Natsu rose to his feet after talking to the last member of his family and bidding them goodbye. He turned to leave but a gentle gust of wind carried a phantom scent, the scent of vanilla. Natsu slowly turned to look back the way he had come and he spotted a beautiful blonde woman in a yellow sundress sat upon her own headstone. The spectre was giving him a sad smiled but she blew him a kiss and waved him over. "Lucy?"

"Hey there…" Lucy replied softly, her voice faintly echoing in the chilly air. "It's been a while, Darling."

"Why didn't you move on?" Natsu asked quietly as he made his way through the rows and carefully sat down on the headstone opposite her. He looked into her stunning, chocolate brown eyes and asked again, "Why?"

"I did." Lucy closed her eyes with a sad smile and she brushed away the tears that leaked from the corners of her eyes, the droplets dissipating into particles of light. "I may have been sad and not wanted to leave you alone, but I knew you wouldn't have wanted me to linger."

"If you had passed on, then how are you here?"

"I'm sure you already know the answer to that, Natsu."

"It was Ceres, wasn't it?"

"Yeah." Lucy giggled quietly and glanced down at the flowers laid at the graves around her then turned her attention to the archway where she could see two women staring at them from beside Natsu's Nightingale. "I saw those women who arrived with you. You said they're from this other world, right?"

"Yeah, that's right." Natsu nodded slowly and he glanced over his shoulder. "Ceres took me to their world so I can live on there. It's obvious which one is my counterpart; her hair stands out pretty well against the snow. The other is Lelyanna, the priestess I mentioned. She's the one who laid out these flowers. She follows Ceres, we work together."

"I know." Lucy gave the man a reassuring smile. "I didn't want to show myself right away, I'm sure it would've freaked them out, especially the other you. I saw how she reacted when she saw all of our graves. But I was here all while you were talking to my tombstone and the others too." She tentatively reached out and brushed Natsu's jacket, disturbing the material slightly. "I'm glad you weren't left to wander forever, until you grew old alone, or found some other way."

"You know I wouldn't have taken the other way…" Natsu murmured as he brought a hand up and held the ghost's cold hand to his chest. It was faint, but he could still feel her and it brought a small smile to his face. "I'm glad I got the chance to see you again, Lucy, even if it was like this."

"I think that's why she brought me here, Ceres." The beautiful blonde slid off the headstone and wrapped her arms around the man. "So, we could both see each other." She let out a gentle breath and mist blew in the wind. "This new world of yours sounds interesting. A monster hunter, a Jaeger?"

"I had to do something, and sitting behind a desk isn't exactly my idea of an exciting job." Natsu chuckled and ran his hand down the woman's ethereal back. "Had to kill some bandits, goblins, and orcs in my first job. It was messy. Both the bandits and the monsters had a bunch of women, one to sell as sex slaves, the other to use for breeding."

"That sounds horrific… But you're making that world a better place, doing what you do now."

"Yeah."

Lucy lifted her head from Natsu's chest and gazed into his void-like eyes, giving him a sad smile as she reached up and wiped the tears that leaked from his eyes. "You're in so much pain… It must be hard for you, seeing our faces over there?"

"I've only bumped into Erza, so far. I'm dreading the time when I see your face. As much I wish to see it and feel your warmth once more…"

"Just… take it easy, don't push yourself." Lucy gave the man a warm smile and she placed a gentle kiss on his cheek. She glanced over his shoulder and waved at the two women by the motorcycle. "They're quite cute, who knew you looked like such a hottie as a girl. Nice rack too, and a killer figure too."

"Luce…" Natsu made a small noise of annoyance but he cracked a smile and chuckled quietly. "Okay, you're not wrong."

"Hehe~." The blonde beauty gave the man a sassy smile as she pulled back from him. "She's got nothing on me, though." She let out a gentle sigh and she fiddled with her hands behind her back. "I really am happy that I had the chance to see you again but don't let yourself become stuck on me. You need to allow yourself to heal and you need to mend your wounded heart. Open up to those two some more, let them see the real you. The man I fell in love with. Oh, and don't worry about my counterpart, I'm sure she'll come around, just give it the time it needs to develop and she'll come to love you as I did. It might happen rather quickly, like it did with me but we were young and I was… stubborn."

"You loved it when you did come around though." Natsu smirked playfully but it shifted to a genuine, loving smile, filled with warmth. It was the first time he had smiled like this since she had died and it made his cheeks hurt a little. He gently cupped her cheeks and gave her a light kiss before letting her go. "Thank you, Lucy. I really do love you."

"And I'll always love you, no matter whatever form I'm in or whatever world I'm from. I'll always love you, Natsu. Remember that, and go find her." Lucy gently reminded the man and gave him a large, brilliant smile that radiated brightly with the love she felt for him. "If I have any kind of power left, I'll do everything I can to see that you have a happy life, my love. Stay strong." The woman began to fade away, her body dissipating into particles of light which were carried away on the gentle wind.

"Thank you… I needed that, Lucy." Natsu murmured softly as he watched the particles drift away to the heavens with a warm smile. He glanced down at her grave and shook his head lightly. It was a few minutes before he rose to his feet and he let his smile fall from his face, though the corners of his lips were still slightly upturned and the glimmer of happiness in his abyssal eyes didn't fade. He silently walked back through the graveyard to his motorcycle and he looked up at the two women. "Thank you. We can head out now."

"She was very beautiful, Natsu… Even more so in person." Natsumi murmured quietly as she hugged herself, she still looked a little pale and was glancing over at the graveyard then back to the man with watery streaks running down her cheeks, something that was mirrored by Lelyanna. She took a deep breath and raised her arm, pointing to the other end of the city. "When I was flying around, I saw that something had crashed landed over by the waterfront. It looked like a massive ship had run ashore but it had gouged out the land… Should we check it out?"

"Going by the sound of it, it's probably one of our warships. Like what dropped me off in Phanagoria." Natsu looked over towards Lake Sciliora and hummed in thought. "I had wanted to either pick up some supplies to do these renovations that I have planned or get weapons and weapon parts, including a weapon for Lelyanna that was compact but allowed her to lay down more firepower than her pistol." He glanced down at the short priestess and he placed a hand atop her head as he gave her a small, proud smile. "Now that you can use Requip, it'll be easier for you to carry other weapons and a lot more ammunition than you could before. I should be able to find you a rifle or parts for it but if you want something that's a little more orientated towards self-defence then I should be able to find you a submachine gun or a machine-pistol that'll fire the same ammo as your pistol. All that will be on that ship out there."

"Well, my pistol was able to punch through that Orc's metal armour and kill it, so I think it would be suitable for most situations where I'm left unprotected."

"Alright. I should be able to find you an MP10 and some thirty-round mags for it in that ship. They can go into the pistol, but I wouldn't recommend it; too bulky and the pistol is only semi-automatic so all it would do is give you more ammo and less of a need to reload." Natsu took Natsumi's helmet off of his handlebars and handed it to her then grabbed his Geiger Counter and attached it to her coat. "I want you to fly around and find any potential radiation hotspots between us and that ship that I need to steer clear of with Lelyanna."

"Will do." Natsumi nodded quickly and she put on her helmet while forming her wings. She took flight seconds later and disappeared past the rooftops.

"Hop on." Natsu glanced at Lelyanna as he swung his leg over his Helion superbike and started it up. Once the woman had her helmet on, he put his own on and respectfully turned the bike around and slowly cruised out. Once he hit the road, he cranked on the throttle and took off.

"You know, it's crazy just how massive these buildings are."

