A/N: No, I am not dead in a ditch somewhere... sorry for the delay but stuff has been hectic lately. Here's the epilogue. Finally.

It was roughly two and a half days after they had left for the S-Class trials that the bulk of the guild members finally made it back to Magnolia.

"We're back!" Natsu shouted as soon as he stepped in through the door of the guild hall with, far ahead of everyone. With the amount of energy he was displaying at the moment, no one would be able to tell that just ten minutes before he had been crippled with motion sickness from the train ride all the way from Hargeon Port.

"Welcome home," Mira pleasantly replied from the loveseat where she sat reading a magazine with her feet up, looking huge and extremely uncomfortable from the advanced state of her pregnancy. "How did things go in Tenrou Island? Did the test go well? Who passed?"

"Yeah. Did you finally make it to S-Class or what, Moron?" Laxus questioned, taking off his headphones just for the purpose of annoying the Dragon Slayer because… well, it was Natsu and he just felt like it.

"Oi! I've been S-Class for a whole year, asshole! You know that!" The fire-breathing dragon-slayer replied.

"Hmm… must have forgotten. Probably because it's hard to picture an idiot like you ever making the cut," Laxus said casually.

Just like that, Natsu unceremoniously dumped his bag on the floor and started rolling up his sleeves. "Gimme a minute and I'll show you exactly how I made the cut!"

Laxus just rolled his eyes. "Tch… annoying brat."

On her seat, Mira beamed. "Oh, I missed having you guys around. It's been just so boring ever since you left."

"That's so cruel Mira-chan," Wakaba commented from where he stood with Macao, oddly carrying a mop and a bucket, his friend matching the theme with an apron and rubber gloves on.

"We've been keeping you plenty of company for the past couple of days," Macao stated.

"… cleaning the guild because you thought it was a bit musty…"

"… minding the bar so you wouldn't have to while Kinana is off…"

"… sneaking yourselves some booze when you thought no one was looking…" Laxus made a point of adding to their list of tasks.

"Now, now, Laxus, they helping out free of charge, which I am very thankful for. What difference will a few drinks make?" Mira pointed out.

"Still," Lisanna stated, entering the guild just in time to hear the tail of the conversation and making a beeline to her elder sister, who she was more than a little relieved to see in the same state she'd been when she'd left. "Shame on you for enslaving those two poor guys just like that. You know I would have had plenty of time to clean the guild once I got back."

"Oh, but it was so much more practical to do it while you guys were away. I was going to do it myself, but those two took the broom right out of my hands as soon as they saw me picking it up."

"Because, as dimwitted as they may be, even they can spot crazy from a distance," Laxus commented.

Mira sighed. "You could have lent them a hand, you know?"

"Hn… someone's got to keep an eye on you in case you come up with more brilliant ideas like cleaning up the guild when you can barely move," he mumbled.

She found his concern sweet, although she knew that at least fifty percent of it was as much of an excuse not to get his hands dirty as his penchant for 'getting lost' doing chores in the midst of vanilla jobs the Raijinshuu sometimes picked up, such as helping out in Yajima's restaurant or assisting with the preparations for a random festival or cultural display of some sort.

"Anyway," she said, turning back to her arriving guild mates. "It's been strange without all the noise," she said.

"You'll get your noise alright," Happy snickered, floating by her.

"C'mon, Laxus! You gonna sit there all day or fight me?" Natsu asked, just as Lucy stepped into the guild with Levy.

"Oh, for the love of God! You've been back two minutes!" the Celestial Mage said, glaring at Natsu. "Two minutes and you're already picking a fight?!"

"Laxus started it! Tell her, Happy!"

"Yeah, he kind of did," the cat supplied.

"Can't you brats keep yourselves from fighting for five minutes?! One worse than the other," the Master barked as he made his way in. "Natsu, stay put! Laxus, stop provoking him!"

"Tch… like he needs much to get him in a mood to fight, anyway," Laxus commented.

"Shut up!" Natsu shouted back.

"Quiet!" the older man said, shooting them one last glare before turning around to face Mira. "Ah, Mira, my dear… How are you feeling? It's a relief to see you still…" well, pregnant – very, very pregnant – unlike some people "… glowing with impending motherhood."

Mira sighed. "To be honest, Master, I would be happier if that impending motherhood turned into actual motherhood. My back could use a rest from all this extra weight…" she mumbled before shaking her head and turning to face the growing crowd of guild members. "Anyway, you guys are still holding out on us about the best part! Who made it through the trials this year, after all?"

