Ch 13: Sky Labyrinth

DISCLAIMER: *TAKES OFF SUNGLASSES AND ACTIVATES GEASS OF ABSOLUTE OBEDIENCE* I ORDER YOU TO HAND OVER ALL OWNERSHIP RIGHTS TO FAIRY TAIL!

HIRO MASHIMA POINTS AT LEFT EYE

NOOO! A GEASS CANCELLER! WELL, AT LEAST I TRIED.

AN: *pants* NOOO! Suzaku! Give me back my muse! *runs faster* Gino! Not you too! Rolo! Help me! *Rolo uses his Geass* JEREMIAH! Stop using your Geass Canceller! *Gino throws muse to Lelouch* YES! Give it to the person who can't outrun Milly! *tackles Lelouch and hugs muse to chest* You guys have done enough damage. Where did you come from anyways?

…if you couldn't tell already, Code Geass has stolen my Fairy Tail/Harry Potter muse and I just got it back. Though, Sayoko is staring at her a bit too much…even so, I HIGHLY recommend Code Geass for those who like a good action/drama anime, with LOTS of tragedy! Seriously, don't watch Code Geass unless you're ready to stay curled up in a ball on your bed, bawling and questioning your life purpose for hours on end. ^-^;

But I'm back, people! And I thank everyone who has stuck with me through my horribly inconsistent updating schedule! NOW, LET THE GRAND MAGIC GAMES BEGIN! …or, at least the elimination round!

Recap:

"The Grand Magic Games elimination round! Sky Labyrinth...begin!"

Lucy's POV

Sting immediately jumped for the wooden walkway, but Hikari pulled him back.

"Wait! Do you see the size of this Labyrinth?! We could be stuck inside for days!"

Rufus frowned. "So, what do you propose?"

Hikari grabbed her trunk charm, and threw it on the ground. She opened up the second compartment, and extracted her Firebolt and various potions. She handed the Firebolt to Rufus. "Here, you ride this, and Lucy and I will turn into wolves and carry Stung and Rogue. That way, we're all faster!"

Everyone nodded. Rogue pointed to the potions. "What are those for?"

"Those are for throwing at people we run across." Hikari grinned. "Don't worry, they aren't particularly lethal; they are just for slowing down other teams."

Sting hopped up and down, balancing on one foot. "Ikezou! We're being left behind!"

"Right!"

"Form Three!" Both of us yelled, and I gestured for Sting to get on. Hikari just clamped her jaws around Rogue's cloak, and swung him onto her back. I giggled.

Sting, on the other hand, tentatively ran his hands through my fur and pulled himself up, settling comfortably.

Kami was I glad that I was in Form Three, otherwise I was sure my face would be redder than Erza's hair!

Erza...I would see everyone. I just knew it. There would be no way in Heaven or Hell that Natsu or any other Tenrou member would miss out on the chance to become the number one Guild in Fiore. I sighed mentally and steeled myself.

"Ikezou! Team Sabertooth!" I cheered.

"Yeah!"

We jumped over the balcony rail, and sped off towards the Labyrinth. I could see all the other Guilds frantically scrambling up the long wooden walkway. I laughed.

"Look at all the others! Man, even though we had a late start, we're beating them by miles!" Sting whooped.

"We are!" I agreed, ramping up the speed. As I was looking around, my sensitive ears picked up a faint "Ikezou! Team Fairy Tail!" From my right.

Jerking my head towards the sound, my eyes alighted towards the group of five, whooping and yelling. I turned away.

I'll show you, Fairy Tail. The real Lucy Heartfilia is back, and she isn't taking any insults standing down! Besides, everyone knew that Sabers eat Fairies. And I was getting pretty hungry. I had pushed down the indignation and the pain of getting betrayed like that by my 'real' family so nee-chan and everyone else wouldn't worry so much, but now that we were headed into a competition, one that Fairy Tail would be participating in, I wouldn't hold back.

Overhead, Mato, the GMG's mascot, had started talking again. "Let's begin with an explanation of the elimination round's rules. This time around, there are 113 teams strong participating in the Grand Magic Games. The purpose of this elimination round is to cut down that number all at once to eight teams who will compete in the Games proper. The rule are simple. All of the teams must go from their inn to the Sky Labyrinth and make it from there to the Domus Flau, the Games' arena. The eight teams that arrive first survive the elimination round and will compete in the Games."

"Easy!" Sting shouted.

