Chapter Text
"Oh no, oh no, oh no. This is so bad Flash!" Walking through a field behind the college I'm panicking as my exceed tries to calm me down.
"Calm down Crista, it's not like they've made a move yet!" Flash attempts to cheer me up.
"Flash, you heard Mr Siegrain! They're not happy, it's only a matter of time before they come!" Flash keeps trying to cheer me up but I just shake my head at her, "Flash, I had a bad feeling before that assembly and it hasn't gone away!"
Flash sighs, her face full of confusion, "What's with all these bad feelings all of a sudden? It use to only be when Gajeel was bored looking for a fight, what are you - psychic?"
I glare at my exceed, now isn't the time for joking! "Not as far as I know, but they haven't been wrong so far!" I say with a sigh. We were too busy arguing to even notice Mr Siegrain walking up behind us.
"Cristallia Draco I presume, what are you doing out here all alone? I thought I said to stay in groups." Taken by surprise at my head teachers sudden arrival I find my mind can't think of anything to do except identify the man in front of me.
Flash manages to come up with more of a response than just the guys name, "Hey, she's not alone! I'm here too!" Flash's tone shows that she's clearly irritated at not being included.
The head teacher smiled down at my small exceed, "yes I see that, although travelling with a cat isn't what I had meant when I said to travel in a group." He continues when Flash glares at him, "I don't intend to be rude exceed, it's just that dealing with demons may take more than one cat's help!"
Before Flash has the chance to reply I hear a familiar voice and it's not long before I see the pink head it belongs to, "Like we'd ever leave her alone with just Flash Mr Siegrain, there's nothing to worry about!" Natsu charms in with a smile.
"Oh, Natsu, and Gray, Erza, Wendy and Lucy too!" Mr Siegrain replies as he turns towards my incoming friends, again missing out the two exceeds with them.
Another voice calls out from the other side of Mr Siegrain, "we wouldn't leave her on her own either, Mr Siegrain, she did save us from being killed by thorns after all!" I'm surprised to see that it was Sting who defended me, with Rogue and Gajeel walking up behind him - their own exceeds in tow.
"Ah, I see she has a good group of friends here already then, well with all of you here I'm sure there's nothing to worry about." Mr Siegrain says with a smile and begins to walk off.
Before Mr Siegrain can get very far we hear a voice call out from behind us, "I see we've found a peppy little wizard and her friends!" I wish the voice wasn't so familiar as I turn around to see the Etherious Jackal, standing with Kyoka, Mard Geer, the young man I'd seen at the gate and a tall, well- built man with spiky black hair, similar to Gray's. There are other demons in the surrounding trees.
Mr Siegrain turns towards the young man, "Mr Zeref, I will not allow you or your students harm any of my students." The young man just grins at him in response, this is the dark mage Zeref? The most feared and thought to be the most powerful mage in existence?
Flash steps forward slightly, becoming in line with me, "I thought you weren't going to be responsible for your students actions, but if you're here then aren't you responsible Mr Zeref?" What was Flash up to? Whatever it was Mr Zeref wasn't intending on playing along and instead turns towards Jackal.
"Is she the one who keeps stopping you?" Jackal nods in response and Zeref glances at me before talking to the Etherious again, "She doesn't exactly look like much, she shouldn't have been any trouble for an Etherious demon." Jackal looks away from Zeref, clearly not happy with failing the dark mage, Zeref just turns towards the other man, "Silver, take her out." He says and waves lazily towards me.
Silver steps forwards and I take a small step away, not sure of what to expect. "Ice Devil, Rage!" Silver sends and blizzard towards me, much like my own dragon roar, but there's no way that I, or Flash for that matter, have time to get out of the way so I grab Flash and try to shield her with my own body.
I'm surprised when the attack doesn't hit and even more surprised when I glance up and see Gajeel in front of me, taking the hit; he's sent flying backwards and lands in an unmoving heap on the ground. Gajeel just took a hit from a Tartaros member for me? A devil slayer's attack for me? "GAJEEL!" Without even thinking I drop Flash and dart towards the unsuspecting Silver, I don't notice my now floating, silver hair, or the crystal gems on my shoulders, or the patches of shining scale patterns on my skin, I don't even notice the fact my body is glowing, all I can think about is the fact that he hurt my friend who was defending me! "Crystal Dragon, Sword Horn!" Surrounding my entire body with blazing crystals I head butt into Silver and send him flying backwards into the crowd of demons behind him, glancing behind me I see that Wendy and Chelia - who has arrived with Lyon, Levy, Cobra, and Laxus - are already healing Gajeel, and Sting, Rogue, Natsu, Gray and Erza are all running towards me to back me up.
