I return! Hopefully, you guys will enjoy this one, because the ending of this was fun to write!

Dear snowleopard314, greetings! If you want to hear the song Wren played in real life, go on youtube and look up Taylor Davis's Fairy Tail Theme, that's the song I based the description off of. Aw, thank you! Those are very high compliments! I hope you enjoy this chapter too!

Dear RedWolf Lover, hello there! Awesome, thank you! Also, you're welcome, I'm thrilled to hear it moved you to tears (but only if they were happy tears, of course).

Dear CzappaStar, hi there! (offers tissues) there, there...

Dear Gerbilfriend, hey there! I'm so happy to hear you enjoyed it! The song she played is Taylor Davis's cover of the Fairy Tail Theme, you can look it up on youtube or buy it on iTunes (which you should totally do, she deserves all the support in the world for her music). I had a wonderful Christmas, I hope you had the same!

Dear Hope10032, hello! (takes stage bow) You're welcome both for the story and for the Bible verses! Thank you for your lovely review, and your thank you over the verses, I was a teeny bit nervous about posting them. I hope you had a lovely New Year!

Dear ChangelingRin, greetings! Thank you, that means a lot to me, it really does. I hope you continue to enjoy this story!

Dear KisaragiMaru, hello there! Well, consider yourself lucky, as it tends to get crazy over here during Christmas, which is such a pity. I'm glad you enjoyed it! I have no plans for them to ever find out about her de-aging and knife-scar circumstances at this time, but we'll see. Enjoy the newest chapter!

Dear BitterLilyz, hey there! (offers tissue) I'm thrilled to hear how much the chapter moved you! Though hopefully this next one will make you laugh instead cry.

Dear Dragon Lord Draco, greetings! The song is Taylor Davis's cover of the Fairy Tail Theme and is available on both iTunes and youtube if you want to listen. (laughs) The Raijinshū are going to be scary when they grow up, they really are. You're welcome, I'm glad you enjoyed the verses as well as the chapter! You stayed up reading this all night? Wow. Flattering, but wow. Heh, hopefully next Christmas Special will be on time as well, but I wouldn't count on it.

Dear sacke110, hi there! I'm thrilled that you find this story so interesting! Revealing her origins to Fairy Tail is not in my plans at the moment and I highly doubt it ever will be, but we'll see. My muses like to mess with me.

Dear Forecast, hello! Yes! Exactly what I was going for! Yeah, I thought it would be a fun extra reason for why Cana is not going to be an alcoholic in this story, alongside her not being so stressed as to turn to being drunk all the time to deal with it. It was fun coming up with ways they got their future uniforms, glad you enjoyed it! (laughs) The snowball scene was by far my favorite scene in the chapter to write, just barely edging out over the final scene because it was just so much fun to imagine the chaos. If you want to, you are welcome to draw your interpretation of that scene! Or any of the scenes! Just if you do, and you post it, let me know so I can go admire it and link it in my profile.

Dear WolfGirl01, greetings! I'm thrilled that you enjoyed it, mess of emotions or no mess! I hope you enjoy this newest chapter!

Dear Cloudsneverbeentouch, hello! Thank you for your compliments! There will be time skips, but so far I'm not sure if there will ever be a 'huge' one, as I plan to cover several things pre-anime and I like to take my time. I hope that answers your question?

Dear , heya! Glad you enjoyed it! I personally love violin (have played it for years), so I couldn't resist making it part of Wren's life too.

Dear najamuzen, greetings! I'm glad you liked it! You're welcome, I hope you enjoy the latest update!

Dear EmberFlame03, hi there! Aw, I'm so glad you liked it! I hope you had a wonderful holiday and New Years as well!