Rogue shushed him. "Be quiet, he's still talking. There may be conditions that will make this easier or harder for us."

Mato continued. "Furthermore, contestants are free to use magic to get through the maze, and there are no restrictions."

Hikari grinned around her wand, which she had just summoned. "Great! We'll be unstoppable!"

"What will you be doing?" Rufus enquired.

Hikari grinned darkly, canines flashing in the dark. "Oh, you know, just the standard procedure of incapacitating and erasing memories," she said. "What?" Hikari put on an innocent face. Well, as innocent as you could get while being a wolf.

No one answered her. We had all learned not to contradict or question Hikari when she got like this.

"However..." Now, Mato's voice had become sinister. "...even if lives are lost in the Labyrinth,"

"What?" I yelped. "People could die?! This is just the elimination round!"

"The Grand Magic Games executive committee assumes no responsibility!" Mato finished with a grin that sent shivers down my spine.

By this time, we had made it onto the Labyrinth.

Hikari looked around. "This maze is three-dimensional...this will be a pain."

"Even so, we'll come out on top! We gotta get through here and beat those Fairy Tail bastards to a pulp!" Sting grinned, slamming his fist into his open palm.

"Basically, we should head east." Rogue interjected. "The arena is in that direction."

I grinned. "In that case, count on me!" Summoning a Silver Key and clutching it in my mouth, I called out "Gate of the Compass, I open thee! Pyxis!" A silver Magic Circle opened up, and Pyxis appeared in a poof of smoke. He was an adorable red bird, with small eyes, a gigantic beak, and a compass on top of his head.

Pyxis used to be extremely notorious for getting directions wrong, but after the training I gave each of my Spirits up in the mountains, Pyxis was extremely reliable.

"Onegai, Pyxis! Tell us which way is east!"

Pyxis cawed, and the compass atop his head spun until it stopped in the direction of east.

"Alright! East is that way! Arigato Pyxis, you can go now." Pyxis cawed one more time, and left in a poof of smoke.

All of us headed towards the direction Pyxis pointed, and it wasn't until we were heading up the starts that I realized just how insanely complicated this maze was.

"We can't travel this way forever, you know..." Rogue trailed off as he looked upwards.

"Is the roof folded back over?!" Sting exclaimed.

Hikari bounded next to Rufus. "Rufus, can you memorize the route we're taking, along with the immediate surroundings so we know when we have gotten lost?"

Rufus nodded. "Good idea, Hikari. Memorized."

Hikari ran back next to me, and looked up at Rogue. "Are you doing okay? The Troia pills should be wearing off by now..."

Rogue shook his head. "For some reason, I'm not feeling sick at all."

"Same here," Sting said, frowning.

All of a sudden, Mato's face appeared in front of us. "Wah!" I yelped, stumbling a few steps back, while Hikari and a Rufus just jerked in surprise.

"I'll explain! For the elimination round, this entire Sky Labyrinth has been treated with magic so even those with motion sickness or fear of heights can compete fairly!" He disappeared immediately afterwards.

"Huh..." Hikari mused. "It's like one big Troia."

I giggled. "Maybe that means that Sting, Rogue, and Natsu aren't the only ones with motion sickness!"

Playing along, Hikari responded with a "Well then, that's pathetic."

"Hey!" Sting protested. "Don't lump me in with Dragneel!"

I laughed. "Gomen! Anyways, let's keep going east!"

"Right!"

We kept going in the general direction of east, sometimes having to loop around multiple times before we had gotten our bearings. The magic may have erased motion sickness and fear of heights, but it hadn't gotten rid of vertigo.

We had stumbled upon doors that go nowhere, endless pits, and tunnels that spun around and around and spit you out in the middle of nowhere, disappearing behind us.

"Watch out!" Hikari yelled, just managing to grab onto Sting, who had jumped off of me to examine a door that we couldn't fit in together. It was another door that led to thin air, and Sting had almost fallen.

"W-When Mato had said that they weren't taking responsibility even if people die..."

Rogue nodded grimly. "If we had fallen, we would've ended up on a street in Crocus, head first."

I shivered. "Let's walk a bit more cautiously this time..."

"It's weird, isn't it? We haven't even run into another Guild yet!" Sting exclaimed.

Hikari frowned. "It is weird. Even if this place is gigantic, there are 113 groups of 5 in this Labyrinth!"

