The Blue Pheasant Flies On

Chapter 5: Past and the Future

Mone

Ur and Kuzan were sitting in a local bar while waiting for Gildarts to come back from his meeting. The Fairy Tail mage had a stack of jobs that he was going through and one of them was to kill the monster that was preventing anyone from crossing the Kaysh River. They needed to cross the river in order to reach their now named destination, Fairy Tail. Gildarts was the man Ur had mentioned when she had talked about leaving with Kuzan and after hearing some of the man's stories, Kuzan could admit to being curious as well.

Gildarts was at his meeting with the town's mayor and Ur had told Gray and Lyon to go off and explore the city. It was much bigger than the small towns they had visited back home and she knew that they'd be raring to explore. They were spending their time relaxing and enjoying a coffee. Gildarts was going to go kill the beast and come back to get paid before picking them up and giving them directions to Fairy Tail from the other side. After that he was heading up north to finish some of his other jobs.

"Have you ever been in a guild before?" Kuzan suddenly asked. He didn't know much about Ur's past beyond her daughter's death, but she seemed almost eager to join Fairy Tail. With her strength she must have either been in a guild or working for the Magic Council. There was always the chance for an apprenticeship, but she knew too much about the guild system to make that a plausible option.

Ur was silent for a moment before she put her coffee down. "I was, once." She didn't say anything more and Kuzan was content to just wait. He had noticed that if Ur wanted to say something she would and if she didn't she wouldn't. Probing with leading questions wouldn't get him anywhere. All he could do was wait. Either she'd talk about her past or she wouldn't and that'd be that.

"My dad was a mage and my mom owned a flower shop in the town his guild was in. When I was little I'd split my time between helping my mom in the greenhouse and listening to my dad and his friends talking about the jobs they went on. I loved their stories, even though I knew that they were embellishing them for me it didn't matter. When I was eight my magic manifested itself in the nursery and I accidently froze my mom's rose garden," Ur gave a little chuckle at the memory of her mom's horrified face when she showed her the frozen flowers. "She kind of strong-armed my dad into teaching me magic after that. It was the best. They pulled me out of school and Dad would teach me how to fight while Mom taught me everything else that I'd need. I spent my days molding ice or taking care of flowers and my nights reading books."

Ur finished off her coffee and let herself get swept up in the nostalgia of simpler times. She then ordered a couple of shots of the strongest stuff the bar had before continuing. "I was a prodigy. I rose through the guild ranks and soon became not only an S-class wizard with a fancy moniker, but the guild's ace. 'Ice Rose' Ur Milkovich, the ace of Snow Angel and most likely candidate for the position of Wizard Saint."

Kuzan could tell by the mocking tone and subsequent shot following that statement that this story didn't get better.

"I fell in love with a guy named Shirato when I was in my twenties. Nice, sensitive, good-looking, everything that a girl could want in a man. We had fun, a lot more than we should have at times, and I wound up pregnant. I wasn't sure at first, so I took a solo job that require me to be gone for about a week. I finished it early and stopped at a hospital on the way back to confirm. That's when I learned about Urtear."

There went another shot.

"I was a regular mess after that. I hadn't given any thought to having kids, that was something old people did. But there I was, unmarried, at the peak of my career, and Shirato and I had never discussed if we wanted to have kids or not nor had we considered how far we wanted to take our relationship. I spent the whole trip back worrying over what I was going to tell him and, even worse, what I was going to tell my parents. Turns out, I shouldn't have worried."

Two more downed with a bitter chuckle.

"The town was gone, buried under a massive avalanche. A couple of local dark guilds had heard that I was going to be gone for a week and had banded together to attack Snow Angel. Someone's spell had gone wide and they hit the mountain. The whole place was destroyed in minutes. There wasn't anyone left with enough magic to remove the snow and they all died. That had happened six days before I got back. They were still digging out the bodies when I got there. My parents, my guild, my friends, Shirato, all gone. They were dead and I hadn't even known." Ur took a shaky breath and Kuzan could see that her knuckles had gone white. After she had composed herself she continued, "I recovered as much of my things as I could and the guild's money—I was its new owner by default. The guild master of none. I paid for the funerals, contacted the Magic Council to let them know that Snow Angel had been destroyed and that I was retiring. I moved far enough away that no one would have heard about Snow Angel or 'Ice Rose' Ur. I had Urtear and planned to raise her there and hope that she wasn't a natural magic user." Ur picked up the last shot glass and swirled it around a bit, "But things just didn't pan out that way."

