Chapter 30: Fire Dragon vs. Flame God
Happy's wings beat furiously against the smoke-choked air as he carried Natsu skyward, a tiny blue dot rising toward the behemoth of Phantom Lord. The metallic enormity of the walking fortress filled their vision, a cliff face of riveted iron and glowing lacrima ports.
"They have to have a weak spot!" Happy grunted, straining. "A vent, a window, something!"
"Just get me close to that cannon!" Natsu yelled, flames already wreathing his fists. As they neared the bulbous front of the fortress, directly below the still-smoking barrel of Jupiter, Natsu unleashed a torrent of fire. "Fire Dragon's Roar!"
The concentrated blast of orange flame washed over the cannon's housing. Metal glowed red, then white-hot, but the enchanted, lacrima-reinforced structure held. It warped and steamed, but did not break.
"It's no good, Natsu!" Happy cried, dodging a sudden spray of scalding steam from a ruptured pipe. "It's too tough from the outside!"
Natsu gritted his teeth, his mind working. The old Natsu would have kept roaring until his lungs gave out. But the new Natsu saw the problem. The barrel. It was a channel. "Then we go through the front door! Get me inside the barrel!"
Happy's eyes widened. "Inside the... the thing that just fired that huge blast?!"
"It's cooling down! Now, Happy!"
With a terrified "Aye, sir!" Happy banked sharply and shot straight into the dark, gaping maw of the Jupiter cannon. The interior was a hellish tunnel, walls still radiating blistering heat, smelling of ozone and melted magic. They flew deep into the heart of the fortress, following the path of the destructive beam.
They emerged not into a control room, but into a vast, cavernous chamber deep within the fortress's core. The air hummed with a deep, resonant power. In the center of the chamber, mounted on a complex series of gimbals and pulsing with violent crimson light, was a Lacrima of monstrous size. It was easily three times Natsu's height, a jagged, crystalline heart from which thick cables of pure energy snaked out into the walls and ceiling. This was the power source, the battery for the apocalyptic cannon.
"There it is!" Natsu landed, cracking his knuckles. "One good punch should…"
"Ah, ah, ah. Not so fast, little salamander."
The voice was smooth, languid, and dripping with arrogance. From a shadowed gantry above, a man dropped lightly to the floor. He had spiky red hair and wore a confident smirk. His attire was flamboyant, and a large, stylized tattoo of flames decorated his chest. Totomaru of the Element Four, the Flame God.
"I must say, I'm a bit disappointed," Totomaru said, examining his nails. "I was hoping Erza or maybe that ice pest would come play. But they send the guild's fireplace? How quaint."
"Get out of my way, matchstick," Natsu growled, flames flickering to life around him. "I've got a crystal to break."
"Your fire is very pretty," Totomaru said, his smirk widening. He lifted a hand, and with a casual snap of his fingers, the flames around Natsu's fists guttered and died. Natsu stared at his hands in shock.
"What...?"
"Fire is my domain, child," Totomaru purred. He gestured, and the very air in the chamber grew warm. Torches mounted on the walls, meant for illumination, suddenly blazed like infernos. The ambient heat from the Lacrima seemed to bend toward him. "I am Totomaru, master of flames. I can control any fire in my vicinity. That includes your paltry Dragon Slayer magic. Your power is mine to command."
He thrust his palm forward. The fire from the wall torches lashed out like whips, striking Natsu across the chest and sending him skidding backward. It was Natsu's own element, turned against him.
"Is that all you've got?!" Natsu pushed himself up, a grin spreading across his face. It wasn't his old, reckless grin. This was colder, sharper. "You control fire, huh? Okay. Let's see you control THIS."
Natsu didn't try to summon a neat flame. He didn't think about control or efficiency. He thought about the furnace in his gut, the dragon's rage. He opened himself to it.
"Fire Dragon's... ROAR!"
But it was not a normal Roar. It was a volcanic eruption. A cataclysmic geyser of raw, orange-yellow fire exploded from his mouth, so wide it nearly filled the chamber. It wasn't aimed. It was a deluge. The sheer, overwhelming VOLUME of flame was beyond control, beyond manipulation. It was like trying to command a tsunami with a teaspoon.
Totomaru's confident smirk vanished. His eyes widened in genuine alarm. He threw up his hands, his magic straining to wrest control of the tidal wave of fire. He managed to split it, to divert streams around him, but the central, concentrated force smashed into him like a physical battering ram. He was engulfed, hurled backward against the far wall with a sickening crunch of metal and bone.
The inferno subsided. The chamber was scorched black, the wall torches extinguished. Totomaru lay in a smoldering heap, his flamboyant clothes burned away, his skin blistering. He coughed, a trickle of blood at his lips, his eyes full of shock and pain.