It's not long before my friends reach me, Sting and Rogue immediately switch to their dragon force forms, Natsu just stares at me until I realise that he's waiting for me to help him into his dragon force form. I reach out and grab Natsu's shoulder, focusing my energy I flood his system with Ethernano and he takes on his dragon force form again. Within this time Silver has returned to his feet and started towards us, "Leave him to me!" Gray steps out in front of us, "no one gets to use ice for bad like that when I'm around!" he says as he takes up his ice-make casting stance.
Looking away from Gray I see that Zeref and the other demons have started their approach towards us. I see Sting turn to Rogue, "come on, let's go deal with that thorny freak, no one traps the Twin Dragons of Sabertooth like that!" Rogue nods at his friends and they run off towards Mard Geer.
Natsu runs past me towards the demons, "I've got Jackal!" is all he says as he launches into the fight.
Erza hesitates and turns to me first, "Crista, do you want me to..." but I cut her off before she can finish.
"Deal with Kyoka, I've got Zeref!" I order towards Erza and I'm surprised when Erza nods and obeys me, I'd expected her to fight me more on this choice. I turn back towards Zeref and he just laughs at my confidence. Raising my arms I cast my enchantments, "Plas Agilitas! Plas Tuela! Plas Virtus!" like Wendy's Ile enchantments my Plas spells increase my speed, defence and attack more than my standard enchantments do. Charging towards Zeref I start my entourage of attacks, "Crystal Dragon, Slash!" "Crystal Dragon, Talon!" "Crystal Dragon, Crushing Fang!" I launch attack after attack on my enemy and send him flying backwards.
I'm surprised when he easily recovers using only one hand to regain his composure. "Even with your dragon force a little wizard like you is not enough to beat me, you should quit while you're alive." Angered by him implying I'm weak I start to run towards him again, but he launches out an attack towards me "Death Orb" from just the name I know I need to avoid the attack and it's not hard with my enhanced speed, I side-somersault out of the path of the attack. He tuts at me, "You won't avoid this one so easily, Death Predation" a black dome surrounds him and starts to expand out towards me, and there's nowhere I can run to.
I feel the familiar paws gripping the back of my armour as I'm lifted into the air and we fly away from the attack, out of its range. "Thank God Flash, I thought I was gone for then!" I smile at my exceed as we float back down, I decide now is a good time to attack while Zeref's recovering from casting his spell, "Crystal Dragon, ROAR!" I launch my attack, direct hit! But it looks like Zeref wasn't even effected!
Landing back on the ground Zeref shakes his head at me, "I thought we were the ones fighting here wizard!" He briefly closes his eyes and then our surrounding change colour - more specifically they become inverted colours, "there, that's better, no more interruptions." He continues as I look worriedly at Flash, "no need to worry little wizard, they're unharmed, just frozen in time. All of them except the two of us. Now let's see what you're made of, can you even deal with some my demon creations - Nemesis!"
Demons rise from the surrounding rubble and start to rush towards me. I allow them to draw closer and raise one arm in the air, my hand spread out, "Fusion Dragon, Nova!" although not as strong as when I teamed up with Natsu the explosion is enough to get rid of the demons Zeref had sent to attack me.
"Very good, but how long can you keep this up I wonder?" More demons rise and I continue to fight them. Long after I'd lost count of how many demon armies Zeref had sent my way I'm definitely tiring, but it appears Zeref hasn't noticed. "I grow bored of this," he's bored! While attacking me with demons, I don't know how much more I can take! "I think it's time to finish this. Death Pillar" Zeref conjures a pillar of his black, death magic and it spreads out towards me.
