The Fallen Dragon

by Draconian Enigma

Natsu loses his world and gets taken to an alternate version where he must recover and build new bonds with this world's Fairy Tail over time. Natsu is stronger, darker, smarter, but can still be a little bit of a goofball. Contains gore, violence, swearing and other mature themes so read at your own discretion. AU to AU. If these themes upset you, just don't read. Info in Profile.

22. Unexpected Visitors (R)

Just a small reminder of Natsu's weapons, including the additions you'll see soon.

- The M7 is based on the Kel-tec RDB Defender but with RFB barrels and has two variants, an 18-inch (barrel) carbine and a 24-inch (barrel) full-length rifle.
- The M5 is also based on the Kel-tec RDB Defender and has a 16-inch barrel. It fires subsonic 8.6x44mm instead of supersonic 8.6x66mm, so it's an intermediate calibre rifle which are generally called Assault Rifles due to their role in assaulting positions. (This was originally coined with the STG-44 or Sturmgewehr 44, which translates to Assault Rifle 44.)
- The M18 is based on the Radikal Arms NK-1 but chambered in 10-gauge instead of 12-gauge.

That's all, I hope you enjoy the chapter, starting with some dumb fun.

---

4th January – 11:00 AM

"Memories broken; The truth goes unspoken; I've even forgotten my Name!" Natsu sung loudly. He stood in his basement workshop and was up to his knees in gun parts. "I don't know the season; Or what is the reason; I'm standing here holding my blade!"

Music was blaring from a nearby sound system while Lelyanna and Henrietta watched on. The priestess had a bewildered look on her face but the woman next to her remained as unfazed as ever by the rhythmic rocking of the man's head.

"A desolate place; Without any trace; It's only the cold wind I feel." The pinkette switched out the barrel of Henrietta's M7 Battle Rifle from the 18-inch Carbine variant to the full-length 24-inch Rifleman variant. "It's me that I spite as I stand up and fight; The only thing I know for real…" The man took a deep breath and tilted his head up. "There Will Be BLOOD SHED!"

Lelyanna jumped at the man's shout and held her hand over her racing heart. She wasn't used to such intense music but it was certainly invigorating. It made her wonder what else his world had to offer in terms of music, was it all like this or was there a variety of different genres.

"The man in the mirror nods his head; The only one left; Will ride upon the dragon's back; Because the mountains don't give back what they take…" Natsu reassembled the battle rifle and checked the headspace. Thankfully, it was spot on, and he took it to the android.

"Thank you, Master." Henrietta graciously accepted her newly modified rifle with a deep bow and a smile. She chambered a round and slotted the magazine into the weapon, then slung it over her shoulder.

Natsu smiled at the woman and returned to his workbench. "Oh No, There Will Be BLOOD SHED! It's the only thing I've ever known!" While the song broke into an intense riff, he shifted a cluster of parts to the centre of the bench.

These were one of the two weapons he was making for Lelyanna. She had asked him to make an M18 shotgun for her, but he had also decided to make good on something he told her that he would do back before they ventured into the ruins of his home world. The parts in front of him were for an M5 Assault Rifle, which was a slightly smaller version than the carbine variant of the M7 Battle Rifle that fired the 8.6x44mm intermediate cartridge. Like the M7, the M5 ejected the casings downwards which dropped them down through the stock – right behind the magazine.

"Losing my identity; Wondering, 'Have I gone insane?'" Natsu quickly assembled the rifle with well-practised hands. This wasn't one of the SLRs that he made, this was a rifle that he was intimately familiar with and so there was no hesitation in his movements. "To find the truth in front of me I must climb this mountain range; Looking downward from this deadly height and never realising why I fight!"

As the music wound down and came to an end, Lelyanna stepped forward and rested her hands on the man's broad back. She leaned against him and looked around his right shoulder as she watched his hands move with keen interest. "The songs of your world are really something else."

"There is a lot of variety to them." Natsu looked back at the woman and gave her a small but happy smile. "It's just a little creature comfort, but it definitely makes me feel better."

"I'm glad." The priestess smiled warmly, her pale turquoise eyes sparkling with a faint divinity. "Do we even have ammo for this rifle? I thought we only had supplies for the weapons you had on hand?"

"I had intended on giving you your own rifle eventually but was lost on what exactly to get. I came across this parts kit on the Brief Respite and figured I should grab it and two dozen magazines for it anyway. I decided that I'd just ask Ceres to grab a few pallets of ammo from that plant we visited before heading to Magnolia later. The MP10 was to act as a personal defence weapon, and should you ask for more weapons later down the line, it was going to be this M5."

"So, since I did ask for more weapons, you're giving me that shotgun I asked for and this rifle?"

"Pretty much, yeah." Once he had the rifle fully assembled, he checked the headspace and then began fitting some accessories to it. First was the suppressor at the end of the barrel, then an angled foregrip to the underside, a holographic diffraction sight with a 3x magnifier that sat in line with it but could be flipped out of the way, and finally he attached a laser-light module in front of the holo-sight but sat low enough to be out of the way of the optic. "Try and get familiar with this rifle while I put together the shotgun. The magazines are on that cart behind me if you want to run through the full operations process."

"Master, do we have any pouches for her to attach to her belt? We'll need two sets, one for the shotgun shells and one more for the intermediate calibre ammunition."

"I have spares to give her." Natsu replied to the android as he felt the woman on his back move away. He glanced over his shoulder and saw her inspecting the magazines. "What I'll get you to do is to put some white and black electrical tape around some of the magazines. The reason for that is so you can quickly distinguish between your tungsten-carbide cored Armour Penetrating ammo and your regular Full Metal Jackets in the heat of battle by just simply looking at the tape around the base of the magazines."

"I think I've seen that on the magazines for your rifles; colour-coded magazines." Lelyanna lifted her eyes from the metal magazine she held in her hand. "I thought there was a reason for it."

"Henrietta, do you mind?" Natsu glanced at the ashen-haired maid and gestured for her to show the priestess with a jerk of his head.

Henrietta stepped forward and removed a pair of magazines from the pouches attached to her belt; one was plain black while the other had a strip of black tape laid over two strips of white so it contrasted against the magazine. "Take a look at the tips of the bullets. Do you see how the taped magazine contains black-tipped bullets? Those are AP munitions and have tungsten-carbide penetrators under their copper jackets."

"It's even more necessary with the shotgun shells since the only way you can tell the difference quickly is by looking down the neck of the shell itself. I generally use green tape on the magazines to show slugs, and red tape for the Dragon's Breath buckshot that I've laced with my own blend of incendiary compounds; a mixture of my own cursed flames and a blend of powdered magnesium and white phosphorous which itself is coated in an inert agent to stop spontaneous ignition but which also burns readily upon firing."

"Everyone is guilty of war crimes, but it's only the side that loses that gets punished. Mm, well, usually. People bitch and whine when things aren't considered humane by their standards, but those same people commit atrocities without batting an eye, so it's free game in my opinion." Natsu placed the completed M18 Shotgun down next to the new M5 Assault Rifle and turned to the women. "What I'll do, Anna, is set up the pouches so you have regular ammo on the left side and special purpose ammo on the right. So, for the rifle; six magazines of FMJ on the left, six AP on the right. And for the shotgun; six regular buckshot on the left, four slugs and two Dragon's Breath on the right."

"It's how I have mine set up too." Henrietta added, nodding in agreement with the man as she replaced the magazines into their respective pouches.

"Since I've already got a tonne of magazines for the M18 already set up and loaded, you can have some from my Requip storage." Natsu joined the two ladies at the cart and placed a stack of magazines down, enough for two full load-outs, along with a few rolls of coloured electrical tape. "I'm done with your weapons, so grab them from the bench and Henrietta can take you into the storage and help you sort out the ammo for the rifle. Make sure it's 8.6x44mm and not 8.6x66mm."

"Thank you!" Lelyanna replied cheerfully. She stepped closer to the man and bounced up onto her toes as she grasped the man's clothing and pulled him down into a soft kiss. She fell back flat on her feet and smiled warmly before collecting up her new gear and following the head maid out of the room.

Now that he was alone in the room, Natsu turned the volume of his music up higher and got to work building out another M7 Battle Rifle in its Carbine configuration. He sang along with the songs while he assembled the weapon and performed all the necessary checks to ensure it would function properly. Once satisfied, he loaded a magazine of FMJ ammunition into the firearm and sent it away into storage.

---

6th January – 03:30 PM

As usual, the guild hall was as noisy and rowdy as ever. There was the odd scuffle but an all-out brawl hadn't yet started, or at the very least it hadn't since Natsu had been there. He stood by the bulletin board that had numerous job listings magically projected across the brass surface.

"Would you like a hand, Natsu?" Mira asked lightly as she approached the pinkette. She glanced at Nab who was – like usual – standing a little further down the job board, reading the jobs but never choosing one. She let out a sigh, sounding faintly annoyed, but she pushed it from her mind as she came to a stop beside the former soldier.

"I'm looking for an elimination job for my team, Natsumi's group wants to join in too so we've got plenty of manpower."

"I see." Natsu reached out and tapped one of the holographic job listings and a window opened in front of him that contained more detailed information about the specific job. "What's a Titan-Ameise?"

"An Ameise is a monster ant. They're much larger than regular ants and are generally the size of an adult male Great Dane. The Titan-Ameise are named as such because they are even larger, at the size of a large man; think Elfman on his hands and knees." Mira looked around to find her brother then pointed him out on the other side of the hall, sat beside Evergreen. "And this is only the minor caste, the major caste are even larger; Queens, for example. And there are ants that have different subtypes of majors which you'll need to be on the lookout for."

