"I think this creates more questions than answers," Mercury announced to the people sitting around him. There was Laxus, as usual, who never left him alone, as well as the remainder of the Thunder God Tribe; they'd been the only ones who he could probably explain all of this to without seeming insane.

Well, he thought they'd be the most likely to tell him if he sounded insane. At this point, Mercury was fairly certain that the rest of the guild would just smile and nod.

"So you're saying that your 'mother' is a dragon? How'd you come to that conclusion?" Evergreen asked, visibly confused.

She and Fried were the only ones with their full attention on Mercury. Bixlow was half paying attention, half watching Romeo attempt to juggle fire, and Laxus had been there for Mercury's first explanation, so he didn't need to hear it again.

"She's less like a 'mother' in the sense that you're thinking and more like how humans refer to gods," Mercury explained. "And I think this makes the most sense. I've had, what, three Dragon Slayers tell me I feel like a dragon? I think that basically proves that we're related in some way."

"Perhaps we should go ask the Dragon Slayers of Sabertooth for their opinion," Fried suggested, to which Mercury tilted his head in surprise. The sunglasses on his face were the same as usual, though he was finding them far less necessary than they had used to be, a surefire sign that his vision was returning to normal. Hopefully he'd be able to do without them soon enough.

"Sabertooth? More Dragon Slayers?" he repeated.

Evergreen and Fried exchanged a look, but it was Bixlow that explained. "How behind on the times are you, man? Sabertooth's got these two other Dragon Slayer kids, Sting and Rogue. Natsu and Gajeel fought 'em during the games."

Did Mercury even want to bother responding? And when he said 'kids,' was he referring to Natsu's age or Wendy's age?

Evergreen beat him to it. "Bixlow, how was he supposed to know that stuff? It's not like he was in a position to watch the games. Use your head a little."

"Oh, right. My bad." He almost looked guilty. Almost. Mercury might have believed his apology if he didn't immediately send his dolls to go fly around Romeo and pester the kid for more fire magic.

"Well, I'm sure they'd be willing to travel to Magnolia if you wanted to ask," Fried said. "So long as Natsu and Gajeel are in town, anyway."

"It's fine," said Mercury, "I'm fairly confident in the conclusion that I came to."

"Then I have a very important question!" Bixlow declared, his attention fully on the group for the first time. "If you share magic with a dragon, does that mean you can use Dragon Slayer magic? Did we get another Dragon Slayer, too?"

Mercury paused, because he genuinely did not have an answer.

"Oh, come on, Bix…" Evergreen said, starting to scold him but then she started to consider it, too.

Could he use Dragon Slayer magic? Was there anything particularly different about Dragon Slayer magic and Magic actually used by Dragons?

Mercury looked at Laxus for confirmation. The man scoffed, "How the hell would I know?"

"Right, I forgot you're a fake dragon slayer."

"I am not –"

"Moving on," Mercury huffed, eager to irritate Laxus for fun, "what do I do with this information?"

Laxus huffed, "No, not 'moving on', you called this whole damn meeting without knowing what any of that meant?"

All the water mage – or perhaps the water Dragon Slayer, though it mattered little since he wasn't using magic either way – could do was shrug. "Knowing what she is doesn't really mean much if I can't figure out how I can actually use that."

"If we get our hands on a Dragon Slayer lacrima like Laxus's…" Evergreen suggested, but even she knew it wasn't a good suggestion.

"And how do you suggest we do that?" Fried probed.

Mercury agreed. "That would require both going to the bottom of the ocean and actually being able to communicate with her. I'm the only one who can do both of those things, and I don't think she'll let me go a second time."

Actually, the odds of her letting him walk free were essentially zero. If he returned, she would not let him leave the ocean – and according to what Mercury had figured out, the odds were that he wouldn't even want to at that point.

"An operation like that is also a one in a million chance anyway," Laxus said grimly. "It probably wouldn't work."

Mercury nodded, his own face just as grim as Laxus's. "Alchemist tried something similar with a water element lacrima, too. It, uh, didn't work as intended."

He could still recall the feeling of toxicity in his veins, blood vessels bursting as it tried to handle magic power that it couldn't accept. Yeah, not a fun experience. He wasn't going to try it again unless he was almost absolutely certain it would work.

"Could the lacrima itself have been the issue?"

"Even if it was, how would we get a new one? How did that bastard Ivan get his hands on a Dragon Slayer lacrima in the first place?"

That was a question that no one knew the answer to, not even Laxus. It didn't look like he wanted to think about it, either, so it just hung in the air for a couple of moments before the conversation moved on.

"Would it be possible to artificially produce a lacrima using your own magic?" Fried asked. "It's possible to make one by condensing magic power, but I'm not familiar with the process."

It wouldn't matter either way. "I don't have nearly enough magic power to do anything like that," Mercury said cynically. "If I did, we wouldn't be so pressed for time in the first place."

Lacrima were something that formed naturally in pockets of high density ethernano. They were possible to produce artificially, like Fried said, but the magic power required to do so was far greater than what it would contain in the end. He'd be losing magic power by trying.

Or so the Alchemist scientists had mentioned at one point, disappointment evident in their voices. That was probably for the best.

Besides, lacrima like that worked sort of like a generator. They allowed the use of magic by storing it up within the stone itself, sort of like a secondary magic core. Laxus could use all the lightning dragon slayer magic that he wanted until his lacrima ran out of anything stored up, and then he'd be back to regular old lightning magic.

He was a special case, though. Nearly one-hundred-percent of people who'd tried to do something similar died of magic poisoning.

