The Blood of the Fairy

by Mega Ghost

While out on a job just to pay the bills, Fairy Tail's strongest team picked up a new addition to their guild. It was a welcome occurrence given the state of things since they'd returned from Tenro, but their new friend isn't the usual breed of fairy. He doesn't talk much and keeps to himself. Will his mysterious past affect their chances in the games? And what magic does he have?

6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

The day after it had been decided that Fairy Tail would compete in the Grand Magic Games, Logan found himself at the beach on Fiore's southern coast. A vote on where they'd go to train was cast, and Logan had been overruled by the others. He'd suggested they all split up to hone their skills individually, but the rest of his team hadn't gone for that. Logan had known they wouldn't from the second he'd said it, but felt he had to try anyway.

In addition to Lucy, Wendy, Natsu, Gray, Erza and the two cats, they'd also been joined by the three members of Team Shadowgear, and the girl with blue hair Logan had seen leering at Gray more than once. He was pretty sure her name was "Juvia," or something that sounded like that, but he wasn't sure. There were a lot of people in Fairy Tail and he hadn't memorized all of them just yet.

"Logan, would you come out already?! Everyone else is ready! And you better not still have those gauntlets on!" Lucy yelled at him from outside.

He'd been dragging his feet in the public changing booth on purpose. Although Logan wasn't self-conscious about how he looked, the thought of going around with most of his body exposed to the elements was still not an appetizing one. The only reason he even had the swimming trunks he was wearing along with ten other pairs had been because Lucy had insisted he get them.

"Better just go out or she'll send one of the guys after me next." Logan thought with resignation.

With a partially aggravated motion, Logan pushed back the curtain and stepped out into the dazzling sunlight to find everyone waiting for him. He instantly discovered a new problem that vastly superseded his discomfort about his own body. Logan wasn't sure what he'd been expecting the girls to wear, but Lucy and Erza's bikinis showing off their voluptuous forms and large breasts instantly set his heart jumping into his throat, back down again, and repeating in a horrid somersault.

Logan had no idea how to look at them in those outfits. He couldn't look at their faces, because his eyes instantly wanted to drift down to their chests. He couldn't look at their feet, because looking in that general direction could easily give either of them the wrong idea about what he was focusing on. His problem was then compounded when Erza took a few steps closer, looking him up and down.

"My, you certainly do look different without those three layers of clothing you usually have on." She said.

Overwhelmed and on the verge of mental collapse, Logan put several feet between himself and the redhead as quickly but nonchalantly as he could. He made no sounds except for an ill concealed gulp in his throat.

"Listen!" A voice declared.

Logan took advantage of the opportunity to distract himself and looked behind himself to see that Happy and Carla were decked head to toe in swimming gear and flotation devices.

"We're not here to play, we're here to train!" The female cat announced sternly.

"Let's get to it!" Happy concurred.

"It's hard to take you seriously when you're dressed like that." Droy of Team Shadowgear said with a chuckle.

Logan had to admit, they did look funny, and he was glad because it brought his stress back down to manageable levels. He looked across at the others, and decided that Levy he would be easier to be around. Even though he still felt the anxiety about where to look, since she wasn't nearly as curvy as Erza and Lucy, he felt like there would be less chance for misunderstandings, and he also knew he'd be fine around Wendy. She had on a two-piece as well, but on her, it had such a strong connotation of innocence and wholesomeness that Logan didn't have the slightest trepidation.

Erza then said to everyone, "There's plenty of time for training, but it's important to balance work and pleasure. We'll play hard, eat hard, and sleep hard!"

Jet and Droy started to make a protest, saying that they were at the beach to train and improve, but their argument was cut short by Natsu and Gray knocking them aside in a mad dash to the water.

"THE OCEAN!" Natsu hollered.

"Last one there's a rotten egg!" Gray yelled.

They both dove in and instantly began a swimming race, which Logan knew would probably be the first of many competitions between them.

"So, Logan, what are you going to do first?" Wendy asked him.

"I think I'll scout out my own personal training ground. My regimen requires special circumstances and I need to figure out if this beach can even provide them."

"Do you want me to go with you?"

"No! I mean, thank you Wendy, but you wouldn't know what to look for, so I'll just take care of it on my own."

Wendy gave him a sweet and knowing smile in response. "That's fine! It's okay that you're still uncomfortable talking about yourself, so it makes sense that you don't want us to see what kind of training you do for your magic."

Logan was taken aback both by how astute Wendy was and how transparent he was apparently being.

"Uh, well... thanks, Wendy."

"It really is okay. I need to start in on these spells I got from Grandina, anyway. Have to study them before I can even start practicing them. But, if you want any help, you know you just have to ask!"

"Right." Logan said. "And if you want my help with anything, just let me know and I'll... I'll do my best."

"Sure, Logan! You'll be the first!" Wendy yelled as she ran off to find a place of her own.

"She sure is sweet." Logan thought to himself.

He did an about face to start looking for a suitably secluded spot, but before leaving, instantly saw that Juvia girl hiding behind a palm tree and leaning out, staring at something. Logan leaned out to his right as well to see what she was looking at, and saw that Natsu and Gray had already finished their race and were now apparently engaging in who could get the best tan.

"My beloved Gray is going to look so handsome with a tan!" Juvia muttered excitedly.

"And she is... something else."

Logan then finally set off to look for his training ground.

OOO

After about ten minutes of searching, Wendy found a great big rock providing good shade from the sun and sat down to read over her spellbook. The little Sky Dragon Slayer had been so enthusiastic about these spells, the final gift her mother had bequeathed to her, but her revelry quickly took a sharp nose-dive.

"Okay..."

With the first spell on the first page, she could see that it listed half a dozen exercises and techniques that she'd have to practice daily for a week before even starting to train on the actual spell. Wendy spent a minute leafing through the pages and found that most of them were like that. Their end products looked really cool in her imagination, but they were all going to require lots of prep time before she could do any of them.

It wasn't long before she was more just glaring at the pages and absently blinking at them instead of reading them.

"Aw, man! This is gonna be super tough."

OOO

Floating peacefully on his inner tube, Happy watched as from fifty feet beneath the surface, Natsu sent up a Fire Dragon Roar that stretched for more thann a hundred feet.

"Whoa! Natsu's really incredible! I'm amazed he can still do his Fire Dragon Roar with all the water pressure down there."

Natsu breached the surface a second later and gulped in a lungful of air.

"That was awesome!" Happy told him.

Fired up, Natsu said back, "You ain't seen nothing yet, buddy! I'm just getting started here. Just watch! I'm gonna up my power even more!"

He swam back down to the same depth, and just as he said he would, let loose a roar attack even more powerful than the last. The massive river of flames burst from the ocean a quarter larger and went a quarter farther than his previous had.

From the shore, Gray watched the display both with his own competitive spirit igniting, and a begrudging respect for his friend's abilities.

"Better train or he'll show me up." Gray said to himself.

OOO

Two miles down the beach, Lucy was deeply involved in her own training.

She thought to herself, "As for me, I always seem to run out of magic power at the worst time, so I want to learn how to sustain it."

To aid her in this endeavor, Lucy had summoned Capricorn, one of the twelve Celestial Spirits of the Zodiac with whom she had contracted.

"To do that, you must first strengthen your mind, thereby enhancing the vessel which holds your magic power."

Lucy grunted softly, focusing all her mental energy upon the task.

Capricorn went on, "Feel the land, the air, the wind. Focus on that sensation. You must control your breathing and try to become one with nature."

Lucy breathed deeply and centered her mind on the sensations of everything around her. She could feel the warming of the sand beneath her, and the moisture of the ocean riding the winds as it encompassed everything about her. Her magic power rose and grew, whipping up the sand in a small whirlwind that circled her.

"There you go, that's it, Lady Lucy. Nice work."

Lucy grunted as she tried to control the flow of her own magic.

"Keep going, you need to release more magic power." Capricorn instructed her.

She grunted and did her best to expel every drop of magic she could muster, and lost it after only a moment, collapsing backwards onto the beach.

"It's tough."

Capricorn said, "This takes me back to times with Lady Layla. I assisted with her training as well."

At that, Lucy opened her eyes and lifted her head, a thought crossing her mind. "Say, have you ever heard of primordial magic?"

"It's the magic from which all others were created. The origin."

Lucy sat up. "I remember Hades saying that he wanted to get his hands on it. I guess my mom must have left out some stuff when she told me about it. She never mentioned Zeref or the Grand Magic World. In fact, she didn't bring up anything scary at all."

"What are you trying to say?" Capricorn asked.

"It's hard to explain, but if the primordial magic my mom told me about when I was little is real, then it's not something Hades would never be able to get his hands on, cause it's not something tangible. From what I understand, it seems easy to get, but it's actually very hard to obtain. And it's contradictory, because even though it's more powerful than anything in this world, it can also be incredibly weak. My mother once told me that all forms of magic originally began with the power of love, so that's why I think, primordial magic actually refers to love."

Capricorn crossed his left arm over his chest, and gave a small bow.

"I like the way you think, Lady Lucy."

Lucy smiled. "If only Hades had been able to see it that way too. Maybe he could have avoided the depths of darkness."

"Shall we continue?" Capricorn asked, trying to help by getting her back on the task set forth.

Lucy shook her head gently and forced herself to perk up.

"Yeah, let's do it! We're not stopping!"

OOO

For his own practice grounds, Logan had left the beach entirely and started walking inland. He wanted to be sure he could have the kind of place to provide for his needs and be a sizable enough distance away from the others that it'd be unlikely they'd stumble upon him. He'd gone four miles when he found a spot he thought might just be perfect.

It was an extremely small mountain, the smallest Logan had ever seen. It stood only about two hundred feet or so above the ground, but Logan could see it had once been much larger. There must have been some kind of terrible earthquake in this region in the past, because spread all around the primary spire of the mountain were thousands of rocks and boulders of every shape and size. Some were small enough that he could easily lift them up, some were roughly the same size as himself, and then there were the ones ranging from only a few feet bigger than him to larger than Fairy Tail's guild hall. The boulders created a labyrinthine maze of narrow corridors, twisting pathways, and near dead-ends.

"This should be nearly perfect for me to hone my skills." Logan thought to himself. "My magic isn't good for much of anything. There's no versatility to it that I can see at all. I don't count for much as a wizard, so I'll just have to polish up my fighting ability."

Logan began to bounce up and down on the balls of his feet, shifting his weight back and forth between the right and the left.

"This rocky terrain will be perfect for helping me improve on my footwork and balance, and all these boulders should be great for working on my strength and for practicing my moves."

He threw a quick, solid jab into the side of a boulder a hair taller than himself. Logan then telegraphed a second jab, and then a third and a fourth, and the final one dislodged the rock from its resting place and sent it rolling for a few feet. He then looked down at his own feet and shuffled them over the uneven ground in a hexagonal pattern, dancing one foot in and the other out in as fast a repetition as he could.

"Gonna do at least an hour of just footwork to start with, and then I'll add in some ducking and weaving to the routine after that."

OOO

At the same time on the beach, everyone was diligently working at their skills. Gray was wading in a tidal pool, trying to use the moisture in the air to strengthen and build up his ice creations. Wendy had borrowed a pair of magic, speed-reading glasses from Levy and was whizzing through her spell book. Erza was practicing with dual sabers on the edge of a cliff, swinging them with eyes tightly shut to become better accustomed to the weight and feel of the weapons. Juvia was using her magic to levitate herself on top of the sea and hold several globes of water in the shape of cubes to test her endurance. Natsu was dragging three large hunks of concrete tied to his waist behind him as he ran as fast as he could.

Each and every one of them put in a hard first day's training.

OOO

The group had booked several rooms at the Akane Inn, right on the water. It was the height of the swimming season at the beach just then, so they hadn't gotten enough rooms for everyone to have privacy, but there had been just enough for everyone to share, and the rooms even came with free dinners and breakfasts. At that moment, all eleven of them were huddled around several small tables pushed together in the largest of their rooms.

The dinner provided by the hotel was simple, but nourishing, consisting of a large bowl of rice, several sauteed chicken breasts, and a mixture of steamed vegetables, plus the option for multiple servings.

"So, how did everyone's first day of training go?" Lucy asked the main group as they ate.

"By the time we get to those games, I'm gonna have the power to create an entire hurricane of fire!" Natsu boasted loudly.