"Hm. Troublesome." Natsu murmured. He looked down at the information panel and tapped on the image provided. It showed what looked to be a shallow mining pit with a shaft in the centre that led into the mines below. It was hard to tell the shaft's diameter from the picture, but going by the size of the nearby machinery, it looked to be between four and six metres wide, though it could be larger in person. A creature could be seen crawling from the mouth of the shaft and looked like an ant with large, triangular mandibles. "I think I might know what kind of ant those are… I knew a girl who kept ants and she had a nest of ants that looked similar to this one. I think she said they were Marauder ants."

"This job is at the McAlpin Mine, which is an iron mine that's run by the Deep Rock mining company. It's about eighty kilometres away from Magnolia, in other words, you'll probably want to take one of the trucks over there."

"How do I accept this? The system you have is different to the one over at the Association…" Natsu asked after skimming his eyes down the information window but he didn't find any clue to the actual process. While he was used to holographic systems, the systems from this world weren't of the standardised system from his world.

"Tap the top left to open a menu and select 'accept' then either choose 'group' or 'solo' and pick either Hellhound or yourself." As she explained the steps, Mira followed them herself and selected Natsu's team. "There you go, you just have to accept it as I can't do it for you." Mira smiled at the man as she watched him accept the job with his authority as Hellhound's leader. "I'm going to print off the job request. Oh, and I'll attach Team Natsumi to the job too since you mentioned that they wanted to tag along."

"Thanks for the help." Natsu gave the woman a quick wave as he turned and headed towards a pair of the tables down on the sunken floor where both his and Natsumi's teams sat waiting. "I grabbed an extermination mission about eighty k's out from Magnolia. Apparently, they've got an ant problem."

"Sounds like Mira is dealing with it." Natsumi raised her legs up and then swung them down, vaulting off her seat and deftly landing on her feet. "Titan-Ameise huh? Don't let their size fool you, Natsu, they are incredibly quick, strong too. You'll want to be on your toes."

"We're all packed and ready to head out." Lucy informed the man. She gracefully rose to her feet and shouldered the bag that was sitting next to her on the bench.

"Here you go!" Mira cheerfully hurried to the group and held out the freshly printed job sheet. "Both teams are listed, and I've already organised transport. Your driver is Alice, she'll be over once she's sorted out her truck."

"I'll take that." Natsumi gently snatched the paper from the barmaid's grasp and skimmed through the contents before handing it off to Erza. "Looks fairly straightforward. Deep Rock is a dwarven mining company, so I'm guessing we'll be dealing with dwarves."

"Are we talking midgets or-?" Natsu glanced at his counterpart with a raised eyebrow.

"Nah, actual dwarves. Most of them are a little bit shorter than Lelyanna and Wendy but also very stout and love all things to do with mines and metals. Alcohol too." Natsumi replied, her eyes darting to the two shortest members of their combined group when she mentioned them. "I suppose you could call them midgets in comparison to other races, but their race is just short in general."

"Oh, here comes Alice now." Mira clapped her hands together and smiled towards the front of the hall. She waved at an approaching woman who looked human, save for the black cat ears and tail that swished with her movements. She also had distinct yellow eyes with the elongated slit-like pupils of a cat. "Hellhound, this is Alice Rivera. She's a member of one of the beastman races. Alice, these are the newest members of the guild; Natsu, Lelyanna, and Henrietta."

"It's a pleasure to meet you." Alice held out her hand as she came to a stop in front of the group. She grinned up at the salmon-haired man which revealed her feline fangs.

"You'll be taking us to the job?" Natsu asked curiously. He took her hand while running an appraising eye down the woman's body, she had a slender lithe figure and looked pretty agile on her feet even though she was wearing thick, woollen clothing.

"That's right!" The cat-woman cheered. She had a smooth but bubbly voice, it had a playful bounciness that had an endearing quality about it, like an energetic young cat. "Mira filled me in already and the truck is waiting out the front. I'm just waiting on you lot."

"We're all set here." Erza replied as she, Wendy, and Grace joined the rest of the combined team on their feet.

"Right." Natsu glanced over his shoulder and released the woman from the handshake. "Let's load up."

"Follow me then." Alice turned on the balls of her feet and made her way out of the guild hall. She hurried over to a transport truck that was parked in one of the guild's parking bays and climbed up into the cab. "Brr…" The woman fished a pair of woollen mitts from the glove compartment and slipped them over her hands, hoping that they'd warm quickly. She leaned out the window and pointed a finger to the canvas-covered truck bed. "It's not very warm, but with two walking space heaters back there, you should be alright."

Natsu lowered the tailgate and climbed aboard with Henrietta mirroring him. They turned and held out their hands, helping the members of both teams into the back of the truck. "We're all in." He called out to their driver and the air filled with faint magical vibrations. The truck gave a slight lurch before pulling out from the bay.

---

06:18 PM

The cold, dark night of winter had fallen by the time the truck pulled up to the front gate of the mine. A short but bulky man stepped out from a gatehouse and raised a lit lantern so its light illuminated the right side of the truck cabin through the open driver's window. "State yeh business."

"I've got Jaegers from Fairy Tail in the back." Alice leaned out the window and looked down at the dwarven man. She jutted a thumb out to the back of her truck and grinned. "Nice beard you've got there."

"Heh." The man grinned and ran a thick hand down his long and gold-adorned beard. "Mind if I check the back?"

"Go ahead."

The dwarf walked along the truck with heavy footfalls. He shined a light along the length, checking the undercarriage for any undisclosed stowaways before coming to the back where he met two pairs of eyes, one ominously glowing red and the other a rich onyx-green. "You the Jaegers?"

"I'm Salamander, the leader of Team Natsumi." Natsumi introduced herself before moving aside and revealing the members of her team who were sat alongside the left of the truck but now rose to their feet to be seen.

"And I'm Báleygr, I lead Hellhound." Natsu moved out of the way to reveal his own team to the dwarf. "I'm the one who accepted the job. Salamander and I decided to join forces due to the unknown and potentially high number of hostiles that are in need of extermination."

The dwarf looked from the familiar woman with her warm and kind eyes to the man with his cold and merciless eyes. "Aye, you'll do nicely. Head on down to the mess hall, that's where everyone will be gathered at this time. I'll send word ahead of yah so they'll know you've arrived. Happy hunting." The man walked back along the right side of the truck and gave the cat-woman and nod before heading into the gatehouse.

Natsu rested a boot atop the tailgate as the truck began to move once more. "Odd, I can't get a reading on the monsters. Neither hearing or otherwise."

"Yeah, I'm not hearing anything either. So they're probably fairly deep underground. Plus, these aren't the type of monsters you'd be able to sense the emotions of." Natsumi glanced up at her counterpart with a playful grin. "A few words of wisdom, you're not going to be able to pick up on every single monster out there. Some beastly animals fall into this, these Titan-Ameise for example. All we can do is allow our instincts to guide us, especially when we enter their territory."

"Fair." Natsu turned to the woman and rested his back against the canvas wall. "Sounds similar to hunting robots. Automatons like Henrietta's other bodies."

"I understand, I guess. You can't sense those clockwork bodies…," Natsumi turned to the ashen-haired maid who was doing one last check on her gear. "Unlike that body. Very marvellous, and bloody crazy, I don't know how the hell that you people came up with those things."

"I could tell you, but I don't really understand exactly either." Natsu sighed and tapped his chest, right over his sternum. "Beyond the information on the knowledge crystal and my own observations, I couldn't really tell you much about her. Mind you, I'm just a soldier. I dole out death not creation."

"Procreation, on the other hand-" Natsumi joked without thinking but she bit her tongue when her words hit her. "Sorry, that's not exactly something I should joke about."

Natsu shook his head and waved off her apology. "Don't worry about it. My past is just that, nothing can change what had happened and those I've lost. All I can do is move on with my life. Indulging in the fairer sex is part of that, though it's less procreation and more recreation."

"Keep talking like that and you'll make a woman blush." The pink-haired woman smirked and pointed to herself. "Not this one, but one a fair bit more… innocent. Though less so in recent times."

Both Dragneels turned in unison to look at the priestess in their midst whose skin had gone from porcelain to rosy and was avoiding their gaze while her legs jittered due to the phantom warmth of a man's coarse hands and his scratchy stubble. But before any further words could be shared, either in jest or embarrassment, the truck came to a stop and the magic vibrations quickly ceased.

"Time to move." Natsu announced. He stepped out of the truck and helped the women to the ground as Alice climbed down from the cab.

"I'll come in with you." The cat-woman informed the Jaegers while locking up the truck. "I'd rather get out of this cold before I catch one."

"That's fine." Lucy smiled at Alice and waved for her to follow after them. "It might be a little noisy but that's no different from the guild."

"Yeah, I'm used to that kind of environment." Alice returned the blonde's smile with a fanged grin before turning her gaze up to the plumes of smoke flowing from the chimney. "I might curl up in front of the fire that they have going while I wait for your return."

"I don't know what all of you are bitching about, it's not even cold." Grace shrugged her shoulders and started to remove her coat but she was stopped by a glare from Erza.

"Curb your habit while we're on a job."

"Yes, Ma'am…" Grace muttered, quickly rebuttoning her coat. "Blame Ur, not me."

"I've heard that one before." Natsu remarked, earning a cackle from Natsumi. pushed open the door to the mess hall and was met with a barrage of shouts and hollers. His eyes roamed across the crowded tables which housed many short but stout men and women. The chime of a bell positioned above the door drew the attention of a small collection of men who were sitting at a bar with tankards in hand.

"Ah, you must be the Jaegers from Fairy Tail." A wizened dwarf called out to the group of tall people through the raucous noise of the miners. He stroked his great orange and white beard and a grin appeared from beneath his bushy moustache. "Right on time, Carl said yeh arrived and were on the way down."

"Before we get down to business, I have to ask; are there any that are in need of medical attention?" Natsu came to a stop in front of the dwarf and glanced around the hall. Everyone had looked at them at least once or twice but they carried on with their eating, drinking, and chatting. "We've got two capable healers that can help while we learn the situation."

