Archive of Our Own ^beta

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Hello All! I'm back! Like for realsies, I'm actually experiencing the passage of time rather than just dissociating between bouts of consciousness. I will try to return to a weekly update now that I am existing. Also note that AO3 has a tag limit and won't let you update/edit an existing work without removing tags, which is why (at this chapter) the AO3 will split into a new work because I tried getting rid of the tags and it didn't work, I had too many. The limit is 75, Ripples is over 300K, I feel like I should get more tags. Also a thank you to all my new readers, your comments really helped me continue writing! Also happy Valentine's! Also I overcomplicate everything I touch, I am sorry. Also the 'Alpha' thing was actually disproven for wolf packs, but the structure is good for this group so I'm keeping it here.

Chapter One Hundred and Nineteen – PALentine's Day

"Dragons…are animals. Creatures. They are not human," Gajeel said, pacing.

It was February, and Valentine's Day was a few days away. Gajeel coerced me into finally having the Dragon Slayer Puberty talk.

It was just the two of us. I had, for once, actually let him past the wards around my house and we were at the kitchen table. I had paper for notes, just in case.

"…O…kay?" I asked, confused.

He sighed. "This may seem obvious, but you need to remember that dragons aren't like humans. They might have opposable thumbs along with their claws, or speak an actual language, but they are still creatures."

"Okay," I said more firmly.

"Dragon Slayers are also, not human. We are more…a mix. Part creature. We have dragon instincts. You've seen some of them…like our hoarding, or battles for dominance."

I frowned. "Battles for dominance? I only really see Natsu falling into that category."

"That's because the rest of us aren't dumb enough to believe we'll win," Gajeel said dryly. "We have a more apt understanding of how powerful we are, and there's no point in initiating a challenge you won't win. Natsu's just…thick. But dragons do tend to pick a leader. In some ways, we're a lot like lion prides or wolf packs, though dragon slayer hierarchy is more complicated if you're with human society."

"For instance," he said, getting out a magic pen. "You and Laxus are technically the Alphas of our pack. While you're not a dragon slayer, you're primed to be a mate of one, and Laxus also tends to defer to you a lot. If we all lived in the wilderness, that'd be it. But because we're also in the guild and society, you and Laxus both still defer to Makarov…(you know, sometimes)…because he's the guild master and Laxus's grandfather."

"Okay…" I said, thinking. "Where is everyone else, then? In the…pack?"

"The term depends on the situation," Gajeel explained. "If we were wild dragons, we'd be considered a 'thunder' of dragons. Don't tell Laxus, please, he'll never let it go. Since we're not all dragons and we mingle with society, I'd either go with Clan or Tribe from an outside perspective. But since you're primed to be a mate, you're part of the group, so you'd refer to it as a 'Pride' with the rest of us."

"Okay," I said. "Then…where do the other Dragon Slayers stand in the Pride?"

"Currently, Erik is the Beta. I'm the Gamma," Gajeel said. "Depending on how Erik and I both grow next year, I might end up challenging him for Beta at the end of it. There isn't a Delta currently, but when Erza's done training I suspect she'll end up in that position. Right now, though, she's the Omega, because she's still learning."

Ugh, fuck Greek. At least these were letters I knew.

"And the others?" I asked, rubbing my temples.

"Wendy, Sting and Rogue are all Sigmas," Gajeel said. "Standard, I guess you could say. Or the kids? They'll grow into certain positions while they're older, and Wendy will probably be the first to move out of Sigma, but for now they're mostly hatchlings."

"What about Natsu?" I asked.

Gajeel sighed. "Natsu is the upsilon. Hopefully, he'll become the epsilon soon, but I doubt it."

"What's the difference?" I asked.

"The upsilon is…I dunno. The oddball? The wildcard? The one that doesn't know where he stands? There isn't always an upsilon, or an epsilon. But that type of personality almost always switches between those. When he matures…eventually…he'll be the epsilon, more aware of his own strength and how to use it. He might even be strong enough to beat Laxus, but even then, he won't become the Alpha. He doesn't have the temperament or understanding to do that. He's more like a loose canon the rest of us point in a direction."

"I see…" I said, thinking. "And you said Erza's the Omega? Does that mean you're going to be mean to her?"

"No?" Gajeel said, giving me a weird look. "It means she the weakest or most unsure of herself, so she just needs the most help? We just make sure she doesn't need to be rushed or that she has backup or whatever. Why would you purposefully weaken the member of your family that's already the weakest? That's so dumb! You've got to strengthen the weak link to keep the chain strong!"

He sweatdropped. "Please don't ever tell Erza I called her the weak link."

"I know what you mean," I assured him. "She's plenty powerful but doesn't really have anywhere near a handle on her dragon skills yet."

He breathed a sigh of relief. "Good."

"Okay, and so what's this 'Mate' thing?" I asked.

"Right, so mates have a different classification, usually among their own. Mates are also usually Stellar Wizards."

I choked.

"Some of them are obvious," Gajeel said. "You and Laxus, Erik and Kinana – even though she doesn't have access to Stellar Magic anymore, she's still biologically a Stellar Wizard. Because Stellar Wizards aren't just human, they also evolve."

I nodded. "Zeref mentioned that, yeah."

"You guys will have your own hierarchy that's usually completely unrelated to ours, or it might change depending if we include your dragon slayers. I don't think Stellar Wizards use the same terms, but you're essentially the Alpha, Jellal is the Beta, and Lucy is the Gamma. Hisui is the upsilon and will become the epsilon eventually, since she's more cut off from the group. Sorano and Levy are Sigmas and will probably always be Sigmas, since their Stellar Magic is only their secondary magics. Yukino is an Sigma, but that's only because she's so young. She'll move up pretty quickly as she grows. Romeo and Koku are the Omegas, since they're babies."

At this point, Gajeel had written this all up with the Light Pen. I was staring at the charts. I had not taken any notes.

"Okay, and you're telling me that all of these people will be together?" I asked.

"Yeah, dragon slayers mate with stellar wizards or other slayers," Gajeel said. "I've already checked what I can with Bickslow, 'cause his Soul Eyes tells us who are mates. You and Laxus, Natsu and Lucy, me and Levy, Erik and Kinana, Jellal and Erza…"

I was nodding so far, happy that my ships were together and that things made sense.

"Uh...Sting, Yukino, and Rogue."

"What?" I asked.

Gajeel sighed. "Alright, so it's a bit complicated. They're all gonna be mated to each other. Triads are rare, but Yukino will need both of them, and they'll both need Yukino to balance each other out."

I nodded slowly. "Okay…" it was just weird because they were all four and five right now…if I pictured them from the anime is made more sense.

"Uh…Wendy and Romeo? That's what Bickslow says, but Wendy's five years older than him? And that seems a bit…much? I don't get that."

I nodded. "Wendy and a few of us will be in stasis for a few years. It'll be fine."

He stared at me. "Are we gonna talk about this more…?"

"No. Keep going," I said.

Gajeel sighed. "Alright, Sorano and Hisui both have strings connecting out somewhere, which suggests that there are more dragon slayers for us to find."

I will not groan. I will not, I told myself.

"And the last two are Koku and Amber."

I froze. "Amber? Baby Amber, Laxus's sister, Amber?"

"Yes."

"…But Amber's not a dragon slayer," I said, confused.

"No…she's not," Gajeel said slowly. "And I'm not sure what's up with her exactly. I don't think she'll become a dragon slayer but there's something about her that…I dunno calls to the dragon side of me? Like she's one of us. Laxus probably can't tell the difference because they're related by blood, he thinks his dragon is just protective of her. And she's around you and Laxus so much that the others have just kinda bonded with her anyway? But she definitely feels more than a normal wizard."

I groaned and put my head in my arms. "Alright, getting more complicated. Are we done?"

"Not even close," he said. "Time to talk about the relationship part."

"Weren't we just doing that?" I asked dryly.

"I mean the sexual part," Gajeel said blatantly, as a tiny thirteen year old, and I felt like I was gonna cry.

"Fine," I groaned louder. "What about it?"

"Remember that dragons, and dragon slayers, aren't human. We can be very animalistic. That's why Laxus gets so possessive sometimes."

"I mean…I'm possessive of him, too," I muttered, blushing.

"Yeah, that's because he's your mate, and the celestial power in you is calling to the dragon in him. Since you're his mate, he will likely be very touchy-feely, with a lot of cuddling…"

"You don't seem to do as much cuddling," I accused him of.

He shook his head. "Solid and darker elements tend to be less touch starved. The only exception right now is Erik and that's because he's in that obsession-mate stage. He'll get over it in a year or so anyway."

"So dragon elements are split?" I asked him.

He nodded. "You can do the same with yours. Mercury, Earth, Uranus, Ceres, Eris, and Pluto are your darker, solid elements. Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and I think Haumea are your lighter elements. Not quite sure what Makemake is, though."

I shrugged. It's not like I knew what it was either.

"So…Natsu, Laxus, Wendy, Sting, and Erza are all light elements?" I guessed. "And you, Rogue and Erik are the darker ones."

Gajeel nodded. "The two dragon slayers we don't know, the ones connected to Sorano and Hisui, are probably darker elements, too."

"Okay," I said, trying to process, and wondering if it meant that the Dragon Slayers could absorb more of their same elements, since Natsu accessed Lightning and Gajeel accessed Shadow. "Going back to the touchy-feely thing…?"

"Right," Gajeel nodded. "So he'll probably cuddle you a lot. Um, a part of courting your mate is proving you can provide for them, so he'll probably give you a lot of presents. There's the hoarding stuff. Oh, you'll probably start to fight a bit more often. Physically I mean, like sparring. The dragon, uh…likes that."

I blushed as I realized he meant that it turned the dragon on. Great.

"Um, you can expect some pretty passionate and violent sex," Gajeel continued, and I wanted to bash my head into the table. "Biting and scratching and stuff is a huge turn on."

I'm going to kill this boy.

"Okay," I cut him off. "I get the picture. Is there anything else important you can think of?"

He paused, thinking. "I think when mates get close, even before they actually do anything, the guy can usually tell when it's a girl's time of the month. Like even without the dragon slayer sniffing out the blood sometimes."

"Okay," I said.

"Dragons also might be giant lizards, but they're also a lot like cats. You've noticed that Laxus has been sleeping a lot more?"

I nodded. More often in the guild, he'd put on his headphones and snooze cuddled up next to me while I played with the kids.

"He'll probably start rumbling soon."

"Rumbling?" I asked.

Gajeel grimaced. "Purring."

"Oh, yeah, he's already kinda started that," I said, making the connection.

"And Laxus has a lot of the disinterest that cats have a lot of the time, while with Natsu you see the attention needing aspect," Gajeel continued.

I wondered if that's why Mashima gave the dragon slayers Exceeds. Literally…cats with wings. While they were cat-like dragons.

"Oh, and sometimes dragon slayers can kinda lose control of their powers a bit when they're…happy…so don't be surprised if Laxus shocks you."

"Yeah, he already did that," I grumbled. Guess I'll be expecting more of that at some point.

"Um…hoarding and nesting aren't the same thing. There's usually overlap, but not always. It depends on the things you hoard. For instance, Natsu will probably have a hoard hidden elsewhere from his nest, since it's mostly gold and such. Since Laxus mostly hoards soft things, though, he'll probably combine them into one."

I am now 90% sure that Laxus's nest/hoard was on my bed and did my best not to look at my bedroom.

"That's all I can think of for now."

"Cool, we're done here. Get out."

Gajeel gave me a small smirk and went, "Gihihi" as he left the house. At least he kept it in until he was leaving.

I put my head back down in my hands.

Magnolia/Fiore/Earthland/The Fairy Tail universe didn't seem to actually celebrate Valentine's Day, a thing I noticed but didn't really care about earlier. Which is dumb, I'd have been able to see my adorable older couples do cute things, but hey, I'm forgetful and trying to wrangle like twenty kids at a time. But even when I was in my old world, the only reason I knew when Valentine's Day was was because of all the merchandise whenever I went shopping. Since this world doesn't have it, I don't remember.

I realized this last year about a week after Valentine's Day, and that I missed mine and Laxus's first Valentine's as a couple, so I made a lot of notes to remind me of it for this year.

Of course, I do have problems with Valentine's Day, due to how highly commercialized it is and the fact that's it's a bit weird to make a day designated to remind you to love your loved ones. Which is why I changed Valentine's Day when I explained it to the guild.

You should, of course, do nice things for your loved ones year round, some planned (like anniversary's) and some spontaneous, just because you do love them. Which was something else I explained to the guild.

I explained Valentine's Day as kinda a mix between Valentine's, St. Patrick's, and a fun Thanksgiving? A way of appreciating your loved ones, or your partner, a close friend, and celebrating life, etc…

And we called it Palentine's Day.

I also made it a lot more competitive. Which, I mean…Fairy Tail is already ridiculously competitive with the way everyone likes to challenge each other and the large pairs of rivals in the guild. But this time we were competitive in pairs.

So for the day, we had a cooking competition, a singing competition, a dancing competition (I don't wanna talk about it), and a bunch of arts and craft projects. We also had tag team battles since some of the kids (I'm sure you can guess who) wanted to fight some others.

Laxus and I came in second place for the singing competition; Macbeth and Erigor won first (no one was surprised).

Laxus and I lost miserably in the cooking competition, mostly because Laxus kept getting frustrated and accidentally frying the dough with his lightning. Baking seemed to be a bit difficult for him. Which like…fair? I can only bake when I'm doing a bunch of other things at once, otherwise I'm too impatient waiting for the food to cook too (it's the ADHD).

And yet, our food still turned out much more edible than Mari and Gildarts, because Gildarts kept accidentally using his crash magic on the food.

"Don't you cook when you're traveling?" Mari had yelled at him.

He shrugged and said that roasting on a fire was different. Which, well…it was…but it still seems strange why his magic was suddenly…acting up…when baking.

I think he was doing it on purpose. If he does miserably during the competition, he won't have to cook at home either. I think Laxus agrees with me.

We did not participate in the dancing competition (no one was surprised by that either).

Surprisingly, Gajeel and Levy placed second? Not quite sure what that was about, but I saw Lucy giving them a thumbs up. Still surprised Gajeel could suddenly dance, though; I remember him struggling at the last few parties. Macao and Enno won first, which wasn't that much of a surprise when Enno revealed that Macao takes her dancing once a week anyway.

The biggest surprise was that Porlyusica actually came to the guild and joined in on a lot of the games and competitions. She scoffed and grumbled the whole time, but she was there (which made Makarov pretty happy, because he also had a partner).

Mavis and Zeref even joined in, which was pretty surprising (Irene was watching the kids; turns out she's good with babies that aren't her own. Or this version of Irene is just…better. Either way, she was watching most of the babies so the other adults could still celebrate together (Maxie, Amber, Ash, Violet, and Romeo).)

I stopped paying attention to the fighting after it got too repetitive, and Ultear used her time magic to refix the arena for the fifth time before snapping at Freed to write some sort of indestructibility/self-repairing aspect into the runes.

We ended the evening with a campfire and smores, though we had to keep smacking Natsu to keep him from snacking on it.

It was, overall, the best (and only?) Valentine's Day I'd ever had. And everyone ended it pretty happily too. We did some random karaoke and more dancing (ei; swaying to music for me and Laxus) and said goodbyes to the rest of the guild.

Laxus came back with me to the house so we could have our own private celebration, and we ended up eating some chocolate cake I made before snuggling together in bed (which I am now almost definitely sure is his nest).

It wasn't until I woke up in the middle of the night before I realized what had gone wrong.

Mira's card had gone off. She's accessed her powers. 

Chapter Text

AN: Woooohooo! So far so good, weekly updates are a GO. Also I know that Mira eventually goes goth and against Erza but remember that Elle interfered before she got a chance to be too depressed and that her personality will probably be a bit different because of her new past/interactions with the changed guild.

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty - The Strauss Siblings

I jumped out of bed, waking Laxus, and quickly grabbed a map and Mira's card, so I could do some Location Magic.

"What's wrong?" Laxus grumbled.

"More soon-to-be guildmates. Go back to sleep," I told him.

"What if I wanna help?" he asked.

"You don't," I said. "Sleeeeeeep."

He grumbled but rolled over and was asleep again before I knew it.

I checked the map again, making sure I knew where to go before I teleported.

I teleported outside a church, where there was screaming and loud bangs coming from inside.

I slammed the doors open and ran inside, freezing just a bit when I realized the demon Mira had taken over was still there, and currently fighting her.

"Venus's Sword," I shouted, creating the sword of light and slicing through the demon. "Begone!"

The demon froze in place, wavering, before it finally became smoke-like and faded in the air.

I was panting, mostly just from surprise. I hadn't been expecting to fight the demon, because in Mira's flashbacks, the demon had already been taken care of.

Taking a deep breath, I straightened and turned to Mira. "Hi! I'm Elle, I'm here because you accessed your magic and if you want I'll take you and your siblings to join our guild!"

Mira just stared at me. Which…I guess was fair. I've noticed I tend to have that reaction on people.

A shout drew both our attention.

"The demon has taken over the little girl! Look at her arm!" a villager shouted.

"Get her!" another yelled.

I cleared my throat.

"It's Elle from Fairy Tail! We're saved! She's here to kill the evil demon!" one of the villagers shouted. "Kill her, Elle!"

"Yeah! Kill the demon!"

I will not punch bigots, I will not punch bigots, I chanted to myself in my mind.

I crossed my arms and stood in front of Mira.

The confusion this caused made the crowd die down.