Dear Pixie, hi! Scrap. I knew I missed something in my edits. Even though I went through that thing three times before posting it... oh well. The guild knew peripherally that Wren had eye magic, but they didn't know what it was or what it did and mostly forgot about it until her temper tantrum over the punch. Wren doesn't use it very often, especially not around other people. Technically, nobody but Wren knows what it REALLY does, because space and space physics are very much not an area of study in Fiore (there's a parallel dimension represented by the stars, I don't think people bother investigating beyond that point). They all think its some kind of black, freezing explosion of some kind. Wren doesn't bother to enlighten them because how would a six-year-old explain her knowledge of complex physics and laws of reality? That's a very good thought! One I've actually had myself for later. At the moment, they're all still saving up money in the team fund and been busy with missions. Wren will get them thinking about expanding in a later because puberty would definitely make their current living arrangements awkward beyond belief.

Dear KEZZ 1, greetings! Glad you think so and I hope you enjoy the latest update!

Dear Chamele, hi! Technically she's not a rebirth character, but I know what you mean. Plus, it was getting kinda tiresome to keep switching names for her depending on POV.

Dear ZaraDimm, hello there! Happy to hear it! I hope you enjoy the newest chapter!

Dear thatgirl221b, hi there! Aw, you're welcome! I hope you continue to enjoy this story!

Dear Kaioo, hello! Well ... it might still happen. You never know. We'll just have to wait and see what my muses decree when we get to that point in the storyline.

Dear demonicKitsune2, heya! I'm so happy you enjoyed it! Playing the violin really can feel like singing when you put enough passion into it, so I thought it was a cool connection to make with her mute status. Not a problem, at the time of the Christmas chapter ages ran like so: Mest - 14. Laxus - 13. Bickslow - 12. Evergreen - 10. Freed - 10. Wren - 6. This current chapter takes place in march of the next year, so the ages are currently: Wren - 7 (her birthday is in April, I'll try to cover it in a one-shot later. Maybe). Freed - 11 (birthday in Feb), Evergreen - 10 (birthday in June). Bickslow - 12 (birthday in May). Laxus - 13 (birthday in November, you'll recall). Mest - 14 (birthday in June). I hope that helps?

Dear storyecho71, hello there! Thank you for your compliments! I hope you enjoy the latest chapter just as much!

Author's Note: I'll try not to talk your ears off because the Review Response section was so long, but real quick, Kuna Longshanks made fanart of Adult!Wren! Check my profile for the link or look her up on deviant art (username is the same there as here) to take a look! She did a lovely job, even included Wren's future 'uniform' (because all anime characters have a distinctive outfit, have you noticed?). Secondly, minor cliffy warning, but not too bad. Thirdly, new character introduced! I hope you all like him. Finally, for my AMOSC and Femme Fatale fans, still working on it. About halfway done with the next AMOSC chapter, managed to make a bit of progress with Femme Fatale, but now Reborn is refusing to talk to me. I'll get there eventually though. Random thing, if I was to post a new story, would you all prefer an FFXV fix-it fic, a My Hero Academia one-shot collection featuring Quirk!Deku, or a collection of random crossover one-shots with anything I felt like at the time. The last one would occasionally feature me gleefully taking turns punting either my main cast from AMOSC or Wren into different universes just to see what would happen. Said crossovers would remain non-canon until either I said so or you guys convinced me to make something canon. Just random thoughts that I've been having, none of those three options would be posted anytime soon, but favor being shown to one or the other would encourage me to work on that favored item some more. Let me know if any of you are interested and which one you'd like to see most (I'd put a poll up, but I can't figure out how). Anyway! On to the chapter!

Copyright Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail or any references made in this story. The only things I own are my OCs who have run off with my plot.

Chapter Thirty-Three: Vacation

(Ten months, one week, five days since joining the Guild)

.

"Have you heard? Circus Night tried to horn in on one of our jobs again." The snippet of conversation from across the guild hall made Wren's ears prick and she frowned mentally. If she remembered correctly, that made the eleventh incident within two months.