"And I'm gonna have the power to freeze that dopey thing solid before it kills someone." Gray said.

"Oh yeah?! Then why don't we go outside and just see about that?!" Natsu screamed at him, instantly triggered.

"Keep pestering me and I'll show you just how useless your little embers are, flamebrain!" Gray hollered back, answering the challenge.

"Come on guys, save it for training. Or for the games, at least. That's where we're gonna need it the most." Levy said.

At those words, Gray was the first to back off from the glaring match he and Natsu were then engaged in.

"Yeah, alright. When I get my chance to put charcoal-breath in his place, I want to do it at my absolute best so he'll know who the top dog is once and for all."

Natsu smiled with an insanely competitive leer. "That's funny. You took the words right out of my mouth. When that moment comes, by the time I'm done with you, you'll be too hot to make any ice for a month! Better go ahead and have an igloo handy."

"Oh, you're the best, Levy! The way you calmed them down was inspired!" Droy beamed.

"Yeah, if we hadn't lost you, I'm sure you would have helped us keep the guild on top!" Jet added.

Levy gave an affectionate wave in response. "Oh, stop it, guys! I'm not all that!"

"From what little I saw of everyone, I'd say we've achieved a solid start to our training, but we have to keep at it. Before too long, we should start training together and engaging in sparring sessions." Erza advised everyone.

"If we do spar, I say we should have tandem matches. And then, my darling Gray, we could fight side by side!"

Gray fought the strong urge to roll his eyes at that.

"I think if we do have sparring matches, it'd probably be more effective for us to fight against each other. Our magic is so similar, it'd surely go a long ways in helping us improve."

"I think you could be right about that. We'll be sure to set it up." Erza said.

"But... my darling Gray and I... side by side." Juvia muttered, half-hearted and dejected.

Logan leaned forward, stretching to get some salt for his chicken, and gave a small grunt of pain as he did so.

"You okay, Logan?" Wendy asked him.

Looking at him, she noticed how the tops of his fingers all looked a little bit raw and that there were small, freshly made scabs on his arms. They were the kind you got from your skin scraping hard against something.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks, Wendy."

"Sure about that?" Lucy asked him playfully. "You look like you put yourself through the wringer today. I saw you and you could barely drag yourself in when you got back."

"Really, I'm fine. I haven't done anything I can't handle."

Logan said it with both a coldness and a directness to his bearing. Lucy saw he was still just trying to not reveal anything about himself, so he was just trying to end the inquiry into however he was training himself.

"You know, come to think of it, I didn't see you all day after we first hit the sand. Where'd you go, anyway?" Natsu asked.

"Just a place to train." Logan answered, sounding almost bored.

Natsu burst out again, "Wait a minute! You're not really gonna keep trying to hide your magic from us are you?! Even with all this going on?!"

Logan declined to answer that one, chewing a mouthful of rice slowly and deliberately.

Natsu slammed his hands down on the table and half rose to his feet.

"Really, man?! That's how it's gonna be?! I thought we were in this together!"

Logan said nothing. Natsu scowled at him and clenched his fist, small sparks of flame coming off of it, but then a mischievous smirk crossed his face for a moment before he decided to settle down. Natsu sat back down to his own food.

"If that's the way you want it then fine, have it your own way." Natsu said aloud. To himself, he thought, "But I'm still gonna find out what you're working at."

OOO

With nothing but a small inhale of breath to speak of it, Logan awakened. He could see the clock on the wall from his vantage point, so he knew it'd been about four hours since he and Gray came back to their room together and went to sleep. Having been a lone, wandering nomad with no one to rely on but himself, Logan had trained himself to be an astonishingly light sleeper. He could be roused form sleep with the slithering of a snake or the softest twittering of a bird.

This time, he'd been brought back to the waking world by the minute sound of the greased hinges of the room's door grinding against each other, signaling someone entering the room. Instantly on the defensive, Logan set his mind to analyzing everything he could about the intruder, without moving or alerting them.

He listened to the sound of their foot steps.

"Very light tread, bare feet. They're approaching cautiously, definitely trying to take us unaware."

He felt for the vibrations of their step through the floorboard.

"About one-hundred and twenty-five pounds, maybe one-thirty. Definitely either a woman or a small man. Favoring their right foot from the feel of it, putting slightly more weight on that leg."

Logan couldn't tell from the limited scope available to him whether or not they had a weapon. If they were here to kill himself or Gray, they could have done with it a gun or crossbow from the doorway, or maybe could have just blown up the whole inn if they had the right kind of magic. The fact none of that had happened meant they wanted to be clandestine about it so they could get away cleanly, which gave Logan the edge since they didn't know he was awake and aware.

Briefly, Logan ran through the gambit of possible suspects who could want him dead. Could it be that woman running the crooked gambling racket he'd broken up three months ago to get his money back? Maybe those guys with the kidnapping ring he'd come across five months back had sent an assassin. Logan then considered it could just as easily be totally unconnected to him, but someone looking to get even with Gray for something he'd done. In any case, with the way he and Gray were arranged in the room, the attacker would have to come right up to Logan before doing anything.

He waited until just the right moment. The intruder was less than two feet away from him, not even out of arm's reach. They passed by him, heading for Gray, and with their back to him, Logan made his move.

He jumped up, whipping the sheets off of himself, and instantly got his arm around the intruder's neck in a choke-hold. It turned out it had been a woman. He could tell from the amount of hair and the feel of her build. There was a considerable difference in height between them, allowing her to almost slip out of Logan's grasp with the slight miscalculation he made.

Logan countered that by making them both fall down backwards. He fell onto his back and used the momentum to flip them over, rolling the female intruder underneath himself and taking back control of the situation. As soon as he had the floor under his knees, Logan let go of his choke-hold, then grabbed onto the woman's elbows with crushing strength, shoved one knee into the cleft of her spine, and then leaned his weight back, robbing her of all possible leverage and avenues of escape.

Just at that moment, one of the room's lamps suddenly blazed on, and Logan saw Gray, up and ready with an icicle sword in his hands.

"Logan! Hold 'em still and I'll-" Gray roared before suddenly cutting himself off mid-sentence. "JUVIA?!"

Hearing that, Logan looked at his captive for the first time in the light. Sure enough, it actually was Juvia, his guild mate. She had her hair back in its usual way, and was wearing a midnight blue nightgown which caused her pale skin to really stand out. Logan let her go, and then stood back to wait for the explanation.

"Ugh! I should have known! Why didn't I guess it straight off?! It only makes sense!" Gray ranted in a fever pitch of agitation.

"Uh, Gray, Juvia, you maybe want to fill me in on what's going on here? Normally I wouldn't ask, but I get inquisitive when people break into my room." Logan asked.

"Alright, I'll tell ya what happened. First though, since you guys haven't talked almost at all, let me reintroduce you. Juvia, this is Logan. Logan, this is the chick stalking me."

"What? You're stalking him?"

"My beloved, you know that's not true!" Juvia protested.

"Yeah? Then what do you call breaking into our room?!" Gray shouted back.

"I merely wanted to give you something to reward you for all the hard work you put in today." Juvia said.

"More like your idea for tandem sparring got shot down, so you thought you'd crawl into my bed to make yourself feel better." Gray countered.

"I only wanted to give you the kind of loving care and relaxation a warm body pressed to yours in sleep can provide!"

"Does she do this kind of thing a lot?" Logan asked.

"You saw her try to tackle me when we got to the guild on your first day. What's more, no matter where I go or when, every time I go out to get some groceries, she somehow manages to 'run into me' by accident, and magically has everything I'd already picked out for myself to buy." Gray said.

"No, my darling Gray, those all really are coincidences! Don't you see that destiny is trying to tell us to be together?!" She declared with conviction.

"How did you even get in here? Because I personally bolted that door and inspected the lock." Logan asked.

"Well, it's really not so hard to defeat if you can make water in the lock fit the mechanism. You just have to turn it at that point."

Gray sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, looking every bit like he was reaching his wit's end.

He said, "Let me just ask you one thing. What exactly did you think was going to happen when I woke up in the morning and found you next to me? Because whatever you had in mind, I promise you, that ain't what it was gonna be!"

Logan then said, "Maybe we should all just, you know, go back to sleep in our rooms."

"That's a great idea, but before that, Juvia, I've got one simple request to make. Please try and exercise some kind of willpower and keep yourself from pullin' any more stunts like this at least until the games are over!"

Juvia opened her mouth, clearly wanting to say something else in defense of her actions, but then seemed to decide not to try.

"Very well, my darling. I love you very much, Gray, so I'll respect your wishes and allow you to concentrate fully on your training."

She then turned and sauntered out of their room with her head held high, trying to look like the very image of dignity.

"Jeez!" Gray declared as soon as she'd shut the door. "I can't get a moment's peace with her around! Every night I go home, I worry I'm gonna find her in my kitchen or maybe skulking around my bathroom or something!"

"That's definitely... odd." Logan said, because he felt he had to say something.

"'Odd'? Yeah, that's puttin' it generously. It's borderline deranged, that's what it is!"

"Yeah, she does seem to be fixated on you. I'm really not sure if I've ever seen a stronger obsession."

"You're tellin' me!"

Gray then took a few soothing breaths, inhaling and exhaling deeply.

"Okay, since that's over, man, I really want to thank you for intercepting her. I would have been even more stressed out by it if I had found her pressed against me in the morning." Gray said.

"I know what you mean." Logan said with a glimmer of remembrance in his eyes.

Gray took a beat as his mind made the connection, then he let out a short bark of a laugh.

"Yeah, I guess you do, don't ya?! Alright, let's go back to bed. And you're definitely gonna keep sleeping close to the door after this incident."

Logan replied, "I would have, anyway. I don't really like the idea of repeating that."

OOO

The next morning after everyone shared breakfast, Natsu instantly put his plan into action. Out on the sand, he was trailing a good hundred feet behind Logan as he made his way down the beach. Natsu crept along as stealthily as he could, randomly ducking into the foliage on his left to keep himself hidden.

Natsu thought to himself, "Yeah, that's right Mop Head. Just keep heading for wherever you're going to, and once we're there, I'll get myself a big old eyeful of your magic!"

"Hey, Natsu!" A familiar, high pitched voice yelled.

Natsu spun round with a horrified grimace for his possible exposure, and saw Happy flying towards him.

"Natsu! What are you doing? I thought you wanted to train ASAP!"

With just a small burst of fire from his feet, Natsu jumped up and grabbed his best friend from twenty feet in the air, and covered the cat's mouth instantly.

"Quiet, Happy! Couldn't you see that I'm trying to follow Logan?! He won't let anybody see what his magic is, but I'm gonna figure it out and then tell everyone!"

Happy used one of his paws to push Natsu's hand away. "Well, I'm sorry to say it Natsu, but I think your mission is scrubbed for today."

"Huh?"

Natsu then turned to look back down at the last spot he'd seen Logan, only to find no trace whatsoever of his silver haired friend. Natsu's jaw dropped and he gaped in shock.

"What the?! How'd he do that?! He couldn't have been out of my sight for more than seven seconds!"

"Sorry, pal. I'll try not to do it again."

"Nah, it's okay, little buddy. I'll just have to get him tomorrow! There's no way he'll lose me again! I'm gonna find out what he's hiding!"

OOO

Before any of them knew it, a month of constant training there on that beach had rolled by. Everyone had been training at their hardest possible, and some of them had reached the point where they were starting to test how much their powers had improved.

Lucy stood in the middle of a clearing on the beach, all alone and preparing herself for what she was about to attempt.

"Okay, I think I've improved my magical capacity quite a bit, but I don't always want to be relying on just my spirits. I want to be able to fight on my own, without relying on anyone to bail me out." Lucy thought to herself.

She lifted up two of her celestial spirit keys and took one last deep breath to ready herself.

"Open! Gate of the maiden, Virgo! Gate of the lion, Leo!"

With a flash of magic power, the two spirits made their entrance to the world.

"How may I serve you, Princess?!"

"Hey there, Lucy. Been a minute. Ooh! Rockin' the beach bod, I see!" Loke said with a hint of flirtation.

Lucy then said, "I want you guys to do me a big favor. A really big one."

"You know I'll do anything to help you, babe." Loke said.

