Sorry it's been a while. I just love leaving you guys on cliffies don't I? To be honest, I'd been wrecking my brain working out how I will finish this arc off in just two chapters. Fortunately I think I've worked out how now.

By the way, whadyall think of my new story cover? I'd waste about half my day getting that photo right, then the rest of the day writing this chapter. The original one has all of Team Natsu in it, but because of the guidelines on images here it only fits Erza, Lucy and Happy. If you wanna see the full photo, check out my Deviant Art profile (the link should be on my Fanfiction profile).

Now with that rant out the way, let's get on with the show. This is the second last chapter of the Trials and Tribulations of Tenrou Island (tTnToTi Arc)...Enjoy!


Sorry, it's been a while but fear not...I am still alive.

I've just found out that I am my own father that is all...

~My Fairy~

tTnToTi Arc Part XXVI: "...Change the past..."

Gazing at my mother of a by-gone time; being before my father of another universe. Staring directly at the past and a new future.

My claws...Why do they throb so painfully now?

"It's hilarious isn't it?" my 'father' breathes on my neck. "All this time you had searched for your parents, only to discover that you came about through your own persona's efforts." His slap on the back of my neck couldn't be more painful than ever. I already knew I was a bit of a joke...but I had always thought that such a thing wouldn't matter...because I knew that there would always be two people in this brutal world that would take me seriously; respect me; love me...

Now one of them has made a complete forgery of my existence...

"Well, take a bit of time to chew this over. I'm gonna make some 'amends' to this current timeline."

I stop him with one word. "How...?"

"Hah?" He sounds as vulgar as his past self has suggested. "Whadd'ya mean? I came back in time and rooted your mother, how else would I have done it?"

"That's not what I mean..." I swallow my throat and bunch my fists. "I mean how could my real father treat me like this!?" The floodgates are under high pressure just waiting to let all the waterworks gush out, but I bite my lower lip and reinforce the gates, trying not too appear any weaker in front of the sower of Benny-boy seeds.

"Oh here we go, 'bring out all the fractured childhood crap on daddy' time." The more this man talks the more I really wish he wasn't my real father. Just how in the hell can my Edolas self manage even physically perform such a deed? Wouldn't he have to have been born at the same time as I was?

He begins to walk down the hill, the same way his past self went. "Hey, where are you going?"

"I already told you...To make some 'amends' to this current timeline."

He couldn't possibly intend to kill someone from this time to change events in the future? I hear Mystogan calling back. "#Master, you've taken too long! The plan has now changed, you have to get out of there immediately!#"

"What?" I shout back at my mind. "But my fa- I mean Banzai said he's going to do something to change the current timeline."

"#No, you see his true ability isn't energy absorption or space-time manipulation at all! I confirmed this after he fled into that portal and when you closed the portal.#"

"Then what's this bastard's ability then? I need to find a way to stop him before he screws up the space-time continuum."

"Okay Master you have to listen to my instructions carefully...Now extend your claws forward and focus as though you're opening several tiny keyholes with them.#"

I try to do the little keyhole trick but find myself just looking like a plain idiot (thankfully out of these people's sights it seems). "They're not doing anything."

"#Focus on a distant memory this time. Something you may only vaguely recall as a child, perhaps your oldest memory in existence. Imagine yourself opening the key to that moment in the past#"

I dunno about this but I really am getting fed up with running through all these old memories. They've all been repressed for a reason you know.

I think about the scene I'm leaving behind. Did I really grow up with Lucy Heartfillia as my sister? But why don't I remember any of these times with her? And who was that third child in the picture?

Why is everything in my past such a cloudy blur to me? I have to find the truth! Screw saving Magnolia or Fairy Tail or whatever the hell I was meant to be doing. This may be my only chance!

Tiny ripples in the air appear around the tips of my fingernails. My claws sink into the air as I move into it.

Banzai...Father...I will find out who you really are!

/?/?/?/

Searching, scrounging, peering, digging and clawing my way through vague shapes and images. I swim through this electric aether as I try to pinpoint a particular moment deep within my own neurons.

My claws are throbbing ever more intensely. Is this the limit of their power – whatever the hell that may be?

