was when they all converged on the attack, striking it to create a massive mint blue blast, and a somewhat less magenta pink blast occurred inside of that blast! Despite how her own attack got decimated, Risa ate the shadows that stretched outward from Fubuki's converged attack to strengthen her own abilities. She felt more strength in her body, and Risa looked quite optimistic.
Risa wasn't as optimistic as Lucy, who managed to get close to Fubuki like she planned on grappling with her, and running at high speeds allowed Lucy to strike Fubuki in the chest with two powerful punches! Those punches caused Fubuki to get struck with two intense bursts of Wind Magic, but Lucy wouldn't follow up with a barrage of punches. Instead, feeling the winds from the earlier blasts caused Lucy to turn around and aim her hands at them. She made her hands take in all of the cold and powerful winds, before converting all of that energy into Wind Magic to strengthen her fists for more strikes pertaining to the Zephyr Punch spell.
As Lucy struck Fubuki's body and her face with several punches that were much denser than before, the antagonist coughed up some blood and groaned right before she was engulfed in emerald green blasts that briefly became mint blue for a few seconds. The side effect of the different color came from Lucy absorbing winds that were infused with Ice Magic instead of being infused with only Wind Magic, and that gave Lucy an idea. She waited a few seconds for Zephyr Punch's aftereffect to assist her, though, and the heavy winds of Zephyr Punch's aftereffect soon went towards Fubuki to make more emerald green blasts occur around the antagonist.
"She's definitely... learned how to improve the strength... of her spells." Fubuki thought to herself in a pained manner, coughing up some blood right before letting out some screams of pain.
Lucy thought to herself with a confident facial expression, as she hastily ran towards the lake and had a strategy in mind, "I have a good theory for powering up my spells of Wind Magic, but I'll gladly let this experiment occur in the middle of a battle!"
"What's Lucy-sama going to do?" Kusabue thought to herself with a curious facial expression, as she watched Lucy jump up high into the air to land on one of the lake's largest ice floes.
Lucy proceeded to activate her third spell of Wind Magic, which was known as Tempest Tornado Bounce, and Lucy fired five emerald green tornadoes from her left hand. The tornadoes quickly came from her hand to circle around the large ice floe, and circling around the ice floe at fast speeds caused the tornadoes to take in more air from absorbing the cold winds around the lake. The fact that the tornadoes were moving around at much faster speeds caused the lake's water to also start violently moving around in a circle, waves of water rising up from the lake while ice floes quickly moved around, and Lucy felt glad to be feeling an intense amount of coldness around her body.
Coldness would also come from Fubuki activating a spell called Freezing Snow Avalanche, and Fubuki made a mint blue aura of Ice Magic heavily engulf her body. She aggressively slammed her left fist against the snow to make a large mountain of mint blue snow rise up from the ground, and Fubuki stretched out her right palm to send a heavy gust of an icy blizzard towards the mountain. It ended up freezing the mountain of snow to make it be covered in a large block of mint blue ice, but making a fist with her right hand made that ice block convert itself into more snow. The new snow piled on to the mountain, increasing its size, and Fubuki viciously punched the mountain with an immense amount of strength from her right fist to make the mountain loudly tremble like the earth around it had been shaking.
The rumbling mountain fell apart in the form of large chunks of mint blue snow that all went down the same slope, heading straight towards Lucy and the lake. The lake's waves were growing larger because of Lucy's tornadoes, and the waves had to endure the impact of the snowy chunks making contact with them. When the chunks of snow struck the waves, large explosions in a mint blue color occurred while the icy properties of the explosions caused the waves to get frozen. The frozen waves were hit by more of the avalanche, causing more powerful explosions to occur while the lake began to get covered in ice, but Lucy made her hands continuously absorb the winds of all the explosions. The exploding attacks left behind winds that were extremely cold, but they were quite heavy. Lucy's hands took in the heavy winds, before she unleashed them all at her mint green tornadoes to enhance their level of strength, and the tornadoes sprang up quite high into the air.
Upon seeing the tornadoes again, Fubuki asked Lucy in a calm manner while having a smile of pure arrogance on her face, "Do you really think that just using enhanced versions of your spells can really allow you to defeat me?"
"Who said anything about me only relying on enhanced spells? Are you assuming that I have no surprises in my repertoire?" Lucy asked with a confident smile on her face, as she got down on her stomach and made her ice floe go over to an area of the snowy ground where some mint blue flowers grew near the lake.
Lucy exclaimed with a fierce facial expression, determination in her eyes as she made a pale green aura start to surround her body after lightly touching the frosty plant, "In fact, here's one of my favorite surprises! First spell of Plant Magic, I call upon thee! Green Flower Bomb!"
"What?!" Fubuki asked in a startled manner, not expecting her green-haired opponent to also be wielding multiple types of magic at once.
Lucy shot out seven pale green daffodils that didn't have stems, letting them all emerge from her left hand, and she aimed them all at Fubuki. The antagonist watched the daffodils go towards her at high speeds, prompting her to activate the spell called Blizzard's Frosty Flames, and Fubuki shot out a large stream of light blue flames from her mouth. She watched the flames attack the flowers, freezing them in burning flames that immobilized the flowers in midair, but Lucy's projectiles hastily detonated to create pale green blasts in midair!
