Disclaimer:The following story is a fan made work of fiction. Fairy Tail and Mahou Sensei Negima!are owned and written by Hiro Mashima and Ken Akamatsu respectively. Please support their official releases.

Chapter 3

There Can Be Only One With Pink Hair

It took what felt like an age for Natsu to shake off the angry girl with guns. But he had been determined and had eventually succeeded. As much as it annoyed him to run away from a fight, this was one fight he did not want.

Fighting naked after sexually harassing a group of girls was Gray's thing. Not Natsu's. And Natsu wanted to avoid copying that damn bastard in anything.

Besides, that girl had been scary! Natsu's back ached from the shots of her magic tool he had not been able to dodge. The places where they had hit were numb as well, leading him to believe that the dark-skinned girl had altered the magic within them.

Panting from the exertion of his mad dash through the forest. Natsu stopped for a moment and tried to gather his bearings. Looking around, he couldn't see anything useful or dangerous nearby, but even with that strange column of light it was too dark to tell. He tested the air with a short sniff.

He wrinkled his nose in confusion at the scents he was able to pick out. Too many unfamiliar smells. More than should have been possible in some woodland in Fiore. Some of them even smelled horribly unnatural in a way that had nothing to do with magic. What few he could identify were useless in the current situation.

All of which meant that his usually dependable nose was not of much help in his current situation. With his nose rendered useless, and the dark forest blocking his vision, that meant he would have to rely on his ears and his gut to move about the forest.

Natsu closed his eyes and tried to focus on his sense of hearing. His breathing steadied.

If Wendy or the others were nearby, then he would hear them.

"I can hear fighting to the north," Natsu said softly. "Blasts of magic and yelling voices, so whatever I stumbled into is going on in other places too. The south and the west are quiet, with only the sounds of animals and insects. While the east has some sort of weird, 'vrooming' noise that I've never encountered."

Natsu contemplated the situation. His instincts were warning him that silence to the south and west meant wilderness, and possibly a high possibly of the girl who had nearly blown his junk to smithereens. The girl had possessed the silent grace of a hunter as she had pursued him. It was likely that she knew how to move without making any noise.

The pain which still radiated from his lower region, as well as his continued state of dress, made the thought of walking into an ambush highly unappealing.

Meanwhile, the weird noises to the east were completely unknown to him. They sounded a little like those magical vehicles that Erza liked to use, but the smell coming from their direction made his nose wrinkle in disgust. That was just as well. Even thinking about some encountering some kind of new man-made transportation caused a wave of nausea to make itself known in the dragon-slayer's stomach.

This meant that the only direction left to choose was north.

Raging battles were fun. Plus, there was a more than even chance that some of the other members of Fairy Tail were involved in it. Fighting was sort of their thing, and if Natsu had run into trouble then maybe they had as well.

"Easy choice," Natsu said happily. He walked towards the north, picking up some leaves as he moved so as to make some crude underwear.

Having a clear objective was always a good thing in his opinion. If it led to a fight or three along the way once he was decently covered, then that just made it even better. All he needed to do was to avoid the girl with the magic blaster, and avoid making any other mistake which might reek of Gray, and everything would be okay.

A knife shooting of the darkness and destroying the half-made underwear ruined his brightened outlook.

"Or, instead of finding one of my friends, I could find yet another angry looking girl. Only this one is wielding a sword. That could happen too," Natsu grumbled as yet another new girl approached him.

Did she have to destroy his underwear with the first shot? It was like the universe was trying to say that it wanted him to fight like Gray.

Natsu did not appreciate it. He did not appreciate the message in the slightest.

Covering his privates as best he could with one hand, Natsu waved at the girl with his other arm. Her giant spectacles and curly long hair made her look a little like Laki from the guild. Although her hair was nearly the same shade of pink as his own, and the girl's outfit looked like some kind of doll he had seen Lucy drooling over once or twice.

The way she held her sword, however, did not resemble the kindhearted Laki, nor any doll Natsu had seen, in the slightest. Natsu never seen either have a look on their face that resembled a demented child looking to pluck the wings off of some kind of an insect.

Despite his better instincts – which were screaming at him to shut up, knock her out, and then run for the north as fast as he could – Natsu took a deep breath and tried to communicate with this strange new girl. He had avoided fighting like Gray just a little bit ago. Maybe the universe would spare him a second time.

