"Am I going crazy, or is there something wrong with the guild today?"
"Well, usually I'd love to endorse your insanity, but you may actually be right for once."
Mercury rolled his eyes, giving Laxus a good smack to the side of the head. For once, he didn't care (much) that the dragon slayer insulted his mental wellbeing because it felt like he might be right.
The air just felt wrong today in a way he couldn't quite put his finger on.
Still, there was no need to give the man a larger ego than he already had. If it got too much bigger, it was going to burst, covering them both with whatever the hell was floating around up there.
"If I'm insane," Mercury hissed, "then you're double insane, Lax."
"That's not a word. Or a mental condition."
"Don't care. At this rate, we're both going to the asylum."
There was definitely something wrong with the guild today.
Mercury wasn't the only one to notice. The air just felt… static. Like someone's gaze was plastered onto him. On occasion, he felt the back of his neck prickle as though someone was watching him, but no matter how fast he whirled to find the culprit, he could never find anyone.
He'd already tried to come up with who might be watching him to no avail. It wasn't anywhere near July, so it wouldn't be people trying to surprise him for a birthday party (assuming people even remembered his made up birthday), and it wasn't like he'd done anything recently, so the likelihood of it being Sorcerer Weekly trying to get a scoop is pretty low too. Still, it was disconcerting to have someone watching your every move… If that was even what was happening. He couldn't get the feeling of someone watching him intently out of the back of his mind no matter how hard he tried to distract himself with Bixlow's dumb jokes or Fried's useless trivia.
"I think I feel it too," Evergreen admitted. "It's like something's going to pop out from underneath a table and scare me."
"A prank, maybe?" Fried suggested.
All four of them gave Bixlow – the most likely culprit – the side eye, but he seemed unperturbed. In fact, he even laughed. "Who would have the balls to pull a prank on us?"
No one had an answer.
With Mercury (partially) back into the fold of the Thunder God Tribe, they were definitely in the running for Fairy Tail's strongest team again. He was back at Laxus's level, with neither having earned a solid victory against the other since he'd regained his strength, which essentially made him an S-Class in all but title. That made their little group the only one with two S-Class level mages. If someone wanted to pull a prank on them, well… whoever was doing it would probably want to prepare well in advance.
"No one else has commented on it, so…" Mercury trailed off. Actually, there weren't many other people in the guild to begin with right now; the days were getting longer and sunnier, so many teams were out there doing jobs rather than huddled around the almost dreary guild hall.
(As for why the Thunder God Tribe wasn't doing the same… Well, who knew? Mercury wasn't going to complain about getting time off, especially with his time now being spent having to wrangle Anemone – something he was only free of now because the boy had gone back to the ocean for a week.)
(Ah, the woes of divorced parenting.)
And to shock him from his reverie, he felt it again – the itch on his scales, telling him that someone was staring. Mercury stood, whirling around to try to meet someone's gaze…
Only for no one to be there.
"Damn it, this is going to drive me crazy," he muttered under his breath. Laxus opened his mouth for another retort at Mercury's mental capacities, but his mood was already starting to spiral downwards, so he gave the man another preemptive smack on the forehead.
Laxus put his hands up, affronted. "Really? I didn't even say anything!"
"I can read your mind like a book," the older man proclaimed to another exaggerated eye roll.
Just like that, the two boys started squabbling again. No, not just squabbling – they began to brawl in an almost childish manner, grabbing at each other's hair and vying for the upper hand in a wrestling match. Laxus was taller, so he had the advantage, but Mercury's scales made it hard for him to get a good grip. On the other hand, Mercury was able to stay more stable, grabbing at Laxus under the armpits.
"Can you two stop behaving like a pair of goblins for one afternoon?!" Evergreen shrieked as she was almost immediately forced aside, but it fell on deaf ears – they were already engrossed.
Then, the doors opened loudly, and both froze, worried that Erza might have returned early. If she saw them with Laxus's arm around Mercury's neck and Mercury's shoulder dug deeply into Laxus's stomach, she'd definitely scold her in her "unique" (painful) way, then tie them up like bandits. Erza may have been one of the guild members who were most happy for Mercury's recovery, but she wasn't one to tolerate such childish antics.
But it wasn't Erza.
It wasn't even anyone they knew.
The girl standing in front of the door had dark green hair and oddly pink eyes, so bright that Mercury could pick them out even against the harsh light flooding from the doorway. She looked to be around Wendy's age, or perhaps a little older, and her clothes were something a younger version of Mira would have found appealing.
