The Great Outdoors!

"IT'S STICKY!"

Laxus listened to his little daughter shriek.

The wild according to Layla was bumpy, sticky, prickly, and icky.

Yuri followed Laxus slowly down a gentle path that was familiar to his father. Vaguely, Laxus could remember making a similar journey with his own father, at a time when Ivan felt like trying, although that hadn't lasted long. The path was steady, and it was just easy enough for Yuri to follow, although Laxus had to walk very slow as Yuri had to climb over vines he easily stepped over.

As for Layla?

She wasn't particularly fond of things that were new, and Laxus was sure she'd be fine once she got over the fact she was outside in the wild. As they made their way to a spot Laxus picked out in his mind to camp in, he carried her on his hip because she made it clear she wasn't going to do the outdoors for the time being.

Trying to get Layla to walk when she didn't want to always reminded him of the day he tried to walk Raijin with a collar and leash (everyone had a bad day that day). Moody, a little volatile, but docile and slow moving until she decided to strike. She was a shy girl, but it seemed like every day, he saw a better glimpse of what kind of person she was shaping up to be.

Yuri was fascinated by the forest, by the sounds of the creatures and the wind in the canopy of trees, by the sights of tiny creatures scurrying about at the corner of his peripheral vision, by the scents of countless living things, by the feeling of unfamiliar things under his fingers, and by the taste of the weird things in the forest his father let him eat: berries, some minty leaves that made his tongue tingle, and a carefully selected and safe mushroom.

"I need to potty."

Laxus put his hand on his son's head. "Stay right here, and don't move."

He took his daughter to some bushes and put her down on the mulchy forest floor before he slid his big pack off his back and produced some tissue.

"When we camp, you can just...well, maybe take off your pants and underwear."

Layla looked left and right. "Where is the potty?"

"You can go on the ground."

His daughter was silent for the better part of thirty seconds, but he watched her eyebrows slowly descend into the kind of irrationally rage-filled expression that only a little girl could get away with. "I want to go home right now," she finally said.

Laxus promised Lucy he'd stop letting their daughter order him around, and decided this would be their battleground. He really didn't understand what the big deal was, but after a lot of crying and complaining, he finally talked her into peeing on the ground. He wondered if maybe it was a bad idea to bring a two-year-old girl into the wondrous wilderness, but he was convinced she'd like it eventually.

"And now I wash my hands!"

"Look, we're camping. Your hands are going to be dirty. You're going to poop outside. Don't you like nature at all?"

Her eyes narrowed in a very Lucy-esque way. "NO."

Laxus picked her up and put her back on his hip and returned to the path where Yuri had just finished eating a mushroom despite his father's warnings not to eat any mushrooms unless he picked them. Having heard the screaming commotion of his finicky sister and their father, he had a somewhat exasperated look on his face.

"You better get used to it, son. You're going to be surrounded by girls for the rest of your life."

"Can I pee in the woods?"

"Of cour-not here! At least take a few steps off the path with me, geeze…"

Laxus watched his children have a moment where they stared one another down and Yuri seemed to be thinking 'girls are weird and confusing' while Layla thought 'boys are dirty and gross.' Their father chuckled at them and actually ended up carrying both.

Their camp site was next to the calm bank of a slow stream under a full moon. It was warm, and the night was perfect. There were fireflies seemingly everywhere while he set up the tent.

Layla was absolutely captivated by the little insects and ventured into some very tall grass to reach out to them.

Ivan once took him to this spot when he was tiny, probably about Layla's age, and he could still remember. It was one of their few good memories together, and he'd somehow managed to hold onto the memory all those years even when he didn't want to. Remembering the way he felt as a tiny little boy toward his father made it hard for him to hate Ivan, although he wasn't sure why he still wanted to. His oldest memory was of loving his dad and the forest and the fireflies.