I drop down to my knees, what can I do? Flash can't get me out, I can't fight it off, I can't dodge it! I've almost given up completely when I get an overwhelming urge to use my fusion dragon secret art and a voice in my head calls out to me, 'don't give up Crista, you're a dragon tamer, use the power they could never understand!' MOTHER?! Standing back up I reach into the makeshift pockets in my battle armour and take out one of the crystals Levy had made for me and bite into it, Zeref's attack is mere inches from me, I feel the power from the crystals surge through me as my wings burst out of my shoulder blades; I'm taken completely by surprise when his attack disperses with each flap of my wings. Clearing the attack Zeref is left speechless at me standing unharmed, then I realise he thought I was just an ordinary dragon slayer!
"What? You thought I was just any old dragon slayer? Well you're wrong!" Flapping my wings I start to fly towards the dark mage, he's still in shock, "I'm the rarest type of dragon slayer, I'm a dragon tamer! And like I told you're Etherious demons, you're power gained from hatred and anger could never defeat the power I get from the bonds I hold with my friends!" To emphasise my point I stretch out my wings, they're usual colours show the powers of the dragon and dragon slayer friends I have: deep blue for my crystal dragon mother; bright orange for Natsu's fire dragon magic and my part flame dragon sister; pale, light blue for Wendy's sky dragon magic; pitch black for Rogue's shadow dragon magic; pure white for Sting's white dragon magic; electric yellow for Laxus's lighting dragon magic - all of which were already in my wings before the demons arrived; there's also a murky purple which I presume to be for Cobra's poison dragon magic, he did help rescue Wendy and showed up at this fight; and a silvery-grey which I presume to be Gajeel's iron dragon magic, he did take that hit for me and I am currently fighting for him - makes sense! "Dragon tamer secret art!" the many powers engulf me in the shape of a dragon as I fly towards Zeref, "Dragon Soul!" The dragon surrounding me leaves and attacks Zeref, breaking us free of his time freezing magic, I see the shock of all of the demons and wizards at my attack overpowering Zeref and it's not long before they all retreat back to their own college.
Landing back on the ground my wings and dragon force leave me, I am exhausted from the fight but despite that I feel better than I ever have before. The other fighting wizards allow the retreating demons to leave and run to crowd me showering me with congratulations, the group that had arrived with Chelia have taken Gajeel to the infirmary and the young girl is running towards us with Wendy to heal us from the fight, Mr Siegrain is also making his way towards us, when he arrives he immediately starts speaking to me, "My Cristallia, I had no idea we had such a strong wizard in our school." He says to me with a smile, "although I would've preferred for this to be settled peacefully"
"Come on Mr Siegrain! There's no way that would've gone peacefully! Anyway, it's not like anyone was seriously injured, we're all fine and Zeref and his demons were all able to run away! Well except maybe Gajeel, but that wasn't Crista's fault!" Natsu immediately jumps to my defence and everyone else backs us up.
"I guess you're right Natsu. Anyway, it was a very impressive fight Cristallia." Mr Siegrain smiles at me as he turns around to walk away.
"Oh, thank you Mr Siegrain." I reply and then steal my courage for my next sentence, "and Mr Siegrain..." the head teacher looks back towards me, "it's just Crista!" I say with a smile, he smiles back and agreed to call me by Crista from now on.
"Come on guys, we've got Christmas to plan!" Erza orders us back to the college once Wendy and Chelia have had a chance to heal all of us and we head back towards the dorms, all smiling and laughing.
***
Running down the dorm stairs with a bag of presents over one shoulder I feel so much like Santa, Flash is flying close behind with her own bag of gifts! It's Christmas day, finally! Natsu and co agreed to involve Rogue and Sting in this year's presents and that did involve Gajeel joining too. We're now on the way to the allotment where we'd decided to do our present exchange.
Running through the snow and ice covered allotment probably wasn't the best idea; just as I get into view of my friends I manage to fall over, I'm lucky though, Rogue was there to catch me before I hit the ground - only to fall over himself a few steps later and take me down with him as I try to keep him upright! We exchange gifts - as you do at Christmas! - Natsu got me a crystal pendent in the shape of a dragon, I got him a similar pendent in the shape of a flame. Most of the other gifts were similar - related to our magic in some way, although I got Happy the biggest fish I could find on the market and I got Erza a cake with a legendary strawberry and the promise of a picnic in the summer. I now hand over my gift to Gajeel, glad I'd managed to find Master Makarov before I'd got the stuff for this plan, he opens it and holds up the pendant with the symbol of Fairy Tail on it, "welcome to Fairy Tail Gajeel!" I say with a smile!