All five Thunder God Tribe members simply stared, unsure of who the girl even was.
Then, she opened her mouth, took a deep breath, and shouted, "I'll never forgive you!"
Mercury tried to catch Laxus's eye even though he was still entangled with the other man's limbs. The dragon slayer didn't look down. He continued to stare at the new entrant as though she had a second head.
… was it just Mercury, or was she staring right at him?
"Um," Evergreen stood from the bench, taking a step towards the doorway, "if this is about a property damage complaint, you'll have to take it up with the Master."
That didn't seem to be it all. The girl's shoulders hunched forward like she was about to cry, and her face scrunched up before she belted out another shout, somehow louder than the first one. "You took everything from me."
Mercury flinched from the loudness of it, but by the time he looked back…
Yeah, her finger was definitely aimed directly at him.
Laxus looked between the girl and the man under his elbow before a look of disgust cracked over his face. He let Mercury go like he'd been burned, scowling. "Seriously?"
?
"What's she talking about, Merc?" Evergreen turned to him, but Bixlow put a hand on her shoulder, looking disappointed.
"Look, Ever, it's not our place to pry. When a girl says a boy has taken everything from her, she usually means…" He trailed off, not finishing.
"Woah, woah, woah," Mercury said after a pause. He'd thought that giving himself a moment would help him figure out what the hell these guys were going on about, but that didn't happen. "I don't even know this girl!"
Somehow, that made it worse.
"A one night stand!" Bixlow proclaimed. Evergreen pulled away.
"I didn't think that you were the type," Fried sighed. "I thought you and Laxus…"
"That me and Laxus what? And in the first place, I don't know her!"
"It's okay, Merc. You don't have to hide it. Fairy Tail's got lots of sleazebags. We all love Gildarts, right? You'll feel better if you admit it," Bixlow said.
Mercury stood, admittedly getting more than a little heated. "Admit what? That's a child – and I don't even know her."
"That makes it even worse," Laxus hissed, raising his voice for the first time. "I can't believe you brought that to my house."
The water mage felt affronted, if not deeply insulted. Sure, they were still living together, but if anything that would prove Mercury's innocence. Laxus's hearing is so sensitive that he can hear when the other man is tossing and turning, and their rooms aren't even on the same floor. If that was going on, Laxus would have heard it already – and he'd have complained about it.
"Mercury…" Evergreen sighed.
"I'm being framed!"
.
.
.
Mercury was soon convinced that the girl's tears were entirely faux and she was doing this just to spite him. She could turn on the waterworks almost as easily as Mercury could rile Laxus up, and she seemed to stop just as suddenly, especially when someone new turned their attention to her.
When she looked at him, her eyes were full of disgust. When she looked at literally anyone else, it was like she was meeting her idol, someone she'd followed for years and years to the point that her walls were lined with posters of them.
… Which she actually had admitted to. For more than one of her new acquaintances.
And, since she'd convinced everyone that he'd done something to her – interestingly, the "something" she referred to was still left vague – Mercury had been pushed to the side like an afterthought. Evergreen specifically threatened to, uh, do some very graphic things if he got within twenty feet of the girl, which was a shame because he still had no idea who the hell she was. Mercury was pretty sure he'd remember her if he'd ever seen her. The combination of dark, forest green hair and vibrant pink eyes was pretty distinctive, so he definitely would at least remember those two things, but he hasn't seen that combo before – not once in his hundred years of life.
What made it worse was the fact she kept shooting him glances from across the room – glances that were far from innocent. They were malicious, and if not that, they were downright mean. Those sorts of eyes didn't belong to anyone below the age of eighteen, that's for sure.
(And where did those assholes get the idea that he'd ever get close to someone like that? Mercury hated kids, with the exception of one or two.)
(Or so he'd tell himself.)
"You know, if you're jealous, you can just say so," said Macao – one of the few to not actively isolate him away from the girl.
What was her name, anyway?
"I am not jealous," Mercury hissed. "Am I just the only one that finds this weird?"
"Yes." The younger man took another sip of his beer as though Mercury were air. "Besides, she's just a kid. She probably just mistook you for someone else."
"At least you believe me there," the water mage grumbled. He put his head on the table and sighed. Evergreen had given him the nastiest look earlier, and it felt ingrained in his mind now.
"I mean," Wakaba broke in after a drag on his pipe, "you're sometimes an ass, but you hate any kid that's not named Asuka, Romeo, or Anemone. It's hard to believe you'd do anything but make her cry."