"With a global population in the tens of billion, we were running out of land and started to build upwards instead of encroaching on our agricultural lands. We had a problem with overpopulation but the war sorted that out between soldiers getting sent to their deaths in that meat grinder or civilians getting caught in the crossfire. That big one wasn't even the first, there was always a war going on somewhere and usually over the same thing; disagreements over who owns what and who has rights to where, including resources and fertile lands which were running out on the planet itself."

"How long had you been fighting overall?"

"The Great War lasted ten years and we were officially a part of it near the end of the second year. But before that, we were basically Guild Mages turn Mercenaries who were sent into dangerous areas to conduct off-the-book operations. I got 'drafted' when I was sixteen and was given extensive combat training as well as some education in structural and materials engineering due to my magic and curses making me incredibly proficient at the demolition of strategic targets. I first saw real combat a few months before I turned eighteen; it was a job over in Sin which had been taken over by the Pergrande Kingdom. I had to cripple a dockyard used to maintain their warships. Some fuckwit psychopath I was working with had kicked the hornet's nest mid-mission and the whole airborne facility was sent on high alert. I blew the place to pieces but fuck me was it a pain. I had to get used to working behind enemy lines pretty quickly."

Lelyanna shifted behind the man and looked over his shoulder at the distant pair of flaming wings. "This ship, is it bigger than the airships back home?"

"Yeah, much bigger. Though, chances are it could've broken apart on impact with the ground; it depends on how fast and how far it fell." Natsu glanced over his shoulder and gently tapped Lelyanna's hand as he slowly twisted the accelerator. He felt the woman tighten her grip on him so he focused ahead of him and let his speed climb well past the posted limits. "How's it looking ahead, Natsumi?"

"You have a straight shot between these buildings. This thing ticked a little faster but not by much. I'm heading to the ship. Watch out for the destroyed buildings, that's where it was beginning to tick faster."

"I'm taking the highway, it'll most likely be safer." Natsu took a corner quickly, leaning the bike all the way over as he hooked a hard left to avoid the city centre. He spared a quick glance at the upcoming overpass and checked the signs before checking the on-ramp for any obstacles like cars or rubble. It was littered with cars and he had to avoid them by shooting up the shoulder, missing the concrete barriers by just centimetres. He felt the arms around his stomach tighten but the priestess behind him seemed barely worried, most likely due to the amount of trust she was putting in him. He smiled as he flew up onto the three-lane dual-carriageway.

Lelyanna gently tapped on the man's thigh and directed his attention out across the cityscape to the cluster of destroyed buildings. "What could've done that?"

"Looks to be done by conventual warheads. See how some seem to be blown apart at the midsection?"

"Yeah?"

"That'd be where the missiles would've hit. It's probably a good idea that I came up here instead of cutting through the centre of the city. The roads would've been littered with rubble."

"Yeah. It's a mess over here. I'm picking up higher readings around the destroyed towers. Any idea what's causing that?"

"Most likely some metals that have become radioactive from neutron bombardment, which means one of the devices that killed Magnolia was a neutron bomb or a few of them." Natsu glanced over at the ruins once again and saw something zipping around the towers. "Try not to hang around them too much, you may not be affected by radiation, but your clothes and falchions would get radioactive particulate on them. I have a few canisters of water from Ceres' world from when she had me cleanse my body, so we can clean them, but it's still a pain."

"I'll be careful. Wait… I smell a storm coming." The firefly in the distance stopped buzzing around and flew up higher. "Yeah. It looks to be rolling in from the northwest. Could be half an hour out."

"Alright. We're picking up the pace. I need you to check that ship to see if there is any radiation. We'll be using it as cover until the storm passes."

"Can't we just weather it?"

"You and I can, Lelyanna can't. Storms like that one will have radioactive fallout in it that it would've collected as it moved across the country. I want to get her to safety before she suffers the same fate as everyone else who walked this planet." Natsu kept his eyes on the debris and crashed vehicles ahead of him. Nightingale's electric motor whirled louder and louder as Natsu went full-throttle. Wind whipped around him and he hunched down against the motorbike, putting himself down into the bike's slipstream and he felt Lelyanna tighten her grip and press herself to his back. The speedometer skyrocketed, 100-150-250-350Kmh. The man deftly danced the rocket of a motorcycle through the debris field like he was a ballerina dancing a ballet.

"Lady Ceres, please grant me protection…"

"You ok back there?"

"I've never, ever, been anywhere near this fast in my life!"

"Just stay tucked up behind me and keep moving with my body and you'll be fine. Natsumi, how's she looking?"

"I think the ship is in one piece. Holy crap it's huge! Gouged a nice line from the lake into the city. There's water to the rear section but I can't see if any of it has gotten inside. Should I check the water with this counter thing?"

"No, if we're lucky, we won't need to touch the water." Natsu raced around a sweeping bend and was able to see snippets of the large warship between buildings as they blinked past. "Looks like a carrier. Probably wasn't travelling that fast but she's a fucking whale of a ship, her mass alone would've been enough to plough through all those buildings. Can you see a name anywhere on it?"

"Err, give me a sec. I've got a lot of ground to cover."

"It'll be near the front quarter."

"Hold on… Alright, I found it. Apparently, she's called the Brief Respite."

"Yeah. She's an Alakitasian Carrier. Part of the Joint Nations' Thirteenth Fleet." The buildings cleared to give him an unhindered view of the large warship. She did seem to be in one piece. "I should be able to cut through now. Regroup with us when you can."

"Ok, coming back to you."

Natsu let off the throttle and allowed the bike to coast down to a more acceptable speed before he took the offramp for the waterfront district. He straightened up on the bike and felt Lelyanna shift herself in the seat behind him and rest against his back once more while looking out over his right shoulder. A distant booming crack caught his attention and he raised his eyes to the sky.

"Was that thunder? I thought the storm was still a little bit off?"

"Heh." Natsu lightly patted the woman's hands that rested against his stomach. "No, that's still on its way. What you heard was Natsumi breaking the sound barrier. She'll be here soon." Sure enough, the pinkette soon appeared over their heads and dived down to fly alongside them. "How's that storm looking?"

"I think we have about ten to fifteen minutes before it reaches the city. Looks pretty nasty."

"Yeah. All of the nukes fucked with the weather patterns. Made things much more violent. We'll need to find cover pretty quickly before the winds kick up. If we're lucky, the wind isn't carrying along a bunch of fallout. But we should definitely stay out of the rain." Natsu glanced up into the distance and noticed a building had collapsed close to the crash-landed ship. It gave him a nice path up to the open hanger bays in the sides of the ship, though, he would have to jump the bike across roughly a twenty-five-metre gap to get into it. "Lelyanna, I'm going to need to jump this bike into the ship… She'll be able to take it no issue, but if you don't feel comfortable with it, then I want you to go with Natsumi."

"I trust you to keep me safe."

"Well. As much as I appreciate your faith in me, blind faith isn't a good thing to have." The man shook his head lightly when the woman responded by just tightening her grip around him and the bike. "Well, don't get cold feet because once I'm going, I won't be able to stop as we'll crash into the side of the ship."

"I'm staying."

"Alright, alright. Here we go." Natsu cranked on the throttle once again and rocketed up the side of the collapsed building, rapidly gaining speed as he closed the distance with the large warship. When he was nearing the end of the building, he leaned back on the bike, shifting their combined weight to lift the front tyre off the makeshift ramp and once it was stable, he readjusted their position so they'd have a stable flight through the air. Lelyanna's grip on him tightened further as they neared the edge and in the blink of an eye, they were soaring across the gap.

"Oooh Myyy Gooshhh!"

"Come on, baby." Natsu grunted as his eyes remained focused on the hanger bay ahead of them. Using both his weight and the rotational force from his rear tyre, he made little adjustments of their angle.