They pushed the blue fire outward towards Fubuki while the winds gave more power to the flames, but the winds also gave some strength to the five tornadoes that were coming down from the cold sky. They had finished absorbing the cold winds in the air, powering up to a much higher level than before, and the tornadoes came down to gain more wind right before they all detonated around Fubuki. She screamed in pain from the power of the emerald green blasts while Lucy used the Green Flower Bomb attack again to make blasts occur on the ice-covered lake, successfully breaking all the ice, and Lucy could see Fubuki getting injured from the density of her attacks.
That prompted Lucy to activate her second spell of Plant Magic, which was known as Forest's Verdant Energy Ball, and she fired a pale green orb of Plant Magic from her mouth. Lucy wasted no time with firmly pressing her hand down on the frosty grass, the pale green aura going deep into the ground, and Lucy watched her aura start to spread across the ground. That led to more mint blue flowers blooming out of the ground while they sent their mint blue aura towards the pale green orb, and their aura was soon converted to match the orb's color. The pale green orb headed straight for Fubuki, who ran out of the emerald green smoke, and she watched the orb burst in front of her to create a high amount of pale green powder. Fubuki watched the glittery pale green powder come towards her, only to see it explode in pale green blasts that grew larger from lighter bits of powder that came from Lucy's first spell of Plant Magic as an aftereffect, and Fubuki screamed in pain as the explosions pushed her in different directions.
One final explosion sent Fubuki flying into the air, before she fell down on an icy part of the ground, and the antagonist quickly got up to glare at Lucy. She watched her come back to this area behind the building while the smoke was quickly clearing up, and Fubuki panted heavily. She had been badly bruised by those powerful attacks, only still standing because of her durable body, and being on the ice restored half of her current amount of magical power. In addition to her magical power being restored, Fubuki's body also got back half of her current amount of strength.
She still felt strong enough to defeat Lucy, who noticed that Fubuki was panting heavily as if she had to expend power during moments of defending herself to where she wasn't standing perfectly still like a bird on very calm water. Since Fubuki somewhat felt calm on ice and began to use the Hailstorm Frenzy spell, Lucy felt like she had to start using her own spells to her advantage. She was fighting an enemy who could rapidly heal herself, as well as fight effortlessly on the ice like Emiria, and going up against an enemy who could move so fast while using speed to deliver powerful blows was certainly troublesome.
Although, Lucy started to have a look of realization in her eyes from thinking about how Fubuki wouldn't be a troublesome enemy if Lucy could release her attacks in one shot from close up without anything going wrong. She started to sternly look at Fubuki, who activated the spell known as Hailstorm Frenzy by spinning around rapidly on one foot while a mint blue aura engulfed her body, and Fubuki was immediately surrounded by a twister of mint blue snow that had been quite cold. The cold snow ended up violently bursting outward while it became solid like hail, and the copious amount of projectiles headed straight towards Lucy.
That prompted Lucy to activate the spell known as Kaze's Feather Dance, and two large mint green wings appeared near her waist. They fell down to her feet, before a mint green aura surrounded her body, and Lucy's body was light as a feather. She was light enough to run incredibly fast, moving at very rapid speeds from absorbing the frosty air around the ice earlier, and Lucy repeatedly swerved left and right to evade the projectiles. As she was evading Fubuki's attacks, Lucy smiled confidently and got herself much closer to her enemy.
"It looks like you'll have to fight me in close combat now, Fubuki!" Lucy fiercely shouted, as the aura around her body became emerald green.
Fubuki responded with an astounded facial expression, not expecting Lucy to use this type of plan, "You were analyzing my attacks for this type of strategy?!"
"That's exactly right, you cruel mage! Fourth spell of Wind Magic, I call upon thee! Emerald Falling Birds!" Lucy loudly replied with sternness in her voice, as she fiercely glared at Fubuki.
Lucy fired that spell from her mouth at full force while grabbing Fubuki's shoulders with her strong hands, and Lucy shot out an emerald green tornado of winds to strike her opponent at point-blank range. The tornado quickly exploded after hitting Fubuki, resulting in several emerald green birds appearing from the explosion while they resembled small pigeons, and the birds created several emerald green blasts when they slammed into Fubuki. The antagonist screamed in pain from how the birds struck her at such a close range while Lucy focused her magical power into the birds for the explosions to be like powerful cannon shots, and the blasts had grown larger from the tornado's earlier winds. The winds of the blasts sent Lucy sliding backwards on to the ice, causing her to start struggling with maintaining her footing again on the slippery surface.
Lucy couldn't keep her balance on the ice, even when wearing her new snow boots, and she roughly fell on to her ass. Lucy groaned in a somewhat pained manner while watching the emerald green clouds of smoke clear up, and she got to see that Fubuki was more wounded than before from getting struck with powerful attacks at point-blank range. That didn't stop the vicious woman from slamming her mint blue hands against the ground while activating Hailstorm Frenzy, sending the cold snow of her twister down into the ground for the blasts to destroy the ground from underneath while also freezing it for several chunks of the ground to be covered in mint blue ice, and remnants of snow filled the cracks in the ground right before the snow was converted into ice.