"I know!"
"You probably shouldn't admit that so readily," Macao said dryly. "Women don't like guys who make kids cry."
Mercury scoffed, shrugging. "I'm not interested in women anymore," he said, then quickly added, "and I can make anyone cry if I try hard enough."
"What? You like men?" Macao leaned forward as though he was getting the scoop. The way he said it wasn't judgemental, just incredulous like he couldn't see Mercury as someone who'd like the same sex. "I thought you had a wife."
"I do have a wife, unlike you," the water mage muttered. "She's just not alive anymore. And does it really matter what type of person I like? Everyone's the same on the inside."
"Not like it bothers me," Wakaba adds. "Just means there's more for the rest of us.
"YOU have a wife!" Macao, Mercury, and a third voice – Milgana, the wife in question – all shouted in unison, startling the smoker. Thus began yet another argument between the married couple, and Mercury had to wonder why the hell she hadn't left his unfaithful ass yet.
After all, if she did, he'd deserve it. Wakaba was infamous both within the guild and at local bars for chasing skirts, and nearly every member of the guild has bailed him out of a shitty situation at one moment or another.
"I just don't get it," Mercury sighed to Macao. "Who is she? Why'd she show up now?"
And more importantly, why was she glaring at him like he's the scum of the earth?
"Why don't you just go ask?"
The water mage laughed bitterly. "Evergreen might gut me. Or ask Bixlow to. Or Fried. Or any of them, really."
"You know she can just petrify you from here, right?"
Neither one commented on whether or not it was actually possible, but the threat hung in the air for a moment before Mercury threw his head back and groaned. "You know what? I think I'll just leave before it gets worse. Come find me when she ends up being some freak who's after Fairy Tail for some reason, and I'll come say 'I told you so.'"
"Where are you gonna go? Laxus looked pretty pissed earlier," Macao asked even though it was pretty clear he didn't really care. If anything, the old man was just happy to get something refreshing going on in the guild now that he wasn't the guildmaster anymore.
Mercury rubbed his temples in a vain attempt to soothe the headache growing there. "I'll find a hotel or something."
Macao snorted as though Mercury was joking.
He wasn't.
He was already far too annoyed to deal with Laxus's inquisitive or accusatory glares for tonight, and he certainly didn't want to deal with Evergreen or Bixlow harassing him for whatever the girl had apparently decided he'd done. Either way, it would probably end up in a fight – either physical or verbal – so it was better to just hide away until this all blew over.
… Assuming it did blow over. He was innocent, after all..
.
.
.
Thoroughly pissed and ready to sleep this off, Mercury left the guild far behind, heading in the opposite direction of Laxus's house. He slouched, shoulders slumped. No one bothered the obviously grouchy water mage as he made his way through the alleyways towards the hotel sitting by Magnolia's eastern gate.
It wasn't the nicest hotel, but it was a place to sleep.
He was stopped before he got there, however, and by the person he least wanted to see – that girl.
Wasn't she just at the guild?
She somehow slid out of the alleyway to his left before he could pass it, beating him there as though she'd known what path he was going to take or she'd somehow left before him. She didn't, though – Mercury was sure he saw her as he left. He remembered the glare.
He tried to slip past her and ignore her completely, but that was a total bust – she stepped in front of him and put her hands out like a stop sign, meaning he had to either go through her or turn around.
"What do you want?" he grumbled. "I thought you hated me."
"I do," she responded with an eye roll as though it were an obvious conclusion to come to. Her face twisted in some childish rendition of anger. It was neither scary nor hateful – just a pure, unadulterated measure of how pissed she was.
"What did I ever do to you?"
"You took everything."
"So you've said," Mercury ground out. "Multiple times. In front of all of my friends. I just find it hard to believe that I've taken anything from you since I've never seen you in my life. So, what exactly was it that I took?"
"You took Fairy Tail," she said – but she said it like the guild was an item, like it could belong to anyone.
"I just live there," he protested. "I've been there since way before you were born."
"You're not supposed to."
Now, that was going a little far – to say he wasn't supposed to be in the guild that he literally owed his life to wasn't fair. In fact, those guys wouldn't let him leave even if he wanted to. It wasn't something she could say lightly, especially when she'd been around for all of two hours.
"That's –"
"So," she interrupted his complaint, "Where are you from?"
Mercury got the feeling she wasn't looking for an answer he could give. Would she believe him if he said the ocean? Would she even care? He tilted his head in confusion at the change in topic.
