The Scars That Make You Whole

By CrimsonStarbird

Riot When the Lights Go Out, Final Part

-Misanthropoetica-

Point Nova, The Same Day

Gajeel was The Law.

Not merely a law unto himself, as his old guild had so often been described, but The Law: the long-armed precursor to Order, ready to unleash the Iron Fist of Righteous Justice upon any miscreant who happened his way, be they a legendary dark guild, a small-time crook, a corrupt politician, or a troublemaking Fairy Tail mage.

No one was above The Law. That was a lesson he delighted in teaching the villains he dragged from their evil hideouts or thrones of ill-gotten power to the nearest police station – dragged in the very literal sense, usually unconscious and by their ankle.

And since Gajeel was The Law, that meant that he, by definition, was the apex predator of the modern world.

It was a source of great disappointment for Gajeel that ten months had passed without any run-ins with his old friends from the guild, to whom he could brag about this indisputable logic. Still, Fiore wasn't short of folks who wanted to learn that lesson, and if they hadn't realized Gajeel preferred the kinaesthetic style of teaching, that was their problem. The Law was meant to be impartial, not sympathetic.

In fact, he was hot on the trail of one of these nuisances right now. Visibility was poor in the oddly foggy city, but fog was no barrier to the cacophony of noise whose source he was hunting down. It sounded like a siren wailing into a megaphone on stage at a heavy metal festival – and the entire ensemble seemed to be moving through the streets at the exact same pace as him, getting neither quieter nor louder no matter how fast he ran.

Not that The Law would ever give up. The thought of all the punishments he could inflict upon the culprit once caught spurred him on.

He wasn't strictly certain which law, if any, the audacious little sneak was breaking. The Noise Pollution Act, maybe. Or perhaps the Public Order Act. Gajeel was particularly fond of that one; last month he had finally been able to celebrate making more arrests under it since joining the Rune Knights than he himself had been arrested under it beforehand.

Either way, he'd get the vagabond for something. Anyone making such a racket deserved the harshest treatment it was within The Law's remit to inflict.

A single bound brought him to the top of a building, and he leapt from rooftop to rooftop as if weightless, not stopping to think about how this was possible as he closed in on the source of the disorder. With one last leap, he crashed to the ground behind the blurry delinquent.

Triumphantly, he seized the criminal's shoulder. "You're under arrest!" he crowed. He could barely hear himself over the thunderous ringing, but that wouldn't stop him. This was his favourite part. "You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you don't- huh?"

His arrestee turned to face him.

And it was an odd face indeed: perfectly circular; perfectly white; devoid of eyes and ears and mouth – devoid of everything, in fact, except a handlebar moustache which rotated in regular jerky steps to point at the twelve numbers printed around the circumference…

Gajeel blinked.

And woke up.

Then he groaned, flung his alarm clock across the room, and buried his head back under his pillow.

It was a real shame that The Law was expected to be in force at any and all hours of the day.

The problem with being The Law was that The Law was needed everywhere.

In fact, since joining the Rune Knights, Gajeel didn't think he had spent more than a fortnight on any one assignment. Part of this was due to his unmatched competence in making quick arrests, obviously. But whenever another region's Knight Captain submitted a request for assistance, his existing Captain was always quick to nominate him for the transfer. Each branch of the Rune Knights clearly felt bad for keeping such a masterful enforcer of The Law in one place for too long. There was an entire kingdom full of criminals out there, after all.

So off he trotted to his next mission, in proud possession of yet another letter of recommendation so glowing that he was accepted straight into the new squad no questions asked. He had travelled more during ten months of this stable, respectable job than he had in many years of adventuring as a guild mage, earning himself quite a reputation in the meantime.

(Neither Levy nor Pantherlily had quite been able to bring themselves to explain the nature of this reputation to their friend. He was far too happy within his bubble.)

This time, Gajeel hadn't even arrived at his most recent assignment before he was called away again. He had been looking forward to this one, too. Alright, undercover missions weren't really his forte, but Levy would have been the one doing the actual spy work, with him and Lily as her contacts (and military backup) on the outside. As much as Gajeel enjoyed bossing around the new recruits under his command – and he really, really did – the thought of a top-secret mission involving just the three ex-Fairy Tail mages, like old times, had appealed to him immensely.

But no, he had been summoned back, and Levy had been left to infiltrate the dark cult on her own, with Lily as her only backup.

The new mission was the usual story.

Details: Classified.

Priority: Highest.

Location: some godforsaken military compound outside Crocus.

