Hey guys, Nightlingbolt here. Welcome to my set of Stinerva Week prompts.

I'd like to think I was one of the first Stinerva shippers, or at least one of the first to guess that Minerva's childhood... kinda sucked. I mean, she was glad Sting blasted Jiemma, so I imagined there was at least some reason she hated him. Of course, a normal person probably would've guessed she wanted control of Sabertooth, but hey.

I probably didn't do that great a job of encompassing the whole "First Date" prompt thing stuff whatever, but the idea was that Sting was kinda panicking about his impending date with Minerva, so...

I like how I just thought of this the day after the fact. Sounds just like me. Just read the damn story.

I don't own Fairy Tail or its characters, Hiro Mashima does.

Sting was nervous.

No, scratch that. He was frickin' terrified.

He had been invited, as Sabertooth's Master, to Blue Pegasus's Blue Harvest Ball, along with four members of his choice. Rogue, Orga, Rufus, and Lector had been given the nod, but that was mostly to accommodate Yukino and Minerva as two plus-ones. Rufus was bringing his new boyfriend, Orga had asked a girl from town, Rogue and Yukino were going together, and Lector was taking Frosch as friends to ensure their whole circle of friends would make it.

Which left Sting with the Lady of Sabertooth herself, Minerva Orlando.

Minerva was Sting's date by default – there was no way he'd get the balls to ask her otherwise. While most of the Strongest Five hadn't shown much worry for Minerva after their loss to Fairy Tail, Sting was worried beyond belief. Though objectively he knew why she disappeared, he couldn't stop himself from thinking he had driven his Lady away with his refusal to attack the weakened Fairy Tail members. He and the others had been more or less forced to digest their loss in order to overcome the Dragon invasion, and while Rogue had told him she needed to come to terms with the defeat her own way, he'd had a feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach that he told himself would go away. After all, she was Sabertooth's strongest mage. She could handle herself.

But when Erza's letter came, the dread turned into full-blown panic. She had joined Succubus Eye, a dark guild from which Jiemma had recruited several members, who, when prompted, told him that Jiemma controlled the guild through a proxy Master, and had most likely assumed full leadership, but more alarmingly, was a subordinate guild to Tartarus.

Fearing the worst, he had gathered the rest of Team Sabertooth for a raid on Succubus Eye, only to discover many paper dolls, and clothes that had Minerva's scent on them. For a while, they had no leads on the dark guild, at least not until hearing that Laxus had absorbed an attack meant to kill a whole town.

Playing on Fairy Tail's desire for revenge, Sabertooth traveled to Magnolia, hoping they would lead them to their Lady. Eventually, they saw Fairy Tail's Exceeds flying somewhere with cards in their paws, which Rufus confirmed as the Fairy Tail Guild.

Declaring that Fairy Tail was going to war, Sting ordered Rufus, Orga, and Yukino back to Sabertooth while he and Rogue flew up to follow the Fairies. Eventually, they had heard Minerva's shouts to Erza and arrived just in time to save her from Mard Geer, and the rest was history.

It was funny how saving someone from a dark guild could change them so much. Before, Minerva had been an unattainable beauty, cold and unfeeling, as a member of the strongest guild should be. Despite being held in the same regard by their Master, there were no true equals in Sabertooth. Everyone was either stronger than you or weaker than you, and if you tied with someone, you were both considered unfit for Sabertooth and made to erase your guild marks.

That was Minerva in a nutshell. Trained to a horrifying extent, she was unsurpassed within Sabertooth,except by her own father. If Sting had dared display any hint of attraction to her, he knew he would be driven from Sabertooth in the most humiliating way possible.

Now, in the days since the Fairies went to war with Zeref's Demons, Sting was confident Minerva's true nature was starting to shine through. Since returning, she had become kinder – much more so than anyone ever thought her capable (though Yukino claimed to have seen this side of her before). She had developed friendships in and out of Sabertooth, though pretty much no one from Mermaid Heel could be considered friendly to her, least of all Kagura. But then again, no one from Sabertooth liked Kagura much either for her insistence that Yukino's life belonged to her (the closest thing she had to a friend in Sabertooth was Rogue, and even then he was nowhere near sympathetic to her claims).

But more to the point, Minerva had opened up considerably to Sting. True, there was still so much she didn't dare reveal to him, but where before she had called him Master because he had defeated their leader, the strongest, she now did so out of a newfound sense of loyalty and devotion. Still, even she was not above poking fun at Sting and questioning his more impulsive decisions (In fact, she was the sharpest-tongued of them all).