Merely creating one meant nothing if Mercury couldn't use it properly.

"I don't think a lacrima is going to be a possible solution," Mercury said, sighing, "but we can always keep our ears peeled for one. I'd probably be able to tell if it was something I could use if I got close enough to hear it. I wonder if Makarov's got any connections to any merchant guilds…"

Nobody questioned his "hearing." They were far too used to it by now.

"Lucy's parents used to be part of Love and Lucky," Evergreen said, "but I think they're probably too small to know anything."

"And Gramps doesn't really care about that sort of stuff," Laxus agreed.

"I wonder if any of his old team might know anything. The guildmasters of Blue Pegasus and Quatro Cerberus used to be part of his old team, if I recall correctly," Mercury suggested. "Blue Pegasus is the more likely –

The door to the guild hall slammed open, causing all of the gathered mages to jolt. Laxus stood immediately, the only one of them whose face was towards the door, leaving Mercury to crane his neck to see the person who'd come in. They were obviously not a Fairy Tail mage; he was a small, portly man with overalls stained with messy brown patches. Mercury vaguely recognized him as someone who worked on one of the fishing boats that went out in the morning.

"Are there any mages in here?" The person who'd entered asked. His hands trembled as he wrung them out in front of him nervously, intimidated by the sharp gazes that honed in on him.

The curious glances weren't hostile; unlike seven years ago, people suddenly entering the guild wasn't inherently suspicious, but the dock worker's entrance was frantic. Then again, he also asked probably the dumbest question in the world – who came into a mage's guild and asked if there was a mage? That was like going to a grocery store and asking for a cashier.

When no one answered, he must have realized his idiotic question because he continued, "At the docks there's a — well, I don't really know what it is, but it's kicking up a fuss down there! We need someone to come subdue it. Please."

"Why the hell do you need a mage for a fish?" Laxus asked. He briefly glanced at Mercury as though telling him to remain seated, to which he rolled his eyes. What was the dragon slayer, Mercury's mom? He would have huffed in irritation if not for the sudden seriousness of the conversation.

"There's some sort of scaled creature," the worker continued, "that came in with the fish this morning. We thought it was a child who'd fallen in at first – at least until it started shrieking."

Every single pair of eyes in the guild, save for the person who'd come asking for help, honed in on Mercury. Yeah, no way he was sitting this one out – a sinking feeling in his stomach told him that this was going to be related to him whether he liked it or not.

"Fine, whatever," Laxus huffed, coming to the same conclusion. "Lead the way."

Mercury, along with the Thunder God Tribe and Laxus himself rushed out the door in pursuit of the dock worker. He was surprisingly fast, and he knew plenty of shortcuts to avoid the crowds of Magnolia's main streets.

Mercury struggled to keep up. His left leg kept twisting uncomfortably and he'd stumble, nearly knocking whoever was behind him over. 'Annoying' was putting it lightly, but there was nothing else he could do – they were in a rush. Who knew what the hell was waiting for them over by the ocean?

For the first time in a while, anticipation swirled in his stomach. For all he knew, he was going to be face to face with something that had terrified him more than life itself in just a couple of moments.

The docks were a mess. They'd always been, sort of, because Magnolia was technically a port city despite not having anything close to a large enough port to support that, but it was definitely crazier than usual – crazier than it should have been for a normal weekday afternoon.

A crowd had already formed, nearly blocking out the incoming mages from making it any closer than the very beginning of the pier. They'd been drawn in by the unnatural loudness that echoed off the ocean just as the sailors had, and while it was easy enough for Laxus to push past them, Mercury had much more difficulty. With only one and a half legs, pushing past them was tough. Laxus had to double back and nearly pull him by the wrist to drag Mercury the rest of the way through the crowd.

He took one final glance behind him at the crowd, hoping to catch the eye of Fried or Bixlow – hopefully, they'd have better luck pushing through and would be able to manage the group before its size turned truly unruly, though the outcome seemed unlikely when the shrieking was still drawing in more of a crowd.

And that shrieking…

It hurt Mercury's ears. It hurt his head. It hurt his heart the sound of a language he hadn't spoken, let alone heard in over fifty years slammed into his chest in a way only he could understand. Both the uncomfortable familiarity he had with it and what was actually being said made Mercury feel like he was going to hurl.

He'd expected the harsh demands of his siblings, not the sound of a child pleading for help.

"It burns!" They wailed, voice high in pitch yet raspy. "Please help me! Someone – anyone!"

That's when he became certain. Whoever this was wasn't here because they wanted to be. How could they be when the sunlight burned their skin, the air couldn't go down his throat, and the brightness blinded them?

Mercury himself remembered it so vividly. "Get ready," he said.

Up ahead, past the large group of people that were desperately being held back by the dock's meager security forces, a net thrashed about near the end of the pier, dangerously close to falling back into the water. Silvery fish flopped around, now helpless — they were still breathing, just barely trying to make it back to the ocean. Mercury kicked the couple he could off the wooden surface underfoot. He didn't care about whether the fishermen would be upset for wasting their catch; it was a better alternative than slipping on their slimy scales.

Something in his gut twisted when he saw the faintest hint of green scales poking out from underneath an even larger heap of fish. The faint, iridescent glimmer, more brilliant than any fish yet duller than precious gems were unmistakable — this was one of his kind.

Mercury swallowed around the lump in his throat. The net trembled as he got close, startled by approaching footsteps in addition to the "sense" that they shared – the ability to "hear" magic. It was how they were able to sense each other even miles apart in the ocean, since salt water had the strange ability to carry such a sound; the ability was far weaker in the open air, but it was still there.

