Chapter One Hundred and Nine - Dragneels and Demons, Part One

Amber looked the same.

With the exception of her too-intelligent eyes, it was like I was back in my original world again.

"Are you okay?" Laxus asked, putting his hand on my shoulder.

I put my hand on top of it. "Yeah. I'm…yeah. I'll be okay."

His hand had a grounding presence, and it allowed me to have my arms open when Mari approached with the baby in her arms.

Amber's hair seemed to have too much of an orange tint compared to Mari and Gildarts's hair, but I figured it was probably something that was carried over.

"Hey, Amber," I cooed at her, cradling her in my arms. "I'm Elle, but you can call me Ellie."

I swallowed against the lump in my throat, remembering that Amber had always called me Ellie. Was this one of the reasons I had bonded so quickly with Lucy? The similarities?

A drop of water fell onto Amber's cheek, and I realized I was crying.

The baby frowned at me before reaching up, presumably to wipe away my tears (if Amber was as smart as I thought), but with her poor baby muscles she ended up poking me in the chin.

Well, she was either going to wipe away my tears or grab my hair, which she had also done a lot before.

I giggled at Amber and smiled, reaching up to wipe my tears away with my other hand.

"What have I missed?" I asked, looking up.

Laxus smiled down at me and his baby sister, and I was grateful that he didn't mention the tears (for now. He'd undoubtedly bring it up later). "Well, we're setting a specific part of the guild up for the kids. Freed is lining it with runes. After all, now we have Maxie, three babies/toddlers, and we've got Enno and Macao's kid coming up, too."

That's right, Romeo was due in February.

"That's probably a smart idea," I said, nodding. "Am I allowed to leave the infirmary bed?"

"Will you stay if I ask you to?" Laxus asked.

I scowled, but nodded.

"You can come downstairs," Laxus said. "But give me Amber."

I didn't want to let her go, but Laxus had a point, even if he didn't say it. It probably wasn't a good idea for me to be carrying a baby down the stairs, even if Phoenix did say that I was healthy.

"Hey, Big Sis, you're up!" Bickslow greeted me at the bottom of the stairs. His eyes were glowing.

"Bickslow?" I asked. "What's up? Are you using your Eyes right now? Is everything alright?"

He grinned at me. "Everything is juuuuuuuuuuust fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine."

"Nothing to see here, Elle!" Papa piped up.

I glared at him. "You're acting suspicious."

"Juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine," Bickslow repeated, the dopey grin on his face, before turning and floating away, his puppets following him and laughing.

"…okay, then. That's not weird at all," I said.

Laxus snorted next to me. "Yeah, he's been acting weird for the past two days."

"Any idea what caused it?"

Laxus shrugged. "We wanted to know more about what happened when you were out, so Bickslow was going to try and focus on your soul. Then he just…left. He's been like this since then."

I sighed. Another thing to add to my list.

Speaking of things I needed to do…

I caught sight of Mavis and Zeref out of the corner of my eye and sighed, again.

Not a discussion I wanted to have any time soon, but one I had to have sooner rather than later.

I needed to talk to Zeref about his kids.

While Laxus took Amber to play with Ash and Violet, I met up with Mavis and Zeref in one of the storage rooms.

"What is it, Elle?" Zeref asked curiously.

I took a deep breath. "We need to talk."

"That's why we're here, isn't it?" Mavis asked curiously. I absentmindedly noticed that she was floating, as per usual. In fact, I think the only time I've ever seen her walk was on water. Hmm.

Focus, Elle, I told myself.

"Yeah," I said. "You guys might want to sit down."

The two exchanged a look and sat down on the boxes across from the one I was sitting on.

I took a deep breath. "First, Zeref. Have you done anything about Tartaros or Grimoire Heart?"

Zeref nodded. "Yeah. I might've also dropped some clues on the keys to 'freeing' me to Precht. All of the keys he knew of were bullshit anyway, and this way he shouldn't go around slaughtering all of those villages."

Oh thank everything, I thought to myself.

I had mostly forgotten about that when we returned from Ivan. I had mentioned reigning in the dark guilds to Zeref at some point, but had mostly forgotten about it.

"What's he doing instead?" I asked Zeref.

"Traveling," Zeref said, shrugging. "I've basically sent him on a treasure hunt, or a wild goose chase. We shouldn't be bothered by them for awhile."

I breathed a sigh of relief. "Okay, and about Tartaros?"

He made a bit of a face. "They shouldn't be bothering us too much, I talked to Mard. He should be roping in the others more."

"You realize they're practically your children," I told him.

He sighed. "I know."

I took a deep breath…again. "Speaking of children…we need to talk about Larcade."

Zeref kinda froze up. "…What about him?"

"He doesn't realize he's an Etherious, moron," I told him. "He thinks he's your biological son, and that you're the world's most absent father."

"Zeref!" Mavis cried.

"And then there's August," I continued.

"What about August?" Zeref asked, confused.

"Elle, am I here for any other reason than to berate Zeref?" Mavis asked.

I nodded before looking at the dark wizard. "There's magic that allows for de-aging, right?"

He nodded, looking wary. "Why?"

"Can it be permanent?" I asked him.

