Gray led us up the path that led us to some kind of temple or whatever to stop the summoning ritual of some stupid beast, and the story began to unfold. I didn't really care about the history behind this monster, I just wanted to kill it.

"So Lyon's ultimate goal was to defeat the demon," explained Gray.

"To defeat Deliora? That's why he wanted to summon it? But wait, then what's the point? Isn't the demon, like, half-defeated already?" panted Lucy.

Gray stopped to take a breather, and so did we. "Lyon's ultimate goal was to surpass Ur. But now that Ur is gone, he wants to defeat the demon that Ur couldn't, in order to surpass her."

"I see, so that's the only way to surpass one who's dead."

"No… Lyon doesn't know the truth. Ur may be gone, but what he doesn't know… is that she's still alive!"

"What?!" we all cried.

"What do you mean?" said Erza.

"...Let me explain. Ten years ago, the city where I lived was attacked by the demon Deliora. It didn't even take a full day for it to be destroyed. Ur and Lyon found me under a pile of wreckage, and that's how it all began."

Gray told us about how he acquired his weird habit of stripping his clothes, because of his training in the snow to learn his Ice-Make Magic. Then one day he left Ur and Lyon because he had heard that Deliora had moved somewhere close by. I realized he had similar goals as me, to defeat the monster who destroyed his town and avenge his mother and father. Which reminded me why I was there in the first place; to grow stronger and defeat Elementia. That would push me even harder to my ultimate goal, to vanquish the entire world of evildoing.

As we ran along, the temple came into view. It was kind of weird though, because it looked very tilted.

"Huh…? It's tilted?" muttered Lucy.

"I'll bet Natsu did it," said Gray. "Not sure why or how he did it, but only he would do something that crazy. But it really doesn't matter whether he did it on purpose or not, because now the moonlight can't shine on Deliora."

"Who knew that Natsu's insatiable hunger for destruction would come in handy one of these days?" said Lucy.

"I knew it. It was foreshadowed," said Happy.

Suddenly, his cat senses kicked in, and it was just in time, as many upon many sharp boomerangs shot out of the trees, straight at us.

"Oh no!" screamed Lucy. A blade was headed straight for my face, but I put up my arm to block it in time. the n others came, and I performed these crazy acrobatic stunts I never knew I had in me. But then, I began to feel weird, like there was a disturbance in my energy force. It had that familiar feeling, but I couldn't place it. I straightened myself up, but as I looked around, I saw that the boomerangs had taken a toll on the others, and razor sharp blades were sticking out of their bodies, slowly killing them.

"Heheheh… we've finally defeated you, Fairy Tail. We can't allow you to interfere with Master Reitei. You're the only survivor. No way could you take on all of us at once," said a voice, and then I saw them all, a large group of people, all wearing strange masks and cloaks and wielding large boomerangs.

A sudden anger began to rise over me…

No. Don't lose your cool. Not now… what if this is just another hallucination, like before? I told myself. Then, looking down at their bodies, the blood dripping out of their all their open wounds, the head, the heart, the disabled arms and legs…

What if it's NOT?! I screamed internally, clenching my fists and gritting my teeth. My eyebrows curled and darkened my expression. Without seeing their expressions, I knew they were laughing. Laughing at me.

They killed my friends. Now they'll pay. I could hear the champion of Sinnoh, Cynthia's voice echoing in my mind: "You may not be able forgive a person, but that doesn't mean you have to kill them!" Cynthia, you may have stopped me from killing anyone back then, and I haven't since then… but you know what...

FUCK THAT!

With a mighty roar, I rushed at the group with my arms ignited, jumped in the air doing a 360, then landing a Flame Cross Chop on the front group. There were still many others, but my reflexes were quick and I was able to land many attacks with minor scratches.

"You… killed… MY FRIENNNDDS!" I screamed, quickly Mega Evolving, then Giga Evolving, then pressure on my body rose to a monumental scale. My teeth ground hard as energy overflowed, too much for my body to handle. But I pushed my limits, I had to, if I had to be the strongest. My left arm grew larger, larger than my ever growing masculine body, adopting a line of razor claw-like spikes from my shoulder to my wrist. Then curved metal claws began ripping out of my body, the bone tearing my skin, making me unapproachable. Long coils of fire began wrapping around my metal arm, engulfing it entirely. As I aimed my arm at the group, the insane energy burst out of my arm uncontrollably, incinerating nearly all of the members.

I began a dash at the remaining survivors, but my uncontrollable energy cloaked me in flames once again, immediately launching me forward at speeds previously incapable. The force of the impact combined with the intense temperature of the blazing cloak of flame disintegrated the last few enemies, leaving me as the last man standing. However, my victory was rather short lived, as my body could handle Giga Evolution no further, and I transformed back into my regular form.