"The demon is already taken care of. Mira is not a demon, she is currently accessing her magic which stole a bit of the demon's powers for her to be strong enough to fight it. Also, not all demons are evil? There is an island off the coast of Hargeon that has an entire village made up of demons and they are all very nice people. Maybe wait to see if Mira is even, like, violent, before turning on her? You shouldn't jump to assumptions!"

The townsfolk dropped any pitchforks they were holding, still shocked.

I turned to Mira. "So, if you guys wanna join, we should pack up your stuff!"

"But what about Elfman and Lisanna?" she asked.

"They have the same magic you do," I said, "it's just centered on beings other than demons. If you guys come join our guild, we'll be happy to teach you how to control it. Besides, we're like one big…destructive and chaotic family."

She sweatdropped. "Those aren't words people normally use to describe family."

"No, it's not," I agreed. "But we're not normal. We're Fairy Tail."

Slowly, she nodded. "Okay. Let's talk it over with my siblings."

The townsfolk, who had been watching quietly, murmured to themselves and created a path for Mira and I to walk through. When we reached the doors of the church, I turned to them and said, "The demon has been taken care of, so you should all get some rest."

The sheeple exchanged glances and slowly departed, returning to their homes and locking up.

Mira began to lead me back to her house, and I took a good look at her. She was currently twelve, the same age as Erza, which meant Elfman was eleven (same as Gray and Cana) and Lisanna was ten (same as Lucy and Levy…and technically Natsu).

"How did you know to come?" Mira asked quietly.

"Did you guys watch any of the Grand Magic Games?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said. "The whole village gathered. Lisanna and Elfman really look up to you guys, you know. Will…we really be able to join Fairy Tail?"

I smiled at her. "Yep. Anyway, do you know that I know strange information I shouldn't?"

She snorted. "I think everyone who's heard of you knows that."

I shrugged. "Anyway, I'm from a different universe, in which I learned about Fairy Tail and it's members. I didn't like the way it ended, so when I died I asked to be popped over here. And viola! I'm here with my memories and am changing the timeline!"

"And…you're just telling me this?" Mira asked.

I smiled at her. "You guys are an integral part of Fairy Tail. I'm just helping you guys join a couple of weeks earlier. You would've joined the guild without me anyway. I just wanted to extend a hand."

"…Us?" she asked quietly, a little awestruck.

"You're a part of our family," I said. "Now let's grab your siblings and get to Magnolia!"

Slowly, she smiled at me. "Right!"

Lisanna and Elfman were very ecstatic to see me. Mira wasn't kidding when she said they looked up to Fairy Tail.

She had managed to get them to stay at home while she went to the Church by telling each of them that they were responsible for the other, and though they each wanted to go after her, they put taking care of the other sibling first instead of leaving.

I admired the Slytherin tendencies.

Elfman wasn't that happy to hear that Lisanna was also watching over him.

As the three packed, I re-explained the situation and caught them up with everything.

Much like Mira, Elfman and Lisanna were super ecstatic to hear that they'd eventually become part of Fairy Tail. Lisanna in particular, chattered almost nonstop on how she really wanted to meet Lucy, and how much she looked up to her. Elfman seemed to be stuck on who he wanted to admire, but tended to focus on Laxus and Jellal; probably not just for their power, but because both of them tend to be very mellow compared to most of my guildmates, and I had forgotten that Elfman was shy and quiet in the beginning.

Mira never mentioned who she liked/looked up to, but I had a feeling (from the way all three, but especially her, were acting) that it was actually me, which made me feel very nice and want to squeal and hug her but she might not be ready for that and I was trying to look cool, so I didn't.

"Can you teleport all of us?" Elfman asked, once I had requipped all of their belongings away.

"If there's no rush…maybe we could journey there instead of teleporting?" Lisanna asked shyly. "We've never really been anywhere."

I blinked. I didn't have anything pressing planned for a while. "Sure, we could take the train if you guys want to."

"Oh, but how much Jewel…" Mira drifted off, but I could tell what she was thinking.

"None," I answered. "Lucy's dad is Jude Heartfilia, and though he doesn't actually have a Fairy Tail mark, he's pretty much a member of the guild. Since he owns the railways, anyone sporting a Fairy Tail mark gets free train rides as long as it's legitimate."

"But we don't have…" Mira's voice trailed off as I smirked and requipped one of the guild's stamps.

"Why do you even have that?" Elfman asked.

I shrugged. "You never know when you gotta get someone into the guild."

Actually, I had never put it back after using it on Zeref. At some point, Makarov made a new one. This one still works, though. But now it's mine.

The three sweatdropped at that.

"So what color do you guys want?" I asked them, smiling.

We didn't take the train all the way back, but the Strausses enjoyed riding it and learning more about their magic.

Lisanna frowned. "So, like Lucy collects keys and spirits…we need to collect souls?"

I paused. I'd never really thought of it that way, but yeah. "Yes. The more souls you have or the more keys she has, the more skills you guys have in your reservoir. Just like as Erza gets new armor and suits that have special talents."

Erza had actually managed (with the help of me, Freed, and the Heartfilia's lawyer) to get Heart Kreuz, the designer of most of her previous armors and some of the guild's girls' favorite clothes, to actually sponsor her. The mage that worked on the armors was named Taylor, and they were really happy to get to experiment with armor, plus Heart Kreuz got a lot of popularity and advertising since most of the Fairy Tail girls' wore their clothing and Erza especially had their armor. Taylor had been especially ecstatic when Virgo revealed to Lucy that she designed most of the clothing of the celestial world, and Virgo began to join Taylor in their experiments to create more armors for Erza.

"Wait, if we need to collect souls, where am I gonna get demon souls?" Mira asked.

That was a good point. Since Elfman had Beast Soul and Lisanna, Animal Soul, they could find other forms pretty easy, just by exploring a forest. But I have no idea how Mira got any of her other demon forms last time around except for the ones she actually got during the timeline, like Seilah and Alegria. So where had she gotten Satan Soul and Sitri?

"I dunno," I admitted. "But as I mentioned before, I know a few demons, and Zeref might be able to help."

Silence in the train carriage.

"What?" Elfman asked. "Like…the Black Wizard?"

After leaving Deliora in an extremely public spot and deliberately catching the attention of the press, Jacob had written an article containing information about Zeref for the general public, which is why the Strausses recognized the names.

"Oops," I muttered. I had forgotten that not everyone knew that Zeref was a part of our guild, or even that he wasn't evil.

"So, Zeref is still alive, he's not deliberately evil, only sometimes is and we found a way to stop his curse from doing that. He's also a part of our guild and will probably help you with your problems."

"…I can't believe you're just telling us," Elfman said, awestruck.

"I know!" Mira muttered.

"I'm telling you guys, you're a part of Fairy Tail," I said, shrugging. "That makes you family."

Lisanna was the first one to jump me at that statement, but the other two weren't far behind.

I laughed as I hugged them back, and the train finally pulled to a stop. "Come on. Time for you to meet the rest of the family."

We walked to the guild from the train station so they could familiarize themselves with the town and its layout. I also told them about Fairy Fields and how they could all live together. They were extra happy that they didn't need rent until Mira turned 13 (and even then, it would be split/divided since the others were under the limit) and her birthday wasn't until the beginning of December. Elfman's birthday was in September, and Lisanna's birthday was in April, which means that she would be turning eleven soon enough.

And then….

And then we finally arrived at the guild hall.

And, okay, honestly; I should have seen this coming.

I had thought about stopping at Fairy Fields first and putting their stuff out of my requip space but Mira rightly pointed out that they'd probably be too tired to go to the guild later if they didn't go there directly. And then she tried to take it back when she realized it might be inconvenient that all their stuff was in my requip space.

I reassured her that it was fine and the introduction commenced. It seemed to be going well, though the Strausses were obviously somewhat overwhelmed.

It's when I got to Freed that we had a problem.

All three Strausses gasped, but Mira had by far the most extreme reaction, stepping forward and excitedly getting in Freed's face. "Are you the writer of Freed's Fanfictions?"

I noticed Laxus facepalming in the background, with Erik cracking up by his side. Erik is one of the few guildmembers who is NOT addicted to Freed's writings, so he finds it absolutely hysterical, though he would still read all of them.

"Yes, that's me!" Freed said proudly. "I am the Captain of the Ellaxus Ship!"

"Juvia is the First Mate!" Juvia also said proudly.

Which lead to other members screaming out random ship-related roles I didn't even know.

"I'm the ship's cook!" Enno said happily.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Laxus asked her.

"Freed needs fuel to write, of course."

"Of course," he said dryly.

Mira's more solemn and quiet attitude had vanished, and with stars in her eyes, she saluted Freed. "Permission to come aboard, Captain?"

"Permission granted!" Freed shouted.

"Whoo! New Ellaxus Member Party!" Cana shouted, and someone blew party horns.

"Us too!" Lisanna said happily, Elfman nodding beside her.

"Here are your official badges!" Mari said, smiling and handing them badges which read ELLAXUS on it in alternating Purple and Gold lettering. Beneath it was a purple planet with rings made of gold lightning.

"MOM?" Laxus shouted.

I had no idea what was going on.

"Oh, relax, honey, join the party!" Mari said happily.

"I think they have a problem," Jellal said quietly from beside me.

"You ship it too!" Lucy said, poking him.

"Well, yeah, but I'm not insane about it," he protested.

"Have some fun, Jellal!" Erza demanded, smacking his head to her chest plate.

"I think I hate this guild," Laxus muttered, before sighing, putting on his headphones, and sitting at a table to eat some cake. He left space open for when I wanted to join him.

I rolled my eyes and joined the party, unsure how it had come to this but enjoying it all the same. Laxus draped his coat over the two of us as I curled into him, and Freed and Mira were excitedly sitting together talking about Ellaxus Fanfiction, both wearing extremely similar expressions. Seems they had both picked out their best friends.

"You write Ellaxus Fanfiction, too!?" Freed gasped.

"It's not very good…" Mira said quietly.

"Nonsense, WE HAVE ANOTHER ELLAXUS WRITER! That makes four!"

More cheers broke out at that announcement and from the sounds of it, most of the adults were definitely on the way to getting drunk.

"Four?" Mira asked.

"Lucy and Levy are still working on their's," Freed explained, before jumping at her eagerly. "What is yours about?"

Mira squirmed, a bit nervous. "Well, I noticed you tend to have a pattern of one extraordinary life mixing with a normal life. Like Elle being a bank robber but Laxus being normal, or Laxus being a God and Elle being human, etc, so I decided to try making them both magical. Laxus is a kitsune. I know that kitsunes are mostly known for fire, but our mother always said that when they reached nine tails, they would wield lightning and be stronger, so that's where I got the idea. Elle is a Shrine Maiden, and they need to work together to defeat Orochi."

"That sounds awesome!" Lucy shouted happily.

"I'd love to read it," Freed said.

"Okay," Mira said shyly, and her smile lit up the room.

The Strausses fit into the guild very easily.

Lisanna was easily pulled with most of the other girl's her age, and she seemed to love Lucy, Juvia, and Cana. Like…a lot. I'm pretty sure she has a crush on Lucy, which is adorable, and also not the way I thought she'd come between NaLu if she did at all.

Elfman was taken in by the quieter boys in his age group, and spent most of his time hanging out with Jellal, Freed, Simon, and Nab. Sometimes Gray would join them, but he was usually pulled into the guild's usual chaos by Lyon.

Mira was too obsessed with writing Fanfiction to get in any fights with Erza, which is perhaps one of the weirdest things about this timeline so far.

Since it's been awhile since we watched the series, and we got a bunch of new recruits since then, we had a Harry Potter movie marathon, and introduced everyone to it…which made Mira scream, two days later (in the middle of nowhere), "OH MY GOD, FREED! HARRY POTTER AU!" and the two of them left the room screaming about Ellaxus, followed by Juvia, Lucy, and a bunch of others.

But overall, they settled in quite nicely.

I smiled as I watched the chaos around me, curling into Laxus's side. Our guild was almost complete.

AN: so now that the Strausses are involved, most of X778 is gonna be relatively smooth until the exceeds (and my surprise) come in, which will be a few months for the Exceeds, and like November for the surprise. Because of that, we'll have some filler chapters, mostly jumping to different characters to see how they're doing, so if you want a chapter/piece from a certain character's POV, let me know. No promises I'll do it, but I'm really introspective about these characters lately so I probably will. Already have plans for POV for Irene and Jellal, and a few others I'm contemplating.

Chapter Text

These are mostly angsty and a bit contemplative since I finally watched the Final Season of Fairy Tail (I had only read the manga before) and have been hit with many feels about the Alvarez Arc and such. Also, they added stuff to Acno's backstory in the anime so I'll be ignoring that. He's still Stellar. Also, I started reading the 100 Years Quest and am vindicated with that scene where Lisanna is possessed but kinda comes on to Lucy, a few days after I wrote a chapter about her having a crush on her? So, guess I grabbed those vibes right. Also I wrote this while listening to the OSP Past Story from Fairy Tail if you want mood music.

Chapter One Hundred Twenty One – An Interesting Interlude, Part One

Sometimes Jellal would wake up in the middle of the night.

The only reason no one else heard his screams was because of the runes Freed helped him install around his room.

He had originally gotten a bedroom at Fairy Valleys when they first arrived, but when Sho and the others left, and Millianna decided she wanted to stay in Fairy Hills, Erza invited him to the other empty room in her suite.

He honestly didn't know if the adults knew they were pretty much living together, even though they were thirteen (well, Erza would be thirteen in a few months, but close enough).

But it was helpful, especially on nights like tonight.

He made his way to the kitchen and heated up some of the hot chocolate Erza made the other day, before quietly sitting at the kitchen table and putting his head in his hands.

When he closed his eyes, he could still see flashes of the other timeline.

Most of the time, the memories didn't bother him. But every once in a while, something happens, that's either extremely similar or extremely different from the last timeline, and it'll hit him like a truck.

It was dumb, what triggered him; just Erza, Irene, and Wendy talking about dragon slaying magic and Acnologia.

But he dreamed of it that night. Of Wendy, seven years older and standing strong. Of Erza, a proud woman in her own right standing against her mother.

Of him, nearly crushed to death in Acnologia's paws.

Of Erza's screams as he nearly died.

He honestly doesn't know which of the flashbacks he prefers; when he's evil or when he's not. He did horrible things when he was evil in the other timeline, but he could at least claim he wasn't in control. But everything he did after that, including pushing Erza away because he didn't think he was worthy of her; all that did was hurt her in the long run.

Elle and Laxus helped him realize that by punishing himself like that, he was really punishing Erza, too.

Arms wrapped around him from behind, and Erza's voice whispered in his ear, bringing him back to the present. "It's the year X778. We've all escaped from the Tower of Heaven. We're proud members of Fairy Tail. You've got a family here, Jellal. And we're happy. It's safe."

A trembling hand reached up to grasp at the arms wrapped around him. "Thank you, Erza."

"Come on," she said, pulling away and holding out her hand. "Let's go back to bed."

At thirteen, he was technically a teenager now, and (according to 'The Talk') supposed to be having 'urges'…but all he felt at the thought of sleeping next to Erza was relief. After their time in the Tower of Heaven, and how close they've grown now, she was exactly what he needed to fight off any remaining memories or the past.

Jellal followed Erza into her room, and the two of them curled up on the bed together, breathing in sync.

"Let's spend some time with Elle, tomorrow," Jellal said as he squeezed Erza closer to him.

The worst part about knowing the other timeline is that he knew exactly where he'd be if Elle hadn't interfered.

Alone.

"Okay," Erza said.

He smiled at her, and closed his eyes.

Erik didn't remember the other timeline.

He's thankful for that.

But there were people around him that did. Sometimes he gets a glimpse from Jellal, or Ultear, and it's horrible.

Every time he got a snippet, he didn't just know what they were doing at the time; he felt it. In the other timeline, it felt like just about every soul is damaged, some shattered and barely glued back together, other filing and chipping away at themselves, bit by bit.

It's agony to hear; to see the pain all of his friends could've been in.

Most of the time, he's fine, but he could hear dreams as well as souls, and he'd forgotten to turn on the barrier that night.

It's a very complicated rune barrier that Freed and Levy helped him make. It specifically cut out the sounds of other's thoughts and dreams; he'd only hear something if someone got hurt or was in trouble.

Jellal's dreams that night hit him hard.

He saw himself and the rest of his friends facing off an old man with unstoppable power; a man that is now an innocent baby Erik sometimes has trouble looking at. The five of them, plus Jellal and the pink-haired chick who hadn't shown up yet, and they still couldn't win. There were times in those memories where, if not for his soul-listening magic, he'd assume some of his friends were dead in that fight.

Still. This dream wasn't as bad as the others.

Sometimes Jellal dreamed of a time where several guilds go up against the five of them and Brain, when they're calling themselves the Oracion Seis. In it, he saw his friends going up against one another; Gray and Lyon against Sawyer, Lucy against Sorano, Erza against Macbeth, Natsu and him, of little Wendy fighting. He saw Kinana bite Erza, nearly killing her.

He hated it. Watching the people he cared for fight each other? Seriously trying to kill his family?

It's horrible.

There's not as much memories from Jellal of the second time; they time they escaped prison and hunted down Kinana's relatives, when they trapped Lucy in a clock and nearly made her dissolve into nothingness.

Sometimes the other kids wanted to know more about the other timeline. Elle would distract them with something else and smile sadly. Jellal would say, "No, you don't," and Ultear wouldn't say anything.

He knew they're right.

But he also felt like he'll end up knowing all of it anyway, more than these little snippets. Somehow, someday, everyone would know what happened before, and even if it didn't tear them all apart, he wonders if any of those cracked edges of their souls will transfer over. If he'll hear them screaming in his waking hours, too.

