X773, Training Grounds

Sunday – July 14TH

"FIRE DRAGON'S CRUSHING FANG"

It was Sunday afternoon and that meant that Natsu had all day to spend perfecting his magic spells, and combos he could use on them.

"FIRE DRAGON'S GRIP STRIKE"

This also meant incorporating his magical spells into his fighting style, The Fire Dragon. Natsu let out a small scoff as he remembered Igneel telling him the name of his fighting style, defending it by stating that as he had made it he should name it after himself, he was modest that way.

FIRE DRAGON'S ROAR"

With that what was left of the trees surrounding Natsu was quickly burnt by the fierce flames that were spewing out of his mouth, some were even up rooted by the sheer force alone. Igneel watched on from the side, offering advice every now and then, but mostly left it to his own devices, wanting to see the progress Natsu gained individually.

Over the past six days Natsu had grown in strength and speed, but they stayed on level 1 of the gravity seal for now, both agreeing that they would see what Natsu was like after the first week before advancing to the next level. Igneel also felt Natsu's power rise slightly, not much, but like a slow drip, it steadily rises, Natsu of course had no clue, it was that small to notice, but Igneel was over 400 years old and could tell. There was only one foreseeable outcome that he could predict, Natsu was going to be very powerful, enough to rival even some of the lesser dragons. Also Natsu's finesse with his spells were definitely improving, not like his speed and strength, but still at a faster pace than hi power.

"FIRE DRAGON'S FLAME ELBOW"

At the point Natsu's fist hit the floor and created a tremor, not unlike a small earthquake, causing a rather large crator in the ground surrounding the small seven year old boy. Said boy just looked around with a smug grin, visions of his older self pummelling Erza, Laxus, Guildarts, Erza and Gajeel into the ground, oh did he mention Erza.

"Hey, brat, what did I say about excessive destruction?" questioned Igneel, slightly annoyed at his words of caution being ignored. Again. He had told him time and time again to watch his strength otherwise he might do something he might regret, or stupid, not to mention idiotic, and chaotic.

"To not to otherwise I might do something I might regret." Natsu answered with a slightly apologetic tone in his voice and expression on his face, for ignoring his father's words, again. Natsu sighed quietly as his father lectured him on this subject again, it wasn't his fault he was just excited. He had all this power to use, he was with his father and he could finally train longer.

Igneel sighed tiredly as he saw Natsu tune him out again. "Listen, Natsu, you can't always go full out and not think of the consequences. Yes you have power, and you can do so much good with it that it is unbelievable, "Natsu puffed up with pride at hearing that. "But you have to understand, if you constantly go full out you might injure one of your loved ones by mistake, and then what, it might be a small scrape, but it might be a dismemberment. You wouldn't want that would you?"

"No." Natsu softly shook his head in the negative, he didn't want that. He remembered small instances where he had been too caught up in the thrill of a fight to notice, but there were times when an opponent seemed a little banged up. "I'm sorry dad, I just want to get stronger." Natsu felt a little guilty, and a little ashamed, he had hurt his family without realising it.

"And you will, we have four years before I leave you, and in that time you will grow in leaps and bounds, but in that time, try to learn a little self-restraint." Igneel smiled a toothy smile at Natsu, assuring him was alright and everything was going to be fine. Natsu in return smiled slightly in thanks for the support he was given.

The day continued on like it had been, Natsu continued to perfect his combination attacks and when his spells should be cast, while Igneel sat on the side offering advice and giving adjustments where needed.

This routine continued day in and day out, nothing but training from dawn till dusk, then as he was going to bed, Igneel would come in and talk to him, reassuring any fears he may have had, and telling him stories to settle down with. Previous fights with other dragons and other worthy opponents, even telling Natsu about his rivalry with his brother in all but blood, Glaciem, the Ice Dragon. Before the two knew it, it had been to months since Natsu's time traveling incident, and both of them could never had been happier.

In those two months Natsu had surpassed even Igneel's standards, by breezing through training and increasing his gravity seal levels like there were nothing, already he was on level four, that was 135 kilograms of weight. It was insane. Also in this time Natsu's combat prowess had shocked the both of them to the core, it was here that Igneel realised that Natsu was a born fighter. While he didn't pick up the educational skills very well, his survival skills were another matter entirely. He didn't learn them, he soaked up the information like a sponge, coming up with tactics to face multiple, or strong, opponents within minutes, able to deduct the enemies weak spot within the first few blows, and then the combos he came up with.