"Help," the kid whimpered once before starting to writhe again.

What Mercury assumed to be their feet snapped out to hit Laxus's, tripping him. Before the Dragon Slayer could say something sharp or even move to pin the child down, however, Mercury cleared his throat as best as he was able to.

"Stop moving," he hissed. "You're making it harder to get you out."

Despite knowing that Mercury was there, the kid's movements stuttered for a moment. It must have been strange to hear their shared language in this foreign, terrifying land even if he could tell that his brethren were nearby.

"Is this one of them?" Laxus asked. When Mercury looked up, he was staring at him strangely, likely startled by the oddness of the language he couldn't understand.

All Mercury could do was nod. He knew that this kid wasn't one of the siblings that had harmed him, and yet even seeing those green scales made him feel like he'd been thrown back in time – which was one of the reasons he hated seeing his own scales.

If Laxus picked up on his friend's turmoil, he didn't point it out. Instead, he looked around – "See anything sharp? They're way too tangled to unwrap them and Fried's too far to lend his sword."

You'd think that a fish market would have thousands of sharp utensils to cut through netting, but no. There was only one option – a dull-looking machete. It would have to do; as Laxus had pointed out, Fried was too far, and Mercury couldn't carry his own sword around even if he wanted to. Just moving was hard enough.

With his good hand, Mercury moved to pick it up, but anything further than that would prove more difficult. With just one hand available to use, there was no way he was going to saw through the heavy-duty netting used to haul tons of fish up from the ocean, and the kid's reinvigorated wiggling just made it even harder.

"If you don't stop moving, we're going to have to leave you here," Mercury said quietly. When that didn't work, he took a deep breath, preparing himself.

There was one thing he could do to get the kid to stop moving. He didn't want to use it – had never wanted to use it – but it was going to be the fastest way for them to free the child

"What are you doing?" Laxus hissed, pausing as Mercury closed his eyes. It was obvious what he was thinking – he was probably worried that the water mage was going to be spending his last remaining magic for a kid whose face wasn't even visible, but in actuality, it was something far different than that.

It wasn't magic, it was "authority."

"Making this easier for us," Mercury grunted. "Don't worry. It's not something stupid."

His voice suddenly took on a far deeper tone, once again speaking in that language that Laxus couldn't understand; it sounded almost like magic, but there was something far more natural about it, like this was how Mercury should have been talking all this time.

The command embedded in his words was simple – "Sleep."

Immediately, any sort of struggle ceased as though the child within the net hadn't been thrashing around moments ago. Even the nearby fish started to lull themselves into almost a dazed state.

Almost as though they had all decided to fall asleep.

"What the hell was that?" Laxus asked. He still hadn't started up his cutting again, staring at Mercury as though worried he was going to crumble into dust.

"Hard to explain. It'll take a while, so let's move somewhere else and I'll tell you."

He frowned, but nodded, returning to his previous movements. One layer of net snapped, then two. The dragon slayer was much faster than Mercury was, and soon, he'd almost pulled the kid out from the torn fishnet entirely.

Green – the kid's scales were green. Mercury tried to convince himself that his face wasn't turning the same color as he gazed upon one of his own kind for the first time in almost a century.

Even if he'd had another century, it would have been too soon. He'd never wanted to see any of their faces ever again, even the face of a young child who he'd never met before.

When Laxus finally managed to pull the net free, Mercury got a better view of the kid – a boy, he assumed, though by what metric, even he was unsure. It was clear that they were far younger than he was. The boy only looked to be around the age of Romeo, who was thirteen, but aging for the children of the ocean wasn't nearly as linear as humans.

Of course, the boy's eyes were closed, and his mouth hung open as he slept away without a care.

"He fell asleep, just like that?" Laxus asked, poking the boy's cheek. He turned to Mercury. "Is that what you did?"

The water mage nodded, though admitting it felt like something dirty. Having that sort of control over someone was disgusting.

"That's… handy," Laxus said as though coming to the same conclusion. "What should we do with him?"

Truthfully, Mercury wasn't sure, but Laxus was asking him specifically. Since this involved him the most, it only made sense for him to make a decision; the question was whether or not Mercury wanted to bring the kid in.

He sighed. There was really only one answer.

"Well… the guild's probably going to be a little chaotic right now," Mercury said hesitantly, observing the sleeping boy. "I need some answers before we can decide what to do."

There really didn't seem to be any indication that the boy would wake up even with chaos reigning down around him, but Mercury wasn't sure he wanted to take that risk; as it was, he was already starting to suffer from a headache born of using an "authority" that he wasn't used to. Besides, there was that monstrosity of a magic power sitting in the basement that was more likely to cause an adverse reaction than not. Mercury remembered his first experience with it… he'd almost passed out. A calm environment was going to be much easier to drag out answers with.

Laxus pursed his lips like he was coming to a large, important decision. "We can just take him to my house."

"But –"

"I've already got one of you freaks living there. What's one more?"

Mercury's expression soured at being called a freak, even though he knew it wasn't out of malice. It was simply Laxus's way of trying to lighten the mood in the only way he knew – starting a fight.

What an asshole.

"That's not what I'm worried about," Mercury said dryly, "but if you're saying it's fine, then it's fine. It's your house." And it was only going to be until they figured out what exactly was going on. After that, the kid could go wherever the hell they wanted; Mercury just wanted to make sure this wasn't something foreshadowing a larger event.

Even now, something in his gut was telling him that this kid was going to be a turning point.

