A New Life in Fairy Tail

Fairy Tail boasted four Dragon Slayers. Three of them suffered from debilitating, chronic motion sickness the moment they stepped onto anything with an engine or wheels. The fourth, Wendy, was only immune because her magic hadn't matured enough yet; it was only a matter of time before she joined the club.

Naturally, Noah had to find a solution.

While permanently curing the physiological side effect of Dragon Slayer Magic was currently beyond his capabilities, creating a temporary workaround was entirely possible. He could theoretically cast high-tier sensory-suppression enchantments directly onto the Slayers to fix their equilibrium.

However, if they were going to use the massive Grimoire Heart airship as their primary, long-distance guild transport, relying on Noah to manually cast and maintain enchantments on three different people every single time they wanted to fly was terribly inefficient.

If he couldn't permanently fix the mages, the logical solution was to fix the vehicle.

Thus, Noah had engineered a localized, autonomous enchantment matrix designed to project a specialized anti-motion-sickness field across the entire vehicle, allowing Dragon Slayers to ride comfortably without puking their guts out.

"Are you serious?! That's amazing!"

Laxus stared at the small metal boxes attached to the hovering stone slab, his eyes practically sparkling with absolute, unadulterated hope.

Just like Natsu and Gajeel, Laxus couldn't handle transportation. The moment a vehicle started moving, his advanced draconic equilibrium went haywire, inducing agonizing nausea. If a mission was relatively close, he would just walk. If it was far, he had to suffer through the torturous, bumpy train or carriage ride, usually arriving at his destination green in the face and completely exhausted.

But if this magical device actually worked... he would never have to suffer that hell again.

"The prototype isn't powerful enough to cover a massive vehicle like a train. The vehicle's total volume has to fit entirely within the device's projected field," Noah explained, seeing Laxus's excitement. "If I want to use it on the airship or a train, I'll have to significantly scale up the runic matrix and tie it into a massive power source."

"I don't care about trains! As long as it works on a standard carriage, that's enough for me!" Laxus replied eagerly, completely unbothered. He didn't care if he had to take a carriage instead of a train; anything was better than walking a hundred miles or puking in a train cabin.

"So... I just stand on it?" Laxus asked, pointing at the hovering stone slab. He was incredibly eager to get this over with so he could reap the rewards.

"Yep. Step on up. I need to monitor your equilibrium responses," Noah nodded.

He opened a digital Archive screen in the air and summoned several golden analytical arrays around his eyes, calibrating his sensors to track the magical output of the prototype.

Seeing Noah was ready, Laxus cautiously lifted his right foot and placed it onto the hovering slab. Feeling nothing out of the ordinary, he stepped up fully.

The moment his entire weight settled onto the hovering platform, Laxus's face turned a sickly shade of green. He violently slapped both hands over his mouth, his eyes bulging as severe nausea hit him like a freight train.

"Looks like the frequency needs adjusting," Noah muttered casually.

He snapped his fingers. A red rune on one of the boxes flashed, and the stone slab gently settled back onto the dirt. The moment the slab touched the earth, Laxus's equilibrium stabilized, and the nausea vanished. He let out a ragged gasp, glaring at Noah.

Noah casually flicked his wrist, and one of the metal boxes detached from the slab, floating over to him. The box popped open, revealing a complex runic core. Based on the telemetry data he had just gathered from Laxus's physical reaction, Noah rapidly typed on his Archive screen, fine-tuning the magical frequencies within the core.

A few minutes later, the box snapped shut and floated back to the slab, locking into place.

"Alright, try again," Noah ordered.

He snapped his fingers, activating the green runes. The slab lifted back into the air.

Laxus, still standing on it, immediately winced, his face scrunching up in discomfort.

"How is it?" Noah asked.

"It's... a little better than the first time..." Laxus groaned, clutching his stomach.

"Needs more tweaking."

Noah snapped his fingers, dropped the slab, popped the box open, and adjusted the runes again.

"Try again... Nope, still off. Let me adjust it."

"Again... Almost there, but not quite."

After four back-to-back cycles of lifting, puking, dropping, and adjusting, Laxus finally threw his hands up in defeat, looking incredibly pale and miserable.

"Stop! Just let me rest for a minute!" Laxus groaned, pressing his hands against his temples. "This constant on-and-off nausea is honestly worse than just being consistently sick!"

"Alright, take a breather. We're almost done anyway," Noah agreed, seeing the genuine misery on Laxus's face.

