Title: And ever we fight on

Full summary: Nuala is forced to assume a throne that had never been intended for her. Nuada, now a prisoner of an almost war, has lost everything he had ever held dear. Even so, will he ever put an end to his mad pursuit? The BPRD fights, as it always did, to protect mankind as its fate hangs perilously in the balance once more.

Miscellaneous: This story is an assortment of genres and characters. I'm trying to stick as close to the canon universe as possible; comic x movie crossover of sorts. Not yaoi/slash/yuri.

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Windows shattered, bullets plowing straight through them and embedding themselves into the apartment walls inside, as BPRD agents fired at the lava golem. The screams of terrified civilians covered the sound of police sirens, reminding everyone that many lives were at stake. This attack was taking place in one of the bigger cities near New Jersey and it could all turn very ugly, very fast.

They did not have many tactical options, Abraham Sapien grimly noted. Ahead of them stretched at least a mile of backed up traffic – people had abandoned their cars in a mad rush to save their lives, and there were apartment blocks on both sides – potential civilian casualties trapped inside with no chance of escaping. Judging from the lights, more than half of the tenants were at home.

He had to come up with a plan and he had to do it now.

Their only option seemed to be luring the golem towards the BPRD units and trapping it there. But then there was the matter of how to effectively capture or kill the lava creature, which had proven to be a formidable opponent.

Its first approach had been to try to crush them with its massive fists. When that hadn't worked, it had alternated between throwing cars and other projectiles, like newspaper stands and street lights, at them and trying to step on them.

It could also shoot rock spikes out of the ground. The spikes contained lava, and shooting them did not help any. Molten rock splattered onto those nearby, killing them instantly. The smell of burned flesh made Abraham sick.

"Damn!" One of the agents screamed in angry frustration, staggering to his feet after having dodged another car. "How many shots does that thing take to die? Die, damn it!"

There was a sound of tires screeching. Abe stopped shooting and let his gaze wander in the general direction of the sound, when...

"Agent Stone, be careful!"

A spike of lava rock ripped upward from the ground, splitting the sidewalk's concrete in half and pushing sideways the parked cars, as agent Stone jumped to his left. He was a fraction too slow. The jagged rock scored a long, ugly gash along the side of his leg, making him double over in pain. Still, if it hadn't been for Abe's warning, the agent would've probably lost his entire leg.

Abraham Sapien, along with a couple other BPRD agents kept firing at the lava golem, providing cover for the wounded agent. A second squad dragged the injured man to a relatively safe spot, for his wound to be tended to.

Most of the bullets glanced off the hard armor the golem's rock skin proved to be, but only when the magazines were finally emptied did Abe stop firing.

"I do wonder, Abraham," Prince Nuada shouted as he jumped off a newspaper stand, elegantly dodging yet another car thrown his general direction. "It is a creature made of lava and rock and even so you-"

"I know that," the amphibian interjected. "I have an-"

"So why do you keep trying to shoot it?" Nuada moved out of the path of a street bench, which exploded in a shower of twisted metal and burnt wood when it hit the pavement. "Trying to shoot a rock golem, that is brilliant, so very brilliant. It makes me wonder how you have managed to survive for so long."

"And you did better, huh?" An agent intervened out of a sense of loyalty to the friendlier creature – that and he was high on adrenaline, not realizing his folly, while firing off another magazine worth of bullets. Needless to say it achieved as much as the fifteen other magazines he'd already emptied – nothing at all. ''You tried to stab it to death!''

Nuada jumped backwards as a silver car went crashing into the area he had been standing mere moments ago. Concrete crumbled around it. He was just about to engage the golem once more, when he saw something out of the corner of his eye.

"Need a hand, Fairy?"

"Red," Abraham exclaimed from the safety of a devastated coffee shop. "We're luring it to the BPRD vans over there, where underground water pipes-"

"On it."

"Assist him!" Manning barked at the agents already scrambling towards Hellboy, who had foregone weapons and was furiously hitting the golem with his bare hands as if it were a punching bag.

There was no time to stop for Nuada, who launched himself at the golem again, whirling in and out of range in rapid succession, every fiber of his body focused on drawing the creature near the hydrant that marked underground water pipes.

Hellboy felt the creature reel beneath him, smashing itself against the wall of a building, in an attempt to dislodge its foe. He jumped off its back before it could crush him against the wall.

This thing was tough, no two-ways about it. But there had to be a weakness, somewhere. Hellboy's next bet was Big Baby, his favorite gun. The massive bullets grazed over the rock armor, ricocheting into one of the few remaining luminous signs decorating the front door of a store.

Hellboy clenched his teeth, reloaded and aimed for the head. He pulled back Big Baby's hammer threateningly. The ground between him and two BPRD agents suddenly split open. Hellboy's side of the highway began to break away beneath his feet, tracking his footsteps dangerously as he retreated back and away from his target, a river of lava cooling off behind him. A large, incandescent hand shot out from within the massive crack, clawing a few cars down into its depths.