The icy ground caused the mint blue aura around Fubuki's body to glow in a calm manner, meaning that she was replenishing half of her current magical power, and she was replenishing half of her current strength. That didn't prevent Sting from running towards her with two spheres of white light of Light Dragon Slayer Magic surrounding his hands, and Sting opened his mouth to consume some sunlight as he ran towards Fubuki. Sting ran on to the ice at high speeds, going with the flow of the gliding while also quickly activating White Drive to make a white aura engulf his body, and the white light in Sting's hands massively grew. He aggressively struck Fubuki in the stomach with his right hand while making his left hand strike the ground with an intense amount of power, and the white blasts of bright light from White Dragon's Holy Nova blinded everyone's eyes.
Lucy only opened her eyes for a few seconds to see that the light was being reflected off of the ice, causing most of the battlefield to have mint blue beams of light rising up from it, and Lucy felt like this was the perfect time for a sneak attack. As she aimed her right hand over at some snow-covered trees for the purpose of activating her fourth spell of Plant Magic, Lucy's intense battle caused Aoiumi to come running out of the building with Samui. The older woman decided to hide behind some grassy hedges with her partner, who had a facial expression that showed a mixture of wanting to fight alongside Lucy while being amazed at the orange-eyed mage's power.
Aoiumi told Samui with a stunned look on her face, before curiously asking her friend some important questions as she saw Lucy activate a spell called Menacing Meadow Bloom, "Wow, Kotomi or whoever's in her body now is fighting much differently than how I remember Kotomi's fighting style of methodically thinking things out! Although, Samui, why is that mage from a legal guild helping us out when she'll probably have to fight against us someday? Why does she fight so hard to protect me, and why is she so different now?"
"That girl and her friends have been fighting together as a team for much longer than we've been partners, and that desire for teamwork has made them greatly mature as people. They've grown immensely as mages, too, Aoiumi." Samui explained with a calm facial expression, observing how Lucy was working quite well with her teammates.
Aoiumi asked with a curious look on her face, as she stared at Samui, "They've grown so much as mages?"
"Really think about what happened earlier, Aoiumi. Mages normally have to face their enemies, but that girl had her back turned and still hit Fubuki with a flawless attack of her Wind Magic. In addition to that, her pink-haired teammate's timing with giving her the command was perfect without even really talking thoroughly about a long-term strategy. To achieve that level of strategy, all of these mages must've endured serious battles to get themselves at this level of skill."
Lucy demonstrated her high level of skill by showing the effects of the Menacing Meadow Bloom spell, which made a pale green aura engulf her body, and aiming her right at the snow-covered trees caused the aura to strike them. Pale green roses instantly bloomed in front of the trees, the amount of roses being very large to where they resembled a meadow, but the roses absorbed energy from the plant roots. They began to grow much larger, before shooting out several pale green seeds from their pistils, and the flowers that bloomed sent all of their seeds towards Fubuki.
Sting got out of the way fast enough to let all of the seeds either strike Fubuki or land around her, but he got to see Fubuki's body heavily glow in a pale green aura from being struck by the seeds. They immediately showed their menacing nature by cracking open to reveal that giant pale green vines had been in them, the vines even having leaf-shaped spiked edges on them, and the vines wasted no time with wrapping themselves around Fubuki. She started to feel the vines constricting her body very tightly, squeezing her to where her bones would crumble while Lucy raised her right hand for the vines to raise Fubuki very high into the air.
When the vines carried Fubuki several feet off of the ground, Lucy made her right hand change from being an open palm to being a clenched fist. That caused the vines to squeeze the antagonist much more severely, making her cough up blood, and she let out intense screams of agony. Those agonizing screams were followed by the vines aggressively throwing Fubuki towards the large flowers, which all viciously exploded when Fubuki weakly shot out the Water Pressure Stream spell from her mouth, and Lucy watched Fubuki fall down to get caught in the numerous pale green explosions that occurred in a chain reaction.
All of the pale green explosions were strong enough to make Fubuki be bombarded with an immense amount of energy from the Plant Magic, the explosions causing her to let out several screams of agonizing pain, and the explosions were very beneficial to the Sabertooth mages. Kusabue had a shamrock green aura engulfing her body while she aimed her hands at the explosions, taking in the massive amount of sound waves to further increase her own amount of Sound Magic that had been immensely growing like she was stockpiling magic for an intense explosion, and Lucy also benefitted heavily from the pale green explosions.
They created very heavy and strong winds that Lucy quickly absorbed into her hands, which were surrounded by an emerald green aura while they took in all of the wind to replenish Lucy's Wind Magic, and Lucy even felt the winds increase the overall amount of Wind Magic that she could wield. She began to think about how she would use her next spell against Fubuki, who was still concealed by the pale green clouds of smoke, and Lucy would wait for her opponent to get back up if this fight still wasn't over. She soon heard Fubuki get up from the grass while groaning in pain, and Lucy was ready to keep fighting.
She prepared herself for the moment when she would need to activate the spell known as Windy Sky Tower, and Lucy would be glad to hit Fubuki with this attack at point-blank range. That didn't seem appealing to Fubuki, however, and she slowly walked through the smoke with an extremely irked facial expression. Not only had she been severely bruised and bloodied to where she'd have to spend several minutes on the icy ground to be back at full health and fully have her magical power back, but she really hated how Lucy was getting in the way of her goal.