"Shhh!" I shushed everyone, ears perked. "I hear someone..."

"You're the one who said that it was this way!"

"What, so it was my fault?!"

"Not that I care, but we've already been here once."

"See! I knew it!"

"Anyways, we gotta keep going or we'll run out of time!"

They came into our line of sight. "Holy shit! That mark..."

"It's Sabertooth!"

Rufus explained quietly. "They were our supposed 'rival Guild,' Titan Nose. It's seems like they still hold a grudge."

"I didn't expect to see your ugly mugs here!" One of the called, obviously faking bravado.

"I didn't expect to run into you either," Sting shot back.

"Heh! Well this year, Titan Nose will beat Sabertooth, and—"

SMASH!

A purple plume of smoke rose from where the potion crashed, and I heard a lot of cursing coming from inside the smoke. When it cleared, all five people had a canary face and useless feathery wings. They ran around, screeching at each other.

"Obliviate!"

All five became glassy-eyed, and they stumble around for a second before flopping onto the ground. Hikari lowered her wand.

"What was that?" Sting exclaimed.

"Memorized."

"The potion is called a Canary Bomb, something some prankster friends made back in Magical Britain. That was Obliviate, a spell to erase memories." Seeing our worried faces, she hastened to assure us. "But don't worry. I only erased their memories of the last 10 minutes. They should be fine in a few minutes. Same for the effects of the potion, it should wear off soon. Meanwhile..." She bounded up towards Titan Nose. "Why don't we take these maps of theirs?"

"Sugoī!" I called, running up to meet them. "Rufus!"

"Yeah. Memorized. According to these maps, we should head that way." He pointed towards a spiral staircase.

We all nodded.

"We should go out of out way to gather some maps, too. It wouldn't be that hard to beat some other Guilds and take their maps!" Hikari suggested.

"Good idea!" I cheered.

We kept moving, occasionally stopping to take maps from the other Guilds and Obliviating them. We were sure we had gotten close to the end when an alarm sounded, and the ground started shaking.

"W-What's happening!" I yelled, shifting to keep my balance. Sting clutched my fur harder, pressing down to keep himself from falling.

"T-The entire Labyrinth is rotating!" Hikari screamed back, pressing her flank against the side of a door. Rogue was clinging onto Hikari, already slightly slipping. Rufus, as he was on a broomstick, simply floated in mid-air.

"NANI?!"

I watched, claws digging into the concrete of the platform under me, as various Guild members began to fall. I spotted a pink head among them, and smiled slightly to myself.

"ROGUE!"

Hikari screamed as he slipped off her back, plummeting down. There was no platform anywhere near him, and I was afraid for a second that Rogue would seriously die. Hikari reached for his cloak that was fluttering madly with the sudden updrift, and clamped her jaws around.

Thin air.

Rufus made to dive down, but Hikari beat him to it. "Wingardium Leviosa!" She screamed.

For a heart-stopping moment, nothing happened.

Then, slowly, Rogue stopped falling and began to float upwards. Hikari grabbed him the first chance she got, and placed him back on her back.

"Are you okay?!" Hikari demanded.

Rogue smiled slightly, even though he was paler than normal. "I'm fine. Thanks."

"L-Let's keep going, minna," I suggested, even as the shaking stopped.

"It's stopped." Rufus called out.

"Yeah. But this is seriously screwed up! What kind of contraption is this?" Sting asked thin air.

"It was designed to pare 113 teams down to eight...and lots of teams were just shaken off." Hikari answered.

I tentatively peeked over the edge, and saw that the people who had fallen were caught by various Magic Circles. I sighed in relief. At least no one had died.

We walked on, more tentatively now, avoiding the riskier paths in case the Labyrinth decided to shake us off again. I began to hear shouting and faint explosions ahead.

"There are people ahead of us...a lot of them." I relayed.

"Huh, seems like we're going in the right direction then-woah!" Sting stopped mid-sentence, a ball of high pressure air magic zooming past his head and exploding against a staircase.

"Yup, we're definitely going in the right direction. Look how many Guilds are battling here!" Hikari exclaimed.

The area was a battlefield. Mages were running around, casting spells, screaming, and stealing pieces of paper from each other-maps.

We looked at each other and grinned, jumping into the fray.

I dodged around two Mages throwing balls of fire and ice at each other, and merely tackled a lone Mage off the edge of the platform-after I grabbed all of his maps. "Gomenasai!" I called. I didn't feel extremely bad doing that, now that I knew that Magic Circles would catch them if they fell.

