"Well, he definitely looks a lot more peaceful than he normally is." Natsumi mused aloud as she crouched down in front of her blonde best friend and looked between her and the dozing man whose lap she was sat on. "Seems like you've got a good effect on his mental state."

"Hm?" Lucy turned slightly and looked over her shoulder, and a smile tugged at her lips when she was met with the man's relaxed, peaceful smile. "Ah, I didn't notice that he had fallen asleep. His arms did go a little slack around my waist but I figured he had just let himself relax."

"Are you planning on doing this more often with him?" Natsumi leaned forward and quickly moved to their left, resting her back against the smooth wall. She spared a quick glance past the man at the priestess and android who were huddled together under a blanket for warmth. "She'll be okay with handing over some of the responsibility for his mental wellbeing to you if you are going to do it."

"It's a little embarrassing but I'm more than happy to do it."

"Embarrassing how?"

"Oh, just that deep down he gives off a similar feeling as you, but he's a man and that is a fact that is all too obvious… especially right now." Lucy blushed faintly and carefully shifted on the man's lap to face her friend. "He has your warmth and a more manly version of your woody and smoky scent plus when I'm this close I can smell his cologne and it smell amazing…, but physically, he is larger and harder than you, he isn't uncomfortable to sit on though. And while you've always been protective of me, he feels more reassuring on an instinctual level since he's, well, a big strong man. He feels like a weathered boulder that'd protect me against harsh stormy winds. He's just outwardly colder than you due to the thick walls he has erected around himself thanks to losing everything he loved."

"Yeah, I can understand that." Natsumi let out a quiet bark of husky laughter. "I mean, I'm strong and tuff and all, but if you put me in a fight with him – even without all of his augmentations – I know I'd lose. He'd overpower me since his body is capable of exerting more force than mine. I'm more limber and nimbler, so I can use that against him, but if he got me into a position where he could out-muscle me, I'd be screwed."

"I hope that wasn't an innuendo…" Lucy sighed softly. She closed her book and held it against her stomach as she nestled into the man's chest and rested her head just under his chin.

"It wasn't an intentional one. Even though I do love a good fight for dominance, I don't stand a chance against him. I'd just get pinned and ravaged, and end up sounding like a bitch in heat. Like the priestess over there, though he's always gentle with her."

"Do we really need to talk about sex at a time like this…" Lucy groaned and closed her eyes for a moment. "You're oversexed, Nat…"

"No I'm not!" Natsumi quietly rebutted. "If anything, I'm undersexed, I need more. And it's a bit rich coming from someone who hasn't even been physically intimate with anyone. Anyway, I blame this hunk of a man for getting me all worked up and leaving me to my own devices."

Lucy shook her head slightly and peaked over towards the fire where the multiversal visitors were gathered, along with the two goddesses. "So, what's their deal?"

"Apparently, that woman who is tied up is Eris and she's a goddess who works as an Overseer. The world that those women belong to falls under her jurisdiction and since she craves entertainment, she messed with some weird technology they have and sent them here instead of somewhere else. The woman who has that one tied up in bondage is Ceres, the goddess who helped Natsu, I've met her before. She's the overseer for both his home world and the world we live in. As for the women themselves, they said that they've been stuck going from world to world trying to find their way back home, or something like that."

"You don't seem overly concerned."

Natsumi glanced at the armoured women and sighed as she leaned against Natsu's side. "I've got more pressing matters to be concerned with right now. This job being the greatest at the present moment; I've got to ensure everyone on my team gets back in one piece. You know that."

"Yeah, Natsu seemed to feel the same way." Lucy turned her attention back to the woman but she snuck a quick look over her shoulder to the sleeping women behind her. "His priority upon regrouping with us was to check on them. When he found that they were alright and were resting, he sat down with them like a protective guard-dog."

"Well, from what they've told me and what I heard when they were nearing the camp; their Levy is heavily into inventing new technology and shit, even more-so than ours. So, he probably wanted to make sure she didn't get her hands on Henrietta if she found out what she really is."

Before Lucy could even open her mouth to reply, her seat shifted slightly and the arms around her waist lifted into the air. "Oh, did you have a nice nap, sleepyhead?"

Natsu looked into the woman's chocolate brown eyes and he let out a large yawn. "Eh, I think I've gotten too used to sleeping on a soft bed; my back is a little sore."

"Well, since you're finally awake." Natsumi rose to her feet and dusted off the back of her skirt. She looked down at the man then turned her attention to the rest of her team. "We're ready to move out when you are. Those women have all had a turn in the makeshift bath and have freshened up, and checked over their gear, so I think they're ready too."

"Alright." Natsu lightly grasped Lucy by her hips and lifted her to her feet before giving her a gentle push on the small of her back. "Have everyone dismantle the camp and then assemble for a briefing, goddesses included. I'll wake these two up and get them sorted out. Then we can pop the cork and head down into the nest. We won't be stopping to take a break from here on out, not until we kill the queen or queens of this nest."

While Natsu woke up the two members of his team and had them switch to armour piercing ammunition, Natsumi and Lucy headed to the centre of the camp to relay his orders. It didn't take long for the women to gather their belongings and gather around the former soldier.

"What's the chances that the leftovers will go berserk or scurry away to another nest?" Natsumi crossed her arms under her ample bust. She watched the man with a curious eye as he fiddled with his gear. "Either outcome isn't exactly desirable."

Natsu refastened his chest rig and placed his rifle onto his back, using the short time it took to develop a countermeasure for both outcomes. "I'll run a network of thermobaric bombs and napalm sigils through the upper sections of the nest while we descend to the throne room. Once the first queen is killed, then I'll activate them and destroy all avenues of escape while blowing apart anything unlucky enough to be caught up there. The napalm will flood the tunnels and burn everything else."

"And what about if we get caught up in the flood?" Grace asked, placing her hands on her hips and leaning in with a bold glimmer in her eyes.

"Do you really think Natsu would hurt us?" Lucy shot her friend a quick glare. "Did you forget that I walked through those very same flames when we first met him?"

"You've frozen my demonic flames with your devil slayer ice before, Grace, you'll have no trouble with his."

Natsu shook his head and continued with the briefing as if he hadn't been interrupted. "Once we have confirmed that all the queens have been killed – if there are multiple – then Lucy will create an escape tunnel for us using Virgo. When we're safely within the cave she will make, then we'll collapse the entire nest with a gravity well from Kagura." He shifted his gaze from the jaegers to the armoured soldiers, with his gaze resting upon the purple-haired woman. "You are capable of that, correct?"

"Yes, but to safely do it I'll need a little bit of time to set up a sigil that is powerful enough to pull all the earth down to it."

"You'll get as much as you need. We can offset it too by destroying the nest's supporting structure with explosives." Natsu glanced at the three-metre-tall icy plug that sealed the entrance to the nest. "In fact, I'll alter the plan slightly so the thermobaric bombs that I'll spread throughout the tunnels will be detonated on our egress. That'll aid in the collapse of the nest. The napalm can be activated as previously planned, though."

"You know, it's a bit refreshing coming across a variant like you." Erza grinned and rested her vicious-looking rifle against her shoulder. She turned her grin on the three women at her sides. "Doesn't he remind you of Dragneel?"

"Kinda." Levy agreed with a short nod. "He's similar, but different at the same time. Oh, Natsu, since we've got two Erza here – and will have duplicates later on – it's best that you refer to us with our surnames."

"Understood. That's something I'm used to anyway." Natsu glanced at the women from the world he now lived in. "You girls won't have any issue with that, right?"

"We had already discussed it." Erza pointed to Scarlet with her thumb. "She asked for me to refer to her as Scarlet after we had introduced ourselves." The woman's words were met with a general murmur of affirmation from the other women in Team Natsumi.

"Master." Henrietta stepped forward; her eyes had been glued to the women's rifles up until she decided to raise her concerns with the man. "Since we're in confined spaces and they have unsuppressed weaponry, I think it would be best if we all use some form of hearing protection; like noise reduction earplugs. They would have a greater impact on our hearing than our weapons would, so I think it would be best to have protection from here on out."

"That's probably for the best." Natsu gave the android a quick nod and begun handing out earplugs to all the women with the exception of the armoured women since they likely had helmets like him and the goddesses due to the divine resilience. After a quick explanation on how they work and how to use them, he put his own pair into his ears and then checked that the others had correctly placed their own into their ears. To ensure he could be heard clearly by the women, he raised his voice a little. "Right, this saves Wendy and Anna time and energy taking care of us once this job is over."

"Natsu, if there are a lot of ants in there then wouldn't it be best if you used that big gun you had during the horde night?" Lucy asked curiously while leaning past the man and looking at the rifle resting against his back. "I'm no gun expert, but I'm sure it would help if we get swarmed."

"Big gun?" McGarden's ears perked up at the mention of the man's weapon. "Are we talking an anti-materiel rifle?"

"No." Natsu shook his head. "A General-Purpose Machine-Gun, my MG80. Though I do have an anti-materiel rifle, too. I should probably get a heavy machine-gun using the 14.5mm bullets that rifle uses." His voice trailed off towards the end of his sentence. He quickly used requip to send his rifle and magazines into storage and he brought out his MG80 which he handed off to the android while he sorted out his ammunition pouches.

"What do these colours mean?" Erza asked, leaning in to take a closer look at the weapon. But before Natsu could answer, her counterpart glanced at the large cartridges and replied near instantly.

"Those four silver tips are armour-piercing incendiary rounds, and the red and silver tips are the same but with a tracer." Scarlet turned to the man and raised an eyebrow at him. "That's correct, right? I'm not sure if you would've had the same system."

"No, you are correct." Natsu gave the woman a brief nod and fastened four spare sacks of 250-round belts to his rig. "Four API's and then an API-T. The rifles are just using black-tipped AP's."

"You know…" McGarden murmured as she brought up her inventory menu and scrolled through her catalogue of lethal weapons until she found the one that she was after. "It may not be as punchy as yours, but I think I'll take this bitch for a ride." She swapped out her Lancer for a light machine-gun and held it up with a smug grin.

"Mine's bigger." Natsu pointed out with a ghost of a grin, pointing to the GPMG held by the ashen-haired woman with his chin.

"And normally I'd tell you to stop compensating, but you're not exactly lacking in what you're packing."

"Huh?" Lucy's attention snapped to the surprisingly busty blunette with her mouth slightly agape.

"Myself, Scarlet, and McGarden are all in an intimate and loving relationship with our version of him." Strauss informed the group while pointing to Natsu with her thumb. "We aren't the only ones either, but we're very aware of what he's hiding in those fancy pants of his."