'Fubuki had no personal quarrel with the girl who looked just like Kotomi Takeuchi, and she observed how Kotomi's teammates were all mages from the famous Sabertooth guild. The sight of Risa firing the Gleaming Magenta Psi Aurora spell at Fubuki only made her use the spell called Winter Snow Water in retaliation, and Fubuki shot out six mint blue snowballs from her mouth. She watched a pink sphere of Psychic Magic surround Risa's body, before the fashion-loving female unleashed that energy in the form of a magenta pink wave that went outward while the wave was quite large from Risa being very determined to take down Fubuki, and the attack created a massive magenta-colored blast after striking the ground. Fubuki hastily applied Ice Magic and Water Magic to her feet, evading the blast and seeing the mint blue blasts from the snowballs and water twisters quickly occur within it, but hearing all of the ice break apart and faintly seeing Aoiumi standing behind the bright blast made Fubuki's patience crack apart with immense frustration like the ice that loudly shattered apart.
"Stop interfering, you pests! This fight has nothing to do with you! Even if you defeat me, Aoiumi and Samui will eventually be your enemies! They're dark mages, after all!" Fubuki exclaimed in a very annoyed tone, looking quite miffed as she pointed a finger at her enemies.
Aoiumi replied with tears welling up in her eyes, realizing that fact, "She's right, Samui. Just because these people are helping us out, that won't stop them from later being our enemies."
Samui stated with disbelief in her voice, as she looked quite shocked, "Aoiumi!"
"People can pretend to be your friends during certain events, Samui. That's how everyone changes so easily, and people betray each other to make themselves get stronger. Samui, this fight is taking place during the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour. There aren't any friends in a battle like this, and the rest of the world is only full of enemies." Aoiumi explained with tears of sadness heavily welling up in her eyes, before closing her eyes and trembling in a scared manner while thinking about Fubuki hadn't been her first distrustful enemy.
Lucy asked loudly in a stern manner while looking straight at Fubuki, having an interesting point of view, "Aoiumi and Samui may eventually be my enemies, but why should I not feel sorry at all for Aoiumi?! Wasn't she crying so much when she begged you to not hurt Samui or anyone else enjoying the fashion show?! Didn't you just disregard her pleas and decide that you'd hurt people, anyway?! How can I not view you as a cruel and disgusting person who has to perish, Fubuki?! How can I not have the urge to be thinking of several ways to defeat you?!"
Upon hearing that last stern question come from Lucy's mouth, Aoiumi's saddened frown started to become a smile of proudness while she still let the tears go down her face. Aoiumi now cried tears of happiness at how the person who had switched bodies with Kotomi was actually not very different from her in the aspect of thinking about several possible plans that could ensure victory, and Lucy was even making her impulsive spells be part of plans. She had even been using her spells in chronological order for their different types of magic, getting herself in the best position every moment for something like that to be possible.
That amazing level of strategy made Aoiumi be quite proud to realize that the girl who protected her at the beginning of the battle was an ally, just like when she was in the Moon Rainbow guild with Kotomi, and Lucy was not a self-interested person. Lucy was selflessly fighting quite hard to protect Aoiumi and Samui, but the immense actions of the Sabertooth mages made Aoiumi start to smile in a calm manner. She smiled at Samui while reaching out with her left hand, prompting Samui to extend her right hand, and the two girls tightly held hands.
They both built up magical power in their hands at the exact same time, preparing to use a combination attack to aid Lucy, but the two females did see Rogue waste no time with eating the shadows of the ice chunk. He consumed the shadows to hastily strike Fubuki with the Shadow Dragon's Roar attack, firing a large vortex of black shadows from his mouth, and Rogue watched Fubuki make a mint blue aura engulf her body. She quickly leaped back to let the spell strike the snowy ground, seeing it create a large black blast that sent snow in several directions while more chunks of ice broke apart, and Fubuki distanced herself from Lucy. She felt that being far away would allow her to unleash the most powerful spell in her repertoire, and Fubuki started to viciously smirk at Lucy.
"Glacier Snowy Blizzard Drill!" Fubuki exclaimed with an arrogant smirk on her face, as malice was in her eyes.
Lucy shouted with an astounded facial expression, not having anticipated this particular spell, "What?!"
Fubuki aimed both of her hands directly at Lucy, and a large wheel of mint blue snow appeared with spikes protruding from it. The wheel had a pinwheel-like fan inside of it with four mint blue blades that were quite sharp, and an extremely large drill was attached to the center of the fan. The drill had five other drills stacked in front of it, all of them rapidly spinning in a counterclockwise direction when the fan and the wheel of the spell both also spun in that same direction, and Fubuki stood behind the spell. She applied the mint blue aura of Snow Magic to her feet, causing her to run quite fast while she stayed behind the drill to push it forward with her hands.
