The next thing I knew, I was in a room with both Aria and Gajeel. The first thing I notice before Gajeel knocked me away was that wherever I was, wasn't the guild of Phantom. This, I could infer by the different walls and number of windows.

"Gajeel! Where are we?!" I yelled.

"Idiot! You followed us to our headquarters! A kid like you shouldn't be here." Immediately after Gajeel was done talking, I rushed forward at high speed, cloaking myself in flames. The force of the impact made Gajeel flip backwards in the air, smashing into the floor.

"B-but I thought I had canceled your Fire Magic…! I'm so sad…! URG-" With a Flame Punch to the gut, Aria was propelled up high, where I met him in midair and brought him back down with Hammer Fist. Stunned and paralyzed from the blow, he could do nothing but lie there.

"Buddy, lemme tell you, this ain't Magic you're dealing with. You may have stolen away my Magic, but there's more to me than meets the eye, fuckface." I turned to Gajeel, who rose out of the ground. "And now you. I'll kill you."

"What's wrong with being honest? You little kid," Gajeel taunted again, which backfired instantly, as it fueled my anger to Flame Punch him even harder to the ground. "You weakling… that didn't even hurt a bit!"

"Want me to barbecue your head, then?" I ground my teeth hard and Flame Kicked him in the gut, but he caught my foot and tried kicking with his foot, but I caught that too, then he tried using Steel Pillar to my face, which I caught, and we realized that we were both using three of our four limbs and if one of us tried using one of them, the other would have a chance to attack. I was in checkmate.

Just kidding.

Of course, I had just learned how to use Flame Breath, so I took a deep breath and my mouth became a flamethrower. While Gajeel was trying to put out to fire in his hair, I saw an opportunity to attack, but Gajeel knew this, and sent a Steel Pillar into my stomach, following this up by transforming his arm into a spiked sword.

"Iron Dragon's Sword!" This had to be countered with me morphing my arm, from the elbow onward, into a metal scythe, causing the blades to clash together creating a shower of sparks. His pushing power was greater than mine, but I still glared at him and pushed back, my stamina quickly draining as he pushed me further down. All this strength he had, even while I was Mega Evolved.

Guess I have to use this… I have to, no matter what the consequence…! I thought to myself. I don't care how taxing this'll be on my body… he'll pay for calling me a kid…! In front of so many people, embarrassing me like he thinks he's some kind of comedian…

It was time to bust out my Giga Evolution again.

"HrrrRRRAAAGH!" My body shone and grew larger than before, and I could feel my energy level increase, resonating throughout every part of my being. Gajeel was lost for words once he saw my evolution, with many large spikes protruding my body, my long hair running down my back (again, this was an early character design before I knew about DBZ, so don't yell at me), my flaming arm and my sharpened teeth, not to mention increased size. Immediately, the pressure began to build steadily, causing me to instantly break out in sweat.

"This is your end, Gajeel! You'll pay for what you did to the hall! Everyone who was hurt… Levy, Jet, Droy… everyone in the guild right now, some being terribly injured…most of this…IS YOUR FAULT!" Rushing forward with an attack plan in mind, I was caught off guard by his overgrown metal arm.

"Take this, you pest! Steel Dragon Club!" It was like the Steel Pillar he previously used, but smaller, quicker, and more powerful, and hurt quite a bit even while I was in my Giga Evolution.

"You asshole… I'll kill you for what you did…!" My fingers curved in the shape of a monster claw, igniting in flames. I'm about to use Flame Claw, but I'm curving my fingers? It's like an actual claw now, but the question is would it work … maybe I should call the other one Flat and this one, now what should I call it…? Gajeel jumped towards me with a hollow cackle, his voice like some kind of possessed hawk.

Oh, I got it.

"Flame Claw: Talon Style!" Instead of just one slice going diagonally, four slashes shot out from my hands, then another, more powerful four when I shaped my metal fingers into actual claws and cloaked them in flames, making a shape of four intercrossing X's on the wall that Gajeel smashed back into.

By not keeping my hand straight as if my arm were a blade, but rather curving my fingers like the talons of a bird, I'm able to cause more damage! This may work with some of my other attacks as well, to add more variety to my attacks.

I had to try again, I could not resist the curiosity. Gajeel rose up, slightly bruised. Instantly I jumped at him, igniting my foot.

"Flame Kick: Crush!" Sort of like Crushing Stomp, I brought my foot down onto Gajeel, who got out of the way in time and shot his club arm at me.

I can do it with my physical moves, I thought, but I don't know whether I can change up my special attacks. I can only try.