"As will I, Princess. Especially if I can be punished for it afterwards." Virgo said.

"As much as I hate to say this, you'll kinda get your wish this time. I want the two of you to attack me, and for real. I want to test how good my own fighting is, and all of the others would hold back if I asked them." Lucy instructed.

That got the two spirits attention, and their faces reflected the surprise they were feeling.

"Are you sure about that, Lucy?"

"Yes, Princess, I mean no offense, but we are more powerful than you. We don't wish to hurt you." Virgo said.

Lucy smiled warmly at the two of them. "I have faith that if it comes to that, you guys will be able to pull back in time."

With that, Lucy picked up the handle of the Fleuve d'étoiles and injected a little magic to activate it. The eerie blue, celestial energy flowed out to form the whip, encircled by a glowing, orange-white light that spiraled along its entire length.

Loke charged in, his right fist instantly shimmering with a golden glow.

"Regulus Impact!"

Lucy flung the Fleuve d'étoiles so that it snaked around his magically charged arm and flung it off course. Loke hit the ground to her right, the magic lion's head of the Regulus Impact exploding into the sand.

"Spica Lock!" Lucy heard Virgo shout.

She managed to jump out of the way just before Virgo's attack of boulders would have entombed her. One of them just barely scraped across her cheek as she dove to her left.

"That was a close one!" Lucy thought to herself.

Just then, a blinding burst of light brighter than the sun forced Lucy to shut her eyes.

"Oh, no! This must be Loke's 'Lion Brilliance' attack!" She thought.

Lucy then felt the ground giving out from underneath her and found herself buried in the sand up to her armpits, completely immobilized.

"No!" She shouted.

With an intuitive premonition of what was coming next, Lucy looked up and saw Loke coming down on her with another Regulus Impact charged and ready. The spirit of the Leo constellation slammed his fist down into the ground six inches from her head, sending a miniature tidal wave of sand surfing down the beach for a hundred feet.

"Oh! Come on! I really thought I'd be able to do this!" Lucy complained.

With a squeaking exclamation of surprise, she found herself being pushed up, out of the sand by Virgo's head underneath her butt.

"I'm sorry, Princess, but you did instruct us to fight at our best." Virgo said.

"Yeah, I did, but do you really have to touch me there?!" Lucy shouted, mortified by where the Maiden had chosen to excavate her.

Loke took her hand and helped Lucy off of her inelegant perch.

"You did show some good instincts there. Getting the Fleuve d'étoiles wrapped around my arm was a nice move, and same with dodging Virgo's Spica Lock. You just gotta keep working at it, Lucy, and you'll get it no sweat." He told her.

Lucy sighed, but then rallied herself and gave him a half-hearted, but appreciative smile.

"Thanks, Loke. I'll be sure to call you guys back when I'm ready to try again."

With that, she closed their spirit gates, and they vanished from the world. Lucy sat down with a thump underneath the shade of a large palm tree, sighing to herself.

"I really thought I was gonna be able to do better than that." She thought. "I guess I do need to keep training. Maybe I could get Erza or Natsu to give me some lessons in hand to hand sometime. I know I can get better, and I want to be able to fight on my own without relying on my spirits! But, I wonder if I'll ever be able to be as strong as my spirits are. They're all just so cool and have such amazing powers! If only there was some way I could share their powers. Hmm... I wonder if there's some way I could do that?"

OOO

At the base of a cliff overlooking the ocean, in the mouth of a cave, Gray was working on his own moves. Gray peered deeply into the dark depth of the cave. It seemed to be a regular beach cave like any other, with a cool breeze flowing through it, pools of water scattering the floor, and the thick smell of salty air.

"Can't tell how deep this cave goes, but let's see if there's some way I can find out." Gray thought to himself.

Gray slid his feet back, taking his magic casting stance.

"Ice-Make Ice World!"

He crouched down, placing his hands on the floor of the cave, and a wave of ice washed over the walls of the cave, covering everything and pushing it's way down the length until it reached the edge of Gray's vision and disappeared.

"Okay, that worked, now let's see about the other part." He thought.

He knelt down, placed a hand on the ice, closed his eyes, and concentrated. Focusing his magic and full mental capacity, he could sense every nook and cranny the ice had covered all the way to it's end, both as separate pieces and as a whole. In Gray's mind, it looked to him like a jigsaw puzzle, and he only had to focus on an individual segment of the puzzle to illuminate it's unique dimensions.

"Nice!" Gray exclaimed mentally. "I can pick up on everything. I can feel the rocks as if they were in my hand, and taste the salt in the frozen water. I can even feel all of the creatures living in the cave. They were frozen pretty fast, so they should be fine once they thaw out. Alright, now for the final test on this new spell."

He formed a clear metal picture of what he wanted to make, and spoke the incantation clearly.

"Ice World: Lancing Spear!"

Inside of the cave, the ice covering the walls morphed and contorted itself to quickly form sharpened stalagmites and stalactites shooting themselves through the empty spaces.

"Yes, it works!" Gray shouted aloud. "Now, with this spell, as long as I've got an enclosed space, I can make all of it one big Ice-Make arsenal!"

OOO

"Fire Dragon Claw!" Natsu yelled.

The rocket-speed propelling, jetstream of flames propelled him up into the sky.

"Fire Dragon Flame Elbow!" He shouted in mid-air.

A second torrent of fire erupted from his right elbow, the force of the blowout sending him into a continuous spin as gravity took hold and pulled him back towards the ground.

"Fire Dragon Wing Attack!"

With his third spell invoked, and his spinning momentum, the flames produced by Natsu's Fire Dragon Wing Attack engulfed him in a seething mass of twisting fire, turning him into a flaming drill-bit that struck the ground with the force of a bomb going off.

The explosion of flames and kinetic energy kicked up a dust cloud of sand, dug out a crater on the beach, cauterized sand into glass, and turned sea water into scalding steam all at the same time. Natsu sat in the middle of the crater, surrounded by ugly lumps of sandy glass, smiling to himself with the exuberance of a child.

"Hell yeah! Now that's a combo attack!" He shouted to himself with giddy excitement.

OOO

Hovering high over the beach from eighty feet away, Happy watched Natsu training.

"Man, Natsu's really doing amazing with his training! Those are some insane combos he's coming up with. He seems to have everything under control down there for now. Don't see what I can do."

The little Exceed then headed down the beach, looking for the other members of the guild, just to see what they were up to.

"There's Levy with Jet and Droy. Hey! That's pretty cool. Looks like Jet is using his speed magic to increase the speed of Levy's solid script magic. That ought to come in handy, but it doesn't look like they need me."

He flew further on down the beach, and spotted Erza on the edge of the forest.

"Looks like she's working with a spear today. I wonder if she maybe-"

Before even finishing the thought in his mind, Happy remembered the last time he'd interrupted Erza in the middle of her training. He'd almost lost a wing from triggering her reflexes, and decided he didn't want to push his luck on a repeat of that incident.

"I know Lucy will be working with her spirits, and Wendy's back at the inn, studying again today. But wait, what about Logan?"

It then occurred to Happy that he had no idea where Logan was. He hadn't really thought about it before, but they'd already been here at the beach for a month of their three month stay, and Happy didn't have any idea where Logan went or what he was doing for his training.

Happy thought, "He never says a word about it. He sneaks off every day, sometimes before the rest of us are up, and always comes back later than everyone else. I wonder if he's lonely? I know he's still not really used to us yet, even though I don't know why that seems hard for him and he won't talk about it. Even still, we've all done a bit together so far, all except him. Maybe I'll just go look for him. Training's always better and easier when you're doing it with a friend."

Happy banked to the right, turning inland. He'd been with Natsu on half a dozen of the dragon slayer's attempts to follow Logan, and every time Logan had vanished, they'd always been near the trees when it happened, so Happy guessed that Logan trained somewhere inland.

It took a good ten minutes or so, but he eventually spotted Logan sitting beneath a shady palm tree. Logan looked to be sitting down, eating his lunch.

"Hey, Logan!" Happy called out to him.

Logan looked up and watched as the cat made his landing and retracted his wings.

"Hi, Happy. What are you doing here?" Logan asked with a blank look on his face.

"Well, I just thought of you and thought I might come and keep you company."

A grunt sounded from Logan's throat, but he made no answer. He just stared at Happy with an entirely inscrutable expression, giving away nothing of what he might be thinking.

Feeling uncomfortable, Happy went on. "I really just wanted to try and come help with your training, but if you wanted, I could just hang around, be there if you want to talk. You know, just be there."

Another long beat passed after that, but Logan finally answered with the tone of someone who'd decided it didn't really make a difference.

"Well... I guess that'd be alright." Logan said.

"Aye, sir! And don't worry, I promise I won't get in your way. By the way, what's that you're eating?"

Logan looked down at his own lunch. It was something of a surprise to him that someone would ask what he was eating. After a quick second, Logan decided it was probably a pretty basic question for a normal person, but he would have never thought to ask.

"Well, I took a bunch of slices of the leftover prime rib we had last night and made it into ten sandwiches to last me through the day." He explained.

"Really? Does that mean you have one to share? It may not be a fish, but I could still go for it." Happy asked.

Logan briefly considered. He'd made ten sandwiches for the day, had figured he'd need at least eight to keep his strength up, and had already eaten five. He could spare one of his "in-case" sandwiches.

"Yeah, sure, Happy."

Logan reached into his bag, pulled one out, and handed it to the little cat after unwrapping it. They sat together for a time, eating in a comfortable, relaxed silence.

OOO

Thirty minutes later, Logan untied the blindfold he'd wrapped around Happy's eyes, with the cat's permission. Logan had asked Happy if it'd be alright to blind him for the walk back to his training ground because he didn't want any of the others to know where he was training. He had thought Happy would make an argument over it, or just refuse and then leave, but to his surprise, the little Exceed had agreed to the special contingency readily enough.

"Whoa!" Happy cried out.

He looked around at the boulder strewn, craggy terrain.

"So this is where you've been sneaking off to! You must be doing some kind of really cool evasion training or maybe earth magic if you need all these big rocks to help you."

"Something like that." Logan said noncommittally.

He of course wasn't going to tell Happy what his training was, because he knew it'd be in Natsu's ear before very long. Logan knew Happy would never be able to figure out what his magic was, even if Happy watched him like a hawk. He'd just have to hope that what Happy would see wouldn't prove very interesting for Natsu. Losing him every morning was no problem, but he figured it wouldn't be long before Natsu tried just walking right behind him or something of a similarly blunt and obvious nature.

"Remember our deal, Happy. You can stay as long as you keep out of my way while I'm training." Logan said.

"Oh, yeah, sure Logan! I don't want to get in your way. We all have to do our best at the games." Happy said.

"Alright, good. I'll be over here, then." Logan pointed to his left.

He walked away to continue his workout, and Happy spread his wings, deciding that the rocks would be good for improving his own maneuvering skills.

OOO

Erza and Levy stood twelve feet away from each other, squaring off.

"Are you sure you want to do this, Levy? I wouldn't want to hurt you." Erza said, her tone confident without being condescending.

"You don't have to worry about me, Erza. I'll be just fine."

"Very well, then. Requip!"

Erza magically changed from her bikini into her normal, Heart Kreuz armor.

"Fair warning, I won't hold back!" Erza declared and dashed forward at her top speed.

"Solid Script: Hole!" Levy yelled.

The written word of "hole" appeared on the ground just in front of Erza's feet, beginning to collapse the ground. Erza would have fallen in, but jumped forward just before her feet touched the word, going into a hand-stand and flipping herself over.

"Solid Script: Fire!"

A wall of flames erupted just in front of Erza.

"Solid Script: Boulder!"

A giant, vertically stacked pile of rocks spelling the word appeared above Erza, hurtling down at her.

"Requip!"

Erza instantly requipped into her Flame Empress armor, jumping through Levy's wall of flames without a hair being singed. She closed the distance between them and raised her sword.

"Soaring Fire Blade!"

At the same time as Erza swung, Levy jumped back. Her evasion wasn't quite as graceful as Erza's, consisting of only a jump and roll rather than a finessed acrobatic, but it worked just as well.

"Solid Script: Water!"

An orb of light emanated from Levy's hand, which then exploded into a deluge of water on contact with Erza, dousing the flames of her sword and coating much of the beach at the same time.

