"That's good to hear," Mavis smiled. "I'm so glad that we could provide the family you needed. It must have been hard though. To learn the truth."
"Yeah… it was…" Wendy sniffed, trying not to cry as old memories were re-awakened.
...
Mavis sighed slightly. Truly how neglectful had she been not to know something like this. Well, she wasn't going to be neglectful any more.
"So, what are we supposed to do now?" Happy asked. "We've got to go and search for all of the others, but where can we find them?"
"I do not know," Mavis replied. "Most likely they are scattered at random across this world, but they're all in separate little pockets of the Fairy Sphere, frozen in time still, most likely. The roar of the Diamond Dragon distorted time greatly, so there's no way of knowing how long it will take each sphere to wear off now. Some of them could be awake now, others might still have months of being frozen in time yet. But I'm fairly certain that they're all in this world somewhere."
"Then how do we set about finding them?" Lily asked. "It would probably be best if we could track them all down as quickly as possible."
"You cast the Fairy Sphere spell didn't you, First Master?" Charla asked. "Can't you sense where they are?"
"The Spheres are small and faint now. I could probably sense them if I got within thirty miles or so of one of them but until then I would be searching blindly."
"That seems to limit our options," Lily placed a hand to his chin thoughtfully.
"What do you think we should do, Lily?" Wendy asked. "You used to be a Captain of Edolas. What do you suggest?"
"I've never quite been in a situation like this before," Lily pointed out before humming to himself and considering. "I believe the first course of action should be trying to gather some supplies like food and water from the island before we strike out and try to find the mainland. We should scout out the settlements, try and learn what type of people live here and if they might be friendly or best avoided. If it's the former perhaps we can garner some help in such for our comrades. If it's the latter… then we may have to search ourselves but keep our ears out for any potential news."
"I'm sure that if Natsu-san and the others are spotted it wouldn't take long for the news to spread," Wendy giggled nervously.
"They do tend to be rather… memorable… don't they?" Charla snickered.
"Don't worry, Wendy, we'll find them," Happy declared, sounding as though he was trying to reassure himself as much as Wendy. "We'll definitely find them and then when we do we'll find a way to get back home again."
"Oh, that's a point," Wendy sighed. "I hadn't even considered how we might get home."
"And I was just getting used to living in Earthland," Lily agreed. "Only to be whisked off to another world almost immediately afterwards… or rather six years afterwards though I only experienced a few weeks of it."
"We ought to worry about how we will get home another time," Mavis pointed out, rising to her feet. She was almost pleased to note that she was actually the tallest person there right now. That didn't happen very often. "For now our first priority is finding all of our guild members. Once we are all gathered again can we think of a way to take us back. After all, we don't leave any one of our own behind."
"That we most certainly don't," Wendy pumped her fist.
"We said we would all go home together right before Acnologia attacked and that still holds true now," Happy cheered.
"I'm still amazed we actually survived that," Charla chuckled.
"Well, from what I've seen, this guild does make a habit of pulling off the impossible," Lily noted with a smirk.
"You all certainly seem upbeat under the circumstances," Mavis giggled slightly.
"Well if we weren't upbeat we'd never get anywhere, First Master," Happy held up a paw. "Considering the amount of things that happen to us. This is just the start of another adventure. And we'll definitely overcome it, just like everything else. No matter what gets thrown at us."
"I like that attitude very much indeed," Mavis clapped her hands together lightly. "That's exactly the sort of spirit and determination I always wanted from the members of my guild when I set it up. I suppose it is decided. I shall accompany you. There's very little reason for me to stay, after all."
"But isn't your grave here?" Wendy asked. "This is Fairy Tail's sacred ground - shouldn't someone stay behind to keep an eye on it?"
"The island will be fine. The barrier I put in place around it to normally keep people from finding it has started functioning again. Even if a ship comes upon the island it should just go around it without even noticing it. Besides, an island is merely an island. What is most important are the lives of the others."
"Then let's go…" Happy exclaimed, before his stomach rumbled. "Um… after we eat. Anyone got any fish? I think I ate my last one some time ago."
"Not everything is about fish, you know," Charla pointed out
"Fish seems to actually be a practical thing to search for right now," Lily acknowledged. "If there's an ocean there should be some here. Hopefully. But this is another universe so who even knows what the local fauna here could be. I'll head back to the boat and see if I can find a net to catch some. It may be faster than a hook and line."
His body glowed briefly and expanded until he had taken on the towering, musclebound humanoid panther form that was his original body, his Exceed wings materialising behind him before he shot off into the air.
Mavis oohed slightly at the sight, before suddenly realising that now there was someone taller than her here, causing her to slump and murmur, "Figures…"
"I guess we should try and make a fire," Wendy suggested.
"That would be easy as pie if Natsu were still here," Happy's tail drooped slightly.
"Well, he's not," Charla replied. "But don't worry, Happy. Natsu's one of the hardiest members of the guild. He's probably one of the last ones we need to worry about."
"Aye," Happy thumped his chest lightly. "Because he is Natsu."
"As if that explains everything," Charla sighed with a slight smile. "Come on then. Let's gather some firewood."
