We were a little past eighteen when Erza and I were holed up in the main hall of the secret lab. Well, I was holed up. I stood at the main screen doing my umpteenth pass through the calculations, while my little sister sat in a chair nearby reading a book.
"All good. Let's begin," I said, walking over to the massive metal chamber and stepping inside. "Wish me luck."
The girl looked up from her book, watched me go, and gave a firm nod.
"I'll make sure no one disturbs us. And... are you sure this is safe?"
"Ninety-nine point something percent." I glanced down at the chamber floor, floating just above it. The futuristic contraption had my body suspended in midair, courtesy of a Telekinesis lacrima of my own design. "You made me run five extra safety checks. This is no more dangerous than a standard S-Class mission."
"S-Class missions can be dangerous," she sighed. "Though usually not for us. Fine, I get it. Stop stalling."
"Faster in, faster out." With those words, my body lit up in a flash of light. At that exact moment, the transparent chamber doors slid shut.
Same place and time. Erza Scarlet.
When her brother launched the process he called "Demonic Dragonification," the red-haired girl simply turned her head away. The chamber filled with needles of varying lengths and thicknesses closing in from all sides, but she didn't watch what happened inside. It wasn't because the sight scared her, but out of plain embarrassment. Thanks to his Requip Magic, the guy was currently as naked as the day he was born.
Instead, Erza let her gaze wander.
In the corners of the room stood massive blocks of red lacrima that she, the more magically powerful of the Scarlet twins, had created. The memory surfaced immediately: Elian thanking her with genuine enthusiasm, saying she'd saved him roughly a year and a half of work. As he'd explained, in that occasionally insufferable way of his, their magical energies were quite similar, so hers worked just as well for his purposes.
Erza snorted, genuinely unsure how to feel about contributing to her brother's project as little more than a power generator. On one hand, she had helped someone she loved. On the other, she'd done essentially the same thing prisoners of the Magic Council did: handed over her crystallized energy. Except this wasn't for a tactical weapon like Etherion, the kind liable to wipe out everything alive in a wide radius, but for the transformation of one specific mage into a stronger version of himself. She leaned toward taking it as a positive.
Around her, magic runes shimmered and coiled across the floor like living things. Like a nest of constrictors, they periodically wrapped around the chamber, functioning as living artifacts that amplified the impact of the mutagens flooding every system of his body. Several holographic screens mounted on metal frames tracked the various processes, while the lacrima in the corners slowly began to melt away, feeding the flow of energy.
But instead of marveling at the sheer technological sophistication, the kind you'd almost never see anywhere in this world, Erza found herself thinking about power.
She was extraordinarily strong, magically speaking. She'd been told so more than once, and she confirmed it herself every time she watched her brother stumble out of a fight, completely drained, while she still felt like she was just warming up. And yet, even so, this brother of hers had always been a phenomenon unto himself, both to her and to everyone else.
It was only in the last two years that she'd started consistently winning their sparring matches, once the gap in their raw magical output had grown to something like twenty times over. She sometimes wondered whether that was just the universe balancing the scales, where reaching for something greater always meant lacking something else. Like her: no scientific aptitude to speak of. Or like Elian: no magical horsepower. And what would have happened, say, if her brother had been born with potential like hers? A Wizard Saint? Maybe by now there'd be a fifth God of Ishgar. It was the kind of question she'd never get an answer to, but could spend a long time dwelling on. Like right now, for instance.
Those thoughts were cut short like a cold splash of water when the bright lab plunged into blinking red light and a shrieking alarm hit her ears. Then a synthesized voice rang out.
"Beep! Absorption limits for subject 'Future Demon-Dragon-Destroyer' have been reached! Beep! Initiating emergency shutdown sequence! Beep!"
Erza was half a second from panicking, and then her heart nearly leapt out of her chest when a hand, translucent and threaded through with gray, settled onto her shoulder.
"Don't panic," a copy of Elian said. "I did warn you this could happen..."
"Wh, what?!" Erza didn't immediately follow. But then the pieces clicked into place, and panic hit her even harder the moment her brain reached its logical conclusion. "Wait, Lian! Drop the mental projection. If your core is overloaded and you're actually fine, you don't need to calm me down. That spell could make things worse!"
"You still lose it when it comes to people you care about." A smile crossed his face as he gently cupped her cheek. "This projection is made from my soul. Don't worry. And yes, the transformation is going to take a while, just like we planned."