"Solid Script: Bullet!"

Levy held her arm out straight and firm, sending multiple copies of the word "bullet" zinging straight at Erza. Undaunted, the redheaded knight used her swordsmanship and speed to block all of Levy's magic projectiles with pinpoint accuracy. Erza then requipped into her Flight Armor, an armor that donned her in a leopard print bra, with further leopard print annotations on the protective plates on her shoulders and arms, and increased her speed dramatically.

"Sonic Claw!"

Erza dashed forward at near invisible speed, but Levy had already guessed she might utilize this armor and had planned for it.

"Solid Script: Oil!" She chanted, causing the word to appear, and gobs of greasy black oil to spray forth, coating the ground before her.

The sudden oil slick caused Erza to momentarily lose her footing, and that was all the opening Levy was looking for.

"Solid Script: Kick!"

The letters of the word materialized, then bent themselves backwards like a leg priming for a roundhouse, and pivoted forward, smacking into Erza's stomach and sending her back into the pool of water she'd been doused in before.

"Now! Solid Script: Thunder!"

Levy pointed her finger and a bolt of lighting shot forth, electrifying all the water she'd spread moments earlier, her plan coming to fruition. The scene exploded in an immense dance of shimmering power, sparks breaking off everywhere. Levy kept the magic lightning going for a full three seconds before disconnecting it.

"Yes!" Levy declared. "I did it! I-"

Levy cut off her celebration when she felt the cold, sharp edge of a blade at the back of her neck.

"Oh, man. Really?" She asked with good humor, disappointed and amused at the same time.

Levy turned around to see Erza right there, towering over her, clad in her Black Wing armor, and smiling down at her.

"I really thought I had you there!" Levy exclaimed with a smile.

"I must commend you, that was a well planned and excellently carried out strategy. You would have won if you'd been able to do a little more damage to me to begin with, or if my requip speed were any slower. As it stands, I was able to requip into my Lightning Empress armor to take out the major sting of your attack, and then jump and requip again into my Black Wing armor to escape, and here we are."

"Man! After Tenro, and all the training I've been putting in for the last month, I really thought I could get you!" Levy griped, still with a smile, but also with a clear note of self-reproach.

"You shouldn't be so hard on yourself. I'm thoroughly impressed with what you were able to do. Don't tell Natsu this, but you came two times closer to beating me just now than he ever has."

With that, both of the young ladies burst out laughing raucously.

"So, am I wrong, or is your Requip speed even faster now than it used to be?" Levy asked.

"Quite right. I expected you'd see it with how observant you are. My previous speed was about three quarters of a second, but through hard training, I've gotten that down to four-tenths of a second." Erza answered.

"And was that pure speed you used to block my bullets or a sword magic spell?"

"It was a spell. I read about it Sorcerer Magazine. It's called "Attraction," an Sword Magic spell that pulls the wielder's sword towards incoming objects. It's not very strong, so the wielder does need to possess good control and sword speed on their own, but it greatly contributes to successful blocking."

"Well, you definitely have what it takes to make that one work."

"Thank you, Levy. Care for another round?"

Levy quickly held up her hands in protest.

"Maybe in like a week? After this fight, I definitely need to improve some more before I try again."

OOO

"Hey, Happy!" Natsu cried out.

It was about one o'clock in the afternoon, and Natsu's stomach had told him in no uncertain terms that it was time to take a break and refuel his tank. He'd been walking back to the inn when he spotted his old friend flying in from the north. Happy swooped down and landed a few feet in front of him.

"Where you been, little buddy? I've been wanting to practice some our aerial moves, but I've barely seen you in like, almost a week, I guess."

"Sorry about that, Natsu. I'll be sure to come and help you with those flying moves tomorrow or the next day." Happy said.

"Not today? What's the deal, pal? Where you been all week?"

"I kinda thought that Logan might be lonely training all by himself, so I've been hanging out with him and keeping him company."

"What?!" Natsu shouted. He grabbed Happy up in both hands and lifted him off the ground in a flash, holding the cat close to his face. "You've been with Mop Head for the last week?! While he was training?!"

"Yeah. I've been there every day."

Natsu beamed ecstatically, his smile reaching ear to ear and practically extending past his face. This was it! He could finally find out what kind of magic Logan used. Happy would tell him. After almost two months of mystery, he could finally know what the big secret was.

"So, what does he do?! What's his magic?!"

"His magic?" Happy asked, seemingly surprised by the question.

Happy scrunched up his face and gave it a good and clearly thorough mulling over. He stayed that way, thinking hard, for almost half a minute.

He finally answered, "You know, I really couldn't say."

Natsu couldn't believe his ears. At first, his mind rejected it. It wasn't possible, simply not conceivable that Happy could have spent a week with Logan and never seen his magic. When the fact of Happy's truthfulness finally forced its way to settle concretely in his brain, the force of the shock was so great that Natsu lost his balance completely. Gravity seemed to reach a hand up from the Earth, grab him by the neck and yank him forcefully into the ground, his legs splayed unseemly over top of his prone torso.

With the same force with which he toppled, Natsu lifted himself into a cross-legged sitting and grabbed onto Happy again.

"What do you mean you couldn't say?! How could you possibly have been with him a week and you didn't see his magic?! What the heck of have you been doing with him?!"

Happy looked up and to the right, remembering. "Well, he made me promise not to bother him while he was training, so I've been working on my own stuff. Been doing some speed flying, going really fast, and also my resistance on eating fishies right away. Then there's also been my nap training. Think I might almost be able to stay asleep now even if Erza was yelling right in my face." Happy then looked directly at Natsu for the first time during his recitation. "What's wrong, Natsu? What's with that face?"

The grimace on the Dragon Slayer's face, the slack-jawed gaping of his mouth and disbelief of his eyes had three times the strength of shock he'd expected to feel when he thought he'd get his long-awaited answer.

Natsu suddenly jumped to his feet, holding onto his head with both hands, whipping himself back and forth!

"I'm gonna find out what you've got! You hear me, Mop Head?! I'm gonna find out!" He howled to the sky.

OOO

"You sure about this, Wendy?" Logan asked.

"Yeah, I'm sure. I think I've finally got it down in my head how these new spells are supposed to work, and I've got to practice them if I'm gonna get them right. I'm more worried about you, though. Dragon Slayer magic is really tough, you know. I wouldn't want you to get hurt."

In his head, Logan thought it was very cute and quite sweet that Wendy was worried about him. Although he wasn't discounting the chance that she could hurt him, because to do so would be to underestimate her and possibly a later real enemy's strength and thereby invite disaster, he had confidence in his ability to evade Wendy's attacks. Still, he didn't let that show in his face, keeping his expression flat and neutral. He didn't want to hurt her feelings.

Out loud, Logan said, "Okay, Wendy. If at any time you think you really need to, then pull back on your attack, but only if you feel it's a hundred-percent necessary. Otherwise, don't hold back. If you do then you won't be able to get the proper feel for the spells."

"Alright, Logan. That sounds like a great plan!"

"It's all worked out, then. You attack me with everything you've got, and I'll do the same, except I will be holding back from hitting you directly. Five points to me, that's five hits which would have connected without dispute, and I win. You land one successful attack on me, one that I wasn't able to stop or block, and you win." He said.

"Let's do it!" Wendy declared.

Logan raised his brace and gauntlet clad arms in preparation.

"You asked for it, so I'm going all out! O strengthen of arm to cleave the heavens! All physical abilities up!"

A magical gust of wind then exploded out from nowhere, pushing Wendy forward at tremendous speed, careening at Logan. Wendy flipped herself over in midair, bringing her heel down on Logan in an axe-kick technique.

"Sky Dragon Claw!"

Logan raised his arm braces just in time to protect his face and her little foot came clamoring down into them hard. While he was impressed with the strength behind the kick, he held his ground against the hit for half a second until the wind from her magic assaulted him. The gust was far more powerful than he'd expected it to be, pushing him forcibly back across the sand for eight feet before Logan's heel caught on a rock embedded beneath the surface and he lost his balance.

Logan rolled backwards, toppling over himself two times before his back slammed into the side of a palm tree. Grabbing onto the trunk with one hand, he used his own momentum to spin him around the tree and right himself. Just as Logan was coming to his feet, he saw that Wendy was jumping at him again, one hand open like a claw and sweeping towards him.

"Sky Dragon Crushing Fang!"

A split-second before she would have made contact, using the tree for support, Logan leaned back so sharply that he became entirely horizontal from the knees onward. Wendy passed right over him, her claw attack missing outright. Once she'd cleared his head by two inches, Logan straightened up, turned to face her as she was landing, and grabbed Wendy around the neck with his right arm while mock jabbing her in the head with his left elbow and similarly planting his knee into her back.

Logan immediately let her go and jumped back, placing several feet between them.

"Sorry, Wendy. That's two points for me. One elbow to the head and knee into the small of the spine."

"You haven't won yet, Logan!" She yelled with a smile.

She extended her left arm all the way out and swung it in a wide arc in his direction.

"Sky Dragon Wing Attack!"

The gusts of air generated by Wendy's spell caused a huge, billowing amount of sand to be kicked up and it was all hurled directly at Logan. With the sand widening and spreading as the air dispersed, it created a veritable smokescreen that Logan couldn't hope to see through.

It was obvious that she was using the cover to try and take him by surprise, but which direction would she come from? To attack from the rear would be the most obvious attempt, but there wasn't enough of the blinding sand to allow Wendy to get around behind him. From either the left or the right, he'd be more than able to either dodge or block whatever she might throw at him, which left only one option. Half thinking, half on instinct, Logan realized it within three-quarters of a second and looked up to see Wendy hovering above him.

"Sky Dragon Roar!"

The signature move of the Dragon Slayer wizard blasted down at him, the wind funnel punching down with all the force of a speeding magic-mobile. Logan knew he didn't have the time or speed to dodge that spell, so he raised his arms over his head and braced himself.

To his surprise, the great jolting blow he'd expected didn't come. Peeking through his arms, he saw Wendy falling towards him, almost level with his head. Her mouth was open and she was preparing a second roar to shoot point-blank into his face.

Logan didn't give her the chance. He pushed his braced arms forward so fast that his metal gauntlets would have pulverized Wendy's face and broken her nose if he hadn't stopped them an inch off with equal force and precision. The shock of seeing the bashing coming for her caused Wendy's concentration to falter and her second roar to terminate.

Logan then stooped himself to one knee quickly enough to catch her before she hit the sand head-first. Wendy stared up into his face with both shock and wonder.

"Sneaky little dragon." He said. His tone had a note tinged with respect and what almost sounded like amusement. "You fired a roar with so little magic powering it that it dissipated before it could reach me just to serve as a distraction."

Wendy smiled a bit sheepishly. "I was trying to be tactical, like you."

"It was a good attempt, but you should remember-" Logan's face altered mid-sentence to show cold determination, and he lashed out with the hand not supporting her to punch down, stopping short of hitting her. "Don't try to show off if you have a clear shot. Being clever is great and will keep you alive, but grandstanding can get you killed."

He lifted her up so she could stand on her feet again and then rose to his own full height.

"Got it!" Wendy exclaimed with a big smile. "I won't forget that, I promise!"

"It may not have worked just now, but that was an impressive little maneuver you came up with there. With Erza, me, or anyone else on our team backing you up and giving you cover, that would work dead on against anyone."

"Thanks, Logan!"

"So, that looks to be four points for me so far. You want to keep going or call it here?" He asked.

"Are you kidding? I'm super pumped now! We have to keep going!" Wendy enthused.

Logan nodded once, and bent down on his knees slightly, extending both his fists out and at the ready. Wendy took a massively deep breath, taking in the element her magic thrived on, and she charged.

OOO

"Logan?! Wendy?!" Erza called out.

At the end of a ten hour day of training, everyone from their guild had returned to the inn for their dinner, except for Wendy and Logan. No one had been particularly worried about either of them being safe since Wendy was a dragon slayer and Logan had proved himself more than capable in a fight.

Erza, however, had become worried that they might miss their dinner after a half hour had passed from her returning and they still hadn't come back. With the titanic amount of effort they were all putting in, she couldn't discount the possibility the two of them could have overdone it and be unconscious somewhere along the beach, so had decided to go looking for them.