Sensing his hesitation, she continued. "Korea? America? You don't have an accent, so I originally guessed Japan, but you look a little too clueless for that."
"Uh," he stuttered, "what?"
Once more, he received that eye roll, except it was far more pronounced this time; the girl, despite how sweet she looked earlier, now looked irritated – infuriated. "The place you were before you reincarnated here? Are you slow?"
Reincarnation…
"I don't mean to be rude, but did you come here from a mental asylum, by any chance?"
"No! Listen, is it so hard to just answer the question? Stop messing around!"
Mercury took a step back. He felt stunned by the sudden shift in attitude. How she acted now was almost the exact opposite of how she'd acted in front of Laxus and the others.
"I really don't know what you're talking about," he insisted.
"There's no way you don't remember. You wouldn't even be here if you weren't aware of the storyline. Why would you join the guild if you weren't aware they'd come back from Tenrou – their reputation was in the gutter until the Grand Magic Games."
"Storyline?" he repeated. The girl's words just kept getting more and more confusing.
"You know, the plot? God, did you even read the manga? There's no way someone would just happen to get reincarnated into this world if they weren't, like, actively wishing for it."
To say he was lost was an understatement; Mercury was traversing the farthest reaches of the continent without a map, and somehow, this girl kept adding additional twists to the path in front of him.
He was genuinely beginning to believe she was insane.
She, however, didn't seem to care that he had no idea what was going on, because she continued rambling. "I've been waiting for this day forever. Every single day since I realized I reincarnated into Fairy Tail, I prayed I'd be able to make my way to Magnolia, but my parents were way too overprotective. Even when I told them that this was my dream, they wouldn't let me leave. And now I'm here meeting my idols – I am so excited. I am the number one Fairy Tail fan."
Somehow, Mercury got the feeling that the Fairy Tail he knew wasn't quite the one that she was referring to.
Once more, she turned to him and glared. "I was so excited… come to find out that someone already took the OC slot."
"OC slot," Mercury repeated.
"OC slot."
"Care to elaborate on what that means?" He genuinely couldn't tell which one of them is insane – her, for talking about all this… shit, or him, for not just walking away.
"Original character, duh," she said as though it were obvious. Again.
Was he supposed to know these terms? Reincarnation? OC? Original Character? Manga? Plotline? He knew the words she was using, but that didn't make them make sense.
"And… because I'm here, that's preventing you from joining the guild?" the water mage tried to surmise. He head pounded, if only because he had no idea what was going on.
"Yes. Things get too chaotic if there's too many OCs."
"And I'm an OC?"
"Well, you weren't in the original work, so I'd assume so," she said, twirling. "If you understand, then will you leave the guild for me?"
Mercury snorted. "Absolutely not."
He almost fully laughed, but held it in. It would do nothing but provoke this insane girl in front of him.
"Why not? You've had your time in the spotlight. It's my turn," she protested, her voice so shrill that Mercury winced.
"Unlike you," he said, taking another step back – who knew when she might suddenly attack? "I'm not here because I admire Fairy Tail as a concept."
"If you don't admire them, then –"
"As a concept," the water mage repeated. "You seem to be idolizing them because you know what they've done, rather than them as people."
"Of course I idolize the mages in the guild!" the girl protested. "What's not to love?"
"Okay, what's Erza's favorite color?"
"Red – scarlet," she answered on instinct.
"Wrong. It's blue." Blue, just like Jellal Fernandez's hair – she'd mentioned it once, long ago… before she even returned to the tower of heaven.
"How can you know that? You're lying!"
Mercury stared down at her with narrowed eyes. He doubted she'd believe him even if he asked her more questions, but…
"What's Natsu's favorite food?"
"Fish!"
"Wrong," the water mage sighed. "His favorite food is whatever's in front of him, unless he can see too many vegetables in it, in which case he hates it. What's Gray's morning workout routine like?"
"He doesn't have one – he's the opposite of Natsu, so he's more of a 'chill' character."
"Wrong. He runs three miles every morning and somehow manages to lose all of his clothes along the way. What are the names of Bixlow's dolls?"
The girl in front of him pursed her lips, raising her voice. "How the hell am I supposed to know that?"
"I thought you were the number one Fairy Tail fan," Mercury said. "Bixlow doesn't name his dolls because giving them names means they don't have to listen to him anymore, but he calls them Eenie, Meenie, Minie, and Moe."
"That's not something a normal person would know!"
