Natsu and Gray help the Resistance come up with a plan to take down the Wall, but the decisions they have to make are more difficult than they'd imagined.

TW for descriptions of scars from torture

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i raise my flags, don my clothes
it's a revolution, i suppose
we're painted red to fit right in

"How the hell are we going to get home?"

Natsu and Gray sat at the table in the resistance hideout, staring at the plethora of charts, maps and diagrams that were pinned to the wall and spread across the table. They were currently alone – they'd searched for Edo-Gray after he'd fled earlier but hadn't been able to find him. When they'd returned to the hideout, the room had been empty.

"I don't know," Gray admitted, leaning his head in his hands and looking like he was going to cry. Natsu scooted closer to him, wrapping his arm around Gray's shoulder and leaning their heads together.

"We'll figure something out," he whispered, trying to reassure both of them. Gray shook his head, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands as the tears began to spill.

"He's just so... broken," he said, voice shaking as he wiped furiously at his face. "Th-the drugs, and I just... I get it, I do, I j-just..." He exhaled sharply. "They're... god, they're monsters. Faust, and Joekel, and whoever fucking... cut his arms up and beat him and... god, it's just..."

"Yeah," Anger and pity flashed across Natsu's face in equal measure. "The drugs, and that scar, and Lyon's gone..."

"He's so sad and angry," Gray murmured. "He misses here-you so much. And here-you misses him too." His fingers drifted to his lips, thinking of the sad, desperate kiss he'd shared with Edo-Natsu before they'd headed inside the Wall. What was Edo-Natsu going to do when he found out that his Gray was alive?

"We're gonna fix this," Natsu said, voice suddenly determined. He pressed a kiss to Gray's temple, then turned to look back at the information spread across the table. "We have to."

"We're going to need a lot more frags."

Edo-Gray stood with his arms crossed over his chest, staring at the holographic map of Acropolis that was floating over the table. He'd shown up at the hideout half an hour ago, apparently clean and acting like nothing had happened the day before. At least, Natsu thought it had been a day. It was hard to tell without the sun.

"And where are we gonna get those?"

Natsu turned to see that Bickslow was speaking. Erza had summoned the rest of the Resistance members, and the small room was crowded with about twenty people. Natsu recognized some of them – Bickslow, Mest and much older looking Romeo from Fairy Tail; Sting, Rogue, Yukino and Rufus from Sabertooth; Jura and Sherry from Lamia Scale; and Hibiki from Blue Pegasus. The other few were unfamiliar faces.

"He's right," Erza replied. "The creds that Fairy Tail sent can only buy us so much." She tapped her fingers on the table, sighing. "But we need them to take down the Wall. With Fairy Tail's magic, it'll be easier to get to the Stone and skrag it." She glanced over at Natsu and Gray. "After we get you two home, of course."

Natsu swallowed, not responding. There was something incredibly terrifying about all these eyes staring at him and Gray like they were some sort of freak exhibit instead of familiar friends.

"We don't necessarily have to blow anything up," Sting said, and Edo-Gray looked almost disappointed. Sting stepped forward and swiped away the view of the Acropolis, then pulled up another map of Imperium and the mainland. Three red dots were highlighted – one close to Louen, one further north, and one on the island of Imperium. "Fairy Tail sent this intel along – these are the generators powering the Wall. They're connected to a backup, which means we'd need to nix all three at the same time. I could make data spikes that would overload the system, it's just getting to them that's the problem."

"Exactly, how are we going to get to Imperium?" Rogue leaned in, pointing to several lines that connected the mainland with the island. He was dressed in regular clothing today – dark pants and a heavy jacket similar to Edo-Gray's, with his hair pulled back in a bun. "We can't take the maglevs 'cause they ident-scan, and our ship would be shot down before we could get close."

"We could swim." Edo-Gray's suggestion cut through the room and everyone turned to him. He shrugged. "That's how Erza got me out. It wouldn't be easy, but if she drops us partway, we could swim. They wouldn't be expecting it."

"That's because it's suicide," Mest interjected. Edo-Gray waved a hand at him dismissively.

"Erza and I survived it," he replied. Mest shook his head.

"I'm not gonna jump off a ship and swim to an island crawling with Magehunters," he insisted. Several other people nodded their heads in agreement.

