It was small – barely larger than a marble. It was iridescent, and it glowed; magic emanated from the orb into Sam Redfox's hand.

He was in the woods with a person who was strange to him but would have been recognized in an instant by several of the adults in the guild. He was an enemy, but even Sam knew he probably didn't have good intentions.

"It'll make you more powerful than anyone you know," the stranger said.

He introduced himself, and Sam followed suit.

Sam rolled it around in his palm, and knew this was true. There was a terrifying amount of power in it, and if he could somehow wield it, well…he wouldn't have to feel like he was second-rate anymore.

He didn't know they'd all been studied and he was selected.

Bluenote Singer said, "Several ordinary people have attempted to use it. We believe it may only be usable by someone who is dragon born. It's a short list. Most of those people are children in Fairy Tail, but there are a few others scattered. If you're not interested, the Cheney boy will be."

He failed to mention the human mages that tried to fuse themselves with the lacrima were all deceased. Sam's wellbeing was a non-concern for him. If he died, Bluenote planned on collecting the lacrima and moving on. If he lived, the confluence of events would likely end up Sam on the wrong side of his guild.

"You want something? For this," Sam said.

Bluenote said, "I've heard that in Makarov's final years, he transferred a great deal of information to one of his great-granddaughters. There's a certain spell I want. Fairy Glitter."

"A-Are you asking me to steal Layla's notebook?"

And that—that was the mistake. He was still just a young teenager and he didn't know the full impact of these words, but he knew he'd messed up. With one sentence, he'd disclosed it had been written down, that he knew where it was, and that Layla was the one in possession of it.

"Layla Dreyar…the oldest…has a notebook with Fairy Glitter's formula?" Bluenote asked.

Sam felt a cold chill crawl up his spine.

Bluenote closed his fist around the lacrima and Sam felt it sink into his skin.

"H-Hey wait! Don't hurt her. She's my friend. And she'll never give it to you! And what about her dad? And our whole guild!"

Sam started to feel dizzy and sick, his stomach turning violently at the sudden increase in magic. He gripped a tree, and threw up, making arguments and pleas that were ignored by Bluenote. He blacked out, and when he woke up, the first thing he did was run to the Dreyar house, only to find things as peaceful as ever.

Layla was watching the baby while her parents were at the guild, the twins were playing chess, and Yuri was out.

Things were normal, quiet.

Sam thought about telling Master Laxus about what had happened, but he didn't. He thought about telling his father, or Natsu, or anyone, but he already felt excluded and he didn't want anyone to know he'd said anything. None of it had been intentional. Plus, he knew no matter what, everything would be okay. Layla was powerful and then she had a whole family and guild.

If anything got out, he felt like everyone would think he intentionally betrayed the guild.

So he didn't say anything.

He was sure that even if Bluenote showed up, Layla would knock him out and move on. He had no understanding that he was on the level of Laxus and Natsu and had risen to be one of the most powerful figures in the world of dark magic. He didn't comprehend how powerless they were as younger wizards compared to such a powerhouse.

Sam was making casual conversation with the twins and trying to convince himself everything was really okay when he noticed Mavis start fidgeting like she was nervous. Her nose twitched now and then and she looked up at him, a little confused.

"You're making me nervous, could you go away?" Mavis pointedly asked.

She really had no idea how to pinpoint what the problem was, but for some reason she felt very uneasy around Sam. His scent was a little off. "You stink too, go home and take a shower."

Yuri came in with a job slip in hand. "Layla!"

The blonde leaned over the rail. "Yuri, if you wake up the baby, I'm going to leave him with you until he stops crying!"

"You're yelling too!"

"Don't tell me what to do!"

He held up the job slip. "Let's go on this job. Mom and Dad said it was fine since school is out. I need your magic. It's a job to dispel a mysterious shadow. Dad said it might be dangerous. It pays good."

Layla needed no convincing and Sam felt relieved that she was leaving.

Lex started screaming when his sister squealed in excitement, and Anna sighed deeply and headed upstairs to take over the care of their tiny little brother. The baby had been quite a family effort, with everyone joining together to make sure he was well-loved and well taken care of. As far as the older kids were concerned, she realized she was possibly the most mature.

