Enjoy your Corona Virus update guys. I restart school online next week!

Erza landed, just avoiding a giant foot that came stomping her way. She took a few deep breaths. They were fighting a reactionary battle. They wouldn't last if all they could do was go on the offensive. She watched Gray shoot out an ice hammer and one of Lucy's spirits, Scorpio if she recalled correctly, unleash a powerful sand blast as the beast tried to step on Lucy.

Erza's eyes darted side to side, analyzing as quickly as she could. They needed a strategy.

"Lucy!" Erza jumped over to the blond's side as quickly as she could, a rough plan starting to form.

"Yeah?" the blonde asked looking a little piqued. She was probably getting a bit tired. They had been going at this for nearly an hour with no rest. They couldn't afford to take a break and let the thing slip away after all.

"Do you have a spirit capable of stopping the creature's movement?"

"Are you kidding!?" Lucy rebuked. "That thing's massive!"

"We won't win this fight and keep it alive if we go full out." Erza gave her a stern look for a moment. "You won't be alone but we need to think creatively. Gray and I can distract it if you can stop its movement just for a few moments."

Lucy paused, thinking. A foot slammed down near them and Lucy whipped out a key. "Okay, alright already!" she cried out, flustered. "I don't know how long it'll help, but gate of the ram: Aries!"

A small pink girl sprung forth in a cloud of smoke and Erza hopped away toward Gray taking a swipe at the things face to keep it distracted from Lucy. The distraction worked like a charm but that meant she had a harder time letting Gray know what she needed him to do. She flew past him and he let a massive ice attack hit the thing square in its face. She redirected herself and swung back his way already preparing a requip into her Heaven's Wheel armor.

Pink wool sprouted around the thing's feet ensnaring it, but it didn't stop. It started curling around the neck.

"Gray!" she shouted, just behind him. "As much ice as you can. Try to trap it!"

A smirk shot across the ice wizard's face. Apparently he accepted the challenge.

She cast forth her own magic calling out some of the material used to make her Robe of Yuen. With the fabric in hand she raced forward swinging between legs and over its back. Each time she touched the ground she used a sword to pin the fabric deep into the ground. With the last point pinned she jumped back.

"Ice make: Prison!" Gray's maker magic flew past her. She was expecting the see a tall stylized prison cell like he'd used to trap Natsu in the past, but instead the ice was snug to the creature's body. It struggled, letting out a roar.

Erza surveyed their handiwork as they all met in front of it. It seemed well and truly caught.

"Oh man." Lucy dropped onto the ground with a sigh. "I'm so glad that's over."

"Good work team!" Erza said with pride, beaming at the two.

"Remind me why we couldn't just fight it normally." Gray prompted.

"You guys actually did it." the boy had wandered forward. He didn't seem worried about the struggling creature just ahead of him.

Erza gave him an encouraging smile as Lucy thanked Aries for her help. "I made a promise to help you, didn't I?"

The boy teared up. "San." he said simply, not meeting her eyes.

"San?" she repeated.

"My name."

She smiles.

"Erza?" Gray sounds unsure and as she turns around she can see why. The creature has slumped down. It's no longer fighting its restraints and it's looking at them almost docilely.

"Koza!" San shouts dodging around the group before they can react. He runs and jumps onto the thing's nose and stays there holding tight. "You're awake!"

The thing huffs in... amusement?

"That's super weird." Lucy comments off handedly.

With a slight frown Erza approaches the boy. "I'm not sure that's safe yet." she says taking the boy's shirt and gently pulling him from the creature. She backs up a few paces so it can see her. "You seem to have calmed down."

The thing gives her a huge huff of air in response. "San tells me you're his brother." Erza says, casually.

"That thing's his brother!" Lucy points and yells.

Erza turns disapproving eyes on the blonde.

"Lucy, don't be rude."

"Yeah! Don't be rude!" San agrees loudly.

A rumbling starts from where Koza is and everyone turns his way quickly. Koza seems to be panicking himself if the look in his eyes and the thrashing is anything to judge by. Without warning Koza lets out a piercing roar that staggers off into what sounds almost like a human scream and his head slumps to the ground.

