A/N: If you're into Naruto, may I suggest reading Pitch Black Magpie's Tuna Fish and Red-Splattered Pages? It's definitely worth your time, unlike almost basically the rest of the Naruto archive.

Warnings: Alternate Universe, Comedy, Trace amounts of Angst, Likely juvenile levels of humour, No Bashing, Ghosts, Nonsense. Keep out of reach of children.

Pairings: N/A

Story Recommendation: Fate/stay night; Fate Zero: Avenger of Swords; by ForteOfTheBallad98

Natsu is a quiet boy turned dragon turned boy, who doesn't quite understand life outside his numerous scrolls. Erza's smile is bright enough to blind all to her unhealthy obsession of all things that go stab. Gray is relatively normal, when he isn't talking to ghosts or arguing with his strange tattoo. Lucy is an heiress to an arguably criminal empire who accidentally stumbled into this mess and is content to stay; at least, when she isn't putting out spot-fires or trying to convince Happy that he is not, in fact, the next incarnation of the Devil.

"Aren't you extinct?"

The dragon in front of Gray jumped slightly, almost uprooting the tree it had been leaning against. Compared to some of the stories Gray had heard over the years, this one seemed to be far smaller than what was considered the norm, barely reaching to the canopy of the foliage surrounding the clearing they were both in. His scales were a shade of red that was nearing pink (and Gray could tell the dragon was a he, it wasn't wearing pants and that didn't look like a tail), his eyes a purple so deep it had crossed the threshold into black and hadn't looked back.

"Um… no?" There was a scroll in the dragons hands, or were they hands, he wondered? The edges of the parchment were crinkled, portions singed, a few new wrinkles appearing across it as the dragon cradled it in protectively against his chest. "Why would I be extinct?"

"Because you're different, and people kill things that are different." Gray fell to the ground and crossed his legs, scowling at the ghost that had copied his movements and made the dragon shuffle away a little. 'Ora shrugged, pulling himself out from where he'd fallen into the ground… and several trees. He was a very big ghost, after all. "That's what 'Ora says, anyway. I don't think it really counts because he's a demon and he's dead as well, but maybe demons are a type of people, and because humans are different to them the demons kill them because they're different."

The dragon blinked down at him. He didn't say anything.

Gray tilted his head to the side, narrowing his eyes and nodding slowly. "You're really smart." He informed the dragon, rocking back until he almost lost his balance and grabbing the soles of his shoes in an attempt to stabilise himself. "What's your name?"

The dragon stared down at the boy, who was waving a hand behind his head as though shooing away a bug. The boy, as he had been christened in Natsu's head, was about as large as he had been before he'd transformed, his dark eyes completely bloodshot. Every few seconds, the boy's attention would shift somewhere else, his body and the odd markings on his arm never stopping in their movement.

"…Natsu." This was odd. Ever since he had transformed, nobody who had come across him had wanted anything to do with him. When he'd first gone into a town, people had screamed and run away, a few brave souls grabbing any weapon they could get their hands on while everyone else fled. He was a dragon now, big and scary and with no chance of making any friends. Or at least, no chance before now.

The odd boy nodded again, hopping to his feet and looking around Natsu's entire body. The dragon shrank back slightly, feeling the overwhelming urge to cover himself until the boy stepped back, nodding happily to himself. "I'm Gray. It doesn't look like you have any ghosts hanging around you, that's good."

Natsu blinked at the mention of ghosts, shaking his disbelief off a moment later. Maybe he would have had some room for doubt if he hadn't been raised by and weren't currently a dragon. "No ghosts is a good thing?" He asked instead, silently hoping he wouldn't accidentally stumble into a topic that would upset his new sort of oh please don't run away like all the others friend.

"Yep!" Gray nodded, falling over sideways and sticking his arm out before he hit the ground. It bent at an angle that looked uncomfortable, the writhing mass of markings on his other arm suddenly spreading across to the limb. As Natsu watched, his arm twisted and cracked into position, the sunny grin never leaving Gray's face. "It means nobody close to you has died, and you haven't killed anyone who wants revenge!"

"…Ah."

"Yep! I've got a ghost following me." Natsu opened his mouth, intent on pointing out that he hadn't actually asked, but Gray barreled on regardless. "He was kind of crazy when he was alive, and he killed my parents. But he's better now, and he watches over me!"

The air around the clearing groaned, the trees buckling and the ground shaking, the odd sensation only stopping when Gray stuck a hand out and it lay flat against thin air. "It's alright, 'Ora. I know it wasn't your fault, I'll find their ghosts eventually." Without warning, he twisted around on the spot, pointing one slightly shaky hand at Natsu's chest. "Your magic is really weird."