The pressure's building up so much on my fingernails, they just want to break into pieces. The pressure pushes on them at all ends as I travel further down the stream of memories.

Just before it feels like they're about to implode, the stream reaches a terminal point; nothing but that swirling darkness to be seen beyond the edge.

I reach the edge...Nothing but swirling darkness below either.

Off we go...

/?/?/?/

The two of us are now in a large brightly lit cave. Banzai scratches his head in surprised confusion. "The fuck? How'd I get here."

"I brought you here." I explain firmly. "It looks like you can't execute your plans here now...Banzai." I don't dare call him 'father' until I am to see the proof.

"Damn you." He curses but doesn't seem too aggressive. In fact he looks quite tired of all this time-jumping now. He'd lurches past me, lightly pushing on my arm as he searches another cave. "You've worked it all out haven't you?"

"Worked what out? Hey where are you going?"

"Ugh." Grunting weakly, he covers his face with one hand as he drags his claws on the ground behind him. He isn't very quick footed so I easily catch my self and tackle him as we both tumble-down a descending cave path.

"AGHH!"

Our tumble finally stops when we reach a small ledge, overlooking a larger cavern. There are windows and buildings built into the rocks. As I try to untangle myself from Banzai's so I can look down over the edge, he grabs my neck and pulls me back.

"NO DON'T LOOK!" His tone is much more pleading now. For some reason he seems so powerless in this situation; he almost makes me feel pity for him.

All it takes is a scratch of my claws across his half masked face to get him off me. As he screams in pain, I use this chance to see over the edge.

And find myself nearly covering my mouth to prevent being sick.

I'm immediately drawn to the sound of a young child crying in pain. I see him, dressed only in a pair of blue shorts, strapped down on a cross-shaped operating table as a dozen doctors cloaked in white lab coats, assess him and stand around a few monitors.

Numerous cages with hands clung around the bars align the sides of the room. Some of the cages have their doors hanging open the hands in those ones don't cling on the bars but flop over the edge – motionless and covered in blood. One corner of the room is completely dark.

The boy continues screeching in immense pain before he finally collapses, overwhelmed by it. A doctor shakes his head. "Perhaps Steven will end up a failure like the other subjects."

"He's name is not Steven." A deeper sounding voice come from one of the scientists. When he takes off his surgical hat and mask he reveals short cream hair and olive skin surrounded by strange tattoos. "He is test subject number 10, 000...Banzai."

"Test subject number ten thousand!?" I find myself asking in shock. I hear a tiny whimper from behind my back. Now he's covering his face, sobbing. "So this is what you didn't want me to see?" I say, still drawn to the horrible scene down below. It seems this place is an underground lab, performing experiments on children.

"We've already lost so many clones Doctor Brain. We can no longer safely dispose of the failed specimens in this facility."

"I don't need your bumbling complaints." Brain snapped as he pressed a few buttons on the monitor. "We'll wake him up and try one more time. I know this one will be a success."

"Oh God." Banzai cowers into a foetal position as the child with his name gasps back into conscious, his eyes nearly bulge out of their sockets, his hands tingle and his back arches as he writhes in an unimaginable pain. Tears and drool pour down his chest as he shakes about, trying to free himself from the shackles of these tormentors.

Brain's grin begins to rise as he watches this child's pain in amusement. "Now just a little more." As he turns a dial the child's cries intensify tenfold. The sound shakes the rocks of this cave as a loose stalagmite falls to the ground. Soon enough, his scream reaches the point where the entire room really is shaking, with monitors and equipment falling over.

"GGRRRAAAAAOOOWWW!" The boy's eyes turn bloodshot as his veins pop out and his muscles bulge. The straps break off as he destroys the operating table with sheer force. His fingers curl and flex as his nails begins to grow longer and sharper.

"YES! BANZAI IS A SUCCESS!" Brain falls to his knees and raises his hands in mad laughter. But it seems his jubilation would be brief as his great success started butchering his colleagues, impaling his new claws through their brains.

The young Banzai continued roaring in his bestial rage as he sliced through all the cages and exterior buildings, setting off explosions and electrical fires. He didn't even spare those other subjects who had gone through the same thing he had.

