Looking back, Natsu couldn't even remember what they'd been fighting about. Nothing important, if any of their fights could ever be considered important. He'd run into Gray on the way to the guild that morning. He'd made a snippy comment, or maybe Gray had, and one thing had led to another. To be fair, Erza hadn't been present. It wasn't right to expect them to abstain from fighting when she wasn't there to stop them.

So they traded some punches right there in the street two blocks from the guild—which might get back to Erza by word of mouth sooner or later, but Natsu believed in facing consequences only when they slapped him in the face and sometimes not even then—and ignored the ill-tempered sniping of citizens giving them a wide berth as they went about their morning chores.

Natsu crowed in triumph as a well-placed punch sent Gray sprawling, but his victory was premature and short-lived. As the fist came swinging back at his face, he lashed out instead of leaping back. It was the perfect opportunity to get in a finishing blow.

Or would be, if he had time to curl his hand back into a fist before connecting. His fingers grazed skin and tangled in a cool metal chain. Gray's fist connected with his chin, and Natsu yanked. Gray made a choking, sputtering sound and something snapped, leaving Natsu stumbling back.

There was no time to waste, so Natsu regained his balance and lunged again. Gray was turning away from him, hand curled against his chest, and he should really know better than to lose focus during a fight. This would be an easy kill. Natsu's foot slammed into Gray's side, sending him to the ground.

"Ha!" Natsu crowed, positive that his victory was assured this time. He braced his hands on his hips and leaned forward to smirk at his downed foe. "You should know better than to turn your back in a fight."

"You idiot," Gray hissed. Pushing himself to his knees, he began running his hands along the ground and squinting at the cracks in the paving stones. "Where did it go?"

"Where did what–? Oh…" Remembering the feeling of a chain wrapped around his fingers, Natsu scanned the pavement for a telltale glitter of silver. "Maybe you should get a stronger chain."

Gray threw a glare over his shoulder before pulling himself to his feet. He walked in a slow circle, hunched over awkwardly as he searched the street. A thin red welt circled halfway around his neck.

"It's not the chain, you idiot," he growled. "The clasp is old, it must have… Happy did you see where it went?"

Happy, up to this point content to watch from the sidelines, flattened his ears. "It flew off that direction, I think," he mumbled, waving a paw towards the far side of the street.

Gray stalked off without another word. Natsu rolled his eyes.

"Someone's a little pissy," he muttered.

Happy flew around behind his shoulder and whispered, "Natsu, he's really mad."

"The ice princess is always mad."

"Natsu. Go find it."

Natsu heaved a sigh and trotted after Gray.

Five minutes of searching—growing increasingly frantic on Gray's part—turned up nothing but odd looks from pedestrians.

"Oh," said Happy finally. Natsu turned and followed the little cat's gaze. Gray was crouching in front of a storm drain, peering through the grate. "You don't think…"

"Well," said Natsu. "That's unfortunate."

Gray looked back, and his face was thunderous. He had more or less ignored Natsu up to this point, but the reason for Happy's concern was suddenly all too obvious. Natsu had seen Gray angry hundreds of times, but not like this.

Gray stood, eyes flashing daggers and mouth twisted into a rather unattractive snarl. "Unfortunate?" he repeated with a sneer. "Thanks for your input, Natsu."

Natsu didn't like how Gray somehow made his name sound like more of a curse than 'flame brain' ever had.

"Look," he said defensively, "it was an accident. We can just–"

"Oh, it was just an accident?" Gray mocked. "Well, that makes it alright, then."

"Okay, you're honestly being kind of a–"

"I've never touched your scarf. What the hell makes you think you can touch my shit?"

Natsu tried to figure out how to explain that his scarf was actually important while a necklace was…not. But without actually saying that, because Gray already looked like he was about to blow up.

"Excuse me?" Gray demanded.

"Natsu!" Happy hissed. "You're making it worse!"

Natsu winced. "Sorry. I have no brain to mouth filter."

"Oh yes, because only the things you care about are important."

"That's not what I–"

"It's my mother's, you selfish asshole." Gray lunged forward and punched Natsu square in the jaw. Natsu staggered back with a yelp, clutching at his face. "It's the only–"

Gray paused, fist still clenched tight and shaking as it hung suspended in the air. He looked down and dropped his hand, but the storm clouds darkening his face didn't lift. Without another word, he stalked past Natsu and Happy and back down the street.