Laxus immediately sat down heavily on the stone slab, keeping his feet firmly planted on the ground to maintain his balance. He knew the device was technically working—every subsequent test had been slightly less nauseating than the last—but the rapid, whiplash transition between feeling fine and feeling like he was going to vomit was brutal.

While Laxus rested, Noah meticulously refined the final few lines of runic code.

"Alright, let's keep going," Laxus sighed a few minutes later, having finally recovered his color.

"Okay. Starting the sequence," Noah announced, sending the finalized box back to the slab and activating the lift.

The stone slab rose into the air. Laxus instinctively clamped his hands over his mouth, bracing for the inevitable wave of nausea.

But it never came.

Laxus blinked in surprise, slowly lowering his hands. He was hovering a foot off the ground, entirely disconnected from the earth... but he felt completely fine.

"Judging by your face, I'd say the baseline calibration is a success," Noah smiled.

He spent the next few minutes taking the boxes off, tweaking minor tertiary functions, and re-testing them. With each minor adjustment, Laxus's expression grew more relaxed. By the final test, he didn't look bothered in the slightest.

"I don't feel sick at all," Laxus marveled, curiously pacing back and forth across the hovering slab. He hadn't been able to move freely on a moving vehicle in years without fighting the urge to throw up. It felt miraculous.

"Alright, that confirms the baseline static stabilization. Now sit down. I need to test dynamic stabilization," Noah instructed.

Laxus immediately sat down cross-legged, looking at Noah nervously.

Noah snapped his fingers. The hovering slab suddenly jerked violently, rocking side to side like a ship on rough seas.

Laxus's hands instantly flew back to his mouth, his eyes glaring daggers at Noah.

"Vehicles don't stay perfectly still. Bumping and swaying is normal. I need to calibrate the dampeners for turbulence," Noah explained calmly, recording the data before dropping the slab back to the earth.

Laxus refused to speak to him. While he logically understood that testing turbulence was necessary to perfect the device, the nausea was incredibly unpleasant, and Noah's absolute lack of sympathy was infuriating.

Seeing Laxus glaring at him, Noah couldn't help but chuckle.

After a quick adjustment, Noah raised the slab again and began rocking it violently.

After a few more cycles of this, Laxus, looking completely green and clutching his stomach in agony, violently signaled for Noah to stop. The combination of the actual magical adjustments and the intense psychological dread of knowing the slab was going to move was making him incredibly sick.

They took another break before resuming.

Thanks to the rigorous testing, the dynamic dampeners were nearly perfected. Laxus managed to overcome his psychological dread, and the physical nausea was significantly reduced. Even when Noah rocked the slab violently, Laxus only felt mild discomfort.

Noah ran two final adjustments.

With the code optimized, Noah raised the slab one last time. He violently rocked it side to side, pitched it up and down, and finally, spun the slab in a rapid, continuous 360-degree circle.

Despite the aggressive, chaotic movement, Laxus felt absolutely fine. No nausea, no dizziness, no loss of equilibrium.

However, after spinning rapidly for nearly thirty seconds, Noah finally dropped the slab.

Laxus staggered off, violently shaking his head to clear the purely physical dizziness of spinning in circles. He glared at Noah suspiciously.

"Are you absolutely certain you were just 'testing the device'? Because I feel like you were just messing with me," Laxus accused, his eyes narrowing.

"That's just your imagination. I was running a rigorous stress test to ensure the enchantment matrix wouldn't break down under extreme, multi-axis turbulence," Noah replied with a perfectly straight, entirely professional face.

Laxus scrutinized him for a long moment, trying to find a crack in Noah's facade, but eventually gave up.

Pushing the suspicion aside, Laxus looked back at the metal boxes with sheer excitement. "So, it's finished? With this thing, I can actually ride a carriage normally?!"

He had hated his motion sickness with a burning passion. Walking everywhere was tedious, and taking trains was literal torture. While his reliance on walking had forced him to perfect his 'Lightning Body' movement technique to travel quickly, he would much rather just sit comfortably in a carriage like a normal person.

"Yeah. The underlying matrix is finalized. Now I just need to scale the output and integrate it into the airship's central power grid," Noah nodded, rapidly typing his final observations into his Archive screen.

"Make a smaller one for me," Laxus demanded instantly, his eyes locked onto Noah. "I want a portable version so I can use it on carriages and trains."

"No problem. I just need to optimize the power consumption for a portable Lacrima battery, and I can easily build you a personal unit," Noah agreed. The hard part—cracking the Draconic equilibrium frequency—was already done. Slapping the finalized code onto a portable device was trivial.

