Evergreen?!
Before anyone in the hall had time to react, Evergreen lifted her folding fan to cover the lower half of her face and took off her glasses. The magic circles swirling in her pupils locked directly onto Dark Magician Girl, who was standing closest to her on the stage.
"Careful! Don't look her in the eyes!" Gray's shout cut across the hall.
Too late. Dark Magician Girl was already frozen solid, locked in a expression of wide-eyed panic, a perfect stone statue where she had been standing a second before.
That was Evergreen's eye magic. Direct eye contact meant instant petrification. Simple, rule-based, and brutally effective. The only real drawback was the requirement for an unobstructed line of sight, which was why she needed to take her glasses off first.
The sudden turn of events threw the whole venue into chaos. Max, reading the room fast, grabbed the microphone and shouted for all the civilians and tourists to evacuate immediately. The crowd stampeded for the exits. Within moments the entire hall had emptied of everyone who wasn't a Fairy Tail member.
Chase stood with his arms folded and looked at the frozen Dark Magician Girl.
She was locked in a pose of complete shock and panic, eyes wide, mid-scream. He thought about her personality for a moment. Careless. Thick-headed. Not exactly the type to fake a reaction convincingly.
That looked extremely real.
He filed that observation away for later.
The hall settled into a tense quiet with only Fairy Tail members left standing in it.
"Evergreen!" Makarov's voice was hard. "Do you intend to ruin the festival?!"
Chase's earlier warning had given him some preparation, so he was not as blindsided as he would have been otherwise. But his face was grim in a way that left no room for misunderstanding. Evergreen was one of Laxus's personal guard. Her doing this, in front of everyone, on this day, confirmed the worst-case scenario he had been hoping would not materialize.
"A festival needs some entertainment, don't you think?"
Evergreen did not bother looking at Makarov. She took a calm step forward and spread her hands.
The stage curtain was pulled back.
Every contestant who had appeared earlier, including Mira and Erza, was standing there as a stone statue. The expressions frozen on their faces told the whole story. Shock. Panic. Not a single one of them had been ready for it.
That was why even Mira and Erza had fallen. They had simply not been on guard against Evergreen. She was a partner who had been in the same guild with them for years. The thought would not have crossed their minds.
"The festival is just getting started. The strongest of Fairy Tail, let's see what you've all got."
Freed stepped out from the side of the stage. Green hair, long sword, the calm expression of someone who had been planning this for a while.
"The strongest! The strongest!"
Bickslow dropped down from the rafters with a crash and a wild grin, steel helmet gleaming, five small oddly-shaped dolls floating in the air behind him. That was his magic. Star Chart: Puppet Possession.
"That bastard! What did you do to Bisca?! Evergreen, undo it right now!"
"Levy!!"
"Let her go!"
Elfman, Alzack, and Droy came forward in a rush of fury, not waiting for any more explanation, heading straight for Evergreen.
Everyone else was yelling.
Crack!
Thunder split the air. Blinding electric light crashed down from above and hit the stage floor directly in front of the petrified girls, close enough to make the point without touching them.
"Laxus!!"
Laxus dropped down onto the stage with electric arcs crackling across both hands. Elfman and the others skidded to a stop. Nobody was willing to take a step that might bring them any closer to those stone figures with lightning that close.
"Calm down. I haven't explained the rules yet."
Laxus looked across the hall with the smug, easy confidence of a man who believed he controlled every variable in the room. His eyes swept the crowd, paused on Chase for a couple of seconds, then settled on Makarov, whose expression was barely staying on the right side of the kind of rage that ended in medical emergencies.
"This is simple," Laxus said. "We fight. Whoever is the last one standing in this Fairy War wins."
"Hah! Then all we have to do is beat you!"
Natsu clearly had not fully absorbed the weight of what was happening. He smashed his fists together, lit them up, took a running start, and launched himself at Laxus with burning fists and zero hesitation.
He never made it to the stage.
A crack of yellow lightning appeared out of nowhere mid-leap and sent him crashing to the floor before he touched anything.