"Graaay!" Happy whined, fluttering his wings anxiously.

"Hey!" Natsu called after him. "You–"

"Fuck off, Natsu," Gray said without turning around. He disappeared around the corner and was gone.

Natsu and Happy stood in the street looking after him, garnering a few curious stares from passersby.

"Um…" Natsu rubbed at his chin a little more and turned back to frown at the grate. "That went well."

"He's really mad," Happy said, tail drooping.

"Yeah."

"Do you think it was really his mom's?"

"I mean, I guess? I don't know why he'd lie about that."

"He's never said that before."

"Are you really surprised?"

"I guess not."

They stood in silence for another minute.

"Well," said Happy, "I'm sure he'll be back to normal soon enough. You guys are too dumb to hold grudges for long."

Natsu touched his scarf, fingers sliding against smooth scales. "I don't know. If someone lost Igneel's scarf, I don't know if I'd ever forgive them. Not until I got it back."

"Even if it was an accident?"

"Yeah."

They looked at the grate again.

"I guess you'd better find it, then," Happy said.

Natsu knelt down and wrapped his hands around the bars. Rough patches of rust scraped along his skin as he pulled. The grate didn't budge. He tugged again, with much the same effect.

"Oh, come on," he groaned.

"Is the great Salamander defeated by a sewer grate?" Happy jibed, a hint of humor returning to his voice.

"Shut up, fur ball. Why won't it come up? People have to get down there somehow, right? To do maintenance or whatever?"

"That doesn't mean their access point is right there."

Natsu shrugged. He could make an access point. Summoning his flames, he slammed his fist into the grate.

Someone screamed as fiery rubble and pieces of twisted metal flew through the air. Natsu scooched an inch closer and peered down into the gaping hole left in the curb, holding out a fiery fist to push back the darkness.

"You don't think that was a little bit overkill?" Happy asked. "The grate probably comes up. I bet it was just stuck."

Natsu hummed absently. Down below, firelight glinted off dark water. It wasn't that far down, really. It looked like some kind of really wide pipe with water at the bottom.

"Are you sure you should be doing that?" Happy asked.

"I have to get down there somehow."

"No, I mean… Can't fire make sewers explode?"

Natsu twisted around to fix him with an incredulous look. "Fire does what now?"

"You know, something about sewer gases being flammable? I think?"

"Where would you even hear something like that?"

"I don't remember."

Natsu shook his head. "You're crazy. Anyway, this isn't really a sewer, right? Just kind of…water stuff?" Happy cast a skeptical look at the hole in the street, and Natsu shrugged. "Whatever. I have to find that stupid– Ah, I have to find Gray's necklace, so I'll just chance it. I'm sure I've survived worse explosions."

He hopped down the hole, wrinkling his nose as fetid water splashed and seeped through his clothes. If he'd known he'd be wading through a sewer today, he might have swapped out his sandals for rain boots. Maybe he should invest in a pair. The water pooled up to his calves, and he had to hunch over to make himself fit inside the pipe.

He waited for a moment, but nothing exploded. "I guess it's okay," he said. "You can come down."

"No thanks." Happy perched at the edge of the hole and looked down his nose at Natsu.

"What do you mean, no thanks?"

"You lost the necklace. You can find it. I don't want to go splashing around in a sewer because you messed up."

"Okay, it's not a sewer. I don't think. It doesn't smell bad enough. I think it's just drainage."

"For water. I'll pass, thanks. If I wanted to go swimming, I'd at least do it somewhere with fish."

"But we're supposed to be a team!"

"I'll cheer you on from up here."

No matter how much Natsu whined, Happy wouldn't budge. Traitorous feline.

"You're not any help at all," Natsu muttered as he crouched down to dip his hand in the water and run it along the curved bottom of the pipe. "Oh, gross! It's slimy."

Happy cackled. Eventually, Natsu gave up on his attempts to keep out of the lukewarm water as much as possible—it was killing his back—and just knelt down. His soaked pants clung to his skin, and he did his very best not to imagine how nasty the water might be.

Happy called out unhelpful instructions as Natsu slid his hand up and down the pipe. The dragon slayer crawled in a little deeper when he didn't find anything, wondering how far the necklace might have gone.

Something poked him in the back of the leg, and he reached back to grab at it. Thankfully, it was just a stick and not an oversize sewer rat or whatever other vermin might live down here. He dropped it in front of him and went back to searching, but paused as he watched the twig float off down the pipe.