"How the hell do you manage that!" The blonde balked, her eyes shooting wide open and they slowly shifted across to the pinkette next to her. "Did you?"

"When I was locked into someone, I kept it monogamous." Natsu let out an amused huff and took his weapon from the android. "But outside of serious relationships, I did sleep around sometimes. He wouldn't be lacking for stamina; you just have to look at Natsumi to know that."

"And what about you with your augmentations?" The woman continued to press the subject.

"Why don't we ask our little priestess here?" Natsumi slowly strolled behind them and wrapped Lelyanna up in her warm embrace. "She's very knowledgeable about how he is in bed."

"Uhh… w-why are you asking me about it at a time like this!" Lelyanna struggled to free herself from Natsumi's arms. Her face quickly became flushed as three the armoured women leaned in and ogled her. "Why are you all so close!"

"Wait, this cute little thing got dicked down by Natsu?" Strauss's blue eyes widened for a moment and she suddenly burst out laughing. "So, how was it?"

"Um… er…"

"Come on, spit it out."

"She can't spit it out since she only swallows." Natsumi smirked at the priestess. "But since she looks a bit petrified right now, I'll answer for her; he's gentle with her. Like I said, she's the only one he has sleep with in our world."

"Oh, this is the woman?" Scarlet looked at the pinkette then lowered her gaze to the woman trapped in her arms. "Colour me surprised."

"She's his Emotional Support Priestess." Lucy joked, a sly smile spreading across her face.

Natsu sighed and gently pried Natsumi off of Lelyanna and turned to the armoured women. "She asked me to take her virginity so it wouldn't be stolen from her by some thug in an alleyway or a monster in some cave. I didn't have any issue with it since I do care for her, even if I don't harbour any romantic feelings for her."

"It goes both ways." Lelyanna agreed quietly and she hid behind the muscular man. "I like him, and I want him to be happy again, but I don't like him in a romantic way. Sex is just a way of blowing off steam and I find it very soothing when I've been having nightmares of the people I've had to kill or witnessing gruesome acts of cruelty from monsters. After the first time, it just started becoming something of a common occurrence between us, to slip into the other's room and have sex."

"She's just so adorable that I want to tease her like fuck," Strauss grinned wildly but she sighed and quickly reigned herself in. "But unfortunately, we've got a job to do. Right, Natsu?"

"Yes, and since we're back on topic," Natsu glanced around at the women around him. "The formation is going to be as such; we'll take a delta formation with Hellhound at the tip and Scarlet's fireteam will split in two and take the left and right flanks, in the back will be Team Natsumi who will be focusing on ranged magic." He glanced at each of the women before letting his gaze come to rest on the twin-tailed blunette. "Wendy, we don't know the air quality in there, but it's likely to be pretty bad. Are you capable of drawing fresh air down from the surface or purifying the air and making it rich in oxygen?"

"We're a bit too deep for me to efficiently draw fresh air down from the surface, however, I can definitely purify the air around me and create currents to push it through the tunnels." Wendy replied softly.

"Alright, I want you to do that as soon as we get in there. Don't worry about anything else, even protecting yourself, just keep oxygenating the air and the rest of us can keep you safe."

Ceres half-raised her hand and quickly inserted herself into the conversation. "I'm just going to reiterate this, but don't worry about Eris and I's safety. We'll stay in the back line and out of the way since we're non-combatants. If the bugs come in from behind the group, we'll let you all know and then move to the centre to give you all room to fight."

"Alright," Natsu shifted his gaze to the pure-white woman and gave her a quick nod. "Sounds good.

"This is going to sound really fucking rich coming from me. But it's a bit dangerous, creating an oxygen rich environment in a confined space." McGarden pointed out and pointed at both of the pinkettes. "Both you and Natsumi are fire users, and our firearms all use combustion to propel the bullets down the barrels. The oxygen in the air would cause those bursts of fire to intensify which could cause damage to these girls."

"Our fire doesn't need oxygen to burn, though we can use it to amplify the effects of the fire." Natsumi replied. "But you do have a good point about the guns."

"The fire from the guns would run out of fuel well before the oxygen can enhance it. The most it will do is create an impressive flash before petering out. And anyway, I'm betting on the oxygen-rich environment to enhance the potency of the thermobaric bombs I'll be spreading through the tunnels with a mixture of my fire and bomb curses. So if the majority of the nest is filled with oxygen-rich air by the time we reach the Queen – plural or singular – then we can decimate pretty much all the ants and ensure that they don't go nuts and cause harm to the dwarves we're working for right now."

"Any rules about use of magic and explosives on the descent?" Strauss asked, raising her heavy revolver in her right hand and a swirling mass of dark and powerful magic in her left.

"Do as you wish, as long as you don't irradiate shit or cause the tunnel to cave in on us." Natsu brushed off the woman's question and turned to the large icy plug. "That's all we need to talk about so pop the cork, Grace. Seal it behind us."

"Alright." The raven-haired woman clicked her fingers and the wall of ice shattered into millions of tiny fragments. Once they passed through the frosty threshold and their boots crunched against the coarse craggy chewed-up tunnel floor, she turned and put her hands together to reform the plug from the numerous ice shards littered on both sides of the wall. The nest's tunnels were just as dark and oppressing as the mine and the only sources of light that was available to the group was that of the embers floating in the air and the lights attached to the firearms and built into the armour of the interdimensional travellers.

"Now which way do we go to go down?" Natsumi looked around and at the ground beneath them. Unlike creatures with distinctively shaped feet or hooves – Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Quin'ael and other beastman races – ants and many other critters effectively walked on points, and because of this it was hard to understand the direction of travel by the prints they leave in the dirt. "It stinks down here. It's so pungent and thick that I can't work out which is to and from."

"Lucy," Natsu turned to the beautiful blonde. "Use Virgo's Star Dress and send a pulse of magic through the ground. It ought to allow you to get an idea of where to go."

"I've got scanning equipment that can do that." McGarden turned to the man and activated her inventory window, but she was beaten to the punch by Lucy who swiped her hand across the key pouch sat on her belt and activated the spell.

"Try not to get any naughty ideas." Lucy giggled lightly and she flashed the man a playful smirk as the golden light that had enveloped her rapidly faded and revealed a maid outfit that made the ones worn by Henrietta look fairly conservative. She closed her eyes and sent a pulse of magic out from her feet and through the ground. After a few moments and a few pulses of increasing strength, she raised her left arm and pointed down the tunnel. "If we head left from here, the tunnel will rise a little bit before heading down further. I was able to map the nest for the most part and it seems we're close to the bottom already. There is a large cavern close to a kilometre from here, down and to our front."

"I feel like I'm in the Locust tunnels again." Scarlet grumbled and her lips parted into a faintly growling snarl. "The stench is the same too."

"Smells like rotting carcasses." Natsu offhandedly informed the group of women as he turned and walked over to the wall. He placed his left hand against the crumbly dirt and a fine net of maroon and yellow shot from underneath it and rocketed along the tunnel wall to their right and heading to the upper levels. "What are Locust?"

"Humanoid monsters." Scarlet replied instantly. "A subterranean race of motherfuckers that lived in a planet called Sera. My Dragneel and I were stuck fighting a war with them for a long time, and that was before they spilled out into our home universe. Saw plenty of friends die in that war, and had to make many tough calls. Dragneel was our squad's leader, much like you were for yours."

"We called them Grubs." McGarden added. "Pale, scaly fuckers who were hardy as fuck. Takes a lot to put them down; more than a few bullets or just one full-powered cartridge if you get them in the head." She brought her fists beside her skull and flared her hands open as if her head was exploding. "Pops them open like an exploding watermelon."

"Did you even try to oversee their damn world?" Ceres rounded on her fellow goddess, her irritation causing her to narrow her white eyes.

"I watched over them." Eris replied with a shrug of her shoulders. "Doesn't mean I need to lift a finger to help them." She tapped on her bindings with her right index finger and they vanished in a flash of light. She stretched out her limbs and held up her hands when Ceres drew closer with a threatening aura. "Chill, chill! I'm not going to run off, why would I when I've got front row seats!"

"You better stay put until I say it's okay for you to bugger off." Ceres shook a finger at the woman and let out a huff and placed her hands on her hips. "I suppose this will give them a period of rest before they're thrown into whatever hell awaits them."

"See, I'm not a completely cruel bitch."

Strauss strolled over to the salmon-haired man and rested her shoulder against the wall beside him, watching him work. "I've seen these curses used by another version of you. But he never used them like this."

"What was he like?"

"I couldn't really tell you; I didn't know him long enough to get a good feel on him and it's been years since then." The white-haired woman looked up into the man's crimson eyes that emitted a menacing glow. "I think he hadn't had full access to the demon side of him for all that long. Both you and her seem to have a good handle on it."

"I've been like this for as long as I can remember. I've got plenty of experience using numerous curses, both for menial things like unlocking mechanical locks and to devastating ends like obliterating a warship from within." Natsu replied, turning his gaze to the woman before shifting it to look over his shoulder at Natsumi. "From what I remember; she's the same. But she's got god-slaying flames integrated into her own flames, it's something I don't have."

"But you've got all the inspiration from the incendiary and explosive weapons of your world, and can use your curses to replicate them, right?"

"Pretty much." Natsu nodded slowly before shifting his gaze back to the wall and closing his eyes to sense how far his destructive net had been cast. "We take inspiration from our environment and mould our magic as such."

"Sounds like a maker mage." Strauss smirked and turned to rest her back against the wall. She looked at the raven-haired woman who stood with her team, waiting for the go-ahead to move on. "Though, having god-slayer flames kinda gives you that kind of ability."

"For weapons only, though. She made a large bow and was using it for ranged attacks before we found you lot."

"She seems less hyper than the one I met at the same time as that other fully-realised hybrid Natsu. Sounds different too, I love that sexy huskiness that she has. It's like she's constantly pillow-talking. She'd be great in a threesome, I bet."

"Well, she's open to have one." Natsu offhandedly remarked and he could feel the pinkette's sly grin burning the back of his head. "When she gave Anna the push to ask me to fuck her, she was raring to join in but I shoved her into the bathroom since Anna wanted something special that she could hold onto if she was ever raped."

"How about we have a threesome; you, me, and Natsumi." Mira purred seductively as she flashed the man a perverse grin. "I bet we could get up to some funky shit."

"Hard pass." Natsu slowly opened his eyes and turned to the woman while he continued to channel his power into the wall.

"Why? I know we'd be able to have a hell of a night together."