Sometimes, he thought he wanted to hear Elle. Just to hear what she would sound like, or see what she's doing, or what she's thinking with her crazy ideas.

But he knew it's better that he can't. Hearing Elle would probably break him, too.

Irene liked being in the future. Really. She did.

But it's more than a little…exhausting.

She remembers her dear friend Belserion, the Sage Dragon, telling her they were losing. She remembers her proposal, that they use her Enchantment Magic to imbue humans with the powers of dragon slayers.

And then she's four hundred years in the future, waking up in a basement with a letter from herself that explained everything.

She didn't want the explanations. She wanted to go home.

There is no home.

The letter told her what she needed to know; Dragon Slayers worked. They won the war against the dragons. But they lost the war with themselves, each dragon slayer going through a process called 'dragonification', and losing some of their humanity, or being driven crazy by the sensations and losing their mind. One in particular, Acnologia, had gone so insane he had ruined Dragon Slayers for everyone else. Her kingdom turned against her, her husband (someone she thought of as a dear comrade in arms) tried to kill her, and she was pregnant for four hundred years, the baby germinating inside her because she couldn't turn human. Eventually she met Zeref, who gave her a human transformation, but she still wasn't human. She couldn't feel anything she did. It was as if her skin was still scales. She finally gave birth to her daughter, and gave her away, before moving to a neighboring country and rejoining with Zeref. And then Zeref and this random teenage girl come along with a plan.

A plan that worked. She did not remember any of these things, and she could still feel and touch everything as she had before. She was still human.

She got to know her daughter, though she was seen as more of a sister or close cousin, and she helped the girl enchant her armor and swords. She started training Wendy, another dragon slayer and an enchantress in her own right, and began to adjust to this new world of hers, even with the nagging worry in the back of her mind that the dragonification process might still await Erza.

She spent time watching the children, and laughing joyously with the guild, and appreciating that they are not at war with dragons; with anybody.

But if this was what peace felt like… then why was she still so worried?

August was a child now. In fact, he had trouble walking. Sometimes he forgot that he didn't have that sort of strength, and he would try to run or walk over to someone. Luckily, everyone in the guild was good at catching babies.

He still remembered everything.

Not entirely, at least. But bits and snippets of information.

When he was first born, he was born with the knowledge of his parents, which is why he found his father and joined Alvarez before he was de-aged.

He knew these as facts, but it was like a fog, a bit hard to reach.

He remembered, back when he was an adult, agreeing to try to start over. Even at that time, he suspected that he might still remember and know things.

He didn't mention it to anyone, and he was right; he remembered. He's also glad that Elle doesn't spend as much time with babies as she does collecting kids. If she did, she might notice that he has a bit more than just intelligence in her eyes, and she might piece together that he still knew these things.

His father could tell, though not entirely. August believes that Zeref (and his mother) have written off any inconsistencies by pointing out that he's extremely intelligent, and just happened to look more intelligent when compared to his brother.

His brother.

He didn't like Larcade before this; instead, he pitied him. Zeref didn't really care for Larcade before, did not see him as a son, but as a creation, and August pitied Larcade for the moment he found out that he was nothing in his eyes.

But he's not nothing, anymore. To any of them. August liked this new life so much better, and if Larcade could remember, he knew that he'd prefer it to. Just looking at him, it's so much easier to tell that Larcade was certainly happier than before.

Even though he's as dumb as a rock right now.

But August loved this new life. He liked Fairy Tail. He hadn't been there long, but it felt more like home than anything else every had. He had his parents. He had a younger brother, even.

He had second chance, and that was all he ever wanted. Before, with all the power he had, he'd still never contemplated doing something like this. He never thought he'd had the opportunity that would allow his father to keep his humanity, to be with his mother, for them to be together and raise them as a family.

August wondered; being surrounded by all these powerful wizards, and by his parents, would he grow up even stronger than before?

If so, good. He wanted to protect his new home.

Grammi had seen a lot of strange things in her life; working for the Heartfilia family will do that. But she thought that Fairy Tail, as a whole, might take the cake.

She'd been there awhile now, though she wasn't technically a member, just an 'honorary one', like Jude was.

That was another thing she found strange. She never thought she'd actually like Jude.

She'd liked him for a bit, at the beginning, but then he and Layla grew more wealthy, and he became more absorbed in his work, and she got mad.

Layla deserved better than him.

Eventually, watching them together was too much, and she left with nothing but a golden key as a reminder of the one she loved.

She went back to Alvarez, started a life, and had a daughter.

And then, one day, Layla asked for her (and Brandish!) to come back to Fiore.

Grammi went. She couldn't deny Layla anything.

She was surprised to see Layla's daughter who was 1) a perfect replica of her and 2) already using magic.

While Brandish had already started using magic (it was often encouraged to learn from a young age in Alvarez) she didn't think that Jude would let his daughter anywhere near Layla's keys. In his mind, they were nothing but trouble. Honestly, she was surprised that Jude allowed Lucy to befriend Brandish, since Brandish was a servant's daughter.

But then…there was the Grand Magic Games.

He flipped attitudes, and became supportive to Lucy. He let Lucy join a wizard guild, make friends, even go on jobs.

She never thought she'd see the day. If someone had told her before she left the household that Jude would become a warm and supportive father, and encourage his daughter to practice magic and join a guild, she would've thought they needed help.

Jude bought a house in Magnolia (a very nice house, with four bedrooms, two and a half baths, and anything else they could possibly need) and essentially ordered Grammi and her daughter to move into it, where they could permanently live and where the Heartfilia's could stay whenever they were visiting and in town.

Lucy, specifically, had her own room with everything she could want.

They gave Grammi an allowance, a bank account that allowed her to buy anything the house, or she and Brandish needed).

Grammi didn't know how to really live like this, so she mostly settled for baking and working at the guild.

And then Layla died.

All the progress Jude made drained away. She felt sick. She and Brandish weren't allowed to Layla's funeral. Grammi had money in the bank, but she didn't know what was coming next. Would Jude kick them out of their home, as it was technically his house?

Luckily, Elle came, bringing Lucy, and said that she talked some sense into Jude and that everything would be fine.

And she was right. Jude returned later that year to Fairy Tail, apologetic and tearful.

He even apologized to her, about not letting them attend the funeral.

She didn't think she could forgive him; not for the funeral bit, but for Lucy, who Grammi now saw as a second daughter and that she loved as her own.

But at least he came to his senses, and Lucy got her father back.

Aquarius decided to be nice this time around.

Well, okay. 'Nice' isn't the right term. But she wasn't blatantly antagonistic, like she had been before.

She'd seen all of the pain that Lucy had gone through, and seeing her now, young and delightful, was a wonderful gift.

While she hadn't blamed Lucy for her mother's death in the previous timeline, she had seen Lucy as a reminder. Time moves differently in the Spirit Realm. And sometimes, since it was still so recent to her, Lucy would summon her, and Aquarius would see Layla there, before she remembered that Layla was gone; and then she took it out on Lucy.

But now it was different. Lucy summoned her more, and she was also so much stronger.

Aquarius supposed that maybe she was also mad at Lucy in the previous timeline because she never really trained. She got stronger over time, just from going on jobs and fighting so much, but hadn't trained properly; not like she did in the year after Fairy Tail broke up and she mastered Star Dress.

Since time flows differently, sometimes, Lucy would summon Aquarius and Scorpio together, and allow them on a date in the human world, so they could spend more time together, and not really have to worry about being interrupted every minute into their date.

Which was really nice of her.

But it'd been awhile since Aquarius was summoned. Since anyone was summoned.

Luckily, she could open her gate on her own, now, so she did.

"You haven't summoned any of us for over eight months," she told Lucy, who made a noise that sounded vaguely like 'Eeep!'

Aquarius stared at her, her arms crossed. "Two whole days in the Celestial Realm went by without any of us being summoned? It's nearly been three, now! We're the Zodiac, and you're the key barer for all of us. Do you really think we wouldn't have noticed?"

Lucy curled up in her bath. "When Mommy died, she gave me an Heir Mark. Elle and Zeref have been looking into it because I don't want to lose it. It's the last thing she gave me."

"Why would you lose it?" Aquarius asked.

"Because no one else can see it and it glows when I use magic."

Aquarius's eyes widened. Then…they were correct. She had to inform the Spirit King!

"Don't worry about it. It won't go away or fade just because it's not acting like a normal mark," Aquarius said. "I didn't realize no one else could see it. If you said something sooner, or summoned us to ask, we would've mentioned it. But do not use your Astral Plane magic, got it?"

Lucy frowned. "I don't think I use it."

"No, you don't but if for some reason you run out of magic and keep fighting, try not to use it," Aquarius said. "You've managed to open your Second Origin a little, so if you keep prying that open you should be okay. Now, I need to go," she said.

"O…okay?" Lucy asked, confused, and Aquarius vanished, eager to get back to the Spirit Realm.

A new age was upon them.

AN: More introspectives to come, please suggest any POVs you want to hear. I suppose this could be considered filler chapters but it's been awhile and we need to catch up to everyone. No, you will not get an answer for the Celestial Stuff anytime soon, I'm sorry, but it deals with the Eclipse Arc (so does the box from before) so you won't get it until after the Gate is opened again which will be...awhile. Yes, I've planned that far ahead. ANYWAY suggestions on things you want to see, POVs, some guild antics, Freed's Fanfiction Reading Corner (yes that will happen) and anything else. Go wild.

Chapter Text

Hi. I continued reading 100 Years Quest…and then Natsu has this headspace where Mavis and Zeref are living happily ever after and are raising their young children August and Larcade together. So I bluescreened, and stopped reading 100 Years Quest. I checked, by the way. The chapter in which Elle and Zeref de-age Larcade and August came out almost a whole year before that manga chapter was published. So...yeah. Anyway the screenshot of that scene is the picture for this chapter. Also my grandpa (83) is going through dialysis so it took me awhile to get back to my computer, and we had cousins come visit but he's been slowly getting better. Also this first scene is based on an entirely true story that happened to me at summer camp when I was eleven. And a reminder that Reedus is still stick-thin for now (in the flashbacks we see him in he's thin like after the timeskip).

Tldr; my psychic 'writing coming true' power is either getting really good, or the writers are reading this fic; my grandpa is getting better, and summer camp is weird.

What age the girls' started the year as:

9 – Kagura and Millianna

10 – Lucy, Levy, Juvia, Lisanna, and Brandish

11 – Cana, Sorano, and Ultear

12 – Erza and Mira

13 – Evergreen and Kinana

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty Two – An Interesting Interlude, Part Two

"Um…this is a bad idea," Lucy said.

They (as in, most of the younger female members of Fairy Tail) were in the commons of Fairy Hills. Even some of the girls who lived in Fairy Fields were there, too, like Erza and Mira and Lisanna.

The girls that weren't there, were their much younger guildmates, so Kagura, Millianna, Wendy, Yukino, and the babies were all absent.

Another one who was conspicuously absent was Elle.

"Uh, I think Lu-chan is right," Levy said hesitantly. "I don't think I want to do this."

Cana pulled back from Erza's mouth and made a face at her. "Ugh, don't be such a baby, Levy!"

"I'll do it," Brandish said, sitting on the floor and joining the circle of girls.

"I'm sorry, but why?" Lucy asked again.

"We wanted to practice kissing," Cana explained.

Evergreen coughed into her fist.

"Fine, I wanted to practice kissing," Cana clarified. "And they're helping me."

"She talked Erza into doing it," Lisanna said.

"My first kiss with Jellal must be perfect," Erza said, somewhat frantically.

Lucy crossed her arms. "I don't care if my first kiss is bad, I want it to be with the right person!"

"Aww!" Levy said. "I agree with Lu-chan."

"I'm okay with trying," Lisanna said eagerly. "What about you, Juvia?"

Juvia sat there, tapping her fingers together very shyly. "Ano…Juvia may try."

"O…okay," Lisanna said quietly, suddenly shy and surprised that Juvia agreed.

The two girls leaned their heads together slowly, and lightly touched their lips together, before pulling back.

"How is that a kiss?" Cana asked.

Sorano nodded. "Cana's right, you got to go for it!"

She turned to Brandish, and with a slight tilt of her head for permission, dove for the other girl's lips as she nodded.

Mira made a funny squealing noise.

Ultear huffed. "Alright, I'm feeling left out, someone kiss me too!"

Evergreen rolled her eyes. "Fine," she leaned over and slowly kissed Ultear, before slowly backing away and opening her eyes.

Ultear blushed. "Thanks."

"What about you, Kinana?" Mira asked her.

She blushed. "I've already kissed Erik."

"Awwwwww," most of the girls said.

"You can still practice with us," Cana suggested.

"Even if it's just practicing I can't," Kinana said, shaking her head. "It'd feel like cheating."

"Okay," Cana said, pouting.

"What makes it okay for us to join in if we're only a year older than Kagura and Millianna?" Levy asked. "There's a few years between them and Wendy and Yukino. We probably could've invited them, too."

"They're too young," Cana said.

"And we're not?" Lucy asked flatly.

"Well, I wanna kiss you…so no," Cana answered.

"I don't think that's how it works," Erza mused.

"Well…I don't care," Cana said. "Now come on, there's a science to this. In order to be better kissers, we need to find which one of us kisses the best first. Mira, it's your turn."

Mira smiled over at Cana and leapt across the circle, giving Cana a very enthusiastic kiss, which Cana returned happily.

They pulled back, Cana smiling brightly. "Mira wins so far!"

"What?" Erza shouted. "Unacceptable. Mira, kiss me!"

"Okay!" Mira said, moving over to Erza's seat.

"Unbelievable," Levy muttered.

"Juvia thinks it's kinda fun," Juvia muttered.

"If you all get sick, I will laugh and refuse to let Phoenix heal you all," Lucy said, crossing her arms.

"That's okay, we still have Wendy," Lisanna pointed out.

"Besides, none of us are sick," Brandish said, eagerly accepting a kiss from Cana.

They pulled back from each other and smiled.

Sorano cleared her throat, "Hey, Brandish, kiss me again, I want to see if I'm a better kisser than Cana."

"Okay," Brandish said, turning back to Sorano, who smirked at Cana as she kissed Brandish.

Cana was glaring at her very hard.

"This is going to go horribly wrong," Levy muttered.

"Do you think we should get Ellie-nee?" Lucy whispered.

"Uhhh…"

Ultear was looking at the two girls fighting over Brandish with frustration. "Really? Fine, Brandish, kiss me!"

"Go," Levy said.

Meanwhile….

"What do you mean, the other girls are having fun without us?" Millianna whined. "That's so mean!"

"But I know what they're doing!" Kagura said. "And we'll do it, too! They're practicing kissing."

Millianna paused. "Like on the lips?"

"Yes," Kagura said, nodding.

Millianna thought about it. "Okay!" and leaned towards Kagura.

Their door slammed open and Simon stood staring at them.

"What are you two doing?"

"Nothing Nii-san, go away!" Kagura said angrily.

"Don't give me that, Kagura, I'm not an idiot!"

"Are you sure, you seem to be missing quite a lot these days!"

"I'm…gonna go…" Millianna said, scooting out the door and wondering if maybe Elle had some catnip for her. She really needed to calm down.

There was a sound behind her of Kagura (probably) throwing something at Simon. "Look at what you did, now she went away!"

Definitely gonna need some nip.

Laxus opened the door, sighing.

"What do you two want?" he asked.

Millianna and Lucy had run into each other right at Elle's door.

"Kagura's acting weird, so I want some nip," Millianna said.

Laxus sighed. "The runes should let you through, don't try to pick more than two or you'll be kicked out."

"Okay!" Millianna said, running for Elle's garden.

Laxus looked at Lucy, crossing his arms. "Lucy. This is Laxus time. Which means you guys don't bother Elle and I."

"I know that, you dumb dragon!" Lucy said, waving her arms. "But the girls are acting really weird and they're all kissing each other and I feel like Ellie-nee should know about this."

Laxus sighed and opened the door wider, inviting her in.

Lucy beamed and ran in, sprinting to the kitchen where Elle was pulling some brownies out of the oven.

"Lucy?" Elle asked. "What are you doing here? It's Laxus time."

"I know that! We all know that!" Lucy said. "Which is why the girls are taking advantage of it to kiss each other!"

Elle put down her brownies and stared at Lucy. "They're…doing what?"

"Cana has them practicing kissing!" Lucy yelled.

Elle opened and closed her mouth, before looking off contemplatively.

"Ellie-nee?" Lucy asked.

"Shh, I'm doing math," she said, before nodding. "Okay, it's kinda weird but I don't see anything wrong with it as long as they're not forcing anyone into doing it."

"Well, it sounds like Cana tricked Erza into kissing her!" Lucy said triumphantly.

Elle sighed and looked at Laxus.

"Ugh, just go!" he grumbled, crossing his arms and sitting down dejectedly.

Elle leaned forward and gave him a small kiss on his cheek. "Thank you. I shouldn't be long."

Laxus 'harrumphed' but gestured to the door.

"Alright, let's go," Elle said, taking Lucy's arm and teleporting.

"Yeah, this is fine," Elle said to Lucy.

"What?! No, it's not! Mama said we're supposed to save ourselves for our true love!"

"Yeah, your mom," Cana said. "My mom's dead, she's not the boss of me."

"Idiot!" Brandish hissed, hitting Cana.

"Sorry, I'm drunk," Cana said, before pausing as she noticed Elle. "No, I'm not. I'm not drunk, I'm just…very mean."

