Chapter 22 Soundtrack (Fight scene only):
1. Super - Brandon Yates
The moment Natsu's head rose from her lap, Yukino once more grabbed his scarf to wipe his face, mopping up every last speckle of watery light she could find.
He had taken a few minutes to rest, a few more to pick his strength back up, before he finally sat back up with his shoulders square and strong.
To her surprise, Natsu gave a tiny giggle as she all but smothered him with his own scarf like a fussy mother cleaning her child's messy face.
He gave one last sniffle, gently tugging Yukino's wrist down away from his face.
Natsu had bright pride in his eyes.
He cleared the rasp from his throat, "Lis would be proud."
Yukino brushed waifs of his shed pink hair from between her fingers, "Oh I know, she's already told me. Besides, I don't get here, where I am now, without her."
"Well, I'm proud of you too." Natsu continued, "I thought you'd feel, like, delicate, now more than ever, but ya don't. You feel strong."
Yukino felt affection overwhelm her. She gathered his shoulders and head back up into her arms, squeezing Natsu tight against her chest. Just for another half minute, just to make sure Natsu had all the time he wanted to pick his strength back up.
"Yukino?" Natsu's voice was muffled.
"Hmm?"
"Do you know any words more fancy than 'thank you'?"
Yukino laughed softly, "Don't worry about that Natsu, I already know."
Natsu felt her lips against his temple as the vibration of her soft voice tousled his scalp.
"You've met your quota of pep-talks for tonight," Yukino announced, "you ready to go out for a spar with Sting and Rogue? I think you could do with some guy time."
As far as Yukino was concerned, Natsu had done his time outside his comfort zone.
Natsu nodded into her neck, hesitantly rising from her embrace to stand up, taller than he had felt all night.
"Oh yeah, I really can't wait to see how strong they've gotten." Natsu announced as he plucked Yukino up by her waist, setting her back down on her feet.
Yukino made sure the burning that twinkled faintly in Natsu's eyes was real and honest. She stared hard until she was satisfied.
Not as big a fire, wasn't raging as hard, but it was there.
He was fighting himself. He would be for quite a while.
It didn't matter what part of him it was, dragon or demon, neither stood a chance against Natsu.
He had become something far more powerful than either of them put together.
Natsu had become gentle.
"Go easy on them, okay? They're goobers, but they're my goobers." Yukino palmed down the wrinkles of her pajamas, then pecked his forehead, "Now one of them is my boyfriend, so be extra careful."
Natsu snickered, then shook his head, "Nah, I'm gonna have to bring my A-game. They'll be more than a handful, I can feel it. If I'm not careful I might be the one getting dragged home."
"You sound oddly excited about that." Yukino remarked.
"Well yeah, Sting and Rogue bein' stronger than me?" Natsu's signature excited grin stretched across his face.
"Now that puts a fire in my belly!"
Said belly gave a faint groan. Natsu rubbed it sheepishly.
"That was the... fire." he mumbled.
Yukino giggled, "Grilled cheese?"
Natsu perked at the offer.
"That's still on the table?"
Sting and Rouge had taken a convenient amount of time to do what had been asked of them, coming down to the main hall to find three paper bag lunches waiting for them atop the bar counter.
That, plus the sight of Natsu in higher spirits than he had been all night, was enough to keep Sting from being too upset over the fact his fort had been taken down.
Natsu and Yukino sat at the bar across from each other, sharing whispery snickers as they fidgeted at something between them too small to see from a distance.
"Hey, what sorta trouble are ya getting my girlfriend into? That's my job!" Sting called out as he bounced down the stairs, making a beeline for his lunch bag labeled with a tiny drawing of Lector's face.
"I'm tryna to teach her to make a caterpillar with a straw wrapper." Natsu chirped in reply.
Sting gasped, "Without me?"
He rubbed his eyes, having spent all night in the darkness with nothing but his dragon slayer senses to guide him.
"Yeah, she had to turn on the lights." Natsu explained.
"I get it, Yukino's pretty skittish in the dark." Sting grunted.
Yukino sulked, "I am not. I just spend a bunch of time in the dark."
"Hey Sting," Natsu began, "whenever Yukino gets spooked does she turn into a tiny little person and run under the stove to hide?"
