Author's Note: Sorry this took so long. Shipping starts this chapter... sort of. I think it still feels a bit rushed, even though it's the fifth chapter now. XD
Also, I don't know if stories need to be rated M for torture or not. I don't see why this one would, since I tried not to go into detail, but if you think the rating needs to be changed, please let me know. ^^
Bisca yawned, sitting up. She slumped slightly, staring straight ahead of her. "…I don't feel refreshed at all." She turned to see Levy, who was on the bed closer to the window, hugging her knees and staring at the dark sky outside. "Something wrong?" she asked.
Levy sighed. "It's just… I have this unshakable feeling that something bad happened to Gajeel and Alzack."
Bisca stood up, walking across the room and hugging the smaller girl. "It's okay. They're capable. If something bad happened to them, they can take care of it themselves."
Levy smiled and nodded. "Yeah. I guess you're right." For some reason, she felt strangely warm when she was being hugged by the greenette.
Gajeel groaned, opening his eyes slowly. He frowned and shut his eyes again. Then he opened them again. Why was there no difference?
Rolling over onto his other side, he could see faint, orange light, like fire, flickering nearby. He could also see what the fire was illuminating: bars. Metal bars, right in front of his face. "Am I in a cell or somethin'?"
He could vaguely remember yesterday – or early this morning, rather. He and Alzack had arrived at some old man's house, tired, starving, and injured. They'd had some stew, fixed up all those cuts from the attack, and gone to sleep. They'd gone to sleep. In a stranger's house.
The dragon slayer groaned again. What had he been thinking?! Neither of them knew anything about that old man! He could've been working with the enemy, for all they knew – and judging by the current situation, he probably had been. Gajeel now understood why Alzack hadn't wanted to go into a stranger's house.
…Alzack!
Gasping, Gajeel sat up, looking frantically around the cell. Where was he? Was he okay? Wait, why was Gajeel this worried about the guns mage? Sure, they were teammates for this mission, but he'd never felt this worried about anything before. His heart was pounding as he frantically looked around, but found nobody else in the cell with him.
"Al!" he yelled into the darkness. "Poncho! You here?"
He was suddenly aware of another human presence standing nearby, and turned to see a tall man in a strange, dark blue uniform with a mask. The dragon slayer growled.
"Where is he?" Gajeel snarled.
"I assume you mean your teammate," the man said. "Let me assure you, he's fine. He's just in a different cell."
"What's the point of putting us in different cells?"
Gajeel was almost certain that the man grinned behind his mask. "This way, you'll be forced to hear each other's screams… and won't be able to do anything about it."
The dragon slayer stood up angrily. "What? What the hell are you gonna do to him?!"
The man was silent. However, a loud, familiar scream echoed down the hallways, causing Gajeel to lean forward and grip the bars.
"What are you doing to him, you sick fucks?!" he roared. Anger had him seeing red, shaking, not thinking straight. He didn't know why he was so angry, or why he felt so protective of someone who he'd been arguing with yesterday. Was this what Natsu felt when someone hurt another person in the guild…?
"What we'll be doing to you in an hour or so. It's all for the sake of luring the other two Fairy Tail mages into our base. There's nothing you can do to save him. Just relax while you still can."
Gajeel waited for the sound of the man's footsteps to fade away. It didn't take long, Alzack's screams quickly drowning them out. He began looking around the cell, searching for a way to escape – then it hit him. He was the iron dragon slayer! He could eat iron!
But were the bars even made of iron, or were they made of some different metal? Dammit, he knew nothing about bars…
…Well, if he wanted to save Alzack, he had to at least try.
"You two!"
Levy and Bisca looked up from the bags they were packing to see the old woman, holding a communication lacrima (the crystal ball was filled with nothing but mist, so it seemed as if the image function had been broken a while ago) and looking worried.
"It's those people again. The ones who invaded our house yesterday. They want to speak to you," she explained.
Bisca frowned, taking the lacrima and putting it on the table. "What do you want?" she asked coldly.
"Ah, I guessed that you might be in this house, after yesterday. We heard someone come in while we were speaking to that family," said the voice of one of the two men. "We just wanted to let you know that we have your friends here in our prison. And we're torturing them. You may want to hurry up and come to find them; it would save them a lot of pain."
"What?!" Bisca's hand slammed down loudly on the table. Levy looked up at her, worried. "You're lying, aren't you? They wouldn't let themselves be captured so easily!"
"I don't know about that," the Zeref worshipper laughed. "They walked right into our hands." Faint screaming could be heard in the background – screaming that Bisca had heard before. "See? Can you hear that? That's your friend. And there's blood everywhere; it's really quite disgusting. You should come and save him before he dies of blood loss. Oh, and we'll be starting on the other one in a few minutes, once our other torturer returns from his search…"
Bisca hung up, shaking as she gave the lacrima back to the old woman.
"What's wrong?" Levy asked.
"They have Gajeel and Alzack," Bisca explained through gritted teeth. "They're not lying. I could hear screaming."
"But why would they let us know that?" Levy asked. "It's probably a trap…"
"I don't care," Bisca growled. "Trap or not, we're going to save both of them."