Mavis grumbled at this and knocked the chess pieces onto the floor. "Babies with babies, what a tragedy."

Yuri tilted his head. "I don't think that's what that means."

"Might as well. I was going to win! Can I come on your job?"

Yuri thought about it, and then shook his head. "Stay at home this time. Next time."

Sam decided to go home and was about to leave when Yuri zeroed in on him suddenly and grabbed his arm. "Huh? What is it?"

Yuri asked, "Why do you smell like that?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know…like someone else. Were you in a fight? I think someone bled on you. It's gross."

Sam couldn't smell himself, but he'd come into contact with two dragon noses and they'd both smelled—and been disgusted by—whatever was inside of his body. That made him feel scared to go home, because his dad had a nose too. Then he remembered his dad left for a job and quietly went home to take a shower and think about what to do next.

The oldest Dreyar siblings left and the twins fed, changed, and kept Lex entertained until their parents came home late from work at the guild.

Laxus usually went to his study after dinner, and if he had, he would have found a note left for him by Yuri, whose instincts had been triggered by Sam's nervous behavior and strange scent.

Tonight, he ate dinner, took a shower, and got in bed with Lucy and the newest member of the family.

His wife was giggly with Lex, kissing his feet and his belly and everywhere else.

"Lex, you're a glutton for snuggles," his father said.

Lucy kissed her husband. "His sisters have him so spoiled. He's a happy little guy, isn't he?"

"He's surrounded by pretty girls who tend to his every whim. He's a guy, what guy would complain about that?"

Lucy rolled her eyes at her husband and looked down at the baby. "You're not a guy! You're my precious baby boy, yes you are! But someday, you're going to get big. Mama's little man, that's right." She chased her dotings with a flurry of kisses to the baby.

"Two sons, both unapologetic mama's boys…" he complained.

"Oh hush. You're a bigger whore for my attention than both of them combined. Especially Yuri. I'm so glad I have a new son because I am so tired of him growing up. I can't believe he's about to be sixteen. The twins are turning twelve in three weeks. I feel like I was just pregnant, but then again, we do tend to memorialize traumatic experiences," she answered.

Laxus' brows rose. "Was being pregnant that terrible?"

"With the twins? Hell yes. I love my babies but they overpopulated my uterus, gave me stretch marks, ruined my hips, and let's not talk about my breasts."

Lucy's body insecurities had been a recurring theme in their relationship, and he'd never thought she was unattractive, even for a second. "Still the hottest chick in the world. I'd hit it anyday."

"And yet, you've gone from twice a day to twice a week."

Her husband cringed. "Okay, so I'm not twenty-five anymore. Geeze. If you want it more, I'm happy to oblige. The last thing I want is an unsatisfied wife. I don't have a problem. I mean, I can get it up whenever I want, or whenever you want. Sometimes our kids give me a lot of shit and I just want to go to sleep."

They snuggled their baby and Lucy giggled a bit. "It's fun being together all this time. We've really shared our lives. Marriage and guild and all these babies…I'm so glad we're together. And I kind of like the stage we're at now. We're watching our older babies grow up and our new baby, he's just a cute little thing."

"He's feeling better, I can tell," Laxus answered.

"He's got such a sensitive tummy." She kissed his chubby little cheek, "But if we have lemons and we have to make lemonade, I feel like five days of diarrhea-leaking diapers and projectile vomiting will help our older kids practice safe sex. God, I hope Yuri remembers having diarrhea run down his arm and having Lex puke in his ear every time he has sex until he's thirty."

Having a baby in the house was an important learning experience for the older kids. It seemed to give them an appreciation for their parents, as they had to stand back and realize that in the past, their parents had four kids under the age of five at the same time, with the littlest being twins. The idea was mind-blowing once they saw how hard it was just to take care of one baby.

The next morning, Laxus put their son down for a post-breakfast nap and banged his wife's brains out just to remind her that he could do so at any time he pleased. Then he left mama and baby to have a morning of snuggles in a house that was otherwise empty since the twins were probably at the guild making trouble.

He went on to work, missing the note on the desk in his study yet again.

It was late that night when he finally picked up the folded note.

