A/N: I do not own Fairy Tail, the same goes for the rest of the chapters.

The Midnight's Delight was Malba City's most well-known bar. It was known for many things, whether it be the superior entertainment that was provided every night, the or the fact that it was literally a few blocks away from the town's local guild: Infinite Bloom.

Infinite Bloom was a legitimate legal guild that was recognized by the newly formed Magic Council, and that alone was impressive enough to display its power. The Magic Council had formed only three years prior to the present day when Litmus R. Fiore, the current king of Fiore, came to the throne. The Council had barely enough time to manage and organize themselves as they were, and only the best and most powerful guilds were important enough for the Council to pass a motion to make a guild legal.

Thus, most of the guilds that were littered around Fiore weren't legal, and even those that were didn't abide by the newly formed laws the Council had passed. Guild wars were frequent: shows of power and strength in which one side would be completely crushed while the other assumed the position of the territory's guild.

Malba City happened to house Infinite Bloom, and the guild's fame usually warded off any Dark or Unofficial Guilds looking to establish a base in the city, which was near the Mikage Forest. Many tourists flocked to the town just for the opportunity to see mages, as many other towns around Fiore didn't have any mages at all. A prime example was Hargeon Town, which was renown for its sea trade. Many of the visitors at the bar hailed specifically from the sea port.

Rae was serving drinks to her bar's patrons across the stone tabletop, her emerald green hair tied back into a practical ponytail, before out of the corner of her eye reflected in an antique mirror she saw a young man enter the bar and sit down on one of the brass stools. Setting down a maroon colored cocktail quickly, the liquid sloshing back and forth from the sudden motion, she paced herself quickly as she moved to serve him.

The man noticed her, and a bright grin came over his face as he leaned forward, his black hair slightly covering his face as he swept it back. "Yo, how're you doing?"

"Chase," Rae acknowledged as her golden eyes darted back and forth, wondering if he was trying to stalk Alucard again (for some reason the blunt man was always a victim of Chase's many pranks), but she couldn't see the raven-haired man anywhere.

The only mages that she could see in the bar at the moment was Iris, a long-time member of the guild who served as a waitress sometimes; Mars, a modest person who often worked at the bar; and Jakkura, a mysterious mage who acted quite sadistic and loved booze (he was a frequent patron at the bar).

"What are you doing here?" Rae asked, sucking in a deep breath as she ran through her mind the possible list of options of why the trickster might have come to her bar. If he wasn't stalking Alucard or planning a prank in the guild hall, the boy was usually seen tinkering with things, but a bar was hardly the right place to do those sort of things.

Usually whenever Chase came to the bar he'd come for the singular purpose to annoy one of his guildmates (and Rae sincerely hoped that she wasn't his lucky target for the day). She knew him well enough thanks to being one of the unfortunate few to be on Chase's team, and Rae hoped Chase knew well enough that if there was one thing that she actually took seriously it was her business.

Chase pouted, complaining, "Can't a guildmate come visit another guildmate without being suspected of anything?"

"If it was anyone but you I'd be inclined to believe so." Rae shrugged, making sure that her flirty facade didn't fade as she kept on her 'business smile' on her face as she felt some of the customers staring at them.

"How cruel," Chase put a hand against his chest as if mortally wounded.

His teammate promptly ignored him. Suddenly, a smile curled up on Rae's face as the green haired girl turned around, sensing another presence behind her. "Ames!" She acknowledged more happily. "How are you?" Faintly behind her she could hear a certain joker's protest at being ignored, and at that the girl smiled even further at Ames.

"Good." The shy boy fiddled with his fingers as the healer shuffled with his feet. Finally, he looked up, a small gentle smile coming over his face as he looked at his friend. "How about you?"

"Same as usual," Rae replied, her eyes softening at her kinder friend. "Manipulating, chilling, bossing around Mars."

Faintly behind her, Rae could hear Mars's protest at the statement. He'd probably sulk in the corner later and play with his flute, so she wasn't too worried. It brought in the customers.