"Oh, uh, yeah, she picked it up from Frosch, she shrinks to about half a foot tall to make her a harder target for predators. Why do you ask?"
"Because Wendy does the same thing whenever she sees any sour food. How do you usually get them back out?"
Sting rubbed his nose, "Hmm, well Rogue and Minerva usually have to coax her out with apple slices n' peanut butter."
"If you two don't stop talking about me like I'm a prey animal, I will throw a bunny slipper at you."
It was the most violent statement Yukino had ever made, yet Natsu and Sting still dove under the shelter of the same table, eyeing her warily.
Meanwhile, Rouge looked over his own lunch, giving a tiny smile at the illustration of Frosch's face Yukino had left on it. A quick glance over to the remaining paper bag showed a sketch of Happy.
"Alright boys, get out from under there, I'm not Minerva when it comes to the kitchen but you should all have your usual." Yukino slid over from her side of the bar to stand before the two as they popped over to their respective lunch bags, "Feel free to check."
Sting fist pumped at the sight of two peanut butter jelly sandwiches-cut into triangles-inside his bag.
"Today is a good day gentlemen," he announced, "Natsu, you get hooked up with the grilled cheese?"
"No, I had to call an audible, " Yukino cut in with the sternest look she was capable of, "someone ate all the shredded cheese."
Rogue recoiled in disgust and spat out words as if they were sour, "You ate an entire bag of it?"
"Plus a jug of strawberry milk." Natsu added.
Yukino and Rogue's faces dove from disapproval to concern. Yukino bounced over to one of the fridges behind the bar and threw it open, taking stock of its contents as if to confirm it all before gasping.
"Yeah, this is a rough moment for me." Sting admitted.
Some part of Sting's insides gurgled. Natsu shuffled a few paces away from his side.
"I pray for dawn. Uhh, Rogue, what's your usual again? I forgot." Sting deflected.
"P.B and J, same as you, but light on the peanut butter, apricot jelly," Yukino informed, "and no crust."
Sting's gaze snapped over to his twin.
"Your bloodline is weak."
Natsu's hands flew up to his head, "Not the Chimichanga bloodline!"
"First off, you used to peel your crust all the time," Rogue retorted, "secondly, Natsu that wasn't even close."
"Chimney?"
"Don't make this a thing Natsu."
Natsu pouted, turning away with a dramatic huff.
"I did no such thing Rogue, this is libel, this is slander." Sting defended, turning to Natsu and Yukino breathlessly, "He is peddling falsehoods. He's a peddler. He peddles."
"How can he peddle? He has motion sickness, he's a dragon slayer, we can't ride bikes." Natsu whispered to Yukino. She patiently stroked his hair.
"I watched you eat four crust-less tuna sandwiches last Thursday." Rogue snapped back.
Sting smacked his lips, "They were already crust-less when I got there."
"I also watched you peel them and give the crust to Frosch."
"Rogue, may I speak with you in the 'stop openly contradicting me' room please?"
"No. "
"Honestly, your loyalty is comin' into question here, to me, to this establishment- this guild, and quite frankly, to the fine kingdom of Fiore."
"I'm more surprised that we are all okay with the apricot jelly." Natsu said.
"Boys, enough," Yukino told them, "you are wasting the night away. You only have two hours before sunrise."
The two ducked their heads, obedient to her reason.
"Pfft, fine, whatever." Sting mumbled.
Rogue rolled his eyes, "He started it."
"We don't gotta worry about time Yukino, it's the spar that'll burn up most- hey, wait, you forgot a whisker on Happy's left cheek." Natsu pointed to the drawing on his lunch bag, "It's lopsided, he has no balance when it's like that."
"Oh, right, sorry sweetie," Yukino quickly took to fixing the doodle, "but don't you boys go far out for your spars? Sting and Rogue have their own spot out of town that's about a thirty minute walk, and they both say it's too cramped."
"Well I have a place super far out where we can go all out without worrying about stuff, yeah, but getting there don't take any time at all." Natsu explained as he hovered over her drawing hand intently.
"Oh, can you make his eyes a little bigger?" he asked
Yukino sent a quick stare to stop Sting and Rogue from sneaking elbows into each other's sides, their exchange of hushed unintelligible hisses stopping instantly.
