Disclaimer: don't own anything aside from Charlotte Phantomhive (kind of), Vulpecula the Fox, 'Nick' the Phoenix, and Lena from Mermaid Heel. I think that's it, at least.

Hi!

Sorry I haven't updated in so long. I've been lazy, was immersed in other fandoms, and am transitioning into a new job, so I've also been stressed.

Anyway!

I can't promise regular updates (I was never good at those) or not to go on really long hiatuses, but for the moment I'm working on this again.

ALSO, there are some relatively important notes at the end of the chapter, so tell me what you think about those if you're at all interested.

Enjoy!


Mirajane crept up to the judges' table quietly, carefully watching the area of the stadium where the exorcists were lounging to make sure that none of them saw her up there.

"Miss Mirajane?" Yajima asked, surprised, when he noticed her presence, causing the other three judges to look at her as well.

Mira curtseyed, smiling prettily and batting her eyelashes. "Sir, it's a pleasure as always. I was hoping that I could have some of your time. I have proof of sabotage against my guild."

The men's eyes widened in shock.

"More sabotage?" Lahar repeated, eyes narrowing in concentration as he prepared to ask for a full report, as the head of the Rune Knights. "Aside from Raven Tail?"

Mirajane winced slightly at the reminder of that horrible guild. With any luck, not only would they stop attacking and kidnapping their members, but they would be able to successfully help Flare recover from her time spent with them.

"I'm afraid so." She agreed. "You see, I witnessed one of the exorcists pour the contents of a vial into tea that was intended to be served to some of our members. Due to my Demon Takeover Magic I'm able to…smell…poison, and Erik was on his way to warn them too, so disaster was avoided, but…"

"Oh, that is so NOT cool." Jason murmured, horrified.

"Miss Strauss, you said you have evidence to support your claim?" Lahar said, taking a notebook and pen from the desk behind them.

Mirajane understood that he wasn't trying to be accusing (for once), just wanted as much detail as possible, so she removed the half angel/half demon necklace that she had received for Christmas.

"This necklace contains a memory lacrima." She explained to them.

"Rune Knights are trained to be able to tell real from fake memories." Lahar mused. "As long as it's not fraudulent, a memory can be used in court."

Mirajane smiled triumphantly, knowing perfectly well what the result of that particular test would be.

"I had Erik add what he heard their leader say when his assassin failed, too." She said cheerfully. "Oh, and as you'll see in the memory, I ended up drinking the poison, so if you end up needing a sample of what they used…"

The white-haired beauty would never admit it, but she was greatly amused by the looks the four men started giving her as she casually mentioned drinking poison.


By the time everyone had come back from lunch and were ready to start again, Lahar had had the time to conduct the verification test on Mira's memory and contact the Magic Council for further instructions.

"This is a rather complicated situation." He explained to Mirajane. "The exorcists are our guests, and therefore were granted a sort of diplomatic immunity when they arrived. However, that does NOT cover attempted murder. The man who emptied the vial and Arthur Auguste Angel were implicated with those memories and will be arrested shortly, but unfortunately we don't know if any of the other exorcists were in on it. We don't want to arrest innocent people, but at the same time we don't want anyone who is guilty to go free. Even with the list of people who your guild is certain didn't have anything to do with it… (aka Rin's friends)"

Mirajane hummed, understanding the problem, tactfully deciding not to mention that the Rune Knights had never seemed particularly bothered about arresting innocent people in the past.

No reason to give the prideful man even more reason to dislike their guild.

"In other words, you want to take a 'wait and see' stance for now." Mirajane concluded with a smile.

Lahar froze as wisps of purple magic started flowing out of the petite woman.

"We can accept that, for the time being." She said sweetly, cracks appearing on her face. "But know this. If they try and hurt them—excuse me, if they try and hurt any of us outside of a sanctioned battle, and they succeed because you were too cautious…well. I think I'll leave the consequences to your imagination. Have a good day, Captain Lahar!"

She left, dress waving behind her.

After a long moment, Lahar discreetly cleared his throat, wiping a few beads of sweat from his brow.

Earlier he had thought Erza Scarlet to be the most terrifying woman in Fairy Tail, what with her awe-inspiring performance in the Pandemonium event, but now he found himself questioning that assumption.


As Mirajane returned to her place with her guild, she noticed Erik raise an eyebrow at her, having (obviously) known what she was doing.

She smiled back at him, brining her memory of her confrontation with Lahar to the forefront of her mind.

Erik smirked, beyond pleased at the visual of Lahar looking like he was about to piss himself.

After all that shit Lahar had put him through back when he was a prisoner, the asshole more than deserved it.

And if Mirajane needed any ideas of how to fill that 'or else' threat…well, he had more than a few ideas to contribute.

But in the meantime, he would content himself with listening to the Vikings' thoughts as they helplessly tried to wake up their chief from his little 'nap.'


Please review! :)

NOTES!

So, I have a couple of projects in mind for the Aurora series, and I was curious about your guys' thoughts.

1-My mom's boyfriend is a graphic designer who wants to add to his resume a bit, and he pretty much offered to do the artwork for a possible web-comic of this story. It would be a heck of a lot of work, especially since he's not into anime and I would need to basically give him a USB drive full of pictures for him to reference. I'm not promising anything, but…it's a possibility.

2-I was thinking yesterday about how this story might have turned out if it was Wendy, instead of Lucy, who Zeref sent back to Magnolia. Eventually that evolved into Wendy coming back with Lucy, not instead of her, because I like how Lucy turned out in this story, but…yeah. So I'm also considering kind of re-writing this story again to allow for that. It would include more crossover characters, more details, some additional pairings (obviously it would NOT include Romeo x Wendy), more romantic scenes to flesh out the relationships, etc. Heck, I might even bring back the idea of Laxus ending up with an Exceed of his own. Feels too late for this version of the story, though.

I would do my best to keep this version of Aurora going, but if I ended up liking that one better…well, I had also said I'd keep the original version of this story going, and look what happened there.