"All those years locked away… I'm starving! I think I'll help myself to your souls!"
The enormous wooden demon had apparently decided to reiterate, just to be safe, that we were all about to get eaten.
Except, judging by what I was sensing, this demon talked a big game but had bitten off way more than it could chew.
"Wait, the demon was inside the flute?" Lucy asked, slowly pulling herself together.
"It's one of Zeref's 'living' creations," Makarov said, scowling at the thing.
"The Zeref?!" Gray choked out.
Not that the demon was interested in giving us time to gawk. I felt it start pulling energy into its maw.
Right. Wooden demon. Wood burns.
"Natsu!" I snapped, loud enough that everyone who'd been standing around in a daze seemed to snap back to reality. I jabbed a finger at the enormous hunk of timber. "Punish it!"
"Punishing it!" The kid practically lit up, literally, and surged forward.
But it was obvious to everyone that the demon was already winding up to attack.
That's when Gray stepped in front of us, arms shooting up into his casting stance.
"Ice-Make…"
"Run!"
"We won't make it!"
Two guild masters standing nearby shouted at the same time.
But before the demon, lurching forward like it was taking a bow, could release the torrent of violet flame building in its throat, a massive curved ice wall of interlocking petals erupted right in front of us.
"…Shield!"
BOOM. The explosion rang in our ears as the flames broke apart and rolled to either side.
"Fast kid!" one of the masters said, impressed.
"Ice-Make?" Lucy said. She didn't know much about other types of magic.
"Magic that converts a wizard's power into any physical form they can imagine… but the ethernano cost is enormous," Happy explained.
Meanwhile, I was watching the rest of the battlefield through Sphere Vision, and things were heating up fast.
Erza had joined in. She closed the distance in a single dash and carved straight through half the demon's massive leg.
Natsu, growling something incoherent, was climbing up the other leg of the staggering monster.
"What the—?" The demon blinked down at him.
It immediately caught a fist to the face from a leaping Natsu, and the enormous body nearly toppled all over again.
"GRAAA!" The demon, furious, charged magic into its throat, and this time a hail of large orbs of demonic energy came blasting out in all directions.
Some of them went straight for the guild masters' meeting hall. I teleported to the right position, and Gray threw up another wall, blocking the barrage.
"Ice-Make: Lance!" Gray decided he was done playing defense. He conjured a dozen enormous ice spears, which went screaming into the demon and buried themselves in its chest.
"AAAA!" Natsu yelped in a panic as Gray's bombardment sent the demon's head lurching, nearly throwing the pink-haired idiot off entirely.
Erza, meanwhile, had her own ideas. A Requip flash, and she stood armored in black and silver-trimmed plate, two membranous wings spreading at her back.
"That's the Black Wing Armor! They say it amplifies the wearer's strength!" one of the guild masters said, sounding like he was reading straight from an encyclopedia.
At that moment, Natsu finally regained his footing, jumped clear, and ignited his fists.
BOOM. Another explosion, and from the force of his punch, the demon finally started going down, toppling backward.
Erza took that opening, flew in, and delivered the finishing touch: a single powerful slash that took the monster's head clean off. The sound of it cut through the air like a thunderclap.
I wasn't celebrating yet, though. Because the demon, still stumbling through the onslaught as it went down, was now falling, its enormous bulk aimed directly at the meeting hall.
I thrust out my hand and strained like I hadn't strained in a week. My Telekinesis shoved the demon's trajectory sideways with enough force to redirect it, and it hit the ground beside the building instead. The earth shuddered under our feet.
"Unbelievable!"
"They dealt with it just like that!"
The guild masters started up again with their exclamations.
"Gha-ha-ha-ha!" Makarov broke into full Gildarts-level cackling. Pride was blooming all over his face. "Well?! What do you think of my kids?!"
"Amazing! You guys were incredible!" Lucy said, from where she'd been standing safely to the side with the rest of us.
"I can't believe I'm saying this, but it seems Fairy Tail just saved our lives," Goldmine noted, managing to work in a dig at our guild's general reputation while he was at it.
"Don't even sweat it! Everything's totally fine!" Makarov was practically overflowing with the urge to brag nonstop. "Gha-ha-ha-ha!"