As Fubuki was pushing the spell towards Lucy, the wind-wielding mage looked quite shocked that her opponent still had this type of spell. The drilling spell didn't just look like it could be a strong rival for the Windy Sky Tower, but it prevented Lucy from getting close to her opponent for a final attack to be dealt at close-range. Not being able to unleash her spell's energy all at once in a close-range hit caused Lucy to groan in frustration, and she guessed that trying to go around the fast-moving spell would only result in Fubuki turning it towards her while also possibly infusing more magical power into it.
That made Lucy send magical power down to her feet for them to be coated in an emerald green aura, as she was going to try taking a bold chance by using Kaze's Feather Dance to hopefully confound Fubuki with high-speed movement, but she suddenly saw Aoiumi get in front of her with Samui to activate a defensive spell. Aoiumi activated the spell called Sea's Scalding Cobalt Shield, and she fired a cobalt blue bubble of water from her hands that were placed right next to each other. The bubble had four large cobalt blue discs floating around it, and the discs had plain blue wings aiming up and down in the center of the shield while a small blue sapphire jewel was in between them. The shields gave off a very bright gleam with cobalt blue lights emanating from them while they rotated around the bubble, and Samui touched the bubble with her aura-covered hands to send more Water Magic into it.
The bubble grew while the cobalt blue shields glowed more, glowing brightly to signify that they were gaining much more strength, and Aoiumi kept her hands aimed at the shields. She sent more magical power into them, giving the shields much more defensive power, and Aoiumi watched Fubuki's spell make contact with the shields. They began to get slightly pushed back by the Glacier Snowy Blizzard Drill spell, prompting Samui to use the Water Bomb spell, and Aoiumi briefly turned her head to see Samui fire a large bubble of light blue water from her mouth.
The large bubble was aimed at the bubble that had been surrounded by the four shields, and Samui watched her attack get absorbed into Aoiumi's bubble. Aoiumi's shields grew twice their current size while glowing much brighter in a cobalt blue color, and their durability also increased to where they were now like tempered steel. The durable shields floated in midair while Fubuki's spell no longer made them get pushed back, and Aoiumi continued to send magical power into them. The shields continued to grow stronger, and Fubuki tried to counter them by boosting the power of her own spell.
The mint blue aura surrounding her hands gave more magical power to her own spell, and Fubuki watched it slowly start to grow in size. The sight of Fubuki's spell growing caused Aoiumi to start looking worried, but Samui noticed how her spell from earlier still showed its aftereffect of making large puddles of water be on the ground. Samui placed her hands into two of the puddles for the purpose of heating up the water with her Water Magic, making the puddles be scalding hot while they heavily bubbled, and Samui hastily sucked up the water from those puddles.
She shot out the scalding hot water in the form of a Water Bomb attack, the spell being much larger than before, and Samui watched it get absorbed into Aoiumi's bubble again. That bubble began to have smaller bubbles emerging from it in a bubbling manner with white clouds of steam also emerging from it, and Aoiumi could now sense that her shields were gaining some heat. In addition to the heat and another increase in durability, the shields glowed in a cobalt blue color again. Their brightness obscured the sight of Fubuki's spell cracking apart, before exploding in a mint blue blast that was massive enough to send everyone sliding backwards, and the sight effect of the spell was that it made icy winds spiral down towards the entire ground for it to be frozen in thick ice. Despite that aftereffect showing itself, the sight of her final spell being destroyed by Aoiumi's shield made Fubuki narrow her eyes in anger while she aggressively ran towards Aoiumi as the shield began to fade away.
"You're going to die for doing that, you little bitch!" Fubuki angrily shouted, as running on the ice allowed her to regain some magical power to where more of the mint blue aura was in her hands.
Samui replied for Aoiumi, as she looked fierce and charged up a periwinkle blue in her hands for a special spell, "You're the one who's going to die here, so let's see if you can handle this spell of Water Magic!"
"Don't forget that this fight started when I blocked Fubuki's first attack, so allow me to let my Wind Magic land the finishing blow!" Lucy stated with a serious facial expression, as she made the emerald green aura engulf her entire body.
Building up a high amount of power and some of it down into her feet to increase the speed of Kaze's Feather Dance may have theoretically been a good idea, but sliding forward on the ice while activating the spell didn't get rid of Lucy's body oddly feeling heavier now. The heaviness came from how she absorbed the heavy winds that were filled with dense and icy air, which were now weighing Lucy down to where Kaze's Feather Dance made her move half as fast as she would when using it at maximum speed. Lucy couldn't move at high speeds using the spell, prompting her to aggressively glide forward on the ice.
Lucy briefly thought about how Emiria had been able to glide on the ice using both of her feet like a professional ice skater, and the best possible way for Lucy to beat her rival later on would be to incorporate Emiria's tactics into her own strategies. Lucy created the strategy of moving very fast like an ice skater as she glided on the mint blue ice, getting herself close to Fubuki for a point-blank shot from an attack, but Lucy veered off to the right. She did that for the purpose of surrounding herself with more wind that she could inhale, before making a sharp turn to rapidly spin around and go back towards Fubuki. Fubuki noticed how Lucy's rapid spinning generated more air, which Lucy was quickly inhaling to enhance the power of her final attack even more.