Down it went.

Ur paused and stared at the glass in her hand for a second. "I probably shouldn't have done that so fast," she absently noticed before passing out on the table.

Kuzan leaned back in his chair after Ur was done. That was a lot more than he bargained for. He had asked if she had been in a guild and received her life's story in response. He didn't really care about her past, he just wanted to know what to expect with a guild.

He stood up and went over to pick Ur up. He pulled some bills out of her wallet and set them on the table before carrying her back to the hotel. It wasn't like he had any money to pay for those drinks. He dropped Ur off in her room and paused a moment to look at her. Now that she was asleep, he noticed the lack of several worry lines that she normally had. With a past like that it wasn't surprising to learn that she was constantly stressed. She probably hadn't told anyone that since it happened and that had to have been over ten years ago. He didn't know what it would be like to lose that many people at once, but he still felt bad for the woman.

Kuzan went over to his room and sat down on one of the two beds he had pushed together. Great, now he was starting to think about all the people he had been friends with over the years that had been killed. Daniels, Captain Kurt, Commodore Shepard, John…

Saul.

It was a depressingly long list now that he stopped to look at it. It was expected when you had served in the Marines for as long as he had. Especially since he had lived through the rise of men that were now legends and spent most of your career in the "Golden Age of Piracy." It made him wonder how he managed to grow as old as he had, even with a logia Devil Fruit.

Great, now he was depressed. Fortunately, he had learned how to fix that a while ago. The tall man leaned back on the beds and shut his eyes. He idly noticed that he still needed to buy a sleeping mask before he nodded off.

Kuzan woke from his nap to the sound of someone pounding on his door. He got up and let out a jaw-cracking yawn before answering. Outside of the door was Gray, Lyon, Gildarts, a young scruffy looking girl with short brown hair, and a cleaner and prettier older girl with long brown hair. Kuzan gave them all a flat stare. "I was asleep for," he checked the clock, "an hour. What could you three have possibly gotten into in that time that ends with two more tagalongs?" Seriously, they might as well buy a wagon at this point.

Gildarts scratched the back of his head awkwardly, "That's a funny story." He then went on to explain that Cappuccino, the local feudal lord, was an ass who had purchased the two sisters to work for his bar. Amelie, the older sister, had asked Gildarts to free her sister and take her away with him after he finished his job. Gildarts decided to take things a step further and he grabbed Amelie, punched a guy through a window, and escaped to find her sister, Mary. Gray and Lyon had already found Mary and were helping her carry things to the bar Gildarts had just exited. He grabbed everyone and threw them over his shoulders. He then fled to the dock and had them take off so that he could finish the job and escape Cappuccino. They were attacked by the Unicol and Cappuccino, who was still pursuing them with the help of one of his henchmen. Gray and Lyon claimed that they could take care of the Unicol, so Gildarts easily defeated the henchman and blew back the water so that they could prove it. Then they crossed the road and were met with the Council's army. They arrested Cappuccino and traveled back across the river and ended up here.

Kuzan briefly contemplated freezing them all, but ultimately decided against it. The girls didn't deserve it and Gildarts would be unaffected. He settled for saying, "There was nothing funny about that story."

"You gotta admit that it was a little funny."

"You three forgot about us until you crossed the river," Kuzan deadpanned.

The three males nervously avoided looking Kuzan in the eye as they stammered out paper-thin denials. Even if they had bothered to come up with a good excuse they were sweating worse than a bunch of chore boys sitting in a room with Sakazuki. He let out a sigh, it wasn't worth the effort to deal with them. "I don't care. But I'm not telling Ur," Kuzan declared. He took a small amount of joy at the looks on their faces before he shut the door in their faces and went back to his nap.

He didn't get to drift off on account of Ur yelling at the three for leaving them behind. Then there was a softer knocking at his door. He opened the door to an irritated Ur. She walked past him and collapsed face down on the bed and let out a long moan into the mattress. She rolled over and stared at the ceiling. "What did I drink last night?"

"It was an hour ago and you ordered whatever the strongest thing in that bar was. Five shots of it."

"Oh, God. I told you about my childhood," Ur groaned as her memories came back. "Oh, God. I told you about my guild. I haven't talked about that in years."