"Uh-oh," he said, the glimmer of an unpleasant idea beginning to form in his mind.

"What is it?" Happy called down, his voice echoing.

"There's a little bit of a current. Like, the water is flowing." Natsu hadn't thought much of the water flowing around him, but it might pose a problem.

"And?"

"Well, I'm not finding the necklace. You don't think it might have…?"

"…Oh. You'd think it would be kind of heavy, though, right? Could the water carry it?"

"I don't know. Water can be pretty strong. It's moving faster than I would have thought."

"It looks kind of deep, too. Like, maybe a foot or two? It's been raining on and off half the week, remember? There might be more water draining, so…"

"Well, that's just great." Natsu squinted into the dark pipe stretching ahead. Taking a deep breath, he puffed out a small jet of fire to race down the pipe. It seemed to keep on going and going. "The ice block is going to kill me if I don't find it."

"I guess you'd better keep looking, then."

"How far do these pipes even go?"

"No idea. The whole city needs them. But there's only one direction it could go if it's being carried, right?"

Natsu supposed that was true, and it wasn't like there was anywhere else to look. He crawled deeper, cursing as he banged his head on the top of the pipe, and felt around blindly in the tepid water and slime.

"Natsu!" Happy called. "Have you found it yet?"

His voice sounded distant and distorted as it bounced off the walls all the way down. Natsu craned his neck around, trying to see how far he'd come, but it was impossible to tell.

"No," he called back.

"It's been hours," Happy shouted. Natsu had to strain to make out his words, and even then he had to decipher the jumble created by the echo. "I don't know how far you went, but I had to find another storm drain so you could hear me. I think you should come back now."

"But I didn't find it!"

"Well, come back and we can regroup and come up with another plan."

Natsu didn't know what other possible plan there could be, but he was sick of crawling around in the water. He'd heard what sounded a lot like scurrying paw steps a few times, and shuddered to think what might be living down here.

Maybe it was time to call it a day…but he soon ran into another problem.

"Uh… Happy?"

"Yeah?"

"I think I'm stuck."

"Stuck? You've crawled through half the city's pipeline and now you're stuck?"

"Well, maybe not stuck. But there's not enough room for me to turn around and go back."

Natsu was too far away to hear Happy's long-suffering sigh, but he imagined it nonetheless.

"Then crawl backwards, I guess."

"Can't I just blast a hole to the street?"

"Natsu."

"Fine." Natsu began awkwardly shuffling backwards, letting his fire go out so that he could use both hands. "Killjoy. You're getting even worse than Erza."

It was slow going, and he was sure it took at least another hour to get back, although it was impossible to tell. He breathed a sigh of relief as daylight filtered down through the hole he'd blasted into the street earlier. He managed to extract himself with some mild cursing and a couple bumps to the head.

"I'm glad you survived," Happy said solemnly. He was perched on the curb beside the hole, clutching a half-eaten fish in his paws.

Natsu eyed him suspiciously. "Where did you get that?"

Happy hugged it closer and flattened his ears. "It's mine."

"Like I want your slobbery fish."

"Some people came by to look at the hole and decide how to fix it, so I went and got a fish until they left."

Natsu noticed Happy did not say where he got the fish, but they had bigger problems.

"Now what? The ice princess is going to be insufferable."

"Well… Maybe you could just try apologizing?"

Natsu threw him a scathing look. "As if apologizing has ever made him calm down."

"Have you ever tried apologizing to him?" Happy asked through a mouthful of fish.

Natsu opened his mouth, closed it again. In fact, he wasn't sure if he had. He and Gray never apologized to each other. That wasn't really what they did.

"I don't think it would work," he said mutinously.

"Well, it wouldn't kill you to try." Happy rolled his eyes, ate what was left of his fish, and dropped the bones down the hole.

Natsu made a face. "I might have to go back down there."

"Well, I don't," Happy said cheerfully. "Let's go see if Gray's at the guild. It's already like three o'clock."

They went to the guild, since there wasn't much else they could do. Happy tried to talk Natsu through the anatomy of an apology, but the dragon slayer was still skeptical. Nowhere was an insult or nickname listed as an ingredient, and that was pretty much exclusively how he and Gray communicated.

Lucy was talking to Levy at a table in the corner of the hall, books and papers spread in front of them. Gray and Erza were nowhere to be seen.

