It all started with a forgotten sack of Forbidden Cookies.
Porlyusica went to the trouble of delivering it to Fairy Tail, only to find that her favourite kid wasn't there. He was out for a mission and it was going to take a while.
Laxus had made it home early, and heck, he was about to run the whole way across Magnolia to Shirotsume if it meant Eir got the Forbidden Cookies and scary demon hag would get out of the guild. But no, Master said no.
Laxus was allowed on jobs anywhere up and down the railway, but Shirotsume was a far distance for him to go without a guide.
Then Cana came back, Eir wasn't back yet, and then she saw the Porlyusica and started crying.
Long story short, no one in the guild knew what to do with a crying girl, Porlyusica was very, very annoyed, and Eir was nowhere to be seen.
Macao and Wakaba had to take a moment to really understand how important Eir was to the guild. Without him around, it's just madness.
-
"You want me to become a what?"
"An ambassador."
"And uh, what does that mean?"
"It means we'll occasionally be lending you out to other guilds to promote teamwork and good relations between guilds in Fiore."
Eir needed a moment.
First he gets fussed over a fever of all things, then he gets banned from work for two days, and now he hears he's being passed around like the latest trend among guilds?
Instead, he just sighed and asked, "why?"
"You're asking me," Makarov groaned, looking like Eir was the cause of all this-- he wasn't, he swore.
Some shitty hand at fate must have had to do with this. What other situation would he ever chance upon members of two guilds in a single day because of a series of bad luck?
"Oh," Eir realized, a hand at his face, "the fortune."
The Wheel of Fortune-- the card that divined a pivot on the roads of fate. Leave it to Cana to really, terribly, warn Eir in advance about this. Heck, how accurate are her fortunes? She should start charging for those.
Makarov sighed at that. "It's a good opportunity. Even now, we only have the council meetings to really bond the guilds together, and that doesn't do much good because the council works on orders and rules. If you act as an ambassador, we promote more interaction without needing to be facing a crisis of some sort."
Eir chewed on his inner lip. It sounded like a pain in the ass.
"So basically I have to go buddy buddy with the other guilds every once in a while?" he asked.
"Well," Makarov crossed his arms, "you could go over and take care of their kids."
"So I'm just a babysitter?!"
-
Laxus was leaning over his shoulder and Cana's head was in his lap. Eir slumped against the tree, unable to move. It'd be a crime to wake them up.
He tugged his coat over Cana's shoulders and set a hand in her hair, running a finger through deep brown locks. She murmured something sleepily and curled in tighter.
Laxus was on his other side, half his fingers curled into Eir's, his body taking up the whole of the older boy's arm as if he was claiming possession of it. Eir gave his hand a squeeze and Laxus's fingers closed over in instinct.
This is bad. He's spoiling them. They're acting like babies.
But this was fine, he guessed. Peace, quiet, and full of warmth. It was something there wasn't much of in his past life, when he and his siblings ran themselves ragged just trying to afford a life. There were donations, there were kind neighbours, but it was never quite enough for a restful sleep.
Maybe this was a blessing, this life. A life of peace, of love, and of family.
And just maybe, he's allowed to enjoy this.
A few years down the road, Eir would find this scene as a picture in Reedus' books. All three sleeping soundly, a picturesque image. He would then yell really hard at Reedus about it, chasing him across the guild with his face flushed bright red.
A few days after that, Eir would hang it up in his room.
-
"You're quite proficient with a staff."
"Yeah. I'm better with a staff than a sword."
Eir spun the wooden pole around his arm, from his front, to his left, around his back and then swung it to the front. Then he straightened, plucking it to the left and planting it on the ground upright.
"Had training for it?"
"Something like that."
In a world of mages, weapon users were quite rare. After all, why use a weapon if you can just blow the useless lump of steel away or defend without one?
In his past life, Eir joined clubs.
He never really wanted to, but there was always a friend that wanted him to try things out. The Wushu club was versatile. He only learned part of the spear's routines there, but the swords practiced beside them, so he knew those movements too.
He hadn't learned enough to be useful in a proper battle, though. He dropped out of the club after a year to work, and then quit school entirely a few months after that. However, paired with wind magic, there really wasn't much he needed to polish.
"Ready?" the Lamia Scale mage before him asked.
"Anytime," Eir said, poised with his staff before him.
A moment. Twice.
The man tensed his fingers, and swung his arm toward the sea. A magic circle glowed on the surface of the water. With effort he raised it, bringing with him a burst of aquatic magic.
"Water Bullet!" he yelled. Posing his other arm forward, the water spout sharpened-- then shot straight at the boy.