The results were mildly unsatisfying. My Flame Ball could only charge up to Monster level, Flare Burst could only be boosted to Flare Laser, Magma Core remained the same, Fire Wheel was no different, and so on. Though it was disappointing, I had to defeat Gajeel either way. Each attack was more powerful with the energy boost of my Giga Evolution, but I had no way to alter my special attacks or do what I wanted. Even more curious, I tried exerting a blast of fire out of both the bottoms of my feet, but that only resulted in my feet becoming covered in flame and me face planting into the floor, making me open to Gajeel, who grabbed me by the leg and swung me round, bashing me into pillars and finally sending me flying into a wall near a large entrance to another room. Bruised and cut, bleeding slightly, I began to rise up, but Gajeel wouldn't allow me to, punching me repeatedly to the ground, then grabbing my metal arm and tossing me across the room once again. This time, I predicted Gajeel's next move and blocked his incoming foot of steel with my hand.

"I won't let you… I won't let you get away with anything!" I panted, igniting my fist and swinging it up into Gajeel's chest, knocking him down. This, however, didn't seem to affect him much, as he quickly rose up again, adopting a nasty grin and cackle, and continued his beating on me. With his punches being hard as mine, it was starting to hurt a lot, making me begin to lose consciousness. My face was bruised, blood was dripping out of my mouth and open lip, and there were many various cuts around my face, all of which I didn't need to see to know it was there.

"Prepare to die, little fairy! Muahahaha! Prepare to die, just like your stupid ol' father! Hahahaha!"

...what did he just say…?

A sudden reflex shot through my arm, blocking Gajeel's incoming punch.

"What… did you… just… SAY…?!" I roared. All the pressure was temporarily forgotten as my entire being began to heat up hotter and hotter, my eyes growing dark, eyebrows furled, teeth curled into a murderous, volatile snarl, ground hard as if they were welded together, fists crackling into a steel vice grip, bursting into an atomic flame, separated from the wall of fire that surrounded my entire body.

"What… do you know… ABOUT MY FATHER'S DEATH?!" My figure began to pulsate, growing larger, reverting back to Giga, and back again, repeating this cycle as I marched closer to Gajeel, who was sprawled out on the ground. He rushed in to try to attack me, but my Fire Shield kept him away. My body began to grow a bit larger than before, pulsating between Giga Evolution and possibly my next Evolution.

"Ha! What good will it do, knowing what happened to your father?" A mistake on his part, gravely. No pun intended. I held him up by his neck and my eyes lowered, then my whole head combusted spontaneously. The heat of the fire was growing to hot for my jacket, and it unfortunately burned away, along with my shirt. The fire luckily went out, leaving my pants on fire.

"Augh! Ack! Shit! My pants!" I let go of Gajeel, dancing around like a dumbass as I frantically tried to put out the fire on my pants. I wasn't ever taught to stop, drop, and roll, so I resorted to the next best thing: dousing my pants with my Water Magic. Which didn't work because Aria had taken away my Magic Energy. I eventually just stripped off my pants and began whacking it around, looking like a lunatic as I sat there crouched in my gray boxer briefs waving around a flaming pair of jeans.

Once I was done making a fool out of myself, I slid my pants back on and turned to face Gajeel, who had been standing there the whole time with a blank look on his face.

"Uhm, where were we again…? said Gajeel.

"Shut it! You're gonna tell me if you had any affiliation with my father's death. And if you did…" I shot another death glare at Gajeel. "... I swear by the name of the True Charizard, I'll obliterate you entirely, burn you to ashes and destroy every last molecule of you, one by one, slowly... painfully... RELENTLESSLY...!"

In the final moments before it happened, I was able to get many strong hits in, and beat Gajeel around like a punching bag, as he had done to me previously, although to little avail, because he either came out unscathed, defended, or just dodged entirely.

Then it happened.

At first, I thought it was my imagination or a mere earthquake, but when I fell over due to my unsteadiness, I glanced out the window to find that the headquarters had begun to move like a giant iron monster, prowling upon the badlands where it once stood, still and silent like a grand, intimidating sentinel. The ground was unstable, and neither one of us could stand without falling over for a short time.

"Gajeel! What's going on here?!" I yelled over the crash of each leg hitting the ground.

"It's begun… finally!"

"What's begun? What's going on?! Tell me!" With much caution, I darted to Gajeel, holding him up by his jacket.

"You're annoying…! Get off! Leggo me! Rrgh!" His hands grabbed mine, but I had a grip of steel, literally. With my other flaming fist, I lifted it up threateningly to his face.

"Answer my questions! I'll kill you if you don't!" Gajeel decided against using his usual smirk, but rather loosened the tension on his neck a bit and sighed.

"You're annoying. I don't care about not calling you a kid because you're being one. I could care less about what you are or your age, I really don't care about you at all. But since you're gonna keep bugging me about it, I'll tell you. But I think you may be too sensitive to hear the truth." My arm shot forward angrily.