Dad, see Sam. Something is wrong. -Yuri

Laxus hadn't seen Sam all day, and judging from the fact Yuri had already been gone an entire day, the note wasn't fresh. Knowing Gajeel was on a job, he headed over to the Redfox house and found Levy was making tea in the living room.

The smell of the tea didn't hide the scent, and Laxus recognized it immediately. Levy didn't seem to know anything had changed, but she didn't have a dragon's sense of smell either. If she had, she would have known her house smelled like Acnologia.

Yuri didn't know the scent. He'd only known to be afraid of it.

When he asked where Sam was, Levy told him Sam had been sick most of the day, and feverish. Laxus went on to see him, both confused and very worried about why he was carrying that smell.

Sam was in bed with a cool cloth on his head, but he looked miserable. His eyes were bloodshot, and he was a kid that didn't get sick.

Laxus shut the door. "Sam, what's going on?"

"Nothing, I'm just sick."

He sat on the edge of the bed and looked over the boy, tracing his body through the covers. "You smell like Acnologia. Your body is full of magic. That's why you're sick. I've been sick like this. When someone put a dragon lacrima in my body."

The guildmaster's mind was reeling, trying to put pieces together. There had been rumors Acnologia's death produced a lacrima, but no one knew who picked it up in the chaos after his death. There had been a story, years back, that a dark guild had it, but that all the people that attempted to use it were killed by its power. It made sense that someone born with dragon blood already in them might survive the fusing process.

Sam pulled his hand out from under the covers and opened it, showing a patch of dark, shiny black scales in his palm. His fingers were deforming into claws, and the scales trailed up from his palm to his wrist. "I didn't say yes…It was in my hand and it just went in. I've been having bad dreams even when I'm awake. I don't know what's happening to me."

Laxus asked, "How did you get this? This is something that potentially makes you more powerful than everyone and anyone. It's the only one of its kind and I need to know why you have it."

The boy sat up on the bed. "I was walking down May Street a few weeks ago, and someone asked me if I wanted to be more powerful. He said he could help me. Of course I want to be stronger. Yesterday he took me to meet a man in the East Forest. Someone named Bluenote Stinger."

Bluenote Stinger was powerful, and on the level of their strongest grown wizards, so the idea that he was interacting with the children of the guild was sickening and terrifying. Bluenote had no sense of remorse, no moral compass, and he was as ruthless as could be. He was indeed someone who was powerful enough to have maintained custody of the dragon lacrima, but Laxus' had no idea why he'd drop such an enormous source of power into Fairy Tail.

"He gave it to you?"

Sam nodded.

"Did he ask you for anything in return?"

He nodded again. "He wanted a spell called Fairy Glitter. He said he knew one of the girls had been tutored by Master Makarov. I didn't mean to say it. It was an accident."

"What did you tell him?" he asked, his voice considerably more serious.

"I told him Layla has a notebook."

Laxus' mouth went dry. "Layla has a notebook with the magical formula for Fairy Glitter? And you told Bluenote that."

Sam said, "I didn't mean to."

"And you didn't…run and tell as soon as it happened. I could stopped her from leaving, we could have chased him down when he was close. Good God, Sam, she and Yuri are out there. They've been gone for a day already."

The boy swallowed hard. "I didn't want her to be mad at me. She's strong, right? She can beat anybody."

"Sam…you have no idea what you've done."

"I'm sorry."

He reshuffled his priorities. "I have to go. Don't leave your house and don't talk to anyone until I get back."

Laxus had never heard of this notebook, but it seemed a normally foolish thing for a girl to keep a secret from her father but tell the boy she likes. All he knew was that he was terrified.

He took lightning form and went after them, hoping maybe Bluenote hadn't followed, or intended to try and get the spell later on.

XXX

Yuri's ears were ringing when he opened his eyes.

One of the great thing about going on jobs was they could take time and explore the world, so they'd gotten off the train to visit a magic shop they'd heard about in Sorcerer Weekly, and were walking on a somewhat quiet road when…he wasn't really sure what happened, but he assumed that probably had something to do with the blood dripping from his head.

He was hanging from the ceiling by chains, his tiptoes barely touching the floor, which had some strange magic array drawn on it that blocked the use of magic.

The room was mostly empty except for Layla who was sitting at a desk where there was a notebook and pen, arms crossed. The walls and floor were lined in bricks. It was hot.

