Chapter Fifty Six - Bands and Babies

The rest of the party was great, and I absolutely loved it. The boys also asked for more songs, and I told them that I'd give them more as long as they gave credit when due and changed the band name.

"What's wrong with EXTREME AWESOMENESS?" Erigor asked, pouting.

"Everything," I had said.

And there was some grumbling, but we agreed to meet up the next day to go over band names.

It should not be that hard to find a good band name.

And some of the ideas were admittedly good, but some were absolutely horrible.

"How about Imagining Awesomeness?" Erigor asked.

I sighed. "Stop it with the 'Awesomeness', please."

"What about Fade to Black?" Lyon asked.

"I'd prefer Fade to White," Erigor said.

"What about Fade to Gray?" Freed suggested. "As a compromise."

Everyone looked at Gray, who shuddered and said, "No way."

"Fade to Silver?" Bickslow asked.

"Nahhh, that sounds stupid," Erigor complained.

"And my dad would get a big head," Gray muttered.

"What about Monsters Under the Bed?" Nab asked.

"Too childish," Erigor sighed.

"What about Between the Lines?" Freed said quietly.

I paused. "That's a pretty good one."

And so I wrote it down.

"What about Out of Control?" Bickslow asked.

Erigor sat up from where he laid, sprawled out on the couch in his apartment, where we were meeting. The rest of us were deigned to the floors. "What about Out of the Chaos?"

Lyon 'hmmed'. "What about instead, it's Chaos Climbing?"

"How about Creating Chaos?" Laxus suggested lazily.

"Those are pretty good," I said, adding them to the list, though I was a bit surprised by Lyon's contribution. "Any other ideas?"

"How about Dead Hearts?" Erigor asked. "Or Lost Souls?"

"How about Lost Hearts?" Gray joked. "Or Dead Souls?"

Bickslow turned to him. "What the hell is a 'dead soul' supposed to be?"

Gray just shrugged.

"How about Hot Mess, like we are?" Nab muttered. He was ignored.

"How about No Evidence?" Erigor asked.

I stared at him. "You can't call it 'No Evidence'!"

He shrugged. "Fine, then how about Leave No Evidence?"

I facepalmed. "Moving on…"

"What about Losing Memories…?" Lyon asked thoughtfully. That seemed more like him.

"What about Making Memories?" I asked. "We don't want them forgetting the songs."

Nab muttered something, but it wasn't heard.

"How about Caught in the Crossfire?" Laxus asked.

I added it to the list. "That's pretty good."

"How about Screaming Cucumbers!" Nab said loudly, and sarcastically.

We all turned to him, and his shyness seemed to seep back into him. He looked away, embarrassed. "I actually have what might be a good idea, if you guys want to hear it…"

"Go for it Nab," I said.

He hesitated, and blushed a bit, before saying. "If we're just going to do covers of songs from Elle's original world, maybe we should go by 'Cloudy Constellations'. Because we're obscuring the original version?..."

"It sounds a bit fruity," Gray said.

"Shut up, Gray," Lyon and Erigor said together.

"How do the rest of you feel about it?" I asked.

"I like it!" Erigor proclaimed.

There were nods of agreement around the room. I looked at them, slightly surprised about the name (though I was mostly surprised that Nab was able to stick to one name). "Do you all agree?"

They nodded.

"Then I now pronounce you as Cloudy Constellations!" I proclaimed.

It sounded like a band I would listen to, anyway.

And I tucked the list with band names into my back pocket.

Hey, you never know.

And from what I could tell from Cana's reaction at the party, the boys weren't going to be the only band around here…

I was right.

The next day I was kidnapped by the girls (with the exception of Lucy and Brandish) and pulled into Cana's room at Gildarts's house.

"We're going to make a girl band!" Cana declared.

I sighed.

Of course we were.

I managed to get out of the girl band, luckily enough, by giving them the list of names and promising to split songs between groups depending on the topic of song and the people's voices.

I don't know what name they're going to pick, and I do not care.

I'm just glad to be out of it.

I heard, at Ultear's tenth birthday party, that they managed to rope Brandish and Lucy in to the girl band idea.

Which was ridiculous because it already had every other girl in it.

I told them that they were probably better off making two bands, with the amount of girls in the guild.

Where they went from that, though, I have no clue.

June 1st, which came around pretty quickly, was filled with both excitement and sadness.

Excitement, because it was Lucy's eighth birthday and she could join Brandish and the others on missions.

And sadness because she couldn't open up another gate.

"Ellie-nee…" she said quietly.

I crouched down and hugged her. "Sweetheart, sometimes we go through ups and down. So you've hit a bump in the road – so have I. But we'll keep working on it., anyway."

I handed her a box with the keys to Musca, Chamaeleon, and Apus in it, to go with Crater, Ursa Minor, and Delphinus, which I had given her last Christmas.

She looked at me and nodded, smiling at the box as she took it and requipped it away. "Okay. Thanks, Ellie-nee."

Corvus bent down next to her. "She's right, princess. A lot of wizards hit a certain point and stop trying to get stronger because they don't think it's possible. But sometimes it just takes a little more time."

"As much as I hate to admit it, he's right," Loke piped in, glaring at Corvus, who immediately glared back. Loke turned back to Lucy. "You're already the strongest Celestial Mage in existence, Lucy, and I know you're going to get even stronger. It took you longer to get up to Phoenix's level, remember? We know you're moving up slower, but you're still moving up."