She activated the spell known as Windy Sky Tower, which made two rings of emerald green wind appear right above her palms. Lucy tightly grabbed the rings, before sending magical power into them for the rings to nearly triple in size, and Lucy slammed both of the rings against Fubuki's body! The moment that they made contact with her body was when the rings ended up bursting to create a spiraling vortex of emerald green winds, and Lucy saw Samui send several periwinkle blue bubbles towards the vortex. It soon alternated between being emerald green or periwinkle blue, the latter color coming from a spell of Water Magic that was known as Periwinkle Bubble Flow, and that spell involved Samui touching it to convert it into cold periwinkle blue bubbles that were also quite dense.
She directed the bubbles towards the vortex by aiming her left hand at it, and the bubbles were quickly bursting to create explosions that provided more supportive gusts of wind to enhance Lucy's powerful attack. The giant vortex of wind created a massive blast that was emerald green, before becoming periwinkle blue, and its intensity sent Lucy flying backwards with Samui to be near Aoiumi while Fubuki screamed in immense agony. The antagonist couldn't endure the power of this attack, feeling the explosions destroy her body, and she was sent flying into the air for only a few moments. She slowly fell down to roughly land in front of Lucy while the blast's power smashed through all of the ice, and Aoiumi could see that Fubuki was heavily bruised. She also bled severely while her skin was charred from the explosions within the powerful blast, and she didn't move at all or seem to be conscious. Fubuki was now dying with only a few seconds of life left, and Aoiumi watched Lucy pant heavily down towards her opponent.
"Even without Samui's spell as an assister, that attack did look strong enough to give this girl a victory. She's... amazing. She actually defeated Fubuki!" Aoiumi thought to herself with a smile of amazement on her face,
Lucy stated to Aoiumi and Samui while panting heavily, glad that she managed to help them out, "Well, this battle... is now.. over."
"Thank you, Kotomi Takeuchi. You and your friends are all quite strong, as well as very strategic. I must give you my sincerest thanks of gratitude for preventing anyone in the building from being harmed by Fubuki. I'm also glad that you helped us take down our rival, too."
Lucy and Samui proceeded to shake hands like they were a good pair of allies, prompting Aoiumi to smile at them both for helping her take down their common enemy. With Fubuki now dead, however, a thought began to resurface in Aoiumi's mind. She looked at Lucy in a calm manner, before narrowing her eyes at a certain fact about her ally. Lucy was still a Sabertooth mage, along with her friends, and they were wizards who were part of a legal guild while they had the tasks of taking down dark mages. That included mages from Cerulean Frost, too.
Aoiumi and Samui belonged to that guild, causing Aoiumi to think that Lucy and her teammates would eventually have the task of making the Cerulean Frost guild be eliminated. She began to tightly clench her fists while also realizing that this fight was just one of presumably many battles taking place in the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour, and Aoiumi felt like it wouldn't be inappropriate to clash with someone who did agree earlier with Fubuki's fact of how the mages from Sabertooth would someday have to fight against their fashionable friends.
Aoiumi tightly tugged on Samui's jacket while starting to look up at her for a moment, sternness in her eyes as she and Samui got to see Risa glide across the ice to be standing next to Lucy, and Aoiumi backed away from them with Samui following her actions. The girls both understood that Lucy and her friends were good people who didn't save them purely out of self-interest, but they would still be considered to be on opposing sides in a different scenario where they could view the opposition as enemies who would eventually be dealt with. Aoiumi went into a combat stance, followed by Samui, and they watched Lucy run up to them with Risa running by her side for what was thought to be another tactic in a fight.
"Samui, you better get back on stage soon! Your break time is almost up, you know! You're a fashion model who can't keep the audience waiting!" Risa surprisingly told her, smiling very happily as she shook hands with her out of gratitude.
Lucy added nicely in a calm tone, as she shook hands with Aoiumi, "Thanks for putting up that strong shield at the right time, Aoiumi! You're a very strong mage!"
"Um..." Samui and Aoiumi stated simultaneously with comically shocked facial expressions, not expecting the girls to act so genuinely friendly after a fierce fight.
Upon seeing Lucy and Risa end the handshakes to run back to their teammates, Aoiumi recovered enough from the shock to fiercely narrow her eyes and turn around to sternly shout, "Stop right there, you two! You're mages in a legal guild, but you have the nerve to jollily run away when we could've chosen to attack you when your guard was down! We'll be enemies at some point, so we can fight later today!"
Aoiumi's words and fierce facial expression made Lucy calmly turn around with Risa to face the younger female, and Lucy could understand that Aoiumi's words came from the viewpoint of being a dark mage who still lacked full trust in good people. That lack of trust fueled her attitude of thinking that Lucy was still an enemy, despite Lucy thinking the exact opposite in this situation, and Aoiumi seemed to be waiting for Lucy to unleash another spell. She seemed like it wouldn't even matter if Lucy's spell was weak, either.
Lucy refused to shoot out anymore spells of Wind Magic or Plant Magic, though. She had enough common sense to detect when a fight was over for the battle to officially end, and this battle was now over. No one else needed to fight each other for any reason, prompting Lucy to make the aura around her body start to fade away, and the intensity appearing in her eyes showed Aoiumi that she had no need for senseless fighting. Aoiumi stared into Lucy's eyes, seeing her conviction of wanting to be a good person who wouldn't hastily view others negatively on the sole basis of the guilds they were in.
