Okay, so if you LOVE Lucy (like I do), and sometimes ship her with multiple different characters (like I do) and love redo fics where they travel back in time and change things because they have knowledge of the future (like I do) and you also love baby dragons (like I do) then open a new tab right now. I found this fanfic the other day (I actually meant to tell you all about it last chapter but I refrained because the author's note was already huge) and it's amazing! It's also eerily similar to this one (I nearly screamed when they announced the team name) and I think all of you who are impatient about the ToH and Dragon Slayers will be satisfied by reading this. It's called Raising Dragons by Merble.

Also sorry for not replying to comments as I usually do, but I figured this would make up for it. And for all the new people joining us, thank you, and enjoy the rest of the ride!

Chapter Forty Eight - The 2nd Annual Grand Magic Games: July 7th, X774

Early in the morning the next day, there was a knock on their hotel door.

"Who is it?" Cana called.

I kicked the door open. "It's us!"

"What do you have against doors?" Laxus muttered, eyeing the door. "You're always kicking them."

I ignored him.

Most of the kids stared in shock before three flying missiles activated. Those three being Juvia, Lucy, and Freed.

Laxus managed to stop me from hitting the ground, but I still had three tiny people on me, and the older they got, the heavier they got.

"Guys," I wheezed. "I'd like to breathe, please."

After some grumbling, they got off and settled back down. Like before, they had created one large bed – except they had moved the beds provided by the hotel out of the room, and used a mix of Cana's and Aries's fluff instead.

"What are you doing here?" Erigor asked.

"We came to watch you compete!" I said happily. "I know we can't see all of it, but we were able to come for the last day, at least. We didn't know they added a day, so now we've got an extra one. So, who's competing?"

I already knew, but I wanted to know their reasoning behind it.

Erigor, Cana, Lucy, Juvia, Levy and Freed put their hands up.

"I'm the reserve," Levy said, answering my unasked question. "I want Freed to have a chance to compete this year. Plus, he's developed some really awesome spells!"

I smiled. "That's great."

I turned to the others. "And how do you guys feel about this?"

"I want to have more souls before I do anything," Bickslow admitted. Papa hummed next to him.

"I'm not ready yet," Nab admitted. "I know my magic is a family magic, but I still haven't gotten the hang of it."

I frowned. It had been several months. Maybe I should see if I could do some research…

Evergreen and Brandish exchanged a glance. "We both agree that we're going to train hard, and participate next year," Evergreen said.

"For now though…I want more control," Brandish said. "And Evergreen wants to expand her strength, and area-wide Fairy attacks."

I nodded. "Awesome, guys."

"How have you been?" Lucy asked.

I smiled. "Well, I've got one element down pretty well." I summoned a ball of lightning and threw it at Laxus.

He swallowed it. "Much better," he said.

Yes, I thought silently.

"What about Uranus?" Levy asked.

"It's a bit more difficult," I admitted. "But I'm working on it."

They dragged us inside and onto the fluffy bed.

"Do you guys have any plans for the finals?" I asked them.

They nodded. "You'll just have to watch it," Cana said.

Lucy nodded. "Yeah, we planned it out way ahead of time."

"Awesome!" I said.

When it came down to deciding what to do for the day off, the boys (poor things they were) got outvoted by the girls, and we ended up painting each other's nails before the Preliminaries.

The boys were adamant about not doing it, with the exception of Erigor, who found some silver nail polish and decided to wear it.

He says it's to piss his father off tomorrow.

Something tells me he won't remove it when the games are over, though.

Though the boys didn't want to participate at all, the girls insisted, and the boys ended up painting some of the girl's nails.

They swore never to speak of it, and I discretely hid all of the pictures I managed to take of them doing so.

Laxus and I were very eager to see how the finale would end. After all, without my teleportation or Laxus's Lightning Body, the group would have difficulty replicating our tactics from the previous year, and they had refused to tell us what they were going to do.

Exchanging looks from our spots in the Fairy Tail section, I knew that Laxus had come to the same conclusion as I did.

When the gong sounded, the team split.

Juvia and Freed went searching for teams on the ground, and Lucy, Erigor and Cana went as high as they possibly could, in order to pick off people from the sky.

This would have worked a lot better if I had given her Sagittarius, but Lucy did a pretty good job on her own. The exclamations from Goldmine as she used Star Dress for the first time was hilarious, and by leaving Aries on one side of the field and using Aries's Star Dress on the other side, they literally swabbed competitors in fluff until they passed out, easily racking in points.

I was also glad to see that Star Dress was nowhere near as revealing as it was in the future, considering Lucy wasn't even in her double digits.