The rear tyre landed on the hanger floor just after the door and Natsu wrenched the accelerator just enough to stop the front wheel to come crashing down and instead it was eased onto the floor. He twisted the bike, dodging the debris strewn across the room as he rapidly slowed down and came to a safe stop in the centre of the bay.

"Well, it's not quite as gut-wrenching being shot from the bowels of a ship eighty K's high, but it's more excitement than I've had in a while."

Lelyanna stumbled from the bike and pulled her helmet off. She used Requip to safely store it as she fell to the ground and laid spread-eagle beside the motorcycle. "I'm starting to wonder if you really are insane. You treated that like it's nothing… though, you did say you used to jump from eighty kilometres up." She looked down along her body as Natsumi flew in behind them and touched down, running the last few metres to reach them as she pulled her helmet from her head.

"That was absolutely fucking insane!" The pinkette cheered as she grinned wildly at the man as he stored his helmet and climbed off his motorcycle. "How big is this thing anyway?"

"About three kilometres long, nine-hundred metres wide at the widest part, and I think six-hundred-ish metres tall, if memory serves me right." Natsu stretched out his body then did a quick check over his bike. "I don't know her full details. She wasn't a ship belonging to Fiore, and I hadn't set foot in her until today. Seen her in action a few times though, lots of firepower but fairly slow." He wheeled the bike behind one of the many wrecked VTOL transports that occupied the hanger bay so it was out of the imminent high winds. "Let's go further into the ship. Natsumi, pass me that Geiger Counter and your helmet. I'll hold onto it until you figure out requip magic and put it into my garage later when we get back."

"Alright." The woman quickly did as he requested and glanced back at the priestess who was still lying on the ground. "Will she be alright?"

"Give her a minute. I wasn't exactly plodding along, the vibrations from the road probably made her all tingly and probably confused too."

"It felt that good, huh?"

"You're asking the wrong person." Natsu sent the flashy helmet away and fastened the counter to his belt. "Go ask her if she was getting off from the vibrations."

"Heh, alright." Natsumi grinned mischievously.

Natsu watched the pinkette smirk at him and slyly slink over to the priestess, at which point he ignored them turned away from the women and switched out his motorcycle jacket and gloves for his coat and he adjusted his cuffs. While he did love the jacket, his new style had grown on him during his time in their world and he had actually come to prefer it. Focusing on the most pressing issue, Natsu hurried up to the Hanger Traffic Control room that sat at the back of the hanger up by the ceiling.

It didn't take long for him to be joined by both young women, one red-faced and the other broadly smirking. He glanced up from the panel in front of him as they joined him and looked out at the collection of multi-purpose fighters and transports. "Seems like her reactor died either on impact or on the way down. We've still got power thanks to her batteries, but it seems that we're stuck with emergency lighting. I'm going to close up the hanger door so we don't get all that crap coming in here."

"How do you plan on getting your bike out of here?" Natsumi asked as they watched the blast doors slide out from the floor and ceiling incredibly slowly, meeting in the centre to seal the hanger bay from the outside elements. "It's so quiet that it's almost creepy."

"Wait until the ship starts moaning and groaning, then it'll get really creepy." Natsu glanced at the younger pinkette. "As for the bike, either I carry it out, or I fly it out in one of the transports, if I find one that isn't totally wrecked by the impact. I'll most likely get Ceres to take it away though." He shifted his gaze to the bluish-silver haired woman who was looking around the room that was sparsely illuminated by dim emergency lights, it was just enough to safely navigate the ship's internals. "We should have a look around while we're in here. If either of you are having trouble seeing stuff, just stay close."

"You can see perfectly well, can't you?" Lelyanna asked, sounding slightly exhausted.

"Yeah, this is more than enough light to let my eyes do their thing." He gave her a small smile and turned away from them, heading towards the door leading along the hanger catwalks. "Hm, I don't smell any bodies. They must've abandoned ship."

"How does one 'abandon ship' in something designed to fly far higher than the tallest mountain?" Natsumi asked with a faint indignation.

"Simple; escape pods."

"Right…"

"The captain probably went down with the ship. They usually do that." Natsu glanced behind him and checked the hanger number, he committed it to memory so he wouldn't misplace his motorcycle. His gaze dropped to the two women for a moment before turning to the nearby walls. "If this was one of our ships then I'd have a better idea of where I'm going. Common sense would say that the armouries and ready rooms would be near the hangers as that means less travel time but this isn't one of our ships. So, I can't be certain."

After some walking, they came across a large map stencilled onto the wall. Natsumi took a closer look at the map and quickly found where they were. She shot a small ember from her fingertip and made it hover over their location. "What's the deal with the patchy colours?"

"The room types are colour coded. At least they made it easy for onboarding new personnel…" The man's eyes darted around the map as he got his bearings, quickly getting a handle about which colour meant what. "Alright, seems like those orange rooms are the armouries, so let's head to the nearest one. Shouldn't take that long."

As they walked, the ship began to creak and groan. Lelyanna squeaked softly and pressed up against Natsu's back which drew his attention to her. "This thing is stable, right?"

"Considering it's almost half buried in the ground, yeah. And don't worry, it's not going to crumple all of a sudden because of high winds and heavy rain. If it survived smashing to the ground hard enough to gouge a massive trench into a city-" The man came to a stop and looked down at the floor. "Huh, I wonder if it breached the subway system beneath the city."

"What, like the Crocus Underground?" Natsumi glanced below them curiously then back to the man.

"Sounds about right, yeah." Natsu started heading for the armoury once more, finding it quickly. Unfortunately, everything was strewn across the floor due to the heavy crash. "Damn, she's had a rough time." The man sighed and moved about the room, cleaning it up and putting everything back in place.

"I've been wondering, just how the hell does something this massive even fly?"

"Computer-controlled magic stored with Lacrima. I could probably replicate it in your world if I had the right equipment." Natsu replied, looking at the two women as they stuck close together in the darkness. "We used automated and precisely controlled gravity magic to counteract the effects of gravity on the ship. There is still air friction and drag from flying around, but aside from that, it's like puttering around in space. Still shakes about though, but you get used to that. It's like being on a ship at sea."

"Like space? Could you go up there?"

"While he had been to space many times, we were too busy fighting each other to competently go into space and colonise it. So, beyond the research and astro-mining stations as well as communication satellites orbiting the planet, everything else was down here."

"What happened to the stations?" Lelyanna asked quietly as she stumbled over to the man's voice.

"Each one was destroyed by anti-satellite missiles about a year or two into the war. Our launch facilities were also destroyed fairly early by missile strikes and saboteurs. We lost our ability to explore the stars just as we were building a ship capable of atmospheric and exoatmospheric flight. It would've solved the overpopulation issue, but I guess people were being greedy or they thought it wasn't happening soon enough."

"So, you basically fucked yourselves." Natsumi followed the priestess over and sat atop the bench the man was working at, watching him assemble a weapon in the dim lights. "As a collective, that is."

"Yeah." Natsu confirmed quietly, his head dropping as he closed his eyes. "It was one retaliatory strike after another. They blew up something of ours, we did it to them." He sighed and shook his head lightly. "All that doesn't matter anymore. Both of you know how that song and dance ended." A loud boom echoed above their heads and the lights brightened for a moment. "Sounds like the storm has arrived, that was lightning striking the ship."

"You seem very calm about that!" Lelyanna half-shouted in a panic, looking wide-eyed at the ceiling as she held her arms tightly around the man's chest. Another loud boom caused the ship to rattle and the lights to flare once more. "We'll be okay, right?"