As far as Gajeel could tell, the Fiorean Royal Army had taken custody of some artefact that was being sought by a group of rogue mages unknown. Not wanting to hand it over to the Rune Knights – the distrust between the secular and magical authorities was mutual – but grudgingly forced to admit that their own intelligence network may have been compromised, the military had requested support from the Rune Knights to help protect it until the culprits were found.

For reasons entirely relating to his prowess as a champion of law and order, and with no ulterior motives whatsoever, the Rune Knights had sent Gajeel.

Which meant that, rather than beating up a dark cult alongside a certain attractive Solid Script mage, he was stuck patrolling an underground corridor all on his own for an indefinite amount of time, with his only hope for escape being someone else catching the unknown criminals who were after the artefact.

Great.

Checking his watch for the fourth time that minute, Gajeel turned on his heel and marched back past the vault doors, noting idly that if he died of boredom and woke up the next minute in purgatory, he probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

The thing was, Gajeel's law was more the proactive kind.

He was proud to say that he went out looking for trouble – in order to put a swift end to it, of course. He preferred to catch crooks red-handed. Well, often their entire bodies were various shades of red from developing bruises once he was through enthusiastically apprehending them.

What sort of weak-ass law let the villains break it first, and then arrested them? No, on Gajeel's watch, The Law was zealously protected from those who tried to break it, by launching pre-emptive raids against self-professed dark guilds before their evil plans could leave the planning stage.

(Joining the Rune Knights had, in retrospect, been an excellent way of getting around the Council's ban on inter-guild warfare, and if his activities over the past few months had prompted an avalanche of legislation attempting to close that little loophole… well, at least no one could say he hadn't left his mark on the Knights during his time there.)

Needless to say, waiting for the criminals to come to him didn't sit right with Gajeel.

But that was the job he had been landed with: standing in front of this vault and waiting for some unknown malefactors to attempt to steal its contents, just so that he could stop them if they did.

There were no words for how much Gajeel would rather have been out there tracking the felons down himself, but what sort of embodiment of The Law would he be if he ignored a direct order?

So, for the fifth day in a row, he stood outside the vault and waited for something exciting to happen.

Not that the odds were particularly good on that. Even if the criminal gang managed to track the artefact they sought to this perfectly ordinary compound, Gajeel was, regrettably, rather late in the lines of defence. First there was the barbed wire fence and the regular patrols, backed up by floodlights and security cameras. Then, of all the indistinguishable grey buildings in the compound, they'd have to find the one which was connected to the underground bunker – bearing in mind that the reinforced door which opened said connection required a code known only by those high up in the Royal Army itself.

In the main corridor of the bunker, in front of the secure vault, waited the Iron Dragon Slayer. Inside the vault was a small safe which contained the treasure that this whole setup was meant to protect. Made of magically reinforced steel, the safe was rumoured to even be impervious to a dragon's breath attack.

As one of the few people alive who had met – let alone fought – a dragon, Gajeel had better cause than most to suspect this was hyperbole, but it was irrelevant, because testing the safe's defences meant that the criminal would have already got past Gajeel.

And that wasn't going to happen.

No, seriously, it wasn't going to happen, because in five whole days nothing more exciting had happened than the game of Guess The Grey Sludge hosted daily by the compound's canteen, and Gajeel was certain that if the people investigating this potential theft didn't make a breakthrough soon, he was going to go insane.

At 9:15 PM precisely, the lights went out.

Gajeel knew this because watching his watch was marginally more interesting than staring at the ceiling, and so he'd been doing it when the lights went out.

About bloody time wasn't quite the first thought to cross his mind – The Law couldn't be seen condoning any attempts to break it – but it was a close-run thing, and he was fighting down the excitement of potential combat even as the more righteous part of his mind was working out how best to protect the contents of the safe from whatever had caused the blackout.

He did not panic as the corridor was plunged into darkness, instead mentally flipping over to rely on his enhanced senses of hearing and smell. The patter of footsteps tickled the edge of his hearing – but they were far away, reverberations felt through the ceiling rather than the floor. If there were intruders, they hadn't yet made it to the bunker.

In the distance, an alarm began to sound.

To any guild mage, it would have been an irresistible temptation, but Gajeel wasn't a guild mage. He wouldn't fall for the obvious distraction. He was The Law, and The Law was – in flagrant defiance of his instincts – patient.

Humming to himself, Gajeel pulled a small lacrima from his pocket and tossed it into the air. It caught and hung there, as if gravity had been switched off mid-arc, and began emitting a warm golden light.