She smiled at them, and gave them both a hug…at the same time.

"Thank you, you guys!" she said happily, wrapping an arm around each of them. All the while, Corvus and Loke glared at each other over her back and tried to fight off the urge to beat the shit out of each other while their precious princess was in the way.

Things didn't really happen over the rest of the month. We celebrated Nab's eleventh birthday, and then it was time for the Grand Magical Games.

"So who's ready for this year's Grand Magical Games? It's time to pick our teams!" Makarov announced, walking into the training room. We had specifically called a meeting for this, and Brandish and Lucy had joined the party.

"Okay," I said, smiling. "…who wants to go this year?"

Brandish raised her hand. "I'd like to, Nora."

I nodded. "Anyone specifically want to sit out?"

Macao and Wakaba exchanged a look, and Enno coughed to get my attention.

"Yeah?" I asked, turning to them. "You guys want to sit out?"

They exchanged a look again.

"We think…" Macao said, speaking up. "That maybe we should start shifting the teenagers to the adult team."

"Why?" I asked, confused.

They looked at each other again.

"Maggie and Rex are going to get married," Enno finally said.

I blinked. "What?"

"Maggie and Rex are going to get married," Enno repeated firmly.

"Why?" I asked. "I mean, they're a cute couple, but it's a bit out of the blue."

"They've been secretly dating for awhile," Enno said.

"Yeah, and then Rex forgot protection," Wakaba snorted.

My eyes widened. "Maggie's pregnant!"

They all nodded.

"Juvia doesn't understand, Onee-sama. What happened?" Juvia asked.

"I'll explain when you're ten," I sighed, waving her away, and turning back to Macao. "What'll happen now?"

"They'll probably be leaving the guild to get settled down (though that might change with the amount of kids running around) but at the very least, neither of them will be competing," Macao said. "In addition to that, you kids are the some of the strongest wizards in the guild. I'm sure one of you will hit S-Class before Wakaba or I do."

"There are more and more of you each year," Enno commented. "And we want you all to get a chance to compete."

"Are you sure?" I asked.

They all nodded, once more.

I turned to Silver and Ur. "And you two?"

"Can we have three teams?" Gildarts asked, suddenly snickering.

I sighed, rolling my eyes. "I'll see if I can do something about that. If we get a third team, it will be Macao, Wakaba, Enno, Silver and Ur. Right?"

They all nodded. "Sure."

"Alright, who wants to compete?" I asked, turning to the kids.

The older team consisted of Me, Laxus, Erigor, Freed and Ultear with Evergreen as reserve.

The second team consisted of Cana, Lucy, Brandish, Lyon, and Gray with Juvia as a reserve.

Reedus and Nab both sat out, because they didn't want to compete. Levy also said she preferred watching the games to competing, so she'd like to sit out as well.

Bickslow was sitting out, because he still only had one soul, and I could see it was getting to him. He was feeling left behind. But Makarov and I were already monitoring all job requests that could have anything to do with a lost soul, and we haven't found anything.

And then the games were upon us.

I visited Hisui before the games started, of course, and Ame said that they were going to be watching.

"Are you sure it's safe?" I asked. Hisui would be two years old in about a month, but still... "Some of the stuff can get pretty violent."

She nodded. "There are restrictions and new rules. Make sure you guys look it over."

"Gotcha," I said. "Fairy Tail wants to know if we can enter three teams."

Her eyes widened. "Why?"

I shrugged. "It's not about winning or the title for us. It's about having fun." And also showing off.

She gave a small smile, and let out a giggle. "I'll have them add it to the rulebook in a small print. We haven't passed them out yet, anyway."

I giggled. Okay, I was starting to see the point in doing things like this...it was fun.

"I don't understand, Levy-san," Juvia was saying as I entered our hotel room. "What does it mean by 'Alignment'?"

"Look, Juvia-chan," Levy was saying, pointing to an alignment chart. "This has a lot to do with your personality! A lot of us fit into certain categories. For instance, Lu-chan is Neutral Good! And Elle-chan is Chaotic Good!"

Am I?

I shrugged. Nothing wrong with that.

"Hey guys, we get three teams!" I said happily. "And Ame is going to hide the rule so no one else notices!"

"See?" Levy said. "Chaotic!"

Eh. So what?

I told Team C (weird thought), and got everyone ready for the preliminaries. Our letters were organized from youngest to oldest, so the team Laxus and I were on was Team B.

And then, at midnight, as our generation stood in our hotel room, the alarms rang throughout the city of Crocus.

"Let the games begin!"

Fun Fact! I'm a Neutral Good, too! Sometimes I have some chaotic thoughts though...they usually all end up in my writing. :)

As for Maggie and Rex, let's just say that in the original timeline they left the guild when Maggie got pregnant but now that there are so many kids running around, they won't do that.

May we send up our wishes that the faithful IceHound returns to us soon. (They said this was the best Fairy Tail fanfiction they read. I didn't believe them and gave them a list of some of my favorites.) For now, however, they drift among fanfiction heaven...this was also why I was going to wait until this story was done to post a list of Fairy Tail fanfictions that helped inspire me to write this...

Also, if anyone wants to see a picture of Laxus in his band clothes, or a fan drawn picture of Elle by Erza763 (thank you so much my lovely!), check out this story on Wattpad or Quotev. The previous chapter holds Laxus's, and this chapter has Elle's.