After the fuss died down, everyone found a seat in the living room and settled in.
The conversation went exactly where it was always going to go.
"That bastard Laxus is completely out of line!"
Natsu had been sitting on it since Gajeel walked back through the door, and the fire had not cooled one degree. His eyes were practically throwing sparks, the memory of Gajeel's injuries and Shadow Gear's account still fresh and hot in his chest.
"Natsu." Happy regarded him with the patient expression of someone who had watched this particular reaction play out many times before. "Have you already forgotten what happened the last time you challenged Laxus? You tried to eat his lightning, and then you couldn't get out of bed for three days straight."
Happy still remembered that clearly. He had been terrified at the time, even if he was careful not to say so.
"Wait." Lucy accepted the cup of black tea Chase set in front of her with both hands and looked between them. "Natsu can only eat fire. Why on earth would he try to eat lightning?"
"Because he had absolutely no other options." Happy spread his paws and sighed. "Natsu just does things like that."
"Damn it, that was over a year ago! I was basically still a kid then! Things are completely different now!" Natsu slammed his fist into his palm, jaw set, eyes defiant.
"Your concept of how much time changes a person is genuinely concerning," Lucy said, pressing a hand to her forehead.
Mira's fingers rested lightly on her burgundy dress. A small, reminiscing look crossed her face.
"Speaking of which, I remember when Chase first joined the guild, Laxus put him on the ground too."
"Ha!" Gray sat up sharply, and then the laughter came out before he could help it, full and genuine. "I completely forgot about that. After the lightning hit him his hair just went straight up into the air. He looked absolutely ridiculous."
He laughed for a good few seconds, thoroughly enjoying the memory.
Then the laughter stopped, and his expression went flat and somewhat mournful.
"Damn it. Back then I could actually give Chase trouble once in a while. When exactly did things get so far apart?"
"I was the one who treated Chase's injuries that time," Erza said. A quiet, knowing smile crossed her face. "Though he stubbornly refused treatment for quite a long while. He would not let anyone near him no matter what."
She had not thought much of him back then, if she was honest. He had just been another member of the guild, the kind that anyone could push around on a bad day. And then somewhere along the way, without her quite pinpointing when it happened, he had become someone she genuinely looked up to instead. The shift had been so gradual she had almost missed it.
She was glad. A man that strong, that steady, standing as a companion she could trust with her life rather than an enemy who measured a person's worth by how easily they could be broken. She was very glad about that.
"Struggling still at least gives you a fighting chance," Dark Magician Girl said lightly, covering her smile with one hand. "With Erza's bandaging technique involved, Master would have had no chance at all."
Chase, sitting nearby, took a quiet sip of tea and gave a single nod.
That period really had been the most genuinely dangerous he had faced since arriving in this world. When he had run into Ignia without warning, he had still had the Dead Revival card sitting in his hand as a last resort. But that day with Erza and her bandaging, he had been completely empty-handed. Nothing in reserve. No fallback. Just hoping for the best.
"That is impossible!" Erza sat forward, eyes wide, her surprise looking entirely real. "I practiced that technique specifically. I put in real time on it."
"Hahaha!" Lucy, who had been holding herself together, gave up completely. "Chase-san had a troubled beginning! I never would have guessed!" She was genuinely delighted. She had arrived too late to see any of that. In her mind Chase existed primarily as an overwhelming, unstoppable problem. The idea that there had been a time when ordinary guild members could push him around was deeply satisfying in a way she was not going to pretend otherwise.
"But that aside," Gray said, leaning back, "Laxus really is something. Even among S-Class mages he has always been near the very top. Gildarts obviously doesn't count in that comparison."
"Gildarts-san." Lucy said the name carefully, like she was testing the weight of it. "He's the one you mentioned before, right? The actual strongest in Fairy Tail?"
After everything she had seen and heard since joining this guild, she had largely stopped trying to picture what the people at the top of that list looked like in a real fight. Whatever she imagined tended to fall short anyway.
"That's right! Though honestly it's getting harder to say these days." Happy hopped up onto the coffee table and looked around the room with the bright, assessing eyes of someone putting together a serious ranking. "Chase is ridiculously strong now, and Erza and Mira and Mystogan are all right up there too. Hey, if the guild actually held a competition to find the strongest, who do you think would come out on top?"
"Oh my." Mira blinked, touching her cheek. "Am I really in consideration for something like that?"
"I wouldn't say I'm quite at that level compared to some of them," Erza said, with genuine modesty.
"Happy." Natsu's voice had taken on a particular edge.