And truthfully, he'd missed being out in nature so much since he became guildmaster, but that part of his life was more or less over. There would be times now and then, but he wasn't a single guy whose primary goal was being the strongest. Now, his goal was to be strong for others; the kids at the guild, and his babies too.

They were magical creatures, the product of Heartfilia and Dreyar bloodlines crossing. And as such, he wanted them to learn how to feel the world around them and to embrace magic, a supremely wild, primal force.

He built a campfire while they ran about until Layla decided she was a firefly. Then they ran around in the tall, wild grass playing with their magic.

"Firefly, Lightning Bug, let's eat."

He washed their hands in the river and they sat down to eat the sandwiches and soup Lucy forced Laxus to carry about as if he was unable to find a meal in the forest. Were it not for these sandwiches, they'd probably be sitting around a lightning-fried boar, but he suspected his picky daughter would have a pretty low opinion of anything so greasy or meaty.

Yuri asked, "When will I grow up?"

"You're growing up right now. Just slowly."

"When will I be bigger than you?" he eagerly asked.

This concept of 'growing up' was a little new and completely revolutionary to Yuri. Laxus could more or less pinpoint the day his son realized he was actually going to turn into a grown up someday. Since then, Yuri had been making some fairly involved plans.

Laxus sipped soup from his little bowl. "Have you decided what you want to do when you grow up?"

He waited for his son to answer and looked at his daughter who was completely gone in the experience of being in the wild that she barely ate.

"I want to build buildings!"

Building the new house spurred Yuri's curiosity in construction and in this particular phase of his childhood, he was less about dinosaurs and more about building blocks and magic trucks and all kinds of other construction paraphernalia.

His father said, "So I don't really want to crush your dreams, but you are a dragon. You will probably spend your entire life as a grownup destroying buildings. And you will like it."

Yuri seemed momentarily distraught, but then asked, "It's fun?"

"Of course."

"I'll be a dragon then! Rawrrr!" he exclaimed, breathing out a few crackles of lightning. "And climb a mountain. I want to be like you someday. But bigger. How tall will you be when I'm grown?"

"Grownups stay the same height, and then when they get really old, they actually start shrinking."

Laxus stuck his finger in his daughter's ear because he couldn't stand for a girl not to pay attention to him. She squealed and gave him a dirty look. "You're just like your mother."

"You're bothering me!"

Sometimes, he felt the same motivation to annoy his daughter that he felt toward his wife. Pissed off girls were cute to him, no matter the age. The fact that Layla made the same expressions and had such a similar face only motivated him further, and when he reached over to tickle her, she tried to bat his hand away.

Laxus easily tickled her anyway, and when she was finished giggling and scowling, he said, "How about you? When you get big, what do you want to do?"

"I dunno."

Laxus moved his hands to the bag for some marshmallows and smores supplies. They ate smores, and Laxus chased them around for a while, and then they stayed up and looked up at the moon until the kids were sound asleep in a bed of grass. Laxus covered them with a blanket and enjoyed being in the still of the wild for the first time in quite a while.

A noise deep in the forest caused by the movement of people caused Yuri to jerk awake thanks to his dragon ears, but the first thing he saw was his father leaning against a tree, looking after them.

Yuri crawled out from under the blanket, but carefully covered Layla up with it.

"You're a good brother. Are ready to be big brother to three sisters?"

"Dad, girls are still weird."

"They'll be weird until the end of time."

There were times Laxus almost couldn't believe that the little boy standing before him was the screaming, squirming little baby they'd had. He once said 'let's make a baby' and now they had a wonderful son who had a personality and desires and hopes of his own.

"Do you ever think a girl is pretty?" his father asked.

Yuri seemed weirdly confused by this question. "What girl?"

"Any girl."

"Hmmmm...no."

"Not even Mama?"

"That's Mama."

Yuri would argue on any day until he was blue in the face that his mother and sister were his Mama and Layla and they were not 'girls.' Other females in his age group besides his sister he seemed to lump into one gigantic category so he could avoid them without much thought. Which was funny because Laxus couldn't take his son to the park without girls chasing his polite but aloof son all over the place.