"Because I don't feel like it. Simple as that. I go to Anna when I feel the need, and she comes to me for the same reason. Yes, I have more stamina than she can handle and I find myself holding back for her sake, but I've got more important things to concern myself with than chasing sexual gratification."

"Hm," Strauss tilted her head slightly to the side and shrugged after a few moments. "I guess I can get where you're coming from. You're probably still busy trying to put your life back together and don't want to fuck that up."

"Pretty much. I'll end up sleeping with others in time until I finally manage to settle back down again, but I'm not about to force her to love me like she did."

"Okay, but why can't we fuck? I've been aching to get fucked by my Dragneel for a while now after being separated from him for so damn long, and now I've come across someone so similar to him that I'm wetter than an ocean and am trying not to push you down onto the ground right here and now and ride you like wild animal. And I know damn well that Levy and that red-haired whore feel the same way."

Natsu stared blankly at the woman for a few seconds and removed his hand from the wall and walked away silently, the only sound coming from the dirt crunching underfoot. His approach quelled the few quiet conversations being held by the small groups of women. "This place has been rigged to blow, time to move out." His gaze wandered across the many faces before settling on Lucy's. "Take us on the shortest possible path, any hostile resistance is of little cause for concern since we'll decimate anything impeding our progress."

As the blonde turned and started to lead the group deeper into the nest, McGarden raised her voice and brought her to a stop.

"I've got a better idea." The blunette took her hand from the LMG's grip and pointed to the wall opposite the sheet of ice. "Why don't we have Lucy use Virgo's power and have her bore a shortcut for us. It doesn't have to be all that large or wide, just enough to fit us single-file or two-abreast. It'll cut down on travel time and allow us to avoid detection."

Lucy looked at the short woman then turned her eyes on Natsu, silently asking for his orders with a raised eyebrow. Her answer was just as silent; a jerk of the chin directed at the wall. "It's going to be fairly steep if I make it a direct path right there. If we're to use it, then Grace should coat the walls with a layer of ice to minimise friction. I can switch to Aries' Star Dress and make a wool cushion on the other side, but it means I need to go first or go at the same time as someone."

"You can follow me in." Natsu raised his GPMG to draw attention to it. "I can provide covering fire while everyone comes down."

"Alright." Lucy gave the man a nod and jogged to the wall. She placed her hands on the chewed-up rock and a bright golden circle swelled from them and grew to span two-metres. "It won't take long for me to connect it up."

"Grace, you know the plan; assist her." Natsu quickly ordered before shifting his attention over to the sky dragon slayer. "Wendy, how's the oxygen concentration coming along?"

"I've increased the concentration to twenty-one percent nest-wide."

"Notify me when it reaches twenty-five, and switch to maintaining that level."

"Heheheheh." McGarden laughed maniacally and a crazed grin spread across her face. "I can sense a big boom coming with those levels of oxygen enrichment."

"That's the idea." Natsu turned his glowing red eyes onto the madwoman and nodded at the mesh of maroon and yellow extending away from them. "Once those detonate, this place will be bathed in flames from both the napalm and the thermobaric bombs. The enriched atmosphere will fuel the blast and make it even more potent. Not only will this place crumble, but everything inside the nest will be reduced to cinders or liquified by the intense shockwave."

"Tunnel connected! Displacing the earth."

"Bombard the other side with the tunnel's contents." Natsu instantly gave the order as he joined the two women by the wall. The golden circle rapidly got smaller but it wasn't shrinking in size, it was moving further and further away from them. "Lucy, I'm considerably heavier than you so I'll end up outpacing you on the descent."

"Understood." Lucy glanced over her shoulder and gave the man a small smile. "I'll trust you to clear a landing zone for us then." She stepped out of the way and gave the man a playful salute and a bright smile. "After you, Commander."

Natsu let out a quiet chuckle and waited for Grace to coat the tunnel with ice before he turned and stood in front of the hole. "See you at the bottom." He took an IR flare from a pouch and ignited it by ripping the cap off with his teeth. The bright light dulled his vision but it quickly returned after he threw the stick down the hole. Gold light illuminated the wall to his left and he turned his head and found himself captivated by Lucy in a short woollen hoop dress and with golden ram horns coming from the sides of her head.

"I'm going to start feeling embarrassed soon if you keep staring at me that intensely, Natsu." Lucy giggled lightly and she hid her grin behind a hand.

"Huh," Natsu slowly looked her up and down and kept his eyes on her as he put one foot in the tunnel and braced himself with a hand on the top of the rim. "You look cute in that, Lucy."

"Oh, I know." Lucy curled her fingers under her chin and gave the man another large, heart-melting smile. "Now hurry~, we've got bugs to exterminate."

Natsu took another step and shifted his weight steadily until his boots broke traction and he began to slide down the lightless tunnel. He sensed Lucy push off just after him, however he was already speeding away from her thanks to his greater weight. A joyful scream tore his attention away from the black mass ahead of him momentarily and he murmured, "Sounds like she's having fun."

As he neared the end of the steep one-thousand-metre descent, he drew two more IR flares and ignited them which filled the tube with normally invisible light that refracted up and down the entire length of the tube. A moment later, he reached the end tube which curved up suddenly and spat him out in an arch. He twisted in the air as he soared over an undulating mass of shiny black carapaces and he flung the two flares to separate corners of the chamber with enough force to embed them into the chewed-up dirt so they illuminated the battlefield below.

"WOOL BOMB!" Lucy bellowed seconds after Natsu had emerged from the tube. The familiar crackle of Natsu's fast-firing machine-gun echoed around the chamber and thundered in her ears as she uncontrollably flipped head-over-heels through the air, but she threw out her hands and cast her spell which sent a pink mass racing towards the floor and it exploded into a large fluffy pink cushion. She safely came crashing down atop it and scrambled across the woollen surface, her eyes darting left and right to try and find the man she had followed down into the pits of hell. "Natsu, I'm alright! I've made the landing zone!"

Natsu spared the woman's words less than half a mind, he couldn't afford to shift his attention away from the swarm of hostiles that were quickly scurrying around him. An ant the size of a large SUV loomed over the rest of the man-sized ants and even the sedan-sized Sub-Majors looked less intimidating in comparison. It was one of the Major-class soldiers, with a large head and powerful mandibles that would easily bite through him.

The subconscious target priority roster in his mind updated in an instant and he snapped the machine-gun up and lined the optics up with the large monster. The trigger was only squeezed for half a second but in that half-second, the gun spat out ten armour-piercing incendiary bullets which tore through the monster's hardened exoskeleton and over-penetrated, punching through the monsters behind it.

Red flares shot through the air above his head and slammed into the walls, illuminating the battlefield with visible light. But he still couldn't let his attention wander. He lifted up his left foot and slammed the boot down onto the head of an ant that attempt to bite him in two, finishing it off with a burst of gunfire and he kept the trigger back as he swept the machine-gun across the monsters encircling him.

Something moved on the far side of the chamber, large enough to look like the wall itself was moving. It was the Queen, an incredibly large ant that was the size of a coach bus and was covered in her children that acted as living armour.

"Queen Located! Twelve-O'clock! Two-Hundred Metres!" He bellowed over the roaring gunfire and a split second later a quartet of flaming yellow-tipped spears screamed right over his head.

They impacted the side of the hulking ant and the explosions rocked the behemoth, shedding some of its living armour and revealing her large body. The blasts also disturbed four more nearby masses that rose to their feet and towered over the humans, each one a queen in this combined colony.

"Holy Fuck, there's five of them?" Natsumi shouted as she soared overhead, her flaming wings holding her aloft. She had four two-metre-long spears hovering just under her spread wings like missiles attached to a jet-fighter, ready to be launched at her targets.

"Roast them!" Natsu ordered, his eyes darting up to the woman who was rapidly closing in on the titanic monsters. The bolt of his machine-gun slammed forward but it just clicked, it was empty. He had burnt through a full 250-round belt in no time and needed to feed a new belt into the gun. "I need to reload! Cover me!"

"You heard the man, Open Fire!" Scarlet bellowed to the women at her side and all four shifted their aim over to the man. Their automatic rifles and the LMG let out a thunderous roar while they slowly advanced to his position.

Natsumi gracefully turned and flipped over, diving head-first down on the first queen. Her eyes darted along its long body as she searched for a chink in its armour and when she found her opening, she unleased her spears and sent them rocketing into her prey.

Four streaks of red and yellow flashed down towards the monster and punched through the queen's carapace. The massive ant's body was illuminated from within moments before it violently ruptured and burning chunks of meat were blown across the chamber.

The woman pealed off through the hail of burning flesh and raced low across battlefield. She glanced around, using her senses to find the man leading the extermination mission. "That's one down, Natsu! I can take out the rest from up here!"

"Right, we'll deal with the rest of these motherfuckers!" The man replied, slapping the top hatch of his machine-gun closed and opening fire once more. Bursts of magic washed over him from behind, caused by the spells fired off by Natsumi's team who fought fiercely while staying safely outside of the cones of gunfire.

Lelyanna and Henrietta carefully navigated their way through the battlefield, trying to regroup with the leader of their squad. The young priestess was thankful that the android had stayed by her side and protected her, and she felt a little reassured by the deathly calm expression she caried while she dished out precise and lethal singular shots to the monsters around them as it reminded her of Natsu. Once they caught up to the man, she hunched over, huffing and puffing as she looked up at the stone-faced pinkette "There's more than I was expecting…"

"Yeah," Natsu nodded slowly. "I'll admit that I grossly underestimated the number of bugs in here. They just keep flooding in from the tunnels around us."

"I think we ought to flood the tunnels, Natsu." Erza called out over her shoulder as Team Natsumi – sans the namesake – fell back and closed the circle. "It seems like they're all heading down this way and not to the surface, so we should close off their escape routes and kill off the ones yet to reach the queens' chamber."

"Right. Turning on the taps."

"How long do we have until it reaches down here?" Scarlet looked across to the man then glanced at a nearby hole in the wall.

"Couple minutes, maybe." Natsu replied. "Flow rate is pretty high since I want to wash them down here."

"Grace," Erza shifted her eyes to her teammate as she used her telekinesis magic to swing her swords at the ants in front of her. "Put up a ring of ice around us, waist-height. And use your devil-slayer ice too since we don't know just how powerful these bombs are going to be."

"Should I make it a dome when we blow this place?"

"It's a good idea." Natsu called out and purple ice shot up from the ground a metre out from him. He flicked down his bipod and braced his weapon against the ice. "Rita! You're on ammo duty."

Henrietta took a knee beside the man and slung her rifle over her shoulder. While Natsu maintained his course of fire, the android removed the one of the sacks of ammunition from one of his pouches and sat at the ready for him to run out.