"Gray and I are sitting right here," Gray said flatly.
Nobody acknowledged either of them. The two of them sat together in their shared indignation and got absolutely nothing back for it.
"I don't really think we need to be ranking each other," Lucy said thoughtfully. "We're all companions in the same guild. That's what matters at the end of the day."
"Oh, speaking of the guild," Mira said, tilting her head slightly as something came back to her, "the guild master mentioned something to me today. The Harvest Festival is coming up next week, and this year we are holding a Miss Fairy Tail beauty contest. Apparently first place takes home one million Jewel in prize money."
She explained the background quietly. By tradition, the prize money was set jointly between Magnolia City and the guild. It should have been five hundred thousand, but this year the Heartfilia family had come in as a sponsor, and the number had doubled directly.
A silence settled over the room for exactly one second.
"A MILLION?!"
Lucy, who had just finished delivering a sincere speech about not needing to rank guild members against each other, shot to her feet with her eyes fully lit up.
"Mira! Sign me up right now!"
"Of course." Mira smiled and nodded. Her smile was warm and sweet and had something sitting underneath it that was very slightly sly. "I'll be participating as well, naturally~"
"A million Jewel." Erza had gone quiet. One fist closed slowly on the table. Her eyes were shining with the specific kind of focus she brought to things she intended to win. "That would more than cover equipment repairs and three months of supplies."
"Last year I couldn't make it to the festival at all!" Dark Magician Girl sat up straight, chin lifted, enthusiasm radiating off her. "This year I am absolutely going to make every single resident of Magnolia fall completely in love with me!"
She was very much a member of Fairy Tail. Nobody was going to argue otherwise.
Lucy looked at the three of them.
Mira, who was on the cover of Sorcerer Weekly so regularly that her face had practically become part of the magazine's brand. Erza, the Fairy Queen, whose reputation for both strength and appearance had reached the kind of status that made people stop on the street to stare. Dark Magician Girl, who was energetic and striking and existed outside the normal rules of age in a way that made fair competition feel theoretical.
The corner of Lucy's mouth twitched once.
She sat back down.
And then, privately and with great determination, she began to work through it from a different angle. Yes, Mira and Erza had reputations and history and established followings. But she, Lucy Heartfilia, was younger. More fresh. More of the moment. As for Dark Magician Girl, her age was genuinely unclear, which created a variable, but even if things went poorly, third place was still prize money. Second place was definitely within reach.
She could absolutely do this.
Lucy stood back up, shoulders squared, and looked directly at the three of them.
"Fine. Bring it on. I am not losing to any of you."
"Heeey, Natsu." Happy's voice was at a volume that was technically a whisper but filled the entire living room without any difficulty at all. "I'm seeing the not-so-pretty side of human nature again. She literally just said we shouldn't be ranking ourselves against each other."
"Ha~ppy~kun~"
Lucy turned to face Happy with a smile that had been assembled with considerable effort. Her voice came out very gentle and sweet.
"Would you like to come over to my place a little later? I'll cook fish. The good kind."
She looked around the room. "Chase-san, Natsu, Gray, you're all welcome too, of course~"
Mira, Erza, and Dark Magician Girl were not included in this invitation. The omission was so clean it was almost impressive.
What a thoroughly practical woman.
"We do not accept bribes," Happy said with unexpected firmness, showing a side of himself that had not previously been documented.
"I mean, I would have come even if you hadn't offered food," Natsu said, completely baffled by the complexity of the situation.
"I'm staying here tonight actually," Gray said, sinking even deeper into the leather sofa with the comfortable look of someone who had made a permanent decision. "Chase's place is nicer than yours."
"Lucy," Chase said, with the warm, encouraging expression of a person about to say something completely terrible, "your odds in the contest aren't great, but you still have your rent to look forward to at the end of the month."
Four direct hits, each one landing precisely where it hurt most, arriving in quick succession from four different directions.
Lucy stood completely still for a moment. Then she walked to the corner of the living room, sat down, pulled her knees to her chest, and stared at the wall with a small dark cloud forming somewhere above her head.
Everyone else laughed.
As the evening wore on and the sky outside deepened into full dark, the laughter eased into comfortable conversation, and then gradually the room emptied. Lucy recovered enough to leave with her dignity only slightly damaged. Natsu and Happy went together. Erza said her goodbyes with her usual formal politeness. Mira left last, unhurried, a small smile still on her face as she went.
The living room settled into quiet.
Only Chase remained, and Dark Magician Girl, who had no particular interest in returning to the card space while there was a perfectly good sofa available. She was stretched across it in a thoroughly relaxed pose, a bag of potato chips balanced on her stomach, tossing them into her mouth one by one with great contentment.