Levy facepalmed behind them.

"Look, Lucy, you want your first kiss to be special, and I understand that. But to some people, kissing isn't that big of a deal. They can kiss however they like, as long as they're not being coerced," Elle emphasized.

"They're not!" Cana said.

"We're not," Erza said, nodding. "We should do this more often. Like practice once a week."

"That's a great idea!" Mira said excitedly.

Elle just sighed. "Yeah, I'm going back. Lucy, if you don't want to join the kissing club, just summon some of your spirits to hang out or something. You realize you can throw an entire sleepover by yourself?"

Lucy pouted, "Yeah, okay."

"Right…goodnight everyone," Elle said.

"Goodnight, Elle!" everyone cried as she teleported out.

"Alright, back to practicing!" Cana said excitedly, before going back to kissing Ultear.

"Why won't they let us in?" Natsu whined.

"Because this is Stellar Time, ya twit!" Gajeel snapped. After he had explained about Dragon Slayers and their mates, Elle decided that everyone should get to know each other better.

"Freed is in there! He's not a Stellar!" Natsu protested.

Zeref cleared his throat, standing at the door. "Freed also wants to learn about Magic, Natsu. You, however, will continually disrupt class and try to bother and distract Lucy."

"Please," Natsu said, looking at Zeref like he was going to cry.

He found that if he copied the girls' crying face, he could sometimes get people to do things, though it worked especially well on Zeref, for some reason.

Zeref hesitated. Natsu could feel him on the verge of breaking-

Elle peeked her head out of the room, followed by Jellal. "Natsu, you're supposed to be with the other Slayers."

"But I don't wanna, I wanna stay with Lucy!" Natsu whined, dropping the tears. It wouldn't work on Elle.

Elle sighed. "How about you specifically challenge Erza to a fight with only Dragon Slayer Magic. None of her swords. Okay?"

Natsu brightened and ran off. "Okay!"

Gajeel rolled his eyes and went after Natsu to make sure he actually went where he was supposed to.

So Freed was somehow richer than he was before he ran away, now. Even as the Justine family heir, he did not have as much money as he did now.

He blamed Elle.

He had known she was crazy since the first day they met.

It was not that she had mysteriously appeared with a solution right as he faced a problem, or that she had convinced him that it technically wasn't stealing to take his belongings since he wasn't kicked out yet.

It was that she took his curtains.

While he had gotten things from the rest of the house, she had climbed up to the window, pulled the curtain rods off the hooks, and unwound the curtains.

He still had those.

Yes, he had known Elle was crazy since the beginning. And many of the other things she did (like challenging Gildarts, or creating a set of runes connected to the entire city from a 'mysterious theoretical unlimited power source', or getting the Black Wizard Zeref together with the guild's founder) only reinforced his opinion of her.

This seemed worse than normal.

"You want to ask the King of Fiore what?" Freed asked, his voice going high-pitched.

"What?" Elle asked causally. "It'd work, right?"

"Theoretically, yes," Zeref said slowly. "But it'd be a huge undertaking, and most likely cost the kingdom a lot of money."

Elle scoffed. "The Rune Knights know Rune Magic, and it's not like they're ever really doing anything of importance. We take down more dark guilds than them. They can take a break from whatever they're supposed to be doing and do this instead."

"She's not wrong," Levy muttered. After all, she'd been saved by Elle herself rather than Rune Knights.

"What would power them all?" Jellal asked curiously. "Is there enough Ethernano in the air for them to be self-sustainable?"

"I was thinking we'd use the unmentioned unlimited power source we already use for Magnolia," Elle said, shrugging.

"You want to use what you currently use to power the whole guild and protect the city…to power protections for the whole country of Fiore?" Sorano asked. "Can it do that?"

"She did say 'unlimited power source'," Lucy reminded her.

"Mavis isn't gonna like it," Zeref said.

"I…don't care," Elle said, shrugging. "It's practical. She'll get over it."

"I'm back," Kinana said, opening the door and leading Ultear in.

"What's this about?" Ultear asked. "I thought this was Stellar (+ Freed) time."

Jellal facepalmed. "You know this is mostly just a Magic session, right? Anyone can join as long as they don't interrupt and want to learn stuff from Zeref."

"No, that's different," Ultear insisted. "We know when we have Zeref Teaching Time. This is Stellar Time. Freed's just here because he doesn't count and because trying to hold information from him would make him spontaneously combust or something."

"Anyway," Elle interrupted. "I have a plan and it needs your help."

"It does not because we're not doing it," Freed insisted.

"Yes, we are," Elle said, rolling her eyes.

"Why are you okay with using Magical Experimentation on yourself but not me?" Freed asked.

"That's literally how you learn magic, Freed, I'd just wish you wouldn't short-cut things like with Dark Ecriture and your teleportation runes. You literally could've tried transporting anything besides yourself for your first test."

Freed huffed and crossed his arms. "It still worked." It didn't mean Elle didn't have a point, though. He probably should've tested his teleportation runes on nonliving and then only organic material first. He was just really excited and decided to use himself.

"Speaking of which, I figured we do that," Elle continued. "Build in some of your transportation runes too. Maybe have some emergency transports near guilds and certain cities in case we need to be there quickly? And I was wondering if adding runes to trains would make them faster and more efficient. Also, maybe it would make the dragon slayers less sick?"

"That would cost even more money," Jellal pointed out.

"Dad would probably be down for it," Lucy said, shrugging. "He's been trying to make the trains faster for a while. Would the runes be applied directly to the trains, or to the railway tracks?"

"We'd probably have to experiment first to see what worked best."

"We could probably use the train set you guys made for last Christmas," Levy offered. Jude had brought a miniaturized train that Gajeel had put on a track around the tree. It was big enough that most of the kids could still sit on it as it went around.

"Ella-sama," Freed said. "How exactly are you going to pitch this to His Majesty?"

She shrugged. "I dunno, I figured I'd just drop by after our Fairy Festival. Or they might even come for the festival."

Freed sighed. "At least that's over a month away so I can get ready."

Elle rolled her eyes. "Freed, stop panicking. We've tested all of your runes on Magnolia and they work perfectly fine. They're not going to suddenly stop working."

Freed blushed. Sometimes he hated how easily Elle could read most of them.

"What do you mainly want these runes to do?" Ultear asked.

"Most are safety and enforcing runes," Elle said. "So that way if we accidentally hit a house, we won't break it."

"And you're expecting us to fight in every city in the country?" Sorano asked.

Elle didn't respond.

Ultear nodded. "Reinforcing runes, right. I assume you might want to add my time runes too, then?"

Ultear, Freed, Levy, Cana (and technically Elle) were actually part time members of staff at Fairy Tail, responsible for setting things to rights. Since then, they've wrote runes on practically every wall and space of the guild that both reinforced strength, and a new rune Ultear and Freed created that helps reset time, though it only happens for a small period of time and needs to be activated manually. If it's activated after that small window, it won't do anything, the space will only remember that time for fifteen or so minutes.

This, along with the amount of strange things Elle had had Freed, Cana, and the others make, meant that they got a side income from their patents and other inventions. Plus, Freed and Bickslow's prank trapping security business was still going strong.

And Freed was now more wealthy than his previous family was combined.

Lucy raised her hand.

Zeref sighed. "Lucy, you don't need to raise your hand during Stellar Sessions, you know this."

She put it down. "I was just wondering if we could use runes for other things. Like farming."

"Farming?" Levy asked.

"Yeah, Ellie-nee has runes on her garden, right?"

"It's mostly to keep pests out," Elle said. "You know…bugs or...dragon slayers. Or Millianna. But it's true that runes can do just about anything."

"Okay, so what about runes to protect fields so they're not destroyed, either by magic or natural disasters or anything?" Lucy suggested.

"We could maybe even use the runes to make them produce faster, or allow them to harvest all year," Jellal suggested. "Though we may need to experiment with that a bit. Who knows if the magic might make it taste weird or make it less nutritious."

"If anything, it should be the opposite," Zeref commented. "With magic fueling runes which are actively being used on food, it should naturally enrich the foods with more magic and taste."

"So we could make food for us like there is for dragon slayers?" Sorano asked excitedly.

Zeref shrugged. "How potent the magic would be, is unknown. We'd definitely have to experiment first, but it's certainly a good idea, Lucy,"

Lucy beamed at him.

"So, we'd turn fields into greenhouses," Elle mused.

Freed sighed. Another thing from Elle's universe that he would be making soon.

Still. He loved this life.

"Why do you want to paint so much, Juvia?" Reedus asked her.

"Onee-sama suggested it," Juvia said, which, really, explained everything. "She thinks it might help Juvia be less sad. Besides, Juvia shouldn't bother them during Stellar Time."

Reedus frowned. "You're sad?"

Juvia shrugged. "Juvia is Juvia. Onee-sama says she thinks Juvia needs to do more things that make her happy. She suggested art. But this is not making Juvia happy. This is making Juvia frustrated."

Reedus glanced at her painting which was, admittedly…unpleasant to look at.

"She suggested art?" Reedus clarified.

Juvia nodded.

"There's more than to art than just painting," Reedus explained. "For example, take what the ice wizards in our guild do. There's a type of art called 'sculpting' where you can create figures from anything solid. Usually stone or marble, but ice as well."

"Juvia sees," Juvia murmured. "Reedus thinks Juvia should try something other than paint?"

Reedus smiled down at her. "Let's try something called 'watercolor'. I think you could do very well in that."

There will be a few more chapters until we get to the Fairy Festival (aka April Fantasia). If you want to see anyone trying something/see there inner thoughts, feel free to mention in the comments. Just because they haven't shown up yet doesn't mean I'm not planning on them being in here.

Also Juvia 100% has depression. She's literally blue. Also, when she stayed in bed the whole time Gray was in Avatar...I felt that.

Chapter Text

I'm rewatching some of Fairy Tail with my friend (who will join us soon) and we just finished the GMG arc so have some Ultear angst.

Also here's another headcanon, I'm sure that y'all can figure out who he's supposed to be the counterpart of.

Also if you see a hammerhead worm, please delete it from nature in a nonflammable way. That is all. Check out Lindsay Nikole on YouTube for more info and fun science facts! She's great and I love her!

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty Three - An Interesting Interlude, Part Three

This new world was weird, but she didn't mind it.

It was certainly a lot louder than her old one.

She had siblings here, too. Cana, from her dad, and Laxus, from her mom. Jellal, as a sort-of step-sibling.

And Elle, from her past.

She can't talk yet, but she can understand what the others are saying.

And she had her own surprises the Library Lady said she had to wait to share, but that was okay.

When her old life ended abruptly, she had been worried about how her sister was.

But now, the two of them were in a new world together.

Amber didn't want to know what happened to her sister in the space between. She's happy now. They both were.

Zeref had forgotten something.

Which was…very frustrating. Since Elle had put him in a lacrima, his memory had gotten better. His thoughts no longer contradicted each other, and he almost felt…normal? Sane? Somewhat like how he was before he was cursed?

With Natsu there, sometimes he could pretend that this is what life would've been like if he'd never died…but that would never last long. His parents were still dead, he had children of his own now, and then there was Mavis and the whole guild.

And of course, he still hadn't talked to Natsu, much less acknowledged him as family.

Still…he'd forgotten what it'd been like to be surrounded by people without worry or hatred. He spent his days at the guild with his family, raising August and Larcade, and teaching the rest of the guild about magic. He especially liked discussing magical theory with the saner/calmer members of the guild. He honestly didn't think he would like teaching that much. He never did much teaching or tutoring at Mildian, instead keeping to himself and absorbed in his work to revive Natsu. The only time remotely similar to this was training Mavis and her friends 100 years ago, and he still wasn't exactly sure why he did that. Because she asked? Because he was lonely, or bored?

He still wasn't sure he knew.

To be honest, what he had at the guild was more than he thought he'd ever have, even if he succeeded and turned back time, or defeated his curse.

Even though, someday, he and Mavis would still be there, and the rest of the guild would fade; though knowing Elle, she'll probably try and get rid of the curse anyway.

Still…this was more than he thought he'd ever have. More than he deserved, certainly.

Was he greedy for still wanting more?

He closed his eyes, thinking.

"What's wrong?" Mavis asked him.

He turned to look at her. "I think I'm gonna tell Natsu."

Her eyes narrowed. "That's what you said last week."

"For real this time," he reassured her. "I'm gonna talk to Elle. She'll help me explain it to him."

Mavis continued gazing into his eyes, before smiling at what she saw there. "Okay. I'm proud of you."

Zeref smiled back at her, letting out a small sigh. "Thank you."

She tilted her head. "That's not all, is it?"

Zeref gave a small shrug. "I just…feel like I'm forgetting something, that's all."

Natsu was very happy.

While he had loved his time with Igneel, he hadn't quite realized that he was a bit lonely.

But at Fairy Tail, he wasn't. There were so many people, and he had so many new friends and family members.

Especially Lucy. He was especially glad to meet Lucy.

He would forever be glad that Elle had brought him and the rest of the dragon slayers to the guild, and that she sent him to meet Lucy.

Even though he was mad that Elle insisted on everyone's homes having rune walls on them, which stopped him from visiting Lucy at her house with Grammi and Brandish.

But he loved Fairy Tail a lot, and all its members, even if some of them were stripping perverts or scary women or babbling babies or even the Black Crybaby Zeref.

Being in the guild was fun and they were all like family! And he wasn't the only slayer there either!

But the best part of it was still definitely Lucy. She smelled good, and she was so nice! And her hair was so pretty, just like gold.

Just being near her made him feel happy, and peaceful; like his worries could start to unwind and he could focus more on being happy, on becoming stronger, on trying to make Igneel proud for the day he'd eventually come back to them.

Elle had said he'd see him again, and she tended to know what she was talking about.

Yes, he'd make him proud, and once Igneel was there, everything would be perfect.

Makarov had never had this many children in the guild before.

He himself was a born and raised guild baby.

But this was getting a bit excessive.

He'd heard a few of his colleagues at the Guild Masters meeting referring to his Guild as the 'Kids Guild'.

Not that he'd get rid of his kids for anything. He couldn't turn them away even if he wanted to.

And it'd just show them anyway; his kids were all extremely talented and would be even more powerful in the future.

Still, sometimes he was amazed at what his guild had become, and at all the little odds and ends that made up Fairy Tail.

At the First Master and the Dark Lord Zeref, raising their children with the rest of the little wizards.

Of Gildarts, a wanderer he'd never thought would settle down; now a family man.

Of Laxus, open and free, regularly laughing with other kids and so happy.

Of Lost Magic, abound again, and revolutionizing inventions that changed their world.

In some ways, he loved and hated Elle for the storm she brought upon them. On the one hand, she gave them time to prepare, and get stronger, and time to be happy beforehand. She brought them all together. And while he knew that most of them would have reached Fairy Tail eventually, now they got time to be a family now before they had to weather the storm. And that wasn't even counting all of the members they had that wouldn't have joined originally.

On the other hand, there's everything she brought with her. He knew that it's not her fault. That they'd be worse off if she hadn't brought a warning, and that it wouldn't've undo their circumstances if she'd never appeared.

He also knew that she gave him a second chance for him and his team to say goodbye to their dear friend, Rob, an opportunity they wouldn't have had in the other timeline. He'd always be grateful to her for that.

Still, sometimes, when he sees the paperwork he has to do, he wants to curse Elle's name instead of Mashima's. Well, at least the Stellars have taken it upon themselves to help him sort out most of his problems.

But the best part about Elle was that she makes Laxus happy. And that was all he ever wanted for his grandson.

Ultear tried to stay away from Jellal.

Maybe it was stupid to feel guilty for events that hadn't happened, but she blamed herself from what she remembered of the other timeline. She had destroyed his life, made him a criminal, chained him down with guilt.

How many years had she taken from him? Nearly twenty? A majority of the life he'd lived.

And he was still so nice. She knew he remembered the other timeline, too, and yet he was still so kind to her, still smiled at her and forgave her for those undone actions.

Sometimes she woke up, and thought she was in the other timeline. She'd have visions of death and blood, of horror and terror. But then she'd walk to the kitchen, and see evidence of living with Gray and Lyon, with her Mom and Silver and the twins.

The Ultear of the last timeline could've never dreamed up a world like this, and that was always enough to snap her back to reality.

One thing from the previous timeline that she regretted was the lack of time she spent with Lyon. Aside from her stint as Zalty, she spent almost no time near him, and even when she had been undercover, it's not like Lyon had known it was her, or anything about her for that matter.

But things were different now. Elle had managed to bring her family together, and derailed most major events that happened last time around.

Though Brain was still loose, and even with Elle taking care of some events, it didn't mean that other problems wouldn't fill the gap.

But Ultear was free, she was a member of Fairy Tail! She had family, and friends…and she had Simon. Or at least, she had had Simon.

Simon, who was hard to be around.

The more Ultear remembered, the less time she spent with him.

At first, she didn't remember Simon from the other timeline. He was just another one of the Tower kids, but he was friendly to everyone, even if he was totally in love with Erza and jealous of Jellal.

And Ultear really, really liked spending time with Simon. They'd go on walks with each other, train together sometimes. They'd even danced together at a few of the parties.

Ultear didn't know what she had thought, before, about what happened to Simon in the other timeline.

She hadn't wanted to.

But one day, she remembered. She saw Millianna, Simon, Sho and Wally, all much older, wielding their magic under Jellal's commands…which were really her commands.

In the last timeline, Simon had died.

Simon, who smiled brightly, and was almost always there with calm reasoning (a sharp contrast to most of their guild members). Simon, who had a kind word for everyone, who tried to cheer people up, who cared deeply for Erza and Jellal despite his feelings on them.