"Chase, shouldn't you be getting ready for tomorrow?" Rae referred to their upcoming mission, rolling her weary shoulders as she sighed. If she could get away from work right now, the golden-eyed woman would, but that was impossible with the rush of business they got just around the evening.

"Nah, I'm good. Got plenty of sleep yesterday thanks to someone," Chase said, putting emphasis on the last word as he remembered Alucard literally knocking him out when Chase had tried to pull a prank on him the other day. The cheeky grin on Chase's face showed that he wasn't really mad about it, although he rolled his eyes. "The bar's more crowded than usual," Chase observed, and his guildmate nodded.

"It is. Luckily I got Iris to help out as a bar-waitress for a little." Rae gestured towards Iris, who was at the moment balancing a tray of mugs filled with amber ale, her bright blue eyes darting around as she nimbly dodged bumping into a table.

"Slave-driver." Chase chortled as the green haired girl whacked him on the head good naturedly as she rolled her eyes, sighing mockingly as if to silently ask 'what are we going to do with this guy?'. "You think our team will go on a mission anytime soon?" He addressed this to Ames, who had been staying silent for the majority of the time.

"Possibly," Ames answered, his emerald green eyes looking up thoughtfully until his attention was caught by Iris, who had accidentally dropped one of the mugs. He hurried over to the pink haired girl, asking hurriedly, "Are you alright?"

"Ah? Yeah." Iris affirmed, her blue eyes moving to glare at the patron who had been bullying and teasing one of the other customers. She had gotten a little angry and in her haste to tell the man to knock it off, she accidentally dropped one of the mugs.

Iris picked up the dropped mug which had luckily been made out of wood (Rae had bought them specifically because she knew situations like this would come up) carefully, placed it back on the tray, and took out a rag and began to wipe the wet floor, Ames helping her while biting his lip.

"Are you sure you're fine, Iris?"

The girl nodded, a smile playing at her lips. Ames was always very caring about his comrades, up to the point where some of their other members were worried about letting him on missions for the fear that he might put others before himself too much. She usually had a good intuition to tell if she could trust people or not, and Ames definitely was someone she could trust.

Those worries about Ames had been washed away when they found out that Chase and Rae were on his team. Despite being some of the most shallow people in the guild, everyone knew that both could be trusted when it came down to it.

Chase, for example, despite being in the guild for only two years, was an A-Class mage who would often be seen with a wrench or something in hand. Sure, he was a jokester, but they trusted him. Rae had been in the guild for a long time: 7 years, and only Marcus and Kei out of their current generation had been there longer, and did whatever she could to help out the guild.

"I'm fine, thanks." Iris bobbed her head, her pink hair falling on her shoulders as she pulled at the collar of the maroon colored button up shirt Rae had forced her to wear while serving. She preferred her white and gold kimono better, along with the rest of her usual outfit. Iris was already beginning to feel chilly from the lack of her red scarf usually wound around her neck.

"Okay then. If you need any help, I'm sure Rae can allow me to work at the bar too," Ames offered as he ran a hurried hand through his golden hair.

"Seriously, it's okay." Iris waved her hand dismissively, grinning a little. "Besides, did you see the look on that guy's face when I threw that mug at him? That was so fun!"

"Iris…" Ames warned, inwardly sighing at his companion. Honestly, Iris was a very kind person: she always saw the best in everyone and stuck up for him when he was too shy and felt discouraged, but for some reason bullies ticked her off immensely and at those times the pink haired girl would get angry and Ames would need to calm her down. He supposed that kindness was why he was friends with her, but at these times he was somewhat exasperated with his outgoing friend.

"I know, I know. I'll apologize later." Iris huffed, crossing her arms.

Meanwhile, Chase and Rae were sitting back at the counter idly, watching the show as a rare sign of intelligence flashed through both of their eyes. They were both similar in a way, Chase supposed. Although he usually just joked around, his teammate hid her prowess by acting flirty instead.

They understood each other. Perhaps that was why he was put on a team with her, along with Ames and Alucard (a calm and somewhat scary person in Chase's opinion). They all suited each other, with Alucard and Chase's short-ranged magic and Ames and Rae's long-ranged magic. Not only that, but their personalities balanced the team out.