With that explanation, Erza began to settle down, reassured that things were, apparently, fine. She'd never quite managed to understand what Elian meant when he talked about his soul. All she knew was that it granted him certain abilities that weren't exactly obvious. But it had been part of him since childhood, so for her, it had long since stopped being anything but normal.
Elian's projection drifted toward his physical body. Through the runes flickering across the chamber walls, the figure inside looked more like a porcupine than a person.
"Two days, at a steady pace," he said. "That way your work storing up the energy won't go to waste, and this body will actually be able to function properly."
"We'll wait as long as it takes."
"Yeah. Thanks for that. And, did you stock up?"
In answer, Erza gave a solemn nod. Then, with a snap of her fingers, a pile of fiction novels, two-player board games, and snacks materialized on the floor around her. Unfortunately, Elian's soul projection, at least at his current level of power, had no use for food and couldn't taste it in any way a human would recognize. But everything else promised that at the very least, the two of them wouldn't be bored.
Elian Scarlet's POV
My body enhancement project, the thing that had made me great in my previous world, part of which I'd managed to carry over into this one, was complete. Well, the first phase, anyway. For two days, my body and its genes underwent a transformation built on a template far more refined than anything purely human. Every biological system working in concert: integumentary, skeletal, muscular, nervous, cardiovascular, lymphatic, respiratory, digestive. In short, everything the body contains was thoroughly reinforced, restructured, and optimized. I could describe what was done and why from now until whatever passes for the Second Coming in this world, but there's no point. The body took a step forward. Not a massive one, but a step.
The short version, keeping it simple: with my own reasonably capable hands, I took the Dragon Seed mutagen from Natsu as a reference, the most detailed instruction manual I could find for swapping out human genes for something else, along with a template for what those "something else" genes looked like. I copied that template clean, then overhauled it for my own body and magical affinity, shifting the elemental alignment from Fire to Spatial. I also engineered antibodies for the mutagen so that it wouldn't, first, try to turn me all the way into a dragon, and second, drain more magic than I could give in the process and simply kill me. In other words, the antibodies served as a transformation governor.
When my body finished transforming, the process moved into its final phase: the artificial crystallization of a Spatial Dragon Lacrima within me.
I never did find a Space Dragon in the vicinity, or any other kind, for that matter, so the lacrima probably came out weaker in places than one naturally bestowed by an ancient dragon of the right element. But honestly? Not bad at all. And while it lacked the internal versatility of the real thing, the quality was still solid. Besides, it didn't really matter. Dragon Slayers have that wonderful property where they can consume even magic that wasn't originally built into them and absorb it. Dangerous as that is. Meaning, if I ate a Space Dragon, I could theoretically deepen my attunement to Space. But right. No Space Dragons in my social circle. So the affinity code was built solely from the Spatial properties I already knew.
As for the danger: throughout the entire transformation, my body, and especially my magical core, was constantly processing Erza's ethernano and converting it into my own, then compressing it and shaping the lacrima directly around itself. That wasn't arbitrary. First, my new body consumed significantly more magic just to operate, and would need a reinforced source to sustain itself without artificial support afterward. Second, the magic the mutagen was integrating into me existed at a higher quality tier. At my deliberate direction, the core burned through its internal potential and processed all that energy in order to ultimately become something fundamentally new, and of a higher quality, too. In essence, I dissolved my old magical core into a newly created artificial one, which had become an indispensable organ in its own right: a Dragon Lacrima with matching energy capacity. Thankfully, Laxus's lacrima served as a useful reference point for that part of the process. The reason I did it this way was that the old core simply couldn't have sustained the quality of the new energy. Even without an increase in raw volume, the "pressure" rose, and containing that required a sturdier vessel.
What brought the transformation's results meaningfully closer to those of a proper Dragon Slayer, far closer than they'd otherwise have been, were the "demonic" genes of Mirajane. Dragon Slayers are called what they are because their magic literally devours dragon ethernano on contact and disrupts it wholesale. Mirajane can do something roughly analogous with demons. My project wasn't named "Demon-Dragon-Destroyer" just so critical-situation alerts wouldn't sound so alarming. It was also because, like the The Demon herself, I'd developed the ability not just to eat dragons and grow stronger from it, which is the Dragon Slayer standard, but also to go with straight absorption and containment, the way Mirajane does with demons. Whether that's useful in a world without dragons is, admittedly, an interesting question. But I figured, if an interesting sample fell into my hands, why not fold it in? Especially if it didn't add much to the transformation's load. A few extra weeks of calculations here and there isn't exactly a downside when the subject is this entertaining.