Natsu walked forward, his own clothes smoking, his eyes glowing with an intense, dangerous light. The dragon within was pleased. A rival elementalist had been crushed. He stood over Totomaru, his fist igniting again, this time with a focused, white-hot intensity meant not to overwhelm, but to pierce and incinerate.
"Fire Dragon's…"
"NAATSUU!" Happy shrieked, flying in front of his face. "Stop! You can't! He's beaten! Destroy the Lacrima! That's the mission!"
Natsu's burning fist trembled. He looked from Happy's terrified face to the broken, helpless form of Totomaru. The killing urge, a blend of dragon instinct and cold strategy to eliminate a future threat, warred with the ghost of Natsu's inherent, brawling mercy. With a supreme effort, he let the flames die. He turned his back on the defeated Flame God.
"Fine. The toy first."
He turned to the giant Lacrima, the source of all their problems. He drew a breath, focusing not on volume, but on pure, penetrating heat. "Fire Dragon's... IRON FIST!" His punch, a concentrated spear of flame, struck the heart of the crystal.
A sound like a dying star echoed through the fortress. A web of light fractured the giant Lacrima from within. With a final, deafening CRACK, it exploded in a shower of harmless, dimming crystal shards. The deep hum of power ceased abruptly. The cables went dark. Jupiter was dead.
"Now," Natsu said, cracking his neck, the fire returning to his eyes. "Let's wreck this place from the inside out."
He and Happy burst from the power chamber into the main corridors of the moving fortress. Natsu was a force of nature, blasting through squads of stunned Phantom Lord mages, melting bulkheads, and turning hallways into tunnels of fire. The interior alarms wailed. The tide of battle within the iron giant was turning.
High in the command center, Jose Porla felt the magical feedback from the Lacrima's destruction. He saw the chaos spreading on his internal monitors. Rage, pure and incandescent, consumed him. "ENOUGH! If cannon and shades will not suffice, then we shall CRUSH them with our very SOUL! Initiate Final Protocol! All power to structural transformation! ACTIVATE THE SUPER MAGE GIANT PHANTOM MK II!"
Throughout the fortress, massive pistons engaged. The entire structure began to groan and shudder on a scale far beyond its walking gait. Walls realigned. Towers retracted. The spherical guild hall reconfigured itself, unfolding with the scream of tortured metal. Within minutes, the walking fortress had transformed. It was now a colossal, humanoid robotic knight, hundreds of feet tall, standing astride the edge of Magnolia, the Super Mage Giant.
Inside, in a shuddering corridor, Natsu suddenly stumbled. The world lurched. The smooth walk had become a jarring, swaying, unbalanced motion. The color drained from his face.
"Oh no," he groaned, a hand flying to his mouth. "Not now... the motion sickness..."
From a side corridor, a burned and limping Totomaru emerged, his body broken but his will sustained by hatred. He saw Natsu's weakness, the green tint to his skin. "The great Salamander, brought low by a little shake?" he wheezed, summoning the last of his power. His hands glowed with a swirling, multicolored fire. "This ends now! RAINBOW FIRE!"
A brilliant, prismatic lance of concentrated flame shot toward the incapacitated Natsu.
But it never reached him.
A wall of ice, three feet thick, erupted from the floor between them. The Rainbow Fire impacted and exploded against it in a shower of steam and melting ice.
"Did you really think he came alone, hothead?"
Gray Fullbuster stepped into the corridor, one hand extended, a trail of frost in his wake. Beside him, Elfman Strauss cracked his knuckles, his body swelling with his Beast Arm.
"Trying to finish off a sick comrade?" Elfman roared. "THAT IS NOT MANLY!"
Totomaru stared in disbelief. "How did you...?"
"The giant robot kinda stopped making Shades when it started transforming," Gray said with a cold smirk. "Figured the tin can's guts were the place to be." He pointed at Totomaru. "Elfman. Do the honors."
"WITH PLEASURE! BEAST ARM: HAMMER!" Elfman's arm morphed into a massive, bestial limb. He charged, grabbed the stunned and injured Totomaru, and with a titanic heave, hurled him not at a wall, but straight up through a shattered skylight in the corridor ceiling. "TAKE FLIGHT, YOU COWARD!"
Totomaru of the Element Four, the Flame God, shot like a burning comet out of his own guild and into the open sky, his scream fading into the distance, finally and definitively removed from the battle.
Gray walked over to the queasy, kneeling Natsu. "You alright, Flame Brain? Or are you gonna redecorate the robot's toes?"
Natsu looked up, managing a weak but grateful scowl. "Shut up... just get me to something that doesn't move..."
But outside, the colossal foot of the Super Mage Giant Phantom MK II was already rising, poised to stomp the ruins of Fairy Tail into dust. The battle had just escalated to a scale none of them had ever imagined.