Lucy maintained that look of not wanting to fight Aoiumi, causing her to slowly make her magical power recede to where it faded away from being around her hands, and Lucy even saw Samui's hands have the periwinkle blue aura fading away from them. Nobody was determined to strike anyone anymore, as Aoiumi now only felt like she needed a response from Lucy for some words to really back up her actions, and Aoiumi hoped that Lucy wasn't attempting to trick her for the chance of unleashing a surprise attack. Lucy's words would probably be more surprising to her, however.
"I'm not going to fight you, Aoiumi. You and Samui are my friends!" Lucy stated with a serious look on her face, not wanting to fight people who weren't her rivals.
Aoiumi attempted to counter with a somewhat puzzled look on her face, "Friends?! We just met today, and you even tried to tell me something earlier about Kotomi swapping bodies or swapping magic with you!"
"I'm the real Lucy Heartfilia, just so you know. Kotomi may have taken my body, but she hasn't taken my mind or heart to where I can view you as a friend and trustworthy ally! Throughout my quest to retrieve the seven legendary rings, I've met so many people who have taught me many things that helped me grow from being a scared girl who had no allies! That includes you, Aoiumi! You've taught me that there are mages who can wield water and ice quite well to create useful attacks and strategies in an event like this one, so thank you!" Lucy stated to Aoiumi with conviction in her voice, glad that they crossed paths.
Upon hearing Lucy's speech, Aoiumi asked her in a frustrated tone of voice while crying with her hands over her eyes, "After you've been through so many harsh battles and have been put through a difficult situation, how can you be so strong?!"
Aoiumi continued to cry tears of emotion, which were mainly from relief at how Fubuki could no longer harm her or Samui ever again, but she started to laugh in a prideful manner to not look like a weakling during the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour. She didn't want to make herself seem inferior to someone who still made her recall Kotomi's habit of thinking too much about plans before doing anything, since Aoiumi felt that being impulsive was generally a better idea, and Aoiumi felt that Lucy was just very lucky that she had Kotomi's body for her to move so fast.
Lucy's fierce strategies involving the combinations of her spells with Kaze's Feather Dance made Aoiumi start to laugh, thinking that her new friend was using generic strategies, and Aoiumi merely stretched out her hand towards Lucy. She did that for a handshake that signified how both groups of mages would vow to fight hard in this event, as well as in other situations until they would meet again for another fierce battle involving them being enemies or allies. Lucy shook hands with Aoiumi, causing both Samui and Risa to smile.
Samui was proud that her friend now had more people to trust instead of viewing everyone else as enemies, and Samui was glad that Lucy had come to aid Aoiumi at the right time. Samui silently hoped that she and Aoiumi could be the ones who would save Lucy and her friends if they were ever in serious trouble, since that would be like a good way to return the favor, and she started to look at Risa. As Risa smiled at Samui and wanted to shake hands with her, Samui started to have a look of curiosity on her face from recalling a memory regarding Risa.
"Aren't you the girl who I met when I took that temporary job at a research lab?" Samui asked Risa in a calm tone, remembering how she had opened the door to see Risa and Haruna trying to get into the research facility.
Risa replied with a kind smile on her face, recalling how Samui had been in that particular forest, "Yeah, that's me! I'm glad you saw a fashionable and fabulous princess of Parmanie Town entering the research lab with someone else who became a princess, Samui! Of course, I only handled a portion of that mission!"
Kusabue added while smiling joyfully, "We all did very well on that mission, and it was great to work alongside people who let my brother and I be Sabertooth's newest mages!"
As Samui merely giggled at Kusabue's words and felt happy that everything went well for the big group of mages, everyone proceeded to go back into the building. There was someone who chose to stay outside the building, however, and that person was Suzuna Hiyayakana. She wore an ocean blue short dress that had laces in the back, along with a ruffled skirt in the color of sapphire blue while her high-heeled shoes were periwinkle blue with the designs of snowballs on them. Her shoes gently stepped on to the snowy ground, her feet shattering ice chunks that she unintentionally stepped on, and Suzuna merely observed the situation.
She glanced down at Fubuki's dead body, immediately identifying her as a mage from a nearby guild while she had heard rumors about Fubuki's strength. The fact that Fubuki was now dead caused Suzuna to start looking towards Lucy, as well as Risa, and she had seen the fight occur from the very beginning. Suzuna was quite impressed that Lucy redeemed herself by taking down a strong mage who wielded Snow Magic, Ice Magic, and Water Magic all at the same time while Lucy herself only wielded two types of magic in the battle.
Being able to secure herself a victory when the odds weren't logically in her favor was very interesting of Lucy, causing Suzuna to smile in a calm manner. She felt that it would be better to help Lucy out with a serious problem, however. The fact that she couldn't move fast with Kaze's Feather Dance after taking in heavy icy winds really showed Suzuna how Lucy wasn't using her Wind Magic's properties to the fullest extent, and the fact that she only recently learned how to maintain her footing on the ice made Suzuna sigh in a somewhat miffed manner.