There was a man there, looming over her with his arms crossed.

Layla looked up at him, and then up at their captor. "Who are you?"

"Bluenote Stinger."

Of course, they'd heard about him. He was a legend, a titan of the dark magic world, a lifelong enemy of Fairy Tail. He was someone on the level of their powerful parents, someone they weren't ready in any kind of way to fight. They knew as strong as they were at their age, that there were classes and levels above them.

He was a killer. He was the type who left bodies wherever he went, and that was normally how the authorities knew where he'd been.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"You know the formula for Fairy Glitter. Write it down," he commanded, pushing the notebook over to her. He held the pen out, and she knocked it out of his hand.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she hissed.

Bluenote used gravity to float the pen back up into his hand. "I'm not patient. I don't like children. Don't test me."

"I've never heard of it."

The old wizard paced the distance between Yuri and Layla. "I know that you have a notebook with the spell's formula written in it. I know you're an extremely intelligent girl. You may not be able to use the spell yet, but you have it up here." He tapped on his temple.

Layla's perception of reality became distorted and confusing at this, because yes, she had a notebook. It had been given to her by her late great-grandfather on the condition she never tell anyone about it. Makarov said it was for when she was older, and that if anyone knew the contents of the book, she'd be in danger.

But she was a teenage girl, and she liked a certain boy, so she'd told him some secrets. Secrets she didn't tell her parents or even her siblings. There was only one living soul in the world who knew about it.

She slammed her hands down on the desk. "Did you hurt Sam?!"

"Hurt? Sam Redfox came to us. He got tired of playing second fiddle to a cute girl and he wanted to be strong. I made him the deal of a lifetime. I traded him a dragon lacrima, and he told me how to get what I want. Your friend sold you out, little girl. He'll be more powerful than any of you, and you…you are going to write that spell down."

Layla started to protest, to argue, but she was intelligent, and she strung together her thoughts quickly.

Yuri on the train said Sam smelled different. Disgusting. Like two scents and one of them was unsettling. She remembered him standing in the living room, just staring, and even then she'd felt like he looked guilty, but that was nothing new; she just assumed it was because he still liked another girl.

"I'll never give it to you. You'll have to kill me."

Bluenote sighed.

Yuri had been silent because his concussion had him a little woozy and he wasn't entirely sure what was going on. But he found himself wide-awake when Bluenote picked the pen up and stabbed it through his shirt into his abdomen, and then turned the metal quill.

Despite his best efforts not to scream, he emitted a high-pitched growl through gnashed teeth.

"Yuri!"

He panted as he felt it pulled from him, and blood started to ooze. It was a fairly shallow wound as far as stabbings were concerned, but it hurt like hell nonetheless.

"Don't to it, Layla. I'm fine…"

Bluenote threw her down to the floor using gravity magic and then stomped hard enough the snap of ribs was heard right before a scream. He pulled her up, by the throat, letting her feet dangle from the ground.

"I'm not going to let you waste my time. You're not going to stall until your guild realizes something is wrong. You're going to start writing now. If you don't, I'll kill your brother. I don't need him. I'll give you to my men down in the village—there's a lot of them, and you're a pretty little virgin. If that's not enough, I'll start breaking your bones. You are going to give me what I want. The only thing you have power over right now is what I have to do to get it."

He dropped her, gasping, holding her side.

Yuri said, "Layla, it's okay. There's not really anything heroic about dying for something like this."

Layla believed Bluenote was going to kill them anyway, because that would help hide his involvement. If they lived and told the guild about what happened to them, he'd be a hunted man. If he killed them, he could go on his way.

The road ahead was unquestionably dark. She knew their enemy would make good on every one of those threats if she resisted him. He'd kill Yuri. He'd give her to the men, and she knew what he was really threatening. He'd hurt her in ways she had no understanding of.

The full weight of her great-grandfather's warnings about the little book rang painfully true. It was dangerous knowledge and she shouldn't have to told anyone.

Her mind wandered to Sam, and then quickly away again.

Bluenote was standing behind her when she cracked a smirk and looked up at her brother.

She reached for the bloody pen, and stood to her feet with a little scream, still holding her side. "Okay. I'll do it. Just don't hurt Yuri anymore."