"Yeh, we do. Some didn't make it out of the tunnels, most likely turned into grub for the bugs by now." The man turned to the woman next to him. "Molly, go and gather the poor sods that made it out." As the dwarven woman left the bar and began moving between tables, the man turned back to the group of Jaegers. "Yeh'll have to forgive me, I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Gavin Galadrite, the foreman for the McAlpin mining complex."

"Báleygr; leader of Hellhound." Natsu replied. He took the man's thick hand and shook it before turning to the two women on his right. "The silver-haired woman is Anna, she's the healer for my team. And the woman next to her, with long ashen hair, is Henrietta. She's the sharpshooter. I'm sure you're already familiar with Natsumi's team?" He turned to face the man and pointed to his counterpart with his chin.

"Regardless, it's polite to introduce ourselves." Natsumi stepped forward and shook Gavin's hand when he offered her a handshake. "Natsumi, also known as Salamander. With me are Erza, Wendy, Lucy, and Grace." She listed off quickly while pointing to each woman with her left hand. "We're acting as support on Natsu's – sorry – Báleygr's job. He prefers to use his professional name on jobs."

"It matters less now that I'm affiliated with Fairy Tail." Natsu explained. "Due to Natsumi and I having similar names and abilities, we could've easily been confused at a glance during the heat of battle. Though, after seeing her in action, our fighting styles are different. She's got a more acrobatic style of fighting where I go for raw speed and power. I also prefer firearms over swords, I'm just better with them."

"Gav." The woman called Molly cut into the conversation, drawing the group's attention to her. She had gathered sixteen men and women, all of who had bandages or slings on their bodies.

"Please excuse me." Lelyanna spoke up. She walked over to the nearest wounded dwarf and held a glowing hand on their shoulder, her eyes lighting up with a divine radiance. Her eyes drifted across the fifteen other dwarves then flicked over to Natsu and Gavin. "Yeah, I can help them. I can't replace missing limbs, but I can bring them back to full health."

"Please do, young lass." Gavin nodded and offered the priestess a thankful smile. "Don't worry about limbs, we can give 'em prosthetics that'd work just as well as their original limbs."

"I'll help too." Wendy hurried to the silver-haired woman's side and activated her dragon magic, using it to heal the dwarf next to the one Lelyanna was working on.

"Don't worry, this won't take long." Lelyanna smiled kindly to the wounded men and women. "But let's go find an empty set of tables to make this easier on everyone."

"Right, follow me." Molly waved for the two women to follow her and she led the group away from the rest of the Jaegers.

"While yeh lasses are patching them up, we'll go over the situation." Gavin slid off his stool and gathered up the bag that sat against it. He hurried off to a nearby empty table, his right foot letting out a metallic clunk every time it hit the wooden floor. He took a seat at the table and placed a crystal disk on the tabletop. With a tap, it projected the network of tunnels under their feet. "We were expanding the tunnels down on the lowest level, level fifteen, and were heading towards an ore vein we detected. But the driller hit a snag and we decided to come at it from another angle."

Natsu leaned in and followed the dwarf's thick finger as the man traced the path they had taken. The tunnel network was expansive and it could be very easy to get lost in it without any form of a map. "And I'm guessing that it was on this alternate path, that you mined into the nest?"

"Aye." Gavin nodded and looked up at the red-eyed man. "We've locked down the bulkhead between levels fourteen and fifteen and thankfully it seems that they haven't dug into the other levels. You'll have to open up the door from down there though."

"That's fine."

"Do you have any copies of this map?" Natsumi asked curiously. "It'll be handy for navigating that maze."

"Yes. Take this one, I prepared it specifically for the Jaegers who'd take on the request."

"Thank you." Natsumi gave the man a quick nod and a warm smile.

"Now, I've got some unfortunate news; the power in level fifteen has been cut. We've got no return signal coming back from there. So yah all going to be the dark down there. You do have fresh air being pumped down there, so don't worry about suffocating."

"I've got lights mounted to the rifles that my team uses," Natsu informed the man. He sent away the two swords on his back and removed his coat as it was going to get in the way of his planned loadout. As he rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, he turned his attention from the map and to the man. "You mentioned that some didn't make it out; do the miners carry any identification with them, dog tags for example?" To clarify what he meant, Natsu lifted his own dog tags out from his shirt and held them up. But he didn't give the dwarf much time to read them because he stuffed them away moments later. "I can collect any that I find down there."

"Aye, we have something like that." Gavin pushed back his left sleeve and revealed a metal bracelet that sat nearly flush against his wrist, much like a watch's bracelet. It had the man's name and blood type engraved into it. "Don't go outta ya way to find them, though. Once it's safe, we can scour the tunnels for the bracelets ourselves."

"Right, though if I do find some during the hunt, I'll make sure to grab them and bring them back."

"The bulkhead you mentioned, how do we open it?" Lucy chipped in. She moved around Natsu and leaned in, resting her hands against the table as she took a closer look at the map. "You said it had to be done down there, but what should we keep an eye out for?"

"The bulkhead is a large metal plug, so to speak. It splits in two and lifts up before swinging out of the way. Near the bulkhead will be a control booth that would be very hard to miss. If the bulkhead won't open, then you'll need to use the manual override and crank it open."

"We'll keep an eye out for it." Natsu brought out a black H-harness chest rig and buckled it around his torso. It was a recce rig from before he had been issued his full ballistic armour, and he had stripped it down since coming to the new world. In its current form, it provided him with no additional armour, however the added physical carry capacity was extremely useful as it offered him quick access to magazines for his M7, various types of hand grenades, illumination devices, and many other tools he might need out in the field in this new world. As an added bonus, it had built-in mag-lock hardpoints in the back panel that allowed him to place his firearms on his back without the use of a sling. He planned on building something similar that would fit in with this world, he would need it for the SPSR-14.5 as the weapon needed the mounts due to its size.

This caught the eye of Lucy and she shifted her attention away from the map and to Natsu's gear. She stepped closer and began to fiddle with his pouches, checking the contents like a curious cat. "Wow, this looks handy."

Natsu firmly grasped the woman's delicate wrist as her hand slipped into the pouch that held a collection of grenades. "Careful, those aren't toys." He pulled the woman's hand from the pouch and brought out his rifle, placing it onto his back where a subtle clack informed him that it became latched to his rig. He checked his watch and let out a small grunt. "Do you mind if we continue this conversation over a meal? I'm happy to pay for the meals for my people, I'd just prefer that we head down there without empty stomachs as it'll cause unnecessary discomfort and distraction which could prove lethal in combat."

"Aye, that's all fine." Gavin turned in his seat and pointed to the bar he had been sitting at earlier. "Just speak with Frannie behind the bar and she'll get yah all sorted. Menu is above the bar. Tonight's special is a loaded burger with hot chips and gravy. But the meals are sized for dwarfs so they might be just a little on the large size for the wee lasses who are tending to the wounded."

"If need be, they can share one between them or we can package it in sealed containers and store it with Requip." Natsu suggested to the women around him, getting a collective murmur of assent in return. "You girls go get sorted first."

"I'll bring you some food, Master." Henrietta moved away from the table but paused. "Since we'll be going into combat, would you like for me to get you two of the meals?"

"Yeah, I'll most likely need it. Especially if I have to maintain a high level of physical and mental activity for an extended period." Natsu glanced over his shoulder at the ashen-haired woman. His eyes followed her to the bar where he returned his attention to the holographic map. "Gavin, do you have anything on these Titan-Ameise. Size, type, any images you have would be helpful."

"We don't have much but we got some photographs of the ones that tried to come up from the fifteenth level before we locked it down." The dwarf rummaged through his bag and removed a few photographs which he placed down on the tabletop. "These were taken by the scouts who were part of the teams we sent down to clear the bulkhead and seal off that floor."

Natsu collected the photos and looked closely at them. They were definitely oversized marauder ants, which thankfully meant that the nest that was breached would be their only one. "Well, I've got good news and bad news; the good is that this is their only nest location. But the bad is that it will most likely have a large concentration of bugs. We've just got to find the queen's chambers and kill her off and the rest will die off in time. That being said, the normal small version of these ants can have multiple queens in the one colony, so hopefully they are all contained within the one chamber."

"You know what they are?"

"They're called Carebara Diversa, also known as Marauder ants. They're a type of army ant, though, unlike most army ants, these prefer having a single nest instead of many forward nests. It's probably best that we eradicate the entire nest as the workers are known for merging into another colony if their own queen dies."

"That's a tough slog through pitch-black tunnels. And you humans can't see in the dark as well as us dwarves can."

"Eh, I can see pretty well in the dark, plus as I mentioned before; the weapons that my team uses have torches." Natsu drew his pistol but kept it aim low. A flick of his finger switched on the flashlight and it illuminated the tabletop with a stark white light.

"So bright yet so compact. Not only do yeh firearms look advanced, but yeh equipment too." Gavin stroked his immaculate beard and tried to take a closer look at the handgun but the light was shut off and the pistol was stuffed back into the holster it had come from. He shifted his gaze away from the weapon and lifted the bag onto the table as Henrietta returned with three plates; two balanced on her left arm and one held in the other. "Well, I'll let you Jaegers eat in peace. I'll leave the bag here since it contains everything I could gather regarding our situation. I hope you find it useful."

"Thanks again for giving us the chance to eat before heading down into the depths." Natsumi spoke up, grinning widely as she appeared next to the dwarf with two plates of food in her hands. "We'll run through what we know while we eat then we'll begin."

"Aye, happy hunting."

---

09:56 PM

The metal gondola shook and shuttered as it slowly descended the primary mining shaft by corkscrewing down the shaft walls. The group of Jaegers were nestled safely within its protective cage, which was thankfully large enough to carry mining equipment and so gave them more than enough room to move about without bumping shoulders or knocking elbows.

"This is deeper than I was expecting…" Lelyanna said, speaking more to herself but still loud enough to be heard by the group over the clunking of the tracks they were riding upon.