Explosions rocked the chamber and caused some dirt to fall from the ceiling as Natsumi's explosive spears found home in two more queens. The ants were frantically trying to snap at the flying pest and they began to pile onto the two remaining queens en-mass to act as impenetrable walls and protect the life-givers of their nest.

It didn't take long for the flaming napalm begin seeping in from the cracks and holes in the wall and into the chamber. The liquid fire washed across the crumbly floor like the waters of hell. It stuck to anything and everything in its path, and the ants that were caught-up in the tunnels came flowing out of the holes; some scrambling around wildly while others were unmoving mounds of burning and crackling flesh.

"Fucking damn it. Just DIE ALREADY!" A frustrated Natsumi shouted at the top of her lungs. She sent barrage after barrage of spears at the two remaining queens but the horde of ants just kept crawling over them and shielding them from her attacks. She let out an irritated growl and raced back to the circle, touching down in the centre. "I can't punch through them, there's just too many of them. If I put any more power into it, I'm going to prematurely cave in the nest thanks to the weight of the napalm."

"I can burn them down with my demonic magic but I'm pretty sure I'd cause the place to come down on us too." Strauss added, her left hand extended. She lined up a shot but Natsu forced her hand down. "What?"

"Well, I've got a big sword meant for cutting down big monsters…" Natsu handed off his machine-gun to Henrietta and rose to his full height. He shrugged off his chest rig and replaced it with the leather harness that was made for his Grosses-Messer and Kriegs-Messer, but only the 160cm sword was currently mounted to it. "Don't worry about hitting me with your rounds, just keep defending this position to the last bullet."

"And here I thought Levy was the clinically insane one." Eris murmured, drawing a quick glance from the mortals around her. It seemed that each one trusted the man's words. "Seriously, you four ought to know well enough what happens when you're caught in the crossfire."

"If Natsu says to continue firing in his direction, then we'll fire in his direction." Scarlet shrugged. "Clearly he's got something hidden up his sleeves."

"When we crossed paths, he moved incredibly fast and took out two of those sub-majors before I could even fling a grenade at them." McGarden informed the group while sweeping the muzzle of her LMG across the hordes of ants ahead of her.

"Enough talking, the 'water level' is rising." Natsu quelled the chatter and he stepped over the frozen barrier. The ground was hard underfoot thanks to the constant pounding it had received from the giant ants, it was a great surface for him to sprint across.

Suddenly, the ground cratered as the man launched from a dead-stop to a full super-human sprint. His twin black Messers glinted in the firelight as they shrieked through the air like a pair of banshees, slicing through ant after ant and leaving a bisected corpses in his wake.

Henrietta shouldered the MG80 and took aim at one of the majors in Natsu's path and held down the trigger, sending a second's worth of armour piercing projectiles barrelling over the man's shoulder and into the large monster. "You heard Master, continue firing."

Lucy's Star Dress burst into golden particles before it reformed with a swipe of her hand over her key pouch, transforming from Aries' dress to Sagittarius' and she raised the golden bow towards the man's back. A golden arrow materialised in her right hand while she drew back the bowstring. Her eyes narrowed slightly at the man's blurry and erratic movements but she released her arrow without hesitation. "Meteor Shower."

The loosed arrow shot forth like a bolt of golden light. Charged with far more magic than Lucy usually applied, it rapidly gained on the super soldier and looked like it was about to punch through his heart but when it came within just a metre away from his back, it burst apart and the golden fléchettes swerved around the pinkette. The golden shards punched through the exoskeletons of the minor and major class ants with ease, detonating within them and blowing apart the monsters with violent bursts of golden light.

With his path cleared, Natsu sheathed his twin Messer and drew his Kriegs-Messer. He kicked off the ground and launched forward as another arrow split around him and showered the closest queen with fléchettes, blowing off some of the ants protecting her and opening up the entire left flank for him to slice into.

He channelled his cursed fire along the sword, placing a mesh of maroon lines across the black-and-blue blade which ignited a heartbeat later with flames that dripped from the sword and splashed against the liquid fire that was slowly rising up his legs.

In an instant, he had moved from the tip of the queen's head to the end of its gaster. While his sword couldn't slice through to the other side, it still cut deeply and left napalm inside the grievous wound.

Before he could turn and take out the last queen, five golden arrows arched over the top of the large ant's thrashing and writhing body then shattered, sending a hail of golden shards raining down like sub-munitions from a cluster bomb onto the last hulking monster.

The concentrated hail of fléchettes blew the living armour off the queen ant and began to punch into its tough exoskeleton, blowing large holes into its flesh and causing the monster to fall to the ground, unmoving.

But to be certain of its demise, Natsu kicked off once more and drove his blade through the length of the beast. He turned on the ball of his foot and raced through the crazed ants with is eyes locked on the ring of ice. The pinkette darted through gunfire and arrows – both golden and flaming but now accompanied by purple ice – as he charged through the frenzied ants, pushing himself faster before leaping over the ice. "Shield up."

"Going up! Everyone away from the ice!" Grace called out. Her magic flared and once everyone was away from the barrier, she slammed her hands together and completed the dome. She released her purple ice bow and sat down against the wall of her dome. "It's all done, right?"

"Almost." Natsu placed his hand on the machine-gun that Henrietta was clutching to her chest and sent it away to his Requip's pocket dimension along with the ammo sacks. The earth around them began to rumble and shutter as countless explosives were detonated in the mess of tunnels above their heads. "Drop the ceiling on us."

Mikazuchi raised her right hand with her index and middle fingers pointed at the ceiling, her magic began to swell rapidly and just as the thunderous roar of the thermobaric shockwaves ripped through the holes around them – bringing a flood of napalm and burning monsters along with it – she brought her hand down and pointed to the floor. "Fall into ruination."

"I hope your ice is up to the task, Grace." Natsu looked around, carefully inspecting the ice dome for minute fractures that could grow under the combined pressure of blast waves, napalm, and the falling earth.

"Are you doubting me?" Grace asked calmly, lifting her gaze to the red-eyed man. "Chill, it'll hold."

"What would ya rate it?" McGarden turned to Scarlet and looked up at the taller woman with an appreciative grin. "I'd probably go an eight, myself."

"I'd say six-point-five to seven." The redhead replied as she looked around at the carnage beyond the dome. "Though, the experience is a bit muted because of the dome. It'd probably be rated higher if I could actually feel the thump hit my chest."

"I'd go nine." Strauss chimed in. "I like the napalm added into it. It's like an even bigger 'Fuck You' than the thermobarics alone, and I mean, using thermobaric bombs but itself is a pretty big 'Fuck You'."

"Yeah, but no one asked for your opinion, you fucking slut." Scarlet snapped at the demoness but she rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "However, you do have a point. I'll raise my score up by half. So I'll give it seven-point-five."

"What are you three talking about?" Erza asked curiously. "What are you scoring?"

"The explosion, of course." Scarlet replied to her counterpart with a carefree smile, as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. "Like I said, I'd probably score it higher if I could actually see and feel it go off, but all we get is this." She spread out her arms, gesturing to the mayhem surrounding them. "It's good, but it could be better."

Natsu sighed quietly as the dome quickly fell into darkness thanks to the rubble and her turned to the two goddesses. "Eris, go home, we're done here."

"It was an alright showing, but like they said; it could've been better." The outgoing goddess grinned before she vanished with a flash of divine light.

The man shook his head lightly and turned his gaze onto the pure-white woman. "Can you take these four to the house and have them allocated rooms. It'll be difficult to explain away their arrival when those dwarves know we only arrived with our two teams."

"I'll deal with it." Ceres replied. She spared the women a quick glance with narrowed eyes and clicked her fingers, suddenly and unceremoniously teleporting the five of them all the way back to Natsu's manor.

Natsu sighed and ran both his hands through his hair, sweeping it back out of his eyes and applying some heat to keep the spikes swept back. "I hope those four aren't going to be a handful…"

"Who knows."

Natsu spared his counterpart a quick glance and turned to the busty blonde standing nearby. "Lucy, can you make a tunnel back to Level Fifteen. You'll need to be careful with how close it is to the nest since it could cave in."

"Virgo has more precision than I do, and she'd know how to do it safely." Lucy replied softly, letting out a delicate moan as she stretched her arms out above her head and released her Star Dress. She took Virgo's key from her pouch and summoned the Celestial Spirit.

"Is it time for punishment, Princess?" Virgo asked the moment she materialised in their world. The spirit looked around the dark dome which had embers floating around at the top to provide a little bit of light, and when her eyes came to rest upon Natsu, she tilted her head a little and leaned in a little closer. "You look like you'll give me the punishment I yearn for."

"Seems like you're no different to the one I knew." Natsu reached out and flicked the woman's forehead. "We need you to dig a tunnel back to the mineshaft, one that won't cave in from the weight of all the earth above us."

"Alright. I'll come back once I've made the tunnel." Virgo dived into the ground and vanished, leaving a metre-wide hole in her wake.

Natsumi let out a long yawn and stretched out her lithe body. She leaned against the cold dome and placed her hands behind her head as her eyes wandered from person to person. "So, all that's left is to tell the dwarves that we've taken out the queens, that there were five of them, and that the vast majority of survivors were incinerated or crushed underneath a few thousand tonnes or more of dirt; and then we go home, right?"

"That's about it."


7th January – 3:46 PM

The truck quietly groaned as it came to a stop and the glass divider between the cab and the bed slid open, revealing the cat-girl Alice. "We're just outside your gate, Natsu."

"Thanks for taking the detour, Alice." Natsu replied with a small but gracious smile. He climbed out the back of the truck and was quickly joined by Henrietta, Lelyanna, Natsumi, and surprisingly Lucy who had her bag on her back.

"You don't mind if I stay over, Natsu?" Lucy asked lightly while dusting off the back of her skirt.

"I don't mind." The man shook his head and turned to look at the three remaining women sat in the back of the truck. "You girls heading home?"

"Yeah." Erza replied, getting a nod from both Wendy and Grace. "The three of us live in the guild's girl's dorm so we'll be getting off there."

"Goodnight, everyone." Wendy smiled brightly and waved at the disembarked party.

"Hopefully that lot won't be too much of a handful." Grace offered the man a relaxed grin and gave the group a wave. "Shout out if you need them put on ice for a little bit to chill out."

"Your jokes are as bad as his was." Natsu groaned softly and ran a hand down his face. "All that brain-freeze really did fuck up your head, didn't it?"

"Ah great, as if one flame-brain wasn't bad enough." Grace threw her arms up in an exaggerated complaint but her face quickly fell back into a kind smile. "Truth be told, it good to hear. If you were anything like she is, it means that you're slowly returning to normal."