"The only thing is… the entire courtyard is destroyed. Who's paying for that?" one of the guild masters asked, single-handedly torching the good mood.
"Don't push it," I said. "If it weren't for my last spell, you wouldn't even have a hall to worry about."
"Exactly!" Makarov, immediately sensing a potential fine aimed his way, jumped to the guild's defense. "A little gratitude would be nice! So what was I saying about filing a commendation request with the Council? Everyone's still on board, right?!"
The guild masters, some of them sporting pretty sour expressions, nonetheless gave reluctant nods. We had, after all, taken down a demon of considerable size, and the collateral damage was relatively contained.
And so, what had started as our initiative to go after the dark mages Erza had spotted had turned into something far bigger than anticipated, and had, in the end, been resolved.
We headed back to Magnolia in good spirits, and once there, everyone went their separate ways.
The dark mages were taken into Magic Council custody to serve their sentences. As for any reward, nothing came through immediately, since no one had formally contracted us to eliminate Eisenwald. I'd already dispatched a few lawyers from the Aquavit family to deal with that.
But that wasn't the important thing right now.
One day after the Eisenwald terrorist incident, Makarov reached out to the three of us, me, Erza, and Mira, and asked us to come to his office for what he called "a sensitive little conversation."
"Elian, Erza, I need the Magic Council to arrest you."
"…Come again?" Mirajane said, not following.
Erza and I wore matching expressions of confusion.
"I heard from Yajima recently. Some people on the Council aren't happy with us."
"They're never happy with us," Erza said flatly. "But our mission was clean. An arrest would be unjust."
"It would. But those people… they feel like they're losing their grip," Makarov said, choosing his words carefully. "They need to make a show of authority. You won't actually be held, you'll be released right away, as long as nothing goes sideways."
At those words, which were, frankly, remarkably diplomatic for the old man, Mirajane's expression darkened.
"Now I understand why I was invited to this meeting too," she said. Then that perpetually warm face of hers settled into what looked, on the surface, like a perfectly warm smile. Except it made Makarov's forehead start to sweat. "Because if they tried to arrest Erza or Elian right in front of me, I'd fly straight to Era and level the place. Hee-hee."
While Mirajane kept up her sweet-as-pie routine, Makarov laughed nervously.
"Lucky for everyone, I know how to plan ahead! Didn't live this many decades by accident!" He stroked his mustache with an air of great wisdom.
"Still, they do think pretty highly of themselves," I said. "We're not a country. We're highly mobile, independent mages. They're not going to fire Etherion at a city in Fiore, and the Councilors themselves aren't Wizard Saints. Maybe it's time to push another Fairy Tail mage into a comfortable seat on the Council."
"I don't endorse what Elian is suggesting about removing Council members," Erza spoke up. "But they are acting in direct opposition to justice. Is that really how a body dedicated to upholding justice should conduct itself?"
"Weeell," Makarov started to buckle, clearly unable to come up with a good defense. "…Look, it just has to be done."
"Relax, old man, we're not coming after you," I said, cutting through the tension before it started to feel like three S-Class mages ganging up on their poor guild master. "The main thing is, obvious answer, I know, but is there anything waiting for us that we should know about?"
"Ahem!" Makarov straightened up immediately. "Of course this isn't a trap, you don't need to worry about that. Yajima can be trusted, and he'll be keeping an eye on everything throughout the whole process. If anything comes up, we'll let you know."
"Perfect. But we're definitely getting something out of them after this," I said. "So, when do they 'arrest' us?"
"Today," Makarov sighed.
"They already decided everything for us," Mira said, her voice going sharp. She addressed me specifically, since Erza still held some degree of respect for official institutions and wouldn't go nuclear without serious cause. The current situation wasn't serious enough. This was just politics. "Elian. We need to make them pay for this."
"Just don't blow up the courthouse!" Makarov yelped, somewhere between an order and a prayer.
"I've had something sitting on a shelf for a few years now. It'll make their lives very interesting, and it won't trace back to us."
"Perfect," the white-haired sadist nodded.
"Settled, then," the old man said, giving us a firm but suspicious look. "We'll wait at the guild. Council representatives will be here any time now. And, this is important, no one can know the arrest is staged."
Logical. Kind of defeats the whole point of the power demonstration otherwise.