"There you are!" she said when they went over to chat. "We were wondering where you guys were all morning. Erza wanted to take a job, but eventually she gave up and left. She said she was going to get cake."

"And what about Gray?" Natsu asked.

"He hasn't been in either."

"Are you sure?"

She raised an eyebrow. "I've been here all day. If he came in, I would have seen him. What have you guys been up to all day?"

Natsu and Happy exchanged a look and mumbled some excuses that, judging by Lucy's expression, were not entirely convincing. Natsu didn't want to delve into all the gory details until he'd managed to figure things out, so it would have to be enough for now.

Their flimsy excuses took another hit when Erza returned, but they didn't crack even under her relentless prying. They didn't speak of the incident at all, not even when Gray failed to appear the entire day. In fact, they never did come up with a better plan, or even really discuss one.

The next morning, they went to Gray's apartment first. Natsu's plan was to catch him before they headed to the guild, to avoid a big confrontation there. They'd given him the rest of yesterday to cool off, so hopefully things wouldn't be quite as…explosive.

When they knocked, no one answered the door. Peering through the windows also turned up nothing, and eventually Natsu just pried one open and clambered inside the apartment.

"Natsu," Happy hissed. "Isn't he already mad enough at you?"

But he followed the dragon slayer inside anyway. A quick sniff around turned up Gray's scent, but stale.

"I don't think he's been here this morning," Natsu said. "Or last night."

It wasn't out of character for Gray to sulk when he was angry, but to not come back to his own apartment?

"Maybe he took a job," Happy suggested. "Sometimes he does that to get away from us."

"Yeah, except that Lucy said she never saw him at the guild."

"Maybe he was sneaky. Or maybe he went over there this morning."

With no better leads, they went to the guild. Gray wasn't there, and Mira confirmed that he hadn't taken a solo job recently. When noon rolled around and he still hadn't made an appearance, Natsu caved. If this was going to be an even bigger problem than expected, the girls had to know. They were already asking questions about where Gray might have run off to.

So he explained that he and Gray might have had a fight and Gray might be extremely angry right now. When asked why, exactly, Gray was so angry, given that they fought all the time and generally got over hard feelings within the hour, Natsu mumbled some more and deflected. He was already in hot water, and wasn't sure Gray would want him to go into details. Better to just find the stupid thing first. No harm, no foul.

"Did you apologize?" Lucy asked.

Natsu rolled his eyes. Why was everyone so hooked on this apology thing? But he didn't voice his thoughts, because Erza was starting to look murderous again.

"I thought I told you two not to fight."

No, Natsu couldn't look for help in that quarter. He worked at placating Erza—with no help from Happy, who only chuckled from the sidelines—and got out of there as soon as possible.

With no other plan, he and Happy went back to the hole in the storm drain. It was surrounded with yellow tape and two men holding tools. This was the fastest anything had ever gotten fixed by the city, which probably meant someone knew who did the damage and was planning to bill the guild. Jii-chan would be thrilled.

"Why don't we walk down the street and you can go down another storm drain?" Happy suggested. "You already covered this ground, anyway."

"We'll get in even more trouble if we blast another hole into the street," Natsu said glumly.

"Then find one where the grate isn't rusted shut."

They wandered down the street a ways and debated which grates were definitely part of the same pipeline he'd been in before and which might be separate. Natsu managed to lift a grate and squeeze down into the pipe, but it was a tighter fit and far less fun than just exploding a hole.

Even less fun was crawling through cramped, waterlogged pipes for hours and finding nothing. At least this time, he was smart enough to push up the next grate he came across and climb out rather than backtrack to where he had started in the pipes. As a bonus, he got to retrace his steps on land, sneak up behind Happy, and scare the living daylights out of his friend.

"You're awful," Happy groused as they returned to the guild to make sure Gray hadn't shown up in the meantime.

Natsu thought he deserved a little fun, given the torture he'd gone through and the fact that his shoes were still squelching with every step, and wasn't sorry at all. His spirits were dampened again when they confirmed Gray had not returned to the guild or his apartment.

After rinsing off and changing into dry clothes back home, Natsu and Happy convened to discuss their next steps. Their best thought was to bring a magnet down into the pipes to hopefully attract the metal necklace. Natsu was not holding out a lot of hope, but they went out and bought the biggest magnet they could find the next morning, and he spent another day slogging through the city's piping system without success. Gray did not reappear.