"I did," Gray declared, hearing the question as he walked in, his face apparently completely impassive to the fact that Juvia was currently wrapped around his arm like a barnacle.

"Juvia did too!" the jubilious water-mage declared. "It must be a sign that this is Juvia and Gray-sama's year, so they should get married before it ends!"

"If that's the case, you should hurry with the preparations, Juvia-chan," Meredy commented. "There's only two weeks left, after all…"

"Don't go around feeding her crazy ideas! We're not getting married!" Gray protested. From the corner of his eye, he saw Juvia severely deflating, looking positively crushed, and started feeling a little bad… maybe he shouldn't have been so harsh. "This year, anyway," he added in a mumble, making a point of looking away.

"Tsundere," Cana declared, hiding the word behind a cough.

"I heard that!"

"But what about the third spot?" Mira asked. "I thought there was room for three people to get promoted this year. Don't tell me only two made it! Such a shame…"

"Oh, no, Jellal did too," Meredy proudly declared. "But it seems like he fell behind the rest of us on the way here… probably fawning all over Erza."

"Oh, you guys went to pick her up from Mermaid Heel on the way here, then?" Mira questioned.

Her guild mates looked at each other hesitatingly. Well… that was awkward. It hadn't been long after they'd discovered Erza stowing away in the ship that Mira had called the Master via com-lacrima to express her concern about her rival's whereabouts since she was taking so long to return from Hargeon, where she'd gone to see Jellal off. Faced with her enquiry, the Master – fiercely protective of his beloved granddaughter-in-law, especially in her 'delicate' condition – had been hesitant to upset her with the truth: that her equally pregnant friend had just gone through a hellish trip and might be faced with having her baby miles and miles away from civilization. As such, he had done the opposite – he had lied and said Erza had decided at the last moment to go and visit Kagura and Millianna while they were gone. Of course, he failed to take into account that such a lie wouldn't go on very long and now it was time to face the music.

"Ah, about Erza, Mirajane…" the Master started. "I may have… misled you a little bit concerning her where she was for the past few days."

"Misled me?"

"That's Gramps speech for 'lied through his teeth'," Laxus helpfully supplied.

"Quiet, brat!"

Mira cleared her throat, her face not looking amused at all. "So, do tell me, Master. How was I… misled?"

"Oh, well, my dear, Erza… Erza never really did go to Mermaid Heel."

The barmaid narrowed her eyes. "She didn't?"

"No… you see, through a rather… interesting succession of events, she actually ended up… accompanying us."

Mira blinked. "Accompanying you," she repeated. "To…"

"Tenrou Island, yes."

"Tenrou Island?! In the state she's in?!" There was a bit of concern in her voice too – rivals they might be, but she and Erza were, above all, friends. The redhead might just be her closest female friend, in fact, and the thought of in how many differently things could have just gone wrong for her… it was scary. "Is she okay? How did this happen?"

"Ah, never mind the 'how'," the Master told her. "Let me just reassure you that she is perfectly fine."

Gray snorted. "I'd go with better than fine," he pointed out.

Lucy nodded eagerly. "Yeah, she's great."

"Over the moon," Juvia provided, attempting to surpass her love-rival's words.

"Super weird," Natsu mumbled. "Igneel was totally right when he said that women go nuts when they have a… mhumph!" he finished, his voice being completely muffled by the sandwich that Lucy pulled out of her bag and pushed straight onto his mouth.

"Here, have some food! You look hungry!"

He mumbled some nonsense around the sandwich but didn't spit it out because, after hours throwing up in a train, he did feel quite hungry indeed.

Mira narrowed her eyes, recognizing a clear sign of deception. "What aren't you guys telling me?" she said, her eyes narrowed and her tone sharp.

The Master gulped silently but Lisanna was the one to actually speak. "Ah, there was a bit of a bump on the road what with her… stowing away with us."

"Define 'bump on the road'."

Before Lisanna could even open her mouth to explain, the voice of the redhead in question came from behind the small crowd of people surrounding Mira's seat. "Victory. Complete and utter victory," Erza herself offered.

Mira was a bit confused for a moment before her guild mates made room for the redhead to pass… and then, as her eyes landed on a small cocoon of blankets in the arms of her rival, everything became clear. Very clear.