On that note, satisfied that everything would be fine, and that if it wasn't, we'd have a way out, our little group of four left the guild master's office. We hadn't even made it out before Natsu broke away from the crowd and made a beeline for my sister.
"Erza! Let's fight!" He launched straight into his usual routine.
"Looking to get beaten up again?" she raised an eyebrow.
"I'm not the same guy I was before! I've grown!"
"Oh… How long has it been since our last fight, exactly?"
"Not that long," Mirajane said. "Natsu, you lost to Erza three weeks ago. You should take your own abilities more seriously. Do you really want to get hit in the head again?"
Natsu responded to her genuinely concerned point with a look of total incomprehension.
"What's 'seriously' mean?" he asked. The word seemed to belong to a language he'd never encountered.
"At a minimum, it means thinking ahead and understanding just how bad it'll be if you make a mistake," I explained to this particular underlit bulb.
"Didn't get any of that. So are you gonna fight or not?"
Erza just sighed. Mirajane and I both rolled our eyes. Erza had beaten Natsu up more than anyone else, which meant he wanted payback from her more than anyone else.
Before long, a crowd of mages had gathered outside the guild hall.
"What's going on?" Lucy asked, pushing through to the front.
"A fight. Normal one," I told her simply. "You can go place a bet with Cana if you're feeling lucky."
At my nod, the blonde turned toward the aforementioned brunette, who was currently crouched with a chalkboard propped against her back and a basket of money in front of her, actively taking bets.
"A thousand jewels on Erza," the little blue cat said, sliding a bill forward.
"Happy!" Lucy exclaimed, somewhere between scandalized and baffled. He turned to look at her. "You and Natsu are supposed to be friends! How could you?!"
"Hm?" Happy put on his best blank face and looked away. "Cats have terrible hearing, I literally can't make out a word. Here you go, Cana."
Cana took the money and recorded the bet with a completely straight face.
Meanwhile, in the ring, Erza Requipped into another armor. This one was predominantly black and red with significant orange accents. The plate was covered in sharp, jagged details: clawed gauntlets, leg guards that looked more like dragon's feet, and yet another set of wings at her back.
"Fire Empress Armor," Erza announced to the gathered crowd, and raised her sword.
"That armor massively reduces fire damage! Natsu's going to have a rough time!" someone in the crowd called out.
"Doesn't matter! No armor in the world stops my fire!"
"Elian, you and Erza are twins," Lucy turned to me. "Did she always have armor like that?"
"Like what, the exposed ones?" I clarified. She blinked, the armor in question did show off a fair amount, between the neckline and the upper legs, then nodded. "Since about fifteen, give or take."
"I'm actually the one who nudged Erza toward that style," Mira said, drifting over.
"Miss Mirajane?!" Lucy looked genuinely shocked. "But you dress pretty modestly, well, the neckline is open too, so maybe not that modestly. But still! You? Really?"
"Surprising, I know. I went through a fun phase," Mira said with a nostalgic little smile. "Still having fun now, but back then it was like something was always itching to get out. Constantly wanted to beat someone half to death, level a building or two. Wasn't it like that for you in your teens?"
"Um… No."
"Hmm…" Mirajane made a mildly offended sound. "Well, okay. And remember, just Mira is fine."
While the two of them talked, the fight between Natsu and Erza was picking up.
He came out swinging immediately: a lunging overhead strike with flaming fists. But Erza stepped back without any effort and tried to open him up with a cutting counterattack against his overextended form.
Natsu, quick as he was, managed to flip out of it and came back with a spinning fiery kick.
She took it on a forearm guard without so much as flinching and went for another slash.
He had to go full contortionist, handspringing, twisting, barely staying out of range. Then, from the ground, he exhaled a gout of flame and scorched everything in a radius of several meters.
The crowd screamed at the fire-breathing idiot and scrambled back.
Erza simply flew above the attack, then came back down and went straight for the Salamander, who'd already found his footing again.
This should have been the final exchange. I could see it: Erza, committing everything, was about to put Natsu down for good. Then, like something out of the most clichéd story imaginable, there was a sudden sound of clapping, and the fight stopped cold.
Both of them froze, mid-swing.
"Cease this at once," came a loud voice, accompanied by the clapping of two small green hands, from a walking frog in clerical robes.