Satisfied, he settled back against the vault door, made his preparations, and waited.

For the first time in what felt like forever, he wasn't waiting long.

There was an odd cadence to the footsteps coming down the corridor. Too fast for a walk, too irregular for a sprint – it sounded an awful lot like someone was skipping towards the vault.

Huh. Maybe the villains were as cheerful at the thought of finally getting to do something as Gajeel was.

A figure rounded the corner. Gajeel caught a glimpse of a small girl wearing a dress that could only be described as cute, with a large black bow in her fuchsia-pink hair. That's an odd outfit to wear for a heist, the Dragon Slayer thought to himself, even as his right arm extended into an iron pole which smacked her straight back into the far wall.

"Hey!" she spluttered, outraged. "How dare you attack a young girl without warning? What kind of savages are the Rune Knights hiring these days?"

"Gehehe." Smirking, Gajeel struck again and again, sending her hopping frantically around the corridor to a chorus of yelps and cracking plaster. "Justice is blind, remember? The Law don't care if you're old, young, rich or poor. You obviously ain't supposed to be down here, so I'm gonna beat you up."

"Alright, geez!"

Jumping one last blow, the girl skidded to a stop and brushed plaster dust from her skirt in a vain attempt to restore her image. "You got me. I'm not really a lost little girl. I'm Mary, dark mage of Avatar!"

"Never heard of you," Gajeel grunted.

In fact, he had heard of Avatar – had heard it mentioned once before, in connection to a mission he had never got the chance to go on. There was no way in hell he was letting her know that, though. Not when Levy's cover could depend on it.

"Not at all?" Mary pouted.

"Nope."

"But we're the disciples of almighty Zeref, ruling over the underworld in his name!"

"Uh-huh. Didja not pay attention to what happened to the last guilds that tried that?"

"Don't- don't lump us in with those faithless fools!"

"At least one of 'em had their leader murdered by the very guy they worshipped, all 'cause they disturbed his rest or something. And Levy says I'm grouchy in the mornings."

"S-Silence, infidel!" the dark mage blustered. "I'll teach you to fear true black magic!"

And she pointed her index finger dramatically towards Gajeel's stomach.

A long moment passed in silence.

"Is something supposed to be happening?" Gajeel checked.

"I don't understand!" Mary exclaimed. "Why isn't my virus affecting you?"

Gajeel shrugged. "I eat iron. My digestive system's basically indestructible."

"…Oh." Triumphantly, Mary swung her finger up to point towards Gajeel's head instead. "Then I'll just make my virus target your-"

Gajeel's iron pole caught her full in the face.

The blow catapulted her out of the corridor and halfway back up the stairs. He could hear her scramble out of the bunker, wailing at the top of her lungs: "Briar! I could use a little help down here! He isn't playing fair!"

There came a sigh, followed by the sound of high heels clicking against the stairs in a confident walk. Gajeel let his arm shift into its familiar iron blade form. This time, it was an adult woman who emerged into the corridor – though she didn't look any more like a typical criminal than Mary did. There weren't enough dark colours in her bikini-like outfit, and there were far too many sequins.

From behind Briar's back, Mary stuck her tongue out at him.

That was as good an invitation as any. Sword held high, Gajeel charged down the corridor towards them.

Still, there was something decidedly unnerving about the way Briar was eyeing him. She didn't look like she was going to dodge at all – and then she did dodge, alarmingly fast, his initial strike and the two follow-ups. After months of fighting minor criminals in way over their heads against a Dragon Slayer, such competence made the alarm bells in his mind ring even louder than the ones screeching through the compound.

That was why he checked the final swing in his combo.

That was why her palm only landed a glancing blow to the flat of his blade.

Pain lanced at once through Gajeel's arm. His arm reverted automatically back to normal. Retreating to a cautious distance, he was horrified to find a deep cut beginning to fill with crimson upon his forearm. He flexed the limb, and it moved smoothly, though it felt like a venomous beast was skewering him with needles up to his elbow. If he hadn't trusted his instincts, it would have cut all the way through to his bone.

How the hell had she done that through his iron plating?

"How'd you like that?" Mary giggled. "There's nothing Briar's magic can't split!"

"We'll see about that," Gajeel growled.

Not that he had any intention of testing her abilities, of course. His greatest advantage was his defence – if that was compromised, this could quickly escalate into one of the most difficult battles The Law had ever faced.