"Now if he was only a little more sexually active…" Natsumi muttered just loud enough to be heard by everyone. She had her arms crossed under her breasts and playfully glared at the man out of the corner of her eye.

"He seems just fine to me." Lelyanna replied innocently, looking between both pinkettes with a faint blush colouring her cheeks. However, her kind-hearted demeanour shifted as her eyes settled on the sensual woman and she gave her a deadpan stare. "He doesn't have any intimacy problems; you just want him to dominate you until your sex-addled brain fizzles out and you lie there; a sweaty mess with semen gushing from every orifice."

"Yes, and?" Natsumi rounded on the woman and leaned in with her hands on her hips. "That sounds like a hell-of-a fun night. Hell, it might even curb my own sex drive for a little bit if he did that to me."

Natsu sighed and shook his head while the women around them watched on with confusion at the priestess' sudden verbal jab which seemed uncharacteristic to them. "Could you two just wait until we're inside the manor before you two have a go at each other, please?" He gave a quick wave good-bye to the women in the back of the truck as he walked around to the left side and lightly smacked his fist against the passenger door, calling out to Alice through it. "Thanks again for taking us out to the job site, have a good night, Alice."

"You too!" The cat-woman called out through the wound-up window with a quick wave and fanged smile.

Once they passed through the gates and entered Natsu's estate, Henrietta's expression softened and she automatically reconnected with the local networked intelligence. "Master, it seems that our guests have already chosen their lodgings. They've paired up in two of the unoccupied bedrooms and are currently spread out across the first and third floors. We also seem to have other guests who have already made acquaintance with them."

"Who?" Natsu glanced over his shoulder at the maid.

"Mira and her counterpart are in the kitchen; Lisanna is with them. And Levy and her counterpart are up in the library, going over the various journals you have transcribed. The remaining two are in the bedroom, sleeping."

"Right. I guess I better check in with the women from this… our world first before I finally turn in for the night."

"I'm worn out, so I think I'll be going right to bed." Lelyanna mused aloud.

Natsumi moaned as she stretched out her body while she followed the man down the path to the front door. "Yeah, I think I'll do the same. Being in a heightened state of alertness for so long is very taxing on my mind. I don't know how you managed to do that for years at war."

"I burned through more magic than I'm used to, so I'm feeling drowsy too." Lucy let out a soft yawn which she hid behind her right hand. "I recovered a bit on the trip back, but I still need to rest."

"I'll see you all in the morning then." Natsu glanced over his shoulder as they entered the building. He stepped aside and allowed the three women to head to the stairs. "Henrietta, before you turn for the night too, I'd like for you to head down to the maintenance pod and check yourself over. This is the first serious job you've been on and you're a pilot model, I want to be certain that you haven't suffered any underlying injuries for defects that we'd need to iron out over the next few days."

"Yes, Master." Henrietta bowed elegantly and began to remove her gloves, coat, and ushanka-hat as she made her way towards the door to the basement. Before entering the stairwell, she turned to the man with her hand on the doorknob. "I'll let you know the result of the scans in the morning. Goodnight, Master."

Natsu waved at the woman and headed for the kitchen once she had left his sight. To his mild surprise, he found both Mira and Lisanna in sheer sleepwear making a small meal for Strauss. "Mira, Lisanna, why are you two here?"

"Oh, Natsu, you're back!" Mira spun around and smiled warmly at the pinkette. "I hope you don't mind, it's just for tonight. You see, Elfman brought Evergreen over and Lisanna and I decided to give them some space to knock boots without worrying about disturbing us. Our options for places to stay the night were pretty limited too since everyone we usually go to is busy right now."

"I mentioned that we should head to your place." Lisanna added, her bubbly, carefree voice bouncing faintly around the room. "I guessed that you wouldn't mind since you seem to be like Natsumi deep down and she's very caring, like another sister to me, so we gave it a shot."

"After we told Henrietta about our situation through the intercom on your pedestrian entry, she let us in and met us at the door."

"Wait, I really need to ask." Strauss held up her a hand to put a temporary pause on the conversation. "Was it some kind of coincidence that they're both names Henrietta; that woman from earlier and these mechanical androids?"

"No." Natsu shook his head lightly. "They're both the same intelligence. The woman you know as Henrietta Frost is a pilot model of a bio-synthetic android designed for combat and infiltration. I found the body in a lab under Magnolia the last time I was in my original world. They were about to enter full production based on her model."

"She sounds like a Gen 3 Synth…" The white-haired woman blinked before laughing loudly. "I see, I see. A little piece of advice, do your best to keep McGarden off her. She'd want to run tests on that woman once she finds out what she really is."

"I'll keep that in mind." Natsu walked past the trio and opened the fridge. He took out a glass bottle of milk and started making a cup of tea for himself. "When I found that body, she was in a braindead state. I had to code a brand-new intelligence that would work on that architecture and modify the AI Hub in this manor to be able to both accept that AI and wirelessly interface with the organic body. It was a headache."

"Hm, maybe she'll try and analyse you too if she found that out."

"Do you plan on telling her?"

"Come on, I don't tell her absolutely everything."

"Anyway, getting back to your situation, Mira and Lis." Natsu turned to the sisters while his electric kettle came up to temperature behind him. "I don't mind if you need to use this place to get away from Elfman and Evergreen. Henrietta probably knew that so that's why she let you in. Just be mindful of that I've got a tonne of advanced tech in the Manor and some pretty dangerous shit down in the basement. Aside from down there, just plod around and try out the stuff I have here. I've got a cinema room set up on the second floor; fully soundproofed with a NanoLED display spanning the entire wall, plus full three-dimensional audio. I haven't had the chance to sit down and enjoy it just yet but if you're curious about it, you can just ask Henrietta and she'll show you how to use it and access the library of movies and shows that we managed to salvage from my world."

"Oh! Maybe we'll go check it out now then!" Lisanna said excitedly. "We were woken up when other-big-sis and the others arrived, they were loud."

"I'm not apologising. When he said we'll be going to his house, we weren't expecting a goddamn mansion."

"Manor," Natsu corrected the woman. "But close enough. I didn't choose this place, Ceres did. I would've been happy with a townhouse, like what Lucy and I had back in my world."

"Yeah, that's more in line with what I thought you'd have." Strauss nodded. She put her hands on her hips and glanced down when she didn't feel her armour as it triggered something in her mind. "Oh, I forgot to say; we agreed on not wearing our armour while we are here in this world. Normally we wouldn't give two shits about it, but for your sake and that of not standing out, we came to that decision."

"Thanks." Natsu turned and started to brew his tea. He spared a quick glance at the woman clothing now that she brought attention to it. She her black pants and maroon t-shirt – which had some band's logo on it – were fitted so close to her skin that it accentuated her figure and breasts, plus her black leather boots had bloodstained spikes that definitely made him feel sorry for any poor bastard unlucky enough to be met with a swift kick to the nuts from her. "Anyway, I'll let you girls get back to whatever you were up to before I interrupted you."

"I probably won't be far of passing out, we've been going full throttle for close to two days with little rest. We were being hunted by these little bear creatures who wanted us for dinner, and that's not in the hospitable way either. Had to slaughter tens of thousands of them, good thing we have no shortage of ammo, the chainsaws helped too."

""Goodnight, Natsu."" Mira and Lisanna chorused happily and they gave the man a pair of bright white smiles.

"Night." Natsu waved to the women and took his tea upstairs. He made his way over to the library where he found the two blunettes chatting animatedly while pouring over one of his journals. "What are you reading?"

"I came across a book on various types of combustion engines using fire lacrimas placed in a volatile liquid state and it got me curious." Levy spoke up from the couch but a few seconds, her head shot up and she looked dead at Natsu. "Wait, when did you get home?"

"Couple minutes ago."

McGarden put her boots up onto the coffee table and stared at the man. "Tell ya what, I'm pretty damn surprised that you have a library like this. And it all looks freshly handwritten. What's your secret? Come on, fucking out with it."

"I possess what could be considered a divine treasure, in fact, I've got two. One is the ring I wear on my right hand, with Lelyanna wearing the matching twin; these allow us to connect our consciousness to the other's body and perceive what the other is perceiving. The other is one I was given before I even came to this world; it's a special crystal made by Ceres which was implanted into my body, or it'll be more accurate to say it was implanted into my soul. It contains the collective knowledge from my world, from which I've been filling out these books."

"Wait, then why did you tell me that you didn't really know much?" Levy asked curiously.

"Simple, it's not my knowledge. I just have access to it through a mental connection. For example, I couldn't tell you how to make a fighter jet capable of hypersonic cruise while also having gravitational dampeners to allow it to pull high-g manoeuvres without disintegrating and turning the pilot into paste. Not off the top of my head, at least. However, if you gave me a little time, then I could write you an entire dissertation on it, and if you gave me a little more time then I could probably build one." Natsu placed his cup down on the coffee table and sat down in an armchair. "I do know a fair few things from stuff I've learnt over the years, but the whole medical and surgery series of books that Lelyanna has been learning from, that's probably ninety-percent not my own knowledge."

"Ah, I see."

"Hmm," McGarden tilted her head to the side and watched the man sip his tea while she ate from her bag of potato chips. "I may have a few things that may interest you. But I want to get some rest. I just happened across Levy when I was checking out your place."

"Like what?"

"Well, it seemed to me that Lelyanna is the only normal person between the three members of your team. Henrietta strikes me somewhat inhuman, I'm not quite sure what's giving me that feeling but I know there is something off there."

"She's an android." Natsu spilled the beans as if it was nothing. "One from my world, so I'm guessing you have some kind of experience with biosynthetic androids."

"You could say that. I know a place who calls them Gen Three Synths. I've had plenty of time to dissect them and experiment on them to know when one is pretending to be human. What's her deal?"

"She's the same AI as the mechanical androids that originally came with the manor. However, it's an AI at the level of my world that I created based upon the incredibly rudimentary AI of this world, based on lacrima recordings of people, I think. Very, very poor quality in comparison to Henrietta's mind. She knows what she is and isn't trying to be human, though her new body allows her to experience the world as if she was one."

"She's one hell of a crack shot too." McGarden remarked offhandedly while dusting some crumbs from her blue shirt and causing her breasts to jiggle and make the 'Eggiest Egghead' text wobble. "Really puts that rifle of hers to good use."

"She's designed for a similar role as me, so that doesn't surprise me."

"Natsu, you mentioned some kind of aircraft, are you capable of flying them?"