She didn't have the ability to fly like Happy, or an inhumanly powerful sense of smell like Natsu, but Erza didn't really need them. Wendy had told her earlier that she and Logan had made plans to practice together, and where they'd probably be, so she could confine her search to a more localized area.

Forty minutes into her search, Erza entered a small clearing of trees along the beach. She was about to call out again when she suddenly saw something, and smiled to herself. Logan and Wendy were sitting up against a palm tree, leaning against each other and sleeping fitfully. Wendy's head was resting gently on his shoulder, while Logan's head was sitting lightly atop hers. Looking at them, Erza couldn't help but beam at them with light-hearted amusement.

She bent down in front of Logan and placing her hand on his shoulder, she began to softly rouse him.

"Logan. Logan wake up."

Logan gradually started to lift his eyelids, and as her opened them fully, he found himself staring directly into Erza's face. The fading orange light of the sunset gave her scarlet red hair an almost ethereal shine, and reflected off her brown eyes so that they were practically glowing. His eyes briefly wandered down to glimpse the cleavage spilling out of her bikini top, and Logan forced himself to look up again. He tried to conceal the blush he felt rising to the surface, but instantly knew he'd failed.

"Erza?" Was all he could get out.

"You and Wendy must have really overdone it." She said with merriment. "With how skilled a fighter you are, I'd fully expected to get my arm twisted or maybe a small punch in the ribs in waking you. At least that you would have awakened before I'd touch you."

"Uh, well, yeah... I guess we kind of did practice really hard." Logan said, maintaining hard eye contact.

To distract himself, he turned his head to look down at the little girl beside him, for what he could see at that angle.

"She really kept pushing for another round and then another. Really wanted to improve. I think she wants to prove something to all you guys." Logan said with a tone that almost sounded proud.

Erza looked at her. "I'm sure she does. Wendy's the youngest member of Fairy Tail, and even more than the rest of the guild, she's like family on our team. I'm sure she wants to prove she can be just as strong and not hold the rest of us back." She then looked at Logan again. "And I'm also sure she'll be very grateful to our newest family member for helping her with that."

Erza then gave him this big, tender smile, showing off her top row of teeth, and Logan didn't know why, but he thought that he really liked the way her smile looked.

"Well, you know, she helped me too. Think I might have hammered out a couple new fighting routines just from this session."

"I'm glad, but we should probably get you two back before Natsu eats all of our dinners." Erza said.

"Yeah, right."

She backed up a step, giving Logan the room to stand up. He rose, but only to one knee so he could turn to Wendy, and softly shook her on the shoulder. Wendy wouldn't awaken, so Logan shook a little harder and said her name a few times. Wendy grumbled and readjusted herself, but she didn't wake up.

"It doesn't look like she's going to wake up." Erza said, sounding amused again.

"Okay."

Without any hint of protest or even the slightest irritation for the task, Logan adjusted himself so that his back was to her, pulled Wendy's arms over his shoulders and then stood up, lifting her into a piggy-back carry. He looked at Erza, and gave her an expression saying that it was no problem for him at all.

"Let's head back." He said.

Erza smiled again, and they set off without a word. The distance back to their inn being a hair over two miles, it was a long walk back for them. For a long time, they walked together in silence, the only sound between them that of Wendy's breathing.

Around the halfway point on their trip back, Logan suddenly spoke up.

"Hey, Erza. Can... can I ask you something?"

Erza's gaze turned to look at him with a small whip to her motion, surprised both by his suddenly speaking and his being inquisitive. In the eight weeks since she and the rest of them team had met him, he'd barely asked any questions of a personal nature, which Erza could tell it was from his tone.

"Of course." She said back.

"I've been thinking about something. It's just that you, Natsu, Lucy, Gray and Wendy all seem to be so different. There are some pretty big, well, personality clashes between you guys. I've been wondering for a little bit just how you guys all came to be a team." Logan explained.

Erza thought about it for a moment and decided he had something of a right to ask that. It went unsaid between everyone within the guild, but only because everyone in the guild had been there to see it happen. Erza realized that someone like Logan, who was still just getting used to all of them and probably still felt like an outsider would certainly be curious as to how their team had come together.

She gave him a bright smile and said, "I'd be happy to tell you."

Starting from the very beginning, Erza told him everything about how their team had been formed. Starting from the beginning of it all, with Natsu recruiting Lucy into Fairy Tail, she told him all about her, Lucy, Natsu and Gray teaming up to stop the dark guild of Eisenwald from using the Lullaby spell, gave an abridged account of their adventures on Galuna Island, their battle with the Phantom Lord guild, what took place in the Tower of Heaven, and then a more detailed narrative about how they met Wendy while dealing with the Oracion Seis. The three of them were well within sight of the inn by the time Erza was finished with her story.

"So, that's how it happened." Logan said.

They were his first words all throughout the story, and he said nothing more afterward. Erza didn't mind, though. She had the idea that he was trying to figure out where exactly he fit into them, and she knew she had to at least partially let him decide that for himself.

OOO

Ten minutes later, everyone of Fairy Tail was eating their dinner together. After figuring out what Erza had left to do, the others decided to wait until she returned with Wendy and Logan. That was exactly what they had done, after Gray had frozen Natsu solid to keep him away from the food. Wendy had even awakened a few minutes after she, Logan and Erza had come in.

In his own mind, Logan was thinking about the other members of the team he found himself on. These people, as insane and overbearing as they were, they were pretty nice people. He wasn't quite sure about it, but he had the distinct feeling that the patience they'd been showing him was far more than he would have gotten from possibly anyone else. He hadn't told them a single personal detail about himself yet, and despite that it was for a good reason, Logan felt like it was probably not the most effective way to build a working dynamic. He still didn't feel like he could explain himself to them just yet, but decided that he should at least start engaging more.

Logan swallowed his last bite of food, cleared his throat, and spoke up.

"So, Lucy, how's it coming with your training?"

Lucy looked at him from diagonally across the dining table with a small, but noticeable look of surprise on her face, clearly from it being him doing the asking. It only lasted for a second, and she then smiled broadly and answered.

"It's going great! I've developed my magical reservoir so much and I know I can push it even further. My spirits have been such a massive help, too. I'm working out fighting routines to work alongside all of them, not just have them do it for me. I'm especially working on pulling off something pretty cool with Gemini, but I think I'll keep that under my hat for a little bit. Wouldn't want to spoil the surprise, you know?" She fired off with quickly and with obvious delight.

Logan couldn't quite tell if she was merely proud of the progress she was making, or if her enthusiasm was in some part because he'd been the one to ask.

Lucy then asked, "So, how about you, Logan? How's your training coming along?"

Logan felt his customary hesitation and reluctance to say anything, but found that he could push it away a little more easily than on past occasions with the group.

"Well, I think it's going pretty well. I've been giving a lot of emphasis to footwork and balance training, really trying to give my agility and maneuverability a boost. At the same time, I've been going hard over my fighting techniques, working hard to refine my style."

"Yeah, you're a close-up fighter." Lucy gave a small, good-natured scoff. "I can't believe how many of those we have on our team. Anyway, how's that going? You focus a lot on boxing moves, don't you?"

"Yeah, I do. There's more to my style than just punching, but I do rely on those techniques a lot, yes."

"You must have to put in a lot of strength training for that, huh?"

Logan said, "Well, yes, pure strength is an important factor in it, but there's much more to it than that. The most vital things to focus on are your precision and control, because strength doesn't mean very much if you can't hit what you're aiming at."

For reasons he couldn't comprehend, that caused Lucy, Erza, and Gray to all burst out laughing.

"Yeah, that's true, alright!" Lucy said between laughs.

"If you can't hit what you're aiming for, you might as well not even bother!" Erza added.

"Logan, maybe you should start coaching Natsu! I don't think the pyro's ever gotten that lesson about control through his thick skull!" Gray wailed.

Directly across from Logan, Natsu gritted his teeth.

"Anyway," Logan said without smiling, but with a lighter tone. "Since we still have another month and a half here, there's more I'm planning to work on, but I think I'm coming along well, both in my fighting skills and my magic."

Natsu's eyes widened, he slammed his hands down on the table, and bolted upright.

"Would you just tell us what your magic is already?! It's driving me nuts! I've got to know! Why do you think I've been following you every day for the last month?! And how the hell do you keep losing me, anyway?!"

At this outburst, everyone became quiet, but none more so than Logan, who looked like he'd just been slapped.

"Jeez, you just had to ruin the mood, didn't you charcoal breath? I can't believe you're still on this! Why don't you leave the guy alone? He'll tell us when he wants to." Gray snapped.

"Uh uh! No way! I want an answer and I'm getting' it tonight no matter what!" Natsu declared.

Logan almost looked like he was physically shrinking, visibly withdrawing into himself mentally.

"Natsu..." Erza growled.

"Wha-"

Before he could finish that one word, Erza had snatched Natsu up by the front of his scarf and hurled him straight through the far wall of the dining room.

In her most commanding baritone, Erza decreed, "This is the last time I'm going to say it, Natsu! If Logan chooses not to tell us about his magic, that's his choice and we will respect his privacy! We're bound to find out what he can do in the games regardless, so your badgering him will do nothing but serve to divide our team when we need to be at our most cohesive! Do I make myself clear?!"

"Yeah... sure... I hear you." Natsu said from across the room in a pile of rubble, his tone coming out humbled and fearful despite the dazed pause between words.

Everyone else at the table were all staring intently at Erza, each of them looking aghast and made timid by the spectacle. All except Logan, that was. Logan was impressed. Impressed by the sheer strength Erza had just displayed, impressed by her arresting authority, and impressed most of all by how compellingly she'd handled the situation. He was fully aware of how possibly unnecessarily forceful what Erza had just done was, but by the same token, he already knew that when Natsu got like that, nothing less than force would make him realize how pigheaded he was being. All the others may have been afraid of Erza right then, but Logan found her to be strangely inspiring.

OOO

A week later, in the thick density of palm trees a distance behind the inn, Lucy was facing off in a sparring match of her own, against Team Shadowgear's Jet and Droy. Lucy had wanted to again test her progress against someone, but didn't want to face someone who might easily predict her like her spirits or anyone on her team. She thought it might be good practice for her as well as training to face someone whose magic and techniques she didn't know.

Jet and Droy were proving to be tougher opponents than she'd thought. Between Jet's High Speed magic and Droy's plant magic, they were proving to be quite the challenge. It didn't help Lucy either that over the course of their seven weeks so far, Droy had lost a lot of weight, slimming down to half of his previous size.

Droy deftly slipped his hand into the yellow sash around his torso and came out with a handful of his secret seeds and tossed them to the ground.

"Secret Seeds: Chain Plant!"

Miniature magic circles appeared over where the seeds sunk into the ground just a second before half a dozen vines sprouted and grew rapidly, their stems thickening as they grew. The ends of the vines split into four different tendrils, each one grabbing onto Lucy somewhere before encircling and ensnaring her.

They started to clamp down to try and hold her tight, but were instantly eviscerated by the energy of her Fleuve d'étoiles. Lucy had wrapped it around herself, powered down, just before the vines had snared her.

Just then, Jet came racing in, moving at furiously inhuman speeds thanks to his High Speed magic. His intent had been to push her down to end the sparring as easily as possible, but Lucy saw him coming well ahead of time thanks to the dust he kicked up from the sand. Lucy blocked him by spinning her Fleuve d'étoiles as fast as she could, creating a shield of magic energy between the two of them. Unable to touch her, Jet instead looped around Lucy again and again, creating a smokescreen of sand around her.

"Sorry about this, Lucy. We like you, but we want Levy to see how much stronger we've gotten with our training, and this will help us do it!" Jet said after coming to a stop.

"I don't think so, boys! Open, gate of the archer! Sagittarius!"

Sagittarius, her horseman celestial spirit appeared in a flash, just outside the settling dust.

"Howdy-do my lady! What can I do for you today?"

"Sagittarius, keep those guys off me for a couple of minutes! I want to try something!" Lucy ordered.

"My pleasure, Miss Lucy!"

Reaching back in a motion too swift for the human eye to see, Sagittarius pulled three arrows from his quiver, nocked them, and let them loose. Those three arrows lopped off the stems of three of Droy's seedlings as they were beginning to sprout.

"Don't forget about me!" Jet yelled.