That was my last memory before I blacked out again.

xxxx

"...Ughh… my head… everything hurts. Hold on. Where… where the hell… am I…?" I expected be in another lucid Elementia dream, but instead, I felt completely wide awake. Voices could be heard, chatting, laughing, and having fun. Sitting up, I noticed I was in some kind of tent. Soreness overcame me, and it was a struggle to stand.

"Is there… a party going on? A festival…?" I pondered, but all questions were answered once I took a peek, as a huge banquet was being held by the natives, and Erza, Happy, Lucy, and Natsu were all sitting around as well, (Gray was being flustered by a group of demon-girls) all alive and well. But wait, did that mean that it was another hallucination? What was going on there? These mind-boggling questions entered my brain, causing a war of questions and answers to break out. I shook my head clear and began to exit the tent, but as I stepped out, I realized I was shirtless.

"Ack!" I yipped as I darted back into the tent. I had a feeling that Erza and the others noticed me, so before one of them could barge into the tent, I searched around for the shirt I was wearing before. I spotted the purple shirt in the corner of the tent, folded up, along with my jacket and my fedora sitting on top of the pile. Quickly, I struggled to get my shirt on, just in time. Erza opened the flap on the tent, just as I pulled my shirt down over my bare chest.

"Sup," my voice cracked awkwardly as I whipped around to face her. I blindly reached for my jacket and fedora like a complete dumbass, and finally gave up and glanced over my shoulder to accurately locate them. Erza couldn't help but smirk, just a lighthearted, rare Erza smile.

"It's alright. I was the one one who undressed you. You need not to be embarrassed," she assured.

… There was an awkward silence.

"I know that was meant to be reassuring, but somehow I don't really find it to be," I chuckled. "Let's not make this any more awkward than it already is. I have to ask you something."

"Sure. I'll bet you have a lot of questions, but all can be explained to you in time."

"Um, it's about that thing that happened with those bad guys earlier. What did I do? Did I seriously hurt anyone? I only did so because I thought you were all dead…"

"Let me tell you. No, you didn't seriously hurt or kill anyone," she said. Thank god, I sighed. "But you did certainly yell very loudly and angrily that they killed us. Gray, Natsu, and Happy were confused and thought you had gone insane, just as I had thought, but I had to explain to them that those were the aftereffects of your training. Then you beat up everyone in the group after transforming, then I only assume that it was too much for you to handle, because you passed out."

"Okay, but what happened to the demon? Deliora?"

"It turned out that Deliora's life force had been drained due to the Iced Shell that Ur had cast. The Moon Drip ceremony had taken effect, but Natsu defeated Deliora in one attack because it was on the brink of death."

"Okay. One thing I don't understand is, I stepped out for a second, and everyone besides you guys are demons! Why? I thought you said they were half-demons?"

"I'll explain," said Erza.

So she told me, the inhabitants of the island had lost their memories due to the purple moon; the Moon Drip had caused a transparent layer of film to loom overhead, making the natives lose their memories of being demons, and they assumed the forms of humans instead, believing they were half- monster and a curse had been cast on the island three years prior, when Lyon and his gang had started the Moon Drip ceremony. With everyone at peace, they all decided to celebrate. I thought it was pretty lame that I had woken up just now, missing out on all the action, but as long as everyone was happy and satisfied, I tried not to care too much about it. But it couldn't be helped, I had missed the fight with Lyon, Deliora, and the Moon Drip.

"What's wrong, Vinny? You look a little irritated…?" noted Erza.

"Oh, uh, it's… er… nothing," I answered. We exited the tent, and the huge banquet of food waited for us. I sat down next to Natsu, who was happily chomping away at some fire. Curious, I asked Natsu if I could try eating some fire, which he motioned to some torches. I lit a stick with fire from the torch and tentatively closed my mouth around the little flame that was burning. It didn't hurt, and it tasted weird, like nothing I've ever tasted. It had a smooth taste, but it was edible.

For the first time in a while, I was actually enjoying myself. That's not to say that the quests I went on weren't enjoyable, it's just that I was finally reuniting with people again, after shutting myself off from people for so long. I got to know thing that had been happening while I was semi-absent from the guild from Natsu, and we ate a lot of food and had a good time, as with everyone else.

However, I was still a bit irked about not being able to destroy any monsters, but I guess the whole point of going to Galuna Island was to bring Natsu and the others back. I had the urge to go back to the guild and complete a quest, but I tried to keep it down for the most part. And considering it was nighttime, I doubted that anyone would be at the guild. Then that thought started morphing into other thoughts like, what if the guild was still open? What if Mira was there? What if Makarov was still there? What if there was a monster hunting quest waiting to be taken? Well, that was actually a 9/10 chance, because there would always be more than one monster quest when I checked the board. But the thought continued to bug me.

Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I rose up, and addressed Erza.

"Erza. Now that all is done, may I return home?" I asked.

"If you must go, inform Master that we will be returning home tomorrow afternoon," replied Erza.

"Thank you. I do believe I have a quest to take on. I must start taking on stronger beasts…" I trailed off. "Okay! Everyone, thank you very much. I may not have helped much, I realize, but thank you still for being hospitable towards me and my friends," I called to the village folk.

The chief spoke. "Why not stay and enjoy your time with us? This is the least we can do for you all!"

"Thank you, chief, you're very kind. But I have business I must attend to."

"I insist! Please stay with us a while!"

"I'm glad you'd like me to stay with you guys, but I must head home. My friends will follow in the morning, so at least you have them to socialize with. Believe me, I'd love to stay, but it's time for me to return home. Thank you so much."

"No, thank you! We're truly in debt to all of you. Best of luck going forward, young one!" Everyone else rose to bid me farewell as well, and I was a bit sad to wave goodbye, but the fate of the world was at stake. If I didn't train immediately, then I wouldn't be nearly strong enough to defeat that insane tyrant. I also had to find out why I was having these weird hallucinations here and there.

"See you all another day!" I called to the villagers. "See you guys back at the guild!" I called to Natsu and the gang. Once I was a few feet away from the people, I held out my left hand and summoned a Dimension Magic Circle. Then extending my right arm and doing a revolving motion, to overlapping my arms face down, holding them up as if they were folded on a table.

"Dimension Switch!" I raised my overlapping arms over my head, thrusting then down so that they were at my sides, then I dropped into the magic circle and teleported away.

Back in Magnolia, a magic circle appeared in front of my house, and I rose up through the circle/portal in the same pose as when I left Galuna just a split second before. Not wasting any time, I ran as fast as I could though the town like a madman to the guildhall, where I was half expecting no one to be there, but fortunately Mira was present. She appeared to be cleaning up a bit.

"Hey," I spoke, then Mira looked up and saw me standing in the doorway.

"Hey yourself, badass," she replied. She smiled sweetly and walked up to hug me. She sighed tiredly as I wrapped my arms around her, and I had to admit, I was feeling a bit tired myself.

"How was the island? Did you go swimming?" she asked.

"Nah, we weren't there for that. Erza was being all like, 'We must bring the others back to the guild so that they can be punished! No rule breaker should go unpunished!'" I badly imitated in a rather husky woman voice, making Mira giggle. "But she ended up doing the quest with them anyway. I didn't do much, sorta just stood back and watched at first, which made me question why Erza bothered bringing me along with her. Then I went ape shit and started seeing terrible things that didn't actually happen, but I acted like they had. Probably because I haven't slept for days, but I wiped out an entire group of people and then blacked out, missing out on the action."

"Why did you pass out? Are you hurt or something?"

"No, not hurt. Just sore from using my Giga Evolution. I know I should focus on controlling my Giga Evolution now, but I'm curious to find out what my other Evolutions might be."

"Sounds like a lot happened. Where are the others? Why are you back before them? Actually, better question, how are you back before them?"

"Well, I travelled here using my Dimension Magic. With it, I'm able to manipulate space and travel places quickly. That's how I got here so quickly."

"Why did you come back, though?" Mira smiled. "Was it so you could see me? Or was it because you wanted to nab a quest?" Damn, she's putting me on the spot, I thought.

"I-I uh... is it alright to say 'kinda both'...?" I stuttered.

"'Kinda', or just 'Both'?" she smiled, knowing she got me.

"Both. Yes. Both. Absolutely both." I said quickly, not really thinking about what I said. "...but I was thinking about you more." Yeah. Real smooth.

"That's good enough for me. Thanks for thinking about me. Unfortunately, all of the requests were taken. However..." She smiled devilishly.

A grin appeared on my face. "Mira, did you do it again?" From behind her back, she held up a folded up request paper, reserved specially for me.

"I know. I'm so bad. But I was thinking how you'd be so upset to find them all taken, so I chose the highest paying one and hid it for until you came back."

"How much is it?"

"Oh, I don't know, somewhere around... I wanna say... 600,000 Jewel."

"Woah! Is that for real? It's been a while since one has been so high!" I exclaimed. "Mira. Thank you so much. You're truly the best. And not just because of things like these. You're awesome."

Slight blush. "Thanks... but so are you. You're way cooler, way more awesome than I am. I wish I could go on quests again."

"Why don't you? Why are you unable to?" I asked, but she looked as if she didn't want to answer that. In fact, it looked like she was about to cry.

