Taste my Pain (Fairy Tail)

Determination

Taste my Pain
Chapter 18

"One more wave!" Erza yelled out as she re-equipped into a new amour where she then attacked the closest men that tried to grab her from behind. Her sword held up high, she turned to look out to Gray and Natsu that were fighting against two men before releasing a spell. They were all fighting their way to see how the others were doing, but with the number of bandits that they were currently facing, it was difficult to know where they were going as they had no time to rest.
Each time they would move forward, another wave would come towards them which made the job that the girls had chosen quite suspicious.

Punching the thief charging towards him, Natsu pointed his nose up in the air as he took in a deep inhale. "I can smell Lucy! She's really close!" Natsu exclaimed as he ran ahead with the others following.
As they ran after Natsu, they could tell that they were almost there where the others were. In the distance, they could see flashes of light and the rapidly changing elements which signified Fairy Tail's presence.

Charles/Carla/Charle flying towards Wendy where she picked her up again, Wendy gave out another roar and dragged it through the air and forest. Her small body panting from lack of energy within her, she forced herself to continue in hopes of giving her two friends extra time to regroup before the next waves caught up to them.

"Wendy, are you alright?" Charles/Carla/Charle asked in concern as she looked down to the girl that was in her hold. Wendy looking up, she forced herself to smile before nodding her head. "I can still continue," she whispered before continuing what she was doing before.

As Natsu lead Team Natsu to Cana and Lucy who were standing back to back, they all saw how the two were glowing from Wendy's supportive side of her magic. Their steady progress showing Team Natsu how composed and united they are in defeating their opponents, the team knew better than to disrupt their focus and kept a distance from them.

"Just how many of these guys are there?" Gray sneered as he kept on using his Ice-Make magic to distance the bandits from Cana and Lucy. He was clearly running out of strength like the others, unlike Lucy, and he was getting much more tired each time he had to move to block an opponent's attack.

Not liking how the situation was slowly becoming, they all joined into one group without knowing. Their backs close to each other, Lucy found herself standing in the middle of the circle formation which made her narrow her eyes.

"It feels like we're back as a team," Erza proudly stated where Lucy frowned.

Standing awkwardly in the middle where her magic would obviously hit any one of them that were standing around her, Lucy refused to reduce her distance from Team Natsu. Her body buzzing from the adrenaline that she was feeling, she shook her head before jumping high into the air where she landed outside of the circle and whipped her whip across the air where it snapped and crackled to her harsh arm movements.

"I will not be the one standing inside of the circle while I'm still able to fight!" she boomed. She didn't want to get grouped together with a group who were cocky about their strengths and teamwork. She wasn't like them and she was much more independent than how she was before in the past.

Being a few hours since the beginning of their battle, the bandits all continued charging towards them in waves. Whoever their commander was, Lucy was estimating that they were fighting against five large bandit groups that wanted to increase their numbers.

One group of bandits followed by another, perhaps the news of their collaboration brought in more bandits that wanted to join in the fun. Imitation magic and Clone magic being the main reason to why more continued to come towards their way, Lucy had to give them props for making it so far.