Disclaimer: I don't own anything aside from a few characters that I will specify as they appear.

Note: Happy NaNoWriMo! No idea if I'm going to bother trying for 50,000 words (if I do it certainly won't be for the same story, just in total), but whatever.

Enjoy!


*1 Year After Tenrou*

Wendy gasped as her breath was knocked out of her for the umpteenth time.

She grimaced down at the small cut on her arm, focusing her healing abilities to draw out the poison in the wound, even if she couldn't technically heal the wound itself.

The Sky Dragon Slayer would never have thought of that, but her tutor had brought up the possibility of her being able to do so to her mentor, Porlyusica, and the old woman agreed to let them try.

"Erik!" she groaned as the rest of the poison left her body.

"Hm?" the Poison Dragon Slayer tilted his head mockingly in her direction, though obviously he had heard her, considering his Sound magic enhanced his hearing even more than being an (artificial) dragon slayer had.

The blunette scowled at him, causing him to smirk.

He'd be lying if he said he didn't feel a slight bit of pride at being the only who she felt comfortable enough with to scowl at. Well, that wasn't an enemy, at least.

Granted, it might just be because no one else went out of their way to make things more difficult for her…

"You gave me a higher concentration of poison on purpose." She pouted, bringing out the watery puppy dog eyes as she stared up at him through her eyelashes. "I thought…I thought we were like brother and sister. Do you like seeing me in pain, big brother?"

Erik raised a single eyebrow, impressed.

"That's pretty good, kid." He admitted, amused as the thirteen-year-old immediately dropped her act and stood up, not bothering to try and get the dirt off of her dress. "I might have fallen for it if I didn't have my magic."

She sighed, but nodded.

Honestly, she hadn't been expecting it to work.

"Still, though…" Wendy's eyes gained a sparkle, causing her older companion to look at her warily. "Maybe I should bring this up to Kinana…"

Erik's jaw dropped.

"Seriously, kid?!" he demanded, giving her a noogie and ignoring her protests.


So, a few months after Jellal had joined the guild, Lucy realized that obviously the blunette couldn't have been the only prisoner that was brought up on false charges, and even the people who really were guilty might very well be mistreated, too.

Not wanting Fairy Tail to take action against them, the Magic Council (and the Rune Knights) reluctantly allowed for an inspection of the prison, and for all of those cases to be reviewed.

When they came upon those who had been enslaved at the Tower of Heaven, only to turn to crime after escaping, things got a little more…complicated.

On the one hand, they had five out of the six members of the dark guild known as Oracion Seis.

On the other, every last one of them had been a victim from the time they were young children, and of course they would have followed the orders of the man who saved them from that hellhole.

The fact that the Magic Council had failed in taking care of the whole situation with the R-System began put the former (?) dark mages in even more of a sympathetic light.

And so, after a lot of internal fighting, the five were released.

On probation, of course.

The moment Cobra was let out of his containment lacrima, he tensed, eyes widening in shock and, dare Lahar say it, hope.

For his part, Cobra sensed something he hadn't in nearly a year now. A faint soul imprint brought into the prison, not directly, but as if someone who had visited knew the person it belonged to.

'Person' being the operative word, here.

"Cubellios…" he breathed out.

Lahar warily gripped his weapon as Cobra rounded on him.

"Where is Cubellios?!" he snarled, eyes wild. "WHERE IS SHE?!"

The purple-eyed man blinked in confusion. "Cu…bellios? Who is that?"

"MY SNAKE!" Cobra hissed, sounding very much like the aforementioned reptile. "WHERE. IS. SHE? Someone was here…someone that came in contact with her…"

Lahar's mouth dropped slightly open in shock as he put the information together.

The only non-prison guards or Rune Knights who had been close enough for the former inmate to sense anything from where they were was the Heartfilia heiress.

Now that he thought about it, hadn't the late Makarov Dreyar reported finding a girl that had been cursed into becoming a snake, whose curse had broken aside from the unfortunate side effect of amnesia?

Oh, dear…

Lahar sighed, removing Cobra's hand from where he had been grabbed and shoved against the wall.

"Apparently we have a lot to talk about." He said dryly.


And so Erik was awkwardly reunited with his amnesiac best friend, who only had the slightest bit of recognition that usually faded almost immediately, though Kinana was more than willing to try and rekindle her bond with the Poison Dragon Slayer.

Cobra, or Erik, as only Kinana and Wendy were allowed to call him, didn't care so much that she had amnesia. Until he'd sensed her soul when he was let out, he had thought that she was dead.

It was nice to be wrong, sometimes.

Anyway, Wendy had greeted him cheerfully after he had reunited with Kinana and was in a slightly more sociable mood.

He was bewildered, obviously.

The Seis had kidnapped this kid so she could revive Jellal (who was also here, what the hell), and she smiles at him like she doesn't even care.

Eventually he realized that it was because the little slayer was lonely.

After all, there used to be three dragon slayers in Fairy Tail (or four, he supposed, remembering hearing rumors about how his fellow artificial dragon slayer had helped them on the island despite having been banished), but with Dragneel and the metalhead gone, she was alone.

And, well…if there was one thing Erik understood, it was loneliness.

So when she came to him asking if he had any tips she might be able to use to become stronger so she might be able to protect the people she cared about next time they were in danger, he could hardly say no, could he?


And, well, when he realized why the little white-haired girl who hung around the kid was so familiar, he found another reason to stay.

He wasn't going to say anything to little Yukino, because despite the kid's apparent guilt-complex Angel would kill him if he didn't warn her first, but...damn.

The kid held her big sister up on a pedestal, thinking that she was dead, and though Angel was like an annoying sister to him, Erik wasn't ignorant to her many, many flaws. She didn't live up to the person who Yukino thought she 'would have been' had she been alive.

That was painful to think about, even for Erik, who avoided emotion like it was a particularly horrific plague.

So...yeah.

First to tell Sorano that her sister was alive and well. Then she could decide what to do with that information.

Better keep the fact that the kid practically idolized Heartfilia out of it, though.


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