After taking in Mercury's assertion, Laxus made one easy motion to sweep the kid up in a fireman's carry over his shoulder. It looked as easy as picking up a sack of rice, which was telling. The kid, for whatever reason, was tiny – far too tiny to be traveling alone, no matter what the situation was.

For some reason, Mercury got flashbacks to how he was carried by the man. Of course, Laxus paid this no mine and turned to the slowly dispersing crowd.

"Oi!" he shouted. It caught everyone's attention – Mercury kept forgetting how famous the man was now – but no one actually did anything but stare. "Nothing to see here. Move on!"

Still, they watched him while passing hushed whispers to each other. Bixlow took that as his cue to start terrorizing them with his dolls; quickly enough, the crowd had mostly dispersed, save for a couple of stragglers that looked more traumatized than anything.

Average Fairy Tail antics. They were sure to get complaints about this later, but when had they ever cared?

Evergreen rejoined their group of two and a half (if they included the kid) soon after. Mercury assumed that Bixlow and Fried were taking it upon themselves to be responsible for once and were attempting to clean up the mess that they'd left at the docks. Fortunately, the streets were relatively clear after that – no one bothered to question what the town's celebrities were doing with a relative unknown (Mercury) and what looked like a dead body (Mercury's brother).

"So, um," Evergreen asked when they were about halfway back to Laxus's house, "that's one of your siblings, right? Do you know them?"

Mercury was especially curt with his answer. "No."

Something was welling up in his stomach the closer they got to his temporary (or not) home, and it wasn't anything positive. He couldn't help but worry that this was a sign that the times were changing – that things were being put into motion that he couldn't predict. What did it mean for another of the ocean's children to come here now?

The mysterious man's words echoed in his ears. 'He's going to like what comes next.' Was this what he was referring to, or would there be something else appearing on the horizon? Because Mercury sure as hell didn't like this development. Not one bit.

A heavy silence enveloped the house when they arrived – one that felt as unfamiliar as the new person they'd dragged in. Wasn't it just supposed to be an easy silence? One that stemmed from a pair of exhausted men, one ill and the other tired from making sure the ill one didn't do anything "stupid," falling into their beds?

It was dumb, but Mercury felt like he was letting an intruder into his – into Laxus's house.

As soon as he walked through his own front door, Laxus made a beeline for the couch, depositing the kid onto it with a grimace on his face. "I forgot how much I hate kids."

"He's not even awake, Lax. How could you hate him already?" Evergreen scolded. "Besides, he's got a cute face."

Mercury's eyes were unconsciously drawn to the child's face, but he had the opposite opinion. It wasn't like they were ugly – the issue stemmed more from the fact that they looked too similar; if one looked between Mercury and the kid, they'd easily come to the conclusion that they were related even without the shared inhuman traits.

"You should have seen him when he was kicking up a fuss," Laxus huffed. He turned to look at Mercury pointedly, clearly signaling for the explanation that he'd been promised regarding how he'd gotten the kid to fall asleep.

Mercury pursed his lips. "Since it's not really magic, there isn't a term for it among mages," he explained. "My kind are all linked, right? We can vaguely tell what each other is thinking about when we're in close proximity, so it was just taking that to the extreme."

"And you forced him to go to sleep like that?"

"What? You forced him to go to sleep?" Evergreen repeated. "Well, I did think it was strange that he could be dozing when he was being manhandled…"

"Forcing… You could call it that," Mercury said. "Think of it like this – if I yelled at you and told you to go the fuck to sleep, you wouldn't do it, right?"

Laxus's half-smile became somewhat mean. "Of course I wouldn't."

"But if you were a little kid and it was your dad telling you to go to bed, you probably would. It all depends on what sort of authority someone has over you."

"My shitty old man didn't have any authority over me," the Dragon Slayer huffed.

Mercury rolled his eyes. "Sure, whatever," he said with crossed arms. The water mage had been around more than long enough to know what Laxus's relationship with Ivan was – so while 'authority' wasn't quite the right term, it was true that the man had once idolized his dad. "The important part is that he's way younger than me, so I can have some degree of control over him."

He didn't want any of that though.

"It's based on age?" Evergreen asked.

"A bit?" Mercury said almost as a question. "I don't really know. I was the youngest, so anyone who tried it on me was way older."

The sentence hung in the air for a brief moment as Evergreen and Laxus digested the statement that the "authority" had been used on their friend. Neither said anything – mentioning it ran the risk of bringing up memories that Mercury was intentionally ignoring, which, as fragile as he was, was probably not a good idea.

"Anyway," the water mage sighed, "we've got a while until he wakes up. He'll probably be really confused when he does."

"You're staying here?" Laxus asked.

"Not like I have much of a choice, since he's liable to run off as soon as he wakes up. I'm the only one who can communicate with him."

"Is that the weird language you were speaking?"

"If you consider it weird, then yes."

"I'm just saying," Laxus huffed, crossing his own arms. "I didn't know humans could make noises like that."

Mercury gave him a long, hard stare with one eyebrow raised and his lips pressed into a tight line. Soon after, Laxus gave him a mirroring look.

"Right."

The water mage turned to Evergreen. "Would you mind explaining what's going on to Bixlow and Fried? Maybe Master, too. The kid's going to need real clothes after he wakes up, and he'd probably benefit from some burn cream, too."

He pinched a hand to his forehead.

"I can handle all that, but are you alright?" Evergreen asked. "You look a bit worn out."

"That authority thing really gave me a headache. I don't know how everyone else used it so often," he explained. When it looked like Laxus was going to scold him, he quickly added, "No need to tell me off – I feel shitty enough about having to use it in the first place, but he was in too much pain to hold still, so it was faster that way. It was a better solution than accidentally cutting him, at least."