Natsu took a cautious step forward, lowering his neck until he could better see Gray's face. The bags under his eyes looked like they had been left there by one of Igneel's Iron Fists. "Gray, when was the last time you slept?"

"Huh? Sleep?" Gray shook his head, waving his hand in seemingly random patterns through the air. Natsu felt a strange tug behind his ribcage, ignoring it for the moment. "The ghosts always scream at night, the darkness reminds them of when they died. They make too much noise, and you can't sleep during the day because that's when the poltergeists attack. Nah, 'Ora usually just takes control of my body whenever I pass out to keep me safe. Aha!" With a whoosh, Natsu fell onto his back, feeling as though his body had just been squeezed through a tube half the width of his fingers. "Zeroth can see two different kinds of magic in your body. The dragon one was just in control, so I changed it around so you can choose which one you want to use. Hope you don't mind, but talking to a dragon was getting kind of weird."

Natsu furrowed his eyebrows, looking up at Gray… wait, looking up?

Natsu's hands were in front of his so quickly that Deliora jumped, knocking into Gray and making him jump too. Before his feet had even managed to get back to the ground, Natsu had grabbed him by the shoulders, uncaring about the fact that he was entirely unclothed.

"I'm human again!" He screamed in Gray's face, as if the boy hadn't been the one responsible. Tugging on the magic that felt so much like Igneel, Natsu found himself breathing smoke through his nostrils as he once again eye level with the higher branches in the trees surrounding them, letting go of his mental hold of the magic and seizing Gray by the shoulder again.

"…You can see magic!?" He asked, in lieu of some of the things he actually wanted to say. He had been so used to life as a dragon, ready to spend the rest of his years in necessary exile. How long could dragons live, anyway? He'd never bothered to ask Igneel, but judging from some of the stories his foster father had told him, he was willing to bet a very long time.

Gray may not have known it, but he had just made a friend that would be sticking with him for the rest of his life.

"Wha- can I see magic?" Gray snorted, shaking his head and holding up his arm. It was a difficult procedure, considering the death grip Natsu still had on his joint, but he managed. "People can't see magic, that's just silly. Zeroth is the one who can see magic."

Just like that, the markings shifted in front of Natsu's eyes, coiling together and forming the shape of a hand.

Which then waved at him.

OK then.

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"So just so we're clear, this is the right direction?"

"The ghosts are all saying that it should be straight ahead, maybe a couple more minutes."

"Got it. Just curious, how many of them are there?"

"I lost count at about three hundred and seven. They keep moving around."

"Alright."

Natsu returned his eyes to the front, narrowing them at the horizon before him. He was back in his dragon form; far more comfortable after spending so much time in it, plus with it he could fly and carry Gray. It was nearing mid-afternoon, the curtains slowly closing on one of the craziest days of Natsu's life, and he could say with full confidence that it had also been on of the best.

Gray was odd. There was no other way to put it, he just was. Even discounting the ghost thing, there were small things about him, which would all add into one big picture of… well, odd. He was constantly moving his head from side to side, occasionally narrowing his eyes and muttering under his breath. His spine would always stiffen whenever they walked past someone in the town they'd found to buy him some clothes (he'd hidden in the forest just outside and waited for Gray to return with something he could wear), and a small dagger made of ice had materialised in his hand when they'd wandered past a man sitting on a bench, who had absolutely reeked of blood.

They'd walked a little bit faster past that one. Gray had been wincing for ten minutes afterwards, rubbing soothing circles over his ears and resolutely refusing to walk or even look back in the direction they had come from.

It was when they had sat down for lunch and gotten to talking that Gray had asked him for a favour. Ghosts naturally congregated around people who could see them, and seeing as he was apparently the first person in fifty years who could pick up on their existence with any reliability, they had been seeking him out for years. Many that came up to him had some sort of request, a message to send or a person to kill (which he would always ignore, eventually those ghosts would either go away or be eaten by Deliora (and after the first one was eaten they tended to get the message very easily)), but over the last month more and more had been approaching him with the same request.

Please, do something, anything, about the Tower of Heaven.

There were published horror stories that paled in comparison with some of the things Gray had heard and subsequently told him. Some of the ghosts had claimed that those who died while in the middle of its construction would have their bodies used as materials. People of all ages had perished and escaped into the here and now, including two ghosts who had been over a hundred and fifty and less than five minutes old, respectively. The infant ghost had done nothing but cry, until its parents had joined it and they had all faded into the afterlife.