"Hey, before we get into this, let's talk for a second," he began. "My name is Natsu, and I'm a little lost. I can't find my friends and -"

The girl's slicing sword cut off the rest of what he had been about to say. Natsu barely ducked in time as while the girl screamed something at him in a language he didn't understand. A few strands of pink hair drifted in the breeze.

Ah well, at least I tried, Natsu thought to himself as he punched her in the face. The girl stumbled back with a cry of rage. Then her sword sliced at his legs and came too close for comfort. Natsu could curse the universe for forcing him to fight like Gray after he had won.

Asuna uncovered her face as she once more stared in shock at the strange young man who was currently running up the slope and into the forest. The young girl's mind had gone numb. How could such a powerful sorcerer be so completely stupid as to forget his clothes?

The guy hadn't said anything she could understand, but his reaction to Setsuna's gesture was unmistakable. He had been completely naked and he hadn't even realized it.

What an idiot!

As she watched him run haphazardly up the hill, his unmentionables swinging in the air, Asuna swore to herself that she would never let Negi grow into such a wizard. So long as she had anything to say about it, this picture would never repeat itself with Negi taking the place of the pink-haired man. She would keep him on the straight and narrow path even if it took the rest of her life to accomplish.

Asuna's numb mind did a double flip. Wait, why was she thinking about a future with the brat? And why had it been triggered by a man who was naked? No, none of that was okay in the slightest! It was wrong. All wrong. Asuna shook her head in a violent attempt to clear out those treacherous thoughts by force, trying to summon comforting thoughts of Takamichi to take their place.

The naked fire mage stopped running along the forest's edge and disappeared into pile of bushes, still yelling at the top of his lungs. She couldn't make out most of what he was saying, but it seemed like he was saying the same thing over and over again.

Beyond confused, and seriously beginning to question her own sanity, Asuna looked over at Setsuna to see if the other girl had any idea what was going on with the crazy fire mage.

Unfortunately the dark-haired swordswoman seemed to be even worse off than Asuna. Setsuna still had her hand outstretched and appeared to be muttering something to herself with a mortified look on her face. Meanwhile, the hand still bearing a sword had tightened its grip around its hilt. The white of her knuckles stood out from the pressure she was exerting. It didn't seem that Setsuna would be of much help.

Asuna turned her head away and looked back at the forest. Maybe the last few moments had been a dream or an hallucination? That was possible, right? Or maybe an enemy mage had trapped them in some kind of weird illusion? Considering that Asuna had seen vampires and demons, mind altering illusions had to be a thing.

Alas, her hopes were not proven true.

The moment Asuna turned her head to look back towards the forest, the pink-haired man came flying out of the bushes he had jumped into just moments ago. Yelping in pain, the man took off faster than Asuna had thought humanly possible.

Two dark shapes burst out from the same bushes. They followed him at a similarly breakneck speed, with the lead shape pointing two guns at the man as blasts of magic burst from the barrels.

Asuna blinked as she wiped her eyes with both hands before looking at them once again. Those two shapes looked familiar!

She took a closer look at their retreating backs. It was Mana, and Ku Fei too! Why were they here in the forest? Could they also be mages like Negi and Setsuna?

Asuna called out to them but her two classmates ignored her and kept chasing the strange man. Whatever had happened in that bush had not taken long but had sure lit a fire underneath the two girls. The three racing figures soon disappeared into another section of the forest in flashes of magic and a stream of sound, leaving behind an utterly confused Asuna as Setsuna continued to mutter under her breath.

It took some time, but after a few minutes of nothing new happening Asuna finally felt her mind pull itself back together. While seeing someone run around naked was nothing new for Mahora – it actually seemed to happen with a disturbing level of frequency – seeing a mage capable of giant blasts of flames running around like a naked idiot while being chased by her classmates had broken something inside of her young maidenly heart. It was weird, it was wrong, and considering how weird Eva and Konoka's grandfather were, it did not bode well for Negi's future.

Asuna slapped her cheeks with both hands to try and drive the images, and all of their horrible associations, out of her mind. It was time to get back to the reason why she and Setsuna had come here in the first place.

"Alright, Setsuna-san, snap out of it," she said, reaching out a hand to shake the other girl's shoulder. "This whole strange incident aside, we've still got to backup Negi and save Konoka. As far as we know things aren't going well for him and he just might need our help."

With a strangled yelp of 'Ojou-sama,' Setsuna stopped her muttering and snapped out of whatever world she had been trapped within.