As soon as Chase thought that, Rae was called on by one of the customers who was sitting on one of the slick black leather couches to get another cup of beer, and she plastered on a bright fake smile on her face as she bowed, giggling girlishly as she called back to the man. "Coming right up, sir!"

After serving him and getting ready a few other cocktails for the waiters to serve, Rae slid back onto the seat next to him, humming a tune under her breath.

"What song is that?" Chase couldn't help but ask.

"A song Mars composed," Rae answered. "He played it for me the other day after some...convincing." She had paused before uttering the last word, as if she was searching for some other word to better replace what she was thinking of.

"I see." Mars, along with Kei, a fellow mage musician, often played at the bar for their patrons' entertainment thanks to Iris and Rae's insistence to hear their music. It wasn't rare for the other mages of Infinite Bloom to stop by when they heard that their fellow guildmates were performing, and thus they had a wide variety of customers enter the bar on those days.

"Aren't you going to watch your customers?" Chase asked bemusedly as he scratched his head, leaning back nonchalantly in his seat.

"Eh, I can spare some time to talk. I'm the boss. Being a boss you need to work harder, but there are some times when you can slack off too," Rae replied, her amber eyes glinting as she cupped her chin with her hands as she watched Iris bow to their customer somewhat reluctantly while Ames watched over her. To her left she could see Mars idly flirting with one of the customers, who handed him a tip before leaving.

Mars was a strange one, but then again they all were. He was also on Rae, Chase, and Ames's team, along with one other person. He was extremely loyal to his friends, but had also picked up some of their bad habits. Just like Rae and Chase, the man would often use his good looks to his advantage, and even though Ames would scold him about it his other two mischievous teammates would just give him an approving pat on the back.

"Such a slave driver," Chase repeated his earlier statement, a Cheshire's grin tugging at his face as he stood up, making his way to Jakkura while Rae returned to her job, not before she tossed a puzzle toy at her teammate to which the black haired man caught easily.

"Keep it," she called over her shoulder, waving nonchalantly as she grabbed several liquids and mixed them in a transparent glass (they had run out of wooden ones). "I know you'll appreciate the puzzle more than me."

"Thanks!" Chase called back, shoving the puzzle into his white pocket as he focused on taking slow, easygoing strides to Jakkura. As he closed in for the kill, he called out to his guildmate, knowing that the gloomy man would not be the easiest to cheer up. But Chase knew that he would at least try his best to help his guildmate open up.

"Yo, Jakkura!" Chase said cheerfully to his guildmate as the rather scary man looked up from his barrel of booze to him and scowled as he recognized Chase's grinning face.

"...it's you."

"Woah, a non-monosyllabic answer! Is the world coming to an end?" Chase asked dramatically as he looked up at the ceiling woefully, tears springing to his eyes. He was bent down on one knee, almost as if he would propose to Jakkura (that thought made him shudder, so Chase pushed it away). An aura of sparkles and flowers surrounded him before the immatureness was blown away by a single word.

"Idiot." Jakkura deadpanned before gulping down some more booze, his one visible eye narrowing at the man as he fiddled with some explosives he had gotten from a store earlier.

"If you want I can try making some machine that can help you with that," Chase offered, his brown eye and red eye both dimming slightly at Jakkura's dismissal of the idea.

"No."

"Aw…" Chase looked thoughtful for a moment before brightening at the thought of a question. He had asked Jakkura several times but never had the man answered the same thing. "Why do you look so...um...strange?"

"...I was experimented by a witch as a child, obviously." Jakkura deadpanned as Chase beamed at the slightly longer answer. He always tried to cheer people up, so he was glad that it was (sort of?) working.

"Cool!"

"Can you leave?" Jakkura asked somewhat rudely, gesturing towards the entrance of the bar as Chase sighed, knowing when to push his luck and where his boundaries were as he nodded in assent and walked off dejectedly.

Meanwhile, the three workers had finally caught a break, and they sat down alongside Ames as they watched Chase get rejected without any emotion flickering through their faces.

"...it's a lost cause," Mars whispered.