"I will." Natsu turned to see that Gray was standing, hands flat on the table. "I'm a strong swimmer. And the military can be drawn away by diverting some of them here," he pointed at Louen. "And here." He tapped Sycca, the northern city hosting the second generator. "If we incite riots it would also keep eyes away from the generators."

"Which is why we need more frags," Edo-Gray said, picking absently at the scabs on his knuckles. "He has a good point. If we go into those cities and cause some static, the military will head over and leave us with less Magehunters in Imperium."

"The question is, how do we get into Acropolis?" Hibiki stepped forward, flicking his wrist and enlarging the schematic of the building. "And how do we communicate between the generators? If we have to blow them all at the same time, we'll need some way of talking to one another." There was a murmur of agreement.

"If I can get to the mainframe and the relay, I can open up channels for us," Sting said, reaching up and tapping the tech next to his eye. "We have comms, just no way to use them yet."

"This plan has a lot of ifs," Rogue commented, playing with a loose strand of hair and giving Sting a serious look.

"What else are we gonna do?" Edo-Gray replied, fiddling with the chain under his shirt. "If anyone else has a better idea, let me know." The room was silent. "We've been trying to come up with something for a year, and this is the first time we've had enough intel to make a real plan."

"It's not much of a plan if we all end up flatlined," Rufus argued. His gaze didn't quite meet Edo-Gray's – in fact, almost nobody looked him in the eye.

"Isn't your life all you've got to lose?" Edo-Gray demanded, his eyes dark and hard. "Do we have anything left but our lives? And this...whoring and fighting and drinking and getting hexed?" Everyone but Erza, Sting and Rogue dropped their gaze to the ground and Edo-Gray snorted in disgust. "Kovardaj. How much more do you have to lose to these bastards before you're ready to die taking them down?"

Nobody said anything, and he sighed and turned back to Natsu and Gray.

"We're with you," Natsu said quietly. "What do you need us to do?"

~

"This is a training simulator." Edo-Gray held out a thick, black visor in one hand, and a pair of gloves in the other. "You wear these, and they let you see what the deck displays. Lets you practice shooting without actually shooting anything." He gestured to a vidscreen behind him. "I can see here what you see, helps me make sure you're doing it right."

Gray reluctantly accepted the strange headgear, then held out his arm for Edo-Gray to help him with the gloves. Discomfort was clear on Edo-Gray's face when their skin brushed, but he pushed through it until both gloves were on and fastened. Then he gestured for Gray to put on the visor. Gray tugged it over his eyes, blinking at the uncomfortable sensation of seeing something that wasn't there.

With the visor on, it appeared as if he was in a bare room with a target at the far end. Moving his head around, he was amazed to find that the illusion covered the full three-hundred-and-sixty degrees. Next to him was a table with a pistol.

"Pick it up," Edo-Gray said. Gray couldn't see him anymore, but by his voice he could tell that Edo-Gray had moved to stand behind him. Gray reached out hesitantly, surprised to feel that the imaginary gun felt solid in his hand.

"Whoa," he breathed, hefting it in his palm. The texture was strange, but the weight was realistic.

"It's a drek set, the gloves were cheap, but they'll do for now." Edo-Gray's voice came closer and Gray heard him sigh. "I have to... help you. With your stance." There was a moment of silence until Gray realized that Edo-Gray was asking permission to touch him.

"Oh. Yeah. I mean, I know you don't... you can just tell—" Gray was cut off by a foot prodding his ankle, pushing him into a more balanced stance. A hand lightly touched his elbow and brought his arm up to aim the gun at the target, and another guided his other hand to brace it. "There you go. Now focus on the target, and exhale when you pull the trigger."

Gray tried to breathe out evenly, squeezing the trigger and blinking in surprise as a bright red ping showed up on the target. It wasn't in the center, but it was fairly close.

"Not bad," Edo-Gray commented, sounding somewhat impressed. "Now, can you do it again?"

Gray fired off ten more shots, each moving closer to the center until he finally hit the red 'x.' The target flashed a few times in congratulations, then the table beside him flashed and a second pistol appeared.

"Impressive," Edo-Gray said, tapping something into the deck's keyboard. "You're pretty good. I'm a decent shot too, but Natsu was always terrible." Gray could hear the fondness in his voice, and it made his chest tighten.

"I've never used a gun before," Gray admitted. "It's not... we don't use them in our world. Well, two of our mages do, but they're... different." Edo-Gray made an unintelligible sound. It was so difficult to make conversation with him.