"Dwarves love their subterranean expeditions. It only really makes sense that they've got a massive mining complex deep into the earth, and it'll probably only get deeper and deeper." Erza replied. Her gaze shifted from the rock walls and to the priestess who was fiddling with her rifle. "You didn't get around much before meeting Natsu, did you?"

"No." Lelyanna admitted as she met the woman's gaze and shook her head. "I mostly stayed within my assigned territory unless I was requested by another member of the church to tend to one of their people. In which I would travel out to their town or city and help them. As you said, I didn't really start venturing further until Natsu came into my life."

"Sounds like life is more exciting with him around." Natsumi chuckled and she flashed a grin at the woman.

"I won't lie, it definitely is more interesting but it's also a more dangerous lifestyle." Lelyanna glanced at Natsu who stood nearby with his eyes closed. She didn't know what was going through his mind, whether he was lost in some memory of his previous life or just getting settled into a mindset suitable for combat. "It's also kind of frightening too."

"Yeah, fighting monsters eats away at your nerves, especially if the battle has become drawn out." Erza nodded slowly. "Fatigue and the life-or-death struggle even get to me."

"I wasn't exactly talking about them." Lelyanna replied softly, she would've lowered her voice but even hushed words would be heard by the man she was talking about. "I didn't tell anyone at the time, but during the night between the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth, I was attacked by a man who had been harassing me for a few years now. He had brought nearly fifty men with him to try and kidnap me and break me. I had warned him and even tried intimidating him by shooting his knees out the previous time I had met him but he still came after me."

"Ah, that's why you smelt of blood and death." Natsumi murmured softly. She glanced briefly at her counterpart then turned her attention back to the small and slender woman. "So, you were meaning him?"

"You all excel at killing monsters, as that is your job. But Natsu… he's a weapon of war, in his own words. He excels at killing humans, and seeing him doing what he does best from a front-row seat… it was terrifying. In the dead of night with very little light thanks to the thick clouds laden with snow, with his footsteps making no sound at all while me moved faster than anyone could track with their eyes… I saw a group of men go from whole to sliced in two, faster than I can blink. I saw a car have one side completely caved in and sent skidding across the ground, only to hit a cursed landmine and well… I'm sure you can envision what happened."

"Natsu told me once that he has a spell that he had designed to take all of his kinetic energy and dump it into whatever he punched…" Lucy quietly added. She rubbed her arms and glanced at the man, she understood the priestess' fear but she drove her own apprehension away and her soft voice hardened alongside her resolve. "He said it can turn them into 'pink mist'. But I don't think there's anything to be afraid of, he wouldn't turn those attacks onto us."

"I agree." Natsumi instantly backed up her best friend. "There may be a lot that's different between him and I, but one thing I'm certain of is that we share a very similar moral compass. Of course, his would be skewed a little since he spent years at war and had to suffer through so much, but I'm confident that we'd come to similar conclusions."

"Would you slaughter everyone who had a hand in Happy's murder?" Lucy asked curiously, crossing her arms as she turned to her friend.

"In a heartbeat. I'd kill them all." Natsumi growled, baring her fangs in a vicious snarl. "And if they made him suffer before he died, then I would do the same to them."

"Heh." Natsu grunted softly and his lips tugged up into a small smile as he felt a little vindicated by her words. He let out a short breath and opened his eyes as they came to a stop. "Kill the chatter. Let's get this door open and get to work." He slid open the door and stepped out onto the wooden elevated platform. Level fourteen still had power running to it, so it was well lit up and he could see a control room on the other side of the hole. "Natsumi, fly over to that building across the way, I think it might be what we're after."

"Alright, I'll go check." Fire burst from the pinkette's back as she formed her wings and took flight.

As the woman flew across the chasm, Natsu stepped up to the wooden railing of the platform and looked down at the expansive slab of metal that formed the bulkhead to the next level. He was completely off the mark with his guess for the size of the main shaft as what had looked like only a handful of metres turned out to be ten times the size in person. The two-piece hatch below them was a vast fifty-metre hunk of metal with a wavy seam down the middle that split the halves in a yin-yang symbol.

"Your orders?" Henrietta asked as she appeared to the man's left and lowered her gaze to the metallic plug. She had her rifle held low across her body with the muzzle of the suppressed weapon pointed just a little off to her left.

"We're holding position for now until Natsumi reports back. If we need to search further for the control room, then we'll head down and fan out."

"Understood."

Natsu glanced at the ashen-haired woman and down to her chest rig. "Would you be able to fight while carrying an ammo bag on your back so you have some more spare ammo in case you burn through your readily available magazines?"

"I intend on remaining at range and not entering arm's reach. So, the bag won't slow me down at all, and the additional ammo reserve would be helpful since I won't have to rely on you if I run out."

"Alright." Natsu took a step back as a backpack filled his hands and he knelt down. He filled the pouches within the bag with both FMJ and AP magazines then put a few types of grenades in just in case the android needed to use them, finally he put in extra pistol magazines and zipped up the bag. He rose to his feet and stepped behind the woman, holding it up so she can slip her arms through it and then he adjusted the straps to suit her body. "How does that feel?"

"One moment," Henrietta stepped away from the man and walked a few laps of the platform. Once she returned, she gave the man a quick nod. "It feels secure and balanced, and it isn't too tight."

"Good." Natsu replied. When he stepped back up to the rail, a mop of long pink hair appeared in front of him and the woman's green eyes bored into his menacing red eyes. "So?"

Natsumi swung her legs over the rail and sat atop it. She leaned forward and brought her face close to the man's while purposefully making her breasts more pronounced. "Lotta levers over there, but I can't tell what they do since all the labels are written in dwarvish."

"Do we have a way of translating it?"

"I can do it." Lucy came out of the gondola and stepped forward. "I'm not a fluent speaker but I can read it."

"Alright." Natsu turned to the blonde and pointed to Natsumi with his thumb. "You two fly back over there and see if it's what we're after. If it isn't, then shout out and we'll begin searching the area."

"Let's get going, Luce." Natsumi reached out and pulled the blonde into her arms. She gave Lucy's breasts a playful squeeze and Natsu a quick wink before taking flight once more and heading across the gap while she was loudly berated by the blonde.

Natsu watched on as they touched down and entered the far building. Through the windows, he could see Lucy moving through the building and occasionally leaning towards something out of his line of sight, most likely to read the controls. He saw her face light up with elation, it was a beautiful sight that made his heart twinge.

There was a distant kah-thunk and Lucy looked up with a bright smile and waved eagerly as the area was filled with the constant and consistent clunking of gears as the yin-yang door began to rotate up out of the floor then it split in two and swung out of the way. A rail slid out and locked into place on the track they had been riding down and it allowed them to continue on to the level below them. The blonde hurried back to her friend and they shot back across the gap.

"Nice work." Natsu offered the beautiful blonde a small smile and guided both women back to the gondola. He allowed Henrietta to board before him and stepped in after her. He closed the door and pushed the drive lever forward which sent them deeper into the mine. While they were making their descent, he double-checked the route they were going to take on Lacrima he had been given by the dwarf.

Aside from the light coming down from the fourteenth level, the fifteenth level was cloaked in a veil of darkness so thick that even Natsu's augmented eyesight couldn't piece all that far through it. They reached the platform for level fifteen and Natsu led the way once again but this time he exited with his rifle at the ready, with both the visible and IR flashlights active as he could see further into the darkness than the others. Two other sets of flashlights bloomed to life to his left and right as the group made their way down to solid ground and fanned out.

"Before we get too far, we should work out how we're going to go about this." Natsu lowered his rifle and turned so he walked backwards down the tunnel that led to the breach. "I'm confident in my own abilities with firearms and I can assure you that even if you're among the monsters, I will not hit you. Same goes with Henrietta."

"I'm not so confident." Lelyanna smiled weakly. "So, if anyone is among them, then I'll hold fire."

"Like we've said," Natsumi spoke up and glanced between Natsu and the women on his team. "Each of us has the ability to fight at range. For example, a long time ago I fought a Fire God Slayer and consumed his fire. A feat that should've been impossible, but the reason I could do it was because I'm a demon and I was able to assimilate his magic into my own. It allows me to give form to my fire."

To prove her point, fire burst from her curled hand and she gripped a large longbow made of solidified fire. At the same time, Lucy flashed with a brilliant golden light as she donned her Sagittarius Star Dress with the gold and black bow held in her left hand. Erza followed suit and suited up in her Ataraxia Armour, complete with swords that floated just off her back and fanned out like wings. Grace slammed her hands together and the already cold tunnel became even colder as she fired off her magic and created a long bolt-action rifle.

"I'm sorry, I don't really have anything as flashy as them." Wendy softly apologised to the man. Instead, she clasped her hands together as if in prayer and she manifested a pair of angelic feathered wings. The white wings spread out behind her and she rose off the ground gracefully. "I can fire off bolts of highly compressed air and buffet monsters around with gusts of wind, but my usual role is to provide support and healing if anyone needs it."

"I mean, those wings are kinda flashy if you ask me." Natsumi laughed lightly. Embers burst from her body and floated around the tunnel to illuminate the area around them.

"Says the one that has wings made of fire. You're less of a dragon princess and more of a phoenix princess." Natsu took a quick verbal jab at the pinkette before turning his attention to the youngest of the group. "I think they're pretty adorable and it suits you, Wendy."

"Oh, I'm not really a princess, Natsu." Natsumi corrected the man. "I usurped Acnologia's title when I killed him. So technically I'm the dragon queen."

"Yet you're still Igneel's adoptive daughter, and he's the fire dragon king." Lucy reminded her friend, a playful smile tugging at her lips. "And since he still reigns as the king of fire dragons, that makes you a dragon princess."

"Is your Igneel still alive?" Natsu quirked an eyebrow and gave Natsumi a questioning look.

"Yeah. I'm guessing yours wasn't?"