"Aye sir!"
Mavis smiled brightly as she watched them go. Yes, this was hardly the most ideal of circumstances, but it looked like there would most definitely be some fun times ahead if these were her companions. But her eyes slowly drifted back towards the ocean and out towards the horizon.
Whatever trails and tribulations lie ahead for my guild… I will see them all safely home, she thought to herself. I swear it on the name Fairy Tail.
...
What none of them could know was that actually there was one other member of their guild who was already awake, having been split away from everyone else in his own little Fairy Sphere and having woken up alone in the middle of a meadow with no clue as to how he had got here, or what had happened to the rest of his friends.
With no answers for him in the meadow, he had picked a direction at random and wandered off searching for answers. Yet he was pretty sure that he'd been walking for miles across open expanse with scattered trees all about the place and come across absolutely nothing. Not even a farmhouse or some other kind of settlement. But still he trudged on. There had to be something close by. Something that could tell him how the heck he'd been on an island being attacked by a Black Dragon one minute and on the mainland and totally alone the next.
But his walk eventually came to a stop when he reached the edge of a cliff and found himself looking out across the great salty expanse of ocean. Definitely not the same expanse of ocean that the island had been in. That had been a very tropical environment. Not so here. The cliffs were rugged and the spray that was coming up them from below was cold. This was some kind of temperate zone, no question about that.
But that just made everything even more stupidly confusing.
"Jeez," he muttered to himself. "This is messed up."
But suddenly his nose twitched and he looked up towards the sky, his eyes widening when he saw something that looked like some kind of black, skeletal winged horse soaring up near the clouds. His red eyes lingered on the creature for several moments before it winged its way inland at high speed, shortly becoming a little black dot in the distance.
"That sure as heck wasn't normal," Gajeel Redfox growled, his long, wild black hair wafting in the breeze that blew up against his chest, bare except for the bandages that were still wrapped around them from six years ago but the black guild mark on his left shoulder on full display. "What kind of shit have I managed to get myself into this time?… Well, at least nobody can say that life with this guild is boring."
...
Massaging his forehead and having to resist the incredibly strong temptation to just throw down his quill and slump back into his chair, Harry Potter did his best to focus on his latest Transfiguration essay. Something about the Inanimatus Conjurus Spell… but his heart certainly wasn't in it? Less so than usual in fact.
He knew it was important. He was a fifth year student now and the Wizarding World's equivalent of the GCSE exams - their OWLs - would be coming up at the end of the year as his close friend Hermione Granger never failed to remind him. But Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was the only place that he'd ever truly called a home and after just one week of being back after the summer holiday he was currently wishing he was practically anywhere else.
Heck, even his magical-phobic aunt, uncle and cousin - the Dursleys - were seeming like a more attractive option right now, and that was saying something.
Why was everything going so wrong? Ever since the Dark Wizard Voldemort had returned at the end of last summer it had seemed like half his world had fallen apart. And not just because Voldemort had killed his parents when he was a baby and left a scar upon his head when he'd tried to kill Harry himself. It seemed almost every other aspect of Harry's life was taking a turn for the worse right now too.
Perhaps that was being overdramatic, but that's the way it felt.
Sure, he'd been let off for using a Patronus Charm to ward off the two Dementors that attacked him and his cousin in the summer and that was a plus. And he still had his two best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, by his side and looking out for him.
But that seemed to be about all that remained. Dumbledore was ignoring him, Hagrid was missing, his godfather Sirius was cooped up in his house in London, unable to send him proper messages in case it was intercepted and certainly unable to visit due to the fact he was a convicted criminal for crimes he had never committed.
Not to mention practically the entire Wizarding World was convinced that his stories about Voldemort's return were attention-seeking lies and the Ministry seemed to be out to publicly discredit him at every turn - a stark contrast to previous years where everyone seemed to idolise him. He'd always longed for that to stop, but not to completely reverse like this. He'd always wanted to be a normal kid but it seemed if he wasn't a hero then he was practically a juvenile delinquent in the eyes of most of the populace.
At least there were some who believed him, like the Order of the Phoenix, but the fact that so many others, even one of his own dorm-mates, didn't want anything to do with him anymore almost made their support negligible. Plus the Order wasn't here now for the most part. Harry kept thinking that's where he should be, with the secret team trying to find ways to stop the low-laying Voldemort rather than stuck here doing essays he didn't even care about.
And what else - ah yes, there was the fact that one of the Ministry's own goons, the toad-faced Dolores Umbridge, had taken over the position of Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher here, spreading the Ministry's smear campaign against him by word of mouth even here, and when he angrily attempted to justify himself and tell the truth she'd taken him away from his favourite pastime of playing Quidditch to make him write lines that carved scars into the back of his hand. The words I must not tell lies were still quite visible even now.
Was that all of it?
Hardly. There was also the fact that the first Quidditch practice session he HAD been allowed to attend had been a total bust, thanks to jeering members of the Slytherin House and poor Ron's nervousness at being the new Keeper, interfering with his gameplay, and now Ron was in a rather bad mood himself as he tried to sort through the same essay. But to be fair that wasn't Ron deliberately trying to ruin things for him like practically everything else. He was sure Ron could do better if he could get his act together.
