I promise this was an accident.

Chapter Seventeen - Gildarts, Part One

When I got to the guild, I overheard Macao talking to Wakaba about Gildarts coming back in four months, which would have him appearing smack dab in the middle of November.

Smiling, I ran inside straight for the training room, Freed trailing behind me.

"Ella-sama?" he asked as we entered the room. "Who is Gildarts?"

"He's awesome!" Laxus said enthusiastically. "Probably the most powerful wizard in Fairy Tail."

"He's also extremely destructive," Cana added.

"He's Cana's father," I said casually.

There was a pause. Then…

"WHAT?" Cana shrieked. "Elle, I kept that a secret for a reason!"

"Yeah, a stupid reason," I said, snorting. "Look, you know how I sorta know some things, right?"

"Oh, really?" Cana asked sarcastically. "Like how you mysteriously know things about the future or people that you have literally no way of finding out, ever? No, I haven't noticed."

Geez, six-year-old Cana was one with the sass.

Probably my fault.

"Look, Cana, I know things," I told her. "So trust me when I say that Gildarts will be overjoyed to find out he has a daughter."

"Really?" she whispered, doubtful.

"Of course," I said, holding out my arms. She rushed into them. "It's up to the two of you what your relationship will be, and I doubt it will be conventional. But this is Fairy Tail. Whoever called us conventional in the first place is an idiot."

"I don't think anyone has ever called us that," Laxus said.

I rolled my eyes. "The point is, Cana, is that he'll want to know, and he'll want to know as soon as he has a chance."

"Thank you, Elle-nee-chan. I…after I started learning magic…and after what you said about me being powerful…I wanted to prove I was strong."

That's right, I thought. She doesn't become obsessed with the S-Class thing until she's nominated.

"Well, if you want to prove you're strong, I have an idea," I said, smiling down at her. "Why don't we fight him?"

Everyone froze. "WHAAAAAAAAT?"

Wait, what did I just say?

"I said we're going to fight him!" I yelled.

Oh, fuck.

"Ella-sama," Freed said. "You mentioned that you pick and choose your battles based on what you believe the outcome is. Does that mean you think we can win?"

I snorted. "Oh, hell no, we're definitely going to lose."

If he fights seriously. But he'll underestimate us because we're kids, and if we use enough unconventional fighting methods, we might be able to catch him by surprise.

You know, maybe.

I mean, we may need to cheat a bit.

"Then why would we fight against Gildarts!" Laxus shouted.

"Because it would be fun!" I whined.

"He'll kill us!" Laxus yelled. "And worse, it'll be an accident!"

I shook my head. "Even if he overpowers one of his spells, it won't kill us, it will just break us down into a bunch of tiny people. It's not like he can't put us back together. It will be fine, it will be fun, and I think we stand a chance if we work together and catch him by surprise."

"I'm in!" Cana said.

"If Onee-sama is doing it, so will Juvia!" Juvia said.

"Umm," Levy said. "I don't think I'm ready."

"That's fine," I told her. "You don't have to participate if you don't want to. On the other hand, you can also spend the next four months training. Everyone else in the guild will be busy building the place for the boys to live, so we've got time until then. Also, your magic is all about creativity, Levy. Use your mind! Whatever you write becomes reality. You could probably make things like Solid Script; Slow-Mo and make him move super slow. And other things like that."

Levy brightened. "I wouldn't mind practicing that."

I turned to Freed. "Do you have any runes that can make people invisible? We can write them into cloaks and surprise him that way."

He paused to think. "I might have an idea. If you'll excuse me, I need to go to the guild library."

"Sure, have fun!" I told him as he left the room.

Turning to Laxus, I stared at him until he threw his arms up in the air. "Fine, I'll join you! But you owe me!"

"Sure!" I said. "Your birthday is coming up soon, right? I'll take you somewhere fun! There will be an island. And treasure."

At least his birthday was at the end of November.

I think.

"Alright everyone. Let's get to training. We'll start with new spells. Cana, come with me, and we'll discuss new attacks. Laxus, I want you to try turning your body into Lightning. Juvia, I want you to work on the pressure and strength in your attacks like Water Slicer. Levy, I want you to come up with a list of ways and techniques to utilize your magic in battle. Everyone got that?"

They all nodded except for Laxus, who instead yelled, "What? You want me to do what?"

"I want you to turn your body into lightning," I said patiently. "No, I'm not joking, yes it is possible, and yes, it will be possible for you to do it. You can probably teleport like I can, too. Speaking of which, Juvia, at some point (though not right now) I would like you to try turning your body into mist. However, I would work on your offense right now, because your defense is already pretty solid with your water body."

She nodded. "Right. Juvia understands."

Juvia asked Levy to make a Solid Script; Iron, telling her that she's going to practice being able to cut through it, and Laxus sighed and stared at his hand as he enveloped it with his lightning.