"Perfect. The second you finish the portable version, I want it," Laxus declared excitedly.

"Don't worry, you'll be the first to get one," Noah smiled.

Laxus grinned, happily pacing back and forth across the hovering slab again, eager to enjoy the incredibly rare sensation of a smooth, nausea-free ride while he still could. Since it was just him and Noah on the island, he didn't have to worry about looking uncool.

Noah smiled softly, turning back to his digital notes.

He hadn't just been testing the device to cure Laxus's motion sickness. He had been meticulously analyzing the physiological and magical reactions within Laxus's body during the motion sickness.

Noah had never abandoned his goal of permanently curing the Dragon Slayers' equilibrium flaw. Motion sickness was a massive, critical vulnerability. If an enemy figured it out, they could simply drag a Slayer onto a moving platform and instantly paralyze them. In a life-or-death battle, that weakness was fatal.

Furthermore, curing the weakness provided Noah with profound insights into the fundamental biological nature of Dragon Slayers. Understanding how Dragon Slayer Magic altered human physiology was crucial for his ultimate goal: finding a way to kill Acnologia.

Acnologia was, at his core, a Dragon Slayer. Even if he had fully mutated into the Dragon King, the underlying biological principles still applied. In fact, in the original timeline, Acnologia still suffered from the exact same motion sickness flaw.

This meant that despite his apocalyptic power and magic immunity, Acnologia still retained fundamental Dragon Slayer traits. By studying Laxus, Natsu, and Gajeel, Noah was actively studying Acnologia's biology.

After pacing on the slab for a few minutes, the novelty finally wore off. Laxus hopped down and walked over to Noah.

"Do you need me for anything else?" Laxus asked.

"No, we're done here. I'll need some time to build the portable device," Noah replied, shaking his head.

"No rush. Just hand it over when it's done. You can send me back now," Laxus said, his tone much calmer. He knew Noah was likely going to stay on Tenrou Island to continue his research, so he didn't expect Noah to return with him.

"Alright. Sending you back," Noah agreed. He closed his Archive screens and raised his hand, teleporting them both back to the Fairy Tail guildhall.

The moment they arrived, Laxus walked back over to the bar, tapping Mirajane out and resuming his administrative duties.

Noah, meanwhile, walked across the hall and spotted Natsu stuffing his face at a table.

"Hey, Natsu. Come with me. I need you to test something," Noah called out.

"Huh? Test what?" Natsu asked, standing up with his mouth full of meat.

"You'll see when we get there. Oh, Gajeel, you come too," Noah yelled, spotting the Iron Dragon Slayer sitting nearby.

"Me too? Why does the salamander get to go?" Gajeel grumbled, standing up slowly.

"Why is this guy coming?" Natsu glared at Gajeel.

"What was that, flame-brain?!" Gajeel immediately snapped, getting in Natsu's face.

"You wanna go, iron-head?!" Natsu roared, pressing his forehead against Gajeel's.

"Alright, both of you, come with me. You can beat each other up when we get there," Noah sighed, raising his hand. In a flash of light, the three of them vanished.

Behind the bar, Laxus watched the trio disappear. His enhanced hearing had easily picked up the conversation.

A look of profound, bitter realization slowly washed over Laxus's face.

Noah was obviously taking them back to Tenrou Island to test the anti-motion-sickness device.

But... if Noah needed to test the device on all three Dragon Slayers, why had he specifically singled Laxus out to go first, completely alone?

The first test subject always suffered the worst. They were the ones who had to endure the brutal, unrefined early stages of the prototype, constantly subjected to whiplash and violent nausea until the code was perfected.

Because Laxus had already endured the agonizing trial-and-error phase, the device was now practically flawless. Natsu and Gajeel were just going to step onto the final product and enjoy a perfectly smooth ride. They wouldn't have to suffer even a fraction of the agony Laxus had just endured.

Laxus ground his teeth, his eye twitching violently. Noah had absolutely singled him out on purpose just to torture him. He could have easily brought all three of them at once and rotated them through the tests, spreading the misery evenly. But no, Noah wanted Laxus to suffer alone.

That bastard... Laxus grumbled internally.

But then he remembered that Noah had promised to build him the very first portable version of the device as compensation.

Whatever. I'll consider it payment for the portable unit, Laxus sighed, comforting himself.

A short while later, Natsu, Gajeel, and Noah materialized back in the guildhall.

~~~

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