"I don't care about what you think. Just tell me already! Otherwise I'll break your teeth!"

"Tch. Like you could anyway. Fine, you wanna know?" To be honest, over the anger, I was actually worried about what he was about to say. And I had no reason not to be. "This headquarters holds a secret weapon that'll destroy your pathetic guild if you refuse to give up Ms. Lucy Heartfilia."

"Okay. And why do you pervs want her so badly?"

"It's not my decision, nor is it Master Jose's."

"What...?" I didn't believe that. Why wouldn't it be Jose's doing? He's the Master of Phantom, so who could be above him besides the Council? I knew the Council couldn't be that cold hearted, so I didn't know who else could've done this. "What are you talking about?"

"Exactly as I said. And if you wanna save your guild, all you have to do is surrender Miss Lucy to us. Otherwise we'll use our Magic Cannon to blast your guild to pieces."

"No... not another one..." My rage began to grow once again. "How do I stop it?!"

"Hmph. You can't. Once decided, the cannon will fire and nothing can stop it."

"No...! There has to be a way! There must be! Why are you guys targeting us? Besides the fact that you want Lucy from us, which by the way, I don't know if you know, but newsflash: we're not gonna give her up. Ever. And you guys can take your little two-inch "cannon" and shove it, because you're not blowing up our guild either. How'd you like it if I trashed Phantom and killed your members? Well, technically, I kinda did, but-argh-that's besides the point! What if everyone in Fairy Tail went to trash your guild and destroy it with a giant cannon?"

"Then we'd get our revenge on you guys, and we'd crush you all, since we're stronger than all of you. But anyway," Gajeel smirked again. "You guys didn't trash our guild. We trashed yours. And we got permission from the Council to do so."

"What? That's incredulous. Absolutely inane! I don't believe you for one second. You couldn't have…" While I was contemplating, Gajeel gained his strength back and threw me over his head onto the ground, making me let go of his jacket. With a Steel Dragon Club, he caught me as I stood up, throwing me backwards and scraping me across the floor like some kind of bug. I lay in the floor as he retracted his arm and jumped forward to crush me again, but I was able to stop him just in time with a Giga Flame Ball, sending him into the air. Pushing off the ground with great force, I flew up to his position in the air and beat him around until he gained some strength back and fought back, morphing his arm into the bladed sword, making me block with my metal arm and creating fireworks that sprayed out from the collision of our arms. My arm cancelled out his attack, forcing us backwards as we spiraled down to the ground, only to dash towards each other with our mightiest attacks.

"Steel Dragon…"

"Monster…"

As we came the closest to each other, I jumped up and leapfrogged over his head, attacking from behind.

"... Flame Ball…!"

"Lance!" Swinging his arm around, he was able to turn just in time and forced his huge arm blade into my Flame Ball. The flame held up and prevented him arm from going through entirely, but I soon felt the edge penetrate the ball just a little. I couldn't allow him to get the better of me, so I pushed harder.

"You didn't answer my other question either! What do you know about my father?!" I yelled over the roar of the crackling conflagration.

"What do you care? I don't want you to burst out in tears like a little baby from the answer!"

Now I'm a baby. That's unacceptable.

"THAT'S IT!" Pushing harder than before, I added more fire to the Flame Ball, giving it just enough power to cancel out Gajeel's mighty attack.

There was a great flash of orange as white hot fingers expanded out in a massive burst. The sheer force Gajeel's arm breaking the Flame Ball was enough to blow me away, combined with the explosion that followed hurled me into the wall, as I became a battering ram that caused a huge chunk of the wall to crumble after I had broken through and started plummeting into some water below. As I fell, I reverted back into my normal form, my Giga Evolution wearing off.

Some Magic Energy returned to me, enough to Summon Gyarados. A sudden deja vu washed over me as I summoned Gyarados to carry me to the surface of the water before I ran out of breath. On the surface, I was met by a shower of debris from the wall that I busted moments earlier. I felt almost offended by this action, having felt like a projectile, but then decided that I was being too sensitive ever since Gajeel had mentioned my dad, but in fairness, I suspected that he had something to do with his death. I wasn't about to let that slide. The closer I could get to finding out the full story of what happened to my father, the more I could prepare to take on Elementia. These thoughts flowed through my brain as I caught my breath, holding on to Gyarados' sleek scales with as much grip as I could manage, pulling myself up over until I hung like a towel, both ends drooping into the water.

"Gyarados... we gotta go catch up with the headquarters," I commanded Gyarados, who sped away in a mad dash like a jet ski after the mobile headquarters building. But then, a sight on the horizon stopped my heart, making my blood run cold.

We had arrived at Fairy Tail.

"No... no...! I'm too late!" I groaned.