"Yes, I was trained to use anything I'd find out on the battlefield. Mind you, that probably won't carry over to anything here unless I make the controls the same as the aircraft in my world." Natsu ran a hand through his hair and let out a tired sigh. "Anyway, from what I've noticed, the only aircraft you guys have here are those brass-skinned airships. I haven't seen any fixed wing aircraft at all, or even seen any publications on them."

"You should make one and strap guns to it." Said McGarden, loudly, as she leaned in and prodded her right pointer at the man's chest. "Big guns, and fucking rockets too. Hell, make a god damn gunship!"

"Eh, it's going to take me fair while to sort something like that out. It's not as easy to do as making firearms since there is a lot more work and room for error in something like that."

"Anyway, the reason I asked about Lelyanna was because I was going to offer one of my spare personal shields. Whether you reverse engineer it or just straight up give it to her is up to you. She's the weakest link in your party, being that she is very inexperienced and isn't that great with rifles from what I noticed, plus she's also the medic so a little bit of extra protection won't hurt."

"I'm not the biggest fan of giving someone I care for tech that I don't know how it works." Natsu leaned in and clasped his hands together while resting his arms on his knees. "That being said, you are correct on both what she is like and also what I would've done with it anyway."

"Right, give me a sec to go through the collection." McGarden brought up her inventory window and navigated to her shields. She scrolled down through the list, humming and harring as she read each of the item descriptions.

"What's that?" Levy asked as the interface's light drew her attention away from her book.

"It's my inventory, it's a tech-based one instead of magic-based; a precaution for if we enter a world where the natural order forbids magic."

"Requip has the same features." Natsu added, bringing up his own – albeit magical – interface to show the blunette. "As she said, the downside is it only works where magic is possible. We had tech that interferes with magic usage, called Magic Suppression Fields. We had to be preprepared before we entered combat in hostile territory due to this, and sometimes there would be mobile generators which create a smaller area of denial but can be set up quickly."

"Is that why you became a super soldier, Natsu?" Levy asked curiously. She scrambled off the couch and sat on the arm of the man's chair, curiously scrolling through his inventory. "Wow, it's laid out incredibly neatly."

"Not necessarily. A rifle round can kill you from multiple klicks away whether you're capable of magic or not, it doesn't discriminate. I was chosen for the augmentation process due to many reasons, like physical strength and durability. I took to the drugs the pumped into me pretty well so they just kept going until my body couldn't handle any more. It was common knowledge among the forces that I was part demon and dragon so they attributed my body's resilience and compatibility to the fact that it had already been mutated by those features. I was basically a test subject after they found that out; I had even the most experimental shit plumbed into my veins."

"Was it painful?" McGarden asked offhandedly, glancing at the man as she tapped at her inventory window and brought out a specific shield module.

"Depends on the concoction, really. Some of it felt like I was being set on fire from the inside, which is an incredibly strange feeling considering I'm practically fireproof. Others felt so cold that it was like liquid nitrogen was being pumped into me. Some made me vomit blood for hours, but my natural regenerative abilities and the healing given to me combatted any major issues." Natsu sat back while he ran a hand through his long spikes and sighed. "Sometimes… it felt like they didn't even consider me human, owing to being a hybrid. They just saw me as some kind of humanoid guineapig or lab rat to run test after test on, to push and push until it broke."

"Have you told Lucy this?" Levy asked quietly. She leaned around the man and looked into his abyssal green eyes with great concern.

"I didn't go into the detail I just did, but she does know about it."

"To be fair." McGarden turned the shield module over and over in her hands before meeting the man's gaze with hardened eyes. "I'd have done the same if given the chance. You would've been an invaluable test subject who would have made it possible to make those drugs safer to inject into others of lesser constitution."

"Still fairly dehumanising."

"Such is war." The scarred blunette replied with a weary grin, one that told of the horrors she too had seen out on the battlefield. "Anyway, this particular one is geared towards melee combat, since you'll be likely fighting monsters and whatever other creature exists in this world." She tossed the device over to the man and closed her inventory window. "Put that away somewhere safe until you can do your tests on it. I'm sure you could make it much less crude than what we found on Pandora. If Henrietta is anything to go by, I'm sure the tech you have in your home world would allow you to make it even smaller and more efficient and whatnot."

"Yeah, we had shield modules in my world but they were mounted to the warships, we were working on personal shields too but it seems they were running into issues with powering them." Natsu flipped the small device back and forth in his hands. Maybe I can use a passive magic accumulator and a converter to power it, with the high-capacity batteries and capacitors from my world to hold the charge. This world is ripe with ambient magic power so it's an incredibly feasible approach."

"Do what you gotta do to make it work. I'd hate to see such an adorable little thing come to harm."

"I'm going to head to bed I reckon." Natsu sent the shield module away with Requip and rose to his feet. "It's best that you do too, McGarden, I'm sure you need the rest."

"Yeah, I'm probably going to chat with her for a bit longer before heading off." The scarred blunette nodded her head towards her counterpart who was retaking her spot on the couch.

"Alright." Natsu collected up his cup and started heading for the door but he stopped before exiting the room. "Levy, I'm sure you know already, but those books don't leave the estate at all. Understood?"

"I got it."

"See you both in the morning them." The pinkette downed the last of his tea and handed off the cup to one of the mechanical servants as he made his way to the stairs and up to his bedroom.


9th January – 6:56 AM

Before the alarm he had set could even wake him, the gentle shift of weight from a soft body rested against his side woke Natsu up. The faint sent of vanilla tickled his nose and he turned his groggy eyes on his bedside table. With the wave of his hand, he activated the holographic display of his bedside clock and let out an incoherent murmur. For some reason, he felt unwilling to get out of bed.

Nothing seemed out of place, it was normal for him to be visited by a woman during the night since he lived with two who had a penchant for sneaking into his bed, and the woman's weight and figure felt familiar enough to not trigger alarm bells.

"Is it morning already?" A gentle voice yawned from under the bedsheets and a pair of drowsy chocolate-brown eyes peered out from the edge.

Natsu looked down at the woman as her messy blonde hair came out from the sheets and she rested her head near the top of his left pectoral. After getting over the momentary shock of the woman being in his bed, he let out a gentle sigh and ran his right hand through her hair to straighten it out and carefully remove any knots. "Lucy, why are you in my bed?"

"Nat was being loud and woke me up during the middle of the night." A delicate moan escaped Lucy's lips as her body arched from the man's touch. She slowly sat up beside the man and rubbed the corners of her eyes to remove the sleep from them. "She was masturbating and not even trying to keep her voice down."

Natsu couldn't help but run his eyes down the woman's body; she had a white crop-top single with a pink Fairy Tail logo that just barely contained her substantial bust and a pair of pastel-pink cotton shorts that were criminally short and hugged her hips so snugly that it was plain to see that she had no undergarments on. "Luce… You know I don't wear anything to bed, right?"

"Mhm." Lucy nodded quickly, but she seemed unfazed. "Nat doesn't either. And yes, I do know you're a man, I could very much feel the difference."

"As if morning wood isn't bad enough." Natsu groaned softly and placed a hand over his eyes. "Now I've got to deal with the consequences of seeing your incredible body…"

"You can look, Natsu." Lucy carefully took the man's hand off his face and smiled, her cheeks tinted a light pink. "I really don't mind, in fact, it makes me feel proud to stir this kind of reaction. It means you find me attractive, and it's kind of an ego-boost."

"Of course, I find you attractive, Lucy." Natsu made sure his manhood was hidden and tried his best to make sure the throbbing rod wasn't as noticeable. It wasn't surprising that she'd be able to do this to him, make him harder and larger than he had ever been since coming to this world, it was a testament to just how much she drove him wild. "You're fucking hotter than anyone else I know. I even think you're superior to Ceres… just don't let that get to your head."

"Hehe, I'll try not to let it." Lucy's blush darkened and spread to her ears. She smiled down at the man with glistening eyes. "Your eyes look pretty today. They aren't as empty as I'm used to seeing."

"Waking up to a woman near-identical to the one I fell in love with and married, who is snuggled up to my side just like she would, would do that to me…"

"What's the difference between us?" Lucy asked curiously. She looked down at the man's bare chest and slowly lifted her leg, sliding it across the man's body and sitting down on his abs with her legs folded at his sides and her hands slowly roaming his muscular upper body.

"My tits have – had – milk in them." A disembodied voice replied in the dim room before the spectral owner manifested herself on the bed, right next to them. Lucy's ghostly body was completely baren of clothing, her usual sundress nowhere to be seen. "Good morning, Darling."

"Morning, Luce." Natsu glanced at the apparition and smiled. "Don't tell me you were influencing her actions?"

"Nope, she came to your room herself and snuggled up to your side. I didn't even have to inhabit her body." The ghost giggled playfully. She sat behind her counterpart and took the woman's hands, guiding them across the man's skin in a pattern only familiar to the lovers. "You should touch him like this, he loves it. And that's not including how you should touch that throbbing rod that's trying to get inside me."

"O-oh!" Lucy glanced back at the spectre and looked down at the man, but her eyes snapped back to the ghost. "Wait, how did you have milk in your breasts, I thought that only happened to pregnant women and those who have recently given birth?"

"Come on~," The ghostly Lucy giggled playfully and pointed to the man below them. "You're sitting on someone who is very competent with the Enhancement curse which allows you to enhance things however you feel like."

"What?"

"One night, early in our relationship, we got drunk and were fooling around." Natsu scratched his cheek and gave the confused blonde a weak grin. "We learnt plenty of things that can be done with Enhancement, like boosting the pleasure one feels-"

"I was coming nonstop, for a good hour."

Natsu glanced at the ghost of his wife and chuckled. "More like two."

"Coming?" Lucy frowned at the unusual vernacular but her mind quickly put two-and-two together. "Climaxing?"

"Bingo." Natsu replied. "Some time during the middle of our fun, she decided to make a bet with me; that I could make her lactate with the curse."

"Who won?" The younger blonde asked curiously.

"I did." Natsu replied once more but he quickly continued. "However, I only won for a few days since nothing happened until her body started to produce milk at the end of the week."

"I rubbed that in his face for a good week." Luce laughed heartily. "My win, my tits, and my milk."

"But, umm…" Lucy turned and looked at the woman while tugging at the neck of her singlet with her right index finger. "Aren't your breasts sensitive to touch too?"

"Yep, and they only got more sensitive after that night too." The slightly older woman leaned around her younger counterpart and flashed a bright smile at the pinkette. "Natsu, when you were back in our world, you stopped by our house, right?"

"Yeah."

"Did you grab the toy chest in our wardrobe?"