Instead, he dropped back, channelling his power into a breath attack that swallowed the entire corridor. She endured it. The largest of the iron shards split apart into fragments upon contact with her magic, and the smaller ones hardly fazed her. Cursing, Gajeel followed this up by charging directly at her.

Briar raised her hand almost lazily to deflect his fist – but it never made contact. Gajeel's punch was aimed towards the ground, and his fist transformed again into an iron pole, which he used as a pivot to kick the dark mage in the side with all his momentum behind it. She was flung back into Mary; both villains hit the wall and went down in a heap.

Unfortunately, he could hardly press his advantage. The battlefield was too compact for him to unleash any of his best finishing moves, and he couldn't risk anything too destructive in the middle of the army's bunker. (Nothing to do with being a good, law-abiding Rune Knight, that; he just didn't fancy bringing down the ceiling on top of himself.)

"Quit playing around, Briar!" Mary shrieked, wriggling out from underneath her fellow cultist. "Destroy him, already!"

With a long-suffering sigh, Briar touched her palm to her own chest. Cracks identical to the one in Gajeel's arm streaked across her body – then, as he blinked in confusion at this apparent self-destruction, the cracks flashed white and her splitting magic split herself into four identical copies.

Great. Now there were four of them. And any one could split his body open with a single touch.

Gajeel cursed, and then wasted no more time in unleashing a quick Roar – which went clean over the heads of the quartet of identical cultists.

"Ha! You missed!" Mary crowed.

He didn't even have time to quip I wasn't aiming for you before his attack smashed the glowing lacrima and a tidal wave of darkness engulfed the battlefield.

After all, there was only one reason why a Dragon Slayer, who had a natural advantage over ordinary humans when fighting in total darkness, would choose to undo that darkness himself with a light-emitting lacrima: namely, to give himself an even bigger advantage later. (So Levy had told him when he'd complained about having to carry the same utility belt as all the other Rune Knights, anyway.)

As Mary gave a startled shout, Gajeel burst into motion. Sound. Scent. The texture of the air; the vibrations of the tunnel floor. Those sensations were his guides when everyone else was blinded.

Lunging forwards, he ran his blade clean through the heart of the first duplicate. The second flailed in the direction of the sound, but he could judge the distance far better than she could; he swayed aside and severed her hand at the wrist. This he followed up by driving an elbow extended by a wicked steel spike into her gut. Well, he only needed one of them to bring in for questioning.

"Got it!" Mary exclaimed, igniting her own light lacrima with a faint click.

Briar adjusted quickly to the light's return, spotting and then ducking a slash that should have decapitated her third self. She retaliated by flashing her palm directly toward Gajeel's chest – which he dodged by letting himself fall backwards.

He hit the ground and didn't stop, falling straight through where the floor should have been and disappearing into his own shadow, as cast by Mary's lacrima. That power he'd nicked from Rogue really did come in handy.

Before the dark mages could work out where he'd gone, he peeked out from the third Briar's shadow and pulled her leg out from beneath her. Gajeel burst completely from the floor, following it up with a slash from his blade before she had even hit the ground. There was a shower of blood, and then the body and the blood vanished, and there was only the real Briar left-

Whose hand reached out and slapped against his right shin.

Four lethal opponents at once was just too many.

Mary watched with satisfaction as Gajeel collapsed to the ground, clutching his broken leg and screaming.

"Serves you right," she giggled. She skirted round the Dragon Slayer as he rolled around on the floor in shrieking agony. "Come on, Briar. Let's grab what we came for and get out of here."

Briar placed her hand on the vault doors. There was a sound like tectonic plates colliding, and the reinforced metal split in two, falling away to either side. The Avatar mages stepped eagerly into the vault – and stopped.

As expected, inside the vault sat a magic-reinforced steel safe.

They had, however, assumed that the safe would have a door.

But, no. The safe was completely open and completely empty. The door lay on the ground… looking an awful lot as if someone had chewed straight through the hinges.

Steel enchanted to resist a dragon's breath attack was still steel, after all.

In the ensuing silence, they slowly registered that the melodramatic screaming from outside had stopped.

"Get him!" Mary shrieked, turning back towards the corridor – just as one last Iron Dragon's Roar brought the ceiling down, sealing the dark mages in the empty vault.

Gajeel, not being a total idiot, had used his shadow-jumping trick to steal the treasure from inside the vault as soon as he had become aware of the intruders.

Well, it wasn't really stealing if he planned to give it back as soon as the danger had passed.

And even if it was, the best thing about being The Law was that you couldn't exactly be prosecuted for breaking yourself.

At least, Gajeel hoped that was how it worked.