"'Super far out'? Where exactly do you boys go?" she asked as she obliged with Natsu's request, gently pushing his head out of the way so she could properly see.
"A massive string of archipelagos in the southeast hemisphere. The islands are a result of large-scale ancient volcanic activity, they are uninhabitable so they are ideal for full power sessions." Rogue answered.
"There is an entire continent's worth of ocean between them and the nearest landmass, which thankfully is also uninhabitable."
"Wait, Sting, thought ya said the place was built by wolves?" Natsu squawked.
Sting shrunk with a coy grin as Rogue turned on him.
"Why do you lie to him like that?"
"Cause he believes me."
Yukino's eyes had bulged at the information, "That's across the planet! H-how could you-"
"Really intense games of 'last one there is a rotten egg'." Natsu remarked as bounced lightly on his heels.
"No, don't listen to him, and if you do, know Sting loses that game every time," Rogue fished something from the inner breast pocket of his navy duster, "we have a more efficient method of transportation."
Yukino stared at the strange card he held between two fingers, breath hitching in recognition, "That card, it's like the ones that Cana woman uses, right?"
When she looked to confer with Natsu, he nodded, "Yep, it's teleportin' card! One card is already way over at the islands, this one is with us."
"With me." Rogue corrected, "Sting would lose it."
"I wouldn't lose it. I don't lose things. I merely put them in places that later elude me." Sting snipped.
"B-but how do you get back? You teleport over there because there is already a card there, but what about returning home?" Yukino said as she handed Natsu's lunch bag back to him, corrections applied to the sketch of Happy.
Natsu gleefully admired it as he explained, "There's three cards, one I keep in the cathedral tower, one at the island, and one with Rogue. Two for markin' locations, one for the portin'."
"Okay, but how did that card at the islands get there in the first place?"
"Rogue lost a game of rock paper scissors he really shouldn't have." Natsu said.
Rubbing the narrow bridge of her nose, Yukino sighed, "Natsu honey, do I even want to know how you got Cana to give these cards to you?"
"I had to do a duet I'm ain't proud of with her at karaoke night."
"That's it?"
"Uh, well she wanted to know what it was like to be a little spoon, but other than that no."
Yukino shared her unease with the twins in a exchange of looks before her shoulders dropped in relief, "That doesn't sound too ba-"
"Ah, wait, Cana has a favorite bar where they serve stuff that gets her super hammered, I have to go with her to look after her after she passes out. Gotta carry her home, tuck her in, stuff like that."
"There it is." Sting mumbled.
Natsu shrugged, grinned, and spoke with fondness, "Ya know Cana may seem wild, but she's kinda adorable, even when she's drunk."
"There's a twist coming, I know it." Rogue said, his lunch bag crinkling in his curling fingers as he snatched it from the counter.
"The 'holding her hair up while she barfs behind into a ditch', not as cute," Natsu winced to himself, "although apparently that's pretty tame compared to Gildarts-"
"Hey Natsu?" Sting piped up.
"Yeah?"
"See these lunches? I wanna have the appetite to eat them."
Natsu's jaw snapped shut.
"We should get going." Rogue suggested.
"Is there usually this much dilly dally?" Yukino mused, "For how often you boys train, I don't actually know your process."
"Well, we start with a 'holla', and end with a creamsicle," Sting began.
"If there's time in between, we patrol for skin-walkers." Natsu finished.
Yukino stared at them. With something more loving than just pity.
"Yukino, you know I support you no matter whoever your heart decides on, but I am duty bound to inform you that you fell in love with a man who reached adulthood by miracle only." Rogue whispered to her.
"I know, and you've been very sweet looking after him." Yukino replied.
"Hey! I'm my own man, I'm the guild master, and once I was guild master injury free for at least three weeks." Sting jumped to his own defense.
"Sting baby, it was two and a half. You cut your finger flipping the injury countdown calendar." Yukino admonished.
Sting deflated as he looked down at his own pinkie, "You told me that it didn't count when you were kissing it better."