Simon, who she danced with.

In the last timeline, Simon had died, and it had been because of her actions. Millianna, Sho, and Wally had lost an older sibling figure. Kagura had lost a brother. Erza and Jellal had lost a friend.

If she had never taken control of Jellal, had never influenced his actions, how would the Tower incident have unfolded after Erza's rebellion? The rest of the group probably would have left the Tower with Erza. Maybe they would've joined Fairy Tail, or another guild, or maybe they just would've traveled. But Jellal and the others wouldn't have stayed a slave to the Tower, and Simon wouldn't have died protecting Erza and trying to reign Jellal in.

Even in the other timeline, Ultear didn't think Jellal blamed her for the death of his friend. He just blamed himself, because it was hard to think anything else when you have memories of doing the deed, of seeing a friend fade from your own hands.

He should've blamed her.

She knew that in the other timeline, Kagura had beef with Jellal because of Simon's death, and she should've blamed Ultear, instead. Did anyone ever tell the other Kagura what really happened? That Jellal wasn't to blame?

Sometimes, when Jellal would smile at Kagura fondly with the rest of the Tower escapees, there was pain in that smile. Ultear could tell; every time he looked at Kagura and at Simon, he saw his actions from the previous timeline. A reminder that he was cursed with the memories of what he had done.

She really didn't know how Jellal could stand to be around her, when she's the one who caused all the damage.

Sometimes even she couldn't stand to be around her.

But she had no more excuses. The only reason Simon was okay with spending time with her was because he didn't know. But she knew, and now Ultear had trouble meeting Simon's eyes, and smiling and chatting with him happily. She's started to distance herself from him, purposefully.

She got him killed last time, and Simon deserved so much better than that.

Mystogan thought it was weird that, between the two worlds he'd lived in, the ones with floating mountains was the magicless one.

But it was weird, being in Earthland. He liked it perfectly fine, but it was still strange seeing this other side to the people he knew.

He wasn't royalty in this world, and Elle seemed to have an infinitely bigger influence here than back home.

She was no longer just 'that strange sister-figure that climbed through his window'.

She was a Lady. The whole of Fairy Tail were superstars.

The version of his grandfather in this world was so nice, so kind to everyone and so welcoming. Why'd he get stuck with the crazy one? The one who was so obsessed with royalty he made his own grandson call him 'Father' and saw his kingdom as his real child.

This world was nice, though, and it was cool that he could use magic here...sort of.

See, Mystogan doesn't have any real magic power of his own, but he does, essentially, have an empty container. While he can't produce his own magic, he can take the magic around him and manipulate it. And while Porlyusica hadn't figured out how to do that, he was surprised to find another person from Edolas who could.

Elle had warned him about Porlyusica. She had not warned him about Gildarts.

Gildarts, who had lived in this world and used magic for so long that his body nearly was magical at this point. He still didn't produce his own magic, but instead worked as an endless battery, infused from taking Ethernano around him and manipulating it on his own.

Maybe one day, Mystogan could be an S Class Mage, too. He'd started practicing with Staves, a type of Holder Magic, and he found that he was actually able to manipulate the magical energy that existed in Earthland.

Honestly, he didn't even think that Gildarts knew he was from Edolas. He hadn't acted odd at all when Elle had first explained everything to the guild. The man had been in Earthland for so long he didn't remember anything else.

He wondered if they'd run into Gildarts counterpart, since he'd already met himself and Porlyusica was the counterpart of Wendy's dragon.

Porlyusica. Porlyusica did remember Edolas. Which was helpful.

Porlyusica was…fine. She was okay.

Actually, she was terrifying.

But she helped clear a few things up with him, which is good because hey, Edolas is pretty weird, okay? Some of those wild animals don't stay dead, which is probably why he scared Wendy so much that time he utterly decimated the corpse of a giant worm that attacked them. But he knows better now.

Kinda. He still destroys the bodies and scatters the ashes. Just to be safe.

And anyway, what if there are side effects from the Anima?

But he liked this world. He liked spending time with Wendy, he liked the guild, he liked not being royalty; he even liked talking with the Earthland version of himself and playing at being brothers. The guild was so happy, so full of light and life, so unlike the life he had lived back in Edolas.

He thought he might want to stay.

Warren wasn't part of Elle's kidnapped club. Which makes him a little sad. On the bright side, when he showed up, she seemed more surprised at the timing than him. 'You're early!' she had said, and then accepted him, just like that.

He has to say, that was really nice of her.

He can't read thoughts or hear souls to Erik's level of expertise. But sometimes, people project their thoughts loudly, and he can hear them.

When he was a kid, he didn't really know the difference between shouted thoughts and spoken words, because he had trouble looking at anyone he talked to. Which ended up with most family members and neighbors thinking he was creepy, that he knew too much and 'you look someone in the eyes when they talk to you, boy!'

Fairy Tail didn't care.

He tended to drift with Reedus, and (even though those two were still preteens), Max and Laki; more people that weren't exactly part of the Queen Elle club, though they all seemed to like her (except Max, who he was pretty sure was faking to be contrary at this point). Laki was the one who explained to him why Fairy Tail didn't care about what he picked up.

"We don't really have normal levels of privacy," she had said, shrugging. "Erik hears everything, secrets are gossip two seconds after it happens, that sort of thing. So many people here have had hard pasts that so many other people have also been a part of, it's hard to keep those private anymore. Besides, when you know all the details of Mavis' and Zeref's relationship, it makes most of our issues kinda pale so we don't care."

He would say that Laki is the most terrifying girl he'd ever met, but that wasn't true. It's just that every girl in Fairy Tail were crazy. But Laki is scary because she seems normal, if slightly more intelligent, and then you see how sadistic she is.

But Fairy Tail was really crazy because they had you work harder to make things happen. Whether it was the guild or Elle, they really pushed you to dive deep in your magic.

"You want my telepathic field to encompass all of Magnolia?" he had asked, shocked when he first heard her request.

"By the time you're done, you'll be able to do it easily. I want you to encompass all of Fiore."

This girl – this guild – was crazy. But it was only fair.

Warren was crazy, too.

Two more Interesting Interludes before Fantasia!

Chapter Text

Sorry for the late update, I've been super fucking sick for over a week. One more perspective chapter before Fairy Festival. Also, there was a bit of a Ripples AU I came up with on my own for fun, and have the first few chapters kinda figured out. I mentioned this to some of my commenters and they asked me to post it. So, uh, if enough people want me to post the Ripples AU then I will. (Essentially, the idea is that Elle disappeared before she went to get Gray and reappeared (fully grown) right as the timeline starts. So almost everything from before (first two years X772 – X773) happened, but she never meet the Ice Brigade, attacked the Tower, rescued the Seis, gathered the Slayers, etc.) Anyway I say this because that one has a lot of action/events in the beginning while this is mostly contemplative right now, so I thought I'd put up the option to see if you wanted to read it.

TLDR; I was sick, and I had an idea for a Ripples AU if you guys are interested.

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty Four - An Interesting Interlude, Part Four

Macao's depression radiated off of him in waves.

"Why don't you just ask?" Enno prompted, playing with Romeo's hair as she smiled fondly at him from across the table.

"Noooooooooo, I can't do that," Macao groaned, face down, with his head in his arms.

"What's wrong with him?" Silver asked, sliding into the seat next to Macao.

"Noooooo, don't," Macao told Enno.

She didn't listen.

"He's feeling left out because he isn't in the room when the kids have Stellar Sessions," Enno said.

"Betrayal," Macao stated, still face down on the table.

"Just join them," Silver rolled his eyes, even though Macao wouldn't see it.

"But I'm not a Stellar Mage, I can only wield Fire," Macao whined. "Romeo's the one that's got the blessing."

"Have you even tried learning another element?" Silver asked. "Even without the blessing, you're still related to Elle's bloodline. They said you should be able to wield multiple elements."

A pause. Enno's lips were pursed together to try and stop herself from laughing.

"Hey, Silver, can you-"

"Yeah, I'll teach you Ice Magic, come on, idiot."

"Finally!" Cana screamed, running into the guild. She looked horrible, her eyes had huge bags, and she was holding a few bundles of papers she requipped away. She glared at the Milkovich boys, who both let out squeals and straightened up. Which made sense, of course, as she currently looked deranged.

She took a deep breath and stared at them. "You two are going to learn Requip Magic."

"But we don't need-," Gray started.

"YOU ARE GOING TO LEARN REQUIP MAGIC NOW!" Cana hollered, pointing at the training room door.

"Yes, Ma'am!" Lyon and Gray said, running out of the room.

"Hahaha!" Natsu cackled. "The strippers are scared of Cana."

"YOU TOO," Cana said, in his face, her eyes huge and intimidating as she rounded on Natsu.

"But I don't…"

"You are going to learn requip," Cana said flatly. "Now."

Natsu, though scared, decided to keep going. "But I don't really-"

Before Cana could explode, Lucy intervened. "Natsu, if you learned requip, you could keep a lot more food on you."

"ALRIGHTY THEN, WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST SAY SO?" Natsu shouted happily, running into the training room.

"What's going on?" Ultear asked Cana, watching as the boys all left.

"I finally think I figured out a way to deal with the stripping problem," Cana said fervently, a fanatic gleam in her eyes. "I FIGURED IT OUT!"

"Right," Ultear said, nodding and backing away slowly. "That's great, Cana. Why don't you go get started on that?"

Cana nodded, her mind barely there, marching over to Freed and grabbing him by the back of his collar.

"What's going on? Cana-san?" Freed asked, confused. "Mira and I were just talking about my newest chapter-"

"I fixed the stripping issue," Cana said, letting him go and whirling around.

"What?" Freed asked, incomprehensive.

"I FIXED THE STRIPPING ISSUE," Cana said loudly, her face right in his and her eyes impossibly big. "NOW COME."

Freed gulped and nodded. "Coming, Cana-sama."

"And drop the '-sama'," Cana commanded.

Freed sat on the ground, looking at Cana's notes. "I mean, it should technically work, and learning Requip will definitely help, but this seems very complicated. There should be a less difficult way to prime them to the requip space."

The plan was simple; connect every pair of clothing the boys had to a card. If the clothes came off a body, they would instantly disappear to the requip space, which is where their virtual closets would be held. By priming a rune on the boys (such as Gray's necklace, for instance), if the body is sans clothing it will transplant the next outfit on the body.

Even if they couldn't get the new clothes to reappear, this would still mean that they wouldn't lose their clothes so much, and if Cana set an alert card for them depending on what they were wearing, they'd at least know what they were doing. Also, this way they could keep things like their wallet, or Jewels on them since they now had a pocket dimension.

"Maybe we should just make everyone learn Requip," Cana said, a strange gleam in her eye.

Cana's new favorite experiment, since she had started learning Requip so long ago, was experimenting with folded space. She loved her requip space, she loved her container cards, you could never have too much space.

"I think that seems unreasonable, Cana-san," Freed said hesitantly, afraid of triggering her. "Not everyone-"

She was in his face again, with impossibly large eyes. "Do you know Requip, Freed? Do you?"

He gulped. "I was p-planning on adding it to my repertoire once I got the hang of the Archive Magic."

Cana sat up straight again, interested. "Archive Magic?"

Freed nodded. "When Ella-sama was having us pick Transformation, Teleportation or Requip for Tertiary Magics, she suggested I try learning Archive Magic to go with my Rune Magic. I f-find it quite fascinating, really, and I agree with her that it suits me."

"Alright," Cana said, calmer now. "But then you'll learn Requip."

"Yes," Freed nodded, feeling very threatened. "Once I get a hang of Archive Magic, I'll start learning Requip."

"Good, now let's start tying their clothes to these cards," Cana said.

"Levy, you're being unreasonable," Jellal said quietly.

"You're being unreasonable," she shot back.

"Levy," he sighed.

"Please," she admitted. "I'm so behind."

"You are not behind everyone else. In fact, you're still more powerful than a lot of the kids in the guild," Jellal said.

Levy looked down. "Yeah, but I was one of the first. It was me, Cana, Juvia, Laxus, Elle, and Freed. They've all surpassed me. And I'm nowhere near the level the other Stellars are."

Jellal messed with her hair. "First off, you're stronger than Yukino, Romeo, and maybe even Macao. And you're about even with Sorano."

Levy looked at him desperately. "Please Jellal! It's our family magic! I should learn it anyway! It's not just that I want to get stronger, it's my heritage, too!"

Jellal sighed. "Alright. If you really want to learn because it's a part of you, I'll start teaching you the more Heavenly Body Magic ."

"Yes!" Levy cried, hugging him. With the exception of Meteor, she hadn't really been able to get the hang of any of the spells for Heavenly Body Magic.

Jellal let out a small 'oomf' as she threw her arms around him, but he was getting used to it. Everyone in Fairy Tail tended to use touch as a love language.

"I can't wait to learn Grand Chariot!" she said excitedly.

"Absolutely not," he stated. "We'll work on the smaller spells first, like Pleiades."

Levy pouted, but it didn't last long before her beaming smile broke through. "Fine."

Laxus. Was. Pissed.

"Do they think I can't hear them?" he hissed.

Elle squeezed his hand from across the table. "Just ignore them, it's fine!"

It was not.

Their first real 'date' and half the guild was spying on them.

"I know Erik can hear me, I can hear him, he's just fucking laughing," Laxus growled under his breath.

He wanted to treat Elle, to take her to a nice restaurant and do 'couple-y things' (as Lucy suggested) rather than just making dinner together and spending time together at her house during Laxus Time.

But he couldn't enjoy their date if the guild was following them.

"Why are they stalking us?" Laxus groaned, putting his head in his hands.

"Hey, it's fine. So, they're watching us. I don't have a problem with people seeing us out together," Elle said reassuringly.

"You know that's not what the problem is," Laxus said.

"When they realize it's just dinner and that we're not going to run off and do something crazy, they'll get bored and go home," she said, in a slightly hopeful tone.

He could tell she didn't believe her own words. "You're delusional," Laxus said flatly. "Those busybodies care more about gossip that has to do with us than anything else."

She sighed. "Okay, so maybe I don't really get the appeal of just following us around during a date, but they're not interfering or anything."

Famous last words.

Sometimes, Laxus really hated Elle's luck.

There was a crash in the kitchen, and everyone in the restaurant turned to look at the doors.

The host cleared his throat. "Nothing to worry about, people, all is well."

Elle turned back to look at Laxus hopefully. "Maybe one of the cooks just tripped?"

The kitchen doors opened and a waiter in a trench coat walked out, over seven feet tall and tilting awkwardly as it made its way across the room.

Laxus glared at the monstrosity making its way towards them while Elle turned her head to the side and tried not to laugh.

As it got closer to their table, they could hear grumbling from the midsection. "Your dumb feet stink and your toes keep gripping my hair! Quit it!"

"Sorry," the person on the top whispered apologetically. It straightened to face them, and Laxus looked up to see Jet's face.

"You and Orga are going to leave. Now," he said flatly.

Orga popped his head out of the midsection. "I can't breathe," he gasped. "Hi, Nii-chan! Hi, Nee-chan!"

"You're horrible at undercover," Jet whispered down at him.

"You're both horrible at undercover," Laxus told them.

Elle, still trying to muffle her chuckles, asked, "Where's Droy?"

"We were too tall if he joined," Jet said. "And I'm not stepping on his hair. It's weird."

"Well, I thought I was gonna be on top," Orga grumbled.

"And I thought that this was a private date," Laxus hissed at them.

"You guys are gonna fall over and hurt yourself, just go home," Elle told them.

They both pouted at her.

"Not gonna work," she said, and pointed back at the kitchen. "Get."

Right then another waiter appeared at their side, looking very professional and put together, asking if they'd like a menu.

Laxus almost relaxed until the scent hit his noise and his ears registered that voice. He looked up to Macbeth, who blended pretty seamlessly with the other waiters.

"Wait," Macbeth frowned at the other 'waiter'. "I thought I was supposed to do it?"

"No, we decided to use us instead, remember?" Jet snapped.

"No, he was napping," Orga explained.

"Why would we use you guys?" Macbeth asked. "At least I look like I could work here. This is literally the most conspicuous you guys could be. If only one of you came up to the table as a waiter it would still be less noticeable."

Laxus noticed Elle glancing around, and followed her gaze. Sure enough, the other diners were all focused on them.

Well, it was Magnolia. They were used to Fairy Tail shenanigans.

"Besides, I thought the other option was Jellal doing it with heels," Macbeth continued.

"No, Jellal took the opportunity to take Erza on a date," Orga said.

"Really?" Elle asked excitedly, putting down the menu she'd been hiding her smile behind.

Laxus groaned. And even worse, he could still hear Erik laughing in the background.

"Well, they didn't call it a date, but I'm pretty sure it was," Orga said, proud to deliver gossip to Elle.

"Still, you guys are drawing too much attention, go back!" Macbeth said.

"You go back," Jet said, using his arms to shove at Macbeth.

"That wasn't me," Orga said. "I can't move my arms."

And then the three (two?) of them were rolling around on the floor, fighting.

"How old is Macbeth, again?" Laxus asked, sweatdropping. It was admittedly hard to keep track of everyone, sometimes.

"Sixteen, I think," Elle said, trying to hold back her snorts.

Another waiter approached their table. "Come right this way, madam, sir, we've prepared a nice table for you two outside. It's least we could do after our employees have been such a nuisance."

Laxus, not looking a gift horse in the mouth, grabbed Elle's arm and took her to the terrace. It was only after they were seated down and looking at their menus that he paused.