Circus Night was a small magic guild that was officially legal and specialized in item location and retrieval quests. Unofficially, there were a lot of rumors of illegal activities that had gotten them kicked out of their original patron town. The Magic Council had launched an investigation into them in January —one the Raijinshū had briefly gotten caught up in by happenstance, which was what attracted Wren's attention in the first place—, but hadn't found enough evidence to convict or disband Circus Night. The mere fact that they had been investigated at all had been enough to ruin the small guild's already shaky reputation and warned a lot of mages off from joining them and clients from sending job requests to them.

Now town-less and very nearly jobless, Circus Night's members had taken to swooping in during the jobs of other guilds, trying to complete the jobs before the assigned mages could and take the reward. While most of the larger guilds in the region had been subjected to the attempted job stealing at least a few times, it seemed that Fairy Tail was the one running into them the most. It never ended well for the Circus Night members who tried it, but several Fairy Tail members had come back with an impressive array of bruises, scratches, and even a broken limb or two to show for it.

Wren wasn't sure if the increased number of run-ins was just because of Fairy Tail Luck or if Circus Night had some kind of grudge against Fairy Tail. She had learned from one of the older members that Makarov and the Master of Circus Night had known each other since the latter was a teenager, but that their relationship had not been on good terms for years. She hadn't asked why they were on bad terms, but considering Fairy Tail Luck, she wouldn't be terribly surprised if the reason was enough for the Master of Circus Night to order his members to specifically target Fairy Tail.

Either way, it concerned her. She had no recollection of Circus Night from the anime, but this early on and with none of the main cast in sight, that meant nothing. Circus Night could very well have caused a lot of trouble before being stopped, or they could have been nothing more than a road-bump in the grand scheme of things. Wren had no way of knowing. Especially not with her own presence causing who-knew-what changes to the timeline just by being there-

A hand came down firmly but gently on her head, startling her out of her thoughts. Wren glanced up to see Laxus watching her out of the corner of his eye, "Need to get your notebook?"

Wren shook her head, then slowly traced out shadowy katakana for Laxus to read, "I am fine. Just thought-" she rolled her eyes, banished the last symbol and replaced it with the correct one, "thinking." She flipped the symbols around for Laxus to read and waited for his verdict.

Laxus eyed the script and his lips twitched, "Better. But you got 'I' and 'fine' backwards again." Wren felt like slamming her head on the table in frustration. Because of course she had.

As her grasp of the Japanese writing system had gotten better, Levy had suggested she get in more practice by using her shadows to write what she wanted to say instead of relying on her sign-language. While the language of hand-signs and whistles Bickslow and she had invented was just fine, it did severely limit her communication skills with anyone who wasn't a member of the Raijinshū and rendered her completely incomprehensible to anyone who wasn't a member of Fairy Tail.

Thus the idea to become proficient at writing what she wanted to say with her shadows so that she could talk to clients and civilians freely even if she got separated from the other Raijinshū. It was a great idea in theory, but in practice it was frustrating. She had to remember to flip the symbols around when she was done writing so that others could read them and she still kept slipping up grammatically and writing the equivalent of Yoda-speak.

Honestly, she was beginning to wonder if she was cursed or something when it came to Japanese letters. Or dyslexic with grammar. Was that even a thing? She was in a world with talking cats and people who could eat fire, so it might legitimately be a thing. That or she was just impatient. It had only been around six months since Levy started helping her learn after all.

Laxus patted her back sympathetically, "You'll get there, Wren. Now what were you thinking so hard about? Looked like trouble." Wren started to wearily raise a hand and Laxus added, "You can take a break from writing if you want. I won't tell."

Wren flashed him a smile and gratefully switched back to her sign-language, "Circus Night tried to steal another of our jobs right? They're getting bolder."

Laxus made a face, "Oh, them. I know what you mean. I don't understand why Jiji hasn't given us permission to just trounce them already."

"He's probably waiting for them to do something that even the Council will see as proper provocation. Otherwise Fairy Tail might get labeled as the aggressor." Wren twisted around in her seat and waved a greeting to Mest as he approached.