Cana and I sat down and she pulled out some paper. "You think I can have more attacks?"

I nodded. "How is your multi-directional Summon Lightning coming along?"

She smiled. "Really well, but I kinda need a test subject."

"How about Laxus?" I asked.

"The hell are you volunteering me for, Elle?" Laxus shouted.

"Dinner!" I shouted back.

A pause. "What?"

I rolled my eyes. "Again, what happened to the trusting me, thing? Cana wants to practice her Summon Lightning, and since it can't hurt you (plus you can eat it), I figured you could help test it out."

"Oh. Alright then."

I smiled, turning back to Cana. "We can try it later. For now, let's come up with more ideas. I want you to have some sort of card that utilizes Mirror Magic."

"Mirror Magic?" she asked.

I nodded. "Yeah, it can reflect attacks. Some would be easier than others. For instance, reflecting a lightning attack could probably go a lot better than a solid type of attack, like one of mine, especially if there was a lot of power behind it. But if you put enough force into your spell, you could probably even block spells of a really high caliber. If you practice hard enough, you might be able to block Gildarts."

"But how would we test it?" Cana asked.

"You would activate the card away from you, and then Laxus will try to break through. If he breaks through, you need more power. If not…you should probably add more power anyway, but that's a good sign."

She nodded.

"I was also thinking about a card that utilizes Sleep Magic," I said. "If we can get those on Gildarts, we could easily win the fight, though I'm not sure if we'd actually be able to create a powerful enough sleeping spell for him. Honestly, if we really wanted to win the fight we could always put a rune barrier down that stopped him from using magic on the training field, but that would ruin the fun. As long as you're smart enough, Cana, you can almost always beat your opponent. Remember, sometimes brain is better than brawn."

She nodded. "Got it. So if we put that in comparison to things that you said earlier for Levy, I could probably do a lot of support magic."

I smiled. Now we're talking. "Such as…"

Cana was getting really excited now. "Oh, maybe I could do something that could make us move faster, or make us stronger. Hmm, but it'd need to find something as a common factor…"

"Well, for future fights, it would be really handy if we could make anyone with a guild mark stronger, but right now this wouldn't be good for a fight with Gildarts," I said. "Maybe something that can single-out our age? I'm pretty sure all of our bodies identify as being non-adults, if not specifically children, and that might be able to work."

She frowned. "Maybe…"

"Well, what other ways could you add support spells?" I asked her.

"Well, I can make us faster and stronger, thought I don't think we could physically match up to Gildarts despite how strong I make us. Magically powerful might help, but it'd need an amplifier…"

"Normally I'd say the sun, but it might not work if it's a cloudy day. How about air? There's plenty of Ethernano in the air, and it would certainly help spread the power, unless you directly linked us to cards."

"Directly…linked…" she smiled. "Elle, you're a genius!"

"Thank you, but if you would specify…"

"Okay, so meditating is gathering our power, expanding it, but also emptying it, right?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Emptying our magical containers help stretch our energy. Why?"

"Well, if we empty our magic power each day directly into a card, and then hold onto the card, then we have extra power in case we run out!"

"Is that even possible?" Laxus asked.

"Probably," I said.

"Elle-chan, would it still work if it's kept in your requip space? That way the cards won't be destroyed," Levy asked.

"We can test it," Cana said.

"This is brilliant," I said. "Doing this should expand our containers, and then if we try to take in some of the extra energy back into our body, that would probably expand our containers more, too! Also, we're recycling! Instead of magic just dissipating into the air, we're able to use it again."

"So what's the plan?" Cana asked.

"Well, we still have four months before Gildarts gets here. That's enough time to experiment on how this would work. We'll practice our magic at the beginning of each day, work hard, and then at the end of the day, empty our magic into the cards. At the beginning of the next day, we'll take in a little bit of the magic from our cards; not a whole lot, maybe a quarter at most, and expand our containers a bit. Then we'll repeat the cycle again, practicing our magic until later the next evening."

"Awesome!" Levy said.

"Another thing, though," I said. "I don't know if it will work if your cards are in my requip. You may need to keep them on you. However…"

I turned to Cana. "I've been meaning to tell you that I want you to learn requip. Not for everything, but it'd be a nice place to store your cards, and you'd also have extra. You can store your space however you want, and it should become really easy for you to use it in a fight."

She thought about it. "Maybe…I'll start later today."

I requipped a book on requipping. "I suggest you read this tonight, maybe practice storing a blank card or two and pulling it back out."

She nodded. "Alright, I'll try."

"Your space will probably start small, but it'll get bigger. Trust me," I told her.

I'm going to give this book to Lucy the next time I see her. That way, she won't be losing her keys all the time.