Of course, it didn't all come out exactly the way I'd dreamed in my wildest ambitions. My Dragon Slayer properties were built strictly around my Spatial affinity and the territory adjacent to it, not across a hundred and fifty elements at once so I could instantly become the legendary master of every discipline and style of beating people up. The limited transformation, as it stood, had already pushed my core to the brink of nonexistence. Building a more versatile Dragon Lacrima would simply have exhausted the magical organ before its replacement could finish forming. Getting my body accustomed to the new energy, so it doesn't tear itself apart during future growth and actually listens to me, is going to take considerable time. It will probably be at least two more years before I get another shot at artificially augmenting myself in any significant way. But that's fine. Because this new core gave me something close to unlimited developmental potential all on its own. From here, building up my magical muscle naturally, at a steady if gradual pace, is something I can start doing within the coming months.
Right now, my magic reserves sit at roughly thirty percent of Natsu's, which, honestly, isn't bad at all. Even accounting for my mediocre starting potential, my core before the transformation, through my own efforts, already held as much as the two stowaways combined. And those two were experienced mages, not the strongest around, but nowhere near the bottom either. As of now, factoring in quality, my effective output is roughly two and a half times what it was before. That puts me at about seventeen times less than Erza's current output, which is still nothing to scoff at. And what matters just as much: with my current potential and the natural growth that comes from training a Spatial Lacrima, the gap between us won't just stop widening in her favor. It'll start closing. My core, in plain terms, will begin catching up to Erza's.
There was plenty to think about and reassess during the transformation. I kept my imprisoned mind from going stir-crazy by using the projection. But eventually, it was time to open my eyes.
The small and medium needles began withdrawing from my body, leaving me feeling like Captain America fresh out of the ice. Last to emerge, from somewhere near my heart, was one particularly long, slender needle that had spent the whole time lodged in my magical core.
My consciousness basked in the pleasant warmth of far stronger energy flowing through me.
Both eyes, feeling completely brand-new, blazed with ethernano as I spread my arms wide with a grin.
"Open sesame." With that, the chamber doors parted. I stepped out directly onto the air, like that was the obvious way to do it, and a moment later touched down on the floor. "So? What do you think of me in all my glory?"
Under Erza's sideways glance, I struck a power pose.
"Put some pants on at least, you exhibitionist," she said, hiding her embarrassment and making a theatrical show of looking away.
I Requipped into a casual home outfit, a shirt and fitted pants. Despite the scale of the internal changes, outwardly there wasn't all that much to show for it. My facial features had evened out, my muscles were more symmetrical, my skin was clearer, and my eyes were sharper. But in my humble opinion, I had been devastatingly handsome before, and I remained devastatingly handsome after.
"You should start accumulating lacrima for yourself now," I said, steering the conversation.
"But that'll take a year and a half at least, if not two! And for your information, draining my magic into you every single day for three weeks was incredibly tedious."
It was logical, of course. Her more powerful core would require proportionally more energy for its own "evolution." And, unfortunately, we didn't have a third sibling who surpassed Erza magically by a factor of tens, so yes, she was going to have to put in the work.
"Maybe... it's not necessary? I'm already strong," my little sister whined, sounding entirely like a child.
"Of course it's necessary! This transformation doesn't just make you stronger. It gives you biological immortality, actual regeneration, and an absurdly enormous magical potential. Erza, most mages would spit blood if they heard what you're turning down. I am strongly, strongly urging you to make the effort."
"Mmm..."
I know Erza is fully capable of being a mature, responsible woman. But when it's just the two of us, why shouldn't she let her guard down and get away with a little childishness?
And the results of the transformation were, in reality, enormous. Sure, Dragon Slayers at a certain level of development effectively had biological immortality already, and in isolated cases, that kind of thing wasn't unheard of in this world. But it was still something only a handful of people ever achieved. An exception to the rule.
"Think of it like a knightly trial. A test of willpower, character-building, all that."
"Fine," came the sigh. It was obvious her "resistance" to my instructions was purely for atmosphere.
