The four wizards Mavis, Erza, Irene and Zeref felt their universe pull them apart at the climax of their battle. Mavis' stomach churned from the jostling plane shift before she ended up thrown alone into a barren white expanse. She was free from the black wizard's clutches but her body hit this floor face first causing her to black out on impact. Her life was in the hands of luck itself now.
Blood drips from Mavis' face the moment she revives from her earlier death. She touches it and spouts, "Great, I died again."
The girl feels happy though that she did not die in Zeref's presence as she gazes out at the emptiness before her. She sees no way out. This makes her wonder whether she truly died or not, or if this is a bad dream, so she gets up on both feet to find clues. Wherever she landed, she intended to find the exit, find Erza and the others and get back to defeating Zeref. The girl takes her first steps and for the next two days travels with this intent in the back of her mind. She manages to take breaks here and there but on the third day of her trip runs out of energy and water and dies again. When she revives a second time, she traverses a third day without food or water while feeling sudden and intense pressure on her joints. This eventually crushes her and she dies yet again. The third time she awakens on the fourth day in this strange place she confirms her Ankh Seram or Contradictory Curse is working based on how many times she has already died.
This last death gives her pause in what she should do. Mavis knows she cannot keep traversing this strange place, as she will simply continue to die yet knows that if she does not look for an exit she will never escape. She needs a better plan; otherwise, she might go mad.
Plans to escape become harder than they seem for every time she tries concentrating on ideas to use her voice echoes inside her head. The wizard finds she is repeating the same ideas like, "What if I walk this way or maybe that way." She remains lost in thought for another three hours until she finally slumps over onto her stomach and admits defeat. There is no way to leave the place that she can conceive alone. All hope appears lost to her until she finally notices a pavilion topped with emerald colored dome and two-hour glasses on either side of it sitting before her.
The pavilion is new and she does not remember it appearing to her before now. She considers, "Maybe I was so lost in thought I missed it?"
The structure draws her in and she finds herself walking up a set of stairs into a rather homely kitchen with chairs a table in the center of it. She looks to her left and notices a wing leading to a bedroom and bathing area complete with a giant tub. She also looks to her right and finds another wing to this building where a giant storage room lays packed with food and water. The girl cannot contain herself and dives straight into this room's supplies finding a multitude of sandwiches and other goods to fill her empty stomach. She stuffs her face with tuna sandwiches and when full heads out to the kitchen table, sits and thinks, "I'm not going to die again. I have food."
One problem finds itself solved for Mavis for now but she still sees no way to escape the expanse. She can only think that somehow the curse she is under will randomly come undone and in doing so she will die for the last time. Her mind awaits this hopeful but it does not come for her over the next three hundred and sixty-one days. She passes that time by running about and playing by herself, eating or sleeping. Sometimes she practices her magic by creating sparking orbs of light in her hands though often gets a bit bored by that too since she is alone. She never travels far from the pavilion though as she does not want to die again out in the strange expanse beyond it.
Her life in this strange place slowly wants to kill her. It is what she hopes for too since, she is free of Zeref's clutches and cannot find a way to go home but her body never gives out. It just so happens that one day, at the end of this year alone, while exiting the bath she notices something different about her predicament. A door that was not normally there appears across from the front side of the kitchen table on the wall.
This door's handle suddenly moves and the girl jumps into action quickly dashing to the other side of the table where a fork she intended to eat with rests. She picks it up and with great enthusiasm grips it in her hand. The next thing Mavis knows she is dashing around the front side of this table and willingly getting ready to lunge at this strange phenomenon. Her green eyes glow with pride and her bare feet carry her to entryway, as the door swings completely open.
The person on the other side though senses this incoming attack, with one quick slap of their hand knocks the tool down into the floor upright then and screams before fleeing back through the door with the word, "HELP!" trailing through the air.