Yuri was completely certain that whatever Layla started to write, it wasn't what Bluenote was looking for. She was a prodigy, smart, and she was too pig-headed to give in. He felt powerless and pathetic, but at the moment, Bluenote's violence had stopped, and that was a relief. He didn't want to see Layla get hurt, and he really didn't want to get hurt either.

He thought about Sam quite a lot while he hung there.

Layla's pen scraped across the page as she sorted through the things she knew.

First, she and Yuri could not use magic on the array that was on the floor. Bluenote could.

Second, were they not separated by too many levels of skill and sheer power, they might have an advantage. It was easy to bend people with gravity. It took an exponentially higher amount of gravitation force to even bend light. So, in a perfect world where they were older and more powerful, he might have a hard time defending against their attacks.

Third, there was something Makarov told her, and she remembered it, but she didn't know what to do with it. Once, she was sparring with Yuri and when it was over, he asked her what the root of the word 'lightning' was. Light, obviously.

She finished writing and pushed the notebook across the table.

"There. Now let us go, you disgusting, lip-less asshole," she growled.

Bluenote picked up the notebook and sorted through the pages. It was correct that he intended to kill them, and he was relieved the girl had chosen the easier path. Threatening a half-grown woman with gang rape and torturing kids were both things he preferred to avoid.

He decided to test the spell, because the girl seemed sly. If she gave him a spell that didn't work, or was weak, and he'd already kill them, his one chance to satisfy his lifelong obsession would be gone.

The structure of the spell seemed to be correct. He easily committed it to his memory and then extended his hand.

It was fitting to kill them with a Fairy spell, he decided.

Yuri's heart pounded as magic started to gather in Bluenote's wrist.

The spell backfired, and instead of blasting them and half the mountain they were on off, it blew Bluenote to hell, blasted the roof and floor and walls, and send everyone flying in different directions.

Yuri was able to snap his chains off when he'd fallen about halfway down the mountain.

The air stank like blood and it was mostly Bluenote's. Yuri knew needed to find Layla and get her off the mountain while Bluenote was injured—if they could do that, they could probably get to Sabertooth safely. That was the closest allied guild and there were wizards there who were strong enough to defend them.

"Layla!"

He started to climb toward the top again.

Near the summit, Bluenote recovered from the blast and took stock of his injuries. The kids, by themselves, possessed no spell and no magic that would have injured him. But whatever the girl had written caused him to use his own magic and instead of blasting outward, he blew himself up.

His left arm was mostly bones and sinews and burned flesh, and he had burns…burns everywhere, especially his face. He raised a hand to his face, and came to the horrifying realization the blast destroyed his left eye.

He felt rage bubble up in him he hadn't known in a long time. Maybe ever. He was weakened, but he was still much stronger than they were, and all he cared about was getting his hands on the girl and breaking her.

The blast had thrown her down and she landed fairly badly. She was looking for Yuri, but she felt Bluenote approaching.

He grabbed her by the hair, and threw her down on a rocky cliff using gravity magic.

Bluenote slammed her down and lifted her up and slammed her back down over and over, harder and harder, breaking her nose, the rest of her ribs, and causing internal damage and bruising.

She raised a hand, and a wall of light appeared between them. While he leveraged his magic against it to bend the light waves, she looked over the cliff and tried to figure out of the fall would kill her, because Bluenote certainly intended too. She coughed and thick blood came out of her, signaling that despite her adrenaline, she'd been seriously hurt.

The wind blew and when Bluenote felt the sting against his ruptured eye, he pushed past her magic and rolled her over set pressing his knee into her belly, right on the injuries he'd just given her. She couldn't really do anything but gasp for air and scream.

"You inverted the spell, didn't you?" he said grabbing the bottom of her face roughly.

He grabbed a sharp rock and while she thrashed under him, dug it into her eye. She jerked her head and the rock tore at her eyelid and around her eye.

Yuri suddenly hit Bluenote so hard he went off the edge of the cliff.

When he saw how badly their enemy had injured her, he couched next to her. "Oh my God, Layla. Hang on. We have to get out of here."

He didn't really know how they were ever going to do that as Bluenote had transitioned from being calm and collected to being filled with murderous rage. He knew Layla was badly injured, and he certainly couldn't defeat the wizard on his own.