Laxus lolled his head back to eye Mest, "And repeatedly job-stealing and attacking our members isn't grounds enough for retaliation?"

Mest smiled thinly as he circled around to the other side of the table and slid onto the bench, "Not when it's Fairy Tail. We have a reputation for being 'hot-headed', 'impulsive', and 'needlessly destructive' among the Council."

Laxus gave a wordless scoff, Wren agreed with him. She had strongly suspected that the Magic Council was biased against Fairy Tail from what she'd seen in the anime, but apparently the bias was there long before Natsu ever came onto the scene to blow up harbor towns.

Laxus bared his teeth in a vaguely animalistic way before he changed the subject, "Whatever. How was your training with Jiji?"

Mest leaned his elbows on the table, "Good. I've finally got the first spell sequence memorized. Master thinks that at the rate I'm learning, he might let me actually test out the spell by the end of the year."

Wren tilted her head to one side, "That's a long time."

Mest waved a hand, "It's a really, really complicated and delicate spell even in it's most basic form. One mistake and, well," he made a grim face, "better to be absolutely safe than be reckless and sorry. I'm honestly still surprised he's letting me learn it at all, even with his supervision." Wren nodded and tried not to let her own unease show on her face. Mest hadn't told them what magic he had decided to learn from the old book Marco had given him for Christmas, arguing that he wanted it to be a surprise, but Wren thought she knew what it was already.

Teleportation hadn't been Mest's only magic in the anime after all, and she highly doubted that the knowledge of how to magically rewrite or delete a person's memory was something you could just look up in a library.

Oblivious to her thoughts, Mest looked around, "Where are the others?"

Laxus lazily flicked his gaze over the guild hall as he answered, "Evergreen's got detention after her temper tantrum in school yesterday. Freed is voluntarily sitting through it with her. Bickslow and Cana are on a job."

Mest jerked in surprise, "Without us?"

Laxus's upper lip curled to briefly reveal a pointed eye-tooth, "Yes. It was an in-town job that asked specifically for a Card Mage. Simple enough job and the reward was too small to split between all of us, especially since the rest of us wouldn't be able to actually help. Bickslow went along in case of Fairy Tail Luck."

Mest shot Wren an incredulous look, Wren shrugged uneasily. Laxus was not particularly pleased about two of the Raijinshū going on a job without him, but Cana had made a good argument and Laxus knew that all seven of them going on every little job every time was overkill. Cana had managed solo jobs just fine before she'd joined the tribe and Bickslow was perfectly competent in hand-to-hand and with his tikis.

Laxus probably would have been happier if Wren had gone with them at least, but Wren was still grounded by Master Makarov after an Incident with a reporter from Sorcerer's Weekly getting into her personal space for pictures once too often.

She still maintained that he deserved it. But apparently Master Makarov thought chasing the annoying reporter around with a 3D shadow version of the Xenomorph from the Earth horror franchise and then having the shadow alien rip apart the reporter's camera and eat the pieces when it caught up with him was overkill.

Though, considering she'd only been grounded from taking missions for two weeks, but not from training or wandering around town, she suspected that the reporter —who hadn't been the annoying Cool™ blond from the anime, surprisingly enough— had gotten on the Master's nerves too with his invasive questions and disregard for anyone's personal space.

The double-doors of the guild flew open, interrupting Wren's musings, and she perked up at two familiar voices calling, "We're back!"

Laxus was already out of his chair and hurrying over to Bickslow and Cana, prowling around them to visually inspect their wellbeing from all angles before he calmed down, "How'd it go?"

Bickslow tongue-grinned, "It went great! Didn't even set anything on fire this time!"

Cana gave Bickslow a bland look, "Canvas awning?"

Bickslow shrugged, tongue-grin only growing bigger, "Okay, one thing. But that's still gotta be a record!" It probably was, and wasn't that a commentary about Wren's life with the Raijinshū in and of itself?