Eir didn't faze. Knocking the pole against the ground and hooking it over his foot, he kicked it swirling into the air, forming a spinning shield before him. He raised a hand in its direction, a silver magic circle sprouting from his hand-- "Enchant Wind: Rotor!"
The wind spiralled across the harbor, and Eir's clothes rattled strong against the gust. The water bullets were blown right out into particles, bits splashing harmlessly on Eir's face and the magic splendidly repelled.
His opponent was blown right off his feet and, with a shriek of sorts, soared off the ground for a horrifying two seconds before falling flat on his face.
Snatching the staff back out of the air, Eir spun it twice before setting it across his opponent's back, so he wouldn't be able to get up easily. Not that the man seemed to want to.
"I'm gonna cry!" said man just wailed, plucking his head off the ground to show the devastating red mark on his forehead, "go easy on me, would you?"
This week with Lamia Scale, they were having a sparring session with Eir. It was a free-for-all tournament, first to hit the ground loses, all in good fun.
The crowd laughed at them.
"If I wasn't going easy on you, I would have used my sword," Eir told him.
"I thought you said you were better with the staff?" he said, confused.
"A staff is used for self-defense. A sword is used for offense. Battle styles with these weapons differ-- of course one's gonna hit harder." Eir straightened, then turned back toward the crowd, "I'm tired. Someone take my place. I'm gonna sleep."
"Out of nowhere?!"
"That's fine, you had like, three wins in a row!"
"Yuka, want to go next?"
Eir found himself a seat beside Jura on a bench, and right away someone handed him a cold drink. Breathing out, exhausted, he breathed out in relief.
"How are you liking Lamia Scale?" Jura asked him.
Eir frowned. "You guys are tenacious," he hissed, "Fairy Tail has stubborn types that are strong individually or in teams-- but here, everyone makes up for what they don't have with wits and new tactics. Everyone learns from everyone's fights. I'm running out of skills to hide because all of you make me use something new each turn."
Jura hummed at that. "As expected, you're sharp."
"Oh, so it is on purpose?" Eir raised a brow. "Underhanded, all of you. Ganging up on me like this, huh?"
Jura laughed.
"It's standard Lamia Scale strategy! Wear him down from different angles each time-- until he's out of options and his heel is in plain sight," Jura explained, curling his fist in a sign of entrapment, "like a Lamia, we corner a prey, draw them in-- and strike them from the back once they've exposed all their weaknesses to us."
Eir shivered at the gruesome imagery.
"You guys are scary."
"Thank you."
-
Lamia Scale tended to hold a competition of some sort-- sparring sessions, rock-paper-scissors, treasure hunts, or arm wrestling competitions. They were plenty eager to be competitive, and since they have Eir for the night, they often have pillow fights or sauna endurance contests too.
In a very strange contrast, Blue Pegasus is very... modest.
"Hold that pose, darling. No, lift your chin a little, yes, that's it."
A hand brushing back his bangs, Eir drifted his gaze a little to the side. A camera flash. And another, from a different angle.
And the next pose. Folding his arms, he lowered his face into his scarf, letting his line of sight fall downwards, right into the camera.
He waited for Ichiya to finally say "aaand CUT!" before he loosened his limbs, fell to the ground, and spent a devastating moment grasping at what's left of his dignity.
"This will be a bestselling issue of the Vandalay fashion magazine. I just know it," the manager glamoured at the photos, and Ichiya was sobbing with joy in the corner. "That's it! Let's have him take the cover with Karen! The crowd will go nuts. Issues would fly off the shelves!"
Eir wasn't anything special back in his past life, so he had no experience with this modelling thing- but apparently, they just wanted his moody expression? They were fine with a resting bitch face? He didn't understand.
In his past life, his younger sister... he had a lot of them, but the twins in particular were a pair of very adorable girls. They were scouted one day and instantly hit the charts. A big part of their livelihoods went to the profits those two could make without revealing their real names.
Eir was a little ashamed that he had to resort to those girls' modelling practice sessions as reference for this situation. He was a man, dammit! More like, why is he even doing this?
"Are you listening, Eir? Sorcerer would be raving for you!"
Blue Pegasus had so far asked him to model for their magazines, to help out at the cafe bar that was their guild hall (this isn't a host club? Are you sure, Master Bob? I feel like I'm in a host club with all the flirting going on here--) and mostly to be the girls' plaything.
If Lamia Scale appreciated Eir's battle prowess, Blue Pegasus adored Eir's looks and everything else except fighting.
Really went to show how diverse these guilds were... and as the ambassador, Eir spent every alternate weekend with one of these guilds, spending every other day back home in Fairy Tail.
It was a strange turn of events, but it wasn't a bad one, in the long term.