"No. They left our bodies when we fought against our Acnologia. We managed to kill the bastard but our dragons died not long after the battle was over." Natsu turned to face ahead and led the way through the tunnel. "This happened before the war had reached us. I was still a teenager at that point."

"I mean, Igneel did technically die, but he came back to life not long after. All of them did, hey Wendy." Natsumi glanced up at her friend who was floating along near Lelyanna, shielded at the centre of the wedge formation they had formed into.

"Yeah. Apparently, they made a deal with the gods and goddesses; in return for being brought back into the world they would live in peace with the other races and to do this, they were given this floating island that moves about and acts as a safe haven. Last time we were there, it sat a bit further out to sea than Galuna Island." Wendy sped up a little and flew alongside Natsu. "It's amazing. I was speechless when Grandeeney first showed me it. The only way to reach it is to fly to it since it sits three-thousand metres above the sea and since it is home to dragons, it is a magic focal point and messes with the navigation instruments of airships. You also see things that seem out of this world when compared to the mainland."

"When we have some time to ourselves, you and I should fly out there Natsu, I'm sure Igneel would love to meet you." Natsumi came up to the man's other side and gave him a large, warm grin.

"Eh, it's been a while since I've seen the big guy. I might not be his son, but it'll still be nice to see him once more."

"Sounds like a date to me, we'll work out a time later. And I've got to make sure it hasn't moved." Natsumi grinned wider but her eyes flashed red and she came to a stop. She brought up her bow and placed her fingers on the string and as she pulled back, a flaming arrow grew from embers and became fully formed at full draw. "We've got incoming."

"Hostiles Front." Natsu called out as his rifle snapped up into firing position. "Spread out and engage."

A flaming arrow streaked through the tunnel and illuminated the walls. It punched through a man-sized ant followed by another and another before all three exploded. The light provided by the attack revealed a sea of black bugs that were charging towards them. Natsumi's attack was immediately followed by a flash of gold as Lucy let loose her arrow on the swarm, but she hadn't aimed directly at them and instead towards the top of the tunnel.

"Meteor Shower!" At Lucy's command, the arrow broke into dozens of golden fléchettes that rained down upon the Titan-Ameise and pieced through numerous, killing a large swath of them. But the ants just climbed over the dead and continued their charge on the intruders.

"Grace, Erza, go for the legs." Natsu ordered and he held down the trigger on his rifle. The tunnel was filled with the crackle of supersonic bullets as both he and Henrietta targeted the closest ants. "Immobilise them."

""On it.""

Erza swung her arms forward and telepathically commanded her wing-like swords to lash out at the incoming monsters. At the same time, Grace fired off icy bullets at the monsters which snap-froze them on impact.

While Henrietta advanced on the horde, she spared a quick glance at the man to her front-right as a thought popped into her mind. "Master, what's your opinion on anti-personnel ammo? I think polymer-tipped expanding hollow-points would be great right now. Especially the kind that peels open and turns into a razor-sharp star."

"Well, considering I'm a civilian now, nothing is really stopping me from using expanding bullets except for the fact that it's more efficient to use FMJs. Overpenetration is your friend when there's a fuck tonne of hostiles in front of you." Natsu replied and gave a quick nod to the mentioned fuck tonne of hostiles that stood in front of them. He shifted his aim from one monster to the next as his supersonic bullets tore through the man-sized ants. "However, if there are innocents around then I can't exactly use the ammo we currently have on hand."

"Are you two really having a casual conversation about guns at a time like this?" Lelyanna asked. She was a little shocked at their complete calmness, but she knew that this was just another day for Natsu. The priestess pushed forward and moved up to Natsu's left side with her own rifle raised. Since all eight of them were using ranged attacks and not in the danger zone, she was more than willing to take the opportunity to polish her skills.

"This affects you too, Anna," Natsu glanced to his left and gave the young woman a small smile. "Those bullets you're using are the same as ours, it's just a different case length. You'd benefit from using polymer-tips too."

The cones of light from the three rifles swept back and forth across the undulating wave of black. Gunfire crackled and blades swished as bodies pilled higher and higher. To clear a path for them, Wendy sent powerful gusts of wind slicing down the centre then split it in two, pushing the dead monsters against the wall with enough force to paint the rock with their mushy corpses.

The small horde of worker ants eventually dwindled down to just a handful of Titan-Ameise which quickly scurried away from the fight and into the oppressive darkness.

Natsu came to a stop and lowered his rifle slowly, his eyes scanning the fleeing monsters. Something felt off but he turned his head to look at the members of the two combined teams. "How's everyone doing?"

"I've still got plenty of fuel for my fire." Natsumi replied quickly. She too had a concerned look on her face as she slowly turned on the spot, looking at all four directions of the intersection they had stopped at.

"I'm good." Lucy released her Star Dress so it wouldn't continue to drain her magic and she placed a hand on her stomach and moments later, an audible grumble filled the quiet tunnels. "Maybe just a little hungry…"

"I don't think we should let our guard down just yet." Wendy quickly warned everyone, her nose twitching slightly as she sniffed the air. "They are releasing pheromones; probably to notify some of the larger ones and guide them to where we are."

"Can you blow those away?" Natsu asked, his attention snapping to the blunette.

"Yes, but the bodies have their own scent so they'll need to be burnt away in addition to it."

"Alright." The man nodded and got down on one knee. "Collect a bubble of fresh air around us, just so the noxious stench doesn't make Lucy lose her appetite."

"Oi!"

"You should try his sausage, Lucy, I'm sure it tastes great." Natsumi turned to the blonde with a large playful grin. "He lets Lelyanna try it all the time."

"Natsumi!" The priestess whined softly. "Now's not the time to joke about that kind of thing."

"I'm all done, Natsu." Wendy called out just as they became encased in a dome of swirling faintly blue wind.

"Got it." Natsu glanced around to make sure everyone was within Wendy's safe zone and then he channelled some power down onto the floor, creating a large maroon sigil that expanded beyond the pale-blue dome of wind. With a minute flare of cursed power, he triggered the sigil and caused liquid fire to flow from the extremities of the complex seal and form four rivers extending down the tunnels around them.

The piles of flesh around them began to crackle as they were washed down the tunnels and the air became thick with acrid smoke, though thankfully they couldn't smell it thanks to Wendy's wind barrier and air purification.

"Hey Lucy," Lelyanna murmured as she approached the beautiful blonde woman. "If you're after a snack, I've got a bunch in my requip storage which I pilfered from a grocery store in Natsu's world."

"Ooh~, show me what you've got." Lucy turned to the priestess with large eager brown eyes. She clasped her hands together in front of her plentiful chest and leaned in towards the silver-haired woman.

"Any preferences?"

"Nope, surprise me."

With the bodies reduced to cinders, Natsu extinguished his flames and rose to his feet. The Jaegers were surrounded by an oppressive darkness once more. "Wendy, can you pull down some fresh air from the ventilation system and force all this crap out to the surface."

"On it."

"Hey Natsu… You feel that?" Natsumi's head snapped to the left and she sent a fire arrow streaking through the pitch-black tunnel. She couldn't pick out anything after a hundred metres as her arrow smashed into the wall and tunnelled deep within, leaving behind a glowing two-centimetre hole. "A new wave is incoming from that direction, but I also feel someone over there and three more spread further around the level."

"I feel it." The man answered, narrowing his eyes slowly. "I'm the fastest here, I'll go investigate. The rest of you will proceed with the mission."

A faint crackle in the distance caused all three dragon slayers to give the distant engagement their full attention.

Wendy spared Hellhound a quick look, glancing at their weapons. "Was that…?"

"Gunfire – automatic too. Doesn't sound like eight-six either." Natsu tossed the map over to Natsumi and began walking towards the commotion. He placed his rifle onto his back and glanced over his shoulder. "I'll track them all down and then move to regroup. Head on ahead to the target."

"Got it." Natsumi activated the map and started leading the rest of their group down the direction they had been heading while Natsu took the left path. "Lucy, you can eat while we walk. Anyone else who needs to recharge, do it now but keep your wits about you."

In the blink of an eye, Natsu accelerated up to an inhumanly fast sprint. He quickly became enveloped in darkness and with no source of light, he was completely blind and had to rely on his other senses to help him navigate the tunnels.

Gunfire continued to crack in the distance and it was soon joined by three other sources. One-by-one the four somewhat familiar women had entered a life-or-death struggle in unfamiliar territory covered in a veil of pitch-black darkness and filled with an unknown number of hostile monsters.

"Fucking Die Already!" Bellowed a blue-haired woman who was clad in full ballistic armour. She was slowly walking backwards away from a massacre with dozens of worker ants shredded by her bullets. All that were left were three large ants the size of a large sedan and with large heads that shimmered in the beams from her flashlight and the flares that she had scattered along her path. Her gun clicked empty and she dropped the magazine to the ground, but as she slotted in a fresh magazine and cocked the weapon, something raced past her. "What the fuck?"

Embers swirled around Natsu's right fist as he drove it straight into the dense head of the Sub-Major and thanks to the Enhanced Iron Fist spell, all of his kinetic energy was transferred into the ant's body and an immense shockwave rendered the monster into a dark paste.

He accelerated from a dead stop in an instant, closing the distance with the second Sub-Major and delivering an unpowered spinning kick which sent the monster colliding with its remaining comrade and he tossed a fist-sized spherical grenade at the two large monsters. It flashed and then let out a pulse of energy that engulfed the ants before condensing to the size of the grenade once more and just a heartbeat later, it violently expanded and vaporised the monsters.

"Those big bastards were tougher than I was expecting but I was about to use Paper Shredder against them or throw a grenade… You fucking beat me to the punch." The disgruntled woman called out to the man who was illuminated by the red light from her discarded flares. She slipped a grenade back into one of her pouches and approached the man. "Natsu, right? Those eyes of yours are familiar, I've seen them once before on another version of you."