If a mage such as Lucy wanted to survive long in the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour, then she would have to spend much more time moving on icy surfaces. That was the best way for a wind-wielding mage to move as fast as wind while using the icy ground to increase their own level of speed to a much higher level without needing to be weighed down by magic, and Suzuna felt like Lucy was one of the best candidates who could help Emiria with her task of unlocking the frosty seal in the cavern. Emiria would want a good helper other than Hiyasu, after all.
"Kotomi Takeuchi... No, Lucy Heartfilia. You're definitely one candidate that I have to keep my eyes on." Suzuna thought to herself while beginning to frown in a stern manner, before her thoughts shifted to Risa's invitation card from yesterday.
Suzuna thought to herself in a somewhat calmer manner, recalling Risa's magic and Rogue's magic, "Risa Ryusei, the psychic mage who wields the magenta-colored magic. You're also someone who could be of use. Although, your teammate seems like he may need more power to access a certain mode at an opportune time."
As Suzuna started to think about how the other mages didn't need any tips on powering up their abilities, she let her eyes glance towards the lake. The lake's water began to get calmer again while Suzuna could still sense a high amount of magic in that particular area of Seigan Town, and she was able to detect that there was nothing abnormal near the frigid cavern. From Suzuna's perspective, that meant Fubuki came alone and fought against the mages without having someone else enter the lake to possibly find out about the underwater cavern.
Suzuna proceeded to run towards a different part of Seigan Town that would allow her to enter a secret passage leading underground, and she left behind some footprints in the snow while leaving the area. Suzuna was no longer close to the fashion building, and that made Kaisui feel like she could emerge from hiding behind a somewhat distant row of snow-covered trees. She walked out from behind the trees with one hand tightly holding on to the collar of her slave, who walked on all four limbs like an animal, and Kaisui had a snobbish look on her face.
She couldn't believe that a fashion icon such as Samui Shimoyake was talking with Risa Ryusei and Kotomi Takeuchi, as that was quite grand for three prominent mages to all be in the same place, but Kaisui felt angry that those celebrities had been laughing with a certain little girl who had dark green hair. Kaisui easily recognized that girl to be Kusabue, the same little girl from yesterday who had dirtied her expensive dress with her ice cream, and Kaisui could sense that girl's magical power. She had actually been able to detect it, since Kusabue's heavy absorption of sound waves powered up her Sound Magic to a level that couldn't be ignored.
"It looks like our paths have crossed again, you filthy little brat. You can build up as much magical power as you'd like, but I'm not going to let you get away with your rude actions from yesterday." Kaisui thought to herself with an evil smirk on her face, the feeling of malice in her eyes.
Kaisui thought to herself in a scheming manner, as her lips formed a devious grin, "In fact, finding a way to fight you by myself may be very beneficial."
As Kaisui started to fixate on creating a good scheme for that thought, she made an ocean blue aura of magic lightly engulf her body. She used the aura while focusing her magical power on the space behind her, attempting to suppress some water droplets that were about to fall from her hair, and they would've landed directly behind her. Kaisui didn't exactly have eyes in the back of her head, and she didn't want any commoners or mages from the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour to see a unique ability that she wanted to keep hidden.
By keeping it hidden, Kaisui could only unleash it on opponents who would be killed by her powerful magic. They would be making her secret abilities never get out to the public, allowing the snobby and elite woman to use her spells without anyone ever being able to counter them with any prepared strategies. She would be preparing a strategy for luring Kusabue into a fight, however, and Kaisui started to softly chuckle at how Suzuna wouldn't be around to get in the way. With that assistant to Emiria and Hiyasu hopefully being gone, Kaisui could hopefully get her revenge on Kusabue.
Just thinking about the little girl's smiling face caused Kaisui to angrily clench her fists while she glanced down at her own outfit for a moment, and Kaisui wore an ocean blue strapless corset dress with sapphire blue laces in the back. The laces matched her new pair of snow boots, which were now in the shade of light blue, and Kaisui felt like she looked quite fashionable. At that moment, Kaisui started to wonder if fashion could be a useful factor in her scheming. She began to walk into the fashion show's building with her slave, and Kaisui felt like it would be important to check out all of the fashion trends pertaining to the wintery town of Seigan.
How was Chapter 47? Feel free to tell me your thoughts on it. Lucy has won the fight against Fubuki, allowing her to regain some much-needed calmness and confidence about her own abilities. Although, Lucy's abilities will need to be tempered and it seems like Suzuna is interested in helping her out in some way. Suzuna seems like she'll also help Rogue out, too. Kusabue and Kūkiatsu haven't gotten as much spotlight as the others, and it seems like they'll also have their own little mini-story in this arc. Of course, the two siblings are still Sabertooth's newest rookies in an event involving very strong rivals. The other rivals from the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour will also get more screentime in this arc, due to how the next little story is only going to be the ending to the story's first half. By the way, this is the fourth part of the Azure Ice Arc! I'll update soon. :)
REVIEWS!
FireBlitz: Thank you!
OrangeDetermination: Thank you so much!
YellowThunder5: Here it is!
GreenGrass4: Thank you so much!
BlueWater234: Thank you very much!
PurpleReis155: Thanks!
Matt: Thanks!
jennie: Thank you!
Kiri-chan: Here you go!
Sena: Thanks!