After that, I left Cana to focus on making the magical storage cards, and went over the spells Levy came up with. All of them were good, but some of them were brilliant. She had starred the ones in particular that she thought she'd be able to use against Gildarts, but she had also thought of some other ones that she could use in regular battle.

I told her to add the most ridiculous things she could think of to the list, and then start practicing, before I went over to Juvia, who was trying to make her Water Slicer strong enough to slice the IRON Levy made in half. So far, it only had some big dents and some scratches.

"Juvia," I said, kneeling down at her. "I want you to get angry."

"How would Juvia do that?" she asked.

I pointed at the IRON. "Do you see that? That's actually a dark mage that's come here because he wants to kill me, and destroy Fairy Tail."

Even though it was only a piece of iron, her temper immediately flared and she shouted, "Water Slicer!" directly at it.

It cleanly sliced it in half.

"Woah," Juvia said softly.

"Listen," I said, taking hold of her arms. "Magic is fueled by emotions. I don't want you to feel angry every time you cast magic, but you felt it bubble up when you got angry, right?"

She nodded.

"It was a lot stronger than it normally is if you're angry because you were feeling protective. Thank you, by the way." I squeezed her shoulders. "What you felt is the amount of power you currently possess. It's not the amount of power you'll end up with eventually, it's how much you have right now. That being said, you've only been grabbing the surface of it when you've cast your spells. Now that you've felt it all, I want you to grab it, and cast the spell again."

She nodded, took a deep breath, and turned back towards what was left of the iron. "Water Slicer!" It cleanly sliced through it again, leaving it a quarter of the original size.

"Wow," Juvia whispered.

I squeezed her shoulders. "What did I tell you? Now, I want you to try pushing it around inside of you, now that you've got a better grasp on it."

She nodded and began to meditate, and I moved on to Laxus, who glared at me angrily. "Are you sure I can turn into lightning?"

"Positive," I said. "Don't take your anger out on me. So you didn't learn it today, so what? You're not going to learn everything in a day, and that's alright, Laxus. Sometimes we need to work harder for certain spells, and that's expected. Hell, you've only got the beginnings of your Dragon Slayer magic down. You haven't even touched your Secret Art."

"Secret Art?" he asked.

I nodded. "It's different for each slayer. While each slayer may have their own variation of a roar, wing attack, talon, and iron fist, they all have specialized Secret Arts, and there are usually more than one."

Technically, Wendy's Milky Way was a secret art, so I'm sure that all of the other slayers had more than one as well.

"But it can also take years to unlock it," I continued. "And that's okay. Sometimes things come easily and sometimes we have to work for it. So work. You'll get it eventually, we both know you will. And while it would help in a fight with Gildarts, it's certainly not going to make or break it. So relax." I smiled at him softly. "You think your Gramps got as strong as he did in a day? Or that all my Earth Spells immediately came to me? I still have trouble with some, and I don't have much stamina when it comes to using them, either, since they take up a lot of power. We have four months. So breathe."

Laxus took in a deep breath and breathed out, the tension leaving his shoulders.

"You're only eleven, Laxus," I said. "You're already a lot stronger than any kids your age could hope to be. So for now, breathe, and try to relax. Imagine your body turning into lightning, all at once. It's not physical anymore. You're like a ghost."

He gave me that look, (the 'dammit Elle' look) but took a deep breath and concentrated on himself.

Slowly, his body began to spark, and for a second I thought that he wasn't exactly physical anymore, before it was gone.

"Good job!" I told him. "It might have only been a second, but I think you grabbed hold of it. Now that you know how it feels, you just need to practice more, and hold onto it."

He made a face. "I didn't like how it felt."

I gave him a blank look. "If you're in a life or death battle, and you need to move and that's your only option, are you really going to sit there and die?"

He glared at me. "Fine, I see your point, it just feels weird…"

He sighed and closed his eyes. I left them in the room and went up to the guild library, where I found Freed reading. He looked up from the book when he heard me coming.

"Ella-sama!" he said. "I believe I found what we're looking for. I also found something else, called Dark Ecriture, and it sounds really interesting."

I sighed. I didn't really want him using Dark Ecriture; I didn't like it. "Freed, you can learn Dark Ecriture, but promise me that you'll only use it against enemies to deserve it. If you want to stop somebody, you can always write runes like Freeze, or something. Don't actively hurt your opponent."

"Unless they deserve it?" he asked.

I nodded. "Unless they deserve it. If they're attacking Fairy Tail, that's one thing, but if it's a friendly competition, absolutely not. Do you understand?"

He nodded, though he looked a bit downtrodden. "I kind of just want to say something cooler when I'm fighting though, other than Rune-Write."

I rolled my eyes. Geez, boys will be boys, no matter how dignified they were raised or how old they are.