"This isn't working," Natsu said after another shower and change of clothes. "It's been days. I have no idea where it could have gone. It could be all the way at the end of the pipe right now, and I don't know where that would be."

Happy perked up. "Actually, that's not a bad idea."

"What idea? I didn't have an idea."

"To look at where the system ends. If it already got washed all the way through, that would be the best place to look."

"Unless it got snagged somewhere along the way. And again, we don't know where that is."

"But we could find out. Ask someone. Hopefully, it doesn't drain into the sewer system."

Natsu made a face. He didn't want to think about having to slog through legitimate sewers.

They asked around the next day. Not wanting to explain their reasons to the guild or having any idea who might be the proper authority on drain pipes, they instead stopped pedestrians on the street to ask questions like some odd pop quiz game show. They got far more strange looks than useful answers, and it seemed like very few people had spared a thought about the anatomy of a storm drain. Fair enough. Natsu never had either.

Finally, after a few hesitant suggestions about the sewer system and wastewater treatment facilities, they found someone who knew what she was talking about. Or at least seemed like she did.

"The drainage system is separate from the sewer system," she said without slowing. "It doesn't go through the treatment plant either. It goes straight to the nearest natural water source. That's why you aren't supposed to dump pollutants down the storm drains, because they go straight to our natural water ecosystems without being filtered."

Natsu and Happy stared after her as she continued on down the street.

"Huh," said Happy. "What were the chances?"

"Nearest body of water, huh…? The river?"

They exchanged another look.

"Better than the sewer?" Happy suggested weakly.

"It's awful! How are we supposed to find something so small in the entire river?"

They went to the river and walked up and down the bank, looking for anything indicating that a pipe was emptying itself there. After nearly ten minutes, they found the mouth of a pipe set in the bank with a froth of white water spilling out.

"Well, this must be it," Happy said.

Natsu watched a twig float past. "The current in the pipes was nothing compared to this. If it made it here…"

He looked off downstream, towards where the river meandered lazily into the distance.

"We should at least try, right?" Happy asked. "We still have the magnet."

Natsu did not have a great deal of faith in the magnet at this point, but dutifully slid off his shoes, rolled up his pants, and skidded down the bank into the river. He splashed into frigid water up to his waist and gasped.

"It's freezing!" he complained as the water pushed at him with icy fingers. He nearly lost his footing in the current, then stepped on a sharp rock and cursed. "There's no way," he said, looking around him forlornly.

The water was deeper than in the pipes, making it far more difficult to run his hands along the bottom. Especially with the current, which shoved at the back of his legs insistently. Also, he didn't want to die of hypothermia.

"You can't give up without even trying!" Happy encouraged.

"It could be halfway to Hargeon by now."

"But there are lots of rocks and things, right?"

"Yeah. They're slicing up my feet."

"There's a good chance it might have caught on one, right?"

Natsu didn't know. For all he knew, the necklace had never even made it this far, or had never settled to the bottom once it did and was swept all the way to the next city.

"This sucks," he said, but began sliding his feet along the rocks and waving the magnet ineffectually. He bent over to run his hand along the bottom, and the current nearly swept him off his feet when his center of balance shifted. Every time he took a step, he had to feel around with his feet to avoid slicing them open on sharp rocks. Once his feet went numb with cold and he could no longer feel them, the task became even more difficult.

Happy flew low over the river ahead, looking for any telltale glint of silver snagged on the rocks beneath the water. About time he was finally making himself useful.

They searched for thirty minutes or maybe an hour before Natsu threw up his hands.

"It's impossible," he said through chattering teeth. "We're never going to find it. What do you reckon our chances are of tricking the ice princess into accepting a fake?"

"I'd reckon not very likely," Gray said.

Natsu nearly jumped out of his skin. He spun about and caught a glimpse of Gray watching them with raised eyebrows from the riverbank before his foot slid out from under him and he went tumbling into the river. He choked on a curse and resurfaced, coughing up water. Happy, finally deciding to lend a helping hand, grabbed his hair and tugged him painfully towards shore.

"Owww, quit that," Natsu groaned, batting him away and heaving himself onto the bank. He rubbed at a gash leaking blood on his knee and turned back on Gray, still reeling with disbelief. "And what are you doing here?"

Gray crossed his arms over his chest and regarded the dragon slayer coolly. "Trying to figure out what the hell you're doing floundering in the river and talking about tricking me."