"White Dragon's Roar!" Sting yelled, a laser beam of pure light magic raking the ground in front of us and throwing Mages into the air.

"It's Sabertooth!" I heard one panicked Mage yell.

"Let's scram!"

"What are you doing? This is our chance to defeat the-AH!" He screamed as a blast of shadow magic threw him across the platform.

"Nice!" Sting yelled. "We have five maps, but none of them are detailed! How about you guys?"

"Same," Rogue, Hikari, and Rufus chorused.

"Wonderful," Sting grumbled.

I scanned the area, and found a kneeling Mage, inspecting a multitude of maps as his colleagues protected him.

"Hey minna! He's got all the maps!"

We all charged, and the four Mages screamed and ran before we were even halfway there. The fifth Mage looked extremely betrayed, before grabbing his scattered maps and running in the direction his guild mates left.

I summoned Virgo's Key. "Gate of the Maiden, I open thee! Virgo!"

She appeared in front of us. "Punishment, Hime?"

I sweatdropped. "No! Virgo, dig a hole under the Mages!"

"Of course, Hime." She drilled into the platform and popped back up underneath the retreating Mages a few seconds later. They screamed, falling.

We walked over, peering over the edge. "We'll be taking that, thank you!" Hikari grinned, swishing her wand through the air and summoning the maps to Rogue's outstretched hand. Ignoring the howls of protest, we ran towards a path on the far end of the platform.

"Here," Rogue said, passing the maps to Rufus. "You should memorize them; it's easier than inspecting them every time we come to a new crossroad,"

"Yeah!" Hikari agreed. "We have lots of ground to make up for!"

"That way!" Rufus called, pointing off into the distance.

I squinted, and just barely made out the outline of the Domus Flau. "Minna! He's right! I can see the arena!"

"Alright! Ikezou!"

We ran, dodging falling Guild members and random brawls, heading towards the exit.

"Move!"

"Outta our way!"

"Excuse me!" I apologized to a guy that I had just rammed into. He scramble backwards and screamed. "A-A talking wolf!"

Everyone cleared out really fast afterwards.

"The-The hell?!"

We had just entered another door, and landed on a rocky pathway in the middle of the ocean.

"I don't know what this is, but I can see the end!" Hikari exclaimed.

Sure enough, at the end of the path lay a small, insignificant wooden door with the neon flashing word "GOAL" written on top. In front if the door stood Mato. Running fast, we reached the door, where Mato greeted us.

"Sting Eucliffe! Rogue Cheney! Rufus Lore! Hikari Heartfilia! Lucy Heartfilia! Congratulations! You passed the elimination round!"

"Yes! Are we first?" Sting demanded.

"As a matter of fact, you are! Congratulations to Sabertooth! You may pass through the door and wait for tomorrow!"

"Yosh!" We all cheered. Throwing open the door, we came across a long hallway.

"You guys are S-1!" Mato called after us.

"S-1..." I said to myself, walking down the hall until I reached a door that had S-1 on a plaque. "Seems like this is us!"

Opening the door, we found ourselves back in our inn.

"Looks like we're back, huh?" Hikari mused.

"Sugoī!" Sting shouted.

"Anyways, since we're first, we can expect to be waiting for a while. Let's just relax. Tomorrow's going to be a long day." Rufus said.

"Right."

The next hour was spent on devising battle strategies, as well as bouncing off ideas on each other about what would be in the GMG. Finally, there was a 'ding-ding-ding' noise that signified the end of the elimination round. We all ran to the balcony.

A hologram of Mato appeared in front of the labyrinth. "So, our eight teams are all present! Sky Labyrinth, the elimination round of the Grand Magic Games, is over! Which Guilds are going to participate in the real Games? You'll find out at the opening ceremony!"

AN: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand…CUT! We're finally getting into the Grand Magic Games! A lot is going to change, and some new characters will be introduced! I'm slightly surprised no one has guessed who the two traitors are…I guess I'll just have to drop some more hints!

I know that they never showed anything behind the wooden door, but I assumed it would take them back to their inn, since when Natsu went to Sabertooth to beat them up for what they did to Yukino, he was running along the streets of Crocus.

Next time, it's the Grand Magic Games Day 1! Hopefully this time I'll be able to update faster, and with a longer chapter!

Ja ne,

Kit Kat