"No…"

Erza's face looked smug – so very smug. "I win," she declared. She didn't even need to say what – it was too clear that she was referring to their competition in all things pregnancy-related.

"No!"

"Yes!"

"Oh boy," Jellal mumbled behind Erza, already foreseeing the oncoming showdown. Now, if only he could get his little son out of the battlefield… but he was right in the center of it – and there was no way his mother would hand over the baby when having him in her arms made it so much easier for her to rub the situation all over her rival's face.

"This is not fair!" Mira screeched. "I'm having twins! Twins are supposed to come earlier than singletons! How can yours have come first?!"

"Oh, don't take it personally. It's to be expected that regular babies would lag behind the utter superiority of my precious baby boy," she declared, full of false modesty. "Born in the the guild's holy land and everything – how many people can claim being that special?"

"Oh, god, she's one of those moms. Mavis help that kid," Macao could be heard whispering to Wakaba, who just nodded gravely.

"You bitch!" was Mira's response to the jab.

"Mira!" Lisanna scolded.

"It's not fair!" she repeated, feeling her hormones starting to take over her temper. "Look at me! I… I'm huge. I can't see my own feet! If I drop something on the floor I can't bend down to pick it up, my back aches all the time… why won't they just come out already?!"

Sensing an incoming meltdown, Laxus quickly put himself to work. "Alright people, spread out. Nothing to see here. Go drink each other under the table or whatever. Freed, Bickslow, Evergreen, get the bar running," he added, turning to his team.

Freed nodded dutifully. "You can count on us."

Most of the people obeyed the Master's grandson, only a handful staying behind to try and help calming Mira down. Bisca was one of them.

"Mira, these things take their time," she tried to explain gently.

"They didn't with her," Mira protested, glaring at Erza.

"Yeah, well, that didn't feel like much of a victory at first either," the sharpshooter pointed out, sending Erza a pointed look that urged her to speak. "Especially when there's still a few weeks to go and you're having a baby in the middle of nowhere, no matter how 'holy' the land might be."

The redhead looked away for a moment, feeling a tiny bit guilty that she'd ended up upsetting Mira rather than just annoying her. "It… it wasn't pleasant… not knowing if everything would turn out well," she reluctantly admitted.

"But… it did, didn't it?" Mira asked, feeling mildly concerned over hearing Erza admitting that.

The redhead nodded. "We were lucky. But he's tiny… we'll have to be extra careful with him for some time."

"Oh," Mira mumbled.

"So, as you see, Mira-nee, you have nothing to be jealous of," Lisanna concluded.

"It probably won't be too long for you, Mira-san," Wendy pointed out. "Like you said, twins tend to come earlier, so Erza-san's little boy will have a couple of playmates soon enough."

Mira sighed. "That's a relief. I get that it's good for them to stay put, but I'm just about done with being pregnant."

"Asuka was two weeks late, so trust me, I know what that feels like," Bisca reassured her.

As it turned out, her words weren't that soothing. "Two weeks l…"

"I'm sure it won't happen to you!" Lisanna was quick to assure her. If not for anything else, because there couldn't possibly be enough room…

"You don't know th…!"

"Mira," Erza interrupted the she-demon, causing her to turn around and face her, looking rather lost. "Would you like to hold him?"

The white haired woman blinked. "Oh, can I?" Erza nodded and she smiled with excitement, all thoughts of endless more weeks of pregnancy gone from her mind. "Gimme!"

And so, Erza did… hesitatingly and with several warnings ahead. "Support his head!"

"I am!" Mira protested.

"Make sure you're holding him, not just the blankets, or else he'll slip out."

The barmaid glared. "I think I can tell a baby apart from blankets, Erza, thank you very much!"

Erza was quick to glare back. "I hope it goes without saying that if you drop him, I will kill you in the most literal sense of the word."

"Of course. Same rule applies when it's your turn to hold my little darlings."

"Fair enough."

"Glad we're clear. Now unhand the baby and let auntie Mira have her turn."

Erza gave her one last warning look. "Be careful."

"Get a move on, mother hen!"

"Er... why don't you take my seat while I go and get diner started, Erza?" Lisanna offered, leaving her place by Mira's side on the loveseat, afraid to be caught in the collateral damage of their bickering.

Erza gracefully accepted the offer, thanking Lisanna, and was quick to occupy the seat as soon as she handed the baby over to Mira.