"Yeah. We can't be harmed in here." Natsu reassured the young woman as he finished assembling a small black gun and showed it to her. "Here. It's an MP10. I've set it up so it has the same laser-light module mounted to the left rail with the controls on the grip like the M12 I gave you, the right rail is free, and the bottom rail has that detachable folding foregrip, just don't go detaching that without telling me. It has an ambidextrous selector by the thumb to switch from safe, semi, and full-auto, same with the slide release, and mag release. But just be careful with full-auto, this girl fires nine-hundred rounds a minute. So, the thirty round mags that I'm going to grab for you will be spent in two seconds flat." He fitted the same suppressor that was mounted to their pistols onto the end of the barrel and quickly ran over how to operate the weapon before he handed it to her and went looking for the magazines.

"Woah." Natsumi eyed the weapon as Lelyanna fiddled with it, watching the woman get accustomed to her new gun. "Why can't I have a gun from here?"

"Because I can't defend myself as well as you two can." Lelyanna replied softly. She pulled the retractable stock back and checked which of the three positions suited her best then pulled down the front foregrip and turned the torch on, sweeping it across the far wall. "I've already told you this… I'm not a fighter like you and Natsu, I have no idea how to use swords or bows and I'm not strong enough to use them anyway. I'm a healer, through and through. But Natsu wanted me to be able to protect myself, so he's been training me on his own weapons. At least, the ones that I'm capable of controlling…" She looked down the unusual device mounted to the top rail, blinking at the red dot in the middle and the brighter image. "Natsu? What's this thing on top?"

"It's called an RSI, a reflex sight and intensifier. It makes things easier to see when looking down the sight." Natsu called out from the adjacent room. He brought out a twenty 30-round magazines and multiple boxes of subsonic 10mm ammunition. He placed them down in two groups and started to load up the first set.

Lelyanna quickly got the hint and turned the torch off. She placed the gun down on the bench and began to load her batch of magazines. "I don't know if I can carry it on my body. It's smaller than the rifle we were thinking about getting me, but I still can't really conceal it unless I change what I wear."

"Well, you're capable of requip magic now, so just store it in a ready state and bring it out as needed." Once he finished all ten magazines, he pushed them over to the woman along with the boxed of ammo. He went back into the adjacent room and collected up a bunch of spare parts for their firearms so he could keep them maintained and functional even if something broke or even assemble new weapons. "Hey, Ceres. Can you hear me?" Natsu murmured and a moment later, the divine presence slipped into his mind.

'Yep. How's things in Magnolia?'

"A storm hit so we've taken cover within a crashed carrier. Since I don't know how long this will go on for, I was wondering if you could take my motorcycle back to my manor?"

'Hm… let me see.' The goddess paused for a moment. 'Just checked your memories; I found the bike. You left it in the hanger, right?'

"Yeah. That's the one."

'Alright. I've sent it to your garage. It'll be next to that car I got you. Is there anything else?'

"No, I think we're fine here. I'm prioritising Lelyanna's safety over our mobility, so we'll be heading down into the subway tunnels while this storm is raging above ground. How's the situation with the factory?"

'I've brought the entire building to my realm and created some constructs to break it down. You'll have all the things you need once you're ready to build a new facility over there. How are the girls?'

"I might have terrified Lelyanna a little bit, I wasn't exactly going on a casual Sunday cruise, not to mention I jumped the bike across a gap to get into the ship. But aside from that, it seemed that she was giddy about the bike, then again, she's always had a fascination with the stuff from here. Natsumi was busy crawling all around the inside of Lucy's car too, but she'll have to put up with it not coming back with me."

'She's fine now, I'm guessing?'

"Yeah. But she seems to hate these ships; it's too dark and rattly for her. But then again, it's running on battery power only after the reactors were knocked offline and I'm guessing a bunch of the batteries were damaged upon crashing, leaving very little power available." Natsu placed his hands on the bench in front of him after sending all the parts he had collected to his storage dimension using Requip. "The girls are doing fine. They might not like the tunnels though; it's probably going to be too dark for them to see anything. And who knows what kind of monsters or animals took cover down there."

'Speaking of animals, I reintroduced those that were killed by all the bombs but some seems to have undergone… mutations. So… Yeah, be careful.'

"Wait, you're leaving me on that bombshell?" The man's gaze immediately snapped to the ceiling, as if he was staring through the layers upon layers of metal and into the void beyond. But the only response he received was a giggle that was fading away as the deity's consciousness began receding from his mind. "Thanks, for letting me see Lucy again…" He murmured before the presence was completely gone, and he swore he felt a gentle smile in his mind before it vanished completely.

Natsumi glanced up from her seat on a workbench as the man walked back into the room. "You were talking with the goddess?"

"She has the ability to create a mental link with anyone she chooses." Natsu replied as he waved for the two women to follow him, but his eyes drifted to the priestess who was holding her new weapon in a position that gave him a prang of irritation, so he gently adjusted her grip on the weapon into a more suitable stance. "We're heading down from here. Ceres has dealt with my bike, so I don't have to go back and deal with it."

"Down? Like into railway tunnels?" Natsumi walked over to the duo and glanced between them.

"Yeah. I want to keep moving. The less time I spend in this world, the better. I want to finish up my business here and get back home." He turned away from the two women and started to leave the room, but came to a stop in the doorway and his voice dropped to a murmur that was just loud enough for the women to hear. "I've made my peace, there's nothing here for me anymore bar resources and equipment. Come, there's still work to do."

"If this ship is six-hundred metres tall, how the fuck are we going to find our way to the bottom?"

"A ship this big will have a shuttle system to allow for cargo transportation and to cut travel times between decks for personnel. That being said, they won't be functional, so we'll be hoofing it through pitch black and claustrophobic tunnels with sudden drops that appear out of nowhere." Natsu replied as he led them to the map, sparing a glance back at them when he reached it and giving them a small sly smirk. "Of course, I'm not overly serious about the last two parts. The shuttle would be pretty big and in turn would need a large tunnel. But it would definitely be pitch black since it's not a place people would usually go outside of maintenance personnel."

"Where are we heading." Lelyanna asked softly as she stopped by the man's side and gazed up at the map, doing her best to read the map in the low light.

"You see those large uncoloured sections that run the length of this deck? The ones wider than the hallways. Those are the shuttle tunnels. The closest station is back the way we came." Natsu ran a finger along the thick greyed-out lines that ran through the deck map. "We find the holes and we'll be able to descend deeper into this beast's belly. Either we find twisted metal, or we find a way out of here."

"Well, it's not like we can take the priestess outside while this storm is raging around us." Natsumi slipped her hands into her coat pockets, her eyes following the line her counterpart was pointing to. "We could burn our way through to those underground tunnels if needed. Do you know how far down we need to go?"

"With where we are in the city, I think about fifty metres below the surface. I'll keep track of our descent and see that we don't overshoot where we need to be."

"How will you do that?" Lelyanna asked quietly.

"Each deck is generally roughly four metres tall or just under, hangers notwithstanding. I know the distance to the surface thanks to how high that hanger we landed in was, so all we need to do is to reach the surface level then descend twelve to fourteen decks and we'll be at the level of the subway system for this area. The hard part is finding the tunnel itself." Natsu started down the corridor, his eyes slowly sweeping the dark hallway in search for anything that may harm them. He turned down a set of stairs and jogged down it but he heard a slip in the steady rhythm behind him followed by a sharp gasp. Natsu twisted his body and jumped back up the stairs, catching Lelyanna in his arms. "Sorry. I keep forgetting that I'm the only person around that has insane vision."

Natsu adjusted Lelyanna in his arms and started heading back down the stairs, prompting the priestess to murmur a complaint even though she welcomed the reassuring warmth. "You don't have to carry me."

"I'll be carrying you soon anyway since you're the only one who can't fly among the three of us." Natsu glanced to the side as Natsumi fell in line with him. "She has those extravagant and flamboyant phoenix-like wings, and I use jet propulsion." He glanced down as the woman hugged her MP10 to her chest and allowed herself to be carried through the darkness without any further complaints. When they reached the station, he jumped down onto the mag-lev tracks and started walking along the rails.