Gajeel staggered out of the bunker with the contents of the safe resting securely in his knapsack. Although not quite as badly wounded as he had pretended, he still wasn't in a good way. He could only walk at all by forming iron plates around his leg to act as a makeshift splint, with his arm doubling as a crutch in iron pole form. He had been fortunate that Briar's magic had resulted in a very clean break, but every step he took on it pushed it closer to the point from which it would never recover.

Above ground, the compound was in chaos. The lights were still out, and the fast-retreating sunset offered little illumination. He suspected the Avatar mages had at least one person on their team who was capable of short-circuiting the security cameras and the floodlights all in one go. Bodies were strewn across the ground, while the soldiers still on their feet dashed back and forth without any apparent purpose.

Gajeel knew the appropriate course of action would be to find his commanding officer and hand over the stolen artefact. Unfortunately, while his faith in The Law was unshakeable, his faith in his fellow law enforcers, especially in the non-magical Royal Army, was not quite so absolute. The fact that Avatar couldn't have made it into the bunker without the help of a high-ranked soldier was not lost on Gajeel.

No, it would be better if he kept hold of it for now, and returned it once all this had quietened down.

It was simple enough to slip out of the compound amidst the chaos. Only once the military base was out of sight did he hunker down amidst the dark countryside and pull out the small sack he had taken from the safe.

"Huh," he remarked.

Inside the sack was a single book. It sat innocuously on his knee, worn brown cover stained black in the moonlight. It wasn't quite the apocalyptic weapon he had been expecting, but then again, it wasn't as if he'd learnt nothing from ten months of having Levy as his partner-in-stopping-crime. A surprisingly dangerous dark cult had gone to great lengths to try and retrieve it, so the odds on it containing some forbidden magic were good.

Not that he was the person to ask. The book was in some language he didn't understand, written by someone whose name he didn't recognize. Levy would have known, but then Levy wasn't with him – she was busy infiltrating the very cult from whose agents he had only just escaped. A heart not quite as iron as he liked to pretend twisted in worry.

Thinking about it, that Avatar lot had mentioned Zeref, hadn't they? Struck by a sudden thought, Gajeel raised the book towards his face, inhaling deeply through flared nostrils. Leather, dust, age, glue – all smells he had become surprisingly familiar with over the past ten months – and soot both old and new, but he couldn't smell anything magical.

Satisfied that the book wasn't going to turn into a demon on him, he let out the breath he had been holding-

"You know you're supposed to read books with your eyes, right?" came a familiar voice. "Not put them in your mouth?"

"Oh, like you know how to read," Gajeel snapped back on instinct, turning to glower at the speaker.

Natsu grinned at him through the darkness. "Long time no see, Gajeel!"

"Same to you," Gajeel grunted. "Where the hell have you been hiding, this past year?"

"I've been training in the mountains! Just you wait 'til you see how much stronger I am!" Natsu clapped his hand to his bandaged forearm – and then a worrying light appeared in his eyes. "Hey, why not? Gajeel! I challenge you to a fight right now!"

"Nah."

Natsu's jaw dropped. It took several moments for him to stammer, "But- but- but why not?"

The Iron Dragon Slayer gave a dismissive shrug. On any other day, he'd have jumped at Natsu's challenge. Right now, though… well, the last thing he wanted was to explain that he couldn't participate in a good old-fashioned Fairy Tail challenge because he could hardly walk after letting two criminals get the better of him.

"This ain't a good time," he shrugged. "I got more important things to do."

Natsu bounced impatiently from foot to foot. "Like what? You're not doing anything!"

"I'm in the middle of my shift!" Gajeel retorted, gesturing at his full Rune Knight uniform. "What, didja think I was wearing this for fun?"

"Uh," said Natsu.

"What?"

"I… actually thought you'd put it on so that you could sneak into the military base and steal that old book as a present for Levy."

"I would never do anything like that!" he blustered, cursing himself mentally for not having thought of that himself. "I am The Law! The bane of criminals everywhere! Try to steal anything on my watch and I'll sling your ass straight in jail!"

Natsu blinked. "Wait, you genuinely joined the Rune Knights?"

"Damn right I did!"

Natsu stared at him.

Then he snorted.

Then he could no longer restrain himself, and he burst out laughing.

"What's so funny?" demanded Gajeel.

"Literally everything you just said," Natsu gasped, wiping a tear from his eye.

"Quit it! I am The Law, and The Law is not mocked!"

