Dear readers, I hope you like the happiness exploding from the pages! I like to think I'm funny. I hope you think so too.

Thanks again to GoddessxNyte2 for the helpful beta-ing!

Mashima owns Fairy Tail, Desna owns the Pradesh Fam!

Enjoy!

When Lucy eventually found him, he was pacing in a clearing that had most definitely not existed before one Gildarts Clive of Fairy Tail had been forced to wait around in a forest without moving.

Little cubes of what used to be trees littered the ground. Little cubes of what used to be ground littered the slightly deeper sections of ground. Lucy took one look, pinched the bridge of her nose, and decided lecturing him about his magic control wasn't worth the effort.

She just rolled her eyes, letting Plue down so he could visit with Gildarts before he had to go home.

The little dog spirit approached him from behind, as they'd come up behind him, and Gildarts turned to him just before the trembling little dog had reached his destination. He held his arms out wide with eyes closed in happiness and shouting, "Lucy, I knew I could feel your magic coming closer, bring it in for a hug!"

Lucy, who had made her way to the northern part of the mage-made clearing to check out a particularly interesting pile of rubble, nearly stumbled and fell right into a hoard of miniature bunnies. Thankfully, she caught herself, but her sputtering in shock rendered her speechless. Because Gildarts, who was very much not facing her, was sensing Plue's magic and assuming it was her own. Which it clearly was not. And the pieces were suddenly starting to fall into place, as to why a self-proclaimed expert in all things magical tracking and magical sensing couldn't manage to find a single celestial mage in a relatively small forest.

She narrowed her eyes, crossed her arms over her chest, and waited for him to realize what had happened because she wanted to see how deep of a hole he would dig for himself.

After a few moments with no response from the celestial mage that he was certain was standing directly in front of him, Gildarts opened his eyes. Instead of being greeted by a bubbly blonde young adult, he spotted the tiny, trembling creature known as Plue pulling on his pant leg.

He was surprised, but didn't waste any time in reaching down and enthusiastically scooping the spirit into his arms, "Oh, hey Plue! Where's your master?"

Lucy, for all her forgiving qualities, and her caring personality, had always had a pretty significant temper (she frequently wondered if she was so forgiving out of habit, as she got so angry so easily that forgiving quickly was kind of… necessary). Which was only made worse by the fact that her body was still sore from the rapid opening of her third origin two days ago, and the fact that she'd been limping for the last hour on a twisted ankle that she had injured tripping over a particularly nasty tree root. A tree root that she would have avoided altogether if it hadn't been for this overly confident mage standing in front of her insisting that he could pick out her magic and find her. Even after she'd told him that several of her spirits were out and about in random parts of Ishgar.

And it was hot. She was sweaty. A combination that never failed to make her explode into a fit of rage at the most minor provocation.

White hot anger coursed through Lucy's veins, "I'm here, Gildarts," she finally spoke up from the wizard's left. She spoke with a deadly calm tone, shooting a glare at the oblivious man who'd forced her to run in circles for days.

"And for the last time, I'm not his master! I'm his friend! Plue," she added, voice taking on a genuinely sweet and caring quality, "head home, okay?"

Hearing Lucy's dismissal of her spirit, Gildarts gulped. There was no mistaking the anger in her tone, and if it was bad enough that she didn't want Plue to witness it? Yeah, he was in trouble. Though he still hadn't quite figured out what for.

He may or may not have started chanting a mantra in his head, over and over. It may or may not have been something about tiny blondes not really being able to hurt him. Something about Scary Lucy not being real.

"Pun!" Plue answered happily, and sealed Gildarts fate as he disappeared in a flash of gold.

Gildarts instincts didn't seem to believe the things he was chanting in his head. No matter how many times he repeated it. The Century-Class Mage just stared at her, trying hard not to cower. Hoping that Scary Lucy (who was obviously very real) couldn't smell fear.

"You mean to tell me…" Lucy began, "That you've been trying to track me all day, and didn't even have the fucking ability to tell the difference between my magic and my spirits?!"

Oh. Gildarts thought he was starting to understand what he'd done wrong. Because, well, she had warned him that her spirits were out and about in random parts of the world. But, he didn't know they would throw off his tracking! He hadn't thought of that!

Truthfully, he wasn't a great thinker, in all reality. He just kind of crashed through things.

Literally.