There were no lights inside the tunnel as it wasn't designed for on-foot travel outside of maintenance, which caused Natsumi to stumble every now and then until she gave up and formed her wings and began to float through the air beside Natsu and illuminate the path ahead. "You know, I've been in some pretty creepy places but I think this takes the cake."

"Probably due to the unfamiliarity with this kind of environment." Natsu came to a stop in front of a hole that extended deep into the bowels of the ship. Without any hesitation, he stepped out over the pit and a jet of flame shot from his foot like a rocket, then another from his other foot as he took the next step. He floated across the hole until he reached the middle and began a slow descent. "We're heading down here."

"Alright." Natsumi slowly spiralled around Natsu as they descended down through the shaft. She made her wings burn brighter to illuminate the shaft and watched the various tunnels pass by, counting as they went deeper down.

"We've hit the surface." Natsu announced and dropped his gaze down the shaft. He could see a fair distance but the bottom was out of view in darkness this thick, even for his sight. "Things are bound to be messier down here, so watch where you fly."

"Which way should we go?" Natsumi asked loudly, her voice echoing through all six directions. They had come to a stop at the thirteenth deck below the surface and the woman was spinning in a slow circle, gazing at the four tunnels leading through the deck.

"To either port or starboard will work." Natsu turned to the right side of the ship and floated along on his jets of flame until he reached one of the mag-lev rails and landed. The groans and creaks of the ship were amplified by the tunnel system, causing the priestess in his arms to move about as he walked along the railing. "We need to reach the edge of the ship. Supplies would've come through the hanger so this won't take us all the way there. We'll stop at the last station. It's not far."

A gentle rumble drew their attention down and Lelyanna squirmed in Natsu's arms. "Ignore that…"

"Oh my, how embarrassing~." Natsumi giggled playfully as she shot up beside the man and leaned over the woman's head. "Someone's hungry~." However, her teasing was abruptly interrupted by another rumble, one from her own stomach.

"What was that about embarrassment?" Lelyanna's pale-turquoise eyes narrowed as a cute smirk spread across her lips. "That was loud enough that even I – a normal human woman – could hear it."

"Enough, both of you." Natsu growled softly, drawing both women's attention to him in an instant. "I'll find you something safe to eat soon enough. If memory serves me right and we are where I think we are then there should be a large shopping centre near here and it should have fast food, grocery stores, clothing stores, and many other things." He leapt across the gap and landed on the station platform. Once Lelyanna was back on her own two feet, he led the way through the hallway. "Hopefully we can get there without exposing you to radiation…"

"Natsu, I don't mean to dredge up old memories… But are you able to call Lucy's spirits?" Natsumi asked quietly as she walked in the middle with her flaming wings lighting the walls around them. "I'm sure Virgo could help us get through to the subway tunnels if we don't get to their exact locations."

"I don't have her keys. I left them where she died. When I returned there with Ceres when I was saying my goodbyes, the keys were gone so I'm guessing they had been scattered or the keys were pulled into the celestial realm. I don't know if they sealed their gates, but I can't open them from this side."

"But you would've been friends with them, like I am, right?"

"Yes. But that doesn't mean they'd heed my call." Natsu spared a quick glance back at the dragon princess. "You need to remember that they are immortal beings, and would have had many masters and mistresses over however long it's been since their creation. While I don't doubt that there's a bond there, I'm only one of an unfathomable many who have been their friend. But I would be happy if they did allow me to call upon them…"

They walked in silence until they neared the hull wall and Natsu came to a stop. He closed his eyes and sent a series of magical pulses out, reading how they interacted with the materials they passed through until he found what he was after; a pair of tunnels that had been severed by the large ship cleaving them in two. The unfortunate part was that they were near the top of the tunnels and he would have to cut down diagonally to reach them and gain access to the subway. "We're not far."

"How do learn to do that?" Natsumi gaped. She hurried after the man with Lelyanna in tow. "Natsu!"

"Have you ever been stuck in an underground labyrinth with no perceivable way out?" Natsu glanced back, but when he was met with shocked silence, he shook his head lightly and continued down the hall. "You tend to learn a few things when you're standing on the knife's edge, teetering between life and death, running low on oxygen, stuck in pitch black darkness with the only light source being your own fire." He entered a room and walked to the far wall. "We're going through here."

"The tunnel is on the other side?" Lelyanna asked quietly as she helped shift the clutter away from the wall as best as her short and slender frame would allow.

"Yes. But there will be a drop, so you'll need a hand getting down there as you could break your legs." Natsu placed his hand low on the wall and a red sigil grew from beneath it, spreading out until it formed a one-metre-wide circle. On top of it was layered another sigil, this time a bright yellow. Once both were formed, he retreated beyond the doorway and rested his back against the wall, quickly followed by the two women with Lelyanna taking cover against his body. He clicked his fingers and a blast echoed from the room.

"What the hell did you do?" Natsumi exclaimed, glancing around the doorway at the smoking wall. "I've never used my curses like that."

"The first ring was to create focused plasma to burn through the metal. The second created a directed explosion that pushed the ring of super-hot fire through the metal and cut a hole for us." Natsu gently moved the priestess away and walked into the room. The wall was seemingly still intact except for a faintly glowing circle. He kicked the cylinder he cut out and the metal plug shot from the ship and crashed down onto the floor of the subway tunnel. "The metal will still be hot, so come here, Lelyanna."

"Coming." The priestess hurried to the man and allowed herself to be carried through the hot tunnel. She started to sweat from the faintly glowing walls and curled into a tight ball so she wouldn't be burnt by the metal. "Wow… it's so thick."

Natsumi snickered at the woman's innocent remark, drawing a curious look from the woman and a pair of narrowed eyes from the man. "What? I didn't say anything."

"I have a fairly good idea of what was going through your mind, Natsumi." Natsu deadpanned and sighed softly. He carefully manoeuvred the woman in his arms as he turned and leapt down into the tunnel. He set the bluish-silver-haired woman on her feet and tapped her MP10 lightly. "Give us some light, please."

"Ok." Lelyanna flicked on the flashlight and beamed the light around the tunnel. Once Natsumi had followed them through the hole and took flight behind them, the priestess led the way, sweeping the light around slowly to illuminate the way much further than Natsumi's wings could. It didn't take long for them to reach the first station, upon which Natsu checked the station map and took them even deeper into the tunnels. "How far do we have to go?"

"Not much further. The next station has a shopping centre attached to it so we'll be able to get some food into us, check the shops there for things like your clothes and stuff I need, then we can move on."

They reached the next station quickly, and both women eagerly rushed up the stairs. They emerged from the subway into a vast hall with multiple stories and stores all around them. Natsumi immediately took to the air and raced around the well-lit building, leaving a slightly envious Lelyanna behind to watch from the ground. But she was joined a few moments later by Natsu who waved for her to follow him as he walked to a grocery store. "This place is massive."

"I think it's the biggest shopping centre in the city of Magnolia. The subway connects to it to bring people here from all across the city. Thankfully, power is still on here, so we shouldn't have trouble finding something to eat, though, it would have to be something from the freezers since all the fresh produce would've gone off by now."

"Did you normally shop here?" Lelyanna asked curiously as she followed the man past a pair of strange pillars and along the isles. Her eyes widened at the assorted foodstuffs and her stomach grumbled again.

"Not for groceries. We did that in the grocers near our house. Lucy did enjoy coming here to shop for clothing though, and I tended to visit the music store to look at guitars." Natsu smiled softly as he glanced down at the woman's midriff. He grabbed a pack of muesli bars and handed it to her. "Check the back to see if there's anything you're allergic to."