"If I need it to be," he said. "Though there could be memory problems…"

I looked at him. "We're going to pick up August and Larcade, de-age them, and the two of you are going to raise them as your children."

They both looked at me, before:

"WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?"

It took over three hours to talk Mavis and Zeref down, and even then, we had to discuss my plans.

They were not happy. Mavis was even less happy because Zeref had left a few things out about his history.

Unfortunately, I realized that I've kinda been depending on Erik too much for communication issues. When someone is having the wrong idea about something, or not communicating, Erik tells me, and we fix it. (Well, I fix it. Erik is too much of a chicken to deal with feelings after his bad encounter with Erigor over Macbeth).

But Erik can't read my mind, or Mavis or Zeref's. And we usually just let the two ghosts do whatever, with the exception of certain events and times.

Except a large part of the Alvarez arc is literally just the two of them being morons, so we should probably stop doing that so much.

Mavis and Zeref did not easily accept August's existence. Then again, I don't blame them. It's a bit hard to swallow that there's a kid out there that was magically produced but is still biologically yours. Mavis especially didn't take it well, since she's been asleep for such a long time, and Zeref had instead been next to August all along as he grew up.

"To be fair," I told Zeref. "August does see you as a caring father. And you also named him, remember? After the month you found him in?"

"YOU NAMED OUR SON AFTER A MONTH? REALLY?" Mavis shrieked.

"I didn't know he was our son!" Zeref protested.

"Oh, so what would you have named him instead?" Mavis shouted, putting her hands on her hips. "I know the names of your demons, Zeref! You aren't. Good. At naming things! 'August' was probably one of the most reasonable things you could've named him."

I let them bicker while I organized my thoughts.

To tell you the truth, I really expected August to kill Natsu at some point in the manga. Not just because (like Larcade) he's jealous of the amount of attention Natsu gets from their father, but also because of their names.

The connection is simple.

'Natsu' is Japanese for summer.

August is the E.N.D. of summer.

"At least 'August' is one of the best month-related names for a male child," I said.

"It's the only month-related name for a male child," Mavis deadpanned.

"Actually, the months July and August were added to the calendar because of Julius and Augustus Caesar, two emperors of Rome. Don't know if you have that history-wise, here…"

"Augustus," Mavis muttered. "We can make that work."

"We can't call him 'Augustus'!" Zeref protested. "I've been calling him 'August' forever!"

"It's just going to be his full name," Mavis argued. "You can't tell people you named him 'August'. But you can tell people you named him 'Augustus' and that he likes to go by August."

I left them bickering about names and went back out into the guild hall.

I didn't really know what to do now.

Well, as I told Zeref, we'd probably pick up August and Larcade.

But I was wondering about Irene.

Especially with Erza…

I looked out over the guild hall.

The rest of the Tower group and the Oracion Seis group were spending time together (probably because some of them would be leaving soon) and I sent a message to Erik.

Hey, Erik, can you send Jellal over here?

His head turned to look at me, and he looked confused, but he shrugged before turning and poking Jellal in the shoulder.

I couldn't hear what he said, but pretty soon Jellal was up and walking across the guild to meet me.

"What's going on, Elle?" he asked me, worriedly.

"So many things," I muttered. "So many things."

He waited patiently.

God, sometimes I love this kid.

I sighed. "Listen, Jellal, has Erza ever mentioned wanting to know her parents? Anything like that?"

His eyes narrowed. "No, but I also never asked. As far as Erza knows, she was abandoned."

I nodded. "Her mother is still alive, and I know where she is. I've been wondering if I should bring her to the guild. Her mom is kinda volatile, too…"

"Would she even join the guild willingly, then?" Jellal asked.

I nodded. Irene technically owed Zeref a debt. If he told her to come join Fairy Tail and get to know her daughter, she'd do it.

See, before I woke up, God let me read the rest of the manga.

It was a bit of a wallop, I'll admit.

And while what I was doing now covered two major points of what I learned (Zeref's kids and Irene) there was a third thing that was bothering me.

Anna.

Anna Heartfilia didn't exit the Eclipse Gate, and that's not right. She should be here.

But she's not and it's weird.

But we'll be visiting Mercurius in early December anyway, for Koku's birthday, so I'd talk to Toma about Anna then. But the fact that she was not here was bothering me; because whether or not she showed up in this time shouldn't depend on me at all. My entrance to this universe should have no influence on that.

Another thing; Laxus's birthday was soon, and I didn't have a song picked out. At all.

The only songs I could think of right now seemed WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too embarrassing to sing.

So that was a thing.

I'd ask some of the other kids for help, but knowing Freed it would spiral out of control.

So maybe it'd just be better to do it on my own.

…..yeah, I'm probably not going to do this on my own. Recommendations for the song would be nice? I have some that could work, but I'd prefer to use something better.

Also, the Ripples/Avenger crossover is a GO! A lot more people wanted to read it than I expected, which makes me very very happy. :). Before I post it online, DOES ANYONE HAVE NAME SUGGESTIONS? It's pretty nameless currently, and I'm not going to post it until I have a title. If I get multiple really good suggestions, I'll post them in the next chapter and you can vote. For now though, suggestions for either the song or the spinoff title would be nice (or both. Both would be amazing!) :)