"Don't do it again," Laxus ordered.

"I just said –"

"Why don't you take a moment and rest, Merc? Lax and I can handle gathering everything ourselves," Evergreen interrupted, sensing that things were going to turn into an argument. Both of the men were in increasingly foul moods due to the turn of the situation – Mercury because he was being forced to look at and understand something he didn't want to, and Laxus because it pained him to see that.

Though he'd never admit such a thing.

"If you two could handle that, I'd really appreciate it," Mercury said truthfully. "I have no idea what the hell is going on."

"He didn't just get sick of it down there and leave?" Laxus asked.

"It's impossible to just 'get sick of it and leave,'" the water mage sighed. His lip curled in disgust as he thought about everything he'd gone through to leave the first time. "Worst case scenario, the rest of them are going to be popping up soon, either for the same reason as him or searching for him."

Evergreen and Laxus exchanged heavy glances while Mercury's gaze was still stuck on the kid in the infirmary bed.

"We'll handle anything that comes up," Evergreen said, putting her hand on his shoulder.

"I believe you," he sighed. Wow, he was doing that way too often now. "I just don't want to see any of their stupid fucking faces ever again. I already have to deal with this crap." Mercury gestured vaguely to his limp arm with a look of disgust.

"Look on the bright side," Laxus said with uncharacteristic positivity. "If they do make it up here, won't it be much easier to find a solution?"

Mercury wasn't so sure, but he also didn't want to deny something just for the sake of denying it. He shrugged with just one side of his body.

It didn't feel as effective as it should have.

"It'll be fine," said Laxus.

Yeah. He really hoped it would be.

.

.

.

Mercury wasn't sure when he managed to doze off one of Laxus's reclining chairs, only that he woke with a jolt when he felt two large, gray eyeballs staring at him like he belonged in a museum. Should he call it fascination or wonder? It was impossible to tell.

When he opened his own eyes, the kid on the couch jolted in a similar manner; he'd been on his hands and knees, mouth wide open as he gazed at Mercury, only to pull away to put his back to the armrest when he realized he'd been caught.

The kid even looked a bit guilty about it.

"Yes?" Mercury asked, blinking sleep out of his eyes. "Is there something on my face?"

"No!" the child squealed.

His voice was high pitched – so much so that Mercury found himself once again wondering just how old he was.

Behind him, the floorboards creaked loudly, announcing someone else's arrival – one Laxus Dreyar, who appeared to have been either drawn in by the sound or had been on his way as part of his usual rounds; the younger man entered unabashedly, striding in as though he owned the place.

Which… yeah, technically he did.

"What great timing," Mercury drawled. "One might think that you were waiting right in the hallway eavesdropping."

"Shut it," the Dragon Slayer huffed. He took a bundle of something from his pocket and tossed it onto the bed; the bundle unraveled mid-flight, revealing familiar looking clothes.

At least, they were familiar to Mercury; on the other hand, the kid drew back like they were dangerous projectiles, staring at the cloth once it landed.

"Are those… your clothes?" Mercury asked. "From when you were a kid?"

"It's either that or Fried's. Evergreen vetoed Bixlow's old clothes immediately."

It was probably for the best; Bixlow acted like he'd find a meal made entirely of melted crayons to be the most delectable thing on earth most of the time, and his clothes were in a similar state. If there were any that weren't horrendously stained, odds were that they were the ugliest thing you could put your eyes on – something Evergreen would have detested.

"I just wasn't aware that you even managed to keep those. I'd have thought you would have torn them to shreds by accident with how reckless you were as a kid."

"Ha-ha, very funny." Laxus made a big show of rolling his eyes, then giving a pointed look to the cowering child. "Has he said anything yet?"

"He might have if you didn't just scare him half to death. I'll help him change clothes, just give me a second."

Mercury turned to the boy. He was staring between Laxus and Mercury with a look that probably wasn't terror, but was pretty darn close. The curiosity he'd been looking at his brethren with was now a muted shadow.

"Put those on," the water mage ordered in his native tongue. "Your clothes are probably dry and brittle, right?"

Indeed, when the boy moved, Mercury could hear the crackling of dried seaweed. The clothes made from the ocean's materials were never intended to be dry, and now that they'd been both in the sun and exposed to dry air, any sharp movement would cause them to disintegrate.

They already had enough problems to deal with. Adding a half-naked child wasn't one anyone wanted to add to the pile.

Hesitantly, the kid murmured, "Yes," and moved to pick up Laxus's old clothes. Once more, he looked between Mercury and the younger Dragon Slayer as though waiting for permission.

Mercury sighed. He really, really didn't want to help, but there seemed to be few other options. "Mother will be mad if you don't. Did she ever scold you for running around without clothes on?"

The boy nodded slowly, looking away in embarrassment.

Funnily enough, Mercury had soured his own mood by bringing up that creature – but at least he had some vague answers now. First, this kid knew who Mother was, and second, he'd been raised by her. It's not like he expected anything else, but it never hurt to confirm the obvious when everything else seemed confusing.

He stood, silently assisting the boy in changing his clothes while Laxus stood to the side, looking away.

It was more of a hassle than Mercury thought it would be, but they got it done. Soon, the boy was dressed in what was horrifyingly reminiscent of a young Laxus Dreyar, and Mercury wasn't sure if that was calming or terrifying. During the process, the kid had poked at his limp arm several times as though trying to confirm whether or not it could feel anything – obviously, it couldn't.

Thinking about it, the kid had probably never seen an injury before – at least, not a lasting one.