"No." Natsu shook his head gently. "I didn't even think to go looking for it."

"That's okay. I think I'll talk to your goddess friend and see if she could bring it here, I hope it all still works."

"Probably should, since we made sure to turn everything off before we left for our last deployment."

"I might go do that now." Light enveloped the woman's body and she manifested her clothing. Before she vanished to carry out her task, she turned to the younger woman with a playful smile. "Want to make another bet, Natsu?"

"I'm probably going to lose if I say 'no'."

"Hehe. I'm willing to bet that she's as naughty as I am. She just needs the right kind of stimulus, and it's a good thing you've already got the experience of turning me into such a naughty little girl, she'll be a cake-walk."

"W-what?!" Lucy spluttered and looked between them, her cheeks darkening further. But before she could gain any form of answer from the spirit, she vanished with her giggles slowly fading out. "Being teased by yourself is very strange."

"How do you think I feel having a female version of me almost constantly trying to seduce me and is actually capable of getting me hard?"

"That does sound just as strange." Lucy giggled softly and shifted about, slowly lying down on top of the man. As her hips moved back, she was suddenly prodded by Natsu's manhood against her clothed labia and her smouldering cheeks were aflame once more. "S-sorry." She reached back and tentatively moved the man's penis up and settled down with it resting atop her ass. "It's surprisingly hot to the touch. Are they normally that large?"

"Not normally, no. Well, not for humans. I don't know if mine was going to be this big naturally or whether my mutations played a part in that." Natsu placed his hands under the woman's arms and slowly ran them down her body until they rested on her hips, but after a few moments, he took the risk and gently grasped the blonde's ass which earned him a delicate gasp. "It's only fair, right? You grabbed my cock when I was going to move it out of the way for you, you don't mind if I get a little more intimate with my touches too?"

Lucy brushed one of her long strands of hair behind a red ear and slowly nodded. "Give and take, it's fair… but if you plan to keep feeling me up, then you need to let me do the same. Let me explore you when I feel like it."

"Oh? 'Explore me', was it?" Natsu chuckled softly and his lips split into a devilishly playful grin and his eyes sparkled with warm adoration. "Only if you allow me to 'explore' you too."

"What is there to explore when you know something so well?" Lucy adopted the same sultry playfulness that the older blonde had carried moments ago. "Though, I might just allow you to show me the wonders of my own body. Be my tour guide, why don't you?"

"Heh, don't tempt me." Natsu slid his hands back up the woman's body before grasping her wrists and flipping their positions. He grinned down at Lucy who had gasped at the sudden inversion and instinctively wrapped her legs tightly around his hips while he pinned her hands above her head and hovered over her. "It may just be more than you bargained for."

Lucy's breasts bounced with every heavy pant and threatened to bust free of their loose confines. She found that couldn't look away from the man's deep onyx-green eyes as his hot breath washed over her, it made her skin tingle pleasantly and sent sparks racing down her spine. Her eyes dropped to the man's lips and she subconsciously licked her lips. "W-what do you plan on doing to me?"

"Just one thing, for now." Natsu lowered his head, bringing his mouth closer to Lucy's. "If you can allow me to be a little selfish."

"Okay." Lucy replied, her whisper barely audible but she knew he'd hear it perfectly. She closed her eyes slowly and lifted her head slightly off the bed, pursing her lips cutely. "I've never kissed anyone before, so I might be very amateurish."

"Just follow my lead, Luce." Natsu reassured her with a gentle murmur before locking lips with here. He captured her delicate moan in his mouth and moved her wrists together so he could hold them with only his left hand. His right hand slowly slid down her arm, his coarse skin scratching slightly against her soft supple skin.

"Natsu~." Lucy moaned, her body arching in reaction to his touch and she found herself desperately squeezing the man's hips with her thighs. She felt Natsu's searing hot tongue flick across her lips and she gasped softly, unknowingly opening the gates for the dastardly invader to slip into her mouth.

While Natsu dominated Lucy's tongue, his hand came to rest at her waist and he gently caressed it for a few moments before deciding to take a chance and he slid it up her stomach and under her crop-top.

When Lucy felt the tips of Natsu's fingers graze the underside of her left boob, she let out a soft shuddering breath. She wiggled her chest slightly and pushed her lips more firmly against the man's mouth, trying to let him know that she had no problems with him touching and playing with her breasts. It worked as he slid his hand higher and lightly grasped the large and soft mound, forcing moans from her with every caress and squeeze of the breast and flick or pinch of the nipple.

After a few more minutes of kissing, Natsu finally felt satisfied though he still had to deal with the weapon dangling between his legs that threatened to penetrate the woman with the slightest movement but he'd sort that out later. "So?" He murmured softly, looking down at the woman as her eyes fluttered open.

"I think I enjoy being restrained…" Lucy admitted bashfully. She glanced down at her exposed breasts then back up to the man. "And being fondled, specifically by your hands."

"Specifically?"

"Nat gets handsy, remember?" The blonde giggled softly and she loosened her legs but she began to stroke the man's sides with her smooth thighs. "But that doesn't even come close to what you did."

"Sounds like you wouldn't mind if I was a little handsy too." Natsu laughed and he gave the woman a quick and tender kiss.

"This might just be the ecstasy talking, but if you kissed me and touched me like that again, I wouldn't try and stop you. It felt really good." Lucy shyly turned her head away but she kept her molten chocolate eyes glued to the man. "Honestly, after that, I think you shouldn't worry or hesitate to touch me. I want you to teach me everything you know about making me feel good."

"Even the kinky stuff?"

"Y-yes… I did say 'everything' after all." Lucy's face was already flushed from the intense kissing session she had with Natsu, but his words only served to cause the blush to spread and even the tops of her breasts had a faint rosy tint. "But, umm… just go easy on me with that kind of stuff. I'd want to warm up to it first."

"Alright, I can do that." Natsu smiled softly at the woman and let go of her wrists. He gently caressed her cheek softly and carefully climbed off the bed. "I'm going to go have a shower. I really need to calm down, or tend to the wood you've given me…"

"Umm…" Lucy hurried to the edge of the bed as the man turned and took a step towards his ensuite. She reached out and grabbed his hand, stopping him in his tracks and making him look back at her. "I want to help with that… It's my fault that it looks so painfully hard, after all."

"Are you sure?" Natsu looked into the woman's honest eyes and saw next to no hesitation in them. "You can't wear those clothes in the shower."

"After seeing your Lucy naked, I know that what I've got isn't anything you haven't seen before. So I'm going to swallow the embarrassment that I'll feel and use it as a means to become more accustom to being naked around you." She gingerly reached out to wrap a hand around the man's thick shaft and she began to clumsily stroke it while the raw heat travelled up her arm. "You… You have the same effect on me… I'm unbelievably wet right now, Natsu – from your touches and your kisses, and from the heat that radiates so intensely from your body when you're aroused – so, um, if I help you get off, could you help me too?"

"Sure." Natsu gave the woman a devilish grin and he turned to her, gently cupping her cheeks with his hands and lifting her head up into a kiss. "Just as long as you don't mind a mess?"

"A mess?"

"Heh," The pinkette pulled back slightly as his hands travelled down the woman's neck and grasped her top, pulling it up and off her body. He placed a hand over her sternum and gently pushed her down onto her back, causing her breasts to jiggle. "Since you want to do this, I'm going to take the chance to blow my load all over these big, jiggly tits.

"O-oh." Lucy's pants quickly became heavier as her lust began to swell once more. She really did enjoy getting pinned down and it made her mind wander to the shower they were about to have, and she began to imagine what it would be like to be pinned to the shower wall.

"Luce, stop thinking about naughty stuff."

"W-what? I-I wasn't-," Lucy sputtered but she quickly cut herself off and glared at the man defiantly. "Maybe you should stop making it easy for me fantasize about you instead. With you constantly pinning me to the bed this morning, it's no wonder my mind is starting to wander."

Natsu laughed heartily at the feisty blonde and he slid his hands down her body, catching his thumbs into the waist of her shorts and slowly sliding them down her legs. He felt the woman's embarrassment spike at his actions but he allowed her to deal with it as she said she would. "You're incredible Luce. Every time I see you, you take my breath away and make my heart race, make me yearn for you."

"Flattery like that will get you in my pants very often." Lucy giggled playfully. She had an arm resting just under her breasts and the other crossing from one side of her lower body to the other with her hand on her hip, but she made no effort to move either to cover herself up. "You know… Natsumi said something about your sex drive, or something of the sort. But I think she's just annoyed that she's actually having trouble seducing someone. You seem to be pining after me, not that I'm any better."

"Considering that you're so wet that you'd be able to save a dying man in the desert, I'm likely to agree with that."

"Says the man whose cock can be used as a bludgeoning weapon. You'd kill the poor bastard if you turned a little too quickly."

"Alright, alright." Natsu wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes and gave the woman a happy grin. "That's enough fluffing, for now. Let's hurry up and go have a shower." He helped Lucy to her feet and gaze down into her smouldering eyes, not moving from the spot until he was lightly shoved by the smiling beautiful busty blonde.

"I know I'm pretty, but we've got things to do today, Natsu. So stop staring and either kiss me or go into the bathroom."

"You're making it really hard not to fall in love with you all over again."

Lucy smiled and placed her hands on Natsu's chest. She pushed up onto the tips of her toes and brought her lips close to his ear to whisper, "Maybe I want that. And maybe it's happening to me too. You do make my heart race after all; I'm surprised you don't hear it. It happens a lot when I catch you absentmindedly staring at me with those longing eyes."

"I probably just tuned it out, trying to keep a little bit of distance between us." Natsu admitted softly. He took her hand and led her into the ensuite. "But…" He stopped in front of the shower and looked back at the woman. "I'm happy that you feel that way."

Lucy closed her eyes and tilted her head slightly, giving the man a radiant smile and a light shove past the open shower door. "Hurry now, we still have to deal with our lust before we wash up."


9th January – 11:40 AM

"Did you two have sex?" Strauss bluntly asked the blonde she was stood next to on the tram. She leaned in a little closer and eyed the blushing woman who seemed a little more radiant than she had been the previous night. "Why didn't you invite me! We could've had a threesome; it would've been fun!"

"W-we didn't have sex!" Lucy spluttered at the sudden question. She looked around the tram with wide eyes but thankfully they were the only occupants, only herself, Natsu, Natsumi, and the four interdimensional travellers.

"His scent is all over you, and the same with him and yours." Natsumi spoke up, a teasing grin hiding the slight amount of envy she was harbouring for the woman. "Not to mention you weren't in my room in the morning."