Natsu turned to the woman and took in her appearance, from her advanced armour and weaponry to the scraps of paper that floated around her like flower petals. "Yes, and you're Levy. And clearly from another world. How'd you get here, did a deity send you?"

"Deity, what like a god?" Levy relaxed a little and shifted her hold on her rifle, resting it across her armoured chest. "The only one I know of is The Happy. No, we've got tech that allows us to jump from one universe to the next, though right now we don't exactly have control over where we are going. You don't seem overly shocked?"

"I'll explain once I've gathered up the rest of you. But the short of it is that this isn't my original world, I was brought here by a goddess named Ceres who effectively rehomed me after my world was nuked to oblivion." Natsu turned on the spot and began to jog through the corpse-ridden tunnel. He took the rifle from his back and switched out the magazine for one that had black tape around the base; one that contained armour-penetrating ammunition.

"Alright, I won't pry into your past, I understand how it feels to lose your home world." The surprisingly busty blunette hurried after the man, speeding up until she reached his side and then she fell in step beside him. "What can you tell me about this world?"

"It's full of monsters, and there are people called Jaegers who hunt them down. It's also home to various other races besides humans and exceeds. Oh, and the tech here is so underdeveloped that I feel like I'm in the fucking stone-age sometimes. Shit runs on magic stones and clockwork mechanics. It was only recently that I was able to bring my own house up to the level I'm used to. They still use bolt-actions and shit, no automatic weapons useable by one person, at least not until I introduced them with my arms business."

"Right. Trust me, I know how that feels. But it can also go the other way when you come across an advanced civilisation. Wait, you own a gun business?"

"Yeah, one of the first people I met here had that kind of reaction, and my counterpart too. I took them to my world when I needed to gather stuff form there so I could make ammo for my guns. And I created a weapons manufacturing business so I can get away with using my own firearms from my home world without drawing too much attention to myself." Natsu glanced at the woman next to him and narrowed his eyes. She stirred something in his memories but he couldn't put his finger on it. "Do you four usually end up scattered like this?"

"Eh, it happens from time to time. You get used to it, but it doesn't mean that it's not a pain in the fucking arse." Levy brought up a holographic menu and quickly navigated its contents. Her rifle burst into particles of light and was quickly replaced by a lever-action shotgun. She placed it on her back and brought out a bottle of alcohol. She took a large gulp straight from the bottle and sent it back to her inventory. "You can take care of those big fuckers; I'll punch some holes through the little fucks with this baby."

"This next one feels like Kagura?" Natsu picked up the pace a little more and raised his rifle as they neared the next cluster of monsters. Wind whished past them and it felt like gravity itself was being pulled towards the monsters.

"Yeah, that's her alright. She's using Singularity by the feel of it." Levy chuckled and gave the man a small, manic grin. "She's probably going fucking batshit right now. One of the last few worlds we were at was a place called Valaka and it had these massive fucking bugs. Long story short, she fucking hates large bugs now."

"Well, she's going to have to put up with it since my job here is to exterminate a nest of Titan-Ameise, basically gigantic ants."

"These tunnels look man-made though, so I take it we're not in the nest yet."

"You're close. Yes, we're not in the ant's tunnels just yet but these mines were made by a bunch of dwarves from the Deep Rock mining company. I'm trying to minimise the amount of damage done within these tunnels since I don't know if it'll be taken out of my pay."

"Ah, gotcha. I'll try not to cause too much damage, but I can't make any promises."

"I don't care what you do once we're in the nest, as long as we don't get buried alive. Now shush for a second." Natsu motioned for the woman to be quiet for a moment as they walked into an eerily quiet stretch of tunnel which was a sight of battle just moments ago. At the centre of an intersection stood an irritated looking woman who immediately pointed her rifle at the incoming singular set of footsteps.

"Oh, it's you Levy. And you've found a local."

"Kinda. He's not from here but he lives here now."

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Natsu." Kagura held out her hand and offered the man a quick handshake. "Since you've come across Levy, I'm sure you know what's going on."

"Yeah, you've travelled here with some warp tech; we didn't get into details since it's more important that we round you all up." Natsu took the woman's hand for a moment before he returned it to his rifle and started heading to the next woman. "I can sense that Erza and Mira have found each other, so hopefully they'll be able to hold out against the combined hordes."

"That's if they don't do each other in before the ants can get them." Levy grumbled but she shrugged her shoulders and fell into step with the man once more. "You mentioned your counterpart, who are they?"

"Natsumi Dragneel. She looks similar to me but there are noticeable differences which I pinned down to a difference in base genetics. And I don't mean that she has a pair of tits on her." Natsu shot the blunette a quick look to cut off the potential snarky response that he had sensed on the tip of her tongue. "Gray is also Grace here, a female. Oh, and Juvia is a guy here too, called Kai. It was a little shocking when I first came across them."

"Are you here alone, Natsu?" Kagura asked curiously while she reloaded her magazines in the small amount of downtime they had. "Down in these tunnels, that is."

"No. I'm here with my own team, as well as Natsumi's. You'll meet them soon once we find the rest of your party and move to regroup with them."

Before they could continue their conversation, they were interrupted by automatic gunfire, explosions, loud insults, and the wet thumps of bugs getting slaughtered.

"Move your fat ass you whore!"

"How about you get your fucking udders out of my damn face!"

"Sounds like they're close." Levy laughed loudly. "Sorry if we all seem like loose cannons right now, we're running on fuck all sleep and are all hungry. The last world we were in was a fucking shitshow, ended up running through a jungle planet while massacring a bunch of little bear things that were trying to eat us like fucking savages."

"Still better than Valaka, if you ask me." Kagura spat and a disgusted tremor ran through her body. She slotted a fresh magazine into her rifle and tested the chainsaw bayonet, giving it a few revs to check if it still functioned properly. "Hm, I'm going to have to lube it."

"Can it wait until we regroup with Natsu's people?"

"Yeah." The purple-haired woman glanced at the shorter woman and gave the chainsaw some more throttle. "It feels a little bit gunky, probably from all the fur from those little creatures that has gotten into the drive mechanism. It won't lock up, but I definitely will have to service it."

"I told you to fucking move, bitch!"

"You move, fucking whore! And make sure it's further away, I can smell your rotten fucking pussy from a mile away."

Natsu tilted his head to the right just mere moments before a beam of magic shot right through the space it had occupied and he let out a sigh. "Are they usually this much of a handful?"

"They have their moments. As I said, we're all at our wit's ends. This is just how we deal with it." Levy replied.

Flashes of light illuminated the two women who moved around each other and the monsters with such precision that it was like a deadly ballet. For all the insults they were throwing back and forth at each other, neither got in the other's way.

Erza maintained a steady stream of lead from her bulky automatic rifle, sending burst after burst after burst into the smaller ants. All the while, Mira was firing a large revolver in her right hand, of which the bullets shot forth like mini rocket-propelled grenades and exploded upon impact with the monsters. From her left hand, the demonic woman shot bolt after bolt of powerful magic into the majors, punching through their tough chitin exoskeleton and blowing them apart from within.

"Do you think the others are doing alright?" Mira called out to her frenemy and she spared a quick glance over her shoulder at the redhead. She pushed her back against the woman's shoulder and switched their positions so she could destroy the incoming gigantic ants. "I could sense their magic but it stopped a little while ago."

"Do you really think Levy would let anything put her down. Same with Kagura, she'd sooner paint the walls with the guts of these fucking bugs than be offed by them."

As if they had been waiting for the right moment to make their spectacular entry, one half of the ants were crushed against the ceiling while the other half were shredded by nanometre-thin fragments of paper.

"It's about damn time that you two turned up." Mira called out, brazenly. She brushed her hair out of her eyes and turned to the two sources of magic approaching her and spotted a third person that she couldn't sense at all. "Ah, you must be the Natsu of this world."

"Nope, not of this world. That would be Natsumi." Natsu replied and waved for the two women to follow him as he walked past them and continued on down the tunnel. "Now that I have you all together, I can give a bit of an explanation."

"Alright. Spill the beans already." The white-haired woman urged the man to hurry as she placed her revolver on her thigh. She fell in with the other armoured women and followed closely behind the man as he ventured into the darkness with only the embers floating around him and the lights on their armour to illuminate their surroundings.

"I am Commander Natsu Dragneel, a chemically enhanced super-soldier who fought for the Joint Nation's forces against the Pergande Kingdom in a war that spanned a decade. I am what is known as a Shock Trooper, which are an elite commando unit that gets dropped behind enemy lines from warships situated in the upper atmosphere bordering space. This was where I was up until four or so months ago. However, during the assault on the Kingdom's capital, everything went up shit creek once we had their leaders surrounded. They launched their entire nuclear arsenal all at once, which caused retaliatory strikes from every other nation. I only survived thanks to my demonic regeneration protecting me from radiation."

"Fuck, so no one else survived?" Levy ran a hand through her blue hair and let out a faint sympathetic sigh. "We had something similar, some bullshit happened and then some more bullshit happened, and then we got fucking invaded by another universe's grubby fucking cunts and had to do some fucking nasty bullshit to survive. Now we're stuck in a cycle of going from one world to the next with no idea if those at home are even still alive."

"Yeah, I lost my friends, family, my wife." Natsu shook his head to dispel the ever-encroaching darkness within his mind. "After a month of wandering that radioactive wasteland, I was found by a goddess named Ceres who told me she was the overseer for my world, as well as this one we're in now. She offered to take me away from that place and she gave me a chance to continue with my life in a new world. I stayed there for a week but was out of it for three days of that, I think. In the time I was there, Ceres and I worked through potential new worlds for me to live in before we settled on this one. On my final day there, I met two goddesses called Eris and Io and talked with them a little bit about the worlds they oversee before I was sent here."

"Wait, you've met three goddesses?" Kagura looked at the man with wide, curious eyes. "What were they like?"