Iris shook her head, eyes fierce. "I'm sure Chase can do it! Besides, I'm sure Jakkura's actually a kind person!"

Everyone else, even Ames, stared at her skeptically.

"...I just have a small feeling that we can at least count on him to watch our backs when it comes to it?" Iris added on hesitantly, fiddling with her pink hair nervously as she awaited her friends' responses.

There was a long silence for a moment before Ames, bless his kind soul, spoke up somewhat warily, his emerald green eyes filled with warmth and acceptance. "...okay, Iris. You seem to know best about these kinds of things."

"We trust you!" Mars added in as he gave her a smile.

"Thanks," Iris said, grinning warmly as Rae gave a nod of assent, everyone just basking in the moment of silent camaraderie.

The spell was finally broken by Chase, who came back to the group wincing and nursing his head where a lump was starting to form. Apparently Jakkura had thrown his mug of beer at Chase when the boy had tried returning to his guildmate again. "Yo, guys! What are you doing?"

"Why does it seem like everyone in our guild is weird?" Mars wondered as he saw Rae roll her golden eyes and cross her arms around her chest, muttering sardonically,

"I wonder."

Infinite Bloom, being a guild for 15 years and a legal guild for 10, was surprisingly well-organized despite the fact that they were right in the beginning of the era that historians were beginning to dub the Magical Revolution.

There were several teams formed by the guild master himself, Norbert L. Ketner for each generation. The teams were usually formed when about 10 to 15 mages aging around 16 to 22 had finally been gathered, and teams usually formed to complement each other.

These teams would go on to spend the rest of their career as a mage together. Of course, there were exceptions. Already just a few months after the formation of the three teams of their generation, a new mage named Alucard Date had joined Team Petal, or Team 1. He was a strange person, always with a blank face that no one could really tell what he was thinking.

Despite that, his team had welcomed him. Rae, Chase, Ames, and Mars had literally thrown a party for the stoic man at Chase's insistence, and although everyone was sure Chase meant well, when the door to the party opened and a bucket of pink paint had fallen right on the surprise guest, Alucard was understandably not a happy man.

Chase had apologized for pranking him (although he didn't say anything about not doing it again), but ever since then he had been doing whatever he could to break the man's pokerface.

That would not work. The only person who really could be considered Alucard's...friend was probably Ames, being the kind person he was. Also, perhaps Michael might have wormed his way through Alucard's emotional barrier. Michael was one of Ames's closest friends who shared a similar personality with an additional quirk that Chase lovingly dubbed 'hero mode'.

At the present moment, Mars was trying not to laugh as he watched Chase position his fake blood on the ground as every now and then the black haired mage looked up towards the doors of the guild to make sure that Alucard hadn't arrived yet.

It was early in the morning, and their team was scheduled to meet to complete a mission that had been issued by some villagers about a monster in a forest. It almost felt like deja vu because Mars himself had been found that way two years ago. He had been living in a cave practicing his magic when in barged a team of mages.

At the time, Master Norbert didn't create the teams yet, so usually the mages paired up with whoever they wanted to. The people who had retrieved him were Rae, Kei, and Michael. They were the people who had stayed longest in the guild, and decided to make a small trio and try things out.

When they had barged into the cave and saw Mars playing a flute in the corner instead of the expected monster, their mouths had dropped. He would never forget the looks on their faces. Of course, Kei-being the easygoing person he was-was the first to recover and as a fellow musician who appreciated his music simply clamped his hand on Mars's shoulder and said solemnly, "We're keeping him."

Kei was never one to mince with his words, Mars thought idly about his fellow musician. Kei played the guitar, and was an Illusion Mage. At the moment he was gone on a mission issued by the Master along with another guild member.

They had brought Mars back to the guild and ever since then, Mars honestly felt like he was happy with where he was. He had new friends, and a new family. They never really pried about his past (it seemed like almost all of them had some dark secrets they preferred not to tell) and only did what would make him comfortable.