"Nah, it does count. When I took Chelia and Wendy ice-skating and they'd fall and scrap their knees, and I'd have to-"
"Natsu honey, sorry to interrupt," Yukino chimed in as she turned back to Rogue, bringing his head in for a cheek kiss, "You boys can keep chatting on the way, move along now. Don't overdo it, any of you."
Natsu and Sting quickly lined up for their own kisses. After a quick exchange of nose flicking and thigh kneeing, Natsu was somehow first up.
"Go easy on them, remember?" Yukino reached over the bar, brushing the hair from his brows to peck his forehead with a playful hum.
Natsu was quickly shouldered aside by a simpering Sting, who gave a haughty huff.
As Yukino's boyfriend, he had exclusive rights to affection much less… innocent.
Yukino squeaked as Sting gripped her dainty chin and captured her lips with his, muffling her startled mewl.
Pale cheeks burned pink as the pliant Yukino melted into her boyfriend's lip lock, her hands twisted in a powerless grip against his shoulders from across the bar.
Sting was ripped away from her when Rogue leapt onto his back, arms slithering around his neck in a choke-hold that squeezed the breath from his yelp and the strength from his knees.
Yukino, dazed, gasped in horror as her boyfriend was wretched to the ground by the man who was basically her older brother.
"Oh my gosh, Rogue, stop! I-it's not that big a deal, he was just trying to get a rise out of- Natsu no!" Yukino wailed.
Natsu had leapt up onto the bar. Then higher up into the air.
Only to fall down upon the helpless Sting with an elbow drop.
"You guys actually suck. She's my girlfriend." Sting's petulant mumble bounced off the narrow winding stone walls of the cathedral tower.
In front of him, the groan of Natsu's footsteps against the auld oaken stairs came to a stop, "Sorry Sting, it was just big brother instinct. Speaking of which, Rogue, you know where Cobra lives?"
"Don't entertain him Natsu," Rogue growled with equal childishness as his twin, leading them up to where the cathedral bell hung, "he had it coming."
They resumed their climb in silence.
Barring a quick argument about who could make better shadow puppets between Natsu and Rogue, the longer the walk to the cathedral had gone on, the more quiet tension bubbled.
It started out normal, on the walk over to the cathedral Sting and Natsu saw two rats fighting in an alley, thought they were having a dance battle, then spent a full minute beat-boxing and hyping them up.
After that, Sting had to go back to the guild to relieve himself as his stomach noises kept being mistaken by Natsu as the sound of a dying bear.
By the time they reached snuck into the cathedral and into its stairway, words had ceased entirely.
For the twins, they would be lying if they said hairs weren't standing on end and palms were completely devoid of sweat.
It wasn't nervousness. It was excitement.
Excitement only Natsu could bring.
It didn't matter to the twins how much they had sparred with each other, it never proved anything, it never released any steam, it did nothing but make them stronger, make them angrier.
Boy's night always brought this anticipation, this thrill.
But now, after the war, after their failure, after so long since testing themselves against Natsu, the twins forgot about the grit between them.
Because tonight that excitement was stronger than ever.
They were human, they knew that, as the dragon seed inside them would stay dormant until the moment it shriveled up and died.
Yet fighting Natsu made them feel anything but.
They had a chance to finally prove themselves in the only way they thought mattered.
Natsu meanwhile was humming some tune to himself like he always did before their fights, bringing light to tension in a way only he could.
Concern lingered for him, but the entire thing was at his insistence.
Fighting was something he loved, and ever since he left with Yukino, Natsu had been given a second wind of his usual whimsy.
It was infectious, he was infectious, always was.
That buzzing enthusiasm, plus their own caged zealous, had Sting and Rogue joining him in acting as if the rest of the night hadn't happened.
Natsu's humming stopped.
"Yo Rogue, real quick."
"Yes?"
"Did uh, Sting fill you in on uhh… Gray?"
"Yes."
"And?"
"Tell Gray thank you. Other than that, me and Sting have decided not to give it anymore thought."
"Cool, cool," Natsu said, making a very difficult conversation easy, "ya guys ready? I want all you two got. Just because Gajeel and Gray ain't here, don't mean anything is different."
"Depends on how insistent we are on not turning a few islands into dust." Sting quipped.
Natsu's lips drooped, "I mean what ya got against islands man? One of my best buds is an island."