"Ceres seemed somewhat full of herself when I first set eyes on her but mellowed out pretty quickly, she's pretty motherly. Io seems really quiet and cute at first glance, but is incredibly perverse when something or someone takes her fancy. Eris is loud and boisterous, and apparently loves dragging Ceres out shopping and stuff like that." Natsu looked over his shoulder at the purple-haired woman then across to the three others. "For example, Eris loudly bragged about some whack jobs from one of her worlds that do crazy shit and invented a talking watermelon."

"Oh, you mean Normalface?" Levy asked, her eyes widening a little as she was surprised at the mention of her creation. She quickly flicked through her holographic menu once more while the man fully turned towards her.

"Don't tell me…"

With a tap on her menu screen, a watermelon with strange arms and legs appeared on Levy's head. It slowly spun around and took in its surroundings before facing Natsu with a very obvious face and pointed to the man with a white-gloved finger. "What the fuck are you looking at? What, you've never seen a ragemelon before?"

"Oh, it's the fucking nutters that Eris was talking about." Natsu smacked a hand to his face and slowly slid it down until it fell from it. "Of fucking course, just my damn luck."

"I'm a fucking ragemelon, not a nut. Are you fucking blind?"

"Watch yourself, Natsu, he's got a hair trigger." Kagura calmly warned the man.

"What did you say, bitch?"

"Hm, he is particularly angry, it seems." Levy noted, though she was completely unfazed by her creation's actions.

Natsu came to a stop and turned to face the group of women and their pet watermelon. "Give me one second…" He raised his gaze to the ceiling of the tunnel, looking beyond it to the heavens above. "Ceres, what the fuck is going on here?"

"OI! I wasn't done fucking talking to you, cunt!"

A blinding flash of light lit up the dark tunnel and when it receded, a pure-white woman dressed in a fancy white dress stood beside Natsu, gripping another woman by her neck.

"Well, Eris… Mind answering Natsu's question?"

"Who the fuck is this bitch?" Normalface yelled at the newcomer. "Bitch you need to learn to use colour in your outfits. You're so fucking white that it's blinding me."

The black-haired goddess looked from one woman to the next then to the talking watermelon and finally, her gaze rested upon Natsu's glowing red eyes and she gave him a boisterous grin. "Oh, fancy seeing you here, soldier boy. Ceres was telling me that you've started making yourself at home here. You've also had her pretty busy running around in the ruins of your world, she hasn't been joining us for our little girl-on-girl time recently."

"Eris…" Ceres grumbled softly, urging her to answer the question.

"Fine, fine." Eris shook herself free of her fellow goddess' grip and put a step's distance between them. "I might have tinkered with fate a little bit so I can throw a monkey wrench in this cute little set-up you've got here. They were meant to go to some dessert world, yes, I mean actual mountains of cake and ice cream and stuff, and all the animals are living gummy animals, but I diverted them here."

"So much for preferring to remain 'hands-off' with the worlds placed under your observation." Ceres crossed her arms under her bust and turned to the pinkette next to her. "I'm sorry about this, but you're going to have to put up with her meddling for about a week, I think."

"It's fine as long as they don't do anything that damages my tenuous position here. Slaughtering those motherfuckers who came after Lelyanna already drew a little too much attention, but it was unavoidable." Natsu turned to the four armoured women and the talking watermelon atop Levy's head. "I've only been here a very short time but I've developed ties that I'd rather not sever. Try not to fuck things over for me, alright?"

"Well, if that's everything you wanted to know, I'll be going now." Eris had barely even finished her sentence when she vanished from their earthly realm with a flash of light.

"Who the fuck does that bitch think she fucking is." Normalface yelled and shook one of his small fists at the space the goddess had just occupied.

"Levy, would you kindly shut that fucking thing up." Natsu calmly asked the woman while he turned to the deity and gave her a quick nod.

Levy shielded her eyes from the divine light emitted by Ceres leaving their realm then shook her head with a grin. "Nah, I think he can stay out. He needs to stretch his legs from time to time."

"Who the fuck do you think you are, telling me to shut up?" The ragemelon got to his feet and leapt from Levy's head, his fist cocked back and ready to pummel the insufferable pinkette into oblivion.

Natsu took a deep breath and slowly released it through his nose. He was trying to calm himself down but his eyes became colder and quickly resembled frozen pools of blood. He could easily move out of the way of this strange creature but his eye just shifted to look at the thing as it slowly flew through the air at him. He saw Levy with a crazed yet carefree grin, Mira and Erza watching him curiously to see what will happen, and Kagura looking a little sorry for him.

Everything was slowly pissing him off. This was meant to be a simple extermination mission, just go in and kill a few hundred or thousand bugs and go home. But because one annoying goddess needed to get her entertainment fix, he had to put up with this bullshit.

In just a few dozen milliseconds, in less time than it took for someone to blink, the man's body blurred and contorted in an inhuman feat of raw physical power and speed.

A torrent of wind rushed past the four women and caused their hair to whip around violently. It took them a few moments to realise that Normalface had suddenly vanished and the wall to their right had been freshly painted with a big red stain courtesy of an incredibly fast kick from the pinkette.

"Three… two… one…" Levy murmured while counting down on her fingers. As soon as the last finger dropped, the stain started to pull itself back together and formed into an ugly gloopy ball. It quickly hardened into a watermelon and its arms and legs shot out of the body and pushed itself off the wall.

"I'm back, motherfucker!" Normalface yelled as he angrily eyed the pinkette, looking ready to launch himself at the man once more. But he suddenly clapped his hands and gyrated his body. "TO BUST A MOVE!"

"Here we go again." Kagura sighed softly and turned her gaze on the mildly confused and irritated red-eyed man. "He can regenerate, it's pointless trying to kill him."

"Uhn Tiss, Uhn Tiss, Uhn Tiss,"

"So I see." Natsu grunted and he bared his fangs. "Well then, I guess a little fire won't hurt it." As the man spoke, the embers floating around him dropped to the ground and formed into puddles of liquid fire.

"What? You one of those guys who don't like to dance? That makes me Full Of RAGE!"

A playful, beautifully smooth voice reverberated through the rapidly heating air. "Now, now, Natsu~. It's not nice to lose your temper so easily. I know they might seem annoying, but you've got to work with them and it won't do to make enemies out of your new friends."

The pools of fire instantly burst into embers once more and danced around them like fairy lights as Natsu let out a weary sigh. "Yeah, yeah…" He turned on the spot and began making his way through the tunnel once more.

"Hold on, that voice is familiar." Levy called out as she rushed to the man and grabbed his wrist, stopping him in his tracks. "Look, I know I'm crazy, and you all think I'm hearing things when I say The Happy talks to me, but I'm not the only one who heard that disembodied voice, right?"

"That would be Lucy," Natsu glanced back at the women, his eyes darkened with sadness and loneliness. "My wife." He shook his arm free of the woman's grip and pressed on towards where he could sense the rest of his group. "I may not be fazed by seeing stuff like this, but I think the others would freak out. I can't have people distracted in combat, so please, deal with the watermelon."

"Fine, I get it." Levy grumbled loudly and threw her hands up. She turned to the ragemelon with a grin. "Alright, NF, get back in the bag. You can come out in the next world we go to and you can go on a killing spree until you are content."

"But Miss Levy, I just got ou-" The talking watermelon didn't even get a chance to finish his sentence before he burst into light particles and was sent back into Levy's inventory.

"He's going to be pretty pissed off when I let him out again, hopefully he can have a bloodbath at the next place we go to."

"That's none of my concern." Natsu placed his rifle on his back and slipped his hands into his pockets. He fell silent and led the way through the dark tunnels to where he could sense everyone else waiting for his return. After a few minutes of walking, a bright flash of light illuminated the area around them.

"She did a runner, but I managed to track her down." Ceres panted softly and ran a hand through her dishevelled hair in an effort to try and get it to look good again. "She made me regret wearing heels today."

"You've only ever worn heels…" Natsu glanced at the two goddesses, though he was more surprised by Ceres' method of capturing the woman. Eris had been tied up with a fine white rope in the shibari style of bondage and looked to be enjoying it immensely. "Eris, since you've caused this crap to happen for your entertainment, you can have a front row seat."

"Yes, Master~!" Eris purred needily while squirming about in her bindings. The knots tied into the rope were strategically placed to press and rub against her erogenous zones and every time she moved even in the slightest, it sent a pleasurable shock racing through her body and made her writhe even more.

Ceres tugged on the rope leash that she had tied around her fellow goddess' neck and made her walk as the white-haired woman followed Natsu. "Don't worry about our safety, Natsu. If we suffer a fatal wound, then we'll just automatically revive in our personal realms."

"Right."

Levy watched the man's back as he silently walked ahead of their group. She spared a quick glance to the women walking beside her but soon returned her gaze to him. "Come on, aren't you the least be curious about Normalface?"

"No."

"What?"

Natsu turned to the blunette and looked her up and down. "You're an alcoholic, a chronic one too. It permeates your scent and causes your emotions to run haywire, it's probably not the only reason too; stress, fatigue, trauma, they can do it too. My experience with Levy McGarden, both of my world and this one, informs me that their core they're incredibly smart and thirst for knowledge. The fact that the one here wanted stuff from my world so she could try and reverse engineer it – to the point that she was practically salivating – lends credence to the assumption that you're similar. The fact that I can feel that you're incredibly mentally unstable, leads me to guess that you're were probably drunk off your tits one night and felt like doing some genetic engineering out of some sense of drunken curiosity."

"Did you just say that I stink?!" Levy asked waspishly.

"So then, am I correct?"

"More or less." Mira burst out laughing and pointed at Levy's psychotically angry expression. She hugged her armoured midriff with her left arm as her sides began to ache. "That thing was grown in a vat and for all her brilliance, she can't remember nor replicate the process."

"I have a question…" Kagura looked between the blunette and the pinkette. "Has she been drinking at all in your presence?"

"Yeah, she took a swig from some bottle of alcohol when I met her."