The last of Laxus's subtle tension seeped away, fully restoring his usual, easygoing demeanor, "Bickslow only set one thing on fire? Now this I've got to hear about."

Bickslow was about to launch into the story when there was a loud clap from the second floor of the guild hall and everyone's attention was drawn to Master Makarov. Master Makarov was standing on the railing of the second floor, looking down over his assorted children with a strict eye. Wren wondered briefly what they'd done wrong this time.

Master Makarov folded his hands behind his back, "Everyone listen up! I have important news for you all! Rika-san from Twin Crow Resort just called to inform me that the family of her boss decided to reserve all of the resort's rooms for the first two weeks of June for a big family reunion they're having." Wren blinked at the massive wave of disappointed groans that echoed throughout the guild. What did a resort and its reservation plans have to do with Fairy Tail?

"So…" Master Makarov continued once the groans of despair had died down, "I decided to make our reservations now instead! Everyone go home and pack your things! All other jobs today are canceled! We will meet at the train station in an hour! We have a two weeks vacation to enjoy!" Wait, what?

Bickslow had a similar expression on his face, but before either of them could ask questions, Laxus and Cana had frantically dragged them out the door and down the street, barely avoiding a stampede of cheering guild members while Mest teleported away with the mutter of getting Freed and Evergreen. Bickslow nearly stumbled as Cana hauled him toward the lighthouse by the hand, "What's going on? Why is everyone yelling? Why are we running?"

Laxus had Wren's wrist firmly captured in one hand as they bolted down side streets and around startled pedestrians, "Every two years, Jiji arranges for a vacation for the entire guild at the Twin Crow Resort for the first two weeks of June. He has for as long as I can remember. But now apparently something's come up and Jiji's decided to have the vacation now. We need to hurry up and pack and get down to the train station, latecomers always get penalties for holding up the vacation."

Wren scrambled to both keep up with Laxus and get her whirling thoughts in some semblance of order. What? What? Seriously? We're just supposed to up and go have a two week vacation with no prior notice? What about job requests? What about houses? Pets? Perishable food in the cupboards? What about the guild that's been harassing us for months? He's really having us just pack up and drop off the face of the earth for two weeks? Just like that?

Apparently, the answer to all of those questions was "yes" because Wren spent the next twenty minutes desperately trying to organize the Raijinshū's packing efforts. Spare changes of clothes had to be bagged according to owner and then packed in the only suitcase Mest could find —a giant thing she had never seen before and was sure hadn't been in any of the lighthouse closets before now—. Money had to be retrieved from the team funds and divided evenly amongst the members for potential expenses. And the electrical fire put out in the kitchen because apparently Laxus had looked at the oven wrong on his way up the stairs.

Ten minutes after that and the Raijinshū stood in the train station, frazzled but triumphant because they were not the last people in the guild to show up and thus wouldn't be punished.

Of course, that was the moment Master Makarov spotted them and announced that while the Raijinshū had done a good job getting to the train station so quickly, they had one person too many in their party. Wren was not allowed to come because apparently, since all missions were canceled during guild vacations anyway, the new terms of her punishment for traumatizing the reporter was that she could not come on the vacation. She had to stay in town for the two weeks until the rest of the guild got back.

The Raijinshū nearly pulled a mutiny right there in the station, but Wren managed to calm them down and prevent them from doing more than accidentally blow up a few of the overhead lights —Laxus—, set fire to the schedule board —Bickslow who had been aiming for Master Makarov— and shatter a window —Cana had amazing pitch when she was furious—.

It took most of the time that remained before the train left to convince the Raijinshū to go on the vacation without her. She almost thought she wouldn't win that particular fight, but she had gone to all the trouble of organizing their packing and it just wouldn't be fair for the real children of the team to miss out on the fun because of something she had done.

Mest tried to volunteer to stay behind, but Wren begged him to stay with the others because Laxus would need all the help he could get to keep the others in line. Bickslow had to be talked down from trying to hit Master Makarov with his tikis again, and Laxus looked like he had a migraine from trying to choose between going with the majority of his tribe or staying and protecting the "littlest".