With that, we returned to our manor in Magnolia. We conscripted the cooks and proceeded to eat an obscene amount of sweets to celebrate the completion of my power-up milestone. Only later, toward evening, did we drift off to do our own things. But some evenings refuse to stay as quiet as planned. I hadn't even had time to settle in with a new magical grimoire from Era before my instincts picked up on something powerful approaching the house.
Even through all the soundproofing, my hearing caught the sound of someone pounding on the front door with real intent. Moments later, my communication lacrima activated, showing me the worried face of the manor's head of security.
"Sir, there's—"
"It's fine, Isaac. I'll handle it."
"Understood!" He gave a quick nod, and I caught sight of him nervously biting into an apple to manage his stress before the connection cut out.
Without wasting any time, I stored the book away via Requip and Teleported to the main entrance hall. I willed the locks to turn in unison, and the door swung open. A white-haired girl came rushing inside.
"Elian! I'm finally ready! And... what happened to you?" She stopped in front of me and started looking me over carefully. "Did you actually pull off that project?! Congratulations... But now you're stronger."
She ended on a note somewhere between disappointed and pleased, fixing me with an expectant look. Our agreement with Mira about her resistance to dark magic was still in effect. She'd been waiting for me to use it so she could try to hold her ground. This wasn't our first "exam" like this, but it had been three months since the last one, and in that time she was supposed to have made some progress. Given my power-up, though, most of that progress had probably just been rendered irrelevant. That was why she was upset.
Not making her wait, I raised a hand toward her and released my Spatial magic. The girl tensed immediately as I pushed harder. The space around Mirajane began to blur and warp under my magic, but she kept resisting. In an instant she reached for her demonic power and shifted into her The Demon form. Her resistance went up substantially, but I matched it and pushed further, and unlike previous times, it cost me almost no real effort.
Up until now she'd been holding her own against the other dark arts I knew. But forced Teleportation, as part of my Spatial Magic, was my strongest suit, and if she could hold out against that, she'd be able to hold out against any of the other high-tier dark arts as well.
"Alright. I'll stop playing around."
With that, my core surged to its peak in an instant, and Mirajane was teleported behind me. A disappointed exhale came from her a moment later, as she realized, same as always, that she hadn't won the bet. But then a painful cough ripped out of me.
"Kgh!" I grabbed my chest.
"Elian?! What's wrong?!" She was at my side immediately.
"Oh, for the love of..." I straightened up, my expression twisting. "Seems like I shouldn't have pushed the core that hard. Even if it feels fine."
I turned to face Mirajane, who had moved to stand beside me.
If I collapse right now, Mira's going to think she hurt me with her magic and start blaming herself. I mean, realistically it probably won't be serious, especially since she's training partly for Lisanna's sake. But she'll absolutely spiral into the worst-case scenarios.
"Don't worry, nothing irreversible happened," I said. "It's from the transformation, not from you. More than that, consider yourself passed."
I changed the subject by sheer force of will, manufactured a natural-looking smile, and adopted the overall air of someone who was perfectly fine.
"What?! I passed?!"
"Yep. After my project, my magic leveled up in terms of quality. The resistance I felt just now, that's already enough to call you a strong mage."
"So we're going on a date?!" She grabbed my hand immediately and pressed it between hers. "Tomorrow morning..."
"A date?" a neutral voice asked from behind us. It was Erza, frozen on the staircase. "Oh, interesting."
Her gaze landed on the two of us. Mirajane, more excited than ever, cheerfully explained that a long time ago, over a year back, I had promised to go on a date with her if Mira ever became a genuinely strong mage.
"Is that right..." Erza began, working very hard to look like everything was fine, and not quite succeeding, not by my measure anyway. "Mirajane, I remember how much you genuinely care... Our goal of bringing Lisanna back... You know, sometimes it seems like we understand each other. I think you two will make a good match. You have my blessing."
Mirajane stood there a moment, processing that. Then her expression shifted into indignation.
"Hey! What 'blessing'?!" Mirajane snapped. "Elian is not your little brother, and it's not your place to decide who he dates." To that, Erza offered only a thin smile, while Mirajane turned back to me. "Have a plan ready for tomorrow. I need to go get ready, too. Bye-bye!"
And with a little wave, from a demonic hand, given her current form, Mirajane sprouted demonic wings and flew off.