"HAHA! SPLENDID. MY MOST BEAUTIFUL CREATION EVER MADE! A PERFECT MONSTER, BORN SOLELY TO KILL AND DESTROY!" The mad scientist spread out his arms as his twisted creation walked over to him. With his entire facility in flames and his loyal workers slain, he was only left with his obsession – his spawn of hatred. "You will know no weakness, no pain, no loss...You will only know bloodshed and glory. Now, go out there and-"

SHUNK. Now even this Brain was silenced, with the young Banzai's claws skewering through his throat. When he drew them out, Brain's body slumped to the ground, his wicked smile still planted on his dead face.

"No pain huh?" The child muttered as he slowly drew one claw directly down his face and then cut another bloody line across it, forming the infamous shape which now masks him to this day. "I'll see to it that everyone suffers that same pain I have endured until now."

"I was a human experiment." Banzai says softly from behind me. "My parents were two cells: both of them from inhuman creatures. I am the result of man's obsession with pushing the boundaries of science and magic."

"I..." I can't think of anything to say at this point. This person who had not long ago tried to kill me and my friends is now breaking down before me. I gulp and ask him.

"So, are you really my father?"

He shakes his head. "No, not in this reality I'm not. I was about to make it so that I would be your father in order to make you feel as stupid as I have to...Since I couldn't make you suffer physically, I would do so emotionally by changing your very concept of a family."

Speaking to him on a more human level seems much better than the stuff I was going through before so I continue. "What did you do with Lucy Ashley's friends? Did you really hurt them?"

He shakes his head again. "They should all be unharmed. I left them alone and pursued Lucy and the other fugitives here so I could achieve my real goal." He looks down at the bloody massacre his old self had caused, showing no reaction to deaths he had conducted. "When I heard that there was a world identical to my own called Earthland, I knew I had to do whatever it takes to find that man and kill him again! But once I heard that he was in prison, I had to use all means of obtaining enough power to break through and destroy him and his associates. I manipulated people with my power and amassed an army large enough to storm through your town and locate the Fairy Boy in order to break into that prison."

"So did you end up finding that Fairy Boy?"

Banzai just looks at me vainly before he shrugs his shoulders. "Never mind."

I stand up. "Look, I understand you had a terrible past, but killing people isn't the best way to solve your problems. Instead of manipulating others and making them miserable, you should have tried to make sure no one ever goes through the same thing you and all those other kids went through."

He still doesn't seem convinced. "Look, we are meant to be the same person right? I should know what you're going through. I should share your pain. For all I know my parents could have been a toad and a slug. I have the same uncertainty you must feel about your own existence." I reach out at this poor self of mine with my arms open – just like his creator, only without the evil sentiment. "So come on, how about we get out of this sad place and back with the others...Steven?"

It must be odd...trying to describe the feeling you get from hugging yourself. It's kind of like hugging your favourite mirror but it's a bit softer and warmer. If only I could have done this sooner, maybe I would have spared a few lives and misery.

I notice Banzai's eyes widen as I notice a shadow over his body. I turn and see that his younger self has spotted us - eyes red and teeth gnashing for blood. it seems in this world he can see and touch us...or kill us if he wants to.

I think he wants to.

"Look out!" Just as his tormented child self is about to stab through my back, Banzai throws me down and takes the beast's claws directly into his stomach.

"Banzai!" I never thought I'd be crying out his name but oh how much things can change with a poignant flashback.

"You're the only other person to call me by my real name." He grunts as blood drools from the corner of his lip. "And you're the only person who will remember me as a human."

"GERGHARGH!" His berserker child self tries to draw out his claws when Banzai grabs hold of them, thrashing his own blood around as he keeps him at bay from me.

"I'll make this last amendment right here." He smiles painfully as his monstrous self tugs desperately to free out his claws. "Go back to your friends...You still have to make use of those claws...Benny-boy."

That bastard, after all he's done and now he's sacrificing his own life for my sake... "There may still be a place for you in heaven after all Steven..."

"...Benson..." He adds with a smile just as the ceiling begins to cave in. "Steven Benson was my name."

"Was?" But just before I can understand the meaning of his last few words the rocks finally cave in on the place and once again, I'm surrounded by darkness.