"Compared to that Iron Dragon who wouldn't even fight back, I actually kind of respect your style, Natsu." Laxus dusted off his sleeve and glanced at the crumpled heap on the floor. "Though it seems like you can't hear me."
"Enough!" Makarov's voice cracked like a whip. He stepped forward and his body began to grow, rising to the full-body giant form that meant the conversation was over. "Laxus! Undo the petrification on Mira and the others right now, and I will pretend this entire farce never happened!"
"Farce?!"
That hit something raw. Laxus's composure cracked and he roared back.
"This is WAR, old man! Don't be naive! If the rules aren't followed, these women die!"
The electric arcs around the stone statues intensified for just a moment, enough to make the point. Every vein on the giant Makarov's forehead went visible at once.
He had prepared himself mentally. He had heard Chase's warning and had time to brace for something bad. And Laxus had still managed to extinguish the last small flame of hope he had been keeping alive by threatening the lives of his companions.
Evergreen stepped forward into the silence.
"If you want them back," she said simply, "defeat us."
"Three hours," Freed said. "The whole of Magnolia is your battlefield. Find us and fight us. The rules are straightforward."
"Four of us against over a hundred of you. The odds are clearly in your favor, hehehe!" Bickslow stuck his tongue out, the Fairy Tail mark on it visible, and laughed loud and wild.
"Your favor! Your favor!" The five puppets echoed him in their small annoying voices.
The four of them were wrapping up their explanation and turning to leave when Chase stepped forward out of the crowd.
"Interesting setup." He looked at Laxus from across the hall. Magic circles began lighting up around him one after another, cards activating in sequence. "So you're really going through with starting a civil war, huh, blondie."
Dark Magician, Summoned Skull, Curse of Dragon, Citadel Wing Dragon, Knight Three Musketeers, Celtic Guardian, each one materialized and took position around Chase as the circles bloomed. A wave of magic pressure swept across the entire hall, heavy and dense, the kind that makes the air feel different.
"I said wait, you annoying card freak. I haven't announced the start yet." Laxus was unbothered. He had hostages and he knew it.
"No, no. I think there's been a misunderstanding here."
Chase stopped. He looked at Laxus with a calm expression.
"Like the guy with the helmet said, four against a hundred is a bit one-sided. Straightforward. Not very exciting."
"One-sided?" Laxus's eyes narrowed.
"It's a festival. May as well make things more interesting."
Chase raised his arm. The card monsters behind him caught the signal, broke apart into streaks of light, and shot out of the guild building in every direction, scattering into the streets and corners of Magnolia and disappearing from sight.
"During the civil war, my card monsters will operate freely. Whichever side encounters them can try to win them over as allies."
The hall went completely silent for a moment.
Laxus and the Thunder God Tribe stared at him. The Fairy Tail members on the other side stared at him. Nobody spoke.
"Chase," Makarov said, frowning tightly.
He could not follow the logic. He could not figure out why Chase would throw something like this into an already dangerous situation. But he had Chase's earlier warning sitting in his memory, and that was just barely enough to keep him from reacting before he understood more.
"What exactly are you doing?" Laxus asked, voice flat and cold.
"Didn't the guild master call this a boring farce? Since you're insisting on a fight, might as well make it worth watching."
A small smile formed at the corner of Chase's mouth.
"I'll play the neutral party."
"The neutral party." Laxus repeated the words slowly. Then something in him went very loud. "You think you can just declare yourself a neutral party and walk around ending the civil war whenever you feel like it?! These are MY rules! I made them!!"
To Laxus, from start to finish, this civil war had one purpose. It was meant to show every weak and naive person in this guild exactly how pathetic they were, push them into leaving on their own, and clear the way for him to rebuild Fairy Tail into something worth fearing. The only people he had ever genuinely wanted to face in this were Chase and Mystogan. Not even Erza and Mira registered as real competition to him.
And now Chase, the one person he had actually been looking forward to, was not only refusing to participate properly but was standing there calling himself a neutral party with a straight face.
That was not something Laxus was capable of accepting.