Natsu winced. That was not the best thing Gray could have overheard.

"We're looking for your necklace," Happy said. "We searched through the pipes for days, but we didn't find it. Someone said they empty out here, so we were checking here next."

Forgetting himself, Natsu turned the full force of his indignant outrage on Happy. "We?" he demanded. "I'm sorry, what was that about being too good to help me?"

Happy rolled his eyes. "Fine. Natsu searched through the pipes, but I was the brains of the operation."

Gray's gaze lingered on the oversize magnet still clutched in Natsu's fist. "Yeah," he said. "Right."

"And Natsu is very sorry about the whole losing your necklace thing."

"Excuse me?" Natsu demanded.

"He's worked really hard looking for it, so don't be mad at him anymore. We've missed you at the guild." Happy glared at Natsu and hissed, "Apologize!"

"I already told you–"

"Natsu!"

Natsu sighed. "Look, I'm sorry I lost your necklace. I didn't mean to, and I was hoping I could find it so you wouldn't be mad anymore, but…" He shrugged helplessly. "We couldn't find it. I mean, we can keep looking. Honestly, there's tons of river left to search and–"

"You'd never find it," Gray interrupted. He looked away. "I'll pretend I didn't hear anything, you can get me a replacement, and no one will be the wiser. It would be easier for everyone, I guess."

Natsu frowned at him, not sure what to make of the capitulation or his friend's odd mood. That didn't seem very…Gray. He understood angry Gray and sarcastic Gray and stubborn Gray, but this felt like a trap.

"Really?" he asked in disbelief.

"Yeah, sure."

Natsu bit his lip. "I mean, if I lost Igneel's scarf… It wouldn't be the same to just get a replacement."

"Which is why you wanted to find me a fake, huh?"

"I didn't mean–"

"It's fine. Just roll with it. Do you want me to change my mind? If you'd really rather keep searching the river, then more power to you."

"Well, no, just…" Natsu looked to Happy for help, but the little cat seemed just as stumped. "You're not mad?"

Gray didn't say anything for a moment, but then shrugged. "Maybe a little," he said. "But maybe I also overreacted."

"Maybe… But I get it."

"Good, then it's settled." Gray turned around and headed up the grassy bank toward the road. "Don't take too long."

Natsu opened his mouth, but he didn't know what to say. He and Happy watched Gray disappear in silence.

"Well," said Happy finally. "That was weird."

"Yeah… I guess we'd better find a jeweler."

They walked around town until they found the right shop to help them out and haggled with the jeweler to get what they wanted.

"Ridiculous!" Natsu grumbled as they stomped back out an hour later. "Can you believe how much this is going to cost?"

"Many fish," Happy sighed mournfully.

"Damn straight! This thing had better be perfect."

Happy suddenly looked very worried. Neither of them had very good drawing skills, and it wasn't clear how well their verbal descriptions had translated.

"I'm sure it will be okay," he said with forced optimism. "Anyway, it's better than crawling through pipes and searching rivers, right?"

Natsu frowned. It was a lot easier. But… Somehow, Gray letting them dismiss the whole issue like that didn't sit right with him. Natsu would turn over every stone on earth looking for Igneel's scarf. He didn't think he'd be very forgiving of anyone who lost it.

A replica just wasn't the same, and he didn't want to give Gray something inferior in exchange for a perhaps equally inferior kind of forgiveness. Even setting aside the fact that Gray might never look at Natsu the same way again, how could he be happy with a fake?

"Do you think we could find it? If we kept looking?"

Happy gave him a curious look. "I don't know. It doesn't seem likely, at this point."

"But it could have snagged on one of the rocks, right? That's what you said."

"I guess…"

And so they spent another two hours back at the river, combing its bed in the hope of spotting something obvious. Of course, they found nothing.

After drying themselves off and slinking back to the guild, they discovered that Gray had returned to the social scene. He acted perfectly normal, although he'd most certainly been subjected to a torrent of questions about his whereabouts and activities upon his arrival. At least that seemed to have settled down a bit.

Which did not mean that the girls were entirely done with their rampage.

"And now you both apologize," Erza said sternly, looking down her nose at Gray and Natsu.

"But–" Natsu tried.

"No buts. You're friends. Friends don't fight like that, and they apologize when something goes wrong. I've already warned you two to behave."