He charged toward Sagittarius, but the Celestial Spirit was ready for him. With yet another super fast draw and loading, Sagittarius used pinpoint accuracy to send his arrow right between Jet's legs. The arrowhead sliced through the flesh of Jet's calf shallowly enough to not do any real damage, but sufficiently enough to make Jet trip himself and go tumbling into the side of a palm tree.

Having moved out of the still settling cloud of sand, Lucy had hidden herself behind a trio of close-knit trees.

She thought to herself, "Okay, Lucy, focus. You've been working on this spell in your head for the last three weeks. You've planned out all the steps, everything it should do, practiced the movements, so now it's time to see if it'll work."

Taking one of her golden keys from her belt, Lucy slowly and methodically began to set her magic into motion.

Meanwhile, Sagittarius was having his hands full trying to keep Jet and Droy off of her. The two had improved both their physiques and their magic more than any of the others had realized in their time so far.

"Try this one out, horsey! High Speed Magic, Friction Blast!"

Jet raced around the immediate area, rubbing his hands against everything he could, himself included, until he'd built up enough static electricity to send a weak bolt of lighting winging Sagittarius' way. The celestial spirit jumped skyward to get out of the way, then fired another quick shot off from his bow. The arrow acted as a lightning rod, drawing the static electricity to itself, only to strike it's own creator as the arrow pierced the ground at Jet's feet.

"Oh yeah? Well, how bout this?!" Droy called out. "Secret Seeds: Blade Plants!"

He threw down his seeds, and the vines grew out with their same usual rapidity, only ending in flattened leaves so razor-sharp their cutting power could be seen with the naked eye.

His first goal had again been to cut off the deadly plant life at their sources like before, but these new sprouts grew even faster thanks to Droy pouring extra magic into them, making it so the spirit could only destroy a single stem before the others had come too close.

With his countless eons of experience under his belt, Sagittarius quickly changed tactics. Utilizing his top speed, and with the use of his infinite supply of arrows thanks to Lucy's magic, Sagittarius drew, nocked, and fired his arrows with imperceptible speed, letting loose no less than five per second. His projectiles found their marks, the points of the arrowheads making precise contact with the bladed edges of the leaves. Droy's blade plants proved sharper in the end, ripping through each layer upon layer of arrows pelted at them until the tips of the remaining three plants reached their target, striking Sagittarius hard in the chest.

"Yes! I got him!"

As Droy looked on, basking in his victory, he suddenly noticed something. His plants had directly hit Sagittarius and certainly pushed him back more than a dozen feet, but they hadn't penetrated his body. While it was true that Celestial Spirits couldn't actually be killed, they weren't strictly speaking invulnerable, their bodies still made of flesh and able to be pierced, so it didn't make sense. Sagittarius looked at him with a smile that was halfway between playful and mocking.

"Ho ho! Sorry to disappoint you, my temporarily unfriendly foe, but I used my arrows to dull the shank of your plants before they could reach me."

Just as he was mentally preparing for what might come next, Lucy suddenly jumped out from the tree she'd been taking cover behind. Her right hand was holding on to one of her keys, and was wreathed in celestial spirit magic.

"Thanks for all your help Sagittarius, but I need all my magic now, so I'm closing your gate."

"Very well my lady! Toodle-oo until next time!" Sagittarius said as he faded from the world.

"Alright, boys! Time to try out my newest move and see what happens!" Lucy shouted.

OOO

Lazing peacefully on the shaded porch at the back of the inn, Levy was taking a break from her own training to catch up on one of the books she'd brought with her, reading without the benefit of her gale-force reading glasses to savor the story more. Taking a moment to stretch in her seat, she happened to look up and noticed a massive cloud of dust hanging in the air a sizable distance away.

OOO

As the air slowly cleared and Lucy could see what she had accomplished, she audibly gasped at the breadth of her spell's effectiveness.

"I can't believe it. It worked!" Lucy then began to jump up and down with joy. "It worked! I did it! I did it! I have a new attack!"

OOO

Everyone from Fairy Tail, the members of Team Natsu, Team Shadowgear, and Juvia as well all gathered on the beach that morning.

"Man, I can't believe how fast that went by." Gray said.

"Really! It's hard to think we've actually been here for three months already. The Grand Magic Games are next week!" Wendy said excitedly.

"I can't believe how much we've all come along!" Lucy exclaimed. "When we started, I really wasn't sure how much we'd be able to progress in just three months, but I think we might actually be ready for this!"

"I'm proud of all of us. We're going to give it our all, but win or lose at the games, I'd say we've done Fairy Tail proud with how hard we've worked." Erza said.

From where he was standing, Natsu glanced to his left, right at Logan, looking him up and down.

"You sure do seem to have put on some muscle mass, man."

At hearing that, Logan looked down at himself. It was true. With all the training he'd been putting in, he'd gained several inches all over himself in muscle. He was still nowhere near as big as Elfman, but in terms of his own team, he was definitely larger than both Natsu and Gray.

"Yeah, I guess so. I've been training pretty hard."

"Doing what exac- oh, forget it!" Natsu croaked with exasperation. "It's not like you'll tell me, anyway!"

"So, we still don't have to head out for Croqus for a couple more days. What do you guys think we should do?" Levy asked the group at large.

With a seeming aura of intensity surrounding her, Erza declared, "I say we should get in as much last minute training as we can to be at our best! Prepare yourselves! You may not survive!"

Lucy groaned with fright.

"Are you nuts?! I didn't work this hard just to die in an extra workout!" Gray shot back.

"Sounds good to me, Erza! Do your worst! I'm ready to feel the burn!" Natsu proclaimed, never being one to back down from a challenge.

"Yes, that's the spirit, Natsu! We'll start with some-"

Erza cut herself off as she suddenly felt a weight added to her. Looking up, she saw that a messenger pigeon had landed on her head.

"A bird?" Lucy asked, staring at it.

"Check it out. There's something around its leg." Gray said.

"It's a note." Natsu stated. "A love letter maybe?"

Happy unfolded the note with Natsu, Lucy, Wendy, Gray, Jet and Droy crouching around him, while Logan and Erza stood off to the side of the huddle, looking down.

Juvia crooned, "You could have just given it to me directly, Gray!"

"Yeah, right. Like I really wrote you a love note."

"Here we go." Happy said. He read, "Hey, Fairy Tail. You better come to the broken suspension bridge on the western hill."

"Dumb note's not the boss of us!" Natsu harped.

"No kidding." Gray said. "I don't care for their tone. Not one bit."

"What should we do?" Wendy asked.

"Why ignore it, of course!" Carla asserted.

"I think we should go there." Erza said.

"I don't know, this sounds like a trap to me." Levy said.

Lucy then added, "I'm with Levy on this one. This has 'trap' written all over it."

"The way I see it, there's two possibilities." Logan spoke up. His tone captured everyone's attention, as it had more confidence and authority in it than they were used to hearing from him. "Anyone who'd send that note obviously has an agenda with us, assuming it isn't some kind of prank, which I'm inclined to disbelieve. Either we go there and find out what it is they're after, or we don't, in which case they're likely to come to us sooner or later. Both choices have inherent risk to them if someone's looking to hurt us, but I personally side with Erza. If we go there, we can find out just what the score is, and we also have enough people here for a few to be hiding in the shadows for backup, just in case."

Logan deliberately neglected to tell them that he also knew of a way to mitigate any possible danger if it came down to that. Once he'd finished speaking his mind, he looked at his friends consciously to notice how rapt their focus on him was. Instantly switching out of bounty hunting mode without realizing he'd been in it, Logan's shoulder muscles loosened and he seemed to slump despite that his posture remained firm.

"Did... did I say something wrong?" He asked a little cautiously.

"No, not at all." Lucy said reassuringly and with a touch of wonder. "That was actually just pretty impressive."

"She's right. You summed up the situation well and came up with a good strategy for dealing with it. We'll do as you suggested." Erza said.

OOO

Forty minutes later, the eight members of Fairy Tail's strongest team approached an old, decaying suspension bridge that had long ago fallen into disarray, it's remnants only held up by the anchors on either side of the precipice. As they approached, Levy, Jet, Droy, and Juvia were all hiding in the trees about twenty yards back, ready and waiting to jump into action if they were needed.

"This must be the broken suspension bridge." Erza said.

Natsu slammed his right fist into his left hand in frustration. "Cowards must have run off!"

"Why are you always looking for a fight?" Wendy asked him.

"Maybe it really was just a prank." Gray said.

"Well, now that that's settled, let's get back to the beach." Lucy suggested.

"Hmm." Logan grunted. "I could have been wrong. No one followed us, I couldn't sense anyone watching us, and there were no footprints on the path up here. Unless they came up through the gully, then-"

Just as Logan was starting to speculate, there was a loud rumbling and in a flash right before their eyes, the bridge reassembled itself to look brand new.

"Huh. That's a first. The bridge fixed itself." Gray quietly exclaimed with wonder.

Logan recanted his previous turnaround. "Okay, so I wasn't wrong. There is someone here and they either came in through the gully below or hiked all the way around the come up from the other side. And although I'm not sure what kind of magic they just used, they clearly want us to cross the bridge."

"That makes the most pertinent question; should we?" Erza said.

"I really don't know about this, you guys. I still think it's a trap." Lucy said.

"I really think we should just go home." Wendy said with a note of real fear and apprehension in her voice.

Without even thinking about it or realizing what he was doing, Logan rested his hand protectively on her shoulder. He only noticed it when Wendy reached up and gripped his fingers with her hand.

"Whoever we're dealin' with is on the other side. Let's get crossin'!" Natsu exclaimed.

"Is he volunteering?" Lucy asked.

"Sure is!" Gray decided and swatted Natsu hard on the back, making him trip and stagger out onto the bridge. "See ya!"

"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" Natsu barely managed to keep himself up right, grabbing onto the rope handrail as he steadied himself. "Don't just shove a guy when he's not looking! I could have fallen!"

It was then that Natsu discovered how the bridge was wobbling and swaying beneath his feet, and he grunted and clamped a hand over his mouth as his stomach started sinking.

"Are you really getting sick from a freakin' bridge?" Gray called out to him.

"Why don't you come give it a try?!" Natsu groaned, his voice muffled from his hand. He turned towards the far end and started running. "Lousy bridge! You're not beating me!"

He leaped into the air and stuck the landing back on solid ground, a victorious smirk on his face.

"Well what do you know? I thought for sure it would collapse the second someone stepped on it." Lucy said.

"We all thought that." Wendy added.

Unable to keep from expressing his own thoughts that time, Logan said, "I was actually expecting someone to shoot at him halfway across."

While Natsu started to spout off a tirade of complaints from the other side, Erza turned to the group at large.

"Now that we know it's safe to cross, let's stop wasting it time. Move it, people!" She said.

They all crossed the bridge one by one and proceeded to hike deeper into the forest. As they moved, Logan kept a weather eye and ear out, keeping track of Team Shadowgear and Juvia behind them as well as everything surrounding them.

After ten further minutes of walking, Natsu exclaimed, "Ah! I hope they attack us soon!"

"Indeed." Erza echoed. "A tough opponent will make for excellent training."

"You know you guys are the only ones obsessed with that, right?" Gray asked.

In his head, Logan was siding with Gray. Whenever he'd pulled off a bounty hunting job through one of the freelance offices, he'd always planned meticulously to make sure that he was the one doing the attacking and that every odd possible would be stacked in his favor. Wanting to be assaulted, Erza and Natsu's desire to be attacked and thus instantly be on the defensive, he didn't understand that.

Erza then suddenly put her hand out, stopping the whole group. Following her line of sight, everyone looked up to see a trio of cloaked figures standing just above them on the incline.

"Someone's there!" Lucy softly shouted.

Logan shot his gauntlet and brace clad arms up into a guard, ready to fight.

"Everyone be careful!" He said.

The trio up above started to descend, closing the gap between them.

"Wait a minute! I know that smell." Natsu said.

An eerie, uncomfortable silence seemed to set over everyone else, leading Logan to suspect they knew who these people were, and wonder what was going on.

"You came. Thank you." The one in the middle said. The voice clearly belonged to a vigorous man, sounding young and strong. "It's nice to see you again."