"Y-y-yes, Asuna-san. You are right. We should hurry as well," the other girl stuttered. "Even if my body and mind are no longer pure for Ojou-sama, I can still lay down my life to save her."

Asuna raised an eyebrow at the other girl before shrugging. That last statement had certainly been telling. But it wasn't any of her business to ask so long as it didn't stop them from rescuing Konoka and saving Negi.

Back in the depths of the woods Natsu found that he was actually enjoying himself. Unlike that bastard he had been fighting before Warrod cast Fairy Sphere, or the dark-skinned girl with the blaster, this opponent didn't use any tricks or long range nonsense. It was pure swordsmanship and magical skill versus flashing fists and fiery blasts. A straight-up, who could stand longer, hack, slash, and bash battle.

This was exactly the kind of fight Natsu happened to love the most.

Blocking yet another slash of her sword with a blazing left arm, Natsu slammed his right fist into her stomach and unleashed a magical blast of fire. "Fire Dragon's Elbow!"

Not exactly a traditional piece of fire dragon magic, Natsu had gifted the move with a name full of awesome after creating it way back when he was a kid playing around with the magic his father, the great fire dragon Igneel, was teaching him. It was an effective move that managed to catch his opponent off-balance.

The blast sent the glasses wearing chick rocketing through the forest with her clothes ablaze as Natsu held his left arm gingerly. He still hadn't fully recovered from his battle against Jackal and he kept forgetting that his body wasn't in perfect condition. Blocking her latest attack had caused some of the wounds healed by Wendy to throb in pain.

The girl recovered quickly, stabbing her sword into the ground and planting her feet onto the trunk of a nearby tree to stop her momentum as her charred dress swirled around her legs. She also extinguished the flames covering her body with some sort of magic pulse that made Natsu raise an eyebrow in curiosity.

Raising her eyes, the girl jumped forward at him with her sword extended in a simple thrust. While the girl's swordsmanship was undeniable, her sense of tactics was not the greatest.

Natsu slammed his hands together in front of his chest just before she reached his position. "Fire Dragon's Brilliant Flame!"

A flash of fire roared out from the point where his hands met, hitting the small figure in front of him and blocking her body from his vision. The fiery blast tore into the earth around them, tearing a huge furrow into the ground as the magic was released.

Smoke hung in the air as several trees burned nearby, set ablaze by Natsu's magic.

The dragon-slayer blinked. He wiped a hand across his face to get the sweat off of it and let loose a held breath. After all the fights he had been in, the chase from before, and with his wounds still not fully healed, Natsu's stamina seemed to be reaching its limits. If he wasn't careful he might end up exhausting himself before he even reached the place where he had heard a magical battle being waged. And that could not be allowed.

"Phew." Natsu muttered to himself. "Maybe that one got her."

He peered about and didn't see any trace of the girl. While he hadn't meant to kill her, the power of his blast was strong enough to turn a normal human's body to ash. Natsu really hoped that she was not that fragile. In spite of all of the fights and battles he had been in, he had never killed a person. He had no intention breaking that streak tonight.

A tingle on the back of his neck was his only warning.

Natsu flung his body to the forest floor, rolling to his left before coming up with a flaming jump kick. He had dodged the girl's downward blow but she in turn blocked his kick with the flat of her sword. The two combatants exchanged a lightning fast series of attacks and counterattacks before jumping back. Both eyed each other warily once they landed.

As they stood still, the girl said a few words to him in that strange language before gesturing to his midriff. Then she sneered.

Natsu let loose a growl from within his throat at the threat. Some things passed any language barrier and needed no translation.

"Oi, no need to go threatening some guy's junk, even if he's pulling a Gray," Natsu called out to her. "It's not my fault that I'm like this. Besides, I didn't even do anything to you. You're the one who attacked me!"

The girl seemed to get the message. Taking one hand off of her sword's handle, she fished around in a pocket conveniently located somewhere in her dress.

The action caused Natsu to blink once again. The girl's pockets had blended in so well that the dragon slayer had completely missed seeing them. It was a good thing that she hadn't stored any weapons in them, or used any weapons which might possibly be inside of them. He would need to keep that in mind when their duel kicked back into gear.

After a few seconds of searching within the depths of her pockets, the girl pulled out some sort of paper talisman. She placed it on her forehead and it gave a pulse of magic as it activated. The thing had some sort of strange writing on it that Natsu had never seen before, but he had seen enough of magic to know when he was looking at a talisman. It's nature became clear the moment she opened her mouth.