"To be fair, I only wanted to know if you had been in a guild before," Kuzan pointed out. He also wanted to point out that she had decided to tell him about her past before they started drinking, but wisely kept his mouth shut. Instead, he sat down next to Ur. "Do you feel better after talking about it?" he awkwardly asked. He didn't really pay attention during the mandated therapy sessions he had to attend when he was just starting out as a Marine, but it sounded like something they might have asked him once. Maybe. They really didn't bother with those after you started serving on the Grand Line. You either adapted to the insanity or they slapped you with a Section Eight and dumped you off on an island devoted solely to a giant insane asylum.

"A little bit? I don't know. It felt better to freeze that destructive idiot and my slightly less idiotic students for leaving us behind," Ur admitted. "I don't like thinking about the could-have-beens in my life. There's so many things that could have happened. I could've stayed in my mom's flower shop, I could've not gotten pregnant, I could've told Shirato about Urtear and stayed in town, I could've just gone to the hospital instead of taking a job to have an alibi. So many different choices that could have been a better life."

Ur's words left Kuzan thinking about his own could-have-beens. The way he could have done things differently in the past. He could have never eaten his Devil Fruit, could have been more motivated to train under Garp when he was younger to beat Sakazuki, could have stood up to the Marines with their "Absolute Justice." Dammit, now he was depressed again. He really hated this introspective stuff. He needed to change the subject.

"Would you change it?"

Ur looked over at Kuzan. She wasn't sure she had heard him right. "What?"

"If you had the chance, would you go back and change your actions?" he clarified.

Ur thought about his words. Would she? If she could change it she could save so many people: her parents, her guild, her lover, her town. She could have become a Wizard Saint, respected and acknowledged across all of Ishgar as one of the strongest mages on the continent. She could have gotten married, Urtear would have still died, but she might have had other children. She would have never lost her leg to Deliora. It was nice to imagine a life full of her old family and friends, happily swapping stories and going on jobs in Snow Angel.

But there were things missing from the idyllic picture she was painting. Her students weren't there. They'd have lost their lives in the aftermath of Deliora's attack, frozen to death in a destroyed city surrounded by corpses. And it wasn't just them, Ur had saved many others after Snow Angel was destroyed. She had officially retired, but people still found ways to contact her about strong monsters that had grown in the mountains. She had met Gildarts on one of those requests after she had saved a couple of kids from a monster. If Snow Angel had survived, then she wouldn't have been able to save Kuzan either. He would have frozen to death up in the mountains or been attacked by a monster and eaten.

"No," she finally answered. "I would love to save everyone that died, but I wouldn't want to never meet everyone that I met after their deaths. Snow Angel happened, it's a chapter of my life that hurts to remember and think about and I might reach for a bottle for a little self-medication every time it come up, but it happened. Things happen that you wish you could change, but you can't. That's life. I'd like to think that I've moved on from it. That sharp pain of agony is now a dull ache of sorrow. You can't reset the past, you've just got to move forward."

Kuzan regarded Ur for a moment, "That's a very admirable way to live. I've seen plenty of people stronger and wiser than you that have cracked under something far weaker."

That's right, Kuzan had served in a military for most of his life. "What about you?" Ur asked. "Are you one of those that have risen above your past tragedy to become stronger?" she joked.

Kuzan hadn't done anything like that. He had always pushed such things to the side. Always following orders so that he couldn't be blamed for acting on his own. Every time he took the initiative and followed his gut he ended up working against the Marines. Robin stood out prominently in his mind. The only survivor of Ohara that he had let go as a tribute to his fellow Vice Admiral Saul's memory after he froze the giant to death. Done more out of guilt than actually feeling bad for the girl. He never went out of his way to do anything that could make his life harder. Any tragedy he avoided or ignored. He spent his time training the next generation of Marines so that he would be the last choice to send out to perform some menial task for the World Nobles. He was just too lazy to form a real attachment with people that was strong enough for him to care if they died.

"No."

In the end, he was just a lazy bastard that had done the bare minimum he needed to become strong enough to be given a mostly free reign of the seas. He lost to 'Fire Fist' Ace for fuck's sake. It was a tie, but he knew that he had lost that fight. The only advantage the kid should have had over him was his Devil Fruit, yet he was able to hold Kuzan to a standstill. No wonder he had only managed to scar Sakazuki, the bastard was stronger than him in every category.

Ur mistook Kuzan's self-deprecation and dour expression for a reaction to her question. She hastily apologized, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to intrude or bring up any bad memories."

Kuzan waved off her concerns, "It's fine. You didn't mean anything by it. I'm just thinking about… things," he lamely finished.