"Don't worry, I don't have any allergies." The priestess gave the man a bright smile and flipped the box over and over to see how to open it before curiously slipping her fingers under the top and breaking the adhesive. "Oh." She quickly took a bar out and took it out of the packaging. "Your food is strange."

"That's probably not the strangest thing you'll see in here." Natsu chuckled lightly and led her through the isle while she ate the bar. "Feel free to toss the box aside if you want. Or you can store it with Requip, in fact, if anything here takes your fancy then you can keep it providing it hasn't gone bad."

"I want to take a bunch of stuff back, even if I can't share it around."

"Lelyanna, if you trust your sisters. You can tell them about me, the truth. But, just be sure they won't spread it around. I trust your judgement." He glanced behind him as he kept feeling faint pulses of magic and he found that Lelyanna had been practically taking one of everything, acting like she was a kid in a candy store. He sighed softly and shook his head with a gentle smile. "Are the things from my world really this fascinating?"

"Yes!" Lelyanna giggled defiantly while her gaze darted from one thing to the next. No matter what isle they went down, if it was edible and safe to eat, she grabbed one of it and sometimes even a handful. "It's strange to think that this was normal life for you. When you weren't fighting a life-or-death struggle. Do you miss it?"

"The life-or-death struggle?"

"No, you silly!" The young priestess smacked his shoulder with a baguette, only for him to grab one for himself and engage in a mock swordfight with her. "Hehe, I mean life here."

"Sometimes." Natsu sighed softly and came to a stop in front of the freezers. "Like I've said, the only thing left for me here are resources and devices I can bring back… back home." He took a few of the frozen pizzas from the freezer and turned to the woman. "I'll be out in food court since there's a bunch of areas to cook stuff there, you're free to grab whatever you want from here, as long as it hasn't gone off."

"Alright!"

On his way out of the store, Natsu grabbed a tonne of various large herbs and spices containers so he could teach his Henrietta how to make food from his own world. He quickly found a place to cook their food, using the ovens of one of the fast-food restaurants. After a quick search in the adjacent restaurants, he brought three sets of dinner plates and cutlery back to the ovens.

"Hey Natsu!" Natsumi called out as she swooped in over the front counter. "Do you have a bag I can borrow? I found a store that has a bunch of sexy lingerie and amazing clothes, and they fit perfectly!"

"You sound like Lucy." Natsu chuckled softly and tossed her the leather duffle bag that had remained unused since Ceres had given it to him.

"Well, I do go shopping with her a lot." The pinkette smiled and flew out of the restaurant. "Shout out to me when the food is done!"

The gentle clicking of boots drew closer, somewhat muffled by the roaring winds and rumbling skies. A curious pale-turquoise eye peeked around the edge of the wall and looked back to the kitchen. "Natsu?"

"I'm in the back."

"I got everything I wanted. Did you want to help me with clothes after we've eaten?"

Natsu checked the times on the ovens and headed to the front counter, leaning against it on his elbows as he gave the young priestess a gentle smile. "I can after we eat if you really want my help, but I think Natsumi would be a better choice for advice."

"I know she'd be good for it, but I kind of want the advice from a member of the opposite sex…"

"Go have a poke around first and try some things on while the food finishes. I know Natsumi had found a lingerie store upstairs so you could go and pick a few things out from there while you wait."

"Ok. I'll see what I can find." The woman smiled and hurried to the stairs since she saw the pinkette shoot up them a few moments ago.

Natsu eyes skimmed the food court, practically hearing the hustle and bustle of daily life that had long since died out. Once the timers rang at zero, Natsu returned to the ovens and placed the pizzas onto four plates and set them to hover around him as he returned to the front of the store and raided the drinks fridges for bottles of soft drinks. As he headed for a table, he took a quick breath and was about to call out for the women but they had beaten him to the punch and Natsumi flew down with Lelyanna in her arms; her keen sense of smell telling her that the food was ready. "I grabbed four different pizzas for us to share. Just grab a piece from whichever one you wish to try, same with the drinks. And there are more in the fridges around us if you want more."

"So, after here, where are we going?" Natsumi asked as she took a seat at the table and grabbed a slice in her hands, biting the tip. Unlike Natsu and herself, she noticed something that made the priestess the odd one out; she was the only one eating with utensils. "You know you can use your fingers, right?"

"It's just a habit, nobles look down on people doing that. So, with all the gatherings I get invited to due to my position and from treating these nobles, I've just started doing this as normal."

"Lelyanna's posh habits aside." Natsu smirked lightly at the woman's expense. "I need to stop by a hardware store for building supplies and tools, then I need to find this company that was building Fiore's androids so I can upgrade Henrietta, even if it's just a single body to begin with. The first is a basic in-and-out job, the second will take some poking around, but I know where the building is. Before that though, Lelyanna wants me to help with her clothes."

"I had a look outside through those glass doors while I was flying around; it's a pretty violent snowstorm, and it's almost constantly sending bolts of lightning down against the surrounding towers."

"I'll check it out after I've finished eating to see if I can secure a safe passage."

"If it's not safe for me to head out with you two, I'm happy to head back and wait in the manor. I got to see your world for myself so I'm happy." Lelyanna smiled warmly as she looked around the building around them. "That way the two of you can get around without needing to worry about me."

"Well, if it turns out that it is too dangerous for you to follow then you could wander around here for a bit and find more things that you want to bring back for yourself."

"Well…" The priestess lightly scratched her cheek and looked at the next floor's railing above them. "The clothes here are fairly interesting. I could try more on. Yeah, I'll have more of a look around then. I won't go further than here."

"That's what I'm going to do once I finish my food." Natsumi sat back with a grin. "It can be tough finding good clothes that I like – I usually have to get them custom-made – but this place has plenty of clothing stores. I'll come find you once I've had my fill."

Natsu took off his Geiger Counter and placed it down next to Lelyanna's arms. "Keep that on you at all times. It's set up to warn the user about what type and how much radiation it is detecting, so if it starts chirping quickly, stop or take some steps back and check the readout. Preferably avoid whatever is triggering the alarm."

"I understand."

Natsu rose from his seat and downed the last of his drink. "Natsumi, I'll come find you when I'm done with Lelyanna and am ready to move out."

"Gotcha." Natsumi shot to her feet with her last slice of pizza clamped between her teeth. Her wings ignited and she floated back up and out of sight.

"Before I run off, what did you end up finding?"

"Hm." Lelyanna rested her cheek on her palm as she leaned her elbow on the table. "Some nice two-piece swimwear, some sheer nightgowns, a few more sets of those training clothes. Skirts, shirts, dresses, some rather… um… fancy sets of underwear. Jackets, jumpers, and sweaters. That's where I had to stop as Natsumi smelt the food and came over."

"As long as you made sure they all fit correctly?"

"Yeah. I tried on each one as I took them off the racks. It felt strange to do, getting changed like that in a public place."

"Well, the only witnesses to that would've seen that is Natsumi and the possible ghosts that haunt this world. Don't forget to visit a shoe store and grab some good footwear. They should have some size gauges there so you know what foot size you are. Make sure you try them on with your socks, and walk around the store a few times with each pair you try so you can get a good feel for them."

"I'll show you the clothes once we get back to your home." Lelyanna gave the man a sweet smile and rose from her seat slowly. "I think I'll just get you opinion there instead, so you can take care of what you came here to do."

"Alright. If you prefer wearing normal clothing, I'll try my best to find an alternate way to protect you. My Fiore is a treasure trove of technology, so there ought to be something I can use here. I just need some inspiration…"

"I'm sure you'll come up with something eventually. And in the meantime, you shouldn't worry too much about my safety because as long as I'm not incapacitated, I can heal myself as long as the injury isn't too great."