"Well, shooting a target is one thing, shooting people is another. Pick up the other gun." Gray reached out and took it in his right hand, hefting it to get used to the weight. "Let's practice with two, then switch to moving targets."

~

"Ow, fuck!" Natsu gasped, opening his eyes and bringing a hand to his nose. It came away covered in blood, and he groaned. "I don't know if I can do this." His ears were ringing, and a headache was working its way to his temples.

"It's not easy, but the Natsu I know can do it." Erza sat across from him in one of the smaller rooms at the hideout. Nobody had ever explained to Natsu exactly where the hideout was located or how they'd built it, only that it could be accessed through several different secret locations throughout Undertown.

"It hurts," Natsu complained, using the rag Erza passed him to clean the blood from his hands.

"So does flatlining," she retorted, clearly unimpressed. "If you want to get home, you're going to have to learn how to do this. There's no other way to get the armor and weapons to Imperium."

After the meeting with the rest of the Resistance, Edo-Gray had come up with the idea of trying to teach Natsu to use Erza's inter-dimensional space to store weapons, just like they had three years ago with Edo-Natsu. They weren't certain it would work, since Gray and Natsu didn't have their magic, but it appeared that learning new magic wasn't a problem. Natsu could feel the space – it was like desperately trying to get a grip on something slippery. But over the last two weeks he hadn't managed to get his hand into the space, never mind fill it with gear.

"All right, let's try again," Erza said. Natsu closed his eyes, sitting cross-legged on the bed and exhaling. He spread both hands out in front of him, trying to relax and focus on the edge of the 'pocket.' Erza had tried to explain it as "crossing your eyes but with your mind," which had only served to confuse Natsu further.

A calm descended over Natsu, and he felt his senses sharpen – he focused on the slightly musty scent of the room, the feel of the cheap sheets under his bare feet, the taste of leftover coffee, gritty on his tongue, the sound of Erza's breathing and heartbeat. There it was. Here was the difficult part – if he concentrated too hard, the pocket would slip away from him, but if he ignored it, it would dissolve, and he'd have to start over again.

He felt the thin edge of it under his fingertips as he coaxed it towards him, keeping his breathing even and steady, leaning forward slightly to get a better grip. Finally. He slid one finger inside the entrance, tugging it until it began to open into a small portal. Part of him wanted to jump up and shout in excitement, but he kept himself calm and controlled until he had the portal open to the size of a dinner plate.

"Good," Erza said quietly, moving closer to him and passing him a set of balled-up socks. "Now put this in and close it. If you don't close it properly, everything will fall out into the void."

Natsu swallowed, opening his eyes a fraction and tucking the socks into the pocket. Then he began the slow, careful process of sealing it. When he finished, he pulled his hands back and let out a deep breath. It felt like a release – everything crashing down away from him – and then he noticed the blood pouring from his nose again. He gagged on the coppery tang, desperately wiping it away with the rag.

"That was perfect," Erza said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Now, you're going to need to fit enough armor and weapons for five people, plus explosives and any interface gear that Sting needs into it." Natsu groaned, feeling lightheaded.

"I'm going to bleed to death before I can help anyone," he complained, but he knew deep down that this was one of the easier jobs.

"Keep practicing," Erza said encouragingly. A knock on the door interrupted her and Gray poked his head in, looking over in alarm at Natsu's blood-stained face and shirt.

"'m fine," Natsu reassured him as Gray moved over to him and tipped his face up. "I think I got it. Just gotta keep doing it." His vision swam and he suddenly felt exhausted and cold, and he leaned against Gray heavily, shivering.

"I was gonna say that it's your turn for target practice, but I think you should take a nap," Gray said gently, looking up at Erza. She gave a soft smile and nodded. "C'mon, bedtime." Natsu didn't even argue, just let Gray pull him up and guide him across the hall to their room.

~

"He's never going to sell us what we need," Edo-Gray said.

It had been a month since their initial Resistance meeting, and Rogue, Sting, Edo-Gray, Erza, Gray and Natsu were gathered in the common area of the hideout. Erza had recently counted up their inventory and had found it sorely lacking.

"What do we need?" Gray asked. He was leaning on the table, coffee in hand, rubbing his eyes.

"This." Edo-Gray swiped over to a new file, and everyone leaned forward, reading the long list of items.

"That's probably not everything," Edo-Gray added, rubbing the back of his neck. "And we have some of it already, but we need a lot more. We've got almost twenty-five of us going into this thing." After their initial reluctance, most of the other Resistance members had come around, and were working diligently to steal, train, spy and sow unrest before they put the plan into motion.