Rogue looked over his shoulder at him, wide eyed.
"Yeah, Kemokemo, he was the funkiest little green bush dude, could spit fire n' stuff. I looked after him for a little bit, then he turned into an island."
Rogue responded carefully, "I believe you."
"Ah, that sucks man." Sting offered his condolences.
"I mean, I go visit him out there islanding it up, I take Lisanna and Happy, we have a picnic there sometimes. So it's not all sad." Natsu said.
Sting took in that tender memory, and said, "So… no blowing up stuff tonight? Been a year, feel like the occasion calls for it."
"Will you guys go all out if I say yes?"
"I admire the way you think that will improve our chances against you." Rogue mused. "We don't have the luxury of holding back."
"That's the spirit!" Natsu giggled, "Now, one last time, you two ready!?"
It was reassuring to see Natsu still expected the world of them. They were still his rivals. Even after Zeref and Acnologia.
They were dragon slayers.
That may not mean much to the world anymore, but it meant more than the world to them. All because of Natsu.
Sting and Rogue locked eyes. Then nodded.
Sting looked back to Natsu and announced,
"Ready to 'spar' when you are."
"Awesome! Real quick guys, if we ever got stuck on a deserted island, and we had no food n' we couldn't escape, or-or like it would be a while before help comes, how long would you want me to wait before I ate you?"
Sting's face shriveled, "Dude, you were supposed to let the moment stand, you ruined my bad ass one liner!" he said, giving himself a lot of credit.
Rogue meanwhile was quiet for a moment.
"Half an hour." he said.
Their reign over Earthland may have come and gone, but on nights like these, their countless legends became closer to truth.
The world of the dragons would come alive once more.
Natsu expected a hard time, after the power he had felt from Sting at the lake, it was obvious the twins were on a different level compared to before.
He didn't expect to get trounced.
The twins' transformation into Dragon Force had been thunderous, obsidian and stone islands shook to pieces under the boom of their dragon roars.
Thick pillars of white had shot from Sting's form to skewer the stars in the sky, while the void of darkness between them plummeted down to swallow Rogue whole.
"White Drive!"
"Shadow Drive!"
The storm of draconian magic flared and thickened around them as their already multiplied power skyrocketed, sharpening the spiky thorns of Sting's maelstrom of light and turning the waltz of Rogue's curtains of shadows into a thrash.
They had come at Natsu as completely different warriors than the Sting and Rogue he knew, attacking with onslaught after onslaught, destructive ferocious tenacity that felt familiar to him.
It was like when they had first started training together, after the Grand Magic Games.
Once more, they fought like they had something to prove.
Which meant a few of the smaller islands were shaved off the face of the planet, a stray Shadow Dragon's Roar one way, a deflected Holy Nova the other.
Natsu eventually found his footing, forced their assault back into a stalemate, spells often cast to the wayside for exchange after exchange of hand to hand.
Sting and Rogue weren't sure whether they wanted to stay stuck in this stalemate forever, or push their chances at proving what they wanted to, even knowing victory was probably not in the cards.
They were the twins of Sabertooth, dragon slayers no one took seriously, facing the strongest dragon slayer of them all, in a limit breaking bedlam brawl no one would see.
Eventually the decision they faced was made for them.
Natsu was waking back up, each elbow that sent him sinking down between the continental shelves shaking the rust off, each kick that could pave new canyons forcing him to hold nothing back.
Sting and Rogue knew they were humans, but lost themselves to this all the same, because they didn't fight Natsu as mages.
Tonight the twins fought as dragons.
They were prime examples of an extinct species, the lingering legacy of their fathers painting sky and earth with light and shadow and fire.
They immersed themselves in a world nobody but them could understand, feel instincts nobody but them could feel.
They continued to thrive in the clash, the White Dragon and the Shadow Dragon slowly forcing the Fire Dragon to awaken in kind.
The dragons did not dance, dancing was for Fairy Queens, instead they warred.
It was a war Natsu wasn't ready for, their stalemate ending as the twins both jumped back from their barrage of strikes into his guard.
"White Shadow Dragon Mode!" they boomed, the following shockwave forcing Natsu knee deep into the ground as he skidded back.
Each twin bathed themselves in the power of their brother, their burning pyre of magic swelling with its opposing element.