The atmosphere in the room turned awkward. The two sat on the beds without saying anything and fidgeted in place. They always seemed to end up talking about depressing things when they were left alone. Was that what drew them together? A pair of shitty pasts that sent them away from their old lives and into a journey to find a better one?

Both ice users let out a silent sigh of relief when there was a cracking sound and Gildarts shattered the ice surrounding himself, Gray, and Lyon. Unfortunately, he also shattered the floor underneath them and sent the trio plus the sisters they rescued crashing down onto the first floor. The sound of their curses floated into Kuzan's room and caused the pair to break into a small smile.

"I guess we should pack up and go help those idiots. How they ever managed to do anything without us is beyond me." Ur stopped at the doorway and looked back to Kuzan, "Even if it didn't help much, thank you for listening."

"Anytime."

Kuzan raised an eyebrow at Ur's back and waited for her to say something. She stubbornly refused to look at him and had crossed her arms to emphasize the fact that she didn't want to talk. Kuzan waited a few more seconds before turning back to the cause of her current petulance. The train they were taking to Magnolia Town had its entire front car frozen to the tracks by Ur. "Arara. Isn't that a little overkill?"

"It's a perfectly reasonable response," Ur defended without turning around.

"You froze the conductor."

Ur hmphed at him, "He wouldn't listen to reason."

Sure, if reason's new definition was "whatever Ur said". After they had all crossed the Kaysh River (with Ur pointing out all the time that could have been saved if some people hadn't forgotten their beautiful teacher and traveling companion and Kuzan noting that he needed a new bike) Gildarts had given Ur a letter for Fairy Tail's master and split off to work on his pile of jobs. They had traveled with the newly freed sisters until they reached a fork in the road. The girls had gone north to where their relatives lived and the ice-make mages went west to Magnolia. There had been a brief incident with a thief in Foss, but Ur had frozen him in place after he tried to steal her savings and they had turned him over to the authorities. He had apparently been wanted in connection to a captured thief guild and they got a nice little reward that bought their train tickets. There had been an incident at the end of the train during the travels involving a poaching guild and two giant mole creatures. Some young mage had gone berserk on the poachers and destroyed the entire guild, the cage, and the caboose itself. He calmed down when Gray dropped a block of ice on him and explained the situation. Then Ur got pissed at them for abducting a baby mole-thing and, in her own words, "froze their balls off." He didn't check to see if she was being literal.

Which all led up to now. Apparently, Ur hadn't lost all of that rage, so when the conductor had said they had finished the repairs and were taking off before Gray, Lyon, and mage-kid whose name he never learned were back from exploring she froze the train in place. A completely rational response for pirates on the Grand Line or a toddler that didn't get its way maybe, but not for a thirty-something, respectable S-class mage that was raising two kids.

Speaking of kids, Kuzan felt the three enter his Haki's range. "Kids are back," he dully informed Ur's back.

The woman let out a sniff and unfroze the train. "Not a word of this," she warned the witnesses before boarding the train and finding her seat.

The conductor wiped his brow and looked at Kuzan, "And you're traveling with her voluntarily?" He gave a grunt of confirmation and the man raised a hand to pat his shoulder only to realize that his arm wouldn't go that high and settled for thumping him in the middle of his back. "You are a brave and strong soul, my friend," he said in a solemn tone that was tinged with a hint of awe. Kuzan just gave him a strange look. The people in this world were weird. All women were scare like that. Vice Admiral Tsuru was still the only person that could get Garp to listen to her without pulling rank—most of the time—for a reason.

After that there were no further incidents involving trains. They arrived in Magnolia Town and the other kid split away from them to go do whatever young, unattended mages with hair-trigger tempers and a tendency to destroy things with magic went. On second thought, they probably should have kept an eye on him. But on the other hand, Kuzan didn't want to deal with a kid like that so it wasn't his problem.

They had quickly gotten directions to the Fairy Tail guild from a map at the train station. Once they reached it, Kuzan was sure that they would have been fine finding their own way to it. It was an impressive looking building that stood at the end of town and was taller than pretty much every building in town except for the cathedral. There was a big sign with the guild name on it over the entranceway and the guild symbol proudly displayed on a sign on the building's front.

"This is Fairy Tail," Gray said in amazement. He was excited to see their new home. Gildarts had hyped it up as a place filled with super strong mages with his story and the two kids that had heard them were filled with excitement, no matter how much Lyon was trying to hide his.

Ur had walked up to the door and found a piece of paper on the door. She swore after reading it and Kuzan walked up behind her, "What is it?"