"I'm up to ten SINchips," Rogue said. He was dressed for work but was wearing Sting's heavy leather jacket over his bare chest to keep him warm. "I can grab a few more, but I don't want people getting suspicious."

He had been drugging some of his clients at the brothel and using a much gentler method of removing their SINchips than Fairy Tail had used on the Magehunters. He then replaced them with faulty chips that Sting had created, making it look like a simple tech issue that would be resolved with a new chip once the clients got topside.

"I'm sure we can get a few elsewhere," Erza said, pulling her hair back into a ponytail. "Just focus on not getting caught." Rogue nodded. Natsu frowned at the list.

"Where did you get the stuff you already have?" he asked, unsettled by the number of weapons. He was still struggling to accept the violent nature of this world, despite practicing with the pistols, as well as working on hand-to-hand combat with Edo-Gray. It seemed like Edo-Gray had less of an issue touching people when it was to punch or kick them.

"Skavak," Edo-Gray replied, pulling up a file and swiping it over to Natsu. An unfriendly-looking man with a full-face tattoo peered down at him. "He's a weapons dealer, and he's not the nicest guy around. He's just as likely to double-cross us to Hollow than he is to sell to us straight."

Over the past month, Gray and Natsu had become fairly well-acquainted with the dealings of Undertown. They were in the entertainment district, but Undertown itself spanned a much larger area. Although Imperium and the Magehunters knew about Undertown, they cared little for what happened here – unless it was related to suspected magic activity. In the absence of law enforcement, an entity named Hollow had appeared. Nobody had ever seen Hollow, but she profited from nearly every business, from prostitution to cage fighting to black market deals.

"I'm sure Hollow would pay double what we own just to get rid of us," Rogue commented. "We're a threat to her. If we restore magic, Undertown and all of her business could cease to exist, and she won't be in power anymore. If we're going to buy from Skavak, we have to be careful."

"We're not gonna buy from him," Edo-Gray said, leaning forward on the table. "We're gonna steal from him."

Everyone turned to Edo-Gray and stared at him as if he had sprouted a second head. He shrugged, closing all the holographic documents and pulling up a new one – a three-dimensional representation of a warehouse.

"Look, Skavak's reprobate. He buys and sells people as well as weapons, and I'd just as soon see him take a dirtnap than give him our creds." Rogue's face hardened, and Gray suddenly wondered if that's what had happened to him. "Once we have all the weapons, we're gonna be leaving here anyway, and we won't be coming back – either we'll be dead, or we'll be free. So what we do doesn't matter."

"He has a point." Sting examined the map, tapping on the neural interface tech on the side of his face and placing his palm on the deck. His false eye went blank for several seconds, then he started to laugh. "His defenses are friable – no ice or anything. He probably thinks nobody would dare because he's ace with Hollow. It shouldn't be hard to get in."

"It's never hard to get in," Rogue cautioned, placing a hand on Sting's shoulder. "It's getting back out that's the problem. And then surviving the aftermath."

"So we kill him and negate the aftermath." Edo-Gray said it so simply, and Natsu felt his stomach twist. He wasn't sure how he felt about this, but he didn't know if it was his place to interject.

"I take it you have a plan?" Erza asked, flopping down into one of the chairs. She was holding her left arm and grimacing – yesterday she'd returned to the hideout with a blaster wound on her arm, courtesy of Hollow's men. Erza was a runner for another organization, trafficking illegal items across Undertown.

"I've got the beginning of a plan," Edo-Gray replied. He looked across the table at Natsu and Gray. "You two ready to use your shiny new guns?" Natsu blinked a few times.

"We... uh... killing..." He felt out of breath and leaned back into Gray for comfort. "That's not... we don't kill people." The words sounded stupid as soon as they left his mouth, and Edo-Gray gave him a withering look.

"Then you're gonna end up flatlined," Erza said, shaking her head. "I dunno what it's like in your world, but here you shoot first. There're no badges out here to bust the bad guys. There's you and your pistol and hoping like hell you've got faster reflexes."

"We're... that's not..." Natsu sighed in frustration, rubbing his face with his hand. Gray moved as if he was going to say something, but Edo-Gray interrupted him.

