When the villagers guarding the wooden gates at the top noticed a round and slowly shrinking ice ball being rolled towards the village, they squinted their eyes and found one of the Fairy Tail wizards pushing it along. They barked some orders and one of the gates were opened, allowing them entry.

Gray heard Pinkie shout something before suddenly rolling Crystal down into a pit. She barely had time to scream before the pit’s floor met her ice body. She groaned when she came to a stop and laid there as the ice ball broke apart; looking up at the top of the pit.

“Who’s idea was this!?” Crystal shouted out to the people that had surrounded her.

“Mine …” Twilight called out, raising a hand. She cringed at Crystal’s look and looked up when Pinkie called out for her. “Can someone help her out of the pit please?” Twilight asked a couple of the onlooking villagers and went to see what Pinkie wanted. Crystal huffed as she got up and raised her hands for one of the villagers to grab onto. She grabbed on tight and felt herself be pulled up. When she got to the top, she crawled over the edge and stood, rubbing her hands together to get rid of the dirt. Crystal sniffed the air and covered her mouth as she fought some bile down.

“Oh god, what’s that stench?” Crystal groaned as she covered the lower half of her face with her hands.

“What smell?” Gray asked, looking at her weirdly.

“‘What smell’ he asks, that smell!” Crystal shouted at him, pointing to the giant flying rat with a bucket. “If you can’t smell, you can at least see it!”

“I can’t smell as good as you, hothead so get over it.” Gray called out to her as he rounded the pit and walked over to Pinkie and Twilight.

“Capitan, I think ze rat is closer!” Pinkie reported, still sporting that fake accent.

“How close?” Twilight asked, a hand placed on her hip as she looked at the flying rat for herself.

“Just beyond ze borders ma’am!” Pinkie replied, taking her hands off of around her eyes and pointing to directly above them.

“What? No, it’s … wait. Yes it is. We need to get everyone into the centre of the village.” Crystal spoke hurriedly when she realised that the Flying Rat Brigade was close.

“Why? All that it’s carrying is a bucket.” Twilight stated.

“And three mages. The bucket has started to smoke by the looks of it.” Pinkie replied. When she heard this, Crystal got a panicked look in her eyes before getting everyone to meet in the centre of the village. By the time she had gotten everyone there, the Flying Rat Brigade were hovering over the village. Crystal watched the bucket slowly tip and nodded to Cana and Levy. During the round-up, she noticed them walk into the village and told them to use their fire spells against whatever liquid was in the bucket. They didn’t agree to it, at first, but after hearing how urgently and panicky she sounded, they agreed.

As the bucket tipped, Angelica swung it around the village so the light green goop in it covered it entirely. Crystal scrunched her nose and tried not to chicken out at the stench. With another nod, the three mages let loose their fire spells. Crystal used her fire breath, Levy used the word ‘FIRE’ in her solid script magic and Cana used three of her cards to create an explosion spell. Soon as the spells were clear, Twilight erected a large enough shield to cover the villagers and mages. The combined fire spells hit the centre of the goop and created a hole via massive explosion.

The goop that was in the hole was vaporised by the sheer heat of the explosion, making the rest of the viscous liquid hit the village and leave the occupants relatively unharmed. Whatever it hit, it slowly ate away at until the only thing left was the ground the villagers were standing on. Twilight lowered the shield and rubbed her head to try and stop the throbbing.

“I don’t think it worked.” Toby said, scratching his ear as he looked at the village from on top of Angelica.

“No kidding. We just need to work extra hard at getting those intruders for Reitei.” Sherry sounded sarcastic as she crossed her arms over her chest. She looked down at the village and frowned when a glowing object sailed towards them. Her eyes widened when she recognised what it was and went to order Angelica to dodge but the ice lance grazed Angelica’s side, throwing the three mages off her back and into different locations on the island.

“Now we just need to make sure they don’t cause any more trouble.” Gray grinned, dusting his hands. Crystal watched the villagers look around in sorrow and saw some of them slide down into the crater that the goop had made. After it had done it’s work, it just disappeared, leaving the ground free to walk on but everything else to remain in shambles.

“That’s it! We need to get Lyon to stop whatever he’s doing and get these villagers back to normal!” Crystal declared and heard her friends cheer her on. She turned and looked at them and smiled. “We need to split up though. There’s six of us, and three of them. So we split up into pairs?” Crystal suggested, doing the math on her fingers.

“I vote to go with Twilight!” Pinkie said immediately, latching onto the Unicorn in a near death grip.