In the chaos, the golem managed to land a hit on the prince, propelling him into one of the stores, as if he were a ragdoll.

"Bastard,"Hellboy cursed. He wasn't necessarily upset about the elf getting hit, as he was about seemingly having lost his edge in the months he had spent with his pregnant wife, stuck in the ever peaceful countryside.

"Demon," Nuada choked out. He trembled, biting his lower lip hard to stop himself from screaming out as he removed a piece of glass from his arm. The prince felt a warm blur in his eyes as he pulled out the shard and threw it in the general direction of the demon. The enchanted collar had weakened him to such extent it was humiliating…He murmured a small healing spell, just enough to allow him to return to battle. Nuada felt his anger bubbling.

"Relax, will you? I'm here to save the day. You're safe, Fairy," Hellboy poked fun at the aggravated elf, while still trying to land a good hit on the golem.

"This is not about whether you succeed in your idiocy or not." Nuada's voice was flat and unimpressed with the mocking. "While I do not have a problem with you causing the deaths of human agents, I would very much like to not get another wound myself. That Fae is not a toy."

The demon's amused grin as he threw another punch only seemed to infuriate the prince further.

"You will get us all killed," Manning yelled at Hellboy from a safe distance, his gloved hands reflexively clenching into fists. "Listen to Nuada!" Manning could not believe he had said that, of all things. "Lure it to the left side!"

"Clear as crystal," the demon replied, his tone as unconvincing as his actions.

Nuada's face fell into an expression of chill contempt, lips tight and turned down, as he watched the demon pay no mind to direct orders and do as he pleased. He began to walk out of the store, ignoring the steady throb of his arm, the rattle in his lungs from the smoke and smell of melting metal, the blisters on his aching feet.

"Just kill it so we can go home and sleep already," an agent voiced what pretty much everyone at the scene was thinking.

There was a glint from above, and by purest instinct, Nuada rolled aside as a stray bullet slammed into the ground where he had been laying a second before. He scrambled to his hands and knees, his breath catching as the wound tore anew, warm blood beginning to soak into the fabric of his armor. He cursed as a horrifyingly familiar sound filled his ears and he leapt to safety behind a car.

Hellboy had killed the golem.

The Fae's screams of agony as it solidified haunted the prince. As the shots slowly stopped, he waited, blood running freely down his forearm and dropping gently to the wet asphalt. His anger slowed to a simmer, though he longed to lash out at somebody, anybody, instead it was replaced by a profound sadness.

Nuada jumped over the car and landed in a crouch next to Manning, his silver lance extended in his hand. There was an intense look in his usually cold amber eyes. The prince sheathed his weapon at his side with a sharp motion and looked up at Hellboy, who was panting heavily.

Abraham began to slink away in the background, not wanting to be caught up in the backlash when Nuada finally snapped. The long fight had drained too much of his energy to deal with their arguing too.

"'Clear as crystal', you told me." Manning's voice was quiet at first, almost snatched away by the sounds of sirens in the distance. It began to pick up intensity and loudness as he continued his admonishment, realizing Hellboy wasn't paying attention to him. "Clear as crystal. What the hell was that, agent Hellboy?" He approached him, quaking with barely-contained rage.

"Not an agent," the demon shrugged as he turned to face his former employer. "Looks like a nice, dead rock thingy to me."

"A nice, dead 'rock thingy'?" Manning growled as he strode forwards, jabbing a finger into Hellboy's shoulder. "You had no business being here, interfering with our mission, then, not-an-agent-Hellboy. And you disobeyed orders! You could have gotten everyone killed! How did you even know we were here?!"

Hellboy kept his voice level and quiet, letting it be a blatant challenge, drawing Manning's anger back on him, instead of that unfortunate agent from the BPRD headquarters who had had no choice but to rat his boss out. Hellboy knew how to be persuasive, after all. "Relax. We won."

Sure, the old man had a fair point there, he reflected as he watched a gust of wind carry some ash onto Manning's pristine, even if wet, suit. But the real question was, what time was it? Damn it, if he was making Liz wait, he was never going to hear the end of it.

"Gotta go now. See ya," Hellboy unceremoniously dismissed Manning and took off in the opposite direction, leaving the man speechless.

The street seemed strangely silent then, the only sounds those of gasping breaths and sparking electricity.

"Prince Nuada? S-sir," one of the agents stammered as he approached the prince, disengaging himself from a group of agents who remained behind, frozen in place, not daring to approach His Highness. It was amazing how one elf could so thoroughly intimidate a set of armed and trained men. "This way, please," he said in a meek tone, as he beckoned Nuada to follow him to one of the vans, for a quick on-scene medical check-up.

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Author notes

Many thanks to my two wonderful betas, JadedPhoenixBurning and Edhla. You two ladies are incredible.

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