"K-Koza?" San asks, stepping forward. His shirt snags where Erza has refused to let go. Her face is set in a serious scowl. Whatever just happened wasn't their doing and it didn't seem like it was a good thing particularly.

"Gray, Lucy," she turned to her guild mates, "take San back to town."

"What?!" San protested, pulling hard against her grasp. "No way! He's my brother! You can't just-"

Erza knelt down matching his eye level and letting go of him. "San, I brought you here so that you could show us where we needed to go to help your brother. Now you have to let us do that." she said before slowing putting a comforting hand on his shoulder. "I know you want to help, but this is the best way you can right now."

San looked uncertain, and on the verge of tears once more, but he nodded his assent.

"Keep him safe." Erza looked up at Gray and Lucy. Neither was fighting her on the decision. They both knew that a civilian's life was important to protect, especially when it was a child. "We don't know what just caused that to happen. There could be something else in this forest."

Gray just nodded. Lucy looked scared but determined as she returned Erza's look. They wished each other luck and headed in opposite directions.

"I'm okay Kosmos." Harry assured the girl for the tenth time as her hands sort of fluttered just shy of touching him. He was leaning over the unconscious boy on the floor checking all his vitals one more time. Whatever the ring had held it didn't seem to have affected his physical body. The boy was still breathing, slow and deep. He looked gaunt from the lack of nutrition for who knows how long, but otherwise Harry would say he looked reasonably healthy. "I think it'll be okay to move him."

Natsu stepped forward and Kosmos and Harry helped situate the unconscious boy on Natsu's back. Harry could've levitated him if he weren't worried about running into the weird woman again and losing control of the spell. Similarly they could have had Happy carry him, but Harry didn't really want the boy's unconscious body dangling like that. It seemed risky. Besides, if they ran into the crazy woman again Harry trusted Natsu's reaction times a bit more.

With the boy secured as best he could be to Natsu's back they set out the way the rescue team had come in. "Do you guys remember the whole way out?" Harry asked with some trepidation. He recalled his point me spells being far from useful earlier.

"Now that the weird smell's gone I can smell our way out of here." Natsu assured him with vigor. Harry was a bit envious of the kid's never ending energy sometimes.

The group set off through a familiar tunnel moving back toward outside hopefully. It didn't take long before they could hear quickly approaching footsteps. They gave each other looks and Harry and Kosmos shifted in front of Natsu despite his protests. Harry had to remind him he was carrying someone.

Harry could feel a spell on the tip of his tongue and nearly hit Erza with a reducto as she flew around a corner. She skidded to a stop with a relieved look. "Good, you're all okay."

"I don't know. Harry's face is pretty messed up." Happy replied cheerfully.

Harry glanced sideways at the cat, unsure what to make of the slight jab. Erza frowned.

"It's nothing. I'll be fine." Harry waved away the girl's concern. "We need to get him to a doctor."

Harry gestured to the unconscious boy on Natsu's back. Erza strode forward and examined him for a moment. "This must be Koza." she said, sounding mildly relieved after her own exam. She glanced to Harry. "Something happened to the creature while we were fighting it. It looked almost like it... he died."

Harry flinched just a bit. Was that a good thing? Harry had no idea, but he had an answer as to why it had probably happened in any case. He withdrew the odd ring and showed it to Erza. "I was able to communicate enough with the boy. This thing was connected to his consciousness somehow. It was destroyed in the fighting."

"Are there any more enemies?"

"The woman ran off after the ring was broken." Kosmos supplied with a flip of her hair. "It was not beautiful."

"We were staying on guard in case she showed back up, but I figured we should try to get the kid to a doctor in the mean time."

Erza nodded and the group set out again with new determination. They made quick time exiting the caves. Apparently if Harry had taken two rights and a left from his initial position he would have found the exit. Events might have played out differently if he hadn't found the cavern. He was hoping beyond hope that the ring breaking was a good thing.

The travel back to town took longer than Harry would have thought, but he was unconscious the first time he'd made the trip. Waiting at the gates was the rest of their group and the small boy Harry recognized from kicking him in the shin.

"Koza!" the kid yelled running forward and grasping at the unconscious boy's pants. Tears poured down the small face and Harry hoped again that they'd managed to help.