"What did you think you were practicing for? Doing tricks?" His lip curled up in a sneer. "You think this is for fun? That these are just some sort of misunderstood people who can be... what, redeemed or something? Those. Men. Are. Monsters."

Natsu made a noise of protest, but Edo-Gray glared at him.

"Wanna know how I got these?" Edo-Gray gestured to the flat, wide scars on his forearms. "Guy named Revik peeled my skin off, bit by bit, to get me rat on my friends." He put his hands flat out on the table so they could clearly see his missing fingers. "Then I got to pick which finger he cut off."

"What..." Natsu's voice was soft and sad and he felt like he was going to cry. Gray gripped his shoulder gently and he used the sensation to ground himself. His head was whirling with a hundred different thoughts and he couldn't keep them straight.

"And this one..." Edo-Gray pointed to the large scar that ran from his cheek to his chest. "You – here-you – you were gonna die. You got hit by that stone, and your arm... it just started decaying. And I had to..." He swallowed, squeezing his eyes shut. "I had to keep you safe. So I said goodbye to you, and stayed behind, and tried take some of them down. I killed four men and I didn't blink because if I hadn't, you would be dead."

He reached up and angrily wiped at the tears that had formed in the corners of his eyes, then glared at the two of them as if daring them to say something. Rogue stepped up behind Edo-Gray and placed a hand on his lower back, and Sting moved to stand on his other side.

"I had to say goodbye to you," Edo-Gray said again, voice quiet and sad. "And we were..." He swallowed, clenching his hands into fists. "We were gonna get married. I gave you a ring that morning. We were... I promised you we'd be happy forever."

Oh god, Natsu thought. He'd assumed that Edo-Gray and Edo-Natsu had been married long before any of this happened.

"They took our magic," Edo-Gray continued softly. "It hurts like hell, by the way – being Purged. Hurts worse than any broken bone I've gotten in the pit." He rubbed absently at a long, thick scar on his forearm. "They killed Lyon." Natsu felt Gray's fingers tighten on his shoulder. "Shot him in the head right in front of me." Edo-Gray's jaw was set, and his nostrils flared angrily as he spoke. "They've killed so many of us. Juvia, Cana, Mira, Alzak, Bisca... Makarov."

"Fuck," Natsu whispered under his breath. "I'm sorry. I'm so... I'm sorry."

"That's why you shoot first here," Rogue added. "I understand your trepidation, but hesitating isn't a luxury we can afford." He gave them a sympathetic look. "Sometimes, Joekel will keep some of the Purged at the Acropolis, to be used by those who live there how they see fit." He paused for a moment to let the implications of his words sink in. "And people like Skavak are the ones who buy people like me from Imperium and sell us to places like the House." He wrapped an arm around Edo-Gray. "I don't work there. I'm a slave because we," he gestured around the room, "aren't human anymore. And I would do anything to be a person again."

Erza sighed, rubbing her face. Then she walked over to the other side of the room, opened up one of the crates, and pulled out two sets of pistols. Returning to the table, she set them next to Gray and Natsu.

"It's your choice," she said plainly. "We're going ahead with this, with or without you. We'll give you some time to think – you have until tomorrow to make your decision." With that, she stood and gestured for everyone to leave the room.

"Wait," Natsu said quickly as Edo-Gray turned to leave. "I don't..." He stood up, moving as if to reach out and then withdrawing his hand at the last minute. Edo-Gray looked at him curiously, then gestured to Rogue and Sting that he was fine. "I'm sorry." Natsu looked down at the floor and Gray stepped back a little to give them some space.

"It's not..." Edo-Gray sighed, running a hand through his hair. "It's not your fault." Natsu looked up at him uncertainly. "Don't... don't look at me like that, it's not fair. You and your ridiculous eyes." He huffed. "I'm not—I get it, okay? But I thought I would never see him again, and now I do, and I'm not going to let anything get in the way of that."

"I'm sorry," Natsu said again, feeling small and childish. The age gap between them was unmistakable at times, and this was one of them. He started when he felt a hand brushing his. Edo-Gray had reached across the table and was very, very hesitantly touching the back of Natsu's hand.

"Not your fault," Edo-Gray said roughly, letting Natsu gently squeeze his fingers. "Just think about what we said." Then he withdrew his hand and nodded, moving back to where Sting and Rogue were exiting the room.

"Fuck." Natsu turned to Gray and groaned, dropping his head into his hands. "What are we supposed to do?"

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Underspeak Translations

Kovardaj = cowards