This World is Wild, But is Not the Forest

[Erza Scarlet]

Just as she began to walk away, there was a sudden emptiness behind Erza in the direction of the gigantic metal tree she'd woken up under. Spinning around and putting a hand on her sword's hilt, she observed the phenomenon in front of her - The tree was shrinking rapidly, and appeared to be changing into an actual, organic tree as it did so. And then, seemingly just as soon as it had finally stabilized into a simple, stout, bark-and-leaves tree, it inverted into the ground, leaving in its place only a large spring, water gushing from the formerly-static ground and forming a fountain of sorts. Erza rubbed her eyes. Okay, that was just weird.

She stood for a moment, trying to regain her bearings. For some reason the whole place seemed different just by the recent exchange of its centerpiece, oriented just slightly off from what she'd aligned with only moments before. She suddenly felt the urge to leave this place as fast as possible - it gave her a strange sense of forboding, and the heebie-jeebies to boot.

It was in that moment that she was bumped rather violently from behind.

Her left foot flew forwards, putting her back into vertical equilibrium as her hand again flew to the sword on her back, this time going so far as to actually swing it to her front as she spun around to face her assailant.

"Whoah, there!" A bewildered woman, green from head-to-toe with the exception of a lengthy mess of near-white hair and significantly better-muscled than most, backpedaled away from Erza, hands up but beginning to take a similar stance to her own as Erza's sword remained in place, showing no signs of wavering. "If it's a fight you want, I'll certainly oblige, but I'm not sure you'd want to be on the receiving end." She was lower to the ground now, her center of weight perfectly balanced, and Erza could see that the green girl had managed to pull out some sort of claw weapon during her short speech.

Erza lowered her sword very slightly, giving off a noise somewhere between a grunt and a low growl. "You seem eager enough. Let's have at it then - you ARE the aggressor, after all." With that, she waved her sword slightly - an invitation. Though, at this point, Erza didn't really expect a fight. The muscly woman in front of her was certainly exhibiting aggressive body language, but she HAD offered a truce after all. She took one hand off her sword to give it a good shake; she was still a bit stiff from just having woken up, and felt she may have pulled a muscle in her shoulder in her reaction to the other woman's initial contact.

"Aggressor? It's crowded, and I bumped into the ONE person not moving. You got that much of a problem with it, yeah, let's do this, right here, right now." She was grinning now, and appeared to be halfway between satisfaction and genuine amusement. Erza noticed that, in the front of her mouth, at least one of her teeth was replaced with a gemstone. Emerald teeth? Well, it wasn't any weirder than the emerald SKIN, and she'd certainly witnessed weirder than that.

Erza lowered her sword to the ground, then sheathed it, adopting an arms-crossed stance. "Apology accepted then. I like your style." Erza extended a hand to the still-battle-ready spunky one, an equivalent grin crossing her visage.

"Damn right you do," she grunted as she glanced momentarily up to Erza's face, then back to the outstretched hand. She then stood back up into a more casual posture, raising her hand to grab Erza's and promptly pulling out, all in the same fluid motion. Her hands were certainly rougher than Erza had expected, probably even more so than her own. "Emerald." One of Erza's eyebrows raised in confusion. "My name. Emerald."

Erza's head bowed, her eyes closing and a slight smile returning to her face. Of course. She lifted her head again. "Well, it'll certainly be easy to remember. Though, I'm not really one to talk." She spun her head to the side, most of her hair flying cleanly around her shoulder to rest on the front of her breastplate. "Erza. Erza *cough* Scarlet."

It was unclear to Emerald whether Erza had let out a chuckle, or had actually coughed due to the hair she'd caught in her mouth.

"Now, if we're friendly, and you have nothing better to do, we may as well keep company. I need to get out of here as fast as possible - Every time that thing changes" - and she swung out an arm to point at what was formerly the fountain, but was now simply a large wooden spire, engraved with runes of a language so old and foreign even Levy might have trouble deciphering them - "I get disoriented, and too many times of that can't possible be good for a person. Sooo, any idea where we might go?" Erza raised her eyebrows slightly. Perhaps this Emerald might know a bit more about this place than she did - And even if not, she certainly looked to be good company while they got their bearings.