They were so unorthodox. They were completely insane, unrealistic. They were so… so… Natsu. Yet they worked seamlessly, and connected with each other perfectly. Igneel was so proud.

It was once again a Sunday afternoon, and Igneel was once again watching as Natsu trained his completely unorthodox, yet effective fighting style, when a thought came to him. 'Hmm, would that even be possible, in theory it would be but the time you'd have to spend to produce even a sliver of its capabilities, but if you managed it. I think I have a project to work on, he he.'

"Brat come over here I want to talk to you about an idea I've had." Natsu did as his father told and ran over to him, wondering what Igneel had come up with. "Listen boy, I think you're going to love this. Here's are new project, we're going to…" and as Igneel explained their project a grin slowly worked its way onto Natsu's face, showing his sharp draconian teeth. By the end of it Natsu had a manic grim on his face as he thought of the possibilities Igneel had just opened up to him.

Ha, this was going to be fun!

So it went on, days passed into weeks, which passed into months and before either of them knew it, it had been eight months since Natsu's incident, and in that time Natsu had grown in both appearance and power, skill and smarts, but most importantly Natsu had started to show signs of maturing. Igneel was beyond believed when he realised Natsu was finally starting to grow up in the mental sense. Also within that time Igneel had shown Natsu some new moves and said that he could only learn one right now.

Admittedly the one Natsu chose was not originally Igneel's, he modified one he had heard Weisslogia talking about, Dragon Slayer Secret Art: Holy Nova. When Natsu had first seen the modified version Igneel had managed to create, he fell in love, it was perfect. However he had a hard time concentrating enough power into his hand to replicate the move, let alone making it stronger by putting more power into it.

What Igneel had done was taking out the White Dragon Slayer magic out of the equation and replaced it with Fire Dragon Slayer magic into it, from there it was a slight tweak to the spell's name and trial and error, eventually Igneel had gotten it correct and had found an interesting observation. While both were deadly attacks in their own right, Dragon Slayer Secret Art: Holy Nova however would do more damage to a single target, but Igneel's move would do more damage on a wide scale.

"DRAGON SLAYER SECRET ART: SUPER NOVA"

Natsu had just managed to succeed in completing the spell for the first time, albeit on the small side of its potential. When Natsu's punch landed, a small shockwave blasted outwards, sending bits of ground skywards, a bending the surrounding trees away, although not enough to up root them.

Also within that eight months, on every Sunday Natsu would spend the first half of his day practising and perfecting his movements, spells and combos, the second half of his day however would be spent with Igneel finishing and perfecting their 'little' project. Igneel was actually surprised at how hard it was to recreate the spell using dragon slayer magic as the source, but the challenge was welcomed with open arms as Igneel found that being a dragon, you were hardly ever challenged. Yet a spell had managed to do just that.

"God dammit, why doesn't this spell work!? I'm doing everything correctly, but it isn't working. IGNEEL! Is this some sort of a joke? The stupid thing won't work." Natsu whined to his parent, showing that while he had matured and had the mentality of an 18 year old, he was still very much a child.

An exasperated sigh was the reply Natsu received, and by the glare on the child's face, he was not amused. "Natsu, I've told you, focus your magical power into your fist, and only your fist. Like when performing Fire Dragon's Iron Fist but instead of the small amount, overload it. This is one move when you can literally put as much power behind as you want." Igneel was honestly getting tired of the complaints, this was the fifth time he had to repeat himself, and it was getting old very quickly.

"That's what I'm doing but it's not working, I keep on trying but it won't fucking work!" ignoring the smack on the back of his head and the quite reprimand of language, Natsu screamed his frustrations to the heavens before angrily turning back to the floor. Making a giant leap into the air (which was quite impressive considering his gravity seal was still in place), Natsu faced the earth and dove straight down, Igneel was nearly blinded by the unexpected brightness of orange flames that filled his vision, then he heard Natsu roar.