The more competent ones escaped from the fluff, but were picked off by Erigor, who was flying all over the field like a bug.

At the end of the day, the finale was much more like it was originally supposed to be, and Fairy Tail ended up in first place (though the judges seemed to wait a bit to see if the kids would attack the alternate team again).

Following Fairy Tail, over ten points behind, was Phantom Lord. Lamia Scale was only one point behind them, and I felt like laughing at what this was going to do to Phantom's reputation. They're second best, can't work together, and are dicks. Quatro Cerberus were two points behind them, and Blue Pegasus barely had twenty points.

Maybe I should have Makarov talk to Bob…

We said our goodbyes, and promised to drop by in a few days to celebrate Levy's birthday.

After that, we returned for Levy's seventh birthday where we once again explored the Magic Council's library. I spent time with Enno and Laxus, who were looking into Nab's branch of magic with me so we could see what his difficulty was. We found several techniques and copied them down, and Enno said she'd talk them over with Nab later (you can't check out magical books).

The real surprise, however, was when we returned several days later, for Cana's eighth birthday, who wanted one thing and one thing only; to see Lucy use Urano Metria against her father.

There was some arguing over it, and they decided to wait one more year, so Lucy could have proper control over her magic so she doesn't accidentally kill Gildarts in the process (which wasn't likely, but still possible).

We ended up having another huge silly string/water balloon/paintball fight with Cana's cards, and by the time we were done, the training grounds had never looked so colorful. I was glad we did it outside. And that I was not one cleaning it up.

Laxus and I were covered in more things than our paint fight for the Fantasia parade, and sometime halfway through, after watching them roll around, Macao and Enno disappeared somewhere (probably to do the diddly-doo).

Then Laxus and I went back to the North, settling in and watching Ur teach her students magic.

"So…" Laxus said, finally bringing something up. "About that guy you want me to bring back to life…"

I snorted and requipped a card, handing it to him. "You see that color?" I pointed to the red glow at the top of the card.

"Yeah, what about it?"

"We can't get him until that turns green," I said. "It means that he's alone. It's going to be hard enough trying to bring him back to life, but we want to do it when there's no one else interfering."

Laxus nodded. "Makes sense."

"Just in case," I continued, "If you send magic through this, it should tell you where he is."

"Why?" he asked.

"I don't know if you've noticed, but things have a tendency of going wrong a lot," I said. "If, for some reason, I'm not there, and you need to get him yourself, this card will help you. You can find the location and use your Lightning Body to go there. Do you know how to restart someone's heart?"

"Do you?" he asked.

"Nope," I said, popping the p. "I was just going to suggest shocking him until you hear his heart beating. With your dragon ears, you should be able to tell. When his heart starts beating, you're good, and you stop."

He gave me a look. "I'm not stupid, you know."

"No, just a tsundere," I said.

He grabbed a lump of snow and lobbed it at me, and I got up and ran. We spent the rest of the day rolling around in the snow like a bunch of goofballs, (this time without cheating).

I was surprised when Laki's card went off, again, but this time it was her distress signal. I quickly informed Laxus of the situation, and then left.

I popped in to find out what was happening, and found her crying in her room.

"Laki?" I asked her. "What's wrong?"

"It's horrible, Eleanora!" she cried. "My Nana left with the light of the sun!"

Wait…what?

"Your…grandma passed away at dusk?" I asked, counting in my head. That would have been about an hour ago, at most.

Laki nodded, wiping away more tears.

"And…wait, what did you call me?"

"Eleanora," she said.

"No. No way."

"You said 'anything but Eleanor'. Eleanora is not Eleanor."

"It had Eleanor in it. Call me something else."

"Lenore, then."

"ABSOLUTELY NOT!"

"Lenora?"

"NO!"

"Lora?"

"No."

"Lena." (pronounced L-EH-na).

"Really?"

"Lena?" (pronounced L-EE-na).

I paused. "May…be…." While I didn't really like the first way it was said, Lena wasn't that bad.

She whooped, and I tried to remember why I thought it was a good idea to let the kids pick what they wanted to call me.

I couldn't remember. Something had made it seem fun at first...

At least she seemed happier.

"Lena…" Laki began.

Wow, would it be weird responding to that name.

"Yes, Laki?" I asked.

"What do we do now?" she asked, surprisingly solemn. Yes, she just lost her grandmother, but again, hey maturity level seems different from the others.

"Do you have a place to stay?" I asked her. "If not, you can come to the guild, start learning magic there. You'll get free room and board, as well as meals."

She paused a bit. "But…I want to stay with Max…"

"Why don't you take it up with Max, alright?" I asked her. "Do you still have my Call Card?"

She nodded.