It was getting worse, or so Gray said. Natsu believed him, of course, which was why he agreed immediately when Gray asked if he could please fly him there so something could be done. The ocean surrounding the tower was a no go, any boat would just be sunk immediately and Gray both couldn't swim the entire distance there and couldn't afford to freeze himself a path. He had been training until he was bleeding and unconscious when the first ghosts had come in, but he just wasn't in possession of that kind of power yet. Not when he was still so young and (according to Zeroth) his body had yet to stabilise the ethernano that made up the crux of his being.

Natsu had outright laughed in Gray's face when he was asked if he could fight, almost dying on the rice grain that managed to get itself stuck in his oesophagus. He was the son of a dragon and could turn into a dragon; it wasn't a question of if he could fight. It was a question of if there was someone out there dumb enough to fight him.

Something on the horizon caught Natsu's eye, jerking his back to the here and now. Gray had told him to keep an eye out for a tower, and he was pretty sure he'd just found it. It didn't look very finished; it didn't even look like construction had managed to get past laying the foundations, but he wasn't about to pretend he knew everything that was happening here. "Right ahead of us, Gray."

"Thank, Natsu. Zeroth, where are- Natsu, slow down!" Natsu flared his wings, shedding altitude along with speed. He felt Gray stumbling across the scales on his back, wincing slightly when his foot caught a particularly sensitive one. "Ah, sorry Natsu, I should have given you more warning. 'Ora, fifty feet up and twenty feet to the left, give us an opening please!"

The air shifted, the same guttural whine as that morning's moving past Natsu's ears and making the boy turned dragon shudder. People were beginning to shout from within the tower, apparently only just now noticing the dragon hovering not too far away from it, the noise raising to hysterical levels when the entire island shook and an enormous hole opened up in the side of the building. Adhering to the plan they'd made up earlier that day, Natsu charged forward, shifting back to human in the smoke cloud that had been kicked up and rolling to his feet in the corridor he'd found himself in. Gray sailed over his head, kicking off the wall and shedding no momentum as he charged towards the first corner.

"How big is Deliora!?" Natsu hissed as he caught up to Gray, the two of them leaping into the air in sync and clotheslining a couple of guards that had been sprinting towards the breach. They both collapsed, out of it before they even hit the ground.

"Really big." Gray whispered back as they ducked into an alcove, away from a whole squadron of people wearing uniforms. The plan hadn't really been advanced far past getting into the tower, none of the ghosts that had sought Gray out really knew the layout of the tower well. As it were, most of them were still outside; in order for a ghost to interfere with the living world, a lot of different factors had to be met, including having physical and mental strength while they had been alive. Deliora was the most powerful ghost Gray had ever met, so he had been sent off with one of the more adventurous ghosts to destroy any big weapons he came across. The rest of the handful of ghosts capable of being helpful were spreading throughout the tower, knocking guards and cultists unconscious through any means they could.

There weren't many of those ghosts. All those who had accompanied them here had been slaves; their spiritual acuity had been shot to Hell by the lack of proper sustenance for physical labour and the general feeling of helplessness before they'd ultimately died. The plan was for the whole lot of them to work together and gather some boats for the slaves to escape on, but there wasn't much hope of that. Even with the extra energy Gray's presence seemed to grant them with, even extremely powerful ghosts had their work cut out for them levitating a table.

The group of guards disappeared around a corner. Judging from the way they all came flying back and crashed into the wall, and the menacing growls rippling through the air after them, they'd just run into Deliora. Gray and Natsu slipped from their hiding space, Gray Ice-Making a battering ram that they both grabbed onto and slammed into the closed door they had been running towards.

The people standing guard over the slave cages straightened, pointing their weapons at the intruders. "A couple of kids!?" One of them exclaimed as the dust settled, others relaxing their stances slightly as Natsu brought his hands to his mouth and sucked in a deep breath.

"Fire Dragon's Roar!"

Gray wrinkled his nose at the stench of burning flesh and screams. Natsu lowered his hands, examining the corridor with a closed-off expression. The rest of the flames flicked out as they waited in silence, before Natsu blew out a sigh and jerked his head forth. "Do we get them out now or later?"

Gray bit his lip, pointedly not looking at the man in front of him, nor the way he clawed weakly at the ground towards his comrade. Even if the ghosts hadn't been hassling him at literally all hours of the day, getting the slaves free would have been his priority. Ghosts had family in here; fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, nephews, nieces. Grandchildren, grandparents. Releasing them now could present a risk, though, if they had no way of defending themselves upon coming across a group of cultists. But they looked so desperate in those cages…

"Now." He decided aloud, turning back to the door they had busted down to get in. "DELIORA!"