The barmaid practically melted as soon as she had him fully in her arms, squirming as he rearranged his position on his newfound resting place. For all the baby rivalry between herself and Erza, there was no way she could resist falling in love with such a tiny little thing.

"Now look at this little man," she said with a huge smile on her face. "Mavis, you are right. He is tiny. I wonder if mine will be like this… there's only so much shared space for them to grow into…" She turned to face Erza, her eyes practically twinkling with curiosity. "How was it like holding him for the first time? Was it as amazing as you imagined?"

"Far more," Erza responded. She didn't go into much detail because there simply were no words in her mind that were strong enough to describe it.

Mira made a wounded sound. "God, why won't mine just come? I really want to hold them like this!" She squeezed the baby maybe a tad too tightly in her eagerness, causing him to fuss a little. "Oh, sorry, sorry… er…"

"Sieg," Erza quickly provided, already having protectively put herself to work in soothing the little boy through soft reassuring whispers and gentle caresses.

"Sieg… Sieg-chan. Sorry, but Auntie just got a little emotional about those friends of yours that are taking so long to come by… I don't suppose you have some sort of special baby call to draw them out, do you?"

"He's a baby, Mira, not an animal," Erza pointed out, giving her an unamused look that quickly turned into bewilderment as she felt a strand of her hair being tugged and found her son's hand faithfully wrapped around it. Just like that, the frown became a smile and she reached to caress the baby's cheek.

Mira beamed. "Look at you, acting like a mommy."

"I am a mommy now," Erza pointed out and the fact was just so new that the words felt foreign coming out of her mouth.

The white haired woman sighed. "I guess you really are, aren't you? Oh, alright, have it your way. I'll concede this win to you. Only this one. We both know I've already gotten you beaten on numbers, anyway."

"You know what they say... can't have both quality and quantity."

"Funny, because, by that logic, the arsenal you keep in your requip space should be the shoddiest collection of weaponry there ever was..." Mira challenged her.

Erza gasped. "Do not insult my weapons! They are flawlessly crafted with only the best materials!"

"Do not insult by babies just because you have a cute one of your own!"

"Ah, so you do admit that my baby is the cutest of them all!" Erza concluded

"I did not use the superlative form of the word! I'll admit, he is a very cute baby… but mine haven't had the chance to make an appearance and surpass him yet, so it's only a matter of time," Mira pointed out.

"Dream on."

"You dream on!"

Several yards away, as he watched the scene from the bar where he stupid with his guild mates, Jellal shook his head.

"They're back at it," he commented, concerning the two women's squabbling.

"Forget it," Laxus replied. "They'll still be bickering about who has the longest cane when they're old and gray."

"Yeah, never mind them! We're celebrating here!" Cana remarked.

"A kid and a promotion to S-class in the same year!" Macao said.

"Try 'same week'," Gray pointed out.

"Same day?" Wakaba tried.

Meredy was the one to deny it. "He's not that lucky."

"Still... we wish we could have both in a lifetime. Lucky enough, I'd say."

Jellal chuckled. "It was a couple of challenging days all around," he modestly remarked. And the test had been challenging. Very much so. However, after the oh-so-nightmarish experience with Erza's drive that he had gone through for those trials, he would have done just about anything short of dying or hurting his guild mates for them not to happen a second time.

"That's a man!" Elfman shouted.

"Shut up!" Evergreen screamed at him as she passed by with a trayful of drinks. "Make yourself useful and go help your sister in the kitchen!"

"But..."

"Now!"

She didn't need to say it again for the large man to obey.

Max snickered. "Elfman might keep saying he's a manly man, but it's clear who wears the pants in that relationship."

"You mean like that broomstick of yours does with you?" Warren replied.

"Hey!"

Sitting on a stool at the bar right by Jellal's side, the Master cleared his throat. "So, my boy, now that you've had a little time to enjoy fatherhood, how is it treating you so far?"

"Well, it's still very new. Sieg mostly sleeps, so… it still feels a little unreal… almost too amazing to be true," Jellal admitted.

Macao snorted. "It'll feel real enough when you're changing dirty diapers while completely sleep deprived and shower-less for three days."

"Just be thankful you got yourself a boy," Wakaba added. "That way, you're not outnumbered by females… and let me tell you, it's hell when they gang up on you!"

Gray snorted. "This is Erza we're talking about. She regularly beats entire armies single-handedly. You really think she needs reinforcements to get him to do whatever she wants?"