Natsu had little time to break out into a sweat, or notice the oceans between the smoldering ruins of the remaining islands boil.
Sting and Rogue stood there one moment, each half of their body smothered in black and white scales, then they were gone the next.
That was when they finally decided to make the full extent of the gap between them known.
Before, Natsu could've gained the advantage if he separated one twin from the other.
Now Sting paced wide impatient circles as Rogue outmaneuvered and overwhelmed Natsu on his lonesome.
Even when Natsu got away, buying time by avoiding their new dual element spells as if he had faced them before only lasted so long before the twins blitzed and pummeled him with physical strikes.
Knocked from one island to another beyond the horizon's crest by a White Shadow Dragon's Sword Horn from Rogue, Natsu quickly stirred in the remains of the canyon wall he had crashed into.
A monochrome sun ballooned over the curve of the horizon.
Like the tumble of tempest clouds, swathes of lily-white and raven magic came together in a spherical handshake, a mutual agreement to devastation.
Natsu staggered.
A unison raid was soon heading his way.
He wasn't sure how much he was supposed to give, if he was supposed to go further, join them in that world of dragons he had introduced and shared with them so many times before.
Natsu had shaken off his rust, but he still stood no chance as he was.
The only option was to escalate, give himself to the battle he loved so much.
Like a wild animal.
Natsu did not want to be a wild animal anymore.
He wasn't sure he wanted to go to that same place Sting and Rogue had, that happy place he once had.
Sting and Rogue, they weren't wild animals.
They were fighting as dragons, that's all. When it was all said and done, they'd go back to being human, back to that world where they belonged.
A deep quake from the brewing raid had the islands tottering.
Natsu quickly realized that those tremors hadn't reached him yet.
Other the distant damask sun wider than the horizon's bend, it was completely quiet and still.
It was him that was shivering.
He should've known better. It was kinda silly to think he'd still like all this after… Acnologia.
Natsu wanted to go see Yukino again. Go rest his head down in her lap for a bit longer.
But he couldn't.
He needed to make sure everyone had someone to keep them all smiling.
He needed to find out just how strong the Twin Dragons of Sabertooth really were.
The twins' rapturous roar came from oceans beyond.
"WHITE SHADOW DRAGON'S HOLY FLASH FANG!"
Duo-toned destruction came drilling through the slight curve of the planet in the form of white-filled black-edged beam, the perfect harmony between light and shadow dwarfing the island it had been shot from.
It hurtled toward Natsu, carving through crust and ocean.
Natsu sighed. Squared his shoulders. Got serious.
An ebony tattoo sizzled off the fabric of his sleeve, the powers of a Fire Dragon King dragging itself out of him, as if lazily tumbling out of bed.
"Whaddya say Dad?" Natsu murmured as he looked down at the marking on his arm.
It felt nice to pretend Igneel's power, his presence, his pride, was still there.
Natsu gave a slim, weary smile, "Wanna make em' work for it?"
Seeing just how far his brothers had come, seeing just how amazing they truly were, seeing if they were ready, Natsu was okay with being a wild animal for that.
Just this once.
The White and Shadow Dragons being stronger than him?
The Fire Dragon just couldn't help the fire in his belly.
The smoldering inside turned to a familiar churn, and another dragon joined the fray.
"I don't wanna be surpassed! I don't wanna be beaten!"
Natsu brought the full might of his Fire Dragon King Mode to bear, evaporating the archipelago's oceans in an instant.
From the center of a monstrous torrid eruption, Natsu let everything he had flare out into a cross of light crimson and cream flames, dragon wings spreading as a dragon head reared back to bellow at the sky.
"I wanna be blown out of the water!" Natsu howled.
The inbound unison raid neared its hundred mile journey, and Natsu cocked his arms back tight against his sides.
"Dragon Slayer Secret Art!"
With a circular swipe of his arms, Natsu let loose a winding torrent of titanic magmatic coils that exploded out in size to match the incoming beam, a barrage of tiny suns clinging to each fiery vine.
"Crimson Lotus: Exploding Flame Flare!"
Just like at the Grand Magic Games, the secret art and unison raid went toe to toe, their clash flattening exposed sea floor mountainscapes.