"So, Master," she said, not looking up from the ceiling. "Laxus. What's the actual plan? Are you just going to beat him until he gives up?"
She already knew what Chase knew about Laxus. The layers underneath the arrogance. The person he would become once the civil war burned through the performance and showed him clearly what he was actually trying to protect. She was looking forward, in a specific way, to watching the breaking point arrive.
"If I just beat him, the civil war doesn't happen," Chase said.
He set down the tea cup he had been carrying back from the kitchen and leaned against the counter.
The music earlier in the day had shown him something real. When the magic was woven properly into the rhythm and pushed through the room, the people it reached expanded past their own usual limits. Their magic swelled. Their movements sharpened. Something in them woke up that normal training could not quite reach in the same way.
Fairy Tail had never been one person's story. It had never been about a single exceptional individual carrying everything on their back. The reason this guild kept producing outcomes that should have been impossible, again and again and again, was that these people brought out something in each other that none of them could fully access alone. Chase had believed that since long before he arrived here, and living among them had only made it more certain.
Even with everything he knew about the plot, even with his cards and his foresight, he had never stopped believing that.
Shouting "We are Fairy Tail!" and then walking through an impossible situation was a little idealistic, yes. But it kept working.
So the civil war that Laxus was about to force on all of them, where every single member would fight with everything they had for the people they cared about most, throwing nothing back and holding nothing in reserve, that was actually an extraordinary opportunity.
Real combat data. Each person pushed to their honest limit, not training limit, not comfortable limit, but the limit they hit when someone they loved was in danger. With that, Dark Magician Girl could build out personalized development plans, the same way she had for Lucy, but extended to the whole guild.
Chase laid it out for her. The full picture. What he planned to observe, what he needed to record, and the specific role he intended to play in the civil war to make all of it possible.
Dark Magician Girl sat straight up off the sofa.
"You can actually do that?"
She bounced once with the energy of someone who had just received very good news, chips forgotten.
"Master, compared to just punching Laxus into the ground, this plan is so much better!"
She was genuinely excited about the strategic elegance of it, yes. But she had also, within about three seconds, noticed a secondary benefit of considerable personal importance: if Chase was busy observing and recording data across an entire civil war, he would have no time whatsoever to supervise what she was doing.
From deep inside the card space, Black Magician went completely still.
His expression, had anyone been able to see it, would have said everything.
On the outskirts of Magnolia, out past the last houses and the last lights, there was a cliff where the moonlight came in cold and clear and you could see the whole city laid out below.
Laxus stood at the edge of it with the wind moving through his coat and looked down.
His eyes found the Fairy Tail guild hall without searching for it. The lights were on. They were always on. That warm, cluttered, noisy building full of people who smiled too easily and cried over things that did not matter and called weakness something worth protecting.
"Just wait, old man." His voice was flat and certain. "After this war, I will build Fairy Tail into something that makes the whole continent stand up and pay attention. Something people are afraid of."
"Weak and naive people have no place in it."
He had already made contact with the Thunder God Tribe, his personal guard, the only people who had always understood what he was trying to build. The plan was laid out. Force a civil war. Break Makarov's grip on the guild. Take it and rebuild it from the foundation into something worthy of the name strongest.
He turned away from the lights below and walked back into the dark of the cliff, completely sure of himself, as he always was.
The next day, Chase finished settling into the new house properly, and by mid-morning enough people had shown up that it had quietly turned into a housewarming party without anyone formally deciding that. It was loud and comfortable and went on longer than planned, the way good things often do.
With the Harvest Festival just around the corner, Chase had no interest in taking any jobs that would pull him out of the city. He kept his days structured: serious training sessions inside the card space in the mornings, thorough preparation for everything the civil war was going to require, and then the rest of the time spent the way he had gotten used to spending it. Wandering through the guild. Talking with Mira when the bar was quiet. Using Natsu as a willing sparring target, which Natsu always enthusiastically agreed to and never quite won. Sitting across from Lucy and saying things that made her expression cycle through several emotions in quick succession.
Life, honestly, was good.
Gradually, as the days passed, familiar faces returned to Magnolia. Guild members who had been away on extended missions came back one by one, drawn home by the approach of the festival the way they were every year, wanting to be there for it, wanting to be part of it.
A week drifted by quietly, peacefully, with all the comfortable warmth of a town that knows a celebration is coming. And then, almost without the week seeming to end, the morning of Magnolia's annual Harvest Festival arrived.
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