By this point, Natsu was laughing so hard he couldn't breathe, and some detached part of Gajeel was wondering if he should start exploring this as a battle strategy.

"Well," he sniffed, "we'll see who's laughing when you're under arrest. I ain't fighting you now, though. I got things to do."

He would have got up and walked purposefully away at that, but he remembered at the last minute the broken bones that the adrenaline had entirely numbed, and he settled for turning away and waiting for his fellow ex-Fairy Tail mage to leave. The sound of Natsu's mirth soon faded, although the sound of retreating footsteps failed to replace it.

Come to think of it, what was Natsu doing here? He couldn't have been looking for Gajeel if he hadn't known he was a Rune Knight now, so… he just happened to be hanging out in the middle of nowhere looking for someone to fight?

"You really won't fight me, for old times' sake?" Natsu asked.

"The Law ain't stooping to such barbaric behaviour," Gajeel retorted, wishing Natsu would just go away.

"…Oh. I was kinda hoping we'd be able to do this in a friendly way."

"Whaddya mean?"

"Thing is, Gajeel… I need that book you're holding."

"Protecting this is the duty of The Law! I ain't giving it to you!"

"I know," Natsu said.

That was all the warning Gajeel got before Natsu was hurtling towards him in a blaze of fire.

Gajeel was ready for him.

Dodging was out, so he was going to have to improvise. He punched downwards with the hand not holding the book, and his arm became a pole of iron. It hit the ground and kept extending, forcing him into the air and clean over Natsu's opening attack.

Showing off his impressive body strength, Gajeel rotated an extra half-turn in the air and touched down on his free hand. With most of the impact absorbed into his wrist and his elbow – which buckled but held – he flipped over and swung his uninjured leg down to the ground, followed by his makeshift cast.

Although he managed to stand, the pain was already beginning to break through the barrier of willpower and adrenaline. Even an iron dragon's endurance had its limits. The last thing he wanted was for their reunion battle to be fought under circumstances like these.

And he had no say in the matter. Natsu was already inhaling for a breath attack, unleashing an enormous beam of flames so hot the very air spat like red-orange plasma. As he turned, the beam cut a line of melted devastation across the countryside.

Gajeel growled. Normally, he'd have charged Natsu to disrupt the attack before it could reach him – or, failing that, he'd have got the hell out of there. Neither were options right now.

So he endured it, forming the thickest scales possible over his skin as he crossed his arms in a token defensive posture. For a terrifying moment, he thought it wouldn't be enough. The flames he remembered from their last battle were lukewarm compared to the intense burning against his armour. Just how much stronger had Natsu become in those ten months?

The moment the assault let up, he let the scales vanish, taking the residual heat with them. Belatedly, he remembered the book in his hand. Somehow, it had been completely unharmed by the flames. Interesting. Maybe he could use it as a shield.

Then again, Levy might never speak to him again if he did that, so he shoved it into his bag just to be safe.

"What do you want with a book, anyway?" he called across to Natsu. "Reading ain't exactly your strong point."

"It's…" Natsu began, and then scowled. "It's a long story. I need it to get to Zeref."

"Zeref? That's what those Avatar fools said, too."

"That's right. I'm a mage of Avatar now."

There was a moment of silence.

"That," stated Gajeel, "is the most unlikely thing I've ever heard, and I joined the Rune Knights."

"It's the truth!" Natsu insisted.

"You're the worst undercover agent I've ever seen."

"Just give me the book, Gajeel!"

"Ain't. Gonna."

"Fine!" With a blaze of white-hot flames, Natsu launched himself forwards. Gajeel tried to dodge, was reminded of his bad leg by a jolt of pain, and blocked the blow instead. The dragonfire bursting from Natsu's fist caught his scales when they were only half-formed. Agony splashed across his torso.

Natsu's gaze flicked to Gajeel's injured leg and back, and he felt a stab of panic. If Natsu had deduced his weakness, the fight would be over in an instant…

But Natsu simply punched him again. Bellowing, Gajeel retaliated with a punch of his own. Natsu twisted with it, and completed the rotation by driving his blazing elbow up and into Gajeel. The spiral of superheated air launched him skyward.

It seemed somewhat ironic to Gajeel that the heaviest and least agile of all the Dragon Slayers was spending so much of this battle in the air – but then again, maybe he could work with it. If he couldn't walk, why shouldn't he turn this into an aerial fight?

Also, they were outside now. That meant he could go crazy.

His enormous Karma Demon Blade formed while he was still in mid-air. Magic, strength, and gravity fused together, and he brought it crashing down towards his opponent with a wicked laugh.