Surely things had to start going right for him pretty soon, didn't they? How much worse could they get?
He shook his head. God, don't think like that. He knew as well as anyone that things could always get worse.
Slowly, the two of them crawled on through their essays until they could finally put it aside and begin yet another, this one from Professor Sinistra and her Astronomy lessons. Honestly, Harry could barely see how this subject counted as magical. Why did wizards need to know about Jupiter's moons? Surely that was just something that Muggle astrophysicists needed to know.
Jeez, he really was sounding like a student complaining about something like algebra.
"Which one is the one with the giant ice pillars?" Ron murmured sleepily, bashing the side of his head a little as if that would keep him awake. "Europa or Ganymede?"
"I think its Europa, but don't call me on that," Harry murmured back.
"Eh, I'll put that in anyway. If its wrong, we can be wrong together."
"Not exactly the right attitude Hermione would want us to have but what the heck."
"Yeah well, looks like she's a little busy with those elf socks of hers," Ron glanced over to where Hermione and his sister Ginny were knitting together. "Honestly I don't know why Ginny's helping her with that. She knows the House Elves don't want to be free."
"Yeah well, something's been taking the things she's been knitting," Harry pointed out dully.
"Probably Crookshanks. Trying to spare Hermione's feelings but throwing them on the fire or something."
"Don't let her hear you say that… though it wouldn't surprise me if that was true."
Ron snorted slightly, before murmuring something about Callisto and trying to write it down.
"Hey guys," their thoughts were suddenly interrupted by their fellow fifth year Neville Longbottom, who had come running up to them, catching the attention of Hermione and Ginny too. "Have you heard?"
"Heard? Heard what?" Harry asked.
"There was something on the Wizarding Wireless Network today," Neville huffed. "Apparently loads and loads of people have been messaging in telling them that they've seen shooting stars or something like that, right across the country."
"Shooting stars?" Hermione frowned. "That's rather odd, isn't it? Surely if there was a meteor shower coming soon, Professor Sinistra would have mentioned it."
"Why would something like that make its way onto the Wizarding Wireless?" Ron asked, bemused. "Sure, it's unusual, but there've been plenty of things like that before and nobody bothered mentioning it on the news."
"That's the thing, you see," Neville replied. "They weren't saying it was just a distant thing in the sky. They were saying that they saw these bright golden lights come flying down really low. Some of the people said they think they might have even hit the ground not far away."
"What, made impact?" Harry asked. "Seriously? Seems kinda farfetched to me. Wasn't it a meteor hitting the earth that was supposed to have wiped out the dinosaurs or something?"
"I dunno, was it?" Ron asked.
"Technically that was a meteorite," Hermione replied. "But it does seem weird. You'd think some kind of falling rock would cause a tremor or too. Wasn't there anything like that mentioned?"
"No, nothing. Just passing on what I heard," Neville shrugged. "Just thought it was interesting."
Harry forced a light smile. "Yeah… yeah, its really interesting, Neville. Thanks for the heads up. Maybe we'll try and sit up tonight… see if we can see any more."
Neville smiled back and nodded. "I think that's what Professor Sinistra is going to do," he said, before he wandered off to tend to his ugly looking Mimbulus Mimbletonia cactus plant.
"We're not really going to stay up tonight to look for meteors, are we?" Ron whispered.
"Oh heck no," Harry replied. "I reckon I'm going to need one hell of good night's sleep after all this. Still, it is rather weird. Do you think… I dunno… could maybe…"
"You-Know-Who?" Ron raised an eyebrow. "You think he could have had something to do with it?"
"I dunno, maybe," Harry shrugged.
"I kinda doubt it," Ron chuckled. "I don't know much about You-Know-Who, Harry, but I've got a feeling that pretty lights in the sky really aren't his style. Giant floating skulls with snakes for tongues, yeah, but this… not every weird thing that happens is related to You-Know-Who, mate."
Harry sighed and shook his head. He knew Ron was right. He was probably being overly paranoid again. It just seemed now that every shift in the shadows and every unexplained phenomenon could potentially be a link to Voldemort. He knew he was just scrambling for details that weren't there, trying to find an answer to the question of what the heck the Dark Lord was doing. But it didn't look like he was going to find them any time soon.
"Yeah, you're right," he muttered. "Sorry."
"S'fine, mate. I get where you're coming from. You want answers. Believe me, we all do."
Harry nodded and started writing a section about the moon Io. "I guess. Maybe astronomy does have some real world applications for wizards after all."
"I doubt it," Ron chuckled. "Not unless a bunch of fairies come bursting out of those lights or something like that."
Harry laughed. All the horrible stuff going on in his life was still there of course but Ron had helped lighten the mood a little temporarily. So that at least he could concentrate a little more on the task at hand at the very least.
Little did he know how bizarrely accurate Ron had actually been.
...
if you want to support me or just to read ahead of the public release, you can join my p@treon :
p atreon/Moonhorse