"Of course, if you want to skip all of this," Chase said, looking at him without changing expression, "you could just smash the stone statues right now and we fight here directly."
He said it flat and steady. He knew Laxus would not do it. Laxus was many things, but he was not that. Deep underneath all the arrogance and the anger and the twisted ideas about what strength meant, the reason Fairy Law would be completely powerless in his hands was already there. Chase knew it. He was betting on it.
And if somehow something went wrong, the Dead Revival card still existed. Nothing irreversible would happen here.
He held the initiative completely.
Killing intent surfaced in Laxus's eyes. His voice dropped to something very cold.
"Is that a threat, Chase?"
"Do you remember the offer you made before? If you actually win this war, I said it wasn't impossible for me to stand by your side." Chase's expression stayed relaxed. "That offer is still on the table."
The killing intent in Laxus's eyes flickered. The fury behind it shifted.
"Heh." Something between a smirk and a genuine smile crossed his face. "You're right. The strongest guild does need a man like you."
He looked at Chase for a moment longer.
"Fine. As a show of tolerance toward my future subordinate, I'll accept the additional rule."
"Then let's begin. The Fairy War starts now!!"
Blinding lightning filled the hall. When it faded, Laxus and the Thunder God Tribe were gone, leaving nothing behind but the cold row of stone statues standing on the stage.
Elfman, Alzack, Droy, and the others had not been following the finer points of the exchange. They knew what mattered. Their family members and companions were frozen and being held hostage, and Laxus was somewhere in Magnolia. They charged out of the guild shouting, scattering into the streets.
Waiting at the guild entrance, having been sent there in advance by Chase before any of this started, a small army of Kuribohs stood ready. Multiplied by card magic, the little round furballs split off and moved out, each one tracking a guild member into the city.
They had two jobs. One was to record every battle with a magic camera and send the footage to Dark Magician for analysis. The other was to make sure nobody died. They were Chase's insurance policy across the entire civil war, his way of making sure his people were covered no matter what happened out there.
He had gone to some effort for this group of trouble-loving disaster magnets.
The guild hall, which had been packed with noise and people moments ago, was suddenly very quiet. Makarov stood looking at the stone statues. Chase stood beside him. Happy floated near Natsu, who was still on the floor trying to remember where he was.
"You already knew Laxus was going to do something like this." Makarov had returned to his small form. His expression was serious and reading Chase carefully. He had noticed the Kuribohs moving out with the guild members. "I can see that clearly."
"I can't hide anything from you, old man," Chase said, with a small scratch of the back of his head.
"I won't ask where the information came from. That doesn't matter right now." Makarov looked at the petrified figures on the stage, and his voice came out quiet and heavy. "Can you guarantee Erza and the others will be safe?"
"Yes." Chase let the smile go and nodded once, directly.
Makarov looked at him for a moment. Then he exhaled slowly, waved his hand, and said nothing more.
He had believed he had not misjudged Chase. He still believed that. Chase's behavior looked reckless on the surface and was actually completely measured underneath. That was the pattern, and it had not broken yet.
"Then I'll leave it to you. Go do what needs to be done."
After confirming that the old man was not heading toward the kind of cardiac event that Chase had specifically been trying to prevent, Chase turned toward the door.
"Hey, Chase! Stop right there!!"
Natsu's voice came from behind him. He had gotten off the floor and gotten the situation explained to him by Happy, and he had processed it in the specific way that Natsu processed things.
"Being the neutral party means if I beat you, you join our side, right?!"
His fists were already burning. His grin was enormous. He looked like someone who had been handed a gift.
"That's about right," Chase said, turning back. "But first you'd have to actually get out of the"
Natsu was already charging.
Thump.
He hit the invisible wall face-first at full speed, his features compressing against the barrier in a way that did not look comfortable. He bounced back and stood there blinking, pressing both hands against the air in front of him.
"What is this?! Why can't I get through?!"
He started punching and kicking the empty air with rapidly growing frustration.
"This is..." Makarov walked over slowly and looked up at the faintly glowing magical letters floating across the doorway. His eyebrows rose. "Freed's magic formula. The rule says... 'Those over eighty years of age and stone statues may not pass'?"