Natsu's secret art momentarily pushed the beam back to even ground between his island and the twin's, but it was clear that their prolonged blast would quickly win the struggle.
His secret art would end, he needed to get in close.
"Dragon Slayer Secret Art!" Natsu spread his stance, readying for take off, "Crimson Lotus: Hidden Fire Form! Flame Lotus Phoenix Blade!"
Those flaming wings took Natsu into the hollow insides of his last secret art like a bullet down a gun barrel, his dragon avatar making him a pointed blazing arrow.
With equal power, yet a much smaller point of impact, Natsu punctured the beam just in time for it to overcome his Exploding Flame Flare, smushing the coils into each other before destroying them entirely.
The squashed horizon bend let Sting and Rogue see Natsu rocketing through their unison raid, cleaving his way into a world of white towards them.
They had maxed out, they had thrown their best, and Natsu was still coming.
Reason had long given way for excitement, so Sting yelled out to his twin right beside him.
"Get in there! Give him everything! I got your back!"
Rogue, as battle crazed as he was, nodded, dived, and disappeared into the flow of their beam.
Sting was left to wildly ram against his ceiling to compensate for the loss of magic, roaring and writhing his way into keeping the attack from his palms going with just as much strength.
Natsu was still gaining ground as a blazing streak cleaving through their beam.
As ridiculous as it was to think they could beat him, emotions that had been bottled tight, now pouring out into the mess of battle, left Sting simply not caring.
He could finally prove his failure during the war would never happen again.
He'd be the dragon slayer Natsu thought he was.
He'd plant his feet. Grit his teeth. And push!
Sting exploded through his ceiling, and the ceiling after that, black and white scales glowing with as fierce a glare that flashed in his eyes.
He took his new vast wells of power to pull from, and multiplied it yet again. Everything Sting had came together to push the union of shadow and light further beyond.
"WHITE! SHADOW! OVERDRIVE!" Sting roared, the beam erupting in size as the magic storm of his expanding sable and alabaster aura obliterated the island he stood on in an instant.
Colossal chrome rings kept the beam's erratic shape contained as it flattened a sliver of the hemisphere and eventually shot out into space, taking several hurled islands with it.
It was as if the beam had come from Weisslogia himself, his gaping maw and its flowing whiskers coming together as stenciled starlight behind his son.
Natsu found his secret art forced to a halt under the withering force before being forced back to the island behind him, the only intact solid ground around him for dozens of miles.
He could hardly see anything, and slowly he and Sting were going to sink down into the crust, obliterating it with their magic without end.
He was pinned.
A black hole blossomed within the beam's beginning, bending its light in impossible ways.
The spasming singularity twinkled with nebulas of white and silver, the rupture to the darkness beneath the deepest hells echoing with a dragon roar.
Natsu had seen space time break before. He had no idea what he was looking at here.
Dragon talons gripped the black hole's edges, and the other Shadow Dragon emerged into view.
Skaidrum's specter pulled itself from the gap in space time, eyes white and teeth silver as the rest of dragon's apparition roiled like flowing ink.
Rogue lay inside of his father's twilight avatar, his storm of mercury magic throbbing as if the dragon wraith's beating heart.
He had reached the same heights, shattering his limits silently.
His father's ghost however, was deafening, letting loose a ghastly wail that flooded the inside of the beam with thick waves of shadowed miasma before he and Skiadrum launched themselves down the length of blast.
The twins had found peace with their fathers, so tonight they fought with them.
Natsu was all alone on that crumbling piece of earth, still stuck giving only one hundred percent.
Natsu didn't care how much time he was throwing away, he rummaged through the ashes inside to find more fuel.
Sting and Rogue were going to have to earn every last bit of his faith.
He found that the memory of Erza tonight, delicate in his arms, whimpering in his neck, was enough to have his scars splitting as the Flames of Emotion burst out, sprays of blood and fire spewing like paint.
The thrust of his Phoenix Blade began to split Sting's blast once more, Natsu's deep yowl of agony echoing across the hemisphere as the size of his blazing inferno climbed to nearly match the beam's size.
It was excruciating, always had been, always was, now more than ever. Yet it couldn't compare to the war.