"It's that last part that worries me, Lelyanna." Natsu sighed as the woman attached the Geiger Counter to her belt and rose to her feet. She only offered him a kind smile in response to his concerns but her eyes told him that she knew his worries were justified.

Letting the woman return to her browsing, Natsu got to his feet and headed for the nearest exit, but as he approached the glass doors, he noticed a music store with instruments. He quickly headed inside and picked up a few packs of nylon strings for his guitar and gathered up amps, speakers, various effect pedals, and anything else that tickled his fancy, like an electric guitar and bass.

On his way out of the store, he bumped into Natsumi and almost tumbled to the ground with her; catching himself quickly by stepping between her legs and grabbing her hips to stop her from falling. "Are you ok?"

"Ah~." Natsumi gasped softly, finding herself aroused by the warmer man's firm grip but she pushed aside the lustful impulse and allowed herself to be righted before she took half a step back. "Yeah. Nice catch." She spared a glance outside and looked back at the man. "Looks like crap out there."

"Well, since Lelyanna is staying behind to look at more clothes by herself. You and I can move with our full mobility. I'm going to be on foot, you can fly alongside me if you want. I like to conserve my power for when I need it."

"Alright. Could you hold onto this for me?" Natsumi asked and held out the bag she had been loaned, giving the man a seemingly innocent grin. "I found a bunch of sexy things and couldn't help but get them since they were on quite the discount."

"I barely know you yet somehow that doesn't surprise me…" Natsu sighed softly at the woman's grin. He took the bag and sent it away so it would become irradiated.

"Maybe I'll give you a little show later~." Natsumi leaned in with a playfully sensual purr, lightly pressing up against the man's chest and looking up through her lashes. But her eyes went wide as she was effortlessly hoisted into the air by the back of her coat.

"Please keep your mind on the task at hand."

"What if you were in my hands?"

Natsu dropped the woman onto her feet an arm's reach away from him, shaking his head lightly as he fiddled with the door. Once he had secured the door behind them, he turned and looked out into the practically white-out conditions. "Hm, it's pretty nasty out here."

"I've never seen weather this bad…" Natsumi murmured softly as she gazed up at the constantly rumbling and flashing white haze. It felt like she was getting pelted by tiny chucks of ice and when she glanced at her feet, she saw not snow but a collection of dirty-looking hail as big as the large buttons on her coat. "I don't think I can fly very well in this… I can't see very far."

"Just stay close to me then, I'll lead the way." Natsu extended his magical aura, causing any ice or snow that came within five metres of him to instantly sublimate into steam. He set out at a quick jog and saw Natsumi quickly catch up and fly right alongside him. "The hardware store isn't far, a few blocks at most."

"What are you getting from there?"

"Since I plan on fully upgrading my manor's electrical systems, I need tonnes of silver-cored power lines to run the equipment I'm bringing over as efficiently as possible, a bunch of lighting, sockets, stuff to make adaptors, I'm basically going to pillage the entire store."

"Why silver, isn't it more expensive than the copper we use?"

"Not when you can mine it with drones from asteroids you drag into orbit near our astro-mining stations. A lot of our materials were fairly cheap, the issue was land for housing and also fertile land for agriculture." Natsu explained, sparing a glance at the woman who slowly rolled onto her side. "Our electronics use silver instead of copper or gold. In fact, pretty much every house has silver-cored electrical wires in it, with the older ones generally getting upgraded to that over time. This was before I came about though."

"So… I've been meaning to ask, how are you so capable?"

"As in how do I know so much off the top of my head or how am I so physically capable?"

"The first." Natsumi floated around to the man's front, doing her best to avoid blocking his sight. "I asked Lelyanna about all those books in your library, she said they contain knowledge from here but they're all handwritten."

"Part of it is stuff I actually know from living here my entire life but for what I don't personally know, I can find out by accessing an artefact given to me by Ceres. She implanted what she called a 'Knowledge Crystal' into me; gives me access to my world's collective knowledge but it can be a pain to access more often than not. I'm not some insanely gifted genius, I just use what I've been given."

"I mean, you are kind of like that when you take my world into consideration. You know how to operate things I couldn't even imagine or comprehend how to operate. And the way you and Lelyanna handle your guns are completely different compared to what I'm used to seeing, and I've got three hardcore gun-nuts in the guild."

"Hm, I see." Natsu slowed down and walked into the hardware store. He didn't plan on being in the store for long so he just hurried down the isles to collect all the building supplies he needed, which incidentally was every last bit of material in the store. And after a quick stop at the power tools and garden tools sections, he ran through a quick mental checklist while reading his requip spell's inventory window, something that shocked the other pinkette. "Alright, I should have enough materials to make the changes I want to make and also build additional buildings to house stuff like the generators, with piping and cabling to run power all around the estate and disconnect it from your rudimentary power grid."

"Onto this android lab thing?" Natsumi asked, stepping around the man and facing him with her hands behind her back. "Where about is it?"

"In an underground lab in the ruins of the city's centre. It's a place only you and I will be able to traverse, so it's good that we left Lelyanna in the shops." Natsu closed the window and made his way out of the large warehouse-like store. He ignited jets of fire from his feet and took flight with Natsumi quickly taking up position to his left. She drifted closer and flipped onto her back, sliding under him until they were face-to-face.

"Hey… Does it upset you, seeing your home like this?"

"Somewhat, but I've seen cities and their inhabitants get blown to bits more times than I'd care to say." He directed his gaze from the ground to the woman flying less than a metre below him. "I'm sure you're more affected by this than I am. You had a bad reaction to the graveyard."

"It just hit home what you've been through… Everyone I know, all of them, they were all there." The pinkette murmured softly. She closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around his waist, burying her face into his chest. "I'm sorry… Can I stay here, for a little bit?"

"Shook you up that bad, huh?" Natsu gently asked as he carefully loosened her arms just enough to spin around in them and move them up to his neck so she could ride on his back. "Then again, seeing the graves of your living friends would probably do that… I know it shakes me up when I see their faces, alive and well."

"I spoke with Erza, since she's already seen you. I had her come over to my house and I told her who you are and what your story is." Natsumi snuffed out her wings and wrapped her legs around the man's waist. "She told me she could feel some kind of turmoil in you and that somehow, you reminded her of me. After I told her your story, she realised exactly why you did, because you were me but not me. She wants to meet you properly."

Natsu took a deep breath and glanced over his shoulder. "I'll probably be able to handle it better now, and if I'm actually mentally prepared to meet her instead of what happened so soon after I arrived. Give me a few days to get things sorted from our little expedition here, then I'll see her." He began his descent down into the towering ruins when a thought popped into his mind and it made him worried. "I noticed that you don't really smell like Happy. Where is he, is he…?"

"He's alive and well. Don't worry." The dragon princess tightened her arms slightly in an effort to be more reassuring. "He lives in the exceed village not far from Magnolia, with Carla. I live alone in my two-bedroom house in the next district over from yours, towards the lake. It's not as grand as your manor, but I'm happy with it. Though, it is a rental…"

"I mean, you saw the house I owned here. That was mine and Lucy's, and it wasn't anything fancy." Natsu touched down in one of the destroyed towers and placed his hands on Natsumi's supple thighs to hold her in place. He gazed around at the rubble-strewn floor and sighed softly. "I smell bodies. Ceres did say she was still in the process of cleaning, so I guess I'm not really surprised…"

"They smell rotted." Natsumi gagged and stuck out her tongue in disgust. "Can we move on; all the smells are coming up the tower."

"The smell won't get any better, trust me. You'll just have to get used to the smell of decaying bodies." Natsu climbed through the rubble until he found the elevator shafts but when he pulled the doors open, he found that rubble had clogged the shafted. "Fuck. Alright, let's go out then come in at a lower floor."