"Wait…was that Lucy?"

"On top of Juvia? And blending better than Macbeth and Jet and Orga combined? I think so," Elle said, obviously amused that he didn't even notice.

"Next time we go on a date, we're going several cities away," Laxus said flatly.

Elle laughed and smiled at him. "Okay. Next time we go out together, we'll make sure it's not in Magnolia."

As the sound of her laughter filled the air, Laxus relaxed and began to enjoy their date. The guild might be crazy, but at least they made her smile.

"So, why do you suddenly want to go on a date so badly?" Zeref asked Mavis and she dragged them through the woods.

"Elle and Laxus are on a date, and the guild is too busy spying on them to spy on us," she explained.

Zeref nodded. That made sense. He had heard about their 'first official date' but hadn't realized that was today.

After four hundred years, his memories started to blur together, and he'd lose track of the days. It was better now that he was incorporeal and surrounded by people, but he knew he would likely always have difficulty with it because of how long he'd lived. Human brains aren't meant to store that much information, even with magic, which is another reason why the Curse can affect them so badly.

"Anyway, do you recognize this place?" Mavis asked excitedly as they stopped walking. She laid out a blanket and a picnic for the two of them near the water.

Zeref smiled. "This is where we met, when you caught me bathing."

"It was an accident!" Mavis cried, turning red and waving her arms in the air furiously.

Zeref started to laugh, pulling Mavis down with him on the blanket and kissing her softly. "Maybe it was destiny. After all, we bathe together all the time, now."

Not that they needed to, but it was fun to relax or play in the hot water.

"You think the boys are okay?" Mavis asked, snuggling up to his side.

"I'm sure Irene has got them in hand," Zeref said.

"Larcade, get back here, now!"

Since the babies were set to grow at a bit of a faster rate, and it had already been nearly six months, plus they weren't de-aged to quite the infant stage, the boys were now approximately nine months old.

Which meant that they were starting to walk.

August was very systematic in his walking. He'd go slowly and try to keep his balance.

Larcade didn't care; he just wanted to make it to wherever he was going before he collapsed, so he'd run around and crash into things.

"Larcade!" Irene yelled as she chased after the giggling baby, who crashed into a table. Luckily, since they had baby-proofed the guild and virtually created a fifth dimension to the building, he safely bounced off of the rune barrier and back towards Irene, who caught him.

"Gotcha!" she cried triumphantly. Larcade just babbled incoherently and giggled.

"Awwww, he was just having some fun," Natsu said, coming up to the kid. "I don't see what's wrong with that."

"What's wrong is that it is bedtime, and he needs to get to sleep," Irene said sternly.

"Natsu-san is right, running is fun!" Sting said excitedly as he bounced over. "Ne, Natsu-san, race me!"

The two boys took off running, neck and neck, and disappeared out of the back of the guild.

Irene looked down at Larcade. "You stay away from dragon slayers. They're a bad influence."

"E…even me, Irene-san?" a small voice asked from beside her. She looked down at Wendy, who stood there nervously.

Irene paused, considering the dragon slayers in the guild. She turned back to Larcade. "You stay away from any male dragon slayers. Female are okay."

Wendy sweatdropped. "Ano…is Erza really the best influence?"

Irene paused at that, but shrugged. Erza was her daughter/family so she'd just let Erza stay on the list.

Wendy might have a point, though.

"Ha!" Nab cried as he moved several steps forward on the gameboard, and was able to switch his miniature with Simon.

"Jee, thanks," Simon grumbled as he watched his progress on the board go down the drain.

"Sorry," Nab said, giggling.

"No, you're not," Simon glared at him.

His eyes widened as Ultear walked past the table and he snagged her sleeve. "Hey, Ultear, come join us! We were just done playing Sorry!"

"No, we weren't," Nab said, confused, as Kagura requipped away the board when he wasn't looking. "We were in the middle of- Where did the board go?"

Ultear was smiling at their antics. "Thanks, but-"

"Please," Simon said, looking at her. He knew she'd been avoiding him.

"Yeah, come join us, Ultear," Millianna said.

Ultear smiled at them. "Gray! Lyon! Take a break and play with us."

"Oh Fuck yes," Gray said, getting up from the Requip notes and running for the table. "But you're talking to Cana about it."

"Fine," Ultear said, rolling her eyes. "If we're done with Sorry, what are we playing now?"

"Monopoly?" Sorano suggested.

"NO!" they all shouted at her.

Evergreen shuddered. "Never again."

Everyone looked at each other, trying to think of a game that wouldn't end in them ripping each other apart.

"Go Fish?" Millianna suggested.

"Go fish," they all agreed.

"Hisui!" a voice called. "We got a letter from Elle and the guild!"

Hisui squealed and abandoned the book she was reading. Even though she was only around four and a half, she had really thrown herself into stories after spending time with Elle and Lucy. It was a way for her to feel close to them when she couldn't visit the guild, even if she did find most of the stories she could easily read a bit bland. Ame would read the more complicated books to her, and they would read Freed's fanfictions together and laugh at how, even in a different circumstance or universe, their friends would always be the same.

"What's it say, what's it say!?" she said excitedly as she rushed to her mother, jumping into her seat at the table.

Ame stroked her hair as she read through the note, and Koku babbled happily from her armchair where she tried to eat cereal.

Keyword being tried. Hisui is fairly certain that she was never that messy when she was smaller.

"Well, to balance out Fantasia, it seems Fairy Tail is putting on a different sort of festival at the end of April," she said, looking over the note. "It looks like it will be several days and that there will be all sorts of fun activities."

"Can we go, can we go, please?" Hisui begged.

Ame laughed. "Of course. You know, I'm not surprised that Fairy Tail is still last minute, even when they're trying."

It was, after all, a month and a half until the Festival began, which, while plenty notice for most people, was a bit rushed considering they were the Royal Family.

"But we can still go, right?" Hisui asked.

Ame leaned forward and smiled at her, whispering. "The best part about being royalty is that we're in charge most of the time." She kissed Hisui on the forehead and folded the letter up before handing the envelope back to Hisui. "They added some more of Reedus's drawings for you."

"Yay!" Hisui shouted, taking the envelope and running off. "I'm hanging them up right now!"

Her room was already filled with pictures of the guild, but she was able to make more room for new pictures by shuffling some around. After finishing up, she backed up and smiled at the faces of her friends spread out across the walls.

Sometimes, being a princess was tiring, and lonely. There weren't really other kids she could play with her age, and she had to do a lot of stuff every day. But she still had her Fairy Tail family that she'd get to see every once in a while.

Hisui checked the letter again, noticed the date of the Festival, and started making a countdown chain out of paper to the day. Each day, she'd rip one link of the chain off until it was all gone and the day had arrived.

She still doesn't quite understand what Elle would mean when she'd talk about the last timeline, but she'd overheard her dad talking to her mom about it.

She knows if Elle hadn't interfered, she wouldn't have her mommy. Or Koku, even though sometimes she's annoying. Hisui also had the feeling that her daddy wouldn't be nearly as happy.

But that wasn't the world they lived in now, and Hisui was happy with that.

She smiled as she hung the chain. Hisui couldn't wait to see everyone again!

Average baby walking age is around 14 months, but I started running at 9 because I wanted to play with the cats. They did not want to play.

Countdown chains were my favorite thing as a kid. I had one for just about every holiday and would start one for the next holiday as soon as one ended.

Anyway, please let me know what you think about posting and making the AU a real fic.

Sweet dreams, everyone. :)

Chapter Text

My birthday is tomorrow (I'll be 25!) so I'm posting this tonight so I wake up to reviews!

Also, for those interested, I posted the first chapter of Riptide (the AU mentioned previously) and the second chapter should be up in a few days while I work out the Festival Arc.

And here we fucking GO! I saved some of the most interesting perspectives for last. Have some reveals and revelations (:

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty Five - An Interesting Interlude, Part Five

"I think it's the perfect opportunity!" he said, slamming his hands on the table.

"And I think you're being irrational because you want revenge," Hades said lazily.

Brain nodded. "I agree with Hades, Ivan. Your opportunity will come, but we don't have the forces needed to take on Magnolia in the middle of a wizard festival. It's likely the other guilds will also come, and we're not going to sacrifice the dark guilds under us for a suicide mission."

"You're the one who's upset that Fairy Tail has been systematically taking out the dark guilds," Ivan pointed out. "Wouldn't it be better to go after them now, before they get more members, become more powerful, and continue to go after your guilds one by one?"

Brain and Hades paused, and exchanged a look.

Brain leaned forward, lacing his fingers. "Go on."

Ivan smirked. Finally, those brats would get what was coming to them.

If, a few years ago, someone had told Ur she'd move to Fiore with her daughter, two students, one of their fathers, and happily join a guild and get married and have more kids, she'd have laughed so hard she cried.

And then she just would've cried, because her daughter was dead.

When Ultear barreled into her life again, Ur froze. She'd thought she'd lost her forever, and for a while, it seemed like everything would be perfect (even if Ultear didn't exactly get along well with her boys).

And then came Deliora. Ur knew it couldn't last.

But she resigned herself to using Iced Shell, because it was the only solution.

And then an eleven year old punched her in the face.

Something she thought no one saw coming (mostly because the girl teleported right beside her) but Ur didn't want to get her hopes up when she said she had a different way to deal with Deliora.

After all, she was just eleven.

But she was also the one who encouraged Ultear to speak out, who fought off Brain so Ultear could escape.

And before she knew it, the demon was dead, Gray's father was somehow alive and these two kids coerced her and the rest of them to migrate countries and join a magic guild.

Sometimes it felt like a dream. Like she shouldn't be there, like she should crack and shatter into pieces or melt away.

Porlyusica said that there's nothing physically or magically wrong with her; it's all in her head.

But she's making it work. It's annoying, of course; missing out on her own life. It's like she's not always present when she should be.

But considering that she wasn't even really supposed to have a life anymore (much less one like this) Ur was okay with that.

Sorano was upset.

Elle was more upset.

"…Do you exist to make me mad, Sorano?" she asked, sighing.

Sorano screwed her face up. "You always do this! This is the magic you wanted me to learn."

"Do you know why I didn't want you to learn 'Angel Magic'?" Elle asked.

"Because you're biased," Sorano said.

"I…what? What do you mean by that?" Elle sputtered.

"You're fine with Mira's magic!" Sorano pointed out.

Elle gaped at her. "What…That's not the problem, Sorano! For one, those dumb 'angels' you're obsessed with are terrifying and not angelic in the least. You've got to admit that."

Sorano crossed her arms but couldn't disagree.

"Second, I don't like that summoning them takes off part of your lifespan," Elle said. "And that's the same problem with this spell. Yes, it is still Moon Magic, and it's probably the most powerful spell of those, but using this could kill you. Do you know what the Three Great Fairy Spells are?"

Sorano couldn't see what that had to do with anything. "You mean Mavis's spells?"

"Yeah. Originally, they were Black Magic, Mavis just found a way to convert it. And here," Elle pointed at the spell on the book between them, "seems like it works similar to Law but can counteract it. Law is what Mavis used and she got cursed. She managed to make it Fairy Law so future users wouldn't be cursed like she was. This spell looks like a variant of Law with the same sort of alterations that Mavis made. Which means that, by casting this spell, you would lose life each time for everyone you effected, a balance added to avoid the curse."

Sorano was quiet.

"Now, I can't exactly tell Master that he can't cast Fairy Law," Elle said. "What with him being Master and also an old man. But I already know that he's talked to Mavis and they're considering making him the last user of Fairy Law. The other spells don't affect the user negatively (well, any more than using magic normally does) and he doesn't want anyone after him to use Fairy Law and die from it. And I know for sure that he wouldn't be happy if you ever pulled out this spell."

Sorano didn't quite know what to say.

Elle pointed to a spell a few levels before the one they were talking about. "This one has virtually the same effect; if anything, I believe it's the equivalent of Fairy Glitter. Which means it will, essentially, disable your opponents, but since it doesn't kill them, it won't take life force from you as payment. This is a plenty powerful spell, Sorano, and it might even be more powerful than Fairy Glitter is because I think this is the original magic. The Spirits said that Priestesses of the Moon essentially died out, and that the rest of your line became Celestial Spirit Wizards. Someone could have easily heard about these legendary spells of yours, and decided to try and recreate them, which Mavis then modified. That's what I think, anyway."

Elle slumped back in her chair and let out a breath. "I know that you're still having trouble with your Moon Magic, Sorano. But jumping to the most extreme spell will not force you into being good at it. We'll talk to the Spirits, okay, and see what they'll say. Maybe we can find another way to use Moon Magic, and tweak it for you, okay? But not this spell."

Sorano nodded, her head down. "Okay."

She just felt so behind. Elle, Jellal, and Lucy were on ridiculously high levels. Even Levy was pretty skilled. But she was still struggling with Moon Magic while Yukino had already shown signs of having a talent for it. Zeref said it was probably because Yukino was the Heir, but that didn't mean that Sorano couldn't be good at it, too!

Sometimes she still felt trapped. Trapped by her magic, by her friends, by Fairy Tail.

She didn't know why. This wasn't the Tower, or Brain. She knew she was free now. She could leave any moment if she wanted to. She didn't have to listen to Elle.

…But she did it out of concern for her. All of her friends did.

Sometimes she just felt so smothered.

Like she should float up into the sky, and straight to the Moon.

Sorano can hear it calling to her, getting louder every day.

She just can't understand what it's saying.

Not yet, at least.

Bickslow felt bad for leaving things out with Gajeel and Elle, but he really didn't know how to explain everything he saw.

Each day he got stronger, the more detailed the strings became.

And honestly, the guild was just a tangled ball of yarn.

He knew he should talk to someone about it, but he didn't know how to bring it up.

It didn't help that it was technically gossip about his guildmates, and unlike most of the guild, he didn't always feel comfortable spreading that to the wind…when he could even decode it.

Erik didn't really like spreading the gossip either, but because of the different nature of their powers, he'll hear a phrase of something he can't help but blurt out. Bickslow has time to see the strings, be confused by them, and slowly figure out what they mean, so he has to take a much more measured thought to actually sharing the information with other people.

The Dragon Slayers in particular, were strange. Not even with their soulmates, but their other bonds.

Like the fact that Gajeel and Rogue have a string connecting them, and he knows that they don't know they're physically related (cousins, maybe, considering the similarities between their string and Jellal's and Levy's previous string before they realized their connection?) Though it should be obvious, considering the dark hair and red eyes they share.

Or how Natsu has a string connected to Zeref; a string that is simultaneously unknown from his end and also, somehow, dead, which he'd never seen before.

Natsu and Wendy also have strangely transparent strings connecting to Gildarts and Porlyusica; strings which are identical to the ones Mystogan mirrors with Jellal. See, Mystogan has every single one of Jellal's strings, but they're Different, like they're not entirely there. He knows that Mystogan is from an alternate universe; they all do, but he's not quite sure how it all connects here. Were Natsu and Wendy also from another universe? Or Gildarts and Porlyusica? Because not all of their strings were Different; both pairs also had connections to people in this world. And even Mystogan had formed some new connections, like the strange double string he has with Wendy, since Jellal is also close with her now, and another doubled string with Elle, which he assumes means Mystogan knew her back in his home universe.

Bickslow couldn't help but wonder if the Elle there was as crazy as theirs.

No, the strings were getting way too complicated, and it doesn't help that the few books Elle and Papa helped take from his house aren't that specific on what all the different strings do or mean.

Besides, nothing in the book ever said anything about dead strings or Different strings from another universe.

He was writing his own book when this was done…or maybe he'd make Freed do it.

And then there were the soulmates.

You'd think soulmates were supposed to be easy, right? That most people would only have one.

No. They were not.

Some of these idiots were so strangled in strings he'd forget that they were metaphysical and wonder how they were even moving around the guild.

And different shades could mean different things. For example, he could see that both Cana and Brandish had multiple soulmates, but the string between the two of them was getting the strongest. Though, it was a close race. Sorano's connection to Brandish is catching up to Cana, and he's starting to feel the tension between those two.

It's also strange how the strings can show someone's reluctance to love, like how Ultear's changed with Simon's. Even though the string was pretty obviously red, it also seemed to be actively pushing Simon away, something he was pushing back against. He couldn't help but wonder if she'd be more receptive to the other strings she had, or if Ultear would push them away when she met them, too.

Bickslow should probably mention these things to Elle, or at least not wear the Runic Bracelet Freed made him that would block out Erik (mostly because Erik complained that he could never see the strings through Bickslow, he just heard Bickslow's comments randomly and it was driving him nuts).

But something was also telling him to wait, wait until he understood more.

Besides…everything else (Jellal and Levy, Jellal and Laxus, etc) had come out so far.

And then…there were the soulmates of the Slayers and Stellars.

Sting, Rogue, and Yukino is the first set triad he's seen. Their strings connect from one to the other, and crisscrosses over, and is completely fine with that.

Erza and Jellal, Levy and Gajeel, Erik and Kinana, those were easy. Koku and Amber were just babies but still had a connection. Hisui still hasn't met hers. And then there were the other pairs.

Well…not pairs, exactly.

See, even the Slayers and Stellars could have multiple strings.

Like the possible crush Erik had had on Elle until Laxus, you know, terrified him and Kinana got turned human.

Or how, while Sorano (as stated) has a connection with Brandish, she has an even stronger string off into the distance, likely a slayer they haven't met, considering Gajeel's words.