"Now we'll be able to understand one another," the girl hissed at him. "So say something before I gut you with my sword and dance in your entrails, you uncouth dog. Even perverts deserve their final words."

Natsu almost leaped for joy. He had understood the girl's words! Finally, he was beginning to make some progress in this messed up situation! But wait, did she still think he was a pervert? Damn Warrod and Zeref both! Damn them for making others see him in the same light as Gray!

"It wasn't my choice! I didn't even try to fight you before you attacked me." Natsu yelled. He flailed his arms as he spoke, punctuating his words with emphatic, angry gestures. "Besides, it's these two old guys' fault that I'm naked in the first place. Not mine!"

The woman just stared at him. Natsu waited for her to reply, but she seemed to have been stricken mute by his words. Maybe he needed to explain things in more detail?

"Ya see, I got attacked at a hot spring by this one old guy and a bunch of his dudes. Then another old guy I knew cast a spell on my partners, and between fighting off the guys who had attacked me and helping the other old guy cast his spell I only had time to grab my scarf."

The chick continued to stare at him with a flat, unbelieving gaze. Bah! He should have known better than to try and reason with someone that was trying to stab him. Reasoning with people like that never worked. Not until Natsu beat them black and blue to knock it into their thick heads. Or so his many experiences fighting people like Gray and Jellal had taught him.

"Anyway, why are you trying to neuter me?" Natsu yelled as he flung a hand in her direction. "Like I said, I didn't do anything to you – you found me and just attacked!"

The girl just kept staring.

Natsu grabbed his hair with both hands and started to pull. Her stare was really starting to piss him off! "Stop looking at me like that, dammit! It's annoying!" Natsu yanked harder, wishing to the high heavens that someone else he knew was nearby. He would even take Happy popping up with some annoying comment over this crazy girl's psychotic stare.

A dark, cutesy chuckle coming from deep within her throat finally ended her incessant staring.

"Ignorance of your crime does not absolve you of your misdeed, not before me, Tsukuyomi. You shot fire at my senpai. You tried to kill my senpai. And afterward," she spoke, her voice beginning to quiver with rage, "you had the temerity, the utter gall, to proposition her with your body. My pure, sweet, innocent senpai. How dare you! Senpai is mine! And mine alone! I will cut off your balls for daring to desecrate her heavenly self!"

The girl's eyes flashed as she screamed the last four sentences, her gaze promising pain. She then punctuated her words with a slash from her sword that shot some sort of strange energy at him in a sweeping arc. Natsu punched his left fist forward and released a torrent of sustained fire, causing her attack to shatter as smoke billowed into the air.

Natsu was no longer having fun. Fighting was one thing. Defending his comrades against the latest bad guy was another. But maiming him for something that was not even his fault just ticked him off.

He called out to her, his annoyance clear in his voice. "Oi, you serious about this?"

A second slash came screaming in from the smoke left by their clash. Natsu blocked this attack as well, releasing even more smoke into the air.

Then, with a shrug of his shoulders as he growled to himself, the dragon slayer waded deeper into the smoke. The girl was beginning to tick him off, but at least she was consistent. It was good when enemies were consistent with their intentions and their actions. It made his own actions simple and clear as well.

The two of them resumed their fight right where they had left off. Surrounded by the smoke, both combatants had to rely on their other senses to attack and defend. Natsu launched devastating punches at the girl only to have them dodged or blocked with the flat of her blade. The dragon slayer found himself dodging strikes as well, feeling the girl's sword slice through the air next to his skin more than once.

As he blocked several more slashes with bursts of fire from his hands, Natsu grimaced in annoyance. He couldn't quite get a bead on her in this forest. The girl was skilled enough to make things difficult for him, always attacking from a blind spot, and his injured body was moving slower than usual. He needed to use close quarters combat or a powerful finishing move to clear things out and give him the advantage. Since he had been unable to gain the advantage in the smoke, chances were that he would have to wait for an opportunity to hit her with one of his big spells.

Then the girl darted in close and took the choice out of his hands. It was a mistake on her part and Natsu made sure to capitalize on it.

She aimed a feint at his head before slashing at his midriff. Seeing through the move, Natsu let the two blows slide past him. He then clamped his hands down on the flat of the blade with both hands and lifted his right leg. His crushing kick slammed into the center of her stomach and caused the girl's eyes to bulge as the breath whooshed from her lungs.