"DRAGON SLAYER SECRET ART: SUPER NOVA"

Natsu's fist collided with the earth, and Natsu would swear to anyone who would listen to his tale that the earth literally exploded, and explode it did, in a huge fireball of death that scorched whatever it touched (except the two fire users). Huge chunks of rocks flew in all directions, trees for half a kilometre all went upwards and outwards, dust covered the area preventing Igneel from seeing what the middle of the damage Natsu caused looked like.

When the dust cloud eventually settled down Igneel looked at Natsu standing in the middle of an extremely large crater, covering almost 50 meters in diameter and 35 in depth, the force behind that attack was truly devastating.

"This is… AWESOME!" Natsu shouted at the skies (and Igneel) for finally completing the spell after months of hard work, before falling into unconsciousness due to magical exhaustion. Igneel felt the sense of déjà vu wash over him as he carried Natsu to bed, remembering the many times before when he had to do this due to Natsu overdoing it.

Morning came and with it was Natsu's training, once fully dressed and a healthy dosing of Igneel's breakfast, Natsu headed to the training grounds his father created. After a few warm up stretches Natsu started his 500 push ups, all of which were done at the same pace, not fast but also not slow. When done he started his sit ups, which were done with relative ease, lastly came the 15 mile jog, which Natsu proceeded to do at a pace most people would be supremely jealous of, and leaving the others with a cloud of depression hanging over their heads.

When Natsu was don he once again started to focus as much magical power as he could into his right hand, much easier now due to last night's previous success, and prepared to level the ground with more damage. Grinning at the thought, he was just about to start the spell when a tap on the shoulder interrupted him, causing him to lose focus and let all the power he built u rush straight back into his origin.

Looking up at Igneel, Natsu was curious as to what he could want, rarely ever did he come down and personally tell him what to do. Hearing a small cough, Natsu looked up at Igneel's face before paling slightly, he had this sadistic look on his face that matched the one he had when he first started retraining Natsu.

"Natsu, today we're going to be doing some resistance training, he he." Natsu's face grinned slightly before becoming horror stricken as Igneel's next words floated into his ears. "We're going to cure your motion sickness. HA HA HA. Bette prepare yourself, I doubt you'll find it fun." Walking away from the horrified face of his adopted son, Igneel smirked cruelly as ideas for the 'training' filled his head.

'Let's start with him riding on my back as I fly around, see how he handles that, we can then progress to faster flying and finishing off with some tricks. Hmm, to finish the resistance training he can catch a train all the way back.' Igneel thought before smirking. 'If he can't get off fat enough then it's just extra training.'

Natsu looked on worriedly as his father started laughing manically, with a sadistic look on his face, it also didn't help that he was looking at Natsu while he did this. It was bad enough he was going to suffer through this torture known as motion sickness, but now he was mentally scarred by what Igneel could potentially do to him.

43.

Natsu had officially broken the record for the number of times a person could throw up in half a day, if there was one. He threw up 43 times before lunch had even started, and while he would be laying on the floor of some vehicle, Igneel would be watching high above the skies laughing loudly at the spectacle. Some strangers offered him pity and helped him out, most just ignored him, a few looked at him disgusted, but the highlight of the day as when two men walked straight into a puddle of his vomit, and as vengeance they through him off the train into the middle of the station.

Arriving back at the cave Natsu slowly walked into his room where he proceeded to drop onto his bed, unconscious before he even hit the pillow, the day's events finally tiring him out. While Igneel would never admit it, he was a little guilty about today. He had thought Natsu had been over exaggerating when he said he had terrible motion sickness. A little gloomily Igneel silently promised Natsu they would take it easier in that aspect of their training.

Hey peoples, just want to thank everyone who has voted on the poll, and if they haven't don't worry, it will be a long time before you, or I, have to worry about the pairing.

Now onto important business, next chapter will decide whether or not the Lightning Dragon teaches Natsu anything, in order for that to happen I really need people to either review or PM me what they think because I really can't decide. Due to this I will not even think about writing the next chapter until next week, plenty of time.

Another thing, this little project that they are working on, don't even try to gain any information about it from me, you'll know what it is in due time. ;)

Again if you have any ideas you want me to include, I'm open to ideas. Constructive criticism is welcome.

R and R

TheMaddogMerc