The few slaves who recognised the name jumped and cowered, while the rest merely stared in undisguised confusion or hope. A few seconds passed before the enormous ghost's foot appeared in the doorway; Natsu swivelled around automatically when Deliora's head poked in through above the doorway, already familiar enough with the pressure the enormous spirit seemed to exude with his mere presence. According to Gray, it was similar to a dragon ghost that he had once come across.

"Get these people outside. Protect them." Deliora nodded, and Gray turned back to Natsu, the two of them stepping forth in uniform.

Some of the people in the cages needed a little coaxing to leave them, mainly those who had spent years upon years in there and the children. With remarkably well behaved manners, they filed into the corridor outside of their cells, eagerly waiting as Gray and Natsu systematically knocked doors down, some even moving forward to help.

Deliora continued to smack approaching guards away, their pained grunts and flying bodies drawing smiles from those watching the proceedings. Gray had just been turning around to address the mass of people waiting as he approached the last cell in the corridor when his tattoo (as he'd informed Natus after they'd eaten) suddenly flared into view and spread out across the entirety of his arm.

"Zeroth, wha-" Gray cut himself off, his head snapping towards the cell he had been walking towards. An old man sat in the corner while a group of children gathered nearer the centre; all but two jerked away when he turned towards them, a blue haired boy with a tattoo descending down his face and a girl with long red hair whose head was bowed to the ground.

"Magic potential?" He murmured, glancing down at his arm, watching Zeroth's mark as it twisted and coiled. Natsu was walking up behind him, not that he paid the familiar approaching footsteps any attention. "In the same cell? …Why? How?"

"Your hair is really pointy…" Gray almost jumped as the girl's neck snapped up, the smile across her face too cheerful. Gray's eyes shot open, Natsu's muttered "holy shit" reaching his ears as they both stared at her face.

Her horribly, horribly scarred face.

Lines of dead cells pervaded every portion of her features, dried blood caking most of her body like a second skin. Her hand was reaching towards the bars, some of the fingers mangled or outright missing, her fingernails having all been removed and left to bleed freely. A few teeth were absent from the smile, many others crooked or chipped, and one of her eye sockets was outright empty, evident by the way to cloth that had been tied around it sagged inwards.

The boy sitting beside her was dressed in complete rags, most of what he had been wearing having been torn and used as bandages for the girl beside him. He was dangerously skinny, his ribs entirely visible, and as they two of them watched he tottered to his feet and moved to stand in front of the girl protectively. None of the slaves were in any way healthy, but these two were in the worst condition Gray and Natsu had seen yet, which was only further compounded as a keening giggle escaped the girl's throat.

"Your hair is really pointy…" She repeated, falling down onto her side with the force of her giggles. Blood splattered the ground before her, prompting Natsu into action as he grabbed at two of the bars and ripped them off. "Can I use it to stab someone?"

"Later." Gray turned back to the doorway, his voice shaking slightly. "Everyone, get out of here and find the boats. If there aren't any, make some. Deliora." The temperature in the room dropped, everyone's breath appearing as a fine mist before their mouth. "If you see a guard, I don't care what you do, so long as it hurts them."

"Gray." Natsu had one of the girl's arms around his neck, the blue haired boy supporting her from the other side. The rest of the cell's occupants were moving towards them now, the old man's mouth set in a thin line as he watched. "Where do we go from here?"

"Fly her out of here, find a doctor or something. Come back for me or don't, 'Ora will stay with me" Gray stepped into the corridor, nodding as the last of the slaves filed out of the door. His t-shirt slid off his frame, revealing his wiry, muscled midsection and the way his tattoo was cavorting across his entire body. When he shot a glance over his shoulder, they could all see that the whites of his eyes had turned black. "I'm going to find whoever's in charge of this place."

In the time it would have taken them to blink, he was gone.

XxX

I'm not actually sure whether I'll continue this one or not. I'm busy with other stories right now, but if I'm anything then I'm fickle. I dunno, I guess if enough people like the look of this one it'll convince me it's worth the effort. Thanks for reading his far, [WARNING SHAMELESS SELF-ADVERTISEMENT] if you've enjoyed my writing then I have another Fairy Tail story out starring Gray, Melting Hours. Time Travel, ain't it fun?

Also, my keyboard is broken. I'm holding it together with duct tape and prayers, so if there's a few grammatical and spelling errors, now you know. Feel free to point them out to me if you do see any, though hopefully you won't.

Anyway. See you next chapter, if I even write one, that is.

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