Letter magic was a rule-barrier type of magic. Once set, anyone inside was bound by its conditions and could not exit unless they met the criteria. It did not matter how much raw power the target had. The rules were absolute. The only counters were specific techniques designed to break letter magic directly.
The downside was that it required preparation. It had to be written and inscribed in advance. The range was fixed once set.
"Wait." Makarov's expression changed as something clicked. He pressed both hands to his forehead. "Natsu... does that mean you're already eighty years old?!"
"AM I EIGHTY?!"
Natsu performed the exact same startled gesture at the exact same moment, arms out, eyes wide.
The grandfather and grandson energy in this building was something else entirely.
"Hey hey hey, I can go right through!" Happy called out cheerfully, flying in and out of the doorway several times in a row to demonstrate. "Look! Watch! In and out! In and out!"
"Hahaha, rough luck, Natsu. Looks like you've got a problem on your hands."
Chase had expected this. He waved at Natsu from the other side of the barrier with genuine amusement. "Sort it out and we can talk. See you on the other side."
He turned into a streak of golden light and vanished down the street.
"DAMN IT! DAMN IT! DAMN IT!"
Natsu attacked the barrier with Dragon Slayer magic. The air wall did not care.
"If I can't beat Chase and Laxus, I can't win the strongest tournament!"
He kept swinging.
Makarov watched him for a moment, then looked in the direction Chase had disappeared.
"Natsu," he said quietly. "This isn't a tournament. Erza and the others' lives are on the line."
"Come on, old man." Natsu lowered his fist slightly and glanced back, his tone completely certain. "Laxus is super annoying, yeah. But he's still a bad friend from our guild. He's not actually going to do anything that messed up. He's just messing around."
A bad friend.
Even now. Even after all of this.
Makarov stood very still. He knew Natsu. He knew this was not naivety exactly but something more fundamental, something that lived at the core of how Natsu understood the world. And because he knew that, the words landed somewhere unexpected and left him standing in silence for a moment longer than he had planned.
"Um... Guild Master..."
A quiet voice came from behind one of the pillars near the back of the hall. Lucy stepped out slowly, looking like someone who had survived a disaster by making very good decisions about where to hide during it.
"Lucy, you too?" Makarov looked at her.
He was genuinely surprised. Natsu had grown up alongside Laxus, so there was history there. But Lucy had only joined the guild recently, and Laxus had targeted her directly.
Makarov's expression shifted for just a moment toward something that might have been a hopeful fantasy.
Lucy read it instantly and shut it down.
"Guild Master. Please do not think whatever you are thinking right now. I have absolutely no positive feelings toward Laxus. None."
She said it with great clarity.
"What I mean is, if Laxus actually intended to hurt Erza and the others, Chase-san would have already turned his face into a potato before any of these rules got explained. The fact that he proposed the neutral party thing means he knows exactly how this ends." She crossed her arms. "I trust Chase-san. Not Laxus."
Makarov was quiet.
She was right. He knew she was right. Worry had been clouding his thinking since the moment Laxus appeared on that stage. Without Chase's earlier assurance he might already be in critical condition right now. Lucy's plain, direct summary of the actual situation cut through the fog in a way that helped more than she probably knew.
And underneath it, there was the same thing Natsu had said, just arriving from a different angle. Chase's neutral party, Chase's careful setup, Chase's complete calm in the face of Laxus's theatrics. It all pointed the same direction.
He believed in Laxus too. Just like Natsu. He was just doing it through preparation instead of instinct.
Buzz.
Purple light pulsed at the doorway. The floating letters of Freed's magic formula rearranged themselves into a live information panel and began updating in real time.
"Real-time Battle Report: Attaching Magic Nab vs. Dancer Magic Bisca. Nab wins."
"Telepathy Magic Warren vs. Sand Magic Max. Warren wins."
"Purple Flame Magic Macao and Smoke Magic Wakaba are currently in an extremely fierce battle."