"I left because you were masturbating right next to me!" Lucy fired back angrily. "How can I sleep when you're moaning his name at the top of your lungs?"

"I was horny."

"And I was tired, I wanted some peace and quiet." Lucy crossed her arms under her bust and leaned back against the railing. "So I went to the other person who can make me feel safe and comfortable with their presence alone. I went to Natsu's room."

"And had sex." Scarlet took her turn at teasing the young beauty. "Or almost did. Either way, you had an intimate moment."

"Should've invited Natsumi too." Strauss murmured thoughtfully. "Then we could've had a foursome. Hell, if we got McGarden and that cute priestess in on it then we could've had a whole orgy going. Where is she anyway?"

"Lelyanna has some work that needs to be done at the cathedral." Natsu replied calmly. "Henrietta is busy with some affairs to do with the manor, so it's just us today."

"You know, you really should've invited us." McGarden decided to throw her two-cents into the fray. "It would a great way for us to wind down after the shit we've had to go through. Maybe we could finally talk Kagura into joining us too."

"Leave me out of your perversions."

"Aw come on, join in on the fun!" Strauss laughed. "Just one short ride of Natsu and I guarantee that you'll be hooked."

"Yeah, just let him fill you up with his hot spunk." McGarden shifted targets to her fellow traveller with a slightly menacing grin. "Get one taste of that and you'll be craving more."

A small smile danced across Natsu's lips when he heard Lucy's faint sigh of relief. "We're almost there. We'll have a small chat with the old man before you lot can be unleashed on the guild. Just remember; try not to fuck things up for me or do permanent physical or psychological damage to the guild."

"Yeah, yeah. We know." McGarden waved off the man's words. "Don't worry, we'll cause an appropriate amount of chaos."

"I wonder what their building looks like." Scarlet murmured to herself.

"It's fairly gothic but with an air of homeliness." Natsu replied. "Far different to mine, what about yours?"

"It's been so long since we've seen it, I honestly can't remember it too well." The redhead shook her head and turned to the man. "We've been stuck in a never-ending procession of jumps, going from one world to the next with no way of contacting those back home."

"Damn, and I thought being stuck behind enemy lines with no means of contacting friendlies was bad." Natsu ran a hand through his hair and shook his head, trying to suppress the tidal surge of unpleasant memories.

The tram came to a stop at the station closest to the guild and the group disembarked. It was a short walk to the guild hall but as they drew closer, they were greeted by the usual flood of raucous noise. To the surprise of no one, when they entered the building, they found that there there was a fight taking place in the lower section of the main floor.

"Oi! Why am I getting left out of this?" Natsumi complained loudly before she charged head-first into the brawl. "Make Way!"

"And there she goes." Lucy let out a soft chuckle and shook her head the back of her best friend. She turned her attention to the bar then looked up at the salmon-haired man beside her. "Looks like Master Makarov is sat on the bar again. Let's go." She grasped the man's hand and hurried over to the bar, pulling the willing man along with her.

"Ah, Natsu, Lucy, good morning." Makarov saw the duo approach from the corner of his eye and he lifted his gaze from the ongoing brawl. "How was the job?"

"It went smoothly." Natsu replied calmly. "We eliminated the nest so the company shouldn't have any lingering issues. We did run into a little hiccup, though." He glanced over his shoulder at the travellers casually strolling over to the bar as they took in the sights. "It seems a goddess was needing a little entertainment, so she messed with this lot's warp gear and they ended up appearing in the mining tunnels during our job."

"So they're like you?"

"Similar. They're soldiers too, but they don't get to choose where they go, and they aren't staying here permanently."

"I see." Makarov stroked his beard as the four rough-hewn women took their seats at the bar. "Well, welcome to our world, ladies. And welcome to Fairy Tail, we'll be happy to make your stay here as relaxing as possible. I can see that you four have lived rough lives."

"Thank you." Scarlet bowed her head politely to the elderly man. "Since we already exist in this world, please call us by our surnames to avoid confusion. We'll respond to those naturally since we're used to that."

"I'll make sure everyone knows to do that." The old man nodded before turning to the white-haired barmaid stood nearby. "Mira, could you tend to their needs? I assume Natsu is providing them with meals and drinks."

"I may be a cold-hearted motherfucker, but that doesn't mean I'm heartless." Natsu huffed, earning a soft giggle from the blonde next to him. "I've given them places to sleep as well as access to my kitchen as well as the various amenities you'd only find in my manor, things from my own world."

"We set up a karaoke machine in his cinema room." McGarden grinned wickedly. "It's so fucking great having a completely sound-proofed room. You can just blast music so loud that it makes your ears ring and everyone else is none-the-wiser."

"Hey sugar, what can I get for you?" Mira asked playfully as she came to a stop in front of her counterpart with a clipboard and fountain pen in her hands. She smiled at the women she had met the night she had spent at Natsu's manor. "Food, drinks-"

"Or you?" Strauss finished in the exact same slightly suggestive tone that Mira had been using. "You know, you remind me of a woman we came across in our travels. She wore the same outfit as you are wearing now, went by the name of Miss Moxxi."

"I don't think she's as crazy as Mox is though." McGarden said. She leaned a little over the bar to get a better look at the woman and nodded appreciative. "Looks damn good in it though. Really suits you."

"I'm glad you think so." Mira replied with a smiled. She pointed to the chalk boards above her where the menu was written. "Don't worry about the prices, we'll cover those for you four."

While the four women were having their orders taken, Natsu physically pulled Makarov aside and sat him on the edge of the bar and lowered his voice to a hush. "Look, I'll tell you what I know so far about them. They're like me but with varying mental states, I think Kagura over there is the most stable while Levy is the most psychotic. Erza's the pseudo-leader, she seems the most experiences when it comes to combat and leadership, but that isn't saying the other three are any lesser."

"So, make sure that my children do pry to deeply into their pasts, right?" Makarov asked calmly, but his eyes were serious. "They look like they carry a similar weight to you."

"Somewhat, but our pasts are different, even if we're all soldiers who fought a war for many years." Natsu sighed gently and spared a glance at the women. "That Levy is like your own; she loves tech and experimenting with shit. Hell, she even provided me with some gear to keep Lelyanna safe. But like I said, she's also psychotic, a mad scientist if you will."

"Like what her shirt says."

"Exactly. Mira and Erza seem to be at odds but only to each other as I've seen them talk normally with their counterparts. Though, when it comes to working together, it seems that they begrudgingly put aside their hostilities to put survival first."

"Are they going to be a problem."

"They've promised not to cause too much trouble, but I don't know how much stock I'd put in their words. However, I have stressed it to them a few times already that I don't want them fucking things up for me or the guild. I've just gotten here, and don't really have any significant ties with the guild members, so if something happens then they could turn on me and ostracise me."

"My children wouldn't do that."

"I can't be too careful, Makarov. My position here is very tenuous still, even though I've been trying to establish lasting connections – like with the Connell's, for example – it could still crumble with a few wrong moves."

"Alright, alright, I won't try and tell you otherwise." Makarov waved off the man's words and looked over to the off-worlders. "You said they're only here for a short time?"

"About a week. That's when their faulty warp tech or critical transient particle overload or whatever it is that's going on with them will trigger and send them to their next destination. This is the second day they've been here, so they've got five more days."

"Right." The old man pushed himself up onto his feet and dusted off his clothes. "I'll go spread word around about their situation and how to handle them. Enjoy your day, Natsu." Makarov turned away but after taking a step, he turned back to the pinkette. "Oh, by the way, it's good to see that you're looking a little bit happier. I won't ask what happened, but keep doing whatever you're doing."

The short man hurried away and Natsu walked back to where the women sat. He leaned against the bar beside Lucy and noticed that she was looking up at him with a faint sparkle of longing in her eyes and she subconsciously wet her lips. "Makarov is going to handle informing everyone about them, so I've got nothing left on my plate for today beside doing so research on this shield module that McGarden gave me."

"Natsu, could I ask you something?"

"Sure, what's on your mind?"

"Mm…" Lucy shied away for a moment before stepping closer and standing up on her toes to bring their faces closer. "You see… my lease is going to end soon and before you charged into our lives, Natsumi and I were talking about getting a place together. So I was wondering, would it be okay if I move out of the apartment I rent and come live with you and Natsumi?"

"I don't mind," Natsu shook his head lightly and gave the woman a small smile. "The room next to mine is free. The one on the right, that is."

"Hehe yay." Lucy cheered quietly. "If you want to charge me rent, that's fine. We can work out a price later on."

"I don't charge rent for Lelyanna or Natsumi, so I'm not about to do that for you." Natsu pushed the woman down onto flat feet and he began to make his way to the stairway to the second floor. "Will you need help moving your stuff in?"

"Yes, but I'll have Erza help me with that. I don't want to trouble you with it, I know you're a busy man. And don't just go and say that you can make time." The blonde giggled lightly as she chased after the man. "That'd be too corny for someone as 'cold-hearted' as yourself."

"I mean, it's true."

"Still, you're allowing me to move in, that's doing more than enough." When she noticed that the second floor was devoid of life, she quickly grabbed the man's arm and turned him around. She cupped his cheeks lightly and stood up on her toes to place a gentle but deep kiss on his lips. "Thank you, really."

"Hm, I might have to do more things for you if this is how you're going to thank me." Natsu chuckled lightly. He grasped her hips and lowered his head, restarting the kiss and earning a muffled moan from the woman.

Lucy wrapped her arms around Natsu's neck and slowly walked backwards, navigating by memory until she found a table to sit at. She tried to sit on the bench but her legs fell out from underneath her and she quickly found herself underneath Natsu's large and hot frame. "You just can't help but to pin me down every chance you get."

"Says the woman who loves it." Natsu grinned playfully down at the woman, making her let out a breathy giggle.

"Says the bad influence."


Sorry that it's taken so long to get this one out. I had caught one sickness which had me out for about a week, and then caught a second right on the tail of that one which put me out for another week with its effects still lingering on the third week. Between being ill and catching up on my classwork, I hadn't had much time to work on this chapter. But we've got some collab action going and some romance between Natsu and Lucy.

As mentioned in the chapter, TheHappy's characters from Shifting Through Realities are on a weekly rotation for their jumps, so they'll show up in the next chapter too and maybe the one after that depending on how I do the progression of time.

Anyway, I hope you've liked this chapter. Don't forget to follow/favourite, and check my profile for more information on the stories if you haven't already. I'll see you all in the next one.

EDIT: I came back after thehappy's review to change something to be more accurate with his characters' situation. We discussed it and it was just a little misunderstanding based in the context of the situation of the scene.