Erza gasped as the three of them removed their hoods. All three of them were young, and Logan could almost feel the strength of their magic in the air itself. A uniquely diverse mix, one of them was a young woman with extremely dark purple hair beneath a white hairband, and red eyes with a weight in their gaze that seemed familiar to Logan. They were eyes filled with regret. She was dressed in a black unitard that clung to her generously proportioned curves in a highly complimentary way, with a white, inverted cross emblazoning the front, detached sleeves with gloves over top covering her arms, and thigh high boots adorning her legs.

There was another young lady with them as well, and she looked to be even a few years younger than the other one. She had aqua green eyes and long, flowing, wavy, hot pink hair tied up at the back of her head. Her outfit was a little more revealing, sporting ample cleavage and short skirt with a hem line ending exactly along her thighs.

Logan guessed that the man with them was maybe four or five years older than himself, and maybe an inch or so shorter. He had short, electric blue hair that jutted out from his scalp in spikes in many different spots. He had some kind of tattoo on his face that Logan couldn't place the meaning of, both above and below the man's left eye. His build was lean, but looked relatively sturdy, although, barring an especially powerful and efficient kind of magic at his disposal, Logan was fairly certain he could take the guy without difficulty.

"It's really you." Erza grunted in a low voice, disbelief dripping out of it.

Logan, while not dropping his guard, took brief glances with his eyes at his team members, perplexed and wondering as to how they all obviously knew these people in front of them.

"You haven't changed, Erza." The blue haired man said. "I take it that word of my prison break reached you some time ago."

"Yes." She responded.

"What?! These guys are criminals?!" Logan thought to himself.

He instantly tightened up his guard even more, and further coiled his muscles, ready to throw out a monster jab with millisecond provocation. He wasn't sure what was happening here, but would be ready for the worst.

The blue haired guy went on, "Please know, I never intended to escape."

"Meldy and I didn't give him much of a choice." The dark haired woman said.

"That was all you, Ultear. Don't lump me into your criminal behavior." The pink haired one said with a smile.

"Jellal broke out of prison?" Lucy asked in hushed tones.

"And with Grimoire Heart no less." Natsu added.

Logan's eyes widened at the sound of that name. "Jellal?! The psycho lunatic Erza told me tried to sacrifice her in that tower lacrima thing?! What the hell is happening here?!"

This was becoming more even more convoluted and confusing to him.

"Chill out. They're not our enemies anymore. Isn't that right?" Gray said, addressing his question to the woman called Ultear.

"Yes, it is. I committed many sins as a member of Grimoire Heart, so many, I doubt I could ever atone for all of them. So, I've dedicated myself to bringing some measure of peace to the people I've hurt. Til the day I die." Ultear proclaimed with conviction.

"You risked so much to rescue him from prison." Wendy said.

"Because Jellal's one of them."

"You don't owe me anything, Ultear. We were both possessed by darkness. It's in the past now." He said.

"Jellal, has your memory returned?" Erza asked.

"Every bit of it. Including my sins. For six whole years I've been living with the guilt of the things I've done. Erza, I'm sorry, but words can't erase your pain."

"I was the one controlling Jellal during the Tower of Heaven incident. The blame is mine, so don't punish him. Besides, I think he's been through enough as it is." Ultear said.

"I could either spend the rest of my life in prison, or lose my life and be done with it. Either way, at least my penance would have been paid." Jellal said.

As he spoke, Jellal unconsciously took a step closer to the members of Fairy Tail, closer to Erza, and with his mind on red alert, that was all the catalyst Logan required. With the seamless grace of long practice, Logan flowed through his footwork, practically floating as he slid himself out from the group, moving in front of Erza, taking up a stance directly between her and Jellal, obscuring half of her with his own body. His eyes burned at Jellal, projecting a clear message of protectiveness and immovability.

"Uh!" Jellal gasped, surprise filling his eyes. "Um... hello. Please do forgive me for failing to notice you before now, that was incredibly rude of me. I don't believe we've met before."

Logan said nothing.

"You must be a new member of Fairy Tail to be friends with Erza and on her team. It's a pleasure to meet you. My name is Jellal Fernandes."

"Uh, Logan, what'cha doin' there?" Lucy asked in a friendly but worried tone.

Logan said nothing.

"Logan, it's alright!" Erza blurted out resolutely. "Jellal, Ultear and Meldy are our friends!"

Logan looked at her with only his eyes, and said nothing.

"It's the truth, really. The story I told you before about the tower and the revival system, it was all true, but that wasn't the full story. I wasn't holding it back, but it just wasn't very pertinent at the time. The rest of the story is that Jellal was being controlled, forced to act that way and do those things. You just heard that for yourself, didn't you? In his right mind, of his own accord, he is not an evil person." Erza explained.

Logan said nothing.

"I know it might be hard for you to believe given what most people must say about him and the stories you've probably heard, but we're telling you the truth. Jellal won't try to hurt us." Wendy said with vehemence.

Logan said nothing.

Gray then added, "Same goes for Ultear and Meldy. We believe in them, and you at least believe in us, don't you? Shouldn't that be good enough?"

Logan had to admit that Gray made a good point. Even if he didn't know these people, his friends and teammates trusting them was at least enough to give them the benefit of the doubt. He lowered his fists, straightened his posture, and relaxed his muscles, releasing the tension with a long exhale.

"Yeah, that is good enough." Logan said.

He didn't lower his mental guards all the way, still watching vigorously for any aggressive tells from the newcomers, but he relaxed his face and loosened his body language.

"I'm, uh, sorry for the assumptions there, but given what you all just said in front of me, and names like 'Jellal' and 'Grimoire Heart,' well... I don't think I was totally unjustified." Logan said, his voice taking on a familiarly uncomfortable and uncertain tone.

"It's alright. I quite understand." Jellal said. "Since this our first meeting, I believe proper introductions are in order. As I said, my name is Jellal Fernandes. It's a pleasure to meet you."

The dark haired woman than stepped up to him. "I'm Ultear Milkovich. You've probably heard of me as well, but I want you to know that I have no ill intentions towards you or anyone else here."

"And I'm Meldy." The girl with pink hair said. "I know we'll have to earn it, but I hope that you'll eventually come to trust us."

"It's, uh, it's nice to meet all of you." Logan said, trying to keep the hesitancy out of his voice. "I'm Logan Bloodborne."

Jellal and Ultear's eyes widened at hearing his name.

"You're Logan Bloodborne?" Ultear asked.

Logan couldn't even attempt to hide his own surprise at his name being recognized by these people.

"Hold up! You mean you guys know him?" Natsu shouted, aghast at the development.

"No, we've never seen him before, but we've heard of him quite a number of times. Some of the inmates I was incarcerated with were even apprehended by him." Jellal said.

"Logan Bloodborne is a moderately well-known name in the Fiore underworld." Ultear explained. "Some consider him to be the number one bounty hunter in the country, and maybe even all of Ishgar. They say that he's been taking some of the worst and most dangerous fugitives into custody for years, some even going up to SS ranking. Some claim he's never failed a job."

"Whoa! Logan, is that true? You didn't tell us you were that well-known." Wendy asked.

"Well... it's not really something I like to talk about." He muttered gingerly.

"And can you seriously take in guys wanted on SS ranked jobs? That's like Gildarts' level." Gray said.

Logan looked away, refusing to answer.

Erza couldn't be sure, but looking at Logan, she thought she detected a hollowness in his voice and an absent, almost searching quality to his eyes. In that moment, she thought it more than his usual modus operandi of not talking about himself, but much like the composition of his magic, that he was actively keeping the truth from them.

It was at this moment that Team Shadowgear and Juvia, having decided that nothing violent would happen, came out from their hiding places.

"Hey there, Juvia! Long time, no see."

Jellal said, "Now that we have that misunderstanding cleared, there's something else I need to clarify. Wendy, there's no easy way to explain this, but the Jellal you knew, he's someone else entirely."

"Oh, yeah, don't worry. We cleared that up a while back." She reassured him with a flourish of her hands.

Jellal then turned his head slightly away from the rest of them, his expression becoming more somber and melancholy again.

"Now that I'm free, I've found a purpose to my life, but I can't say it's entirely positive." He said.

Ultear explained, "The three of us have formed a guild of our own. It's an independent guild, neither officially recognized nor aligned with anyone. It's name is 'Crime Sorcière' or 'Witch's Crime.'"

"An independent guild?" Levy asked.

"You're not affiliated with any alliances?" Carla asked.

"Crime Sorcière, I've heard of you before." Droy said.

"Yeah, me too." Jet added. "You guys have taken down a bunch of dark guilds over the past few years."

Ultear said, "Unfortunately, our one true goal alludes us."

"Zeref." Jellal finished.

The words of that proclamation brought about an instant reaction, eliciting an audible exhalation of surprise from Erza, Natsu, and Lucy.

"Zeref?" Logan gasped.

Gray, Lucy, Natsu, Wendy and Erza all turned to look at him, finding themselves with one shock added onto the other. It were as though he'd just been gut-punched. The look in Logan's eyes was a mixture of tortured confusion, inner strife, displeasure, wanting, and fear. In contrast to his usual stoic demeanor, he looked as though he were desperate for something and terrified at the same time.

"Hey pal, you okay?" Gray asked with some concern.

"Yeah, I'm, uh, I'm fine." He replied, visibly trying to compose himself.

"Are you sure?" Wendy asked, matching Gray's tone. "You look kind of rattled. Do you maybe know something about Zeref?"

"No... no, I don't." Logan insisted, putting some strength into his voice. "It's just, I just thought Zeref was only a legend. Just didn't expect to hear him talked about as being a real person. That's all."

"I can assure you, he is no mere legend." Jellal interjected.
"Zeref is the root of much evil in the world as we know it today, and that's where we come in. Dark guilds, and anyone who seeks to destroy the lives of innocents, we'll purge every one of them so no wizard will ever be possessed by his darkness again."

"That's a seriously righteous cause!" Lucy enthused.

"With all the good you've done, I'm surprised the magic council won't accept you." Gray said.

"I am a convict." Jella said jovially.

"And Ultear and I did used to be in Grimoire Heart." Meldy said with a laugh to her voice.

"Besides, if we were to become official, we wouldn't be able to go after dark guilds anymore because of the inter-guild conflict ban treaty. We're far more useful if we remain as we are now."

"Anyway, as much as we'd love to keep catching up, we brought you here to ask a favor." Ultear said. "Is it true you'll be entering the Grand Magic Games this year?"

"Yeah, why?" Natsu asked.

"We can't get too close to the coliseum without trouble. If all of you are willing, we'd like you to do something while you're there." She went on.

"Oh, I get it. You want someone's autograph." Surmised Natsu.

"I'll pretend you didn't say that." Ultear responded, not bothering to hide her irritation or how stupid she thought the comment to be.

Jellal continued, "Every year we sense unusual magic power during the games. We want you to find out what's behind it."

"What? Are you guys for real?"

Trying to recover himself, Logan spoke up.

"From what I've heard, nearly every official guild in Fiore competes in the games. Every category of magic energy in existence must be collected there during the event."

"Don't you think you might be a little paranoid?" Levy asked the members of Crime Sorcière.

"We wouldn't be asking you if we weren't absolutely certain. What's more, the power we've been sensing is not only evil, but reminiscent of Zeref." Jellal said.

"Zeref? Are you sure that it's related?" Erza asked.

"We believe our prior involvements with him has given us the ability to perceive any trace of his powers."

"I don't know." Natsu thought aloud.

To himself, Logan had to agree with Natsu. It seemed highly unlikely to him. He'd read once in a book how some wizards could eventually sense the unique magical energies of people they'd known for a long time, but without some kind of permanently fixed telepathy or body-link magic forged between them, it was an ability which uniformly required close proximity. Unless these three had performed a closer reconnaissance than they were implying, it didn't seem possible.

"Now do you understand why ascertaining the truth is paramount?" Ultear asked the group.

"If you can track down the source of the mysterious energy, it may help us locate him." Jellal said.

"And you'll be compensated just like any other job." Meldy added. "Discretion is important. We don't want the culprit to know we're onto them, so we'll be rooting for you from behind the scenes."

"It sounds like a wild goose chase, but we'll do it." Erza spoke, deciding unilaterally.

"Thank you." Ultear said.

"You sure about this?" Gray asked her.