"Wood-Make Magic Laki has successfully persuaded card monster Queen's Knight to join her team."
"Jet failed to persuade Summoned Skull. Successfully received a fashionable afro hairstyle as a consolation prize."
"THEY'RE ALL OUT THERE HAVING FUN AND I'M STUCK IN HERE?!"
Natsu stared at the scrolling updates with the specific anguish of someone watching a party happen through a locked window. He redoubled his assault on the barrier, Dragon Slayer magic flying in every direction, accomplishing nothing.
"Where exactly in any of that does it look fun to you?!" Lucy jabbed a finger at the panel.
She stared at it for a few more seconds. Then she took a breath, squared her shoulders, and felt something firm up in her chest.
She could not handle Laxus. That was a fact she had made peace with. But Chase was a different situation entirely. When it came to acting cute, using charm, sweet-talking someone into lowering their guard, was Chase really going to be that hard to manage?
She was younger. She was personable. She knew him fairly well at this point.
She could absolutely pull this off.
"Decision made," Lucy announced. "I'm going out there to capture Chase-san, the neutral party."
Happy drifted over and looked at her with an expression that radiated gentle concern.
"Hey hey, Lucy. I don't know what you're basing that confidence on, but you're really brave~"
"Shut your mouth, you tiny little traitor! Don't underestimate the bond between me and Chase-san!" Lucy pointed at him fiercely. "I know exactly how to handle that Card freak!"
Happy opened his mouth.
"You'll die~"
Lucy was already running for the door. She shot through the barrier, which had absolutely no problem with her passing, and disappeared down the street at speed.
She had a point to prove. To Happy, and maybe to herself a little bit.
"Um... Guild Master... I am very sorry. I was not able to do anything useful."
A round figure stepped out from behind one of the hall pillars, moving slowly with a face full of genuine guilt. It was Reedus, the drawing magic mage, his usual cheerful expression nowhere to be found.
He had not charged out with the others. When Laxus had appeared and the lightning had cracked across the stage and the whole situation became something much more serious than a beauty contest gone wrong, Reedus had found a pillar and stayed behind it. He was not proud of it.
"Reedus, do not blame yourself." Makarov's voice was kind. "Leave Laxus to Chase and the others. What I actually need from you right now is something else."
He looked at the stone statues on the stage.
"Can you go to the cabin in the eastern forest and bring Porlyusica here?"
Porlyusica was Fairy Tail's consulting pharmacist. Chase and the Kuribohs were out there, and the situation was as controlled as it could be, but serious injuries were still possible. Medical preparations needed to be in place before they were needed. And there was a chance Porlyusica had something that could address the petrification directly.
"Of course! I'll go right now!"
The relief of having something concrete and useful to do lit up Reedus's face. He accepted the task without hesitation and headed out.
Natsu watched him go, teeth grinding, fists clenched, staring at the air wall with a fury that had nowhere productive to go.
"Can you be a little quieter?" A flat voice came from somewhere above. "You're disturbing my sleep, you useless lot."
Gajeel dropped down from one of the overhead beams where he had apparently been sitting the entire time, landed with a thud, and looked annoyed at having been made to wake up for this.
"You want to go?!" Natsu spun on him with the full force of everything he had been building up. "Come on then, iron scrap!"
Gajeel did not take the bait. For once, he simply did not engage. He wiped something off his face, looked at Makarov, and said in a straightforward voice, "Laxus's situation should be dealt with first. I'll go and stop those idiots."
Makarov nodded. "Be careful. Do what you can."
"I'm confident enough when it comes to fighting." Gajeel rolled his shoulders, walked toward the door with steady, sure steps, drew back slightly for momentum, and walked straight through into the barrier.
Thump.
The sound of an Iron Dragon Slayer's forehead hitting a magical air wall was, it turned out, noticeably crisper and more resonant than a Fire Dragon Slayer's.
Makarov said nothing.
Natsu said nothing.
Happy said nothing.
The three of them looked at Gajeel standing with his face pressed against the invisible wall and collectively arrived at a point where words seemed insufficient.
"....."
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