"Oh...! No, um, I'm sorry! Did I say something wrong? I'm sorry!"

She wiped a small tear from her face. "No, it's alright. I just..." she closed her eyes and a stream of tears began leaking out of them, running down her smooth face.

I wiped away her tears with my thumb and held her chin up. I noticed I was a bit taller than her, but the thought quickly withered away, as my focus turned to her face.

"Hey. Look. I'll tell you what, you can go with me on a quest some day, and I'll do my best to defend you if trouble strikes."

"I can't... I don't have enough Magic Power..."

"Forget that. It doesn't matter if you don't have enough Magic Power, I will protect you. I promise."

"You promise. Okay. I'll give it some thought."

"Cool. Oh, also..." my expression grew very serious. "I told you something a while ago, and I have yet to fulfill that."

"What was that?"

"I said that sometime, I would take you somewhere nice, maybe get some food, and we could just talk and get to know each other, y'know?"

"That sounds good. I'd like that." She looked down at her feet, folding and unfolding her fingers nervously. "I, uh, want to ask a question."

"Ask me anything," I said kindly.

"Um... so I realized I hadn't had the chance to say it when I was confident enough, and when I wasn't, you were there. I was also too embarrassed to ask in front of other people. I wanted to ask..." she stopped and stared at the ground unconfidently. "Since neither one of us hadn't asked officially... um... do you wanna date?" she almost shouted.

I had seen this coming, but was still kind of taken aback. Somehow. I decided to try and play it cool. "What is it that you see in me that you want to go out with me? Look at me. I'm a mess." That much was true. I was a mess. I hadn't socialized with people for the past three months, and I also hadn't slept a lot during that time, which caused all these crazy hallucinations, and most importantly, I wasn't strong enough. If I could barely withstand the energy of my Giga Evolution, then who knew how it was all going to turn out in the end?

"You're most certainly not a mess, otherwise you'd be wearing dirty clothes that would be all ripped up and what not."

"That's called being a slob. Being a mess is something quite different. I meant mentally, not physically or fashionably.

"Well, you're not a mess, otherwise I wouldn't ask you."

"But what is it you see in me? Why me, and not someone else?" I asked.

"Well... for one, you're more handsome than some of the guys here, and you're kind."

"When have I shown kindness...?"

"You're nice to me. You're nice to Natsu and the team. Not only that, but you're courageous, strong, and you're a normal person, not too wild, and not too serious. I've seen you smile, whereas, let's say for instance, Gray doesn't smile very often, and neither does Erza."

"'Normal', huh? I guess so, but you know, there's more to me than meets the eye."

"Vin, there's more to all of us than meets the eye. We all have our own backstories, where we came from, what our past was like, but the past doesn't matter. What matters is who you are now, not who you were 5 years ago. You're a good person. That's why I like you."

I felt the sincerity in her voice and conceded her statement with a hug.

"Um...is... is that a yes...?" she stammered.

"Yeah. That's a yes. I hope so," I joked. "Hey, uh, what day is it?"

"I think it's Thursday... yeah, I'm pretty sure."

"Okay, so tomorrow I'll take on the request you gave me, and probably another one if I have the time, and on Saturday we can go somewhere, if you're free then."

"Yeah, that's fine. Saturday, uh, where are we going?"

"I'll make it a surprise. You don't have to wear anything too nice, even though I'm pretty sure you'd look good in anything."

"Aw, thanks. Yeah, I guess I could go casual."

"That's fine. What time?"

"Maybe around 7:00 in the afternoon, since I'll be at the guild most of the day."

"That's good. Perfect. Right now, I think I need to get some sleep. I haven't slept in a long time."

"Well, get as much rest as possible. You do need to rest after training so hard all this time. You need a break now and then. I know you're trying to push yourself hard, but don't push yourself that hard, otherwise you won't gain anything."

"Thanks, mom," I joked. Mira chuckled. "How do you know all this?"

"Oh, because of my brother Elfman. He always talks about being manly and how rest builds muscle and makes you even manlier."

"Speaking of Elfman, should you tell him about us? What do you think his reaction would be?"

"Oh. I never thought of that. I'm sure he'll say something about your manliness, but I don't know for sure."

"Okay... I guess. Alright Mira, I'm gonna go catch some Z's, as I'm sure you have to as well."

"Alright, goodnight Vinny."

"Goodnight. See you tomorrow." We exited the guild and parted ways, leaving me to walk back to my house. But I couldn't stand to walk all the way back to my house, so I made things simpler for me by teleporting back, where I stepped inside and fell right on my bed in my clothes, ignoring how uncomfortable it was.

I was too happy to let it bother me.