An old rancher looked out onto his field and sighed, leaning forward on the fence around the field's perimeter. The sun was now halfway down the horizon, casting the land in twilight hues. Faint stars shone in the ever-encroaching night sky. Soon it would be too dark to safely (what safety one could muster) capture the planted horses, and the mages he'd been sent would have to retire for the evening.

The rancher stifled another sigh as he gazed towards the two lads, who stood a few yards away from each other in tense stances. Both were bruised and bloodied–from the horses as well as each other–but both had refused to come inside even as the hours and injuries stacked up. He'd tried to explain to them how people normally harvested the horses, but between the yelling and the kicking and the overall chaos the mages brought with them, he soon found even his patience tested. He'd left them alone after that, figuring that either they would get themselves knocked in the head and go home or give up. So far, to his surprise, neither had happened yet.

At this point, they might as well just come in and get treated along with a meal. As frustrated as he was with their inability to do their job, he also wasn't cruel enough to send them back home in such a state. He was about to yell out to them when the wind shifted, blowing a cool evening breeze across his back and the field. The two youths staring at each other gave faint nods as if the wind was a signal for something, and in that moment they began to move.

A scarf fluttered through the air as the fiery youth–Natsu he remembered–leaped up and slammed into the soil with one foot. Just as quickly, Natsu leaped back, landing softly. Not a second later a full-blown Plant Horse erupted from the ground below. It snorted, turning in Natsu's direction to charge him. The youth yelled, "Gray!" as the horse advanced.

Gray–the topless lad–(he wasn't topless when he arrived, to the rancher's faint recollection) immediately stretched out a palm and made a fist. "Ice Make…" he began, ice crystals forming in the air around him. The horse snapped its head towards Gray, sensing the magic being cast. Natsu put two fingers in his mouth for a shrill whistle. The creature whipped back towards him and whinnied, unsure of who to target first. And that was its fatal mistake.

"Ice Make Jaws!"

"Fire Dragon's Kick!"

The two things happened simultaneously, as far as the rancher could tell. He couldn't do magic, and to be honest he never once was jealous of the people who could. He'd always lived a simple life on the horse farm, and it was the simple things that called to him. But even he couldn't deny the flutter in his heart at what unfolded before his eyes.

Natsu launched into the air, delivering a fire-laced kick to the top of the horse's head that sent it into a daze, stumbling and nearly tripping. The fact that it wasn't knocked unconscious spoke of the sheer bulk of muscle Natsu was pushing through to even get it to stumble. And then before it had time to recover the other thing happened. A set of jaws, carnivorous in appearance, set their way right in the middle of the horse's path, the mouth opened just wide enough to entrap the horse without squeezing the life out of it. There it lay, perfectly nestled in between the two rows of teeth, the sheer cold finally pushing the creature over the edge, and it passed out within the jaws.

The rancher whistled. Well, I'll be.

And that wasn't the end of the miracles, as the rancher then watched the two men tiptoe quietly over to the other before wildly flailing their arms in celebration, their feet never leaving the ground. They even hugged. For two men who hadn't gotten along since they arrived, it almost brought a tear to the rancher's eye. Well, that and the fact that one of the creatures he asked them to capture was finally caught.

"Well done lads!" he bellowed from the fence. The two flinched and turned towards him sheepishly. He chuckled. It seemed they'd forgotten his meager presence entirely in their desperate battle against the Plant Horse. "I'm glad you found a good strategy to use on them!"

"Right, strategy...um, how many of these did you have planted again?" Gray called out.

"Well, let's see, I think we have a bumper crop this year so about two to three hundred, maybe more if we got lucky. So I'd like at least half of them picked–"

The two, who had been so full of joy and light, went pale in an instant and looked down at the field numbly. Natsu murmured something unintelligible from the distance which made Gray punch him in the shoulder. This made Natsu bare his teeth and punch back, a little harder. Gray rubbed his arm and then retaliated. Whatever he'd said, the camaraderie that'd built itself like a bridge between them was now smoking. The two devolved into a fistfight, completely losing themselves to the battle.

"Wait! Fellas!"

Two horses erupted from the ground beneath them, knocking both youths into the air before roughly landing back down. The rancher gave a low whistle when the two didn't get back up immediately. At least the first horse was trapped…for now. He should probably advise one of the two to carry it over here. If they could pull off the moves they just did, they should be able to move a horse no problem. That is when they woke up. He sighed again and yelled out towards home.

"Catherine! Ya better put on some food, these two louts will be hungry when they get inside!" He turned towards the setting sun, the sky growing darker and darker, and wondered just what on Earthland their guild must be like if every person in it were half as powerful, and half as stubborn, as those two.

A/N: I've been sitting on this conclusion to the Natsu/Gray interlude for a looooong time. Feels nice to finally have it "complete".