Laxus once heard a little girl tell him he was cute, which he replied to by saying 'okay, bye' and walking backwards away from her with weird awkward body language his father recognized as his own. Lucy referred to this was 'Recurrent Laxusism.'

His daughter was the opposite.

He wondered what the twins would be like.

He wondered if Yuri would take his own kid to this place in twenty-five years. Which just made him more curious about what went on inside his head. "In your grand plan, when you're all grown up, are you going to have kids?"

"Yeah! I'll be the boss of 'em!"

"Oh? You know that means you're going to have to learn how to talk to a girl then, right?"

"Why?"

"No reason. We'll finish this conversation in about a decade or so."

Layla sat up and rubbed her eyes, and then trudged barefoot in the grass in a half asleep state to her father, plopped down in his lap, and snuggled up to his chest under his coat without saying as much as a word.

He knew they were going to love nature like he did when they slept outside with him instead of in the tent.

XXX

Lucy awoke the morning her husband brought the kids home from their nature adventure to the strangest phenomena. She emitted little electrical shocks every time she touched anything. It vaguely reminded her of the day she ran into Laxus at the market and she had a static electricity field from having balloons rubbed on her. This had, strangely enough, led to their courtship and eventual marriage, which in turn brought about this peculiar pregnancy.

Seven months pregnant with twins, she was already bigger than she'd ever been with either of her other pregnancies and currently weighed more than she ever had in her entire life. Her belly was covered in angry little red lines, and most of her joints hurt because suddenly, she was heavy.

She went to the mirror and saw her hair was standing up everywhere.

She rubbed her belly and said, "Look, I don't know which one of you is pissed off today, but this isn't as funny or as cool as you seem to think it is. Give your poor mama a break."

Lucy pled with her unborn, gave up, and went about her day as well as possible while she awaited her husband's arrival home.

The kids were asleep by the time they made it home, and Laxus released them to the nanny to bathe and put to bed. He'd carried them almost the entire way home, and Layla he'd never really put down except at the campsite. He was tired and he needed a shower and a nap himself.

He climbed the stairs of their new home, which he was trying to get used to. Their old house normally smelled like playdoh, macaroni and cheese, and air freshener, along with a weird scent the tiger left that only Yuri and Laxus could smell. It was the scent of a predator, and the dragons also excreted something similar.

The new house smelled like construction dust and new carpet, but it was big and the kids had their own playroom and he had a study and the family could sprawl out and not annoy one another when necessary.

Makarov was in the living room writing in a ledger, probably for one of his business ventures with Chelia. "Your wife is pissed."

"What did I do now?"

"Go see for yourself."

Laxus headed upstairs, and while peeling his clothes off for a shower, saw her laying in the bed with her hair sort of standing up and moving about on its own. He chuckled and jumped in the shower, knowing at least one of the babies had some dragon blood in her. This pleased him as all the other dragon babies were males and there was some talk that maybe dragon blood only passed to boys.

He was going to have a little dragon girl, maybe two.

Lucy was waiting was waiting for him when he emerged from their bathroom. "Laxus! Tell your kid to settle down and stop electrifying their mother."

"At least they're not electrocuting you."

"Laxus! God, they're worse than you after…"

Sometimes, after an incredible romp involving multiple rounds of sex, Laxus left her similarly surrounded by static electricity. He was usually amused and pleased with himself that left her like that until after he slept.

"I don't know how that leads to an imbalance. I take your ions, but I give you my-"

The glare she gave him stopped him mid-sentence and he reached out and poked her, causing the static electricity to drop.

They spent most of the afternoon resting in bed as the kids were napping for once, and when Lucy woke up and went downstairs, she found her son sitting on the floor of living room with all his big cardboard blocks. The kids had been told they had their own play space, but they refused to accept the idea that the adults could claim any part of the house.