"Well, you'd know that if you paid any attention to the people. Natsu's food preferences are pretty obvious, and I can't believe you'd say that Gray is the opposite of Natsu. Both of them hate being called that, you know?"
There was a beat of pause as she digested what he said. For a second, Mercury really thought she was going to accept his words, but instead, her face twisted into that of rage.
Yeah, definitely not the face of a kid.
"You're making all of that shit up!" she proclaimed. As the words left her mouth, Mercury felt a chill on his spine and threw himself to the side to just barely dodge an earthen spear aimed at his back. It was pointed. If it had hit, it definitely would have punctured his body somehow.
What the hell? And the sound of it – it was by far the most disturbing sound of magic he'd ever heard in his life. He couldn't even describe it other than to say it made him feel like he was going to throw up.
"There's no way anyone would know that stuff," the girl huffed. "It wasn't in any of the author interviews!"
"Instead of admitting I'm right, you're just going to attack me?" Mercury asked.
The girl's hair began to wave, a clear sign that she was young and had incomplete control of her magic. "I'm attacking you because you're lying!"
A second spire of earth rose from the ground, quickly becoming taller than Mercury himself as he hit the deck to avoid his head being taken off. It slammed into the bricks, sending a cascade of broken wall and crumbling earth into the water mage's hair.
The point stuck into the side of the alley, exactly where his face had been moments ago.
That… could seriously kill someone if she wasn't careful. Then again, that was more than likely the point – if she wanted to "take his place" in the guild, then it would make sense to just try to take that spot forcefully.
"You really are crazy, you know that?" Mercury said.
The ground underneath him rumbled again, signaling that she was far from done. Instead of letting himself be skewered, he grabbed onto the remains of the first magic construct and scaled it as quickly as possible, getting himself off the ground, and not a moment too soon – it burst upwards, destroying the pathway entirely and filling almost all of the empty space.
Unfortunately for him, the earth wasn't the only thing he had to look out for. The water mage heard that disgusting, unnatural sound once more and pushed down the rising nausea in his stomach before leaning back to avoid a blade of air aimed at his throat. Instead of hitting him directly, it barely nicked his cheek.
Looked like she wasn't just able to control earth. What were the odds she had fire and water, too?
"Pretty impressive for a kid your age," he said, relatively unbothered. His cheek healed in a fraction of a second, leaving behind only a faint splattering of blood that had rolled down his cheek before it could clot. "Can't you just join the guild normally? They'd be happy to have you – but make sure you tell them it was all a misunderstanding, okay?"
"NO!"
Well, there went that idea.
What followed was a barrage of air and earth attacks, none of which came too close to hitting Mercury. Without the element of surprise, she really was just a kid, and without any experience, she was less accurate than any mage Mercury was familiar with.
Of course, on the flip side, she was incredibly destructive, too. Outside the alley, the water mage heard people shouting, half asking for help and half asking if "Fairy Tail was at it again."
"We can still stop this," he said, eyeing the entrance that he'd come through. It had now collapsed, so at least no one was going to accidentally wander into the carnage.
"I'm not stopping until you give up your spot in the guild!"
"Guess we'll go until you're exhausted, then."
Now, it wasn't like Mercury wasn't able to hit her. In fact, he was fairly certain she'd go down in one hit, physical or otherwise. The issue was that he was going to be getting mad shit for hitting a little girl, and with how little his friends apparently already thought of him, he didn't want to risk making it worse.
That being said, he didn't quite wanna stand her playing around with her for too long, either.
He dodged around a couple more blades of air. The stone pillars that she'd created were enough cover that he could pretty easily just duck behind one and be completely fine. When she realized this, she added one more element into the mix – fire. It was nothing compared to Natsu's, but he hadn't expected much else. The difference between the two was like trying to call a single match a roaring wildfire; her fires created ashy marks behind wherever Mercury dodged, and that was it.
Clearly, her go-to was earth, and fire wasn't something she was experienced with yet.
(He wondered whether or not she'd made it to water yet.)
Still, the longer it went on, the more pale she got – she was pushing herself much too far, especially for the few results she was getting. In total, the only damage to Mercury's body was a small cut in his shirt's right sleeve from where it had gotten snagged on something sharp.
"Stop –" she huffed, trying to catch her breath. "Stop moving."
"I'd have to be an idiot to do that, sorry."
"You are… an idiot… for not…"
She didn't have to finish her thought for Mercury to know what she was trying to say: he'd have to be an idiot for not giving up his spot to her, or whatever.
Were teenage girls always this delusional?
