Holding it under his own like a bedroll and helping Gray move the unconscious Dragon Slayer up the stairs. Levy stood there for a moment, trembling with anger and shame at herself for hesitating like that, before she hurried after them as well.
...
Pantherlily and Happy were now zipping through the air in their smaller forms, dodging brooms wildly as the owners of those brooms either tried to chase them or continued to focus their efforts on the humans below instead. But either way, it was absolute chaos, with the brooms having to constantly veer to avoid hitting each other or one of the lift rails.
Lily shot up towards one of those rails and whooshed tightly around it in a swift U-turn, diving back down towards two of the others who were veering up at him. Red Stunners filled the air, but Lily skimmed underneath three and dodged another, shooting straight down the middle and between the two, and in that moment he suddenly grew to his battle size and threw his hands out.
His heavily muscled arms crashed into the pair and knocked them off their brooms, but before they could fall Lily seized them by their fronts and hoisted them up, depositing them onto one of the rails and leaving them clinging there for dear life as he drew his sword from his back and swept it through the air to sweep a couple spells aside, bellowing as he charged in towards the others and forced them to swerve aside to avoid his mighty swing.
Happy zig-zagged rapidly around, spells breezing past him as another of the broom riders followed in close behind him aiming for his flicking tail. But then Happy turned up sharply and did a tight loop-da-loop over the broom riders head until suddenly he'd landed on the twigs of the broom itself.
"Mind if I steer?" he asked as he gripped the broom and shoved it sideways, powering his Aera to turn the broom's direction sharply right. The rider yelled and clung on for dear life as Happy veered him around so he was shooting straight towards another broom rider. Happy leapt off as the two crashed into each other and fell, crashing onto the ice stairs below with their splintered brooms falling all around them.
Happy grinned to himself right as a couple of jets of light whisked by his wings. "WAAH!" he shouted, dodging to the side and wheeling around the stairs, only to discover that he wasn't the target. The remaining wizards were concentrating their fire on Lily, who was much bigger and therefore seemed to be the bigger threat. As Lily shot upwards with several wizards in hot pursuit, Happy flared his wings and shot up to meet them, attaching himself to the back of the head of one of them and placing his paws over the woman's eyes. The woman yelled and suddenly careened sideways, crashing into another woman before twisting the other way and knocking into a man, sending them both spinning as tried to pull Happy off with one hand while desperately holding the broom with the other.
"Nice, Happy!" Lily chuckled as he shrank back into normal form and dropped straight downwards, shooting by another couple of riders and then growing big again, swinging his sword around to slam another set of elevator doors out into the hall beyond. He then spun around to face the two riders that Happy's had hit. As they struggled to regain control he lengthened his sword to maximum, holding it horizontally with the flat side facing up. The two riders actually landed on the sword blade with a thud, standing on it as if it was a platform. But before they could recover their wits Lily twisted them around and stuck the tip of his sword through the open doors and raised the handle up, causing them to slide down the blade and out into the hallway beyond.
One of the last few remaining on their brooms, seeing most of his companions were now grounded, raised his wand and searched his memory for the biggest spell he could muster, determined to take at least the big cat down. But before he could find a spell a girl with long blond hair suddenly popped into existence in front of him, actually standing upright on his broom, and said, "Hi!"
"AAHH!" he bellowed and lost his grip on his broom, falling sideways and plummeting down. He landed with a thud on the broom behind the woman that Happy was still clinging to, and the blue Exceed steered them both around so they were shooting straight towards the open doors and let go, sweeping up and away. The two riders yelled as they landed with a crash into the hallway beyond.
That left only one rider, another woman, left. But as she readied her wand and pointed it at Lily, Happy suddenly grabbed her from behind and hoisted her off the broom. The broom itself was then grabbed by Lily, who snapped it like a dry twig in one hand and flew up towards her.
"Who… who are you lot? And what are you?" the woman croaked, ceasing her struggles when she realised that if Happy let go she'd go plummeting.
"If you don't already know then its a long explanation," Lily replied as he stowed his sword away. "But I'll tell you what we're not. We're not people who want to be your enemies. This is all one big mess, really, but you can tell your superiors this. We can be friends when they decide to be. And if they leave us alone, we'll leave you alone. But if we're attacked, we will defend ourselves. Simple as that."
"Nothing personal," agreed Happy as he set the woman down on another rail. Then he, Lily and Mavis all took off towards the door that the others had reached a while ago, leaving the woman staring after them, nonplussed.
"I think we did rather well there," Lily said as he shrank back to regular size. "We took all of them out but none of them fell to their deaths."
"It's so much better when we can just hit things with everything we've got," Gray muttered. "Instead of just holding back."
"How's Gajeel?"
"Damned out of it, that's for sure," Gildarts muttered as he shook Gajeel none too gently and smacked him across the face slightly. This last act served to knock some sense into the unconscious man and he gasped and heaved for breath.
"What… the hell happened?" he coughed.
"Damned if I know. They hit you with something but I don't know what," Gildarts hefted Gajeel back upright. "Doesn't seem to have done much lasting damage though. You alright?"
"Yeah… yeah… I'm fine…" Gajeel rubbed his eyes slightly. "Feel a bit dizzy but I'm fine."
Levy let out a sigh of relief, but when Gajeel's gaze turned towards her she winced and took a step back again, re-igniting her frustration with herself. But before Gajeel could comment, Mavis quickly said, "Gajeel, which way now?"
Gajeel grunted and took a deep sniff in through his nose. "This way," and he barrelled off down the corridor in the lead once more.
...
Several minutes prior to the events of the stairwell saw Wendy, Charla, Lisanna and Juvia dodging around the various officials that flattened themselves against the walls of the corridors to get out of their way, Wendy still taking the lead as her nose homed in on the scent of the Clippers. Right up until the point where Wendy pointed to a door up ahead and said, "Through there. They're definitely in there!"
"Coming through then!" Juvia shot past her and expanded her body out into a blast of water that impacted with the door and slammed it off its hinges, her body solidifying again as the four girls spilled through into the room beyond… and almost crashed straight into Charlie Weasley.
"Whoa! What the…!" Charlie stumbled backwards as Juvia's water stopped inches from washing over him, the water woman pulling back and solidifying at the last second.
"Who are you!?" cried one of about a dozen other people in the room, all of them in green robes and reaching for their wands. Juvia acted instantly and threw her hands out, encasing all of them at once into their own, individual Water Locks. Including Charlie.
Charlie gasped and floundered madly in the water for a couple of seconds before he realised… somehow… he could breathe. It was only then he felt the small air pocket that Juvia had created around his nose and mouth that was giving him the oxygen he needed. But the rest of the people in the room were quite clearly not able to breathe, kicking and struggling as they fought to reach the edge of the liquid spheres and break out, only for water to keep them very firmly in the middle no matter how much they flailed.
But the sounds of their kicking and clawing from breath were very much drowned out by the racket that was being kicked up by the Clippers.
Lisanna stepped forwards slowly, staring up at the huge cage the dominated the middle of the room in revulsion. It was at least twenty-five feet tall and twice as wide, and all thirty of the birds were crammed into it at once. Every time they flapped their wings they were beating them against the other birds and many of them were pecking and clawing at the bars, trying to get out to the open air where they belonged.