"Uhh… I didn't know you all had the same magic?" he responded lamely, holding up his hands in some kind of 'surrender' gesture. If he'd had a white flag, he'd have been waving that fucker like his life depended on it.

"LUCY KICK!" she shouted, catching the man off guard as she connected with his stomach and sent him back several… inches. He was fucking indestructable, and damn it if that didn't just piss Lucy off more.

The man clutched his stomach and doubled over (a few seconds too late to be a genuine reaction), and he had barely moved so she was more than pretty sure it was just for show. Maybe so Lucy didn't get it in her head that she needed to repeat the gesture to get her point across.

She screamed in frustration and just glared at him, "You IDIOT! They don't have the same magic. They have their own, they just use mine as a base! If you were actually skilled at tracking, or even just sensing, you'd be able to feel the difference! UGH!" she stomped her feet like a petulant child. Not that she'd admit to the action if asked later, "I can't believe I wasted my whole day on this when I could have just found you myself. Stupid, egotistical-"

She kept up the string of insults for several minutes. He was pretty sure she started speaking Minstrellan there for a while. He even thought he caught a little bit of Boscan and Old Fiorian before she finally gave up ranting and just sat heavily on the ground and just kept up with the glaring.

As physically hurting him to express her frustrations was clearly not an option. She made a promise to herself there and then that she'd use every bit of training he gave her to get strong enough to make him at least wince. Or something. Some outward sign of minor discomfort when she struck him.

She'd been silently attempting to kill him with her single-eyed glare for several minutes before he spoke up, "Ah… Well… Sorry?" Gildarts offered meekly, sitting down next to her as well.

She rolled her eye at his less than comprehensive apology, but felt her anger dissipating. If only slightly.

Lucy felt a tug at one of her bonds, and a slight warmth on the underside of her right forearm, as the pink maid popped up to Lucy's left. Virgo gave her an almost sympathetic glance (if you could read it past her expressionless features) before turning to Gildarts and handing him a thick letter envelope, sealed with a wax and a tiny version of the guild's symbol stamped on it.

He took it and weighed it in his hand, raising an eyebrow at Lucy. She ignored him.

"Thanks Virgo. Did you want to go somewhere today?" Lucy asked her loyal spirit. She had enough energy to re-open a gate somewhere on Ishgar, and as Lucy didn't particularly care where she was leading her false trails, she'd been letting her spirits pick places they wanted to see again. Without having been there herself, she couldn't make them exact, but she could put them in the general area where they wanted to be.

Virgo nodded quickly, "Yes, actually, princess. If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to visit Iceberg for a while."

Lucy had no clue what there was to see in Iceberg, but decided not to question it and just smiled at her spirit, "Alright. Let me know if I miss. Go on back, I'll get your gate open!"

Virgo disappeared, and Lucy groaned and fell to her back, sprawling over the one clear spot in the ground that was still grass in exhaustion. She still had magic, but the concentration it took to keep everything going was… intense. Her brain was tired.

She closed her eyes, and silently summoned Virgo's gate to Iceberg. Or she thought she did. Her aim still needed improvement.

Gildarts watched as one of the gold key tattoos on Lucy's arm glowed softly and he felt the pulse of her magic next to him. Huh. That was new.

He didn't know Lucy's abilities that well, but he was pretty sure she'd never had those tattoos before. And also sure he'd never seen that weird, squiggly tattoo on her collarbone before - though she'd been covering up more of her chest in the last few times he'd been to the guild, so he guessed it could have been there. And he's also pretty sure he'd never seen that weird, upside-down star shaped tattoo over her heart.

He'd never really witnessed her abilities. He wasn't lying, though, he did have a good magical sense, and she'd always had a lot of magic power, but as she never flaunted it he never thought to take notice. Now?

Seeing some things he'd never known celestial magic to be able to do, he had some questions.

Lucy was clearly exhausted, though, and he had a letter to read, so he decided to save those questions for later.

Gildarts carefully unsealed the letter and began reading it as Lucy slipped into a sort of meditation by his side.

Three pages and several minutes later Gildarts could be heard whispering quietly in the clearing, "What the fuck have you gotten yourself into this time, kiddo?"

He'd assumed Lucy had fallen asleep, or was just meditating so deeply that she wouldn't hear him, so he was surprised by her tired voice responding to him.

"Don't call me kiddo, you overconfident geezer."