When Mercury somehow managed to wrangle the kid into clothes that were both several sizes too big and seemingly too small, he once more took a seat on the reclining chair he'd been sleeping in. Unsurprisingly, Laxus pulled up one right next to him.

"Just so you know, I'm not translating it word for word for you," Mercury said, arms, as usual, crossed. "I'm just telling you the jist."

"Don't leave anything important out."

"Now why on earth would I do that?" Before Laxus could say something snarky back, Mercury turned back to the kid, switching languages once more. "What's your name?"

He'd rather not keep referring to him as "the kid."

"Anemone Drifting in Water's Wake."

Mercury flinched. While he hadn't forgotten the more traditional naming conventions of his home, it still felt almost shocking to hear it again; the long, verbose names served little purpose other than to be a mouthful. Their supposed actual purpose was to guide a child's development so that they "grew" into their names, but they may as well have been just a bunch of random adjectives and verbs piled onto a noun.

(Mercury's very first memory was of her whispering his name; he'd long since abandoned most of it.)

Fortunately, he wasn't the only one of that opinion – surprisingly – so the general consensus was to shorten the name down to one or two words. Using one's full name carried the same sort of connotation that it did for humans. It was only used when they were in trouble – usually by Mother, but sometimes by elder siblings, too.

"Do you prefer Anemone or Wake?" Mercury asked curtly.

"A-Anemone."

Without turning, the water mage relayed that information to Laxus, who didn't make a comment on it. If he found the name odd, he said nothing.

Then again… Mercury wasn't exactly a common name either.

"Then, Anemone," he said, "what exactly is it that you're doing here?"

A brief period of silence passed before Anemone said anything. Mercury couldn't tell if he was hesitant to spill the beans or if he didn't quite know how to phrase it, which was only answered when the kid opened his mouth again. "Um, Flood told me to come up here. That's Flood of "

"I know who that is. Why did he tell you to come up here?"

"I don't know."

"He didn't say anything? Just told you to leave?"

"He didn't say anything…"

It seemed that getting any sort of information out of Anemone was going to be more of a hassle than Mercury thought.

Anemone suddenly looked like he'd had an epiphany, reaching under his armpit for something and fumbling around with his finger. Underneath the arm was a spot that lacked any scales; it was something that could be used as a storage for something small if one tucked an item beneath the outcropping of slightly longer scales, but Mercury had never really considered using it that way.

When the boy found what he was looking for, he presented it to Mercury, who groaned. His headache from earlier seemed tame in comparison to the one that was starting to build behind his eyes.

"Flood told me to find the owner of this. That's you, right?"

It was a small, gray scale, about the size of an adult's thumb nail. Undoubtedly, it was one of Mercury's.

"Is that…?" Laxus had come to the same conclusion, squinting at the item.

"One of mine, yeah."

"I thought they were supposed to disappear after enough time had passed. It's not new, is it?"

"That only applies to things like skin and bones," Mercury explained. When Laxus gave him a semi-accusatory look – as though Mercury had kept something from him – the water mage sighed. "I didn't know about that until one of those scientists told me. It wasn't really relevant until now, anyway, so don't give me that look."

Laxus made a grunt, then looked away.

Returning to Anemone, Mercury reached out his hand to accept the scale. When he brought it up to his face, he was once more certain that it was his; for all he knew, he was the only one with gray scales – something that had been a point of soreness for him back then. Based on the size, he'd guess that it was a scale he'd lost back then.

Why the hell had Flood held onto such a thing?

It's not like he and Mercury were friends; they just happened to be the two youngest at the time, so most of his "childhood," if you could even call it that, had been spent with the slightly older man. Their relationship was nothing like what Mercury had with Laxus, or even with Chloe – they were little more than acquaintances in the grand scheme of things.

Actually, Mercury had thought that his elder siblings would have destroyed all traces of him the moment that he left so as to prevent anyone else from getting any rebellious decisions. Maybe they had, but that just reiterated his question.

The water mage flipped the scale back to Anemone like a coin. The young boy squinted at the incoming item just as he had with the bundle of clothes, only to miss it – which reminded Mercury of the fact that it was probably terribly bright for him.

He took off his sunglasses and handed them to Anemone, gesturing for him to put them on, which he did somewhat gratefully.

Now it was Mercury's turn to squint, but it was far better than it had been; he could actually make out details.

"Those make it better, right? Keep them on if you can, but don't lose them. They're mine," he said.

Mutely, Anemone nodded.

"Are you going to be okay without those?" Laxus asked. "You're just going to be walking around squinting at everything without them."

Mercury shot the man a glare. He put his hands up in a pathetic show of defense, but it did nothing to ease the water mage's irritation.

If he ever got better, he'd love to throttle Laxus just once. Even if they were now friends – or, arguably, brothers – again, the younger man was amazing at being an irritating asshole when he wanted to be.

"Um," Anemone hesitantly interrupted, "Who is that?"

He stared directly at Laxus, eyes searching him up and down.

"This is Laxus. He's my…" Mercury paused, trying to think of the word in their language, only to realize that there was no word for it. "You can think of him like my brother."

"Another… brother?"

The water mage felt a light blush rise to his cheeks as he realized the implication of his own statement, but it was fine – Anemone was never going to actually speak to Laxus, right? Nobody had to know that he'd been called Mercury's brother.

(He wondered if Laxus would hate being called like that.)

"More or less," he confirmed. "You don't have to be scared of him. He's mean, but he won't hurt you unless you try to hurt me."

"So he's like Mother?"