She reached up, and touched his shoulder.

Yuri felt her magic flow into his body at a dizzying, fast pace. His sister had a much larger amount of magic, and her magic was different. She was like their great grandfather and used divine light magic. It was considered a 'high' magic—powerful, pure, usable by only a few.

And he used lightning dragonslayer magic. It was a dose of light for a lightning-bearer.

The two magics tangled and twisted together, and this caused a chain reaction. His senses sharpened to the point he felt like he could see and feel everything around him. He felt his fangs elongate, and scales formed on his face and forearms.

He'd never felt so powerful in his life. Or so unafraid.

Bluenote shot back up to where they were and was knocked out of the air by a jolt of lightning that was more powerful than the young dragon should have been able to produce. He moved fast, leaping from one rock to the other until they landed at the base of the mountain.

Yuri circled to stay on his left side, since his left arm and his left eye were effectively useless.

"Dragonforce…cheeky little shit," he hissed.

Yuri attacked again with explosive, concussive force. The fact that Bluenote was already at half of his normal strength combined with his extensive injuries quickly put him on the defensive. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been in that position, and he found the boy didn't seem like a boy at all.

He looked like a vicious, deadly, full-grown man.

Bluenote quickly realized Yuri was not only crushingly powerful in his current state, but he had a killer pedigree and a lifetime of being trained by one of the most elite wizards in the world. He was the son of Laxus Dreyar, who climbed ranks in the magic world even as a teenager.

"Oh? Are you a man now? Then let's fight like men. Until one of us dies. You either die or you kill."

"Were there ever any other choices for us?"

So they entered a fight to death.

Yuri won.

XXX

Laxus didn't catch up with them for another twenty-four hours, and by that time, they were at a hospital three blocks from Sabertooth, under careful watch from their allies. Sting had sent word to Fairy Tail to send Wendy to them already, and when Laxus showed up, was sitting in the hallway between two hospital rooms where the Dreyar kids were resting.

"Are they all right?"

Sting stood and said, "Yuri got beat up, but nothing that won't heal up on its own. Layla got it pretty bad. She's awake."

Sting gestured to one of the rooms, and Laxus went in and found Layla sitting up in the bed. She was wearing a sports bra and had a massive brace keeping her back completely straight. Her ribs were tightly bound, and he could see a surgical scar that extended down her midsection. Half of her face was covered in bandages as she sat there with the nurse, trying to stay still as the nurse listened to her body with a stethoscope.

"D-Dad?"

"Layla…baby…"

The nurse wrote something on a clipboard and left, and the little blonde looked up at her dad.

She cracked a little smile. "I'm really glad to see you."

"You have officially scared the living shit out of me. I've been chasing after you two for almost two days," he said as he sat on the edge of the bed. "You okay, baby?"

Layla gave him an uneasy smile. "I think. I'm really doped up right now. It's pretty nice. I'll be glad to see Wendy."

He kissed her forehead gently. "You'll be just fine, I promise."

"Dad?"

"What is it?"

Layla touched the bandages over her eye and whimpered, "I lost my eye. It's gone."

He did his best to pull her into a gentle hug, but she seemed to be hurt everywhere. Wendy could patch up broken bones and bruised organs, but she couldn't erase the memory of getting those injuries. And there was nothing she could do about her eye. The late Porlyusica might have been able to help, but he didn't know if there was anyone else who used that magic.

He was glad they were alive, but he'd followed them to where Bluenote was left to rot.

"Bluenote is…was…so powerful. But you guys are alive, and I saw how he ended up. Will you tell me what happened?"

Layla seemed numb as she went through the facts. Her memory was sharp and she repeated what she'd been told about Sam in monotone, like she was talking about someone she didn't know. And then she went on to the uglier parts, like realizing Bluenote was going to kill them no matter what, and that they didn't really have the power to stop him.

They were alive because she outsmarted him, because she used her magic to induce Dragonforce in Yuri, and because Yuri didn't know how to deal with the idea someone had cut his sisters eye out except to beat him to death.

Life was never going to be the same.

Not for her, not for Yuri, and not for Sam.