It wasn't enough.

Natsu had somehow blocked the blade with both arms, never mind that fact that it was broader than he was tall. The entire weapon was glowing an unhealthy shade of red. Where it was in contact with Natsu's body, the metal was already beginning to warp from the heat.

Even worse, Gajeel was about to hit the ground again.

Scowling, he spat an Iron Dragon's Roar at Natsu from point-blank range. Natsu dived aside as the huge sword vanished, but hitting him hadn't been the point – the recoil pushed Gajeel back up into the air, out of a frustrated Natsu's reach once again. Heavy they may be, but iron dragons could fly just as well as any other-

Iron dragons could fly.

It was a reckless idea, but Gajeel seized it with the audacity found only in the heat of battle. He generated his iron scales once again, only this time he focussed on exactly where the magic flowed along his skin. When it reached its natural end, he forced it to keep going, channelling all the power he had into it – until it broke free from his body to form a pair of plate iron wings.

Gajeel was so startled by his own success that he almost fell out of the sky.

Thankfully, he was now able to do something about that. Recovering with a thunderous wingbeat, he righted himself and gazed triumphantly at an equally astonished Natsu. "It worked!"

Wings pounded again. The downdraft cracked the earth as if he'd hit it with a giant hammer; Gajeel rose higher into the sky. "Why'd I not think of this before?" he crowed.

"That's not fair!" Natsu protested, stamping his foot on the ground. "I wanna do that too!"

Concentrating, he made two wings of pure fire erupt from his back, and he gave them an experimental beat.

Nothing happened. Insubstantial wings couldn't take him anywhere.

"It's not funny!" Natsu yelled up at Gajeel, who swept by, sniggering as he did so. "Get back here!"

Gajeel responded by turning a gleeful loop-the-loop – which snapped into a sudden dive, and the Iron Dragon Slayer punched his opponent with a force he would never have been able to achieve without gravity's assistance. Natsu was sent sprawling across the earth as Gajeel soared away, still sniggering.

"Who's the coolest Dragon Slayer in Fairy Tail now, huh?" he smirked.

Because for a moment, they had just been two Fairy Tail mages, competing because they were alive and they loved it.

Then Natsu seemed to remember where he was, and the spark faded from his eyes. "I told you," he grunted. "I ain't a Fairy Tail mage any more. I'll prove it."

Light blazed dawn-bright, and he was gone.

"Eh?" Gajeel blinked.

He flipped over to see Natsu descending towards him, his feet still burning with the remnants of the magic that had launched him upwards faster than Gajeel's new wings could manage. Unearthly wind rushed past Gajeel. All the oxygen in the area was being drawn to the inferno that was Natsu's presence.

"Fire Dragon King's-" Natsu was bellowing.

All Gajeel could do was funnel as much magic as possible into his defence… and pray.

"-Demolition Fist!"

The universe exploded. Gone was the night, gone the stars above and earth below, and in their place was enough energy to make them all anew. There was no air to carry Gajeel's scream, but he screamed anyway. The pain demanded it.

Amidst the blinding atomic orange spun tendrils of thick black smoke as iron combusted in the heat. Crushed between intense burning and explosive force, hurled into a volcano just as an earthquake caved it in on top of him, he screamed in the molten core of the planet – and somehow didn't die.

Somehow, the magic faded and the world was still there, intact, and even more incredulously, he was still perceiving it. His improvised wings had melted into nothing, but his plate armour had held out, and the skin beneath was raw but unbroken.

Natsu landed and staggered, regarding his fellow Dragon Slayer with astonishment.

This was why Gajeel had trained so hard to strengthen his defensive as well as his offensive magic: all for this, the perfect moment to turn the tables.

Across the twisted black wasteland of their battlefield, a spark rekindled itself Natsu's eyes. "I shoulda known the first person to take that and remain standing would be you, Gajeel." The Fire Dragon Slayer grinned even as his shoulders heaved with exhaustion. An orb of fire burst back to life around his fist. "Bring it, Gajeel!"

"Gehehe. You're on, Sala-"

Something smashed into Gajeel's broken leg.

The Dragon Slayer screamed louder than he had in the face of Natsu's attempt to replicate the conditions of the Big Bang. There was nothing melodramatic about it this time. Crippling pain short-circuited his brain. All thoughts of continuing the fight – of doing anything except lying there – fled at once.

Through watery, dimming vision, he saw another figure stroll by. He smelled familiar, but at the same time, not familiar at all. Half his face was stained in violet darkness; a mallet of pure ice swung casually from his hand.