She held the paper out to him. "They're away," she summarized the short message. The paper was pinned to the door with an icicle. "What the hell do they mean, 'away?!'" she yelled out in frustration.

"Probably that they aren't here," Lyon snarked at his teacher. He quickly regretted it when she leveled a glare at him that had him desperately wishing he had kept his mouth shut. "Um, I mean, I'm hungry?"

Ur glared at him a moment longer before sighing in frustration. "Yeah, sure. Let's get something to eat.

They stopped at a café that was close to the guild and ordered some pretty decent food. It would have been better if Ur wasn't constantly complaining about Fairy Tail being closed the whole time. She apparently had been more excited to join than her students. "I'm just saying that it's completely unprofessional for an entire guild to skip town like that," Ur finished making the same point for the fifth time.

"Who are youse guys?" a rough sounding voice asked them. They looked over to see a younger guy in a leather jacket smoking a cigarette and drinking a large mug of beer while leaned back in his chair. He had the most ridiculous pompadour they had ever seen and was wearing a pair of sunglasses even though it was pretty cloudy out. All in all, he looked like a teenager trying too hard to be cool. The man took a deep swig of his beer before continuing, "Youse gots some business with Fairy Tail?"

Ur glared at the man, but kept her temper in check. He seemed to know something about Fairy Tail. She could freeze him later. "We're mages looking to join the guild. I was given a letter to give to the master from one of their mages."

"A letter, huh? Who's the one that gave ya that letter?" the man asked while putting his mug down. They now had his full attention.

"Gildarts."

"Gildarts?!" the man exclaimed in surprise. His chair hit the ground with a thud and the smoke cloud that had been hovering around his head shot out and snagged the letter before Ur could react. He examined the writing on the envelope, "Yep, that's Gildarts's writing all right." No one else could manage to write in a scrawl that was bad enough to give the reader a headache, yet still be legible quite like him.

The man then found himself frozen up to his head in ice with a very pissed off woman in his face. Never a good place to find oneself. She snatched the letter out of his smoke before freezing that as well. How did she even do that? She even got the tip of his cigarette. The man had more pressing things to be concerned about though, "You have until five to explain yourself before I freeze your balls off. Five."

"WAIT, wait! I'm a Fairy Tail mage," the man shouted out. "I'm Wakaba Mine. Half of the Smoke and Fire team. My marks on my chest. Please don't freeze me," he pleaded. He preferred his balls unfrozen, thank youse very much.

Ur gave him an unconvinced look but unfroze his torso. Wakaba unzipped his jacket and lifted up his shirt to show that there was indeed a Fairy Tail mark on his chest. The man sighed in relief when Ur unfroze the rest of him and he took a very deep drink from his mug. "Thanks fer not freezing me solid," he grudgingly said.

"Where's Fairy Tail?" Ur demanded. She wasn't feeling a lot of patience for the man right now.

"They're out on vacation. Every year the whole guild goes on vacation after the S-Class Trails, sorta like a big 'The assholes on the Council didn't shut us down this year' celebration. They should be back tomorrow," Wakaba explained.

Ur relaxed a little. So things weren't so bad after all. She had been afraid that they were going to have to wait in Fairy Tail for over a week before they got back. "Is there a place we can wait for them?"

Wakaba puffed on a new cigarette while thinking. He could have offered for them to crash at his place for the night, but the lady scared him so that was out. He'd just show them to a hotel. "There's a hotel called the Fairy's Garden nearby. We use it for people that are visiting Fairy Tail and new recruits that haven't found a place to stay yet. Youse guys qualify for that last one. Although," he looked Kuzan up and down, "I don't think they'll have a bed big enough for youse."

"I'm used to it," Kuzan replied. He was going to have to see if there was a way to magically shrink himself. Hitting his head off of the ceiling and doorframes and having to make his own bed out of ice was getting quite annoying.

"Suit youseself," Wakaba said with a shrug. He downed the last of his drink and left some money on the table before leading them through town. The Fairy's Garden was a small two story building that was just out of earshot of Fairy Tail's antics while still being in sight of the building. Wakaba signed them in with an explanation that the girl they normally had running the desk was also on vacation. The rent was cheap and they settled on three rooms.

"And like that youse all are good," Wakaba said as he finished signing a paper. "Here's your keys and I guess I'll be seeing youse around the guild." He walked out the door with a "Welcome to Magnolia," thrown over his shoulder before going back to his day drinking. These sorrows weren't going to drown themselves!