"Erza..." I said.
"Everything's fine, Lian. You deserve a personal life..."
I went still. Something tightened in my chest.
I watched in silence as Erza walked away, heading back up the stairs.
A date with Mirajane. Hah. Had it been worth giving this girl a chance rather than turning her down from the start? Of course it had. She's one of the most beautiful people I know, inside and out, and on top of that she's strong, she can carry responsibility, and she genuinely appeals to me for all those reasons and more. Her sincerity. Her capacity for real kindness. Things like that.
Did I know this might cause a fracture in things with Erza, who matters even more to me? Yes. Was it worth it? Given that the fracture was probably fixable, most likely yes. Did I know how to fix it? More or less.
I gave my head a small shake and started toward the staircase Erza had just climbed.
I'm not the type to stand around brooding alone. Especially not when someone I love is sitting somewhere feeling sad too.
"Hey. Can we talk?" I asked on an exhale. Erza flinched.
She was sitting on a couch in one of the side rooms. In her hands was a plushie. A tiny version of me. She was so absorbed in hugging it, with such a quietly sad, faraway look on her face, that she hadn't heard my footsteps at all.
The toy disappeared into Requip. The girl turned toward me, caught off guard.
"Ahem." A soft smile found my lips as I made a point of pretending I hadn't seen anything.
"About what?" she played dumb, badly.
"I'll take that as a yes." I vaulted over the back of the couch and sat down beside her. "You don't need to put on an act for my sake. Or for Mira's."
"I'm not acting."
"You are."
"...What is it you want to say?" Her voice was unsteady now, and it was clear she was close to tears.
"That I'm not going anywhere." I said those few words with every bit of warmth I had. Then, meeting no resistance, I put an arm around her.
The subject we'd just cracked open was a sharp one for both of us. So, to take the edge off, I decided to fight fire with fire: knock one uncomfortable topic sideways with an even more uncomfortable one.
"You know, no matter how many warm things I say to you, I always feel like I could say more. But to get to the next part, I need to take a small detour. I want to talk about something called incest." Erza's gaze, which had gone carefully still, froze completely as she tried to figure out where I was going with this. "Immediate family, like parents and children, or siblings, have a thirty to fifty percent chance of producing offspring with severe congenital defects, profound intellectual disability, or children who just die in early infancy. That's a horrifying thing to risk doing to your own kid."
The tactic of hitting someone with something so startling it resets their brain worked perfectly. Erza was, without question, floored by this narrative turn and had already forgotten what she'd been sad about.
"But for us mages, things work very differently. Ethernano fundamentally rewrites our genetics, and every bit of power we gain changes them further. Strong S-Class mages lose the biological basis for incest entirely."
Her eyes going wide, Erza began turning red at an accelerating rate, finally understanding where I was headed, and clearly spinning out a whole lot of thoughts I wasn't saying aloud.
"Erza, biologically, we stopped being related a long time ago. But to me, you are closer, more precious, and more loved than anyone else in the world." I leaned in toward her face, which had gone another shade redder. "Could I ever leave you behind? That's absurd. Especially when there's the option of being together... Forever?"
Silence hung between us for about five seconds. She could only blink, unable to find a single word.
"Ha. You know, judging by that look, you might need the reminder that you are an experienced, powerful mage," I said, watching Erza completely lose her footing while making sure the whole thing still felt close and safe. "You're perfectly capable of making serious decisions. And of course," I added, "you have time to think it over."
After one more pause, two seconds this time, she gave me a grateful nod.
"Lian... You're proposing something ridiculous."
"A logical kind of ridiculous."
"People will judge us if we have that kind of relationship," she explained, like I was missing something obvious, her blush already coming back. But I was glad she'd chosen to keep talking rather than shut the conversation down completely.
"Society does that because of the specific problems incest causes. And I already explained why that's not a problem in our case. Besides, there's nobody in our circle stubborn or obnoxious enough to refuse to accept it. As for whispering crowds... do we really care?"
That rhetorical question got no answer.
"We've always been together... I got hit with this terror when I realized that might not be the case anymore," she told me honestly.
"But we're adults, and it's only up to us how we live," I said, my hand finding its way into Erza's hair on its own. "Either way, we can choose to stay together, just like always. But what about more than that?"
The same offer, repeated. Only now, with the girl in a more coherent state, she was able to give a more coherent answer.