He'd put the big hollow blocks in proper order, making a crude structure from stacked blocks. And he seemed so pleased with himself.

Lucy thought it was so damn cute that her son wanted to be a builder and make houses and she'd spoken to him often about it. Yuri was quite imaginative and had an idea of what kinds of things he wanted to make someday. "That's really good, what is it?"

"The bad guys are here. Don't worry, I'll get 'em, Mama."

The little boy who wanted to create was suddenly gone and there was a nearly sinister glint in Yuri's eyes as he continued to work.

Lucy sat on the sofa and rubbed her belly. "Yuri, what makes them bad men?"

"They are robbers."

"What did they rob?"

"A zoo."

"What did they steal?"

"A giraffe! I like giraffes!"

He was just like his father, without trying, without knowing, without even thinking that the little dragon was standing in the footprints of his big dragon daddy.

Well into the era of imaginative play, he was capable of creating some fairly creative scenarios. "Lay down," he said.

Lucy played along and laid down on the couch as her son finished his construction.

Yuri jumped atop the coffee table. "I'll get you, you robbers!"

He leapt face-first into the blocks and knocked the whole construction down, and then spent the better part of two minutes throwing the blocks all over the room and making growling noises. This reminded Lucy of every dragon slayer ever. She'd never seen him so thoroughly enjoy anything in his life, and when he'd successfully scattered all the blocks, he picked up an action figure.

"Oh no, they're running for the mountain!" he said as he 'walked' the action figures over Lucy's belly.

His mother said, "Wait a minute, is my belly the mountain?!"

"Yeah. Cause it's so big," he innocently said.

Lucy realized her son had her lay down not because she played an intricate role in his little pretend play, but because her massively pregnant belly happened to be so big it reminded him of a mountain. She sat up and glared at him.

She was going to let him get away with it until the 'robber' went back to the ruins of the previous structure and Yuri decided it would be a great idea to use his somewhat puny lightning breath as well.

Yuri was embracing this destruction, and delighting in it, but cardboard blocks and lightning were a terribly flammable combination and they burnt up and scorched the wood floor.

Lucy watched in horror as her little boy had the grandest revelation about life as a dragon:

"Mama, I like to break stuff!"

His mother knew it wasn't a coincidence that the little boy left to spend some quality time with dad and came back acting like dad. They all knew that Yuri, slowly but surely, was evolving and would someday simply mutate into his father's little clone. From babyhood, Yuri had desired nothing more than to be like his father.

Laxus raced downstairs and found his son amongst the smoldering ruins of his cardboard blocks, looking almost high from exhilaration.

Lucy looked at him as if to say, 'You know this is your fault.'

And he looked at her as if to reply, 'Probably is. So what?'

"Please tell your son not to set our brand new house on fire and that my stomach is not a mountain."

Laxus looked down at his son. "No fires in the house."

"...and?"

"I'm not lying to our son. I heard Mount Prego is the highest peak in all of Fiore."

Yuri ran upstairs to get more toys and Lucy said, "You better talk to him about fires in the house, Laxus. I let your little boy stuff go but this is serious. And did you tell him that he'd like tearing stuff up?"

Laxus shrugged. "I don't really remember."

"I will kick your tail if that boy burns this house down. At least, I want to say I'll do that, but I don't know if I still have feet. I kind of assume they're there, but I haven't seen them in a while."

Please Review!

AN: just a short little chapter I was thinking about today at work.

Special thanks to guest, kurahieiritr JIO, ninjapenguinlover, fiddlefightsong, silverghostkitsune, w1n6s-0f-f1r3, thornado, Ladyallyssa, arouraleona, megumiyoung, katelyn, thealicehuntt, lunastarlady, killer-kelly420, katiekat2001, silverwolf-fox, guest, sassykitten1701, andy24amk, savygirl1515, and 33p1987 for reviewing!