Harry let the doctor prod at his nose and tried to keep from wincing every time the old man rubbed against the large cut that ran across it. He'd only let the man look after him after he'd spent nearly an hour checking everything he could possibly check on the unconscious Koza. According to the doctor the kid just appeared to be sleeping. He'd set up an IV of sorts and it seemed to be working to restore the kid's bodily fluids. The doctor assured him if the boy hadn't woken up in a few hours he'd place a feeding tube since the boy looked so malnourished. The longer Koza went without waking the more the guilt ate at Harry's stomach though. Had he let a kid die in front of him because he hadn't stopped Natsu from stepping on something he knew was important. Harry certainly didn't blame Natsu. He blamed himself.

"Hold still." the doctor swatted his arm sharply and Harry realized he'd been been chewing his bottom lip.

The doctor was applying some sort of magic salve after having done some rudimentary stitches. Harry had honestly been surprised when he finally saw a mirror. He'd looked like hell. The cut running across his nose had been much larger than he'd initially thought. He'd be surprised if it didn't scar pretty badly.

With a final slap the doctor adhered a bandage across the middle of Harry's face and Harry had to swing his arms to keep from toppling out of his chair.

"Idiot kids." the old man groused, not realizing Harry was much, much older than him. Still, Harry took the admonishment in stride.

"Thank you." he replied, standing.

"Whatever, wait outside."

Harry wanted to ask about Koza, but he followed the grumpy man's instructions and exited the house belatedly wondering if all healers in this new world were such grumps. The one's he'd met so far certainly were.

"Harry!"

He was met by the rest of his team outside the door. It was Natsu that was greeting him happily. Everyone else seemed a touch melancholic, Erza most of all.

Harry opened his mouth to respond, only for the door to open behind him and the doctor to poke his head out.

"You might want to see this."

Harry prepared himself mentally for whatever laid on the other side of that door. Was Koza taking a turn for the worst? Had he died suddenly?

Gold eyes met green as he turned toward the bed. Harry blinked a few times as the rest of his group filed in behind him. San was sobbing onto his brother's lap, but Harry figured that was probably because he was happy his brother was awake.

Harry felt like he might join San in the sobbing.

"Hi." Koza croaked, weakly.

The Fairy Tail team spent nearly a week in Clover after the incident had concluded. Erza claimed their reward, but the odd creature body Koza had inhabited had disappeared. Without proof of the thing's death their reward was halved, to Lucy's obvious horror.

Harry was just elated that Koza was alive and seemed to be functioning normally again. Once he was back on his feet and could move out of the doctor's house Erza pulled the kid aside. Most of the Fairy Tail group had disappeared to do odd jobs around town while they waited for Erza to announce it was time to return home, but Harry had stuck pretty close to the kid's sides, unsure if the weird woman from the caves would reappear. He followed Erza as she sat the two children down and had them explain how the entire problem had come to be.

Apparently both brother's were orphans. Their parents died when they were young and their aunt, the woman who had paid for the reward, was taking care of them. Both boys had a habit of disappearing because they felt like their aunt didn't really care for them. Harry cleared his throat suddenly, interrupting the story. Curious golden eyes raised to his and he apologized. He'd thought he was long over his discomfort from his days with the Dursleys. Apparently he was wrong. Or maybe it was just hard to hear it happened to other people to. Though, it didn't sound like the boys lived in cupboard, so maybe not quite as bad. He tried to shake off the feeling.

"We liked to go up to the caves. We knew them pretty well." Koza explained, eyes drifting. "One day we were up there and we ran into a lady."

"The one from the cave?" Harry asked.

Koza shook his head. "She was blond, like the bee lady." It struck Harry that the woman had in fact been wearing bee themed clothing. A yellow yukata with a thick black obi. "But she was really nice. She told us that if we wanted she could make it so we never had to go back to Aunty again."

Well, that didn't sound foreboding. Harry shook his head just slightly.

"She gave you the ring?" Erza asked removing half of the thing from one of her pocket dimensions. It gleamed just a bit in the low light.

Koza nodded. "And she told us how to make it work." Koza admitted. "She said it would make all our problems go away."