Mercury felt a grimace come to his face. "Absolutely not. Just consider him as you would Flood. You said he sent you up here, right? He must have done it to protect you from something."

Anemone's face went a little pale as though he hadn't yet considered the possibility that he was sent away for an actual reason. Truthfully, why would he have? For all he knew, the ocean was a safehaven – there was no danger, just as there was no outside world.

Which begged the question of why he'd been sent up here in the first place.

"So you weren't told why you needed to leave, but Flood gave you that scale to hold onto?"

Anemone nodded. "He said that you'd help me if I needed it."

Damn you, Flood. He was right – though the sight of familiar scales still made Mercury want to hurl, he was excessively weak when it came to children.

Unfortunately.

What a pain in the fucking ass.

Mercury turned back to Laxus, who was lurking in the background. "So, basically, he says that he doesn't know why he was sent here, only that his… friend told him to find me."

"And is this 'friend' someone that you know?" Laxus was fishing for answers, though he didn't even really need to go that far; Mercury would tell him whatever he wanted to hear now that he was so done with this situation.

"I do know them, but we weren't on bad terms – at least, he seems to think I can help this kid in one way or another. He's the closest in age to me."

Laxus made a 'hmm'ing noise, but didn't say anything else, so Mercury turned back to Anemone, who was watching them interact.

"He looks angry."

"That's just how he looks – pay him no mind. I'd rather you answer a couple of questions for me, alright? Can you do that?"

Another shallow, mute nod – Mercury couldn't tell if the kid was shy or if it was just the shock of being in an unfamiliar place. Either way, it was once again painfully familiar. Not being able to speak the language, being burned by the sun… it really made it feel like the world itself was going to reject you, which, to Mercury, had been the same thing he was running from.

Of course, his life took a turn for the better not long after in the form of a little house on the beach and a girl with flaming crimson hair, but that was besides the point.

He could worry about what kind of person Anemone was after he made sure that his world wasn't going to be flipped around again anytime soon.

"There was nothing odd going on when Flood told you to leave was there? Nothing that seemed out of the ordinary?"

"Well, there was one thing…"

Mercury took a sharp inhale, silently asking for Anemone to continue on – which he did, albeit in an incredibly hesitant tone. The young boy quietly wrung his hands together.

"Flood told me that you left the ocean a long time ago, but he also said that you were the only one who'd ever done that… and then someone else came back."

"Someone else?" The water mage repeated, so stunned that he accidentally slipped back into the more familiar language. Laxus gave him an odd glance; Mercury shook the man off, gesturing to say that he'd explain later, then repeated, "Someone else?"

As far as he knew – as far as he'd ever known – Mercury had been the only one that left that hellhole of an ocean he'd called home. And now someone else returned?

Just who the hell…?

"They weren't pretending to be me or anything, were they?" he asked before Anemone could respond to his initial question.

"I don't think so. Flood was also confused – the cycle after that person came back, he didn't say anything for a while. He gave me your scale a couple of cycles later."

"And Mother reacted just fine?"

"I'm not sure… I haven't heard her for a little while…"

That in itself was worrying, but Mercury was more worried about the fact that whoever had returned had apparently been welcomed – because if they hadn't been demolished by Mother's overwhelming power immediately, it really was a warm welcome.

So there was someone who had left the safe confines of the ocean prison before him.

Mercury turned to Laxus, fervently translating what he'd just heard. For some reason, the younger Dragon Slayer didn't look too surprised. "I suspected as much."

"How the hell did you 'suspect' that? I didn't even think –"

"Who the hell did you think that fucker wearing the purple clothes was?"

That shut Mercury up – real well. He slammed his mouth shut so hard that the sound of his teeth clacking together was audible.

Had Laxus… made a surprisingly astute deduction?

"Oi, I feel like you just thought something really fucking rude," the man huffed, but Mercury was actually thinking about it now. Hadn't Bixlow said that they had similar souls? Considering the realization that he'd come to about how his soul was somehow "linked" to Mother, it made sense if someone who had something similar was also in the same position, and hadn't Mercury felt oddly on edge when he was around that man? Or, at the very least, on edge in a way that didn't stem from getting kidnapped and experimented on as a result of that man's actions?

… Was it really that simple? Could that sort of conclusion even be considered "simple"?

"Is that what he meant when he said I'd enjoy what came next? He's going to involve the ocean?"

"Maybe," Laxus half-agreed. "I was thinking more on the level of trying to use those ocean bastards for something bad. An army of effectively immortal creatures that all follow the word of their 'god' as law? Sounds like a great plan for doing something evil to me."

Mercury let out a heaving sigh, leaning back into his chair. "Don't even joke about that."

"Who said I'm joking? It's a real possibility, especially if you consider that 'authority' thing that you used earlier."

It made far too much sense to just brush off, but Mercury felt like he had to reject the idea immediately – the mere thought of it was terrifying, and not just because he didn't want to interact with any of them again. What if that man had a plan to use Mercury's brethren like that?

Even if it made sense, surely it was just a fantasy, right? How would he gain such an ability himself in the first place?

"Take-Over," Mercury said out loud. "He might be planning to use Take-Over on her – we're already linked by our souls, so I don't think it's a stretch to say he might try it to take Mother's power with it."

"But is that possible? Can a dragon be taken over?"

It was a world of magic – the impossible was simply something that hadn't been done yet. There was no possible way of knowing if something was possible yet until it had actually been attempted, and by that time, it would have been too late.

"... For our sake, I hope not," Mercury said. "Not a single dragon slayer was able to defeat a dragon during the Grand Magic Games, right?"