"Oh come the fuck on! It was just a single mouthful! I'm not going to get wasted off that." Levy yelled and she glared at the women around her. "I know I'm partial to a drink or twenty, but fucking hell. I'm not that bad.

"What she has done and what you all have done is of no concern of mine." Natsu coldly informed the women as he turned his back to them once more and continued to lead the way. "All I care about is that none of you try and fuck over the life I'm trying to rebuild here or harm those I've grown attached to, the rest is meaningless to me."

"Someone is feeling a little cranky~." A seductively playful voice cut through the darkness and the woman it belonged to stepped into their circle of light a few moments later. "Are these the off-worlders?"

"Blame the negative shitstorm that surrounds them." Natsu met his counterpart's vibrant green eyes and noticed that red had begun to slowly overtake the green from the outside edge of her irises. "I'm sure no introductions are needed."

Natsumi's eyes skimmed across the women and she offered a warm smile, it was the complete antithesis to Natsu's cold snarl. "You all feel tired, we've set up a small camp so we could rest a little before we delve into the nest; it's just up ahead. I heard you coming so I came over to say hello."

"Damn she's hot, and she sounds so damn sexy too." Mira grinned widely as her eyes drifted from one pinkette to the other. "Have you two fucked yet? I'm sure you'll be able to go at it all day and night."

"Sadly, no." Natsumi laughed brightly and clapped a hand against Natsu's back. "He's only put out for the priestess, and that's only because she wanted to have her virginity taken by a man that she trusted instead of robbed by some thug or monster." The woman snaked her arms around the man's left arm and plunged it into her cleavage. "Though, I do want to be railed by him. It sounds like so much fun when I hear that innocent little priestess moan like a bitch in heat."

Natsu decided to quickly redirect the conversation to the camp that Natsumi had set up. "Did you check if the hole is the only point of ingress for the ants?"

"I had Wendy check the air currents. She said that the scent of formic acid that is venting into the mine is only coming from the breach location. So it seems that they haven't dug into the mines at any other locations just yet."

"And the breach itself?"

"Plugged by Grace until we're ready to advance."

"Good. We'll let everyone rest for an hour or so, that includes a short nap if they need it."

Natsumi kept glancing at the woman bound in rope and led on a leash by Ceres, and after close to two minutes of going back and forth from the woman to the path ahead, she finally looked up at Natsu with a glimmer of curiosity in her eyes. "I've gotta ask…"

"That's Eris, one of the goddesses I met before I was sent here. She's their overseer and the cause of their arrival here. It was for the sake of her own entertainment, not for any other specific reason. So I've decided to give her a front-row seat."

"Okay, but why is she tied up like that, and why can't I be?"

"Because you're useful and she isn't." Natsu replied blandly, sparing a glance at the violet-eyed goddess. "And that's to keep her in check so she doesn't try and run away."

"You might as well call her Aqua." Ceres told the pink-haired woman. She felt the goddess start to fall behind and so she tugged on the rope. "Get a move on."

"Ah~!" Eris gasped and moaned as the sudden jolt sent sparks racing through her body from the knots. "More, please~." She begged.

"I didn't realise it was so easy to quell her." Ceres admitted to Natsu while dragging the goddess with her as she came up to his right side. "If I knew this, I would've just tied her to a bed or something so she'd stop pestering me to go places with her."

"And here I thought Io was the pervert." Natsu muttered and he sighed softly. He released the cloud of embers swirling around their party as they entered the makeshift camp.

Natsumi's team had set up some tents and made a little alcove for bathing with tightly woven vines and melted ice. In the centre of the ring of tents sat a small but roaring fire that seemed to be burning without any fuel, it was likely placed by the pinkette to help keep the other women warm and allow them to heat up or cook their food.

Natsumi looked over her shoulder at the off-worlders and pointed over to the makeshift bath. "No one is currently using it and the water should still be nice and warm. If any of you want to, you can go bathe while we rest."

"I'd like to speak to my counterpart, if that's ok." Erza stepped toward the pinkette and looked around for the stunning scarlet hair or glimmer of armour that she expected to see from the woman she was after.

"I'll take you to her." Natsumi released Natsu's arm and headed into the cluster of tents.

"Ceres, can you keep an eye on her. She seems pretty placated now, but I want her to be punished for pulling this kind of shit. Especially since she's actively fucked with a world that isn't within her domain."

"Oh no, you don't have to worry about that; I fully intend to keep her on a tight leash." The goddess replied. She led the woman over to the fire and made her sit down while they waited for the resting mortals.

This left Natsu alone with Levy and Mira, and he turned to look back at them. "Do whatever you feel like doing provided it isn't counterproductive. We're here on a job and I'd rather that it doesn't end up going tits-up because some travellers got bored."

"Well, we might as well eat while we wait for our turn in the bath." Mira stretched her arms out above her head and groaned softly. She made her way to the fire and as she walked, she brought up her own menu and unequipped her armour. She was quickly joined by Levy who decided to keep her armour on for now but got started on heating up some food she had stored away.

Natsu glanced around at the small camp and he prodded the nearest treated canvas tent with a finger. It not like he hadn't seen something like this before, but it just seemed incredibly crude compared to what he was used to in his own world.

"Oh, hey Natsu," Lucy stuck her head out from the tent and looked up at the man. She looked surprised but she gave him a warm smile and exited her tent. "Sorry, I was zoned out so I didn't notice that you had arrived. What was the commotion you three had heard?"

"Some interdimensional travellers were sent here by an annoying goddess who wanted some entertainment." Natsu's gaze lingered on the woman's smile for a few moments before he shifted it to the fire. "The one who is tied up is Eris, the cause of this bullshit. And the one next to her is Ceres, the one who brought me here. I don't think I ever introduced you two."

"I don't believe you have, though Natsumi has told me about her." Lucy stood beside the man and clasped her hands behind her back as she took in the sight of the goddesses, the fire causing her eyes to shimmer beautifully. "They're both so beautiful that it's kind of freaking me out. But I suppose that's a goddess for you."

"Back before I came to this world – well, the same day I came here technically – I met her and one other goddess. Eris mentioned these crazy versions of us from one of her worlds, they were her favourite form of entertainment." Natsu glanced down at the beautiful blonde stood close-by then shifted his attention to the travellers dotted around the camp. "I don't know about Kagura over there, but apparently the rest of them are missing a few screws."

"I mean, you're no different." Lucy softly reminded the man. She slowly turned on the balls of her feet and looked up at his malevolent crimson eyes with a kind smile. "You're cold and cruel, and will slaughter those that harm the ones you care for. And for you, it's normal. Killing is as natural as breathing for you. But that doesn't mean that it is all that there is to you. You're also very caring and loving, and you look out for others. Just look at what you've done for Alzack and Bisca."

"I'm trying to work out if I should be insulted or flattered by that." Natsu chuckled quietly and he flashed the woman a small smile. "But I know what you say is true." He reached out and gently ran a hand through the woman's silky-smooth blonde locks. "Maybe I should give them a chance."

Lucy's eyes closed slowly and her smile widened as she leaned into the warmth of his hand. "Lelyanna and Henrietta didn't seem worried about you running off on your own."

"They know I can handle myself. If anything, I'm a little more worried about their safety." Natsu looked over to the tunnel wall where he could see the two women in his team huddled together under a blanket to keep warm while they rested and waited for his return. "Lelyanna can heal herself and Henrietta is capable of self-repair provided she has the necessary materials for regeneration. But serious damage would leave lasting marks since Lelyanna can't heal missing limbs and if Henrietta takes too much damage, I'd need the maintenance bay in my basement to restore her body."

"Hm, I wonder… Since her healing was a gift from that goddess, could she reattach limbs? And the android, since she's organic, is it possible to heal her?" Lucy cracked open an eye and gazed up at the man. "It makes sense to me."

"Maybe." Natsu shrugged his shoulders. He slipped his hands into his pockets and looked around the camp, much to the dismay of Lucy who let out a discontent murmur as she was enjoying the warmth of his touch. "I'm going to sit down and have a little bit of rest while I wait for everyone to be ready."

"I'll come with you, just let me get my book." Lucy turned on the spot and reached down into her tent. She felt a pair of eyes watching her and it made her smirk playfully. "I know you're staring at my butt, Natsu, I can feel your gaze."

"Caught red-handed." Natsu took his eyes off the woman's ass that was threatening to reveal itself from under her short skirt and he walked past her, heading towards his team. He heard Lucy's heeled boots clack against the tunnel floor as she hurried after him. He sat down next to Lelyanna with his knees raised and his arms resting atop them. A soft sigh escaped his lips but his focus was immediately stolen by the blonde once more when she gently nudged his legs apart and sat down between them with her back resting against his chest. "Comfortable?"

Natsu lifted his arms from his knees but he hesitated for a moment as he stared into the woman's beautiful brown eyes. Their eyes stayed locked onto each other for a few moments more before Natsu lowered his legs to the floor and tentatively wrapped his arms around Lucy's waist.

Lucy gasped softly at the feeling and she could feel how tense he was from the stiffness in his arms and chest. In an effort to put him at ease, she shifted back a little more so she was nestled against him and she looked up through her lashes at him, giving him a warm smile. "I've told you before, Natsu, that I'm more than okay with you touching me since you feel so familiar and comforting to me. Please, if you ever feel the need to hold me, just do it."

"Thank you." Natsu murmured into the woman's ear. His arms tightened slightly around her waist and he closed his eyes, allowing her own comforting presence to help him relax and calm down. To help him reign himself in and be just a little more human.

"Anytime you need me, Natsu. And whenever you don't too, of course."

---

That's this chapter rewrite completed. Again, it was a minor one but this chapter saw a decrease of about 200 words. Mainly me fixing minor mistakes and removing superfluous sections.

I'm hoping that I've got thehappy's characters portrayed fairly accurately and that they aren't out of character.

I hope you have enjoyed this chapter, I'll see you in the next one.