Disclaimer: I don't own anything that's appeared thus far.

Enjoy!


It wasn't very long after her friends disappeared that Wendy had an idea.

According to Lucy-nee, the Magic Council owed Fairy Tail in a huge way, and they would probably bend backwards to stop Fairy Tail from releasing the fact that they had infiltrated their guild in order to find a reason to tear apart their guild.

Right before she joined Fairy Tail, she had seen the Rune Knights carry out a huge miscarriage of justice when they arrested Jellal for his actions from when he was one of the councilmembers and Wizard Saints, despite the fact that they were told and were entirely willing to prove that he had been possessed when he did all of those things.

The blunette knew by now that he wasn't the Jellal that she knew, of course.

No, the Fairy Tail guild knew her Jellal as Mystogan, and at this point he had taken his rightful place on the throne back in his own world, safe and making sure that his people would survive no longer being able to use magic.

She missed him so much.

The only person she had even really been able to talk to about her Jellal was Pantherlily, and now even he…well.

First she lost her birth parents (not that she remembered them), then Grandineey, Jellal, her old family at Cait Shelter who didn't even turn out to be real people, and now Carla and what sometimes seemed like everyone else she had come to care about.

Sometimes Wendy felt like she was cursed to a life of heartbreak and loneliness…

'But enough about that!' she thought to herself determinedly as she shook her head, causing strands of her dark blue hair to fall into her eyes. 'Time to see if there's anything we can do to help Jellal…'

After all, it was still Jellal, even if he wasn't the one that she had known.

Even if her sense of justice didn't demand she try and get Jellal out of prison, she owed it to Erza to at least try.

Now she just needed to talk to Lucy…


First order of business: go visit Jellal in prison.

Simple, right?

After all, it was hardly an unusual concept. In fact, it was entirely allowed.

Except for the fact that apparently no one had thought that anyone cared enough about Jellal to come visit him and report anything strange about how they found him, so they were a bit…negligent, to say the least.

…No, the two girls couldn't even sugarcoat it that much.

It wasn't neglect, it was outright abuse.

And they were furious.

When they entered the Hall of Crystals (such a presumptuous name for the room where they kept the prisoners in those crystal-shaped lacrima), it was to see one of those amphibian-like creatures employed by the council torturing Jellal by using an electric rod to electrocute him.

What. The. Hell.

Now, Lucy and Wendy both had very good control over their magic, despite not having studied their craft as long as some of the other mages in their guild had.

However, seeing what they knew to be an innocent man being tortured, because a couple of creepy toads were bored and decided they had the right to do whatever they wanted to him?

Well.

Needless to say Lucy had her whip out and at the ready in less than a moment, and Wendy could now give an educated guess at how powerful her magic might be if she consumed Ethernano and went into Dragon Force like Natsu had told her about before they all disappeared.

But no, there was no Ethernano in the air, or at least no more than was natural.

She was just pissed off.

And as Natsu or Gajeel could have told you, it was a BAD idea to piss off a female dragon, especially if you were a threat to someone they cared about.


As it turned out, Lucy was right.

It was surprisingly easy to come to an 'agreement' with the Magic Council and the Rune Knights to arrange for Jellal's release.

They had tried to extend that to Richard, too, since Nirvana had realigned his morality and he regretted his time with the Oracion Seis, but the former dark mage politely refused their assistance, instead merely asking them to let his brother know what had happened to him if they ever crossed paths.

The two girls had agreed to do so, and dropped the subject.

For now, at least.

Anyway, back to the Council.

They had agreed to release Jellal, on the condition that he live with either Lucy or Wendy, preferably both, for a few years so that he could 'adjust.'

Privately, the girls thought their reasoning was closer to: 'then we can hold them accountable if he does anything wrong.'

But they knew that the Council would only agree to so much in such a short time, despite the amount of blackmail that Fairy Tail now held over their heads, so they didn't comment.

And that was how the three of them moved in together, with Lucy moving out of her beloved home (she was of two minds about it, considering it also meant she got away from her demonic landlady) and Wendy moving out of her room at Fairy Hills.

Honestly, Wendy and Lucy didn't regret it all that much.

The two girls had so many memories of their friends at their former residence that it was sometimes heartbreaking to step inside. At least now they could find comfort in each other.


A few hundred miles away, a young teenager with long dark hair held back with a white ribbon choked on her food as she caught a glimpse of the newspaper one of her guildmates was reading.

Jellal Fernades…had been released from prison?

Time to go get that sword she'd been keeping safe out of storage…


Please review! :)

Meredy and Ultear will still end up joining Fairy Tail, it's just that in this version it didn't take nearly as long for Lucy to arrange Jellal's release from the prison, so they never had the chance to hear about it and offer their help.