Gajeel had told him that Slayers either end up with Slayers or Stellars, which is why Sting and Rogue still have a connection to each other, and why Sorano's connection to the unmet slayer is so strong. Bickslow thinks that, if Sorano never met the other slayer, and Cana was…elsewhere, she could've been happy with Brandish. But that doesn't mean they both don't have better options that would make them happier.

And then there were the last few things he had trouble understanding.

Wendy's was a bit strange. She had a connection to Romeo but another connection leading off. It was weird because Romeo definitely only had one red string. It seemed likely that whoever was on the other side of that string wasn't Romeo's soulmate.

And it was very clear that Wendy and the other person were still soulmates with each other. Unrequited love didn't appear the same as soulmates. So, it wasn't just that Wendy had the potential to love someone else…there was actually another love of hers wandering around out there.

Maybe Wendy just gets two people? He's not quite sure how that would work, but he's not sure how Sting, Rogue and Yukino will end up working either, just that it will, from what he can see of the strings.

And finally there was Elle's. He hadn't seen it before because it hadn't been there before, but now she had more than one red line connecting her, too.

One that was flickering, like it wasn't sure whether or not it was going to exist. Something that changed from what Fate was supposed to be; something Bickslow thought only Elle was really capable of.

He'd never seen a string appear like that before.

Even when the dragon slayers had appeared in this time, and Lucy and Levy's strings had finally appeared; that was more sudden, like it was snapping into place.

But Elle's other line had flickered into existence, and hasn't disappeared for a while. It was set now, and was getting stronger, and nearer, every day.

And one day (one day soon) that person attached to that string would walk into the guildhall, and he didn't want to think about the riot that would happen once the Ellaxus Shipmates could feel the tension there. Because Laxus was not connected to the other string, just Elle.

Freed would probably kill him for not warning him, but honestly, at this point?

As long as it happened before everyone else figured it out, Bickslow would be okay with that.

She stood at the edge of Magnolia as the wind whipped her long hair around her. A paper blew up to her and landed at her feet.

She knelt down, picking up the flyer. It took her a bit to read it; her literary skills were still rusty. But she got through it eventually.

Fairy Tail's Fairy Festival! A week of fun games, battles, and concerts run by the Fairy Tail guild. Everyone welcome! Attendance is free!**

**Specific games/products may cost a fee.

The date was soon; within a month.

One month. She'd go to the festival, watch the guild from the shadows, and make her decision.

…Sometimes, it was like she could still hear her father, in the back of her mind. A voice, telling her what to do.

You'll go there whether you want to or not.

She wasn't sure she'd listen to the voice. Father wasn't there to make her do anything, anymore. But she had to admit, she was still curious.

It was like something was pulling her towards the guild hall. Like…she was supposed to go there.

It could have, possibly, been Father. He was very insistent that she join this guild, ever since he had visited it around five months ago. For all she knew, he may have put a spell on her to make her join the guild.

She'd still go to the festival, as his last request to her. But that was all.

After that it was up to her. She'd control her own Fate.

Her eyes wandered back to the date on the flyer.

Soon.

"So, what do you think?" God asked her, delightedly.

The deity lay relaxed in an armchair, and with a wave of her arm, a tray of tea appeared on the table beside her. Her guest picked up a teacup and settled down into the identical armchair that faced her.

"I think," the guest said, "that you're having too much fun with this."

"Oh, you might be right," God said enthusiastically. "But this isn't my doing."

"It's not?"

"Oh no, he chose to mess with things with his own free will. I will admit, I didn't see it coming. I don't think Elle would either. I can't wait to see how she reacts when it all comes together! It makes it quite exciting; don't you think?"

Her guest turned back to the screen that hung between them, watching down on Earthland and the guild.

"Yes," Layla Heartfilia said, smiling down at her daughters and their friends. "I suppose it does."

:3

Chapter Text

...hi. If the person writing 100 year quest is reading this, and you want a way to make the Platinum Keys canon in a way that makes sense, I have one. If you're willing to hire me, just pm me or smt (i am very broke)

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty Six - Countdown

Laxus was exhausted. They were still preparing for the Festival, which would be starting tomorrow afternoon. Everyone had been assigned to their 'stations' and were working on their parts.

He had only sat down for a quick breath.

….There was a child in front of him.

This always happened. He loved being the 'big brother' to all of the kids in the guild but sometimes it was so exhausting.

Even worse, it was Jellal, who actually was his brother, so…

"Yeah?" Laxus grunted.

"Can I talk to you privately?" Jellal asked quietly.

"Mmmhmm," Laxus hmmed. Could you be too tired to make noise? Was that a thing?

"Good," Jellal said, bringing out a card and activating it. A sequence of rune walls went up, surrounding them and cutting off the noise from the rest of the guild. The walls also shimmered a certain way, which told Laxus that it was a one-way visual. In other words, no one could see them while they could still watch the guild.

He felt like the dumbest fucker alive. Why didn't he carry one of those?

Still, the noise of the guild being cut off helped him relax a bit.

Oh. He'd been overstimulated.

Now he felt even stupider. More stupid? See, he didn't even know which one was right.

"How did you and Elle get together?" Jellal asked nervously.

Oh, boy. Why? Why would he ask him that? How was Laxus supposed to know? Yeah, he'd been there and all, but that doesn't mean he understood what happened!

Laxus gave Jellal a look that he hoped conveyed his 'Are you fucking serious, man?'

Jellal sighed and sat down beside him. "Maybe it was Freed? Do I need a hype-man?"

Laxus would've choked if he'd been eating something. In no way was Freed a hype-man.

Jellal sighed, leaning back. "I just don't know what to do. I already know that she's the one I want to spend my life with."

Ugh, Laxus was going to have to talk. There was no way around it. "Does she know?"

Jellal blushed. "Probably?"

"Listen, if anything, I think you're already together, you just haven't put a label on it."

"What…what about kissing?"

Erik, please come kill me, RIGHT NOW!

Laxus could see him on the other side of the barrier, snorting and looking away from their vague direction.

That dick.

"I think," Laxus said, "That Erza will start kissing whenever she feels like it."

"Oh," Jellal said, pausing. "Yeah, that makes sense. Still, I wanted to do something special for her for the Festival."

"Then talk to Elle about making one of your songs a solo," Laxus said, very Done with this conversation.

"Alright," Jellal said slowly. "Alright, yeah. I can do that! I'll go tell Elle. And keep the card, you need it more than I do."

Jellal darted out of the rune square and Laxus actually let himself smile at that, finally relaxing alone in the quiet for a bit.

Sometimes having siblings was nice.

As much as I love all of the kids in the guild, I don't really spend as much time with some of them. I mostly spend time with the Stellars, Slayers, and Erigor, Juvia, Orga, Macbeth, and Freed. Yeah, Ultear will still come talk to me privately for big sister talks, and Jet will also still want to run his mouth on the gossip of the guild, but for the most part, I don't spend as much time with the rest on a very personal level.

See, I usually keep an eye specifically on Natsu, Orga, and Sting, as they are the most rowdy and troublesome. Energetic? Hyper? The point is, those boys are a lot so I'm usually watching them for trouble.

I was not watching Lyon.

That was a mistake.

See, we were ending the Festival with a big concert. A lot of our songs during previous Fantasia parades got pretty popular, and people wanted their own copies (which we would also be selling).

I had struggled with trying to find the right songs to sing for the concert. Some of them were almost no brainers, but others I kept picking and discarding because it turned out it was a bit more depressing than I remembered, or had a few 'inappropriate' words. Makarov draws the line on cursing in songs, which cuts out like…well, I don't know, but a lot of them. If it was in the chorus or anything we couldn't do the song, but if it was just once we could probably fix it. I also didn't want anything too death related or sad (I told Erigor and Macbeth we can have another concert sometime in May or something) or anything too…rebellious.

For example, on my 'Probably Too Much/Maybe Edit Songs? Playlists', one of the songs is Burn the House Down by AJR. It's a song I love, it's very easy to dance/party to, and…yeah. I like the song, okay? The trumpets are cool.

But the instant Lyon's Sound Pod got to the chorus, Makarov choked and Lucy had to bring out Phoenix. So we had to cross out any songs that were a bit too much when it came to anarchy or revolution or whatever.

I mean…I still managed to get a few of them in there. A key part in all of those things is that, for as much disorder they cause for a society, they're representatives of different opinions and expressing oneself.

So most of those songs were a bit more 'be yourself' then 'set the government on fire'.

I mean, we could do that too, also. Set the government on fire, not sing the actual song.

I also ended up singing a lot more songs than I wanted too. I still wasn't sure how I felt about singing in public (the guild doesn't count), but first it was just a little nudge from Erigor and Jellal (traitor), who suggested that I join in with the song the Stellar Siblings were doing as a group, and it's okay that Levy and Kinana weren't singing because they weren't as public and the public didn't know that they were Stellars anyway but I had to join because Yukino and Lucy were doing the first verse, and Jellal couldn't sing the second verse alone Elle, he'll be lonely, and HOW CAN WE BE THE STELLAR SIBLINGS IF THE MOST KNOWN STELLAR ISN'T SINGING WITH US!?

So I caved.

Even though that song was originally just going to be Sorano and Lucy, but then a male voice joined in the original version so they bugged Jellal to join. (Even though I told them that the gender of who sang the song originally doesn't really have to be taken into account. Most of the kids just like making it sound as close to the original as possible.)

From there, it was easy enough for other members to ask me to join in for a specific role in one or two songs, and by the end of the planning, I had somehow had several duets and solos.

But at least I still got to draw some lines, because Freed found a song that wasn't in any of the possible playlists and suggested that.

"No, Freed, I am not singing a song about kidnapping children!" I shouted at him.

Laxus smirked from where he was sitting. "I dunno, the lyrics are pretty accurate."

"I get what Ellie-nee is saying," Lucy said, looking at the lyrics. "The chorus is too dark. If it wasn't for that I'd say to do it."

"Lucy!"

The song in questions was Come Little Children by Erutan. You know, the song from Hocus Pocus.

"We could change the chorus," Macbeth said, smirking at the betrayed gaze I shot him.

"'Here in my garden of shadows'," Lyon said, looking at the chorus. "Hmm, it doesn't rhyme, which makes it easier, I think. Light. Happiness?"

"We'll just put it aside for now," Erigor said, waving it off.

But at least we were too busy/occupied with everything else to actually work on changing the lyrics, so it was left alone.

And that was how most of the songs were chosen. Via argument. Then, because more than a few of us were singing multiple songs, I had to make sure it was in an order that didn't strain our voices, or (in the case of Macbeth, who was also doing special effects for a few of the songs) magic.

And for your information I will not be singing Come Little Children, even with changed lyrics; mostly because Laxus kinda wanted us to stop giving his grandfather heart palpitations (because obviously my opinion isn't relevant here).

The biggest issue when I started planning the concert was that I didn't really know how long a concert was; it's not like I'd been to one.

Then I was informed that they were usually at least an hour or an hour in a half. But we also didn't have any band open for us, as 1) it would shift the attention too much for our first debut and 2) the only cartoon band I ever want opening for me is the Hex Girls, and this was not their universe. (They're hot, okay?)

The Festival started each day, Monday through Friday, at 1:00 pm and ran to 6:00 pm. This is because some people like to sleep late, and so other people can do errands or chores for the first half of the day.

As the clock hit 1:00 pm on Sunday, everyone had settled in the guild hall for last minute preparations.

"Alright everyone, our festival starts tomorrow and we've officially hit the 24 hour countdown," I shouted to them.

Most of the guild let out cheers.

"Alright, status report!" I shouted. "Warren, Max, you guys first!"

"Alright, the booth is all stacked with Fairy Tail products!" Max said excitedly. "We've got flags, TV shirts, keychains, paperweights, stickers, jewelry, and my personal favorite; Our Guild Hall in a snow globe! Except they're magic sparkles, not snow."

"Ooh," a few guild members crowed as Max shook said snow globe.

"I've also got the music all set," Warren said. "After people enjoyed our last few Fantasia Parades, they've been asking us to record more stuff," he explained to the guild at large. "We've recorded all of those songs as well as the ones we're planning on singing during the concert, in case anyone likes those, too."

I nodded. "Okay, and the merch we have that isn't just the guild symbol?"

"We've made tiny collectable figurines, as well as posed photos and posters for each team every year of the GMG. And Freed and Cana helped us finish the card game."

"Card game?" Orga shouted eagerly. Since cards were (usually) the most nonviolent game for the guild to play, I'm not surprised that he zoned in on that.

"The only ones who currently have cards are people who were in the GMG," I explained. "You get a card set of the people in the guild but they're randomized. There's also a dice set that gives you a setting, an opponent, and the amount of energy the mage has. Then you figuratively fight with the cards by using certain attacks until you either win or lose."

A.K.A. it was kinda Pokémon with slight alterations.

"THAT SOUNDS AWESOME!" Orga yelled.

"I WANT A CARD!" Natsu screamed, standing up.

Gajeel rolled his eyes and yanked him back down. "You didn't participate in the Games, dumbass, so no one knows who you are. Besides, we're pretty behind compared to some of the mages in the guild. No one would want your card."

"THEN I'M GONNA BE THE STRONGEST IN THE END!"

"NO WAY FLAMEBRAIN, YOU'RE NEVER GONNA BE STRONGER THAN ME!" Gray shouted.

"YOU WANNA GO?"

Erza slammed their heads together. "Aneki has taken valuable time to make sure everyone on the guild knows what is going on! Now is not the time!"

"Yeah, wait 'til Ellie-nee is done explaining," Lucy pointed out.

The guild sweatdropped.

I turned back to Warren and Max. "And you have a Master set of cards we can edit, right? For when we grow in power and have to change our stats?"

They both nodded.

I turned to Cana, "And you're giving readings at certain times, right?"

She nodded. "I've got the fortune booth set up."

"Jude, all the business deals are set?" I asked him.

He nodded. He'd helped us negotiate business deals with local Magnolia businesses, who would be selling food and their own merchandise.

I checked the list again. "Erza, you're with the Heart Kruez display, right?"

She nodded. "Don't worry, Aneki, the display won't be open the whole time, so I'll still get time to wander."

I smiled. "Good."

I wanted everyone to enjoy the festival, which means that we couldn't exactly be preoccupied the entire time.

I turned to Maggie. "The design booth?"

She smiled, passing Maxie over to Rex and picking up some papers with pictures on it. "Good so far. We have several designs that can be bought, and they can ask for customized designs if they want. We also can make them in Ice, Metal, and Wood so far."

The Ice Making Mages, Maggie, Mari and Gajeel, and Laki all gave me a thumbs up.

"I've also got different designs for the ear piercing booth," Gajeel said.

"And Ultear, you've got your Restorative Booth?" I turned to her.

Ultear had a separate booth that would be open from certain times (since we didn't want to strain her too much) but it essentially let people come and pay to have things repaired. Using her Time Magic to fix rusted heirlooms or broken souvenirs was likely to be very popular, and it was being advertised the whole week, so that someone could get their items and return another day at an open time if possible.

Ultear's commissional repair work, as well as Max and Warren's merchandise booth, were going to be things that were sporadically and periodically repeated throughout the year (the merch booth being open much more often).

"Great, I think we're set on that part then," I said, nodding. "Alright, we'll start with the games."

The 'Experience Games' are ones where there's no real winner or prize, it's just a fun activity to do.

"The Thunder Legion has the Flying Cage all set," Evergreen said, smiling next to Bickslow and Freed. The Flying Cage was how Bickslow, Evergreen, and even Erigor learned how to fly using their powers or wings. You could chose to fly with wings, which were a bit hard to use but a lot of fun since it feels real, or you can essentially jump in and float in the air like a sky diving tank. Macbeth and Erigor were also going to be helping with the Flying Cage since Freed was going to be more focused on monitoring the Runes around the Festival. Kagura was also helping out so if something went wrong with the machine, she could use her gravity magic to get everyone out safely.

"Great!" I said, looking at the next one. "Brandish?"

"I need to borrow Droy," she said. "My Beanstalk broke."

"Okay," Droy said, relaxing.

The main reason I was having this conversation with the entire guild was because some members *cough* Brandish *cough* could be intense or extreme when they wanted something. The second reason is because I wanted them to remember the types of activities we had available for when they weren't running their own things.

Brandish's game was called Miniature Adventure, where she would shrink you down to a much smaller size and a team of players (kids who wanted to participate) would essentially play out Jack and the Beanstalk as well as other plots including mini-people.

She sneezed.

Lucy sighed, passing Brandish her allergy medication, which Brandish had, again, forgotten, as it hadn't been that bad when she first came to Magnolia.

At least Droy had managed to find a plant they could use for the beanstalk that didn't trigger her allergies.

"Strausses!" I called. "You guys are going to be helping Brandish, right?"

They nodded. All three of them have managed to at least have one full takeover form, and were going to be miniaturized and put in Brandish's game, wherein Elfman and Mira would work as foes and Lisanna will be the helpful talking bird that gives the questers hints.

"Alright, so I think I've scheduled enough time in between your specific segments, but if you guys get too tired to keep up your Take Overs, please let me know. You guys are still easing into this, and there's no shame in taking your time to make sure you develop correctly."

All three nodded. They'd been warned about the dangers of Magical Overload and that they had to be careful pacing themselves.

Millianna was just going to be thrown into Brandish's games as…a helpful forest catgirl? We didn't go too deep into the plot.

I turned to Reedus. "Reedus?"

He nodded. "My painting booth is set up. Several people will be helping me with the face paint station and I will be making portraits of anyone who wants them. And the more famous of you who volunteered will have certain time slots to pose with customers." Most of the younger kids who didn't have set stations volunteered to help with the face painting.