Laxus listened and when she finished, he said, "Things are going to change, but you'll be okay, I promise. If anything, you and Yuri have proved you're fierce as hell. You took down a very, very powerful dark wizard. People are going to think twice before they fuck with you from now on."

Layla didn't seem to care about this at all. "Dad, I don't ever want to see Sam again."

"Layla, I don't think Sam had any bad intentions toward you. He didn't mean for any of this to happen."

The facts were damning:

Sam made contact with strangers, Sam disclosed extremely dangerous information, Sam received a reward for this, and he didn't tell anyone that it happened. As a result of that disclosure, a powerful dark wizard targeted and almost killed two of his peers. The only thing that was up for debate is how much Sam understood and intended.

"I don't care at all about his intentions, Dad."

As guildmaster, he had an absolute disaster to contend with. The sky was going to fall on Sam even if he was only guilty of being foolish and insecure, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He was going to be met with hate and distrust. They would hold him responsible.

He thought about trying to talk Layla into having mercy on him, but she was young, and he couldn't expect her to think or feel like he did. She trusted him and told him a secret, he repeated it, and she had to fight like hell just to survive.

Sam became stronger. She lost an eye.

The Fairy Tail kids had always been so close, so inclusive, so cohesive. They played together, went on adventures together, lied for each other, kept secrets, and suddenly, a huge chasm had opened in that order. Sam was inevitably going to find himself without friends or allies, probably even among the adult members.

He decided not to make his case with Layla. It wasn't fair, all things considered. She already had too much to deal with and process, no matter how tough she was acting.

The door creaked open after she'd gone back to sleep, and he looked up to find Wendy and Lucy, who had Lex in her arms.

"Laxus? You're here? We've been looking everywhere for you! You can't just vanish into thin air and not tell anyone!" she exclaimed.

Laxus could tell Lucy was more than a little pissed off and then she saw Layla.

"Oh my God…what happened?!"

"I found out Bluenote Stinger was probably after them so I left in a hurry," he said as he took the baby from her. "Where are the twins?"

"With Natsu and Lisanna."

Laxus explained to Lucy, whose parental response was much like his: some mix of fear, anger, and frustration that their babies had been swept up into trouble. The baby started screaming and it was far too much noise for Wendy to concentrate on healing, so Laxus took Lex out into the hall.

Once he'd soothed the baby, he opened the door to the room right next to Layla's and found Yuri and Lilia Eucliffe snuggled up tight in the hospital bed while she spoon-fed him ice cream.

"Dad?"

"You'd be amazed at how quickly I just stopped feeling sorry for you," he answered.

Lilia said, "But Master, look at him. He's all beat up. All bruised up and sore and can barely move at all. My poor baby."

Laxus took out his wallet and gave her some money. "Big favor. When Layla starts to feel better, she's going to want creature comforts. You're friends, so can you go get some stuff? An outfit, some lip gloss, you know…girl stuff."

"Of course, Master. I'll be back as soon as I can," she said as she disentangled herself from Yuri and bounced out with his money in hand.

This left the two men, the younger of which sighed.

"Dad, you didn't have to ruin that."

Laxus sat next to his son and toward the ice cream from the table while he held Lex against his shoulder. "You want me to spoon-feed you?"

"No thanks."

"Are you sure? I mean, I have a lot of experience feeding cranky babies. Open up so the choo-choo can come in?"

Yuri glared, and then looked worried. "You've seen Layla?"

"Yes. Your mother and Wendy are with her. She'll be okay. It's going to be different, but life always goes on. Except for Bluenote. Someone beat the living fuck out of him until he died."

His son shifted uncomfortably. "He made me do it. He said I was either going to kill him or die. Not really a hard choice."

"You entered Dragon Force?"

"Yeah."

"How was it?"

"Kind of weird. That guy was really going to kill us, no matter what. I was surprised we made it."

Laxus nodded. "But you survived. That's really the only thing that matters."

Yuri looked down at his little brother and reached out to pinch the baby's toes. "You almost became the only son, and we can't have that."

"Are you really okay, son?"

His son took a deep breath. "Everything is going to change, isn't it?"

His father nodded. "Life has to change. It's not possible for things to stay still. Some changes are going to be terrible and difficult to endure. Others will be great. That's just the way life is."

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