The door shuts behind this mysterious newcomer leaving Mavis unarmed while she tries to grab the door and open it. Mavis did not want her first human contact in forever to go yet finds herself unable to exit through the door. No matter how much she twists, pulls, or tugs at the handle the door will not budge. It frustrates her to no end as she takes to propping both arms against the door. She then leans forward and shouts, "Let me outta' here you bullies!"
The mage only hears her voice echo back at her and cries once more at her predicament. She just wants to go home but cannot due to her rather annoying circumstances. She felt that for the first time in a long while, someone had come to rescue her in the year she had ended up trapped there but now she was not so sure. The mage notes that someone is outside wherever she is and completely capable of coming into whatever this place is.
She walks defeated away from the door and slumps down in one of the chairs in the kitchen for moment feeling something strange about it too. "My legs feel longer."
It is true. While she has never measured her height since coming here, the girl knows she is normally four feet, eight inches tall this makes her taller than the guild's master Makarov by a foot in height. At this time though, Mavis feels like she has somehow grown four inches when she sits down and feels the tips of her toes almost touch the floor at the table.
She feels she cannot have grown taller since her curse would never let her age but then again this place was weird. The only way she was truly going to confirm this was if the person who had been at the door came back. She prayed they would because whatever this place was for, even if she still had her curse attached to her, Mavis might finally become an adult.
What Mavis did not know was that this place had a rather significant name it was the Hyperbolic Time Chamber of Universe 7. It rules were simply one could stay there for two years at a time, possibly longer, if they rationed out their supplies; but they had to enter through the door that person had come through to get into it as that was this place's only entrance or exit. Essentially, Mavis had broken the rules and come into the space through outside means.
Fortunately, this space was outside the realms of normal time and space, which could make that possible, but extremely unlikely. Its express purpose was to act as a useful training ground that could turn a day's worth of physical training into a full year. Because of this, people aged inside the building with one real day roughly equaling a full year there. This is why Mavis, an immortal who never aged, grew at all. She happily kicked her long legs and awaited the prospect of this person's return.
Meanwhile, Erza had a much softer landing. She came out of the vortex they made in a rather bustling modern city. Its tall buildings towered over her increasing her anxiety. She looks out-of-place in her armor and many people stare at her, especially her sword, out of fear or concern. Erza believes she still might be on the previous battlefield though.
"Where is Mavis?" She panics. She grabs the nearest civilian pulling them into a strong embrace with her sword across their throat. She wholehearted believes Zeref was creating an illusion to distract her even though her actions are extremely rash.
"Help!" the captured civilian screeches desperately with a strong feminine voice. Erza's actions catch the eye of passing civilians followed up with calls to the police and the wails of incoming cop cars. She runs from them with her hostage in tow yet the police cars surround the scene. When the armed officers step out of their cars, she realizes it is too late to let this person go and freezes on the spot while using them as a shield. It allows her to focus and see she has captured a woman of similar height and build to her own.
"Put your weapon down and release the woman criminal."
The chief officer orders this while they all point their handguns at her. Erza's whole body shook with the feeling she might be in another part of Earthland or Edolas. The primary reason being everybody felt too real to be an actual illusion. Yet the problem with this idea was nobody looked or acted like neither official magicians nor Doppelgangers she already knew. They appeared clueless about who she was, the image of Erza Scarlet was famous across all Ishgar and beyond, yet no one used magic around her.
"Just where am I?" She demanded while frowning at the officers. She pulled her arm across her captive's waist, tightening her grip, and pushing their blue hair across the front of their face while awaiting an answer.
"This is West City criminal. The domed building down the block is the world-famous Capsule Corp." One of the officers states in a ticked off way due to how clueless this kidnapper appeared about famous places. Erza leans her head slightly to the right and peers past the victim and officer at a white-topped dome, tan walls, and big logo with "CAPSULE Corp." written on it.
"Huh? I guess I am in neither Earthland nor Edolas. This really is a foreign place to me." Erza realizes aloud.
The officer fumes at her response and while this calms Erza for a moment, she does not release her captive. Instead, she brushes her sleeve against the woman's bare stomach to keep her grip on her. A soft sneeze from her hostage and Erza feels a strange chill crawl up her spine.