"We don't have much choice. Guilds from all over Fiore will be gathering around this power, so it could be trouble for us too." Erza then turned around to her rear flank and looked up into Logan's face. "The only thing I'm wondering about is whether or not we can count on your help in this venture."

"Huh? Why me?"

"Logan, you're the only one of us here who has no history whatsoever with Jellal, Ultear, or Meldy. As such, even though you're a part of our team, you don't have any obligation to help us with their favor, and I'll entirely understand if you choose not to."

Logan was slightly taken aback by the level of thoughtfulness she was showing him. He took a few full seconds to consider the question, but really, what was there to consider?

"Well, it wouldn't make me much of a teammate or a friend if I didn't help while all of you were pitching in, would it?"

Erza smiled up at him. "I'm glad to hear it."

Logan gave her a nod, cementing it. He would help. He had his reasons to help.

Ultear then said, "By the way, did we mention we'll be paying up front?"

"FOOD MONEY!" Natsu, Lucy and Happy all shouted in unison.

"Oh, no, nothing so material. I've had years to work on and improve my Arc of Time magic and can use it to enhance your abilities. A power up. At least, that's one way to put, although its not entirely accurate." Ultear said.

She proceeded to explain, holding out the crystal ball which was a tool of her magic to create a presentation.

"Wizards possess something like an internal container that determines how much magic power they can have. Though it's depleted with every spell you cast, your body naturally draws in ethernano from the surrounding atmosphere all on its own and continues to do so until the container is full again. But, recent research has revealed there is a part of this container and the magic it holds that goes unused. They've come to call these hidden troves of magic the 'Second Origin.'"

"Seriously?" Natsu asked with awe.

"Not only can my Arc of Time force your containers to grow, but I can also grant you access to your Second Origin. Simply put, you'll not only be able to use more powerful magic, you can keep using it for longer periods of time."

"You could really do that?" Lucy asked.

"Yes, but I have to warn you, unlocking your Second Origin would involve unimaginable pain. It's not an easy process."

"But Ultear, how could you even pull that off? I thought your Arc of Time had no power over the organic tissue of people." Gray said.

"That's true, but the magical reservoirs of the Origins are an exception. The Origins have been proven to be coated in a naturally occurring layer of magic. A sort of self-defense mechanism against damage, and as such, they're isolated from the organic tissue of the rest of the body, meaning that once my magic penetrates your body, it can affect the Origins."

"That does make sense logically." Carla commented.

"Yeah, but, everybody, do we really want to do that? I mean, she said it'd be painful, and besides, wouldn't it sort of be like cheating? I doubt many other people at the games are going to have this Second Origin." Wendy said.

"She makes a good point." Natsu said. "I mean, it sounds totally awesome, dude. I know we've had our differences, but all that's water under the bridge. By the way, I'm also totally cool with you pretending to be a chick."

"What do you mean 'pretending?!'" Ultear sniped.

"Do you really still think she's an old man?" Gray asked, both surprised and unfazed by Natsu at the same time.

"I have to side with Wendy. It's a very generous offer, but I think we'll need to think it over before we make this decision." Erza said.

"That's entirely fair. Just let us know tomorrow, please." Jellal said.

OOO

A few hours later, the members of Crime Sorcière and Fairy Tail had all gathered together to share a meal, roasting meat, veggies and sweets by the flames of a large bonfire.

While they were all having a good time, Erza and Jellal had left to have a quiet word. The two of them had gone off together to the edge of one of the cliffs over looking the sea. They were both staring off into the distance, neither looking at each other.

"So, you remember everything that happened?" Erza asked.

"I do."

"Does that include what happened to Simon?"

"He died by my hand." Jellal answered with no inflection and no deflection, but stoic acceptance of the events.

"What about the Nirvana incident?"

"Everything. I remember it as being trapped in a fog of amnesia. It's a strange feeling."

"Is it accurate to say that I'm speaking the Jellal I knew as a child?" Erza asked, turning to look at him.

"I'd be happy if you thought about it that way, but given my crimes, I won't blame you if you keep your distance." Jellal said somberly, looking down at his hands. "And if you try to avenge Simon, I won't stop you. My life was forfeit long ago."

"Do you honestly think Simon would want you to die? What about your new guild and all the good you've done through it? Why can't dedicating your life to fighting the darkness be your atonement?"

"Because, I don't think it can."

"Why not?!" She asked heatedly.

"Don't get me wrong. When I first created Crime Sorcière, I hoped it would bring me peace, but the things I did at the Tower of Heaven can't be made right that easily. Is there really a point to what I'm doing? Will these horrible thoughts ever go away? I feel so lost. Perhaps it's best if I did die."

Hearing those words, Erza couldn't contain herself as her indignation boiled over the surface. She swiftly stepped in front of the seated Jellal and slapped him hard across the face. That seemed to momentarily snap him out of his daze, but only for a moment before his eyes glazed over again.

"You'd be satisfied with the coward's way out?!"

"I don't have the strength to overcome this."

"You thin-"

Just as Erza was about to yell something at him, she caught something in her periphery vision, and looked up to see Logan standing there about twenty feet away. He was staring back at her with a surprised and sheepish look on his face, obviously unsettled by the scene he'd stumbled upon.

Erza's ire and scorn of only a second before seemed to drain from her as though a faucet had been opened.

"Logan, what... what are you doing here?"

With great deliberation, Logan carefully replied, "I, uh, I didn't realize you two had gone off alone, so I was coming to talk to you about something. Um, I'm, uh, clearly interrupting something. I'll just go."

"No, wait." Jella spoke loudly just as Logan was turning. "It's alright. I'll leave and you can say whatever it is you came to say."

Jellal then stood from the rock he'd been crouching upon.

"I'll see you tomorrow for your group's answer, Erza."

"Very well, but I want you to think about one thing. If you can't allow yourself to overcome this, then how can you possibly expect to overcome Zeref?"

Jellal's eyes widened minutely, and then he gave a small, reserved nod of his head, and left. As he departed, Erza brushed a few stray strands of crimson hair out of her face, trying to compose herself.

"So, Logan, you said you wanted to talk about something?"

"Um, yeah, but if you're really not in the mood for it, it could wait for another time."

"No, really, it's fine. I'd actually appreciate a change of subject."

As she spoke, Erza walked around the rocks, moving closer to Logan, while at the same time, he leaned himself against the cliff wall. Erza leaned against the cliff as well, looking Logan right in the face from four feet away.

"So, what exactly did you want to talk about, Logan?"

"Well, you see Erza, I'm just, I'm not very sure how much you guys really want me on the team for the Grand Magic Games."

"What?!" Erza snapped harshly.

Logan didn't flinch or make any type of overt sign of panic, but blinked questioningly in response. Erza quickly softened, relaxing her knotted muscles. She also couldn't help but note in her mind how most people would have dived for cover after the tone she'd just used.

She said, "I'm sorry, Logan. My previous conversation seems to still have me on edge, but it won't happen again. Please, go on. Why on Earth would you think we wouldn't want you on the team with us?"

"You guys know that there are things I've been keeping from you. Things I haven't been telling you, what my magic can do being among the top of the list. My magic, well, it isn't very strong. It isn't very versatile. It can't do much."

"Are you saying you'd like us to replace you on the team once we get to Croqus?"

Logan said, "In the interest of the guild and our chances of winning, it might be for the best. There are going to be some real powerhouses in this competition. I'm just not sure how much you guys really want me in there with you."

Erza then smiled and released a small chuckle from her throat.

"Is that all this is? Logan, of course we want you there with us. You're a part of our team."

"But, you guys really don't know me. You don't know anything about who I am, what I've been through, or what I can do, so how can you say you absolutely want me fighting by your side?"

"Speaking for myself, because we've already fought side by side for one thing, so I know for a fact you can handle yourself against multiple opponents at once, and then there's also how you trounced Natsu. You think we don't know anything about you, but you're forgetting we've already learned something about you, and I think it would only serve us to have Fiore's number one bounty hunter on our side during this event. Don't sell yourself short. I can see how tense your muscles are right now. You must be aching from head to toe, meaning you've been putting in lots of training. I know you'll be invaluable for our side during the games. You just need to believe in yourself like I and everyone else in the guild will believe in you." Erza said passionately, sweetly, and with conviction.

Logan's face softened, not fully into a smile, but he visibly looked reassured.

"You know, coming from someone as strong as you, I really think it just might work."

"It's funny. You've been with us for nearly four months now, but you and I still haven't talked very much, have we?"

"I, uh, I think that's mostly my fault."

Erza gave a small, satisfied laugh in response. "Yes, I think that'd be accurate to say. But, even though you are very reserved and reticent, I enjoy your company. I'm glad to have you on our team and a part of our guild."

"Thanks, Erza. I appreciate this, and I won't let you down. No, make that, I won't let the guild down."

"I'm sure you won't."

"You know, I'm getting pretty tired. You maybe want to head back to the inn? I think the rest of them will still be at it for a while, but I don't feel like going back."

"You go ahead. I think I'll make sure Gray and Natsu aren't saying anything they shouldn't."

"Yeah, that sounds like you, alright." Logan said with something of an amused tone. "Well, night Erza."

"Good night, Logan."

OOO

The next midday, after everyone had been roused and knots and headaches had been nursed, the members from Fairy Tail reconvened at the same meeting place as before with the members from Crime Sorcière.

"Hello again." Jella said, stepping forward. After a night of contemplation, he'd regained something of his former composure. "I assume you've come to give us your answer."

"Yes, we have." Erza said. "We will take on the job you've asked us to do, but we won't be accepting your payment of the Second Origin."

Exhalations and wide eyes adorned the faces of Jellal, Ultear, and Meldy alike.

"Are you guys serious?!" Meldy asked.

"Yeah, we're serious. Sorry, but we can't go into this with some kind of trump card over everyone else." Gray said.

"But the competition will be fierce. Some of the most powerful wizards in Fiore will be there." Ultear said.

"Oh, we're deadly sure about this. If we went in there with an advantage like this, it'd be like all our training for the last three months would have been pointless. We could have just done nothing and partied and still had a fighting chance." Natsu said.

"We're Fairy Tail wizards!" Lucy exclaimed. "We do things on our own terms and fight how we want to, every time!"

"Besides, the games are about finding out which is genuinely the best wizard's guild in Fiore, and if Fairy Tail won because we all got a power-up no one else has, than our victory wouldn't mean much of anything." Wendy said with intensity.

"We're more than happy to look out for this negative energy, whatever it is." Juvia said.

"But when it comes to the contest, we're doing it our way."

"Well said, Levy!" Jet and Droy blurted out together.

The three from Crime Sorcière all looked at each other, and then each in turn smiled from ear to ear.

"I suppose we should have seen this coming. Fairies are always stubborn." Jellal said. "If that's the way you want to do it, than we're happy to have your assistance on those terms."

"Very well, then. We'll see you in Croqus in three days." Erza said.

Jellal nodded, gave her a small bow, and he and his guild then made their departure.

"This is gonna be so freakin' awesome!" Natsu yelled at the top of his lungs. "We're gonna demolish those games!"

"Yeah, but not literally, right guys? We can't really afford to get the capitol and the government against us." Lucy asked fearfully.

"Knowing this motley crew, I'd say that will be a distinct possibility." Carla said.

"Don't worry about it, Lucy. I'm sure no one will go that far overboard." Wendy said.

"But if someone does, blame it on the pyro and run. I'm sure we can all sell 'em on that." Gray joked.

Natsu instantly stuck his face in Gray's. "Watch it, popsicle! Or I might just have to melt that frozen blood of yours!"

"Try it and I'll freeze yours before you can touch me!"

"Come on, guys. Save it for the games." Logan said.

Everyone looked over at him in surprise. He was standing erect, with a look somewhat resembling confidence on his face.

"Whatever beefs any of us have, we should save them for our enemies in the coliseum."

"He's absolutely right." Erza declared. "Now, let's get back to the inn and get packed! We'll need to send a letter off to Master Makarov before we can leave tomorrow and we can't afford to be late, so let's get to it!"

OOO

A/N: Okay, here's a new chapter for everyone. Sorry it took so long to get this hammered out, but it's here now and I hope you all enjoy it. Writing the Fairy Tail characters and inhabiting their world through this is such a treat, so I'll definitely be sticking with this story. Hope to hear what you guys think, as constructive criticism is always welcome, and I'll see you guys next time.