STA: This story operates on the assumption that Sting and Rogue leave Sabertooth after the death of Lector and near death of the guild master, and end up in Fairy Tail. The reason why is probably that Rogue remembered Natsu's scolding, but honestly it doesn't matter. They left ST because Lector died and now they're in FT. Anything contradicting that in the manga will be ignored for the purposes of the plot.

-x-

The only thing more beautiful than Mirajane herself was her voice. At least, that's what Lucy said. I don't get that. A person's appearance and voice are nothing alike. How could you even compare them that way? Besides, what mattered was that Mira was nice and could kick the ass of anyone who thought she wasn't pretty. Lucy just liked to say weird stuff. It must be a writer thing.

I don't usually remember when Lucy says weird stuff. I guess I must have thought of it because Mira was singing the night Sting and Rogue joined. Sting was looking up at her with that weird look Gray gives girls sometimes, like he wants to tell them they're pretty but he doesn't want to have to take them out on a date afterward. Rogue was playing a card game with his cat. Frosch was winning too. I hope Rogue let her.

Hm… maybe this isn't when everything started, but if I think about it I'm sure it was when we were celebrating the new guild members. Not all the chaos with demons running loose snatching up bodies and the spell that thought for itself. That didn't start for a few weeks, but it really feels like something Sting did that night was the start of the whole event. Okay, maybe I know what he did. I'm not into this story telling junk like Lucy is, but when I asked her she said you need to start off sounding cryptic and stuff.

Mirajane finished her song, her eighth song, and turned down her millionth encore.

"Sorry," she told everyone. "I'm really sorry. My throat's beginning to get sore. I couldn't manage another song tonight. Maybe someone else would like to sing?"

I wish she hadn't asked that. Gajeel was on the stage before she finished talking. He didn't even wait for her to say 'sing' before grabbing the microphone from her hands.

"This is a song I wrote. I think the new members might like to hear it." The got Rogue's attention. Frosch started laying out the cards in what I'm pretty sure is supposed to be the pattern for solitaire while her partner watched, full attention on Gajeel as he sang "Shoby doo bop" and other… ugh. I never really got why people praised Mira's singing so much. I never listened to singing. It's boring. But watching Rogue devote his focus completely to Gajeel I felt like I needed to listen too.

Even Lucy can probably sing better than Gajeel does. I'd bet my food money for a month that she can write better songs too.

I think Gajeel's song is called Best Friend, though I can't tell why. The words don't make any sense. They make even less sense when you try to match them to the title. I still hoped it would maybe make Rogue and Sting act less like jerks if they heard something about friends.

After Gajeel finished his song he wanted to go again, but everyone but Rogue objected. I objected the loudest, and since everyone was really loud letting him know not to keep singing that meant I did the best job of telling him to stop.

Mira still wouldn't sing, so she started picking random members from the crowd to come up and perform. Lucy went up with Levy. The both sounded better than Gajeel.

I think Rogue went back to playing cards after that. I didn't pay much attention to him. Gray and I were too busy arguing over whether or not you're supposed to eat fries with ketchup or vinegar (I know one is more common everywhere outside of Fiore but we all know which tastes better) when Sting and Rogue started arguing too.

Whatever Rogue said first I didn't catch it, though I think it was something about how Sting was actually listening to everyone's songs. Rogue hadn't spoken all evening, and his voice in our guild hall still sounded strange. I noticed right away.

"Well, some of them sound good," Sting responded. "That blonde girl earlier wasn't half bad. Erza might have been decent too, if she'd actually managed to sing."

Oh. I guess Erza got stage fright again.

"I liked Gajeel's song."

Sting laughed. "Only because you've never listened to anything else. I bet if anyone who could sing had sung that you'd have hated it."

"Gajeel could sing, and it was a nice song," Rogue argued. I wasn't the only one who noticed him speaking. Half the guild had gone quite, or at least lowered their volume, to try and get a better idea of what their new guild mate was like.

"Gajeel can't sing."

"Well why don't you go up and do better?" Gajeel demanded.

Sting was the one being challenged, but Rogue was the one to look away. I guess he didn't realize his man crush was listening in.

"Because I don't need to prove it. No one could sound worse that you."

The guild disagreed. Loudly. I wasn't the loudest that time but it would be funny if Sting couldn't sing either.

There was no avoiding it. Not when Mira was dragging him onto the stage. Sting looked out at the crowd with the same horrified look Erza had on her face when she'd been on stage, but when he drew in his breath he didn't pass out.

He started to sing.

"I have long-one final dance"

I blinked, trying to make sense of the nonsense string of words, and realized the song was over. I'd only caught the very start and end, and the rest was a blur of sounds that made me lose myself in his voice and want to follow that spikey haired idiot to the ends of the earth.

And that is how the incident started. With Sting and his dumb brainwashing singing trick. Or… the stuff that came with the singing trick… or the stuff that the singing trick came with. Lucy's better with words.

The mess began because of Sting's weirdness, and that song that was so enchanting I couldn't even remember if his singing voice was good or not was the first sign that there was something up with him.

-x-

STA: Writing from Natsu's POV… is hard. Anyway, this story is not all in Natsu's POV, and while he's one of the more important character's it's not about Natsu either. I'm practicing my character juggling so Lucy is also going to get a handful of chapters. Sting will get the most, because he's maybe the closest the story will come to a main character. Rogue will get a few because he's one of the most important to the plot. Jellal gets a couple. A character I can't name who I swear isn't an OC will get a fair amount. Planning is as of yet only mostly done but Zeref, Juvia, and probably Freed will all get a chapter…

Holy shit, did I really plan to do something from Freed's POV? Oh God that's going to suck.

Well… I have a ten chapter buffer and no actual update schedule. I'm sure I'll get it done without too huge a wait for new chapters.

Next chapter: Sting Needs Water to Survive