“I’ll go with Levy. We’ve worked together before.” Cana smirked and wrapped the smaller girl in a shoulder hug.

“That leaves me and the popsicle. Okay, we’ll split up and hopefully get to the three wizards that fell off Angelica in time.” Crystal said with a grin, patting Gray on his head at the same time. He growled at her patting but otherwise, didn’t complain. The other four nodded and followed Crystal and Gray towards the village gates. Once they were outside, they took off in different directions and hoped that at least one of the mages they were after were somewhere along the way.

“So that’s where the demon got to.” A voice said quietly; following one of the pairs through the treetops.

“This doesn’t look like camping gear, Rarity.” Rainbow eyed the laden cart that Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom and Scootaloo were pushing and pulling in tandem for Rarity. The cart that they were pulling was filled to the brim with dresses, shoes, makeup and a very large tent that seemed to take up most of the space. Scootaloo wore a green zip-hoody with dark purple trackpants. Sweetie Belle wore a flowery summer dress with patterns of flowing purple and white throughout it. Apple Bloom wore a green plaid shirt and dark blue denim jeans. All three fillies were sweating and panting by the time the group stopped to make up camp for the night.

“Oh, nonsense, Rainbow. It’s just the essentials,” Rarity said flippantly, waving her hand and lifting up her yellow-rimmed sunglasses.

“Essentials, Rare? It’s just a bunch of make-up, shoes and dresses. Who could you possible meet out here in the woods?” Rainbow cried, flinging her arms to the side to show what she meant.

“Rainbow has a point, Rare. They don’t look like camping gear, much.” Applejack told her, tipping her Stetson so that her face got a bit of shade.

“Well I never! This is essential camping gear for a lady like me!” Rarity protested, resting her sunglasses in her mane, close to the base of her horn as she directed Sweetie Belle and her friends to try and set up her tent.

“I don’t believe this!” Rainbow threw her arms up in the air, reaching for her own tent and setting it up in the clearing herself while Applejack did the same. The campsite was three long logs spaced around a campfire, with enough room between the logs and the forest edge for setting up tents.

“Keep a lid on it, Rainbow. At least she didn’t pack an extravagant tent or anything like that.” Applejack told her friend, before looking over to the three girls and watching them pitch up the exact tent she just described. Before she could curse, Scootaloo held something up.

“What’s this? It looks like a weird flute or something.” Scootaloo said, looking at the twisted wood with three holes on one end and what looked like miniature tree roots on the other end.

“It’s a flute!” Sweetie Belle squeaked and snatched it from Scootaloo.

“Hey! No snatching!” Scootaloo protested, reaching for it but Sweetie Belle moved it out of the way, causing Scootaloo to overreach and smack into Sweetie Belle, sending them both sprawling onto the ground. The flute flew out of Sweetie Belle’s hand and rolled over to Rainbow and Applejack. Rainbow picked it up and gave Applejack a weird look before moving her finger across the wood, sending a gust of air through it. A strange note played out as the eyes lit up purple for a brief second as some kind of magic worked.

Soon enough, the ponies felt their eyes close and slump to the ground, sleeping calmly as the flute rolled out of Rainbow’s hand and into the middle of the camp. The rolling stopped when a sandalled foot gently rested on top of it. The man belonging to the foot stood tall, had blue lines covering his bare torso while a ripped dark blue cloak covered his waist and legs. He had spiky silver hair on top and identical tattoos around his eyes that were in the shape of two arrowheads, one on top of the other.

“Who would have thought following this group would have turned out to be a success? They only played one note though. They’ll wake up in the morning, unfortunately, so I should leave when I have a chance,” the man told himself, picking up the flute and lifting himself up with his magic, quickly made his way towards Appleloosa for a little distraction.

“Erza, no-one is going to take us to Galuna.” Lucy complained, posture slumped forward with a dead look on her face.

“Nonsense. Of course someone would-” Erza waved Lucy’s complaint away but stopped when she heard a couple of ponies talking about a magical attack at Appleloosa. “An attack on Appleloosa?” Erza whispered to herself, twirled on the spot and walked over to the couple that had spoken. After a few tense minutes of speaking, Erza made her way back to Lucy and placed an armored hand on her shoulder. “Lucy, we’re going to Appleloosa. There’s a wind mage there that has a hold of some sort of flute.”

“A wind mage? At Appleloosa? There’s only farmponies there. Why would a wind mage go to Appleloosa?” Lucy asked, freezing up momentarily at Erza’s grip.