"Gotcha," I said, checking my list. "Okay, Ice Family, your show is at 3 pm, and Lucy, your Celestial Spirit segment show is at about sunset, around six. Is that good?"

"We're all set," Ur said, smiling.

"It works for me," Lucy smiled.

"Nice," I said, turning to the next person. "Enno, how's the dancing lessons prepared?"

"Great!" she said. She and Macao were running the dance floor, during which she would teach some basic dance, and use Music Magic to enhance energy. They would also be running hula-hoop contests and hopscotch (though, since magic was involved, the hopscotch would be much more competitive, with levels going up to Extreme that we would usually use for parkour and practice fighting). Civilians would have to pass the easier rounds first if they wanted to try the Extreme Parkour route, though.

"Alright," I murmured, checking the itinerary again. It was mostly the same each day, with the exception of Friday night, which was when the concert would be.

"Alright, who's running Lazer Tag?" I asked, flipping through the pages.

"We are!" Natsu shouted enthusiastically. While the Dragon Slayers would be showing off some eating tricks (specifically the newer ones since most people had seen Laxus and Erik eat during battle before if I fed them), they would mostly be occupied with Lazer Tag, which would hopefully keep them in line for most of the day until the Stellars took breaks from Lucy's booth (which we were all helping with) to keep them in line as they enjoyed the festival. Simon would be helping supplement Rogue's magic since he couldn't cover the entire space for long amounts of time for the In-the-Dark Laser Tag segment. Erza had insisted she focus on the Heart Kruez booth instead, and the guild was sworn to secrecy about her dragon slayer powers until she was ready to reveal them. As far as the public was concerned, she was just a requip mage. And Gajeel, of course, would be at the Design Booth for the most part.

I turned to Irene. "And you're okay with the Maze?"

She nodded. "I like kids, so it's fine."

The Maze was a play place (like the ones that they'd have at those old McDonald's or Chucky Cheese) where younger kids could run around and have fun. Irene would also be taking turns watching some of the babies while their parents were doing other things.

"And the firing range?"

It was a small range, mostly just shooting small magic guns and popping balloons, but I figured it'd be good to get started for when Alzack and Bisca show up. I've been monitoring them but their cards have been pretty dormant so far.

Some of the older members of the guilds nodded. "All set up!"

"Great!" I said, turning to Rex and Jet. "And the racetrack?"

It was a mix between a racetrack and an obstacle course that people could play around in. Most of the ideas, that you had to run the race and pick up certain items, was mostly based off of Makarov's idea in the other timeline. I figured if we did it like this, we could probably avoid the Punishment Game in the future. This also wasn't mandatory, though.

"Good to go!" Rex said happily.

And that was about all the activities. Honestly, the hardest part was getting it all to fit in one section of Magnolia, but with some space folding magic from Cana, we managed to get it done.

"And finally, we have the battle portion," I finished, looking at the schedule. "Some of us are scheduled to fight (you know who you are) but if enough people from the audience wants to see a certain fight, they are allowed to request it, though this is only for people who have participated in the Games."

Some of the younger or newer kids gave a sigh of relief, while others (*cough* Natsu *cough*) looked disappointed.

"Those of you who are participating in the concert, either as a vocalist or a magi-technician, you know your roles. The concert is on Friday, and I'll put up the final list of the songs and the order they're in tomorrow."

A few more whoops, with everyone nodding. We had put a lot of effort into our concert - into all of this - and everyone knew it.

I turned to the last person; the person who had the biggest chance of ruining everything.

Gildarts sighed. "Yes, I'll wear the seal stone."

With his Crash magic sealed away, we wouldn't have to worry about him tripping and crashing into booths. Since he started living in Magnolia permanently and staying in a house with Cana, he'd gotten a lot (a lot) better at controlling his magic, but we weren't going to chance it, especially when he usually still destroyed at least one part of the guild (like a wall) a week.

"Alright," I called. "Get any last-minute things you need done, and then we'll take the day to relax and later get a good night's rest. The Festival is gonna be open for over five hours and we're gonna need all the energy we can get."

There were calls and whoops of agreement and joy, and everyone split up with their other groups to work on their booths.

I turned to Makarov, Porlyusica, Mavis, and Zeref, who were sitting on the side. Jude was near them, but was currently speaking with Warren about business tips.

"I'll admit, Elle," Makarov said. "You managed to find a lot of activities and ways to utilize our magic. I'm impressed."

I might've preened, just a bit. Makarov spent most of his time grumbling about the chaos I cause, so this was a nice change of events.

"I still think we should get a booth," Mavis pouted, kicking her feet back and forth from where she sat on the table.

"You know why we can't have a booth, dear," Zeref said, patting her arm.

While neither of them were recognizable figures by sight, we still didn't want them to interact with people too much. Mavis, if she was holding Zeref's arm, can become visible to others, so they were probably going to wander the Festival as a date (they'd do it invisibly but there will probably be too many people around) and then come back and stay with Freed and the runic ward for the city. But we didn't want them repeatedly interacting with other people in case they let something unexpected slip and the Council bursts a brain vessel trying to get us in trouble.

Freed had protested when I suggest he enjoy the Festival, but he insisted on being able to maintain the wards, though he promised he'd listen in to any announcements and the concert on Friday.

Bickslow had assured me later that he'd drag Freed off with the rest of the Thunder Legion and the Strauss Siblings to enjoy the Festival at some point.

Freed had also done something to his hearing while experimenting with Runes and still hasn't fully explained what it was (mostly because I don't think he knows) so it's probably better for him to stay focused on one thing and out of the way until it gets figured out so it's not a liability anymore. For that time, he was also banned on quests for experimenting with Magic poorly again.

"You guys can still enjoy the festival," I said to Zeref and Mavis.

"We will," Zeref assured me. "You've all worked very hard on this project, so I'm impressed."

Mavis nodded, smiling. "I'm so proud of Fairy Tail!"

I smiled at her. "Alright, back to prep, then."

Less than 24 hours to go.

Feel free to add suggestions of fights or songs, and who you maybe would like to see show up at the Festival.

Chapter Text

~On the last day of Chanukah, Narnia gave to me

another chapter to read!~

I made it!

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty Seven – The Festival

"Requip!" Erza shouted, changing her armor.

The group of people watching the Heart Kruez booth 'ooooooh'ed.

I sighed. "Sometimes I wish I had a magical girl transformation."

Laxus frowned. "We can get someone to help you with Transformation magic if you want."

I gave him a small smile and squeezed his hand. "You're so sweet, honey, but that wasn't what I was talking about."

The fair had only been open for about an hour, and it was already crowded. I spotted several other people I recognized from the Games, including other Guild Masters (Goldmine had already contacted Makarov previously to find out if Lucy would be doing anything with her spirits (he's really excited).)

Laxus was obviously confused on what I was talking about. "I'll explain at a later time," I said, leaning my head into his shoulder.

"Okay," he said, still somewhat dubious, as we turned back to the showing.

As the organizer of the show, I didn't have a specific booth, though I was helping out the other Stellar Siblings and Dragon Slayers. Besides, I'd be showing off my powers plenty during the concert. For now, Laxus was taking a break on the Laser Tag to walk around with me.

"Hey, have you ever actually fought against Erza with your sword?" he asked, as we watched Erza change her armor again and attack an empty armor set for demonstration. The other armor held up well against her sword.

"Oh, yeah, but I can't hold a handle to her," I admitted. "Since my sword is manifested with my own magic, I can manipulate it, which helps, but she always kicks my ass. She's just a natural swordswoman."

I remember seeing a post online, in my original universe, that pointed out that when Erza gets really serious in a fight, she drops all of her magic. You know, when she binds her chest and just uses the flame pants and a sword. Her skills in swordsmanship are entirely unrelated to her magical strength.

Even when I extended Venus Sword and would use it to swipe at her, or try to tickle or freeze her into submission, she always broke through it. Much like she kept fighting without her senses against Kyoka in Tartaros in the other timeline.

Me, her, Irene, and Zeref are still trying to figure out just how it works. For now, we think that her strange ability when faced with pain is related to the fact that Irene couldn't feel anything when she was a dragon and Erza was in the womb the whole time.

Erza had requipped out blocks of steel and other materials, and requipped to a new armor that she had been gifted for the fair. With one gauntleted hand clenched in a fist, she slammed it down on the steel and left a deep gouge mark in it.

"Ooooooh!" The audience applauded. They were allowed to walk up to the steel and touch it, trying to dent it to see how strong it was.

Nothing funnier than watching a gigantic monster of a man (a la' Armstrong from FMA) try to dent something with no results, after a small twelve-and-a-half-year-old had dented it with one punch.

Laxus and I laughed and carried on, wandering around the Festival. We passed Reedus's face painting booth, where Kinana, Levy, and Juvia were currently helping. Next was the Design Booth, which was actually more like a Design Tent, with a small Booth where Gajeel was currently reassuring a little girl who wanted her ears pierced (aww).

"Ah! Elle-dono! Laxus-dono!"

We turned to see Jura, who approached us, smiling.

"Hey, Jura! It's good to see you!" I said.

"It's my pleasure," he said. "This is a wonderful festival you've put together! It seems very interesting so far, though I'm planning on coming back later." He looked down to his hands which held a wrapped up piece of cloth. "I'm very excited for everything you have but I'm planning on stopping at your 'Restoration Booth'? I think it's called. I'm not sure if it will work, but I have a treasured family manuscript I'd like to see fixed, though I'm not sure I have all of the pages."

Ah. Ultear had put in a disclaimer that her magic might not work properly if there weren't enough pieces or too many things were missing in what might need to be restored, so I could tell why he's worried.

"I'm sure Ultear will try her best," I said, smiling at him. "I wish you luck, and hope you enjoy the fair!"

Laxus nodded at him with a small smile. "Have fun!"

"Thank you, my friends!" Jura said hopefully, before moving on towards Ultear's booth.

We continued to explore a fair, passing several groups of giggling children followed by hurried mothers, and some teenagers who were dragging each other around excitedly. I heard several 'Oh my words!' from an elder crowd who were watching Brandish shrink down her next group for their adventure, and some enthusiastic clapping from some older wizards as Ultear restored Jura's old family manuscript.

Laxus smiled at my smile and tucked me into his arm. "You did good," he said.

"I feel good," I admitted.

And then someone ran into me. Not hard; they were small, barely came up to my knees, but it was enough to direct my attention to see what had happened.

To my surprise, I recognized the small child that had bumped into me.

"Meredy?" I asked, astonished.

She looked up at me, equally shocked. "Elle Rigby knows my name? That's so cool!"

This was not the Meredy who hid in Crime Sorciere, or was brainwashed by Grimoire Heart. This was not even the Meredy that had lost her parents.

This was a child.

"How old are you right now?" I asked.

She gave me a big toothy smile, and held up her fingers. "I just turned seven!"

I nodded. "Right, and where are your parents?"

She frowned and turned her head around, her body eventually following it until she spun around completely. "I don't know, but they were right here…"

Before she could panic, I put a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, it's okay. How about you describe them to us, so we can help you find them?"

According to her, her mom had pink hair (like her) and her dad had black hair.

"Right," I said, nodding and exchanging a look with Laxus. "Now, are you afraid of heights?"

She shook her head.

"Then in order to look for them, I'm going to use my magic to lift you high in the sky," I told her. "That way we should be able to find them."

Magic really is useful. If we didn't have it, I'd probably have Laxus put me on his shoulders and put Meredy on mine. He could do it. Maybe.

But since I do have magic, I can just make a small mini-tornado to lift Meredy up instead.

She shrieked with glee as she rose into the air, hovering on the wind I gave her, and I called up to her to remind her. "Now that you're up there, you're looking for your parents, remember!"

"Oh yeah!" she said. Peeking over the edges, she scanned the crowd until she pointed. "There!"

The helpful thing about flinging a child into the air is that the parents are also very likely to see the child, apparently, because before we could even move in that direction, a couple which fit Meredy's description ran up. "Meredy!" they shouted, and I lowered the tornado until she fell into their embrace.

"Thank you!" they said enthusiastically, and I hadn't realized how big of a scene we made until we heard a lot of thunderous clapping, and I realized everyone was staring at us.

Blushing furiously, I scratched the back of my head. "It was no trouble, honestly. We're happy to help."

Laxus gave me a little kiss on the forehead. "Like I did anything to really help. It was all you."

I was going to turn into a tomato, I swear.

"I'm just glad you're safe now," I told Meredy. "And I hope you're having fun!"

"The best!" she said excitedly, still huddled between her parents. "One day, I'm going to have magic and join Fairy Tail, too!"

I smiled at her. "Then we'll have a spot open waiting for you," I said. "Why don't you stop by next week after the festival is over and we'll try to find your magic, okay?"

And hopefully Zeref will help me get her Maguility Sense kickstarted. Or maybe he could just demand to Master Hades to give him the book they used in the last timeline or something, I dunno.

The crowd dispersed and we waved off Meredy and her parents, who planned to come back the weekend after this one.

Laxus and I continued to wander and talk to the others we recognized and check in on how each booth was doing.

Eventually, we finished our rounds, ate some food from one of the restaurants that Jude cut a deal with for the festival, and returned to the Lazer Tag booth, where Erik was going to take his own break and meet up with Kinana.

Simon was also taking his own break, with a time written for when COMPLETE DARKNESS Lazer Tag would resume, and meeting up with Ultear, who was also going to be recharging her power for an hour or so. If someone came to her booth and she wasn't there, there was an area Runed-Off for them to place their damaged items and for them to pull a ticket so they could enjoy the fair until Ultear returned.

The next few days went past very quickly, and very busy. The Ice Family and Lucy and her spirits did multiple performances each, all to wowed crowds and excited children. Some of the ice structures and puppets that Ur and Silver pulled out were really incredible, and Lucy used her spirits magic to tell a completely engrossing tale of the origin of Celestial Spirits, Stellar Magic, and the Bloodlines.

The different versions of the race were really popular, though the Parkour Version was undoubtedly the most widely visited. Most people didn't finish it, or even get very far, but they had a lot of fun trying, and there were sessions when some members of our guild would run it so others could see it run in full. Several wizards from other guilds managed to finish it and liked it a lot.

Activities like Brandish's Miniature Adventure Game and the Raijinshu's flying booth was also very popular, with many people coming back to them more than once to try different stories or new techniques.

We underestimated the amount of merchandise we would also sell, and had to break out some of our provisions for the rest of the year on Thursday. Luckily it would be at least a week before we opened our merchandise booth again after everything, so it would give us time to make more.

Cana's fortune telling was also immensely popular, and she decided she'd probably pick a few hours once a week to read fortunes if people wanted them, even after the Festival was over.

On Friday I was starting to get very nervous. It didn't hit me until then, but I had, for some forsaken reason, agreed to sing in front of strangers. What was I thinking?

But I persevered throughout the day when the first strange thing happened.

Elle, you have a message, Warren sent to me telepathically.

It always jolts me a bit, but I'm getting better at receiving messages and Thought Projections. Luckily, I wasn't holding something this time so nothing ended up broken.

What is it? I sent back.

Freed says there's something wrong with the wards.

I frowned. Freed had, unfortunately, spent most of his time monitoring the ward scheme for all of his runes around the Festival. He seemed to think that Dark Guilds might want to attack us during this time.

Most of us thought they wouldn't dare, since there's so many mages here. Not just Fairy Tail, but mages and guild masters from other guilds, too.

I wasn't so sure. Ivan had proved his stupidity to me over and over when he had held me captive, so I wasn't about to dismiss Freed's…paranoia? Suspicion? I'm not sure what to call it, but his hearing and eyesight have been…off since he created Dark Ecriture. I had to wonder if it was maybe something else altogether.

Freed had, luckily, relented a bit and actually enjoyed the Festival himself a few times, when Zeref and Jellal (together, since Freed is a worrywart) stood watch over the wards for him. But he'd mostly been holed up with the wards in a portion of the basement one level above the Lumen Histoire.

"Freed!" I called as I entered the basement. "What's wrong?"

"Ella-sama!" he cried, immediately relaxing. "The outermost runes detected several groups of people wearing guild marks of dark guilds. If they cross the next layer of runes, they'll be transported to the Holding Cells of Magnolia's Rune Knight Division, but with the amount of people the runes recognized, I don't think there are enough cells to hold them."

I paused. "Okay, then start doubling cells. Can you write in a rune sequence where if all the cells are full, it'll add another person to a cell with only one?"

He nodded. "Easily."

The more I spend time learning about Rune Magic, the more it seems like programming, like you're setting up computer sequences. Unfortunately, I never really looked into that stuff in my past life, so I don't really know how similar they are. But it's one reason why I suggested Freed learn Archive Magic next (what Hibiki from Blue Pegasus uses). It just seems like it might be really useful since it's basically a giant computer.

"So, just keep adding them to the cells once they're occupied by one?" he asked. "What if all cell has double occupants, but there are still more?"

"Then triple them," I said, shrugging. "It's the Rune Knights job, this is for them to deal with."

Freed shrugged and kept writing. The runes, once activated, would teleport the dark mages into the holding cells and also remove anything from them that could store magic or be used as weapon. The cells are also magic dampening, so they shouldn't be able to escape from there. I doubt I'd be able to, since the cells also make accessing Requip Space impossible, so I couldn't even pull out a drill or anything to escape if I somehow got ahold of one.

"I'll go alert the Rune Knights," I said, giving Freed a quick hug. "You did great, Freed! We'll visit them and try to figure out their plan later, but for now…"

I checked the time. Around an hour to the concert. I had to check that everything was set up, that people were in places, and that everyone was dressed and ready.

"It's almost showtime."