"Chase," Mars said somewhat apprehensively, memories of ashes and fire flashing through his mind as he asked, "Are you sure this is going to be...okay?"
"Of course." Chase snickered as he added his last finishing touches to the prank as he sat down at one of the guild's tables idly, crossing his arms and waiting for his teammate to enter. The guildhall was empty today. Most of the adult mage teams had headed out together on one great mission to one of the nearby countries and wouldn't be back for the next month or so.

Mars presumed that the other teams were sleeping, considering that Rae had insisted on waking up early to begin the mission. Most likely, the flirty girl was on her way to the nearby apartments where most of the mages at Infinite Bloom stayed to wake up Alucard. Ames hadn't arrived yet, but Mars was sure the boy was either buying sweets for the trip or reading a book in his home.

"Yo! We're here!" Rae called out cheerfully, winking at Mars and Chase as Ames and Alucard trailed behind her, both surprisingly (well, more like unsurprisingly in Ames's case) holding books although Alucard quickly stashed his away in a suitcase he probably packed for the mission. Mars suddenly felt the urge to grab his own book from out of his satchel but shoved that desire back as he sat silently, watching the scene play on.

The green haired woman paused as she saw the fake blood on the ground, her smile seemingly frozen on her face before she turned to Alucard, whose face was deadly pale as if he had seen something ghastly. She pursed her lips, twitching slightly as if she wasn't sure to flick Chase in the forehead for playing such a prank or giggle along with it.

"...Chase, did you do this?" Ames questioned, looking less taken aback by his comrades as he turned to the prankster of the team.

"Ahahaha...how'd you guess?" Chase rubbed the back of his head sheepishly as he shrank back at his teammates' glares.

"...you shouldn't do that," Alucard stated in a monotonous tone as he lingered slightly away from the group, standing back a few steps as his eyes flickered to Mars before focusing on Chase again.

"Okay, okay, sorry!" Chase waved his hands around innocently as if to deny the accusation. "I won't do it again. Happy?"

"You're an idiot." Rae pinched her nose as she rolled her eyes.

"Psh, I know you love me." Chase dismissed as the rest of his teammates stared at him apathetically. Mars didn't know what they'd do without Chase lighting up the atmosphere. Ames was sometimes too shy to speak up, Rae usually dropped her flirty/happy demeanor around them and instead assumed the voice of reason, Alucard was already as antisocial as one could get, and Mars simply sometimes felt like just playing his flute in the corner.

"So," Mars said with a playful grin as he nudged Chase, trying to cheer everyone up. "What are we going to do now?"

"We've been hired to hunt down a Dark Guild's location. They've been on the run for a while now and have started several guild wars with other guilds, killing a lot of innocent citizens who were just caught up in the battles." Ames answered, his eyes saddening at the thought of so many casualties.

They usually left it up to him to pick the missions because they knew the rest of them would pick extremely hard missions outside of their level for either the purpose of training or personal reasons.

Both Alucard and Mars looked towards the blonde haired boy with a small glint of interest as Rae nodded resolutely. "Okay then, sounds simple enough."

"We are just going to track them down, though," Ames warned, ignoring several protests about it being boring or too easy. "I know you guys are all for jumping into battle headfirst but we need to think things out. This is an entire dark guild that has been defeating countless guilds. Tracking them down will be hard enough, for they've moved all around Fiore's Eastern side."

"Roger that!" Chase saluted.

A/N: Hello everyone! Just a quick note to thank everyone for submitting their OCs, it was really hard to pick the cast out of them but I hope that this will suffice. This is a sort of introductory chapter in which I tried to include as many OCs as possible at the same time setting a background on the time period. I really wanted to get this out as quick as possible to see if I'm getting the OCs right...

I suppose it's a little overwhelming, so I apologize for that, but I'm working right now on making each OC memorable. It's pretty funny because a lot of the OCs are actually quite similar yet have slight differences I'm trying to emphasize. As you can probably tell this chapter was sort of focused on Chase (and Team 1), and I'm planning on focusing chapters around different characters each time.

If you feel like your OC is OOC (LOL that sounds strange), don't hesitate to tell me~ I want all the critiques possible so I can improve. And if you like any other OCs, don't hesitate to say that. It encourages me to know I'm making characters likable.

Thanks for reading!