"Everyone remain where you are! I am a Herald of the Magic Council!"
"A Council Herald?!"
"The hell does he want now?!"
The mages started grumbling.
"You mean this kind of thing doesn't even surprise you guys anymore?!" Lucy said, genuinely astonished.
"This is Fairy Tail," I said, spreading my hands.
"Ahem! In connection with the destruction of public and private property," the frog said, unrolling a large scroll and beginning to read, "specifically the Oshibana train station, as well as the courtyard of the guild masters' district assembly hall in Clover…"
"Tch. So one of those bastards actually filed a complaint," I noted.
"…and the commission of a number of other offenses on the day of the Eisenwald guild's terrorist attack, the Magic Council has authorized the arrest of Erza Scarlet and—" he turned toward me, "Elian Scarlet. Guards, please proceed."
"WHAT?!!" A wave of outrage rolled through the guild.
Guards approached me and Erza to put the cuffs on.
"I hope justice will prevail," Erza said, with an expression that could have been stone-faced sincerity or pure sarcasm. I accepted the accessory in silence.
"How can you just let this happen?!" Lucy demanded of whoever would listen, watching them lead us away.
"Unfortunately," Mirajane said, not quite managing the sorrowful tone she was going for; it came out more like venom behind a stretched smile, "the Council's authority is too great to contest."
Shortly after, Erza and I were loaded into a transport, and we left the city without delay.
At that same moment, somewhere in Fiore but miles from Magnolia, a blue-haired young man without tattoos on his face was speaking to an image in a lacrima crystal.
"Yes, Chairman, my health has been failing me again, I'm afraid. My apologies…"
"Councilor Siegrain, you are young, yet you fall ill constantly. Please sort out your health and begin attending Magic Council proceedings regularly."
A large man spoke to him over the connection.
"I'm doing everything I can," the young man said, letting a properly apologetic smile cross his face.
"The youth of today," the Chairman muttered, drifting straight into full grumbling mode. "You, and Ultear. And the rest of us old men have to carry everything."
The connection cut. The young man's expression immediately soured.
"And there he goes, running scared again, aren't you, little Jellal?" a woman's voice came from behind him, and his face twisted further.
"Ultear. I believe I've asked you not to call me that."
"Little Jellal, little Jellal, little Jellal?" the black-haired girl in a white, one-sleeved kimono and red choker repeated it three times for good measure. "Is that what you asked?"
"Yes… precisely that." He endured it rather than invite more.
"You're so boring," she said. "This is the perfect moment, you know. Your old fear, your enemy, heh," she couldn't quite hold back a snicker, "the one who made you turn down my offer about playing the twin-brother role to sneak into the Council. The one who made you change your whole look with that tattoo and that hairstyle," she poked his face, where the distinctive mark under his eye was expertly concealed with makeup and his hair was slicked straight back, "and the one who made you beg me to change my own look before we infiltrated the Council, so I wouldn't be recognized, even though he's almost certainly never seen me! Just picture it: you step out from behind one of the columns in the Punishment Hall, where they're bringing this Elian, and you laugh right in his face. Because you actually made it to a high position on the Council, and he's the one heading for the defendant's bench!"
"And you know perfectly well this trial is a farce."
"Of course. But wouldn't it be fun?"
"Ugh." Siegrain, who was actually Jellal, rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Stop provoking me. And no, showing up would blow our entire plan…"
"Hmm! Alright, you might have a point there. That boy really did grow up into something dangerous."
"He was dangerous from the start."
"Oh? Is little Jellal exaggerating his enemy's strength to save face? So he doesn't look pathetic, since he used to lose sleep over him as a kid?"
"Naturally, his connections are even more dangerous than he is," Jellal continued, keeping his face as unreadable as humanly possible. "But as long as they're not thinking about us, that works in our favor. Fairy Tail's Ace may have taken a century quest, but even Hades isn't guaranteed to be able to stop him."
"Ahh. So many people in Ishgar who could get in our way. Isn't that just tragic?" Ultear said, still mocking him, though she gradually shifted into something closer to a business tone. "Though that Gildarts isn't guaranteed to come back… Otherwise, those old men wouldn't dare put this much pressure on Fairy Tail."
"Either way, it's a good thing we slipped out of any direct contact with them."