Gajeel was all but stumbling down the hallways of the prison. Whatever that stuff had been, it was not iron – it had tasted like some of that new metal that someone had invented, the one that was resistant to magic. He had eaten some of it once, and been sick for days. But he didn't care. He had to save Alzack.
The dragon slayer finally reached the cell the screams were coming from, beginning to eat through the bars. The torturer inside the cell was far too busy to notice him as he finally removed enough of the metal to enter the cell. He snuck up behind the torturer, his Iron Dragon's Fist hitting him in the head from behind, knocking him out cold.
Alzack was on the floor, on the verge of unconsciousness. The cuts and scratches he'd received in the attack from the spirits had re-opened and were bleeding, along with the new cuts. His poncho and shirt lay several feet away from him, on the floor. He didn't notice that the torture had stopped until he felt a hand gently touch his arm.
"Gajeel…?" he managed.
The iron dragon slayer was pale and shaking, breathing heavily. He hadn't eaten that much of a metal he wasn't supposed to eat before, and now he felt even sicker than he had on the train.
"Are you okay?" the guns mage asked.
Gajeel nodded. "I'm fine," he lied. "Now let's get out of here." He reached down to help Alzack up, then realized that walking would be a bad idea with him losing blood that fast, and picked him up to carry him. He grabbed the red shirt and the poncho from the floor, using them as makeshift bandages for all the bleeding wounds. They didn't have any more time to hang around.
He turned around, leaving the prison cell and running as fast as he could. Black spots were beginning to appear in front of his eyes, and he felt like he was going to vomit. It was impossible to tell how far behind them the guards were; his hearing was fading along with his vision. It reached the point where he couldn't see at thing and was barely able to hear.
But he heard Levy's voice.
"Solid Script: Water!"
Gajeel collapsed onto the stone floor as a wave flew over his head, causing loud cries of surprise and pain from the guards behind him were hit.
"Solid Script: Lightning!"
"More are coming in, Levy!"
"I know. Can you take care of those? I'll help the guys."
"Okay."
As the dragon slayer's sight began to return, he looked up. Levy was standing over him.
"Solid Script: Iron," she said calmly, a large block of iron hitting the floor in front of Gajeel. The bluenette smiled at him. "Eat it. You might feel better."
Gajeel wasn't sure if eating his element would make him feel better after he ate that magic metal, but it was worth a shot. He bit into the iron, eating the whole block as Bisca and Levy continued their attack on the guards, Alzack regaining enough strength to join in. Gajeel finally managed to stand up, unleashing an Iron Dragon's Roar, wiping out a large chunk of the guards. With that, along with all the damage the other three had done, there only seemed to be a few guards left – but they were calling for reinforcements.
"Quick!" Levy shouted. "We have to get out before those reinforcements come!"
The other three nodded, turning and beginning to run. Levy turned back around as she heard the few remaining guards begin to pursue them.
"Solid Script: Mud!" The ground between her and the guards became coated with a thick layer of mud, far too sticky to run through. The guards would have to walk carefully across that, and would undoubtedly get stuck several times. Grinning, the bluenette turned and followed her comrades.
The four of them were back in the house of the family that had let Bisca and Levy stay with them last night. The iron had apparently had the desired effect, and Gajeel felt much better now; Alzack's cuts were healing surprisingly fast. Levy and Bisca had a few wounds that were also healing well.
"So, what now?" Bisca asked. "We go back and beat 'em up?"
Levy shook her head. "What we saw was probably only a small fraction of them. It won't be easy to beat them with four people, especially since none of us are S-class mages."
"What did this mission need exactly four people for, anyway?" Alzack asked, frowning.
Gajeel shrugged. "Dunno."
"I think it has something to do with the dome," Levy frowned. "Our only way in was underground, after all, and any more than the four of us wouldn't have been able to fit through that hole."
"Could be," Bisca agreed.
Alzack nodded. "And I guess we might need a small group to find their main base. A larger group would be noticed by those spirits."
"We got noticed and attacked by those spirits anyway," Gajeel pointed out.
"We won't be noticed again if we hide." Alzack smiled at him. "Like what we did before. Remember?"
"It's easier to hide in groups of two that one big group of four," Bisca said abruptly. She noticed the others staring at her and slumped down in her chair. She didn't know why she had suggested that, or, now she thought about it, why she wanted to team up with Levy but not the other two. "I mean, we can bring communication lacrimas with us this time," she continued. "I'm sure this family has some spares or something, right? Those things are breakable; anyone with a grain of sense buys at least two spares."
Alzack nodded. "I agree. We could form some sort of strategy and attack their base from both sides. Maybe we could capture the leader and question them."
Gajeel thought about it for a second. "Yeah, I guess it would be better to attack the base from both sides…" He glanced at Alzack. "It's not gonna do that much harm to divide ourselves into two teams again. We were okay last time."
Levy quickly nodded in agreement. "Same two teams as last time?"
"I guess so." Bisca put her arm around Levy's shoulders. In the silence that followed, she realized what she had just done and quickly withdrew her arm. "So, what's the plan?"