The newest member

Chapter 17

For a while, we all sat in silence, staring at Merrion. He peered at us intently, watching what few moves we made. Natsu stood up, clenching his fist and drawing it in.

"Well then, looks like we'll have to kill this thing good and proper right?"

"Aye sir" Happy shouted, his wings appearing as he jumped into the air.

"We don't even know where it is" Erza muttered, speaking what was probably on everyone's minds.

"Don't worry" Wendy said, nearly treading on my hand in her eagerness to stand. "We'll find it. You know Natsu, he can find anything with his nose and so there'll be no way that we don't find it soon."

"You bet" Natsu said. "Wendy and I can find it in no time. It'll be a piece of cake."

Erza looked hopeful for a split second before nodding. "And when we find it, we'll have to throw everything we have at it as soon as we can."

"Like we did with Hades" Lucy cried.

"Not the best example as that didn't work" Gray shrugged. "But I get what you mean."

Merrion clapped his hands. "Fantastic. Thank you so much for helping me out on this. I hoped someone would come to help but I never thought that they'd be this enthusiastic."

Lucy grinned and showed him her hand. "We're members of Fairy Tail, it's what we do."

We left the room with Merrion's task at hand, full of hope but as we descended further down into the volcano, I saw looks of fear cross across everyone's faces. We were all scared. Natsu and Wendy hadn't been able to scratch it before. Happy stopped floating and dropped onto Natsu's head.

"What's up buddy?" he said, moving his hand to rub his head.

"Natsu, what happens if we don't do this?" Happy asked quietly. "What happens if we die or something like that?"

"Then we die or something like that" Natsu grinned using the same hushed tone as Happy had. "But we're going to try not to. Stop worrying about this kind of stuff. You always think we're going to die."

Happy buried his face in Natsu's hair. "I guess."

"So where was it that you found the demon last?" Erza came up next to them.

"It was..." Natsu raised his head and sniffed the air. "It's... this way." He turned down a passage that appeared to our side and vanished down it.

"Wait Natsu" Lucy shouted and ran after him.

"That idiot" Gray shook his head. "He's going to get himself killed some day."

Erza sighed and we started after him.

When we'd finally caught up with him, we were all breathing hard. Natsu had stopped just in front of a thick, rocky wall.

"Great going Natsu" Gray snapped. "You've lead us down the wrong path, we're all tired now and we've got to go backwards and then forwards again down some other path that you'll  have lead us down, only to find that it'll probably be another dead end."

"Shut up Ice Brain" Natsu hissed. "I know what I'm doing and Wendy can confirm that. This happened last time."

"What? That you failed to actually find out where it was?"

Natsu punched the wall, hard and turned round. "Shut up, seriously, shut up."

"Calm down Natsu" Lucy muttered. "You don't want to go over the top again and find yourself totally killing the entire volcano. Either you destroy it or it blows up. We don't want that happening."

"Relax Lu" he said, grinning. "As I said, I know exactly what I'm doing."

He punched the wall again, this time harder and with a fist engulfed in flames.

"Natsu, stop it" Erza grasped hold of his arm. "As Lucy said, you'll bring the entire thing down on our heads."

He shook her off and punched it again. The wall caved in as did a bit of the floor. Happy, who had recently dived off his head flew down and caught him.

"See" Natsu grinned. "I know exactly what I'm doing."

Lucy sighed and peered cautiously down into the centre of the hole. It was a huge chamber, the bottom overflowing with a boiling hot, orange glow. It bubbled ferociously, sending small spits almost as high as we were.

"That's all very well" said Gray, leaning back from the ridge. "But where is the actual thing we've come to fight?"

Natsu laughed in a creepy way, rubbing his hands together and pointed towards a massive hole in the wall. "I'm gonna place bets on there."

He and Wendy flew down with Happy and Carla to see if it actually was what we were looking for and came back seconds later.

"Quick" Erza said, sharpening one of her blades on a nearby rock.

"It's not hard to spot a demon a gazillion times the size of you." Natsu demonstrated with his hands.

"It's definitely there" Wendy said, dropping to the floor. "And it's definitely over twice the size of the other one."

There was a metallic splash from beneath that sounded like someone walking through water. A leg the size of the Fairy Tail guild hall appeared out of the hole in the wall, making another loud splash before being followed by another of equal size. A claw like a dragon's gripped the edge of the rock, parts of it crumbling away and pulled something of great size forwards, into the light so we could see it; the other demon, the same as the other with it's scales of what looked like red flashed, supporting great, curly horns and squinting eyes, black as night.

Lucy made a choking, gasping noise and took a single, small step backwards before recovering herself and retaking the step. "We're... fighting that thing?"

"Oh yeah" Natsu said, one of his fists going up in flames. "I'm all fired up now."