"Couldn't we just blast them clear?"

"No, I don't know how sturdy this tower is to begin with. And with all the rubble around the ground floor to the fourth floor, I don't know if there is any structural damage down there." The man took flight once more and floated over to the side of the ruined tower. He descended five floors before he came back inside through one of the blown-out windows. Once he had opened the elevator doors, he peeked down the shaft and narrowed his eyes. It was dark, even for him, so he cracked a chem-light and tossed it down the shaft, watching it illuminate the shaft as it plummeted. "Seems like the Elevator was somewhere above the blast that broke this tower apart, this shaft is empty."

"Shall we, er, ahem… ease down the shaft?" Natsumi asked, trying to stop the giggle from slipping into her question and failing miserably. "I'm sorry~ I couldn't help it."

"You're immature."

"I don't see any issue with loving immature jokes." The woman giggled freely. "I feel that it lightens the mood. And it feels like you aren't really opposed to them, I can sense that little bubble of amusement~."

"I suppose you're right." Natsu murmured as he stepped off the floor and plummeted down the shaft after the chem-light. He felt Natsumi's arms fly off his neck and then some long light-pink hair was brought down and pinned to his chest by her arms. He glanced at the woman's calm expression then watched the incoming floor, sending out intermittent jets of fire to control their speed. "I had a thought pop into the back of my mind; that rental place you have, since it's just you there, do you want to move out of it?"

"Hm, I don't mind living alone. But it does get lonely sometimes. Are you trying to ask me to move in?"

"I was just saying that I don't mind having a permanent resident that's a living person. It may seem selfish, but I hate being alone, so I'd like to have someone else there. You and Lelyanna are the only people I really know here, even if it has only been a very short time."

"Shush." Natsumi placed a finger over the man's lips with a soft laugh. "I'll sort it out. I understand the loneliness part, like I said. My rental contract is about up anyway, so it's perfect timing."

"Alright. There's a fully furnished room waiting for you when you're ready to move in." Natsu smiled slightly against her finger and came to a stop at the last floor the elevator reached. Since the shafted had each set of doors labelled, he knew he was at the right underground level. Once he had pulled the doors open, he stepped out onto a polished concrete floor and was once again met with the smell of decaying bodies. "Seems like they were trapped down here."

"How do you know?" Natsumi asked as she climbed down from the man's back and created a ball of flame in her hand to shine some light around them.

"We're too deep for the radiation to reach. But if their path to the surface was blocked, then they would've been unable to leave or even get food down here. So, either they resort to cannibalism or they die, and I don't sense any living here." Natsu looked around as he headed deeper into the facility. He spotted a dead security guard near the entrance to the labs and knelt down in front of the man who was lying in a pool of flaking dried blood. "Gunshot wound; self-inflicted."

"He killed himself?" The dragon princess jogged over to the man and brought her flame lower to cast more light on the body.

"Probably decided to go out on his own terms instead die of hunger and thirst." Natsu slowly lowered his head to look under the body's jaw. "Yeah, thought so. Single shot to the jaw, aimed up through the head." He rose to his feet and took his pistol out from behind his back, activating the flashlight so they had a safe form of illumination. "Snuff your fire. I don't what's down here and I don't want to risk a potential explosion."

"Okay." Natsumi whispered and did as the man ordered. She pressed up against his left side, walking with him as her eyes followed wherever he pointed his pistol's cone of light. "More dead bodies…"

"Each one bit the bullet." The pair of arms tightened around his left arm, drawing his attention down to her soft breasts as it sank between them, he lifted his gaze to her eyes and noticed they were wide with horror. "Not used to seeing the dead?"

"Not like this… I'm used to seeing people be killed by monsters or other people… not like this." Her eyes slowly drifted to the suppressed handgun in Natsu's hand then up to his face. "Did you ever consider…?"

"Taking my own life?" Natsu looked into the woman's unsettled eyes but he was only given a loaded silence in reply. "I've entertained the thought a few times but never acted on it, not even in the slightest. Lucy would kick my arse if I did, and I'd leave behind the people I've made connections with here. On top of that, I'd never throw away the life that Zeref gave me."

"If you need someone to talk to… Well, I'll move in as quick as I can." Natsumi murmured and rested her cheek against the man's shoulder.

"I can only talk for so long before I feel the need to actually do something to fix it. That's why I'm renovating my manor, why I'm getting all the projects going, why I'm training Lelyanna or always doing something to my weapons. It's so that I have something I can do that'll help me actively work through things."

"Hm, I guess that's a difference between us."

A presence slipped into Natsu's mind and he moved his gaze away from the dead body as he knew it might upset the woman. 'Lelyanna, do you need help?'

'No, I just wanted to tell you that I've been through this entire building and am heading back to your manor. There were a few places that I couldn't go to due to the counter starting to tick faster and faster, so I made sure to avoid those areas and find another way around. But I've grabbed a bunch of interesting things.'

'Alright. We're in the lab now, just need to find what I came over here for then we'll be heading back too.'

'I'll show you what I grabbed when you come back. See you soon!'

Lelyanna's consciousness pulled from his mind and Natsu glanced around the lab once again. He noticed some kind of pod hooked into a terminal at the end of the room and quickly hurried over to it. Stencilled on the metal half-cylinder cover was PM-B/I-01, the unit's designation. While Natsu fiddled with the terminal, Natsumi slowly walked around the unusual device and gasped when the shield retracted to reveal a naked woman who was as tall as her.

"What is this? What does it mean?"

"Pilot Model, configuration Battler slash Infiltrator, unit zero one." Natsu read out the information from the terminal. He brought the holographic window over to the body and started checking the specifications. "Seems to be the final prototype and initial production unit of a biosynthetic android designed for military activities."

"She looks real… Like a real woman. I can see the pores in her skin, what the hell!"

"Hm, she seemed to be designed with the same premise as myself. Well, for what I was chemically modified to be. A super soldier."

"Is there any way we can bring it to life?" Natsumi asked quietly. She hesitantly poked at the android's body and blushed faintly when it felt like a completely normal woman, no matter where she prodded. She grasped her own chest then grabbed the android's breasts to compare them. "She feels like she's the exact same size as me, should we dress her?"

"Huh…" Natsu narrowed his eyes at the readings he was receiving from the android. "It's fully operational, but essentially braindead. Needs to have a neural map uploaded into its mind to actually come to life. Right now, it's no different than a fully realistic sex doll. This pod is a maintenance dock, enhancing the self-repair feature of the android among other things."

"Wait, how is it still functioning?"

"It has two ways of taking in the power needed to operate. The first is the natural way where she eats and drinks, the second is a set of specially crafted organs that act as organic batteries capable of wireless charging with this station. According to the specs, it is capable of linking to a combat network to share information... So, it can operate independently or in groups with seamless communication… Hm, I can work with this." Natsu nodded slowly as he looked down at pale body of the ashen-haired android then up to the pinkette standing on the opposite side of the pod. He closed the shield and dismissed the holographic screen. "I'm going to look for some equipment that I can use to convert Henrietta's existing mental structure to a digital format then modify it to be far more sophisticated and compatible with this body. After that, we can go home."

"Alright, I'll wait here by the pod."

That's another rewrite completed. This once came to an increase of approximately 500 words with changes being made throughout the chapter.

The weather phenomenon is on Thundersnow, something I haven't experienced myself but I came across during my research for this chapter. It was basically a hail storm crossed with thundersnow with radioactive materials mixed in due to picking it up from the surrounding radioactive environments. I figured it fit with the apocalyptic nature of Natsu's home universe.

Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this chapter. See you all next time.