Dear Readers,

I couldn't leave you at the cliffie. It was rude.

PLEASE TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK. That is all.

Disclaimer: Desna owns the Pradesh Family. Hiro Mashima owns Fairy Tail. GoddessxNyte2 is my brilliant beta.

Enjoy!

"Goddamn it, not again…" Lucy muttered to herself as she felt the odd sensation of being pulled through… a… gate? It was odd, it felt a lot like how it had whenever Loke had taken her to the celestial realm, just, kind of, different. She was having trouble articulating how it felt, honestly, because she had an unreasonable amount of spirits shouting in her mind, inquiring about her status.

Even though they could fucking feel that she was fine, their bond was pretty comprehensive. Though, now, she did have a headache.

She hissed at them all through the bond to quiet the fuck down so she could figure out what the hell was going on, and they complied. Though Loke did so reluctantly.

He'd been witness to the rather unpleasant things that happened the last time she'd been kidnapped.

"Finally got you," a voice said in her ear, and she recognized it instantly, though it sounded almost tired. Turning around to hit him, she found she… couldn't. She was in runes. Odd looking ones that felt like celestial magic, but runes just the same.

Being so close to Alec Cinder and him literally being inches out of her reach was an experience so incredibly frustrating she couldn't think. Her magic power went fucking rampant, but it seems they'd planned for it. They weren't as unprepared as she would have hoped they'd be.

Realizing she was essentially in a five by six foot block of not being able to move, she felt a sliver a fear creep down her spine. She pushed it aside, focusing instead on her anger.

"You bastard… I promise you, you will live to regret the day you crossed me, or you will die denying it."

He smirked at her, but even in that, she could tell… whatever he'd done to bring her to this place… it had weakened him.

She was almost annoyed by that. It's almost less satisfying to kick him while he's down. Almost. Remembering the Stellan Massacre, she decided she didn't need satisfaction from his death. She needed pain. He needed to burn, the way his victims had burned in their homes for no reason at all.

"Seems whatever you did to get me to wherever the fuck we are… took a toll on you, Alec. How… disappointing," she said, her magic still flexing around her in nearly uncontrollable rage.

She saw Bruno and Terra behind him, but for the first time, she really looked at them. There was fear in their eyes. It could have been from the golden hue in her skin and along all her key markings, but seeing them actually meet her gaze, almost pleadingly… she doubted that.

The Starbringer brought her attention back to her once-torturer, her eyes betraying a hatred she'd never had before. She didn't hate people (she had a lot of people she didn't particularly like) but hatred was altogether unfamiliar. In Cinder's case though, not unwelcome.

"What," he teased as lightly and pompously as he could, "Don't you recognize this place?"

Zen was halfway past losing his goddamn mind, pacing around the large dining-room-turned-conference-center as his family tried to figure out where his best friend and the woman he loved had been taken.

Right from under his arm. Literally. A fact that had his magic nearly spiralling out of control. Cristoff's magic was clearly trying to calm his own, but that likely would have been more effective if Cris himself wasn't nearly as frantic as he was himself.

Looking around the room, all of Lucy's dragon kin were similar. Well. All except Natsu, Lucy's longtime partner who had been through more kidnappings (literally, more than one in a day at some points) that he was all calm determination and easy confidence. It almost annoyed him, Natsu's attitude, if he didn't know for a fact that the fire slayer cared for her deeply.

There wasn't much Lucy kept from him these days, and the details of her reunion with Natsu hadn't escaped their conversation topics.

Erik had berated Emzadi enough that she'd been forced to pick him up from his position with Crime Sorciere just so she could kick his ass. They'd arrived back, and immediately continuing to freak the hell out about Lucy's status, ass kicking forgotten. Temporarily, anyway, Zen knew Emzadi rarely forgot about threats she made.