"Then call me when you make a decision, alright?"

"Alright."

"And you'll be fine on your own?"

"Yep!"

I nodded. "Alright. If you need help, call me."

I felt horrible leaving her there, but that was what she wanted, so I went back to Laxus.

"Everything okay?" Laxus asked as I reappeared.

"Laxus…" I started, biting my lip. "Am I a good person?"

"Eh, if you forget all the crazy…" Laxus said teasingly. He lost his smile when he saw I was still glum. "Seriously, Elle, what brought this on?"

I flopped onto the snow covered ground, and said, "I try to trick myself into thinking that I was a good person. Like there are good reasons behind it all. But sometimes I just think I'm really selfish."

Laxus hmmed and slid down onto the snow next to me. "I think everyone's a little bit selfish, Elle. And there's not something wrong with that. I think...it's okay to be a little selfish, as long as you aren't hurting others by doing it."

I breathed out. "I came here because I told myself that I wanted to help you guys; to prevent horrible things from happening to you. But…" I trailed off.

Laxus finally lied down next to me. "But what?"

I continued looking up at the stars. "But really, I think the reason I came here was because I would get a family. I knew you guys would accept anyone unconditionally, and I wanted that."

"That doesn't make you a bad person," Laxus said.

I rolled onto my side and looked at him. "I know that, a little bit. I would say the same to anyone else in my situation. Before I left my old world, I found myself reading psychology books in my spare time. One of the books mentioned that the best way for people with PTSD to handle things is by looking at it from someone else's perspective. Like imagining a friend going through the things went through – you know that they don't deserve it, and neither do you. I don't think I have PTSD, but I don't really think I came out of my old life all that clean and healthy, either."

"People need love," Laxus said quietly. "I didn't really realize that until Dad…no, until Ivan got kicked out. I never really got to spend a lot of time with Jiji, and other than him, I didn't really have anyone. Now I have you," he paused. "And you brought in all the other kids. And the difference is…well, I don't think I could have imagined what it's like now beforehand." He laughed. "Well, imagined how it felt." He gave me a look. "I definitely couldn't have imagined you up, that's for sure."

I smiled, and shrugged. "What can I say? I can exceed imaginations."

"Isn't it supposed to be 'expectations'?" Laxus asked.

"Is it?" I asked. "Because all expectations come from imagination."

Well…I guess that depends on how you look at it, but technically, I'm right.

"Thanks, Laxus," I said quietly.

"Yeah, yeah," Laxus muttered, suddenly blushing and looking away.

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, stop it you stupid tsundere. There's nothing wrong with sharing a few secret things and weird opinions and ideas with your best friend. It's not like anyone's around to hear us, anyway."

A few hours later, Laki called me to tell me that she would be staying with Max's family. I helped her move her things into her new bedroom, and left her with Max, who seemed determined to take care of her.

On August 24th, we dropped by the guild to celebrate Evergreen's tenth birthday. I had also dropped by the castle for Hisui's first birthday, and let her crawl through my treasure until she found a jewel she really liked; which just so happened to be her namesake.

While we were there, and Evergreen was having a racing/flying competition with Erigor, Lucy whispered to me that we had missed her mother's birthday earlier that month, and I mentally added it to the calendar.

Watching the two of them fly around reminded me about having to practice my own spells, and I mentally sighed. While I had adapted to Jupiter quite easily, the same could not be said for Uranus, which I was still having trouble with. It was a slow going, and part of the problem was that I couldn't make ice appear easily on its own. I could do Uranus's Blizzard, but that was all. The others still evaded me.

Mercury was even harder, and I started to put off practicing it altogether. With the exception of tinkering with a bunch of scrap metal I found, I did nothing else with Mercury, because I couldn't form it at all. That was mostly to practice control, because if I was ever fighting in a junkyard, it could come in handy.

I didn't mention it to Laxus, but his theory about producing magic was wrong, because after trying, I was able to form soil in my hands on my own - which means I could conjure it just fine.

So that was still a bit of a mystery.

We returned to the guild a few days later for Enno's twenty first birthday. Not much happened, other than Enno and Macao officially announcing that they were together. There was a lot of shouting at that, both from Enno's many admires and also from everyone else who was waiting for the two of them to get on with it.

And then it was September, and I was nowhere closer to learning Uranus or Mercury than when I started.

Okay, that's a little of an exaggeration, but I was still having extreme difficulty with them!

It was driving me nuts!

And then came the day I was dreading.

Can you tell my anxiety and depression are acting up?

Also, since I'm a tease, and I left you with this cliffy, I'll leave you with the next title chapter, too. XD

Chapter Forty Nine - Deliora.