"Ah, now that you mention it, I think you may have a point there…"

"The guy was screwed from the start," Cana concluded. "Of course, now it's too late to run."

"'Cause we'll hunt you down if you try," Natsu vowed, feeling the issue hitting a little too close to home. "A kid needs his dad!"

"Yeah, we'll drag you back kicking and screaming!" Gajeel added.

Jellal shook his head. "I'm not going anywhere. You can rest assured of that." Any doubt – valid as it could be – that he might still have paled in comparison to the newfound responsibility he had found in fatherhood. That, he vowed, was not a job he was willing to screw up, even for the sake of his issues.

"Yeah, you'd better," Natsu insisted. "Even though Erza is all weird now. You know, with that whole…" he vaguely gestured towards his chest and shuddered, looking utterly disturbed.

"For god's sake, Natsu, how many times do we need to tell you that feeling babies like that is perfectly natural for you to understand?!" Lucy questioned.

"Natural, she says… you humans are so weird," Happy commented.

"We are weird?! How do you think kittens feed themselves, stupid cat?" she barked back.

"I wouldn't know. I'm an exceed, not a cat," the blue feline replied. "But I guess you being weird is good for you in a way – that way there is a point for those huge boobs of yours… you know, other than getting exposed for everyone to see every other week or so."

"That's it! You're dead!"

Confusion ensued after that. While even Lucy succumbed to the ways of her guild and chased murderously after the flying cat, who took great pleasure in remaining just out of her reach with his wings, Natsu randomly picked a fight with Gray over something trivial just to pass the time. Everyone was distracted watching, so Cana took great pleasure in pouring other people's drinks into her tankard behind their backs as the Master wept in horror in the background while his grandson described to him the pile of work that had arrived in his absence and was awaiting him upstairs.

In the meantime, Jellal just sat contently at the bar, nursing his drink while listening to Macao and Wakaba describing funny anecdotes of their children's early days… that was up until he saw Erza approaching – glaring at her errant guild mates while at the same time carefully avoiding their havoc and clutching the baby protectively to her chest. In the background, he vaguely saw Mira wobbling with difficulty towards the kitchen, likely to go and catch up with her siblings, who she'd barely had a chance to talk to yet since their return.

"Hey, are you done chatting with Mira?" he asked when she reached him. "L hope you did not part in bad terms..."

"Of course not… it's just a little healthy competition," Erza said.

'Healthy' was too generous a word for it. "I see. So, are you ready to l…?"

His sentence was interrupted by Gajeel joining in the fight between Natsu and Gray and ending up punched through a window by both mates. "Natsu! Gray!" the Master could be seen shouting in the background to the culprits. "You'll be paying for that!"

"Add my cut to my tab, Gramps!"

"Tabs are for drinks and food, not property damage!"

Erza frowned, shaking her head. "There's a newborn in the room. Would it kill them to be a little less rowdy?"

Jellal chuckled in a good-natured manner. "He seems to be taking it very well," he commented, reaching to pull the blanket down a little to get a glimpse of their son's sleeping face. "They do say babies hear things even in the womb. I guess he must have gotten used to all the noise around here before he was even born."

"Maybe," Erza offered with a sigh.

Jellal looked up. "You seem tired," he told her. She had already had plenty of chance to rest after having a baby but it never seemed like enough. He supposed the unfamiliar and exceedingly spartan surroundings of both the island and the ship might not have made her sleep as restful as they should. "Do you want to go home?"

She nodded. "Very much so. I miss our bed… and we need to get this baby actual clothes rather than a blanket." She looked down, adjusting the blanket – blankets – in question so it was properly wrapped around the snoozing little boy, and sighed. "I can't believe I didn't carry anything for him to wear in my requip space…"

"Well, you were quite sure that he wasn't going to come anytime soon, so…"

She groaned, mostly because she was embarrassed for having been so off with her predictions.

"We should probably stop for diapers on the way too," Jellal added, recalling yet another thing they hadn't prepared to. Washing the makeshift cloth diapers Porlyusica had made out of an old sheet every had been a nightmare so far…

Erza sighed. "We will be doing that a lot from now on, I imagine," she observed, looking down at her son for a moment. "Does it feel strange to you too? That we have a baby now?"

"Very much so," he admitted.

"Good strange, right?"

"Incredibly good," he assured her. "So let's take this baby home now, shall we?"

She smiled and then nodded. "Home it is."

The End