Fairy Tail had gotten back from their vacation late last night, so the Ice Mages stayed another night in the Fairy's Garden after spending the day exploring Magnolia Town. The next morning saw them walking into an open and decently filled Fairy Tail. Kuzan appreciated the tall ceiling and entranceway that he didn't have to duck to fit under. This place was already at the top of his list of good places to stay in this new world.

Ur confidently led them over to a short old man with a gray moustache and a strange orange hat. She stopped in front of the man and nodded to him, "Master Makarov."

"Hm?" the old man hummed before taking a good look at her. His eyebrows went up in surprise. "Ur? Well that's a face that I thought would never grace our doorstep," he said with a big smile on his face. "How have you been?"

"Pretty good. Picked up some students, lost a leg. Nothing too exciting," Ur joked.

She was indeed walking on an ice construct. So was her tall companion. That was a story that Makarov would have to hear later. But for now, he cared more about why she was in Fairy Tail. "Would you happen to be coming out of retirement?" the old man asked in a tone that was both curious and a little hopeful. He had always like Ur and had back her as a candidate for the Wizard Saint position. Whether that had hurt or helped her case he had never found out since she had retired before a decision was made.

Ur smiled at the old man. Makarov always was a sharp one. "It just so happens that I am. These are my students, Gray and Lyon," she gestured to the boys.

"Hey, Gramps," Gray said while Lyon just grunted. Ur made a mental note to increase combat training later for their disrespect.

"Sorry about their attitudes. They're boys." The two students felt a shiver go up their spines at Ur's tone. They knew they were in for it next training session.

"Yes. My grandson is around their age," Makarov nodded in sympathy. He felt her pain. "Children are so disrespectful to those that take care of them."

Ur nodded back, "Indeed." She then brought the conversation back to her request, "We would like to join the Fairy Tail guild."

Makarov's grin grew wider, "Of course. And what about your tall friend?"

Shit. Ur had forgotten about Kuzan. He had never given an indication if he wanted to join Fairy Tail or not. She had invited him on her journey West and he had tagged along without issue, but what if he wanted to keep moving? He was a wanted man by his home country. Settling down in a famous guild might not be good for his cover.

Ur didn't need to worry. Kuzan had already decided to join the guild. It was home to everyone he had gotten to know in this world and seemed like a decent enough place. He could live with doing some merc work to make a living. It's what he would have done if he hadn't joined the Marines anyways, and there was no way he was enlisting in the army to work his way up from a chore boy again. That shit was for the birds. "I would also like to join." He noticed that Ur and her students breathed out little sighs of relief at his decision. It was nice to know that someone wanted him around.

"Oh. I'm supposed to give this to you," Ur said while pulling out the letter. "Gildarts gave it to me."

Makarov took the letter and could feel a headache coming on. Damn Gildarts and the chicken scratch he called penmanship. Makarov read the letter and nodded at its contents. He stood up and jumped up to the railing while performing several backflips and sticking the landing. "Listen up, you brats!" he yelled out at the guild to get their attention. All noise stopped as they looked up at Makarov for his announcement. "We've got four new members joining us today! Gray and Lyon here," he pointed down at the two boys that had somehow managed to lose both their shirts in the time it took Makarov to get up there. "And, by recommendation of Gildarts, our two new S-Class mages, Ur Milkovich and Kuzan!"

Kuzan and Ur both jerked their heads up to stare at Makarov as the guild erupted in applause. S-Class? That's what had been in Gildarts's letter?

Makarov hopped back down to the counter. "Congratulations, you two. That's the first time Gildarts has ever recommended someone be made S-Class without taking the test. We're expecting great things from you." He was going to make Ur an S-Class mage anyways, from what he could sense from her, her power had only grown since her retirement. She wasn't slacking with her students training. The surprise came in the form of Kuzan. Gildarts had said that had supposedly killed Deliora up north and was stronger than Ur. Makarov could feel that, but killing one of Zeref's demons was no small feat. He wondered just how strong this mystery man actually was.

Bah, enough of those thoughts. It was time for celebration. Makarov reached down under the bar and pulled out the guild stamp. "Now, where do you want your marks?"

A/N: Hey, look. I updated a thing. So, we're at Fairy Tail now. Next chapter or two are going to be shorter and will focus on our favorite little orphans joining the guild and how Kuzan will interact with them. That'll be for a few chapters before we get to canon events. Even then I'll probably have Kuzan and Ur off somewhere doing some S-class stuff. Or fluff. God knows that my fics could use some more of that. Until then, later.