“I don’t know and I really hate to go against Master Makarov’s orders but we don’t have a choice here. Come on.” Erza told her, tightening her grip and effectively dragging Lucy behind her and back to Ponyville for the train station.

“Why am I the one that’s always getting dragged?” Lucy complained, resigned to her fate but helped Erza move along more quickly by keeping in time with her steps.

“That one’s Sherry,” Gray said in surprise when he recognised the waist-length pink hair and clothes. She was face-down in the dirt, laying still for a few moments inside a crater she had made upon landing.

“Of course it’s Sherry. Is she the one that controls animals?” Crystal asked, sliding to a stop as she panted to catch her breath.

“That’s the one. She already seems out for the count anyway, so I suggest we-” Gray was interrupted by the shifting and moving ground underneath Sherry. A wall of earth suddenly rose up, obscuring their vision. When it disappeared, a giant earth-like golem covered in rocks loomed above the pair, smashing trees and leaves out of the way as it moved about. On top of the golem, something moved and stood up slowly, perfectly balancing itself on top of its head.

“Doll Attack: Rock Doll,” Sherry muttered, directing the doll to turn around with a speed that belied its size. Crystal managed to duck under the doll’s swing but Gray ended up taking the brunt of the force, smashing his back into a tree with a loud crack.

“I don’t think you’ll be able to move after that attack, snowball,” Crystal observed, quickly running to him and turning him onto his stomach. He let out a loud groan and laid still as Crystal went over his wound. “This doesn’t look good.”

“It definitely doesn’t feel good so why don’t you take care of that rock thing, and I’ll take care of myself, okay, dragon breath?” Gray said rhetorically, pushing her away from him as he saw a rocky punch come their way. Gray cried out when the punch hit his already damaged back and laid still for the time being.

“We may have gotten off to a rocky start, but maybe we can sort out our differences, mano a mano, huh? What do you say rock creature?” Crystal asked cockily, not really feeling her bravado as she dodged another punch, feeling it graze against her side.

The golem roared an unintelligible answer and brought both fists down on Crystal’s head. She grunted and crossed both arms above her head as she tried to block it, covering her arms in a layer of crystal to try and block it further. The dual fist still managed to send Crystal to both knees, even though she was struggling to hold the rock fist above her head. The pressure let off when the rock golem lifted his hands at Sherry’s command.

“Impressive. Very, impressive crystal-user,” Sherry said and despite having fallen what was most likely a few hundred feet, looked and felt good.

“Close on ... the name, ... Sherry,” Crystal panted, slowly getting up and realising she was ankle deep in sludgy earth. She tried to move her feet but couldn’t really get them out of it. All the heat she had been naturally generating melted the earth where her knees were and turned it into a droopy sludge. “Why can’t I move?”

“Perfect. Doll Attack: Mud Doll,” Sherry said, grinning widely as she lifted her hands and created a golem that was a mixture of dirt and mud, rising out of the ground from just underneath Crystal. She fell backwards and landed on her back as the size of the golem forced her to rapidly crawl backwards and heard the crash of rocks falling to the ground as Sherry’s first doll crumbled in on itself.

“Mud can be hardened, can’t it?” Crystal wondered and rose her temperature as fast as she could. The mud slammed into her just as the mud around her ankles hardened and she spat it out. “Blegh! This is going to take weeks to get out,” she muttered in disgust. She tried to move again but her feet were stuck in this new layer of fresh mud.

Sherry laughed and went to attack again but she and everything else froze in time. A white blur moved about, helping the frozen Crystal and Gray move away from the battle while time slowly regained its normal speed. When it did, Sherry looked around in surprise at the sudden disappearance of her two victims. She screamed in anguish and plodded off through the forest on a slow search for them. If that failed, she would head back to Lyon to give her report if the others hadn’t already.

Crystal looked around, as did Gray, as they found themselves a lot further away from the ocean and a lot further inland.

“What happened?” Gray asked groggily, rubbing his head with a hand as he sat up and winced as his back twinged with pain.

“Dunno. You doing okay?” Crystal asked, leaning down to help her friend stand up.

“Just a broken back,” Gray chuckled and placing his hands on the small of his back, pressed inward and stretched forwards at the same time. A loud crack sounded out and Gray sighed in relief. “There we go.”

“That didn’t sound healthy,” Crystal muttered but looked at the ocean before turning around. “Think we should head back to the village?”

“You think?” Gray scoffed and ran back into the island with Crystal hot on his heels.

Author's Notes:

The Lullaby arc and the Galuna Island arc still happen at the same time but I'm going to skip it so I can try and bring back some normalcy to this fic.