Several more minutes passed like that until they two reached a stalemate, and that's when Mercury was finally starting to hear other sounds – familiar sounds. Ones he enjoyed a lot more than whatever the hell she was using.
"Last chance to stop," he said gently.
She continued to breathe heavily, one hand pressed against the wall of the alleyway in an attempt to get herself to keep standing upright. Her face was covered in sweat. It slowly dripped to the ground.
"I… won't…"
"You're going to pass out if you keep this up. Does it look like you're going to beat me?"
For what seemed like the first time, the girl looked at him – really looked at him. It was as though she was actually seeing him for the first time. The patch of scales on his cheek, the gray plating on his arm where the fabric had been torn… in hindsight, it was odd that the girl hadn't commented on it already.
Her eyes widened in shock.
"You're… not human?"
"Correct. I've been in Fairy Tail since long before you were born, so I'm not really sure how I could have 'stolen your spot,'" he explained. "And I don't know about OCs or any of this reincarnation business, sorry."
She looked down at her hands. "But… that's not possible… this world isn't something that can just change."
"Then maybe it's not the same as the world you read about."
Mercury heard the clash of cymbals, and suddenly, the temperature in the alleyway jumped about ten degrees. Lightning crashed down a few paces behind him. It startled the girl, but he was unsurprised.
The water mage put his hands up to say "it wasn't me." His message wasn't passed along as smoothly as he wished.
"What the hell are you doing?" Laxus growled, looking at Mercury and only Mercury; he didn't bother to spare a glance at the girl, who was looking at him with owlish eyes, only sending his sharp, pointed glare at the water mage.
"Trying not to get stabbed, thanks," Mercury replied easily. "Why is it you who showed up?
"Because those assholes ran in screaming about 'some girl making a ruckus' and 'some guy getting attacked in an alleyway,' and I knew it had to be you. Can't you go a couple of hours without causing an issue?"
"I didn't cause –"
The girl chose then to open her mouth. "They have it wrong!" she wailed, turning on those crocodile tears. "He attacked me! I couldn't even fight back!"
And Laxus, for once, did not look like he cared in the slightest.
"Do you even know what you're saying?"
"Huh?"
"This idiot only has talent for one thing, and it's not this," he said, waving his hand vaguely at the carnage around him – the broken mounds of earth and the large, jagged lines cut out by blades of wind. "And I think you'd have drowned already if he seriously attacked you."
Mercury crossed his arms. "Hey, thanks for the vote of confidence and all that, but I'm not going to drown a kid."
"Shut up or I'll tell everyone you were getting your ass kicked by a middle schooler."
The girl huffed indignantly – and wow, look at that, her tears were all gone, though the tear tracks still ran down her face. "I am not a middle schooler."
"Coulda fooled me."
Wisely, Mercury didn't speak, but he did step to the side so that he wasn't in between those two. While he wouldn't hit a kid, Laxus definitely didn't have such inhibitions.
In fact, her being young would probably have made him more eager.
"I'm not lying," the girl protested again when it was clear that Laxus wasn't going to believe her. "He really did attack me!"
"Yeah, and that's why this place is a goddamn mess," the dragon slayer huffed. He took his eyes off of her and looked towards where the real casualties happened – clods of dirt and stones had been strewn everywhere, and shards of wooden box lay haphazardly underfoot. There were even several broken panes of glass that had been shattered by the wind.
It was actually sort of funny to see Laxus of all people worried about the damage. Maybe he actually was beginning to grow as a person.
… Or maybe he didn't want to deal with the aftermath. Or, rather, he didn't want Mercury to complain about it, because more likely than not, the water mage was going to be the one handling it.
"But, I–"
Laxus cut her off with a glare, then turned back to Mercury. "Explain what happened in two sentences or less."
Mercury only needed one. "She's crazy."
"I am not crazy. I'm just trying to get you to see reason!"
"And what sort of reason are we talking about here?" Laxus pressed.
The girl and Mercury shared a glance. For some reason, neither really wanted to share the topic of their conversation; in the former's case, it was because telling the "characters" of a "story" that they were, in fact, characters in a story was a sort of taboo, and in the latter's case, he wasn't even sure where to start.
"Oh, now you two are shutting up? Fine, see if I care. Fight it out. I'm going back home."
"Mister Laxus, wait –"
"Don't call me mister," the dragon slayer hissed. "I'm not that old."
"But you do admit you're old?" Mercury asked.
"Not nearly as old as you," Laxus said, glaring angrily – though not necessarily meanly at the older man. "Goddamn, you're annoying today. I went along with that crap back there because I wanted to mess with you, but it got old fast."