"But thank you for letting me learn it. It will allow me to write runes without my sword. However, it will take me some time to learn it."

"That's fine," I said. "For now, focus on learning your runes. You can learn Dark Ecriture at some point in the future."

"Anyway, I do believe I found what you wanted. You were thinking about inscribing runes on clothing, yes?"

"Mmmmhmmm," I said. "What about it?"

"It's possible," he said. "But it'd be easier to just inscribe it on a bracelet or something that we were all wearing. If we want it on cloth we need to sow it in, and I never learned how to sow."

I nodded. "Alright. I think there's some magical bracelets we can inscribe stuff on that I found at an archeological site. I'll show you them tonight. Oh, and did you ward Makarov's office yet?"

He shook his head. "No, he hasn't asked me yet."

I smirked. "Perfect."

I popped into Makarov's office.

"Ahhhh! Elle!" he shouted. "Are you trying to give me a heart attack?"

"No."

"That was a rhetorical question," he said.

"I wanted to know if there's a place in the basement or the attic that was free," I said.

"Why?" Makarov asked.

"I want to start practicing Pluto, and I can't do that until I've found the right place to train. Nowhere around my home suits the atmosphere, and it's not doing anything for me."

He sighed. "Fine. There's an office in the basement. It looks old and medieval. Is that good enough?"

"Are there stone walls and torches?"

"Yes."

"Perfect."

He led me down to the basement, leading me past the Lumen Histoire and into an office. I sat cross legged on the floor and started meditating. "Close the door behind you please."

I didn't hear a reply, but I heard the sound of the door shut and footsteps going back up the stairs.

I opened my eyes and took a good look at the room, and the shadows caused by the torches. Slowly, I leaned back into a shadow and meditated.

Honestly, I wasn't going to attack him with Pluto magic – there was only one I needed to learn before the fight.

Pluto's Body.

It turns your body into a shadow, which was something I could use for defense.

I spent the whole day meditating down there, before I went back upstairs, ate dinner with the others, and then walked home with Freed.

As two weeks passed, everyone grew noticeably stronger, through both our recycled magic and our regular magic.

Recycled magic doesn't work as well; it's not as strong as it was originally, and it runs out a lot faster.

That being said, if you aren't constantly fighting and have time to store extra magic while meditating, it works fine.

We discovered a few surprises with Juvia, and Levy came up with a whole slew of extremely odd surprise attacks that I couldn't wait for us to use on Gildarts (or anyone, really).

We would spend two hours meditating/charging cards before eating a snack, another hour fighting out magic against each other, sometimes as teams so we could see how we worked together.

Usually, in a one on one battle between me and Laxus, neither would win, and we'd both end up completely exhausted.

If I fought alone against Cana and Juvia, however, I lost every time.

I feel extremely proud just thinking about it.

Despite it all, and the amount of time that passed, I still hadn't gotten ahold of Pluto's Body.

The latter half of the day, after lunch, was usually a mix of magic battles, just plain exercise (so we could practice moving faster) and for me; meditating in that damn basement.

I was getting sick of seeing shadows.

Freed's birthday passed, and he turned eight.

Cana helped me make 'alert' cards for anyone who would eventually join the guild (well, anyone that didn't have a specific time ready), which allowed me to know if they needed help or their magic activated.

All in all, we were more prepared, and getting stronger.

But after a month of trying, I still hadn't gotten it down.

The next time, instead of the usual position with my legs crossed (Criss-Cross-Applesauce) I laid directly on the floor and thought specifically of Rogue. Some way through, I think I fell asleep.

When I woke up, I was halfway through the floor.

"Holy shit," I breathed.

I could shadow travel. That's awesome.

Concentrating on surrounding my body with magic, I pulled myself into the shadows and tried following them upstairs.

Unfortunately, I couldn't hold it very long, so the spell ended and I hit the floor.

"Ow…" I muttered, rubbing my butt.

But I'd gotten ahold of it (fucking finally), which was good.

I spent the rest of the day practicing with my shadow body, jumping from shadow to shadow and moving through them. It was the oddest feeling; as if I was made of mist.

Hours later, I was exhausted, and slowly trudged my way upstairs.

"Hey guys," I muttered, walking into the training room. Freed was reading a book, Juvia was breaking another piece of IRON, Cana and Levy were discussing something, and Laxus appeared to be meditating.

"Are you okay, Elle-chan?" Levy asked. "You don't look well."

Everyone turned to look at me. I smiled at them and waved them off. "Nah, I'm just tired. Freed, can you make your way home?"

He nodded.

"Good," I said. "I'm gonna teleport home. Goodnight, everyone."

I popped out with rings of 'goodbye' in my ears.

After a quick shower and a bite to eat, I climbed into bed and passed out.

Yeah...I'm open to suggestions.

Like any. Any at all.