"What the hell was that for?" Natsu half-shrieked. "We were just getting to the good bit!"

"You were taking too long," Gray yawned. "Anyone would think you were here for a cute rematch with a former guildmate, not a vitally important mission."

Hotly, Natsu demanded, "Why can't I do both?"

The ice mage gave a long-suffering sigh. It grated against Gajeel's whimpers. "You really are hopeless at this, aren't you? Arlock is no fool. The only way you'll be able to convince him that you're truly willing to do anything to reach Zeref is by proving that your old friends mean nothing to you. Watch."

He tossed the ice mallet to himself, easily, then turned suddenly and slammed it into Gajeel's leg once more.

Blood burst black in the moonlight. More of it than should have been possible. It stained the smashed bone fragments the same non-colour as his mangled flesh. Waves ebbed and flowed again with every heartbeat, spilling his burning spirit, his vitality, his sanity out onto thirsty ground.

An exclamation of horror burst from Natsu's lips. "Gajeel-!"

"It's just his leg," Gray assured him, rolling his eyes. "It's hardly a fatal wound. But it looks horrific, doesn't it? No one can see that and accuse me of still having ties to my old guild. This is what deep cover means, Natsu. If you aren't up to it, give up your quest to find Zeref and go back to Fairy Tail."

Rage flashed in Natsu's eyes. "He's gonna be okay, right?"

"Course he is. Dragon Slayers are tough, right?"

"But what if he can't walk again-?"

"That's what Wendy's for, isn't it? You must have heard about the guild getting back together. She'll put him right in no time. Believe in your friends, right, Natsu?" Sighing, Gray retrieved the ancient book from Gajeel's blood-soaked knapsack. "It would have looked better if you'd dealt the final blow yourself, but we'll take what we can get. He would probably have got away if you hadn't been able to track him by scent, so that'll win you some points with Arlock, I suppose."

"But…"

"I told you, Natsu. If you want any chance of infiltrating Avatar, you have to do exactly as I say." Snapping shut the tome that Gajeel had given everything to protect, Gray added, "Anyway, we're done here. Let's go and dig Briar and Mary out of the collapsed bunker."

"…Fine."

The vibrations of the ice mage's footsteps faded to nothing.

Natsu threw one last awkward glance over his shoulder, to where his friend lay crippled on the ground. Sorry, he mouthed, and then he, too, disappeared into the night.

Hardly a fatal wound.

Hardly a fatal wound.

That's what Gray had said, but if that were true, why did Gajeel feel like he was dying?

His iron skin was near-impenetrable from the outside, but it seemed as vulnerable as any flesh to piercing from the inside. Briar's break had been clean, unnaturally so; Gray's blow had shattered it, pulverized it, driven spears of his own bone out through his skin, rupturing blood vessels and ripping apart flesh in the process.

It wasn't the pain that scared him. It was the lethargy. It was the readiness of that indomitable dragon's heart to lay down and give in.

He knew that if his eyes closed now, they would never open again. He knew that. And yet…

But The Law couldn't yield. Not while his own friends were running round destroying military bases. Not while there were unrepentant criminals on the loose. Not when he was the only one who knew how powerful Avatar's elites truly were – and the magnitude of the danger Levy and Lily were walking into.

Before he knew it, he was standing. He summoned his wings, but did not have the strength to lift himself – so one foot and two arms-turned-crutches it was, dragging his battered, breaking body onwards.

In the distance, the lights of Crocus flickered.

One foot in front of the other. One breath after another, for all the good it did, when it sloshed ineffectually in iron lungs and spun swirls across his vision.

A drop of water hit his shoulder, sizzling against burnt skin. Then another, then another.

Funeral rain.

It knew he wasn't going to make it.

He was in the streets of Crocus now, no clear memory of the transition from scorched wasteland to soft grass to paved road, but the hospital was on the far side of the city and he wasn't going to make it.

He was on his own. Lily and Levy were on the other side of the kingdom. His friends were scattered, the pieces having fallen not merely in different locations, but on opposite sides of the playing field.

Of all the people he had come to trust during his time as a Fairy Tail mage, the only two physically close enough to come to his aid were the two who had left him in this state.

Unless…

Unless that fresh scent drifting across his nostrils wasn't a hallucination.

Ten months ago, its owner wouldn't exactly have been his first choice in an emergency… but she was here.

On he staggered, through the rain and through the night, and his passage added an ugly crimson stream to the rivulets already running between the cobbles.