In the distance, I could see the cannon unfold, pointed towards a large crowd; everyone in Fairy Tail. Gyarados knew this was urgent, and sped along faster than before. Soon, we arrived close to the shore, and in one slick, fluid motion, I used the momentum of Gyarados' speed to launch me onto land, then returning him back to his Pokéball as I rolled and landed in a little caved in area that the crowd made.

It was then I realized that I had only pants and shoes on.

Frantically, I Summoned a shirt and slid it on. It was a little smaller and made my muscles show more than I wanted them to, making me feel a little embarrassed. But my embarrassment was soon wiped out by the issue at hand. In front of me was the cannon, storing up a dark pulse of energy, distorting the space around it and causing the air to ripple.

"Vinny! Stand back!" yelled Erza from the crowd. As she said this, she stepped forward and Requipped into a heavy suit of armor, then she held out a Magic shield in front of her, causing a Magic Circle to appear.

"Erza! Don't do it! You'll die!" shouted Gray.

"Gray! You need to have faith in Erza! She's strong enough to withstand this!" I called. "Erza! You can do it!" Although I had faith in her, I couldn't help but be worried still.

"Natsu! Let's help Erza stop the cannon!" I called to Natsu.

"Alright!" However, Natsu was stopped by Erza.

"No! Don't! If I die, I'll take one for the team. I'm doing his for you all. I don't want any of you getting hurt. Please." Her voice was sincere, and I could feel it. "Please. Just like you said. Have faith in me. I know you want to help me, but..." She smiled sadly. "I can't let anything happen to you all."

"... okay. But if anything happens to you, if you die from this, I'll never forgive them. I swear it. And I already have a list of people I can never forgive, and that'll just add to it," I joked.

"Fairy Tail. This cannon will fire if you choose not to give up Miss Lucy Heartfilia. If you fail to decide, then we will fire the Magic Cannon, Jupiter."

All at once, there was a great uproar from the crowd as they angrily jeered at the headquarters building. The response was absolutely earsplitting. Over and over everyone screamed "NO!", defending the wonderful girl from our guild, Lucy Heartfilia. I almost couldn't believe it. Lucy was just as new as I was, and we had only been a part of the guild for about a year, but everyone was treating her like they had known her for years and years. I don't know exactly how they would act if I was in that position, but I assumed very similarly to this moment, because each and every one of them were nice people inside. No matter what their flaws may be. Even if I hadn't gotten to know any of them fully, I knew that they were all nice people.

This uproar inspired me, and soon I was roaring with the crowd, cursing Phantom out with the best insults I could think of, yelling angrily at the top of my lungs. I couldn't bear the thought of Phantom having any affiliation with my father and his end. But I wasn't just about to stand by idly and let them get away with it, on top of everything they did to our guild.

The ripple in the air grew larger and larger, and the growing ball of energy from the mouth of the cannon seemed to distort all space around it. All yelling ceased as the deafening burst of the cannon shot straight at the entire crowd. Erza prepared the shield and began to wrestle with the rushing beam of darkness. A massive crackling sound resonated through the air, so much that one could not even hear themselves think. Erza dared not to give away, although I could imagine the amount of strain was being put on her. Adopting a fierce glare, she gave her all as the shield began to fracture, slowly deteriorating under the pressure. I didn't think it would actually happen, but just as the beam was about to stop, her armor broke, and just the slightest blow from the beam forced her backwards as she did a somersault in the air, Requipping in midair.

At least, that's what I would've seen.

What I witnessed was the energy beam forcing its was through Ezra's shield, relentlessly pushing onward, disintegrating Erza entirely right before my eyes, then stopping.

"Erza...!" cried Gray.

"Ezra's..." I started.

"No, she's not dead. She's halfway there, though. She needs medical attention immediately!" shouted Elfman.

It's just a hallucination. It's just a hallucination, I reminded myself. But despite the fact that I was able to snap back to reality, and see that Erza was indeed still intact and alive, she was just barely. And I couldn't let that go. I didn't care what their intent was, I didn't care if they meant to harm her or not, the action was still done. Such as Phantom trashing our guild and harming our members. It was unforgivable. I'm sure anyone in my place would feel the same way, and do what I was about to do.

Over the loudspeaker, Jose said something about Jupiter taking time to recharge, but I didn't really listen to what he was saying, the only thing I could make out was "15 minutes to recharge" and then many dark figures came out of the building and spread out, creating an abstract screen of blackness.

Erza was carried away to be taken care of, but meanwhile we had these shadowy apparitions to take care of. A bit of energy returned to me, and I sent out Fearow to fly me up to the mouth of the cannon. I figured if I could stop the cannon from the inside within the 15 minutes, I may be able to save the guild.

I was gonna get some answers, even if it meant bloodshed. There would be hell to pay.