/?/?/?/

"Come on! Hurry up and breathe! Come on!"

I flutter my eyes open and find myself back on Tenrou Island with all the others. For some reason, I'm lying down and everyone's huddled around me with odd gawks like a bunch of dumbfounded chickens. Natsu seems to be holding back a snicker though and Gray and Erza aren't too impressed either.

"Oh hey guys it looks like I'm back." I try to get up but I'm quickly held back down by a certain Lucy whose baby tears are pattering into my eyes.

"Thank God you woke up! I was worried I might lose you again." On closer analysis, it appears to be the Edolas-Lucy who's wrapping her arms around me and crying with relief.

Probably a good thing too. We're still pending on whether the other Lucy is related though.

"It seems you've made good friends with Lucy Ashley." And just like a grumpy older sister, Lucy harrumphs as she crosses her arms at this odd scene. I hope she's not jealous, I'm the innocent one here!

"I think I'm gonna die if you don't let go of my neck." I wheeze before the boyish girl releases her monkey grip.

"Haha! You stud! Getting in Lucy's good books!" Natsu slaps me on the back as I sit back up.

"Just to verify though that we're talking about Edo-Lucy." Lucy turns back and grumbles. Yeah I think she's jealous.

"Well thanks Lucy – I ugh mean Lucy Ashley." I correct myself as she smiles. Then I look up at Mystogan who appears to have an Erza from Edolas clung around his neck too. "So how did I make it back? I must have blacked out just at the end."

"Banzai must have cancelled out his power, and so expelled you from the alternate dimension." Mystogan surmised as he accepted a few wet kisses from his red-headed lover (please Edo-Erza save it for when you get back to the other world eh?). "You see, Banzai had fooled all of us with his power, even me."

"So what was his power?" I say as my own Edolas anchor keeps me planted down on my butt.

"The reason why you experienced all those time loops for your birthday; why you had those visions of 'Him' in your sleep..." Wait who told you about that? "The reason why he made those soldiers wear those masks and why he couldn't kill you, even though he had plenty of opportunities all boil down to one thing, and that is-"

"HEY LET'S HAVE A PARTY!" Natsu hooted as he tore off his shirt and waved it around.

"Aye sir!" Happy joined in followed by Gray and then just about everyone else who didn't seem bothered with tying threads anymore.

"Wait but-" Mystogan frowned as everyone left him to go jump in the creek. The girls must have changed at the speed of light as now they were all wearing bouncy bikinis which left very little to this poor child's imagination. "I even had some diagrams prepared n'everything." Mystogan pouted as Edo-Erza consoled with the blue chap.

"Isn't it great Charles, everyone's okay now." I saw Wendy conferring with her feline companion as usual as she splashed some water onto the kitty.

"Hmph. I would have preferred if he didn't come back." Haha, oh Charles...I hate you too...

Edo-Lucy tugs at my right arm. "What do you say Benny? Shall we cool off with the others?"

"But don't we still have to defeat those guys from Grimoire Heart or something?" I check with everyone else.

Natsu pops his head out of the water with a fish in his mouth. "Nph. Wph Wnt n kiphed hiph aph on thph shph whl yph wr inph thph hl." Which I think translates to: 'no we already went and kicked his arse on the ship while you were in that hole.'

"Oh, well in that case." I smile and plunge into the refreshing water with Edo-Lucy. With the scorching sun returning into view, this is a well deserved reprise after all the trials we've been through.

"OI! YOU BRATS HAD ENOUGH TIME MESSIN' AROUND YET!?"

Everyone, including myself, stops immediately and turns towards that very nostalgic voice. We follow a long shadow in suspense as it leads up to a tiny pair of legs on an equally tiny body. Despite, all the dirt caked around his cape, he has the same angry vigour as before as the little guy comes back from beyond the grave. "Ya' could have left me with a few centrefolds of Mirajane if you were plannin' on keepin' me in that coffin for six friggin' months!"

~To be continued~


A major new twist strikes the Fairy Tail guild as Mashima's Law happens once again. What will this mean for Benny's role in the guild? And will we ever find the truth about Benny's parents? Don't miss what I hope will be the concluding chapter of the Trials and Tribulations arc and in turn the second season of My Fairy!