"She lied!" San exclaimed angrily.

Koza nodded. "At first it didn't look like anything was happening. We came back to Aunty's house. A few days later these weird scale things started popping up on me. I went back to the caves to find the lady... and then I was in that thing. It was like it split out of me or something."

Harry was nodding along seriously. He could only imagine how terrifying the experience must have been for a child. Koza paused his story there and looked up, meeting their eyes and for the first time Harry saw tears there. He was obviously holding back for his younger brother's sake, but he was still scared.

"I woke up and everything hurt." He admitted roughly. "And I was mad, and I couldn't figure out why. And then there was this smell and I would just... lose control. I didn't... I didn't want to hurt anyone, honest."

Koza's head dropped and tears finally fell. Harry moved before he really knew what he was doing. He dropped onto one knee and pulled the kid into a hug.

"You didn't hurt anyone Koza." he soothed. "You might have destroyed some fields, but fields regrow. Kosmos is out there right now helping people regrow them. And it wasn't your fault anyway."

Koza pulled back and met his eyes like he wasn't sure Harry was being honest. Then his eyes flickered to the bandage still lingering on Harry's face.

"Don't worry about this." Harry waved away the obvious guilt. "Might've been worse if you hadn't tried to stop me from falling right?"

Koza gave him a weak nod.

"Alright, so that's settled then!" Harry said with a beaming smile he didn't really feel. He didn't want to make light of what he was sure was a very traumatic experience for the kid but he was sure dwelling on it wouldn't help right now.

"Did you see the woman again after she gave you the ring?" Erza asked gently.

Koza shook his head, eyes still locked on Harry.

"Did she give you a name or bear any guild marks?"

Koza shook his head, but San didn't seem to agree. "Yeah she did! She had a mark! It kinda looked like an eye!"

"An eye?"

San jumped down and drew his finger through the dirt beside the pavement. An open shape roughly resembling a stylized eye surrounded by a pyramid was left. Erza studied it.

"Does it look familiar?" Harry asked. He knew nothing about Fiore's guilds, really. There were a lot to keep track of. He'd only heard briefly of Fairy Tail before the grand magic games and this guild mark looked like none he'd ever seen.

Erza shook her head. "I've never seen it before."

"Do you think she'll come back?" Koza asked, nervously.

"I don't think so." Harry offered with a smile. Did he know that for sure? Hell no, but he wasn't about to put more weight on the kid's shoulders.

"Will you all stay here?" Koza asked more hopefully.

"Unfortunately, no." Erza answered for Harry even as he floundered. "Our guild has more missions like this one. So we have to go help more people."

Harry was pleasantly surprised with how well Erza was handling the conversation. He'd seen her interact with way less grace when talking to adults and other guild members.

"If you have problems though all you have to do is send word to us in Magnolia." she offered. "I talked to your aunt while you were recovering. She didn't know the two of you had gotten involved in any of this."

The panic on their faces was almost laughable under different circumstances. Erza smiled.

"I assured her you were just caught up in the middle. She seemed worried." she said standing. "Maybe you should have a talk with her?"

Harry gave them encouraging looks as they thanked them and headed off towards their aunt's home.

"You're good with kids."

The statement surprised Harry and he turned to see Erza giving him a guarded look. He couldn't tell what she was thinking when she looked like that. He laughed a bit at the comment though.

"Ah, I wasn't always." he admitted, turning away from her and starting to walk back towards the inn where all their stuff was. "I remember when my best friend had his first kid I always made her cry."

A hand on his shoulder stopped him and he turned back, confused.

"I owe you an apology." she admitted.

"Erza...?"

"I split up the group and you were seriously injured because of my leadership. I..."

He turned fully and put a hand on her head silencing her immediately. He appreciated the sentiment. He did. It was nice that he'd chosen new people to put in his life that actually cared about his well being. He ruffled her hair a bit and gave her a smile before turning away and continuing his walk. When she fell in step beside him he pretended not to notice.

Lots of emotional moments in this one. And with that, the prologue to a veeeeeeery long arc has finished.

Expect more soonish, but not too soon.

Til next time!

~Kanathia