The phrase, "Bless you," escapes Erza's lips anyway.
The hostage responds with, "Its ah-right I just got to understand why a varmint like you kidnapped ME!" She then slams her elbow into Erza's gut for good measure. Erza staggers back from the pain only to catch a glimpse of this suddenly aggressive woman with blonde hair, not blue, running away. She dashes towards the police line and pulls out a handgun on them. A loud "BLAM!" resounds from the chamber and multiple rounds ricochet into the air causing the police to scatter. In the confusion, said woman disappears into the crowd beyond them leaving the police and Erza shocked.
The officers regain their focus and Erza sees them trying to encircle her again. She makes a similar mad dash through a gap in their lines and successfully leaps and slides over the hood of one of their parked cars, however, her wish to flee stops there. A short man wearing a police helmet, yellow polo with a star-shaped badge, purple shorts and brown boots blocks her path. Something about him felt threatening to her even though he was shorter than any man she ever knew save Makarov or Ichiya, but she would not let that stop her.
Erza backed herself against the car behind her and with a smile on her face asked, "How do you intend to stop me shrimp?"
She held her sword aloft and leveled it in front of her to defend herself but this challenger showed no signs of fear instead he dashed towards her leaped into the air and fired a kick into the side of her face. Erza tried to withstand this blow; however, it felt like ea train was hitting her at full speed. She had no idea how someone so small got so much energy into one attack, considering nobody here seemed to use magic, and felt her body crumple against the blow. Her face hit ground and along with the rest of her and her head spun out of control. The police officer landed and with a quick smack of his hands together smiled at his work.
He said to her as he bent over the red-head, "That's how I'll do this. I' just glad you decided on making Launch your victim today instead of someone else. It could have ended badly otherwise."
The blond or sometimes blue haired woman known as Launch was a known criminal whom had stolen many things but few knew she had a nice personality that switched to a bad one simply by sneezing. This particular officer did though because he knew both sides of her personally. Some of the police continued to search for this woman for questioning yet found no trace of her when canvassing the entire block. It was a surprise considering a number of vehicles had bullet holes in them yet no one was hurt. This was likely thanks to Launch's honed abilities to run and hide when she needed to as her bad self.
One of the officers then walked to the shorter one and reported to him, "We searched the entire block Officer Krillen, sir, but we couldn't find the other involved party. Is it okay to take the armored woman back to the police station with us?"
"Yeah, we'll be fine with this one," Krillen answered with a smile on his face. He then clicked a pair of handcuffs to Erza's wrists and hoisted her up from the ground. Krillen did not want to take her to jail but he had no choice considering how odd and dangerous she might be. He tried to pull her sword from her grip but her fingers clung to it like death itself.
It took some time but with the help of another officer they managed to get her to let go and Krillen walked her over to his scooter parked at the edge of the police barricade. He hopped on his motor scooter, and with the help of this same officer, let them lay Erza's arms around his shoulders while they stood her up. It looked rather awkward and comical but it worked for a short trip to their police station that was two blocks away.
Once they got there Krillen dismounted from the motor scooter, embarrassingly tucked Erza's legs around his waist and carried her inside. He then filled out the necessary paperwork and finally took her into an interrogation room with two chairs and a table between them. He would set Erza in one, then slowly move over to the other side, and hop into the other one to await her awakening. To make matters more interesting an officer then entered the room and set Erza's sword sheathed between them. After this, the officer left him a report and he read all the parts he missed for this hostage situation with a look of curiosity in his eyes.
"Let us see what you have to say," Krillen chuckles leaning forward to gaze intently at Erza with his beady black eyes. He hoped her arrival did not mean the potential return of someone like Frieza or an event like the Tournament of Power. That had ended a year ago and although they saved the universe from its complete destruction, peace was still hard to come by even if no one ever truly knew how close to the world's end Universe 7 had come to multiple times over the years. A full day passed before Erza awakened but in that span of time, things had started to change for both universes.