"What?" said the girl.
"What?" said Mercury.
Laxus smiled, though it was more of a smirk than anything. "Did you really think I'd believe some little kid coming in to say that you of all people were messing around with her?"
Well, no, Mercury didn't really believe it, but that's why he was so annoyed by it. His mouth gaped open as he tried to come up with something to say, yet he was almost entirely speechless.
… Except for one phrase, of course. "Fuck you dude. Really. I hate you so much right now."
"Get in line."
"Wait!" the girl interrupted. "Mi – I mean, Laxus, what do you mean by messing around?"
This time, it was Laxus's turn to be stunned. "Wait, was that not what you were trying to say?"
"Of course not! I wouldn't do… that with my sworn enemy!"
"Oh, so we're sworn enemies now?" Mercury said dryly. "Does that mean I can fight back now? Do you fancy your odds against a grown adult, or should I ask Evergreen to step in on your behalf?"
"Oi, don't even say that. She's already pissed enough right now." Laxus visibly shivered, his face becoming pale.
Mercury understood. Even if Evergreen's petrification magic didn't work on him, she had… other ways of making your life a living hell – ways he did not want to personally experience. Just seeing it happen to their enemies was more than enough.
"... is she mad because you made a big deal out of something that wasn't even true?" Mercury was certain that at least Bixlow had come to the same conclusion, so he was going to be in the doghouse, too.
Laxus's pained gaze said it all – they'd be lucky to get out of this unscathed.
"I just… I don't understand," the girl said, this time crying in a way that seemed far more genuine. "Why him and not me? Is it because I was born too late?"
"I still have no idea what she's talking about," Laxus admitted.
"We should probably keep it that way. I don't really get it either, but it was enough for her to attack me over."
"Right…" the Lightning Dragon Slayer said. "And I'm assuming you don't want to hold her responsible for all that crap?"
Laxus knew him well. Too well, maybe. "As long as she clears up what she meant, it's fine. She's just a kid – they're bound to get confused sometimes."
"I already told you, I'm not a kid! My name's Aria, and I'm fifteen years old!"
It was incredibly hard for either of them to take her seriously when her face was slick with tears and her nose was stuffy with snot.
"Well, Aria, if you're fifteen years old, doesn't that mean you should be with your parents right about now? It's getting late," Mercury pressed. When it looked like she was going to retort with something scathing, he added, "You already said that they were overprotective. Do they even know that you came here?"
She looked away. They didn't – which meant that come morning, they'd probably get two concerned young parents showing up at their doorstep.
Great.
"That's not our problem," Laxus said. "Let her stay with Evergreen or something until she goes back home."
"You say you don't care, but you clearly care enough to let her stay in the city," Mercury pointed out.
"Shut up. Are you coming home or not? That old blue fart said you were going to stay in a hotel or something."
For some reason, Aria perked right up at that. Mercury heard her take a sharp breath that sounded like she'd seen something she wasn't supposed to see, and suddenly, her overall demeanor changed – gone were the tears and scowl, replaced with an emotion that was strangely like excitement. In fact, he was pretty sure it was excitement. She began muttering something under her breath that he could make out, but it was so jumbled that he couldn't actually understand what she was saying, so he didn't even try. Fried did this fairly often, and he knew that it was usually far better to just let them ramble it out than try to press them for details.
And for some reason, he found himself somewhat scared of what had changed her attitude.
Laxus gave her the side eye, then caught the water mage's gaze. He shrugged – while he didn't care for Aria in the slightest, he didn't want to just leave her in an alleyway… especially after the mess they'd made.
God, the mess. Fairy Tail was sure to get a complaint about this, and Master Makarov, vindictive as he was, would probably decide it was finally time for Mercury to get back into the swing of things and start working through the paperwork again.
Damn it.
"Aria, you're coming with me to explain that I didn't cause all this damage by myself," Mercury sighed. That didn't break her from her reverie, but putting a hand on her shoulder did; she jumped back, eyes wide, and shouted out a sentence that was so incomprehensible that it sounded like a foreign language.
"Whydidn'tyoutelllmethatthisayaoigenre?!"
It sounded like a demand. "What?"
"Why didn't you tell me," she repeated, eyes so large that they might have popped out of her head entirely, "that this was a yaoi genre?"
… This was clearly another thing that she was delusional about, but something about it made him feel vaguely ill, so he said nothing.
"... What the hell is yaoi?" Laxus asked.