Her grip on the blade slackened and she soon dropped to her knees, gasping for air.

Letting go of the blade with one hand, Natsu delivered a swift chop to the back of her neck with the other. As good as she was, it seemed that she had never fought an unarmed combat specialist who was able to grab onto her sword in mid swing. Between that and her unnatural rage, the odd girl had clearly not been fighting at her peak ability.

But that didn't bother Natsu. A win was a win after all, especially when it was the other person who had picked the fight in the first place.

Natsu let her body fall to the forest's floor. The dragon-slayer then tossed the girl's sword deep into the woods.

He stared at her for a long moment, waiting to see if she could get up and resume the fight. All the girl did was lie on the ground and twitch her hands every few seconds as her eyes started to flutter open. She would recover soon enough, but having to locate her sword would stop the girl from pursuing him for a good long while.

With that accomplished, only one piece of business remained between them.

Natsu bent over and plucked the girl's paper talisman from the ground. It had fallen at some point during their battle, and Natsu wanted the girl to understand his next words. He placed the strip of magical paper back onto her head so the girl could clearly understand his words.

"Fight me again when you are stronger and I've got some clothes on. We can settle things then in a fair fight. My name is Natsu Dragneel, and I am a member of Fairy Tail. And Fairy Tail Mages always keep their word."

With one last look at the girl as she twitched in rage, Natsu took the paper off and resumed his march northward.

Only to quickly come face to face with a very large, very angry, and very singed bear with a sword sticking out of its shoulder that immediately bit down on his injured arm.

END

A/N: Like I said previously, I am trying to get away from my massive chapters. I'll bust a big one out every once in awhile but they will be few and far between.

What did you all think of the first series of fights? Were they good? Bad? Too long or too short? Leave a review or send in a PM. I always feel that fight scenes are a weakness of mine as a writer and I would like to improve them. It's a major reason why I went so heavy on them in the first few chapters of this fic.

This will also be the last of the quick updates. The next update will be on 11/9/18 and should follow a weekly schedule from there until we get to 1 chapter beyond what I had originally posted in the old fic.

On to the comments section!

Tsukuyomi: Ugh. I really wished that I could have avoided using her in this fic (she is far from my favorite character), but it was just not possible. She was the only proper Negima antagonist in the area – other than Fate, who is busy with Negi – who could give the Dragon-slayer more than a moment of hesitation in a fight. Mana could too, but I wasn't willing to bust out her demonic form at this time.

In Negima canon, Tsukuyomi went from being a moderately difficult opponent in the Kyoto arc to a near-boss level opponent in the final arc. This discrepancy always bothered me, so I'm choosing to place her closer to her final level of power (I'm also changing her hair color from brown to pink, because of plot reasons) and say that she was just messing around under restrictions placed upon her by Fate when she first encountered the others off screen. She will also use her defeat at Natsu's hands to become stronger so as to wash away the shame of her defeat with his blood. Or attempt to.

In canon she was obsessed with Setsuna (poor Setsuna is like Gray in FT; always getting the short end of the stick. And no, it's not a knock against Juvia. I'm just pointing out that Gray keeps having bad things happen to him like Ultear and his dad dying), and that's not going to change in this fic. She will just add a boiling hatred of Natsu for 'defiling' the unwilling object of her affection into the mix as well.

Fate Averruncus: Don't worry, Fate will be making an appearance. Just not for a very long while as I did not feel the need to change anything about his interactions with Negi and the others at this time.

Power Levels: As we all learned in Bleach, Naruto, DBZ and DBZ Abridged, power levels often make zero sense and are constantly being changed. It's true in anime. It's true in cartoons. It's even true in comic books and in blockbuster movies. Although I will try to keep things believable and coherent (because variable power levels drive me batty), my fic may end up no different. All I can say is that it will follow its own system.

A system that I will be making clear with a series of upcoming fights involving multiple characters from FT and Negima (like Natsu and Tsukuyomi's battle in this chapter). Eventually some characters, like Wendy, will end up far more powerful than their canon selves as this story goes further. While others may fall before they reach their own canon levels of power.

Recommended Reading: This time I would like to recommend Better Late by Ariana Deralte. It is a short, 1.5k word Naruto fanfic which takes a tongue in cheek look at how Kakashi started being late.

Until next time,

Elsil