Laxus's mouth became a thin line. "You do realize that I fought the sixth ranked Wizard Saint the day before that, right? I wasn't exactly in peak condition."

"Yeah, yeah, just like you weren't in peak condition when you went to fight Master Precht – I mean, Hades. That excuse doesn't work in the real world."

"You little –"

"Excuse me," Anemone cut in, startling both of them. Mercury had almost forgotten that he was there in his silence. "Please don't fight."

It sounded like a little kid begging their divorced parents to stop arguing, and the fact he could even tell that they were arguing was rather telling considering that he couldn't understand a lick of what was being said.

"What'd he say?"

"He said to stop being a little baby."

"He did not say that."

"And how would you know, Mr. Mono-lingual?"

"That's it," Laxus huffed, "I'm kicking you out of my house. The kid can stay – not being able to understand is a hell of a lot better than dealing with your annoying ass."

"I'm sure Mira would be willing to house the guild's cripple for a night or two," Mercury said with a feral grin. "And then your childhood crush would be –"

"Shut," the younger man ground out, "up."

Anemone cleared his throat hesitantly, standing up to his full height – which, in reality, was barely up to Mercury's shoulder while he was sitting down. "You guys really are brothers, aren't you?"

It startled him enough for his mind to momentarily go blank. "I… that's what I said, yeah. I already said we were."

"Stop speaking in that dumb language while I'm here," Laxus whined. Whined, like he was a child who wasn't getting his way.

The young boy expertly ignored him. "I doubted it because he's – well, he's kind of weird. He has no scales and he just doesn't feel right, but you guys act a lot like some of our elder siblings do."

That was the most words that Mercury had heard come out of the kid's mouth the whole time, and they were stunning enough that he was actually at a loss for words for almost twenty seconds.

How did one respond to that?

"I get the feeling that he just called you a baby," Laxus said. "Maybe he's not so bad."

Being called a baby would have felt a lot better than getting called out so explicitly; for some reason, Anemone seemed a lot like Natsu – surprisingly and startlingly astute in ways that were unpredictable.

Mercury cleared his throat with a small cough. "That's not what he said. He was just talking about, uh, brotherhood. He said we look like really good friends."

Laxus was also in the category of surprisingly astute people. He could read the lines better than a lot of people, so it was no surprise when he shut his mouth too, looking away.

…. If Mercury didn't know any better, he'd say that there was a blush on the man's face – but then again, there was one on his own, so he had no room to talk. It was a bad idea for the pot to call the kettle black.

"That's true," he said to the boy when it didn't feel like his cheeks were going to explode. "He's helped me out a lot – but don't tell him that, or his ego will grow too big for his head."

"... ego?" Anemone repeated.

Right; Anemone was a kid. Even if he made a good point, he was still younger then.. Well, Mercury didn't know, but it had to be rather young if he was still being taken care of by Flood.

… Which brought him back to the point that Laxus had brought up.

"That guy – the one that you said come back. Can you describe him for me?"

"Flood told me not to go near him, so I didn't really get a good look," Anemone explained, looking somewhat guilty. When Mercury made a noise of disappointment, he quickly added, "... but I did get to see him once. He was a little odd looking, too."

"In what way?"

"He was… he didn't feel right, just like, um, La-cksus." Anemone struggled to pronounce Laxus's name, which wasn't all that surprising. Their language and human words weren't generally supposed to mix, after all, and Laxus's name had some weird syllables that were hard to pronounce even for native speakers.

"The sound was off, right? Not like Mother?"

"Yeah. It was like us, but also… not. Like he was like us and at the same time like the mister."

"What did he look like? Any noticeable characteristics?"

Anemone shook his head. "He looked like the rest of the big brothers."

That didn't sound right, but it wasn't like someone couldn't change their looks – while it would be hard enough to trick a being like Mother, as far as Mercury was aware, she didn't even have a real body, anyway; she wouldn't be able to see anything that was noticeably off.

But there was still one last question. One final nail in the coffin.

Mercury gestured to his right earlobe. "Did this part look normal?"

"No, it was –"

He didn't even listen for the rest of Anemone's sentence, already leaning back in his chair in a mixture of defeat and anger. As much as he hated to admit it, Laxus was right.

And that was terrifying.

"What did he say? For real this time."

"You were unfortunately correct; the guy who visited the ocean was the same guy from Alchemist."

Mercury expected Laxus's signature look of superiority, not the deep frown that followed. "And you're sure?"

"You saw it, right? The way his ear looked like it had been bitten? Anemone said the guy had the same thing."

Both of them stayed silent for a couple of moments, taking the information in. The jovial atmosphere from a couple of moments ago was long gone, replaced with something heavy – until Laxus smiled.

"Isn't this a good thing?" he asked.

"Why the hell would it be a good thing? Who knows what that guy's planning – like you said, it can't be anything good."

Laxus's brow became set into something almost like the superior look, except it was tinged with what could only be described as anger. "You may not want to deal with them, but I didn't get a single chance to decimate those fuckers. Isn't this as good a shot as any to get some much-needed revenge?"

Maybe it was for Laxus, who didn't fear the future as Mercury did. Still, such a thing was entirely in character for the younger Dragon Slayer – Mercury knew he'd been quietly hiding his anger at the whole situation out of respect for the water mage's feelings to the degree that this was the first time it had truly slipped out.

It felt somewhat relieving.

Mercury sighed once more – something that was becoming far too natural. This one, however, was less reluctant than the rest; it was almost a sigh of relief.

Because that arrogant asshole, Laxus Dreyar, was always going to be on his side, whether they were fighting a dead dragon or the ocean itself.