Rogue would be on him in moments, and Sting's blast was winning a slow battle against his Phoenix Blade.
No time for another secret art, not that it mattered. With emotions ripping more power from him, a Fire Dragon King spell would be stronger than his last attacks.
Natsu held up a fist, wrapped it up tight in a second layer of thick amber and copper, then let that blaze swell to the limits of his will.
The battle would be over before that happened.
"Fire Dragon King's Demolition Fist!"
The phantom of Skiadrum came careening at him from the wicked darkness, as the roar of Weisslogia was relentless in trying to overwhelm him.
Natsu's rocky voice boomed with one last challenge to the twins.
"SHOW ME! WHAT YOU'LL GROW! BEYOND!"
Natsu sprung from his little crumpling chunk of rock, taking all of his fire to charge the stream of Sting's silver ringed star-beam head on.
"YA WANT THE TORCH!? COME TAKE IT!"
Natsu leapt into Skaidrum's caliginous maw to throw his last defiant strike, where Rogue and rows of platinum dragon fangs were there to meet him.
Natsu found himself smiling at the irony.
When Sting's feet touched solid ground again, he was pretty sure it was several miles below sea level.
He had fallen for quite a while after he stopped the unison raid, forced to unless he continue to obliterate his way further into the planet.
He was barely upright for a moment before he dropped to his base state and fell back squarely on his ass.
It took forever to catch his breath, to fully realize just how loud his aching muscles screamed, but he spent that eternity blinking burning sweat from his eyes.
He knew that this would be intense, it was supposed to be their first true outlet of their growing frustrations since the war.
Sting had not planned on pushing harder than he ever had before in his life.
Nor had he planned on losing control from the moment he ascended to Dragon Force, eventually leading to doing all… this…
Well, Sting really did have no idea how to exactly describe the destruction he sat up to.
The archipelago and its oceans and its seafloors, just gone.
All that was left was just a flat expanse of smoldering glass and rock.
Boy's night was always destructive, but he had just shaved off a little of the planet's curve. Natsu had contributed to none of this, they had escalated the fight, not him.
This had never happened, this didn't have to happen, he could've reached the same heights without all this, but the prospect of forcing Natsu to try had been too enticing to care about control.
He was in an uninhabitable part of the planet, fighting the strongest man on it, recklessness was not a concept out here.
His entire everything was now telling him he was a dumb-ass for thinking that.
Sting told his everything to stuff it. He and Rogue had just made Natsu get serious, even if this had been the sloppiest spar they had ever had.
He didn't see the final blow, but they probably hadn't won.
Either way they gave a very game Natsu a handful, forced him to pull out a mode they had never seen.
Before tonight they were so much stronger than they were during the war, but now?
They could've demolished those Spriggans that had tried to subjugate his guild.
They could've…
They could've…
Yet they hadn't. He hadn't.
Any sense of satisfaction was smothered as the frustration returned, here to stay.
Sting stared down at his shaking palms through blurry eyes, he had still failed when it mattered.
Where had this power been during the war?
Why had he been stuck as a pathetic excuse of a guild master that needed his own girlfriend to slap some sense into him?
Acnologia, that was so far out of his reach, not nearly as bitter a pill to swallow, not with Natsu there to do whatever it is he had done.
But that had been winnable.
Just like the Dragon King Festival, they should've been strong enough but they weren't and he had to keep going pretending that was okay.
Approaching movement brought Sting out of his head.
It was probably Natsu dragging back Rogue, still up and ready to fight while they're exhilaration had come and gone.
Sting looked up to see Rogue, panting as he emerged from a crevice of shadows to slip a limp Natsu off his back and carefully lower him to the ground.
Natsu's body steamed like bread fresh from an oven, his scars clotted with scorched blood as he laid there motionless.
Sting stared, the faint rise and fall of Natsu's chest to his right arm freed from its sleeve to expose the distinct shape of his guild mark seared deep into his shoulder.
Rogue, as exhausted as Sting was, braced himself on his knees as he waited and waited for Natsu to pop up and proclaim he was just joking.
He eventually stopped waiting. So did Sting.
Their older brother wasn't getting up.
The twins looked at each other, aghast.
Sting was the first one to wheeze out words.
"Did we just win?"