The Kingdom of Fiore, the town of Magnolia.
Something was tearing through the middle of town, and the residents of Magnolia were doing the sensible thing: getting out of its way.
Between the pale stone buildings and their gabled roofs walked a Giant Soldier of Stone, easily ten meters at the shoulder, each footfall shivering the cobblestones loose from their mortar.
Its build was lean and purposeful for something carved out of stone, and a pair of massive rock swords jutted from its shoulders like crossed blades, giving it the bearing of a soldier rather than a monster.
High above the street, wind pulled at a red and black trench coat.
A man rode the giant’s shoulder with both hands in his pockets, watching the guild’s rooftops come into view at the end of the road with the mild interest of someone checking whether a kettle had boiled yet.
A knot of adventurers, more annoyed than sensible, lit magic circles beneath their boots and planted themselves across the giant’s path.
One of them, sleeves already rolled and grin already fixed in place, looked ready to make a name for himself.
A middle-aged man broke from the crowd and grabbed for his arm.
“Hey, quit it, would you?
Get back here!
That thing’s just passing through.
Stay out of the road and it won’t touch you!” Being a Magnolia local, he clearly knew enough about the giant to want no part of a fight with it.
“Retreat?
You’ve got to be joking!
I’m the strongest mage in Black Pheasant Legs!” The young mage grinned, rolled back his sleeve, and showed off the guild mark branded into his forearm like it settled the matter.
The older man blinked.
Nothing about the name rang a bell, and his face said so plainly.
“…Never heard of it.” That was apparently the wrong thing to say.
The young mage’s face went red, and he threw himself into finishing his spell circle, determined to prove himself whether anyone recognized his guild or not.
“Fine, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” The older man threw up his hands.
“That’s Chase Lynn Edgardon riding the thing.
S-Class mage of Fairy Tail!” With the giant closing the distance, the older man didn’t stay to see how the fight went.
He was already backing away.
“Black Pheasant Legs, White Chicken Hands, whatever it’s called,” he shouted over his shoulder, not looking back, “I’m out of here!” Chase Lynn Edgardon.
The name did the rest of the work on its own.
It settled into the young mage’s head, and whatever had been fierce and ready-for-anything about him drained out through the soles of his feet.
What was left in his eyes looked less like the strongest mage of anything and more like a nervous freshman on his first day.
He didn’t get the fight he’d been picturing, the one where the giant went down and the street cheered his name.
What he got instead was a kick that sent him spinning two and a half times through the air before he landed headfirst in a trash bin, boots waving.
The giant didn’t so much as slow down.
It carried on up the now-empty street to a building three stories tall, more tavern than fortress, flags stitched with a dancing fairy snapping in the wind above the door.
A wooden plaque hung beneath them, the name burned into the grain: FAIRY TAIL.
Fairy Tail.
The most famous mage guild in all of Fiore.
Chase snapped his fingers.
A card etched with a black vortex on its back appeared between them, and light bloomed beneath the giant’s feet, red and black threading together into a circle that turned once, slow and deliberate.
The Giant Soldier of Stone came apart into motes of light and poured into the circle until there was nothing left to stand on.
Chase dropped the short distance to the street, landed without a sound, and slid the card away into his coat.
It wasn’t Celestial Spirit Magic, not exactly, though the mechanics weren’t so different: feed magic into a card, and whatever lived on its face stepped into the world to fight.
Yugi Muto’s deck, or what was left of it after it became Chase’s inheritance.
Or his curse, depending on the week.
More than a year, and I didn’t even notice it slipping by.
I’d almost forgotten what it feels like to come home from a long trip.
He let out a breath, listening to the noise already spilling from the guild’s half-open door, and raised a hand to knock, two fingers bent, polite as anything.
The door came apart at the first touch, hinges and all, and smoke rolled out into the street.
Normal people knocked before walking into their own home.
Fairy Tail had never much cared for normal people.
“We’re under attack!” “Ha!
Somebody’s actually dumb enough to start something here!” “A real man doesn’t wait his turn.
Out of my way, I’m taking this one myself!” “Like hell you are, Elfman.
This one’s mine!” The guild hall came alive at once, every conversation cut off mid-sentence as every mage inside turned toward the door, already looking for a fight.
Any other guild, faced with its front door caving in, might have gone quiet and careful.
Fairy Tail skipped straight past that and went right to arguing over who got to hit the intruder first.
Nobody got a good look at him before the fighting started, so the fighting started anyway.
“Oh?
Beat me to a pulp?
Elfman, you’ve gotten manlier since I saw you last.” The voice cut through the noise and stopped it cold.
Every head in the guild turned toward the smoke, and every jaw in the room dropped when the shape inside it turned out to be a face they knew.
“Wha…
Chase?!” Elfman deflated on the spot, all his volume gone in an instant.
He stepped back into the crowd, tugged a couple of guildmates along with him, and turned to face the bar as if he’d been in the middle of a very different conversation the whole time.
“Hey, Mira, what were we talking about?
Right, the laundry.
Did you bring it in yet?” Mirajane folded her hands over her red dress at the bar, tilted her head, and smiled, sweet and entirely unbothered.
Whatever had just happened at the door, it hadn’t happened to Elfman.
His sister’s cover was airtight.
Chase let his gaze move on, past Elfman, to the handful of mages who’d been shouting loudest a moment ago.
Jet, Droy, Warren, and two others he didn’t bother naming all took a step backward in the same instant, smooth as a single unit.
Macao Conbolt’s retreat came half a beat late, and that half-beat left him standing alone at the front of the guild with nowhere to hide.
“You son of a—when did you get back?!” Sweat had already broken out along his hairline.
His guildmates had bailed on him without so much as a warning, and his glare followed them across the hall.
“Guild’s supposed to have your back,” Macao muttered, mostly to himself.
He knew exactly what he was looking at.
Chase, Natsu, and Gray were three different flavors of trouble, but only one of them could put a person in the infirmary for a month without breaking a sweat doing it, and it wasn’t the one with flaming fists.
Macao shut his eyes and waited for the hit.
Chase’s expression, serious right up until that moment, cracked wide open into a grin.
He jabbed a finger under Macao’s nose, laughing hard enough to blow a snot bubble, and didn’t bother lowering his voice.
“Ha!
If it isn’t Macao, the guy who couldn’t even take down a lousy gorilla.
How’d you manage to get even weaker while I was gone?” Name: Giant Soldier of Stone Attribute: EARTH Level: 3 Type: Rock / Normal ATK: 1300 DEF: 2000 Description: A giant warrior made of stone.
A punch from this creature has earth-shattering results.