Frosch had made an offhand comment about Minerva being in love with Sting, which, considering it was Frosch, Sting wouldn't have paid attention to if Minerva hadn't reacted so strongly that a fight almost broke out between her and Rogue. That was two weeks before the Ball, and hopefully, Sting would find out if what he thought were hopeless feelings weren't so hopeless after all.

"That was Yukino," said Rogue as he was fiddling with a Miniature Communication Lacrima. "The girls are ready." Judging by his annoyed expression, white didn't seem to be his favorite color (Yukino had insisted on reversing their color choices for once).

"Well, let's get the hell on with this thing!" said Sting.

"Rufus and Albion won't be joining us right away," said Orga. "They say they want to show up fashionably late. I don't really care for the concept, but... eh."

"Well, of course!" said Lector. "At a fancy party like this, you can't make an entrance right away!"

"Fro thinks so too!" agreed Frosch.

"I'm pretty sure it's the host that needs to be fashionably late," said Sting.

"Fro thinks so too!" said Frosch.

"Hey, whose side are you on anyway?!" said Lector angrily.

"Rogue's," said Frosch innocently.

"Rogue-kun didn't even say anything!" yelled Lector.

"Whatever," said Rogue. "We need to get going. Sting, lead the..." He trailed off upon seeing that Sting had already left.

"...Way..." Rogue finished in disbelief.

"For the love of..." Orga muttered.

"Sting-kun must really want to see how our Lady looks," said Lector slyly.

"He loooves her!" said Frosch.

"We really need to keep you away from Happy-kun," said Lector.

Sting knocked on the door to the girls' hotel room. "Okay, fellas, this is it," he said. "Let's do this right!" He struck a pose, only for it to slack once he realized he had left his comrades behind.

"Crap, I can't face the Lady alone!" he muttered to himself. Slapping himself on the hand, he said, "Calm down, Sting. You're the famous White Dragon. Just play it cool." No sooner had he said that than a chorus of "WhatdoIdo? WhatdoIdo? WhatdoIdo? WhatdoIdo?" started repeating in his head.

"That's not playing it cool at all!" Sting yelled out loud.

"...Who exactly are you talking to, Sting?" Minerva's voice cut in.

"Ah! Princess!" Sting exclaimed. "Uh... no one, I mean, me, I mean..."

However, words failed Sting the moment he turned to face Minerva. She was wearing a sky-blue cheongsam emblazoned with a silvery-white Eastern dragon, along with elbow-length white gloves, and her hair was tied up in a small bun on either side.

"Ah," said Minerva playfully. "I see my beauty has struck you dumb, Master."

"I...I..." Sting stammered. Finally, he forced out, "You look pretty!"

He regretted the words as soon as he said them. Pretty? No, his Lady was beautiful, every bit as much a goddess as the War God whose magic she commanded!

Minerva, however, took comfort in the simple compliment. "Thank you, Sting," she said with a light blush. However red her face looked, Sting's looked tenfold that color.

"Where are the others?" asked Yukino from inside the hotel room.

"Huh?" said Sting looking around, once more aware of his male companions' absence. "Uh... they said to go on ahead... that we'd meet up at the party..."

"You ran off ahead of them, didn't you?" Minerva deadpanned.

"I... couldn't wait to see you?" Sting supplied.

"Ih Rag-" Minerva started to chant. However, Yukino's hand on her shoulder stopped her.

"Now don't you go mussing up Sting-sama's face just before your first date," Yukino scolded gently.

Minerva uttered an exclamation in the Yakuma language, then replied, "This is not a date, Yukino!" rather irritably.

"Fair enough," said Yukino, holding her hands up in surrender. "Talk to me again after the first slow song."

Minerva blushed in earnest as Yukino excused herself to the bathroom. "She's become quite bold since her return," she commented.

"Ah, she's just giving us shit," said Sting. "That's what friends are supposed to do, right? Especially before a date."

"Yes," said Minerva. She felt much better now that Sting called their impending outing a date. And though neither one knew what a date entailed, at least they had their friends to learn with and from.

Compared to Jiemma's Sabertooth, that made all the difference in the world to them.

Eh, not my favorite ending. I kinda wanted to get this up at a decent hour, since I had to go to my cousins' graduation party Saturday, and Sunday was Mother's Day, and I kinda wanted to get this prompt up while it was a decent hour. So anyway, off to post tomorrow's prompt - or today's, since in my haste I didn't add any commentary and all this is after the fact. So, I'll see you all in a few minutes.