"I'm not sure I want to know." No, actually, Mercury was certain he didn't want to, so he turned, did a full one-eighty, and hauled ass out of that alleyway. His friend was close behind, equally as disturbed.
And unfortunately, the girl followed, too.
"Are you saying you two live together?" she asked.
"We're roommates. It's not weird." Besides, a kid lived there part time, too – there was no way anything weird could be happening.
"You're right, it's not weird – it's yaoi!"
"What the FUCK is yaoi?"
"It's when –"
"No," Laxus cut in, "I do not want to know. Change of plans – we're dropping her off with Evergreen before I let her get anywhere close to where I live."
"But I –"
"No!" He grabbed her by the back of her shirt and hoisted her into the air, earning him an indignant squawk that garnered them more than a couple of strange looks, but at this point, no one was surprised. They just watched with chuckles, which was unfortunate for Aria but good for the two of them.
At least Magnolia was certain that Mercury wasn't going to do anything weird to a kid. That said more than his supposed "friends," even if it was supposed to be a joke.
(This was worse than the time they forced him to dress as a woman.)
They dragged the girl back to the guild hall like a stray cat, though between the three of them, Laxus gave off the best impression of such an animal; Mercury couldn't tell exactly what it was had triggered his more instinct side, but at some point between finding the water mage and grabbing the girl, his haildn't r had begun to stand on end.
It was probably sometime around when she'd first brought up the word, "yaoi." Mercury felt exactly the same way. Still, even he could admit it was funny to see Laxus on the receiving end of discomfort.
Compared to the events of the day, this wasn't really all that bad. Then again, they still had Evergreen to deal with.
… Mercury was not looking forward to that even if he had technically not done anything wrong this time.
With the girl in tow, they gave a strange impression, especially when Laxus kicked the doors open, his hands too busy holding Aria to do it themselves. Then, without ceremony, he tossed her inside.
To her credit, she at least landed on her feet. Mostly. "Hey! Just because I approve of your relationship doesn't mean –"
"Don't start with that again," Laxus said to cut her off. Slightly behind him, Mercury struggled really hard to hide his laughter and failed – earning him a nasty glare. "You don't start, either. Tell her to shut up."
"Me?"
"You're the one she was weirdly obsessed with."
"Uh, no. I think the ones she was weirdly obsessed with were everyone except me."
"Yeah, and that's why she intentionally tried to corner you, an old man, in an alleyway and do something to you."
Kill me, Mercury thought, but kept it to myself. The idea of that girl being able to actually kill him was laughable at best, and it probably wasn't going to do them any good to bring it up now.
Besides, she'd changed her tune pretty quickly. She clearly didn't want that anymore, though for some reason, Mercury felt he was dreading whatever she wanted now more than he was before.
"Hey," said someone, approaching the two men and one girl somewhat cautiously – Max. "So, uh, wanna tell us what's going on?" He hadn't been here during Aria's entrance earlier, so he was understandably at a loss for words.
"Yeah, Aria," Mercury said while trying to keep a smile on his face. "Care to tell everyone why you're here? The real reason?"
After that, she was all too happy to spill most of her real motivations. Obviously, she didn't mention any of the "OC" or "reincarnation" business, but she did explain that she came here to join Fairy Tail but had thought it was too full for her to have a spot – something that garnered her several curious stares, if only because the guild's roster was at an all time low.
And much to Laxus and Mercury's displeasure, Master Makarov chose right then to make his entrance. It might have been pure coincidence if not for the fact that he just happened to already have the guild's stamp in his hands; he made a beeline for the guild, sending the two other men smug glances that had Laxus furious and Mercury just plain confused.
Had he done something to piss off the guildmaster recently?
Well, perhaps. When was he not doing something to bother Makarov?
The old man then proceeded to give everyone his usual speech. Magic comes from the heart, the Magic Council sucks (anyone could guess exactly why he hadn't been present for most of the day), they should all be free to act as they wished… Aria's eyes were as wide as saucers, and it wasn't exactly hard to imagine why. Despite his usual debauchery, Master Makarov was good at giving speeches, plus he loved the attention of it all.
Afterwards, he offered Aria the official choice to join the guild, which she unsurprisingly accepted without an ounce of hesitation; she only added, "I thought there'd be no space with two OCs, but we're different genres, so it's fine," quietly to Mercury for some reason afterwards.
He was still confused, but decided it was far better to be that way than understand the ravings of a madwoman.
(After all, according to Laxus, he was already insane enough.)