In the end, Wren only managed to convince them to go by pointing out that the less members of Fairy Tail in the area there were, the less Fairy Tail Luck there was. So technically she would be much safer staying home than going with them to an unfamiliar place that was packed to the brim with trouble-attracting Fairy Tail members.

She also may or may not have used the Look to make them obey her and get on the train, but that was completely her business, thank you.

Finally, all the Fairy Tail members had been packed into the last few cars on the train line —the conductor had experience with their guild didn't want them anywhere near the engine of the train— and Wren waved them away with a heavy heart, a long list of "safety rules" to follow, and one of Cana's special SOS cards on top of her tracking card.

Wren sighed and rolled her eyes as the train disappeared into the distance. Missing out on the vacation was disappointing, but she had been worried about the house and she wasn't the only member staying behind. Wakaba had forgone the trip upon the request of his latest girlfriend, whom he actually seemed to be getting quite serious with. Magnolia was mostly inoculated to Fairy Tail Luck, so while she wasn't stupid enough to not expect trouble, Wren figured the biggest trial would be entertaining herself for the next two weeks.

She was mentally a full grown adult and physically a very capable mage despite her age. She could handle staying in Magnolia for two weeks by herself. It would be a bit like taking a vacation of her own, away from the chaos of the other Raijinshū and Fairy Tail. It would fine. Right? Right.

.

.

.

So.

It turned out that Wren had no life. At least, not one outside of Fairy Tail, the Raijinshū, and the chaos involved therein.

In her defense, those things usually took up all of her time quite handily. There was always a mission to go on, a fire to put out, bandits to beat up, or a host of other crazy things to do that had somehow become her new version of normal when she wasn't looking. She could even argue that there was nothing particularly wrong with that, as Fairy Tail was both her job and her family, which comprised the two most time-consuming chunks of anyone's life, not just her own.

Unless, of course, said job went on hiatus and said family went on vacation without her. Leaving Wren to discover that she had very little to do outside of those two things and that it was in fact possible to go insane from boredom. Why else would she miss the daily brawls —by far one of the most annoying things about Fairy Tail— so badly if she hadn't lost her mind from sheer lack of things to do?

The past eleven days had been spent diligently going to school —and trying not to prank the teacher out of frustration—, training by herself —she now knew how to make a clone of herself using her shadows, but the thing was a lazy jerk that refused to train with her no matter what she threatened—, and practicing her reading —she had officially moved on to chapter books about talking rocks! Someone kill her now while she still had dignity left—.

She had managed to shake things up a few days ago by grabbing her violin and improvising with her scales on street corners. It had earned her quite a bit of pocket change because apparently six-year-old street performers were adorable. Unfortunately, there was only so much violin playing she could do per day before her tiny hands cramped and so that was only about two or three hours of non-boredom in an otherwise unbearably long day.

She had known that the Raijinshū was on the co-dependent side, but this was ridiculous. She was an adult —no matter what she looked like outwardly— and she should have been able to entertain herself without the aid of the actual children of the tribe!

"Yo! Excuse me!" The young voice jerked Wren out of her brooding and she looked over her shoulder, trying to identify to whom the speaker was calling out. She promptly had a near heart-attack from shock at the sight of an unmistakable shock of black hair and dark eyes jogging in her direction, "Hold up a minute!"

Wren barely had the presence of mind to slow her steps and point at herself in question. The approaching figure grinned and waved emphatically with the hand that wasn't pulling at his coat, "Yeah, you with the case! Wait up!" Wren stopped and stared as the boy jogged over to her. Naturally narrow dark blue eyes locked with round hazel as he came to a stop in front of her, obliviously plopping the coat he had just wiggled out of onto her shoes as he asked, "You know the way to a guild called Fairy Tail?"

And that was how she first officially met Gray Fullbuster.