She was like Lucy in that, a little. It was similar to how he knew, he just knew, Lucy was still going to get Van back for the stunt he'd pulled four months ago. With the glitter. The celestial mage hated that stuff. Her frequent rants on the topic in his memory almost made him crack a smile, but he was too filled with worry to actually do it.

Laxus had managed to refrain from having someone jump him all the way to Fiore, but he was wrangling a very irate Wendy and an even more frustrated Gajeel, who's soul bond had kicked back into high gear as soon as he'd heard 'Lucy' and 'Kidnapped' in the same sentence while standing near the bar when Laxus got the call from Bickslow.

Cris had gotten the unfortunate task to jump to fucking Fiore to retrieve two very agitated dragon slayers from the Sabretooth Guild. He was practically exhausted from jumping so far, Sabretooth was exactly too far to be comfortable for him, but not enough that it wasn't doable. They wouldn't have gone to get them at all, but Kaleb reminded everyone that Sting… couldn't be trusted not to be a dumbass. Rogue had agreed with that wholeheartedly, sitting right next to said dragonslayer and holding up the com. He'd claimed he would not be held responsible for whatever dumbass decision he couldn't keep the man from doing, and Cris had gone.

So now the entirety of the Pradesh Clan, the freshly surprised entirety of Fairy Tail, and every dragon slayer on fucking Earthland were sitting around twiddling their thumbs trying to figure out how the hell things had gone so wrong when she'd been standing right next to them not three hours ago.

It didn't help that they had less than no leads to follow.

Arman looked as though he was starting to worry about the state of his home. For good reason, as a few walls had been blown to pieces already.

"Okay, everyone needs to calm the fuck down, we'll never find her this way."

"You'll never find her anyway," a grumpy voice stated from the doorway, one that hadn't been there earlier. "You'd never have guessed where they were holed up. It was so stupid that it was kind of brilliant," Loke admitted, strolling almost casually into the room.

"LOKE!" Zen shouted, approaching the man at nearly a sprint. "Where is she?!" he asked, grabbing at the Lion Spirit's collar and shaking him.

"Hey, watch the suit…." he grumbled, but answered nonetheless, "She's… she's at home. At the Heartfilia estate. She told me to come tell you."

"She has access to her magic?" Arman asked, confused.

Loke rolled his eyes, "Yeah, she does. Since our gates are secured to her now, not even magic cancelling cuffs could keep us from appearing. And the bonds are internal magic, they couldn't stop that if they wanted to."

"So why the hell are you there, fleabag, and not helping Lucy?"

Loke glared at the com feed showing Laxus that was projected on a large screen in the room, "In all the years you've known me, when would I have ever left her there alone if I had another choice?"

Laxus grumbled, but relented. Gajeel was still bitching in the background, but he went ignored.

"She's stuck in some strange form of celestial runes. Which gives me some thoughts on who they might really be, but… I can't see how that would be possible… Anyway, we're pretty sure the runes are limiting her magic output to the gates and without her support we wouldn't be able to do much. Besides, we are under orders not to come out, Lucy says they are after us and she'd 'be damned if they got what the wanted' or something along those lines."

Zen asked him to elaborate on the 'who they are' thing, but got a glare in response, "I could tell you, maybe, but then you would feel obligated to tell them, and then when Lucy is released from this stupid fucking situation, her duties as Starbringer would force her to punish you for releasing secrets of celestial magic. Tell me, do you want to be on the receiving end of what happened to Karadin of Peregrande?"

The archangel mage shuddered. He… did not want that. And he wouldn't say, with all he'd done in the pits, that he was confident the scales would fall in his favor. And he'd never put Lucy in that position.

"Is she alright?" he asked softly, looking into Lucy's faithful spirit's eyes.

He nodded, "She's more angry than what happened in Peregrande, but… she's fine. Not hurt. Gotta go, though, I'm on standby, we all are. I'd hurry there, I haven't a clue what they want, but… they snatched her. With apparently great effort from their leader. They've got some sort of plan, and it's surely not good."

With that, he disappeared, and the rest mobilized.