"Alright, this is the plan."
The usual suspects—Natsu and Happy, Lucy, Gray, Erza, Wendy—huddled in the bushes near the target of their mission, the Dark Guild: Macabre Viper. The mayor of the nearby town had submitted a request stating that the wizards had been stealing the town's already-sparse supplies and needed to be dealt with. Typically, the group wasted no time in charging in, particularly Natsu, but the mayor had gone through great pains to detail the expert wizards hidden among the weaker ones, so Erza found it reasonable for them to exercise the same caution.
"To hell with a plan," Natsu muttered. "Take 'em by storm, that's my motto. Right, Happy?"
"Aye sir!"
"The mayor was especially frightened of these people, Natsu—don't you think that there's a reason for that?" Erza snapped.
"Don't make him think too hard, Erza, he'll hurt himself before the battle even starts," Gray said. Natsu's eyes flashed but he held himself back, lighting his fists up.
"That mayor doesn't know how strong I am! I'll burn all those dark bastards to a crisp!"
"Natsu, put your flames out or we'll—" Erza was cut off as the foliage around them soon caught fire from Natsu's heat, the tongues of flames skipping across the wood and leaves until all of their cover was up in a blaze of orange and red. Lucy and Gray turned towards the Guild as Erza occupied herself with strangling Natsu, Happy and Wendy being the witnesses to his funeral, and watched a group of thirty-something wizards pour out from the door and onto the sunned dirt.
"Looks like we've got a good fight on our hands," Gray said, jumping straight into the fray. Erza followed him, leaving Natsu lying disoriented on the burnt ground. Lucy left him with Happy as she drew a golden Key.
"Open, Gate of the Maiden! Virgo, drop these guys!"
"I expect punishment right after, Princess," Virgo said as she appeared with a swirl of sparks. Right after, the ground directly in front of the advancing wizards sunk inwards into a deep ravine. It caught the more slow-minded ones, maybe ten, but the rest leapt over, undeterred. Gray stepped in there and iced the ground, causing a good amount of them to lose their footing and fall on their faces.
Erza re-equipped into her Heaven's Wheel, and with a cry of "Blumenblatt!" she pierced the downed wizards, taking out half of them easily with her single attack. Wendy knocked out a couple with her Sky Dragon's Roar, but another came up behind her while she was occupied, hands alight with purple fire.
"Wendy!" Lucy called, but Natsu beat her to the punch: He decked the wizard so hard he skidded across the battlefield and nosedived into Virgo's lingering pitfall. She sighed and remembered that everyone there was completely insane and could care for themselves. "Virgo, gate closed. Open, Gate of the Lion—"
"Did you call me, my lady?" Loki purred, manifesting on one knee with his hand out. "Your guardian lion, at your service."
"Skip the dramatics, will you, Loki?" Lucy sighed as she changed to her Leo Star Dress. He rose with a smirk as he faced their opponents.
"Of course."
Macabre Viper was, as majority of guilds, no match for Fairy Tail. Still, Erza's warning about the wizards stuck in Natsu's brain as he used a water mage to beat down a fire mage (whose fire absolutely sucked, by the way) leaving just a few wizards standing. The one that cornered him was tall and smelled like a man, but he was cloaked so Natsu couldn't actually tell. "Mm, Natsu Dragneel, I've wanted to test your strength for a long time."
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Dragon Taming
FanfictionA tetralogy of NaLu one-shots. "Red Riding Hood" - Lucy's father warned her that the forest held dangerous animals like wolves. She did not expect, however, to see a dragon with his flying blue cat in her grandmother's house. "The Pastry Princess an...