She managed to extract two reluctant apologies and seemed quite satisfied. And then things were normal again, like nothing had even happened. Natsu didn't know if Gray had told the girls any of the specifics—he rather doubted it, as the ice princess tended to be close-mouthed on personal subjects—but left the matter alone.

The next week was almost painfully normal, aside from never quite being able to catch Gray alone. Although, to be fair, Natsu might not be putting his whole heart into it. He had no idea what he might say to Gray, anyway. There wasn't much to be done until the fake necklace was ready.

When they finally picked it up from the jeweler, he and Happy examined it thoroughly and debated whether it was close enough. They decided to run with it. Gray already knew it was fake.

Not wanting to make a scene at the guild, they stopped by Gray's house early the next morning.

Gray answered the door, eyebrows climbing up his forehead. "And here I thought it was going to be a perfectly good morning."

Natsu glared and fished the replacement necklace out of his pocket to thrust at his friend. "Here."

Gray eyed it distastefully before taking it. "Thanks. I guess we're square, then."

"Yeah…" Natsu looked to Happy, who nodded encouragingly. "I mean, I'm still sorry and all that–"

"For the love of– We already did the whole apology thing. I get it, we're all sorry. Now let's be done with it."

Natsu halfway smiled. At least that was more normal. Then he noticed that Gray had lost his shirt sometime in the last thirty seconds between now and when he'd first opened the door. A silver necklace gleamed against his chest.

Natsu gaped and pointed. "You already got a replacement?"

Gray looked down and then rubbed at his nose sheepishly. "Ah, not exactly."

"What do you mean, not exactly?"

"Well… I didn't storm off just to sulk. You remember a few months back when we did a job for that lady in Hargeon who made charms and things? I went to see her and she gave me a locator charm that I used to track down my necklace. You know, I didn't actually think you'd find it."

Natsu gaped some more, goggle-eyed. "You found your necklace?"

"Yeah."

"Where did you find it?" Happy asked.

Gray snorted and rolled his eyes. "Not in the river, that's for sure. It was jammed all the way down in a crack in the road. I can't believe we missed it."

"But why did you ask us to get a replacement if you already found it?"

He hesitated and looked away. "Well… I was pretty upset, honestly. And looking back, I can't believe I was on the verge of throwing away a friendship because of something so…small. I mean, it's important to me." He tugged at the pendant around his neck absentmindedly, rubbing it between his fingers. "And yeah, I don't want to lose it. But I don't think it's worth throwing away everything I have now over something from the past.

"If anything happens again, I'll have something to take its place so I don't get as angry. I mean, in theory. It's not the same, but it still means something because you gave it to me. If I keep it, maybe it will remind me of that next time I start losing my cool."

Happy clasped his paws together and sniffed. "Aw, that's so sweet!"

Gray scowled. So did Natsu.

"Wait a second," the dragon slayer growled. "Do you have any idea how expensive that was?"

Now Gray did smile, and it was all sharp edges and mischief. "Well, you did lose my mother's necklace and break the clasp so that I had to get it fixed. I feel like you still owed me something."

"Why, you–!"

"Natsu!" Happy wailed as Natsu lunged at Gray. "Erza said no more fighting! She's going to kill you!"

Gray just laughed and swung back.

Note: I just wrote this a couple months ago, but to give you an idea of how long I put it off, there's a scene of something similar in "Heat Stroke" and I'd actually meant to write this fic before that one X) It changed a little since then, but I'm glad to get it off my chest. I'm trying to go back and scribble down some of the fic ideas I came up with ages ago but never wrote, and this was part of the campaign.

Also, if anyone told me I'd write a fic where a main setting was a storm drain, I would have laughed them out of the room. I don't really have an excuse lol

emmahoshi: Yeah, it's sort of Natsu's character to go barking up the wrong tree lol And Happy is a bit of an instigator. He kind of plays Natsu sometimes. I could see him bossing Natsu around while sitting back and snacking on fish. Well, I think Natsu is a little careless or oblivious sometimes, but he generally means well. Yeah, I haven't gotten around to working on that one yet. I just started writing for FT again a couple months ago, plus I'm writing for another fandom and some original work. So it's been a little slow. Keep bugging me and maybe I'll get on it lol (EDIT: Yeah, I haven't started that one either. I've been working on scribbling down some one-shots and old ideas I never got around to. Haven't started another multichapter yet. Life has been keeping me pretty busy. But if you keep on me, I'll be more likely to buckle down and work on it once I have some more time lol)