The Scars That Make You Whole
By CrimsonStarbird
Interlude: Mira and Lisanna in the Underworld
Alstonia, Three Days after Fairy Tail's Disbandment
"I'm sorry, I think there's been a misunderstanding," Lisanna said.
It was the first time she'd spoken those words in the city called Alstonia. It would not be the last. Unbeknownst to her, they were to become a kind of coping mechanism during her stay, repeated over and over until she came to the conclusion that she was the one misunderstanding, and the world was supposed to be utterly illogical.
Now, though, still several months shy of that epiphany, she insisted, "We don't want to buy your pub. We're only here to inquire about the waitressing job."
The owner of the Gehennan Princess, a wizened old man whose eyes spent half the conversation on his two visitors and half on the door they had entered through, folded his arms. "There won't be a waitressing job unless someone buys the bar."
"What about this one?" Mira wondered, handing over the flyer that had tempted them into travelling halfway across the kingdom for a job they could have done in any town or city they'd passed through. Beneath the name of the pub, and the grainy photograph they had used to identify it, it simply read 200,000J, no experience needed. "The Gehennan Princess sounded like the perfect place for me… I should have known the 200,000J monthly salary was too good to be true."
"Salary?" The old man's eyes bugged out. "That's the selling price of the bar!"
"What?" Lisanna asked in disbelief. "That's- that's ridiculous!" Yes, it was a little dark and a little grimy, but it was a big, welcoming space with a well-stocked bar, plenty of storage, and tables that would be perfectly serviceable after an introduction to a bucket of soapy water. She could already imagine how appealing it would look under the right lighting. "How can you possibly be trying to sell this amazing space for such a pittance?"
"Don't want it any more," the man grumbled. "The sooner I can get rid of it, the better. Are you going to take it, or not? Cash only."
"Of course not!" Lisanna cried, at the same time Mira said, "Absolutely!"
The sisters stared at each other.
"I thought we came here to work in a bar while we waited to hear what's going on with the guild," Lisanna pointed out. "You know, something normal. Spontaneously buying a really shady business is not normal!"
"You're right." Mira clenched her fist, and a very dangerous fire indeed ignited in her eyes. "It's not normal at all. But Natsu, Erza, and everyone else – they're not settling down somewhere with a nice, normal job, are they? They've all set out on training journeys. Even Elfman has gone beyond his comfort zone, with a new career in a new guild. We need to push our limits too, Lisanna! This is our training journey!"
"And how do you propose we pay for this training journey? Natsu's living wild in the mountains, not buying businesses!"
"We've got 200,000J cash, haven't we?"
"That's our rent deposit!"
"Oh, the apartments above the pub come as part of the deal," the elderly man interjected helpfully. "You can live there. Or use them as storage. It's all the same to me."
"Isn't it perfect?" Mira beamed.
"Well… I won't deny that it's a great opportunity, but… doesn't this whole set-up worry you?" Lisanna pressed.
"Nope."
"Not even a little bit?"
"Does Natsu worry about mutant cave beasts waking up in the middle of the night with a craving for Dragon Slayer kebab? Of course he does! Does he let that stop him? Absolutely not! Training journeys aren't supposed to be easy – they're about overcoming challenges to become a stronger person! One day, Fairy Tail will be whole once more, and how will we be able to look our friends in the eye if we back down now?"
"I suppose it is a very Fairy Tail thing to do…" Lisanna conceded. "Oh, what the hell. Let's do it."
Mira dropped the pouch containing their life savings onto the counter with a satisfying clink. "Sold, for 200,000 jewels!"
"Good, good," the vendor nodded, slapping documents down next to the pouch one by one. "Here's the contract, the land registry forms, the legal disclaimer, the other disclaimer, these three deeds of indemnity – sign two copies of each, perfect, thank you."
No sooner had Mira put down the pen than the owner swept up his copies of the forms and their life savings, shoved them into a duffel bag already bursting at the seams, hoisted the whole thing onto his back, and vaulted over the bar with astonishing agility for a man his age. "Congratulations, you now own the Gehennan Princess. Goodbye, and good luck!" he shouted over his shoulder, as he hightailed it out of the building.
"…Do you think we might have rushed into this?" Lisanna wondered dubiously, staring at the cloud of dust where he had vanished.
Mira wasn't listening. Humming happily to herself, she folded her new ownership documents neatly before scanning the interior of the pub with an appraising eye. "Wasn't that a stroke of luck?" she marvelled. "This place is in perfect working order! We've got equipment, stock, power, running water, and two experienced staff members in you and me… if we start now, we can clean the entire bar from top to bottom and still be ready to open tonight!"
"And what are we going to do when whatever forced the previous owner to flee under suspicious circumstances comes after us instead?" Lisanna wondered.
Mira waved the mop she'd found in a dismissive gesture, sending soapy bubbles drifting through the air. "Eh, we'll burn that bridge when we get to it."
"Cross," Lisanna corrected.
"Huh?"
"You mean we'll cross that bridge when we get to it, right?"
Mira frowned. "What did I say?"
"…Never mind," Lisanna sighed, picking up a sponge and making a start on the tables.
Next time her siblings split up, she was definitely going with Elfman.
On their first night of business, the Gehennan Princess received a grand total of exactly zero customers.
"I see now why that gentleman was in such a hurry to sell," Mira remarked. "Maybe the fact that we didn't renovate the Princess or do a grand re-opening has confused people. Everyone must think we closed down when the former owner left. Let's hit the streets tomorrow to drum up some trade."
The following morning, they did just that. From dawn to dusk they patrolled the centre of town, handing out leaflets for their new pub. After the events of the previous night, Lisanna was half-expecting the two outsiders to be shunned by the public, but it was quite the opposite. Everyone they met was perfectly polite, happy to take a voucher with a smile and wish them luck, and the sisters awaited opening hour on the second night with unrestrained anticipation…
The second evening of trade came and went, and still they did not have a single jewel to show for it.
"What are we doing wrong?" Mira wondered. "If this was Magnolia, we'd get a few customers even if we were the least popular establishment in town. The location's perfect, our prices are competitive, and it looks a lot nicer in here than it did before… why is no one even coming in to have a nosy? Check out the new competition?"
"Maybe you should ask them," suggested Lisanna, who was only resisting lying face-down on the table because Mira had insisted that Fairy Tail mages on a training journey would never show such despair in the face of adversity. The fact that balancing the books wasn't nearly as easily solved as a dark guild attack didn't seem to matter to Mira.
"Maybe I will," her sister agreed. "Tomorrow night, I will stand outside the pub and demand to know why everyone in Alstonia apparently becomes teetotal the moment they approach the Gehennan Princess!"
On the third evening, they received their first paying customer.
Admittedly, when the door slammed open to reveal a staggering, blood-splattered young man in a torn suit, we're in the money was not the first thought that popped into Lisanna's head.
Her sister, however, was already at the stranger's side, practically dragging him to a stool at the bar. "Welcome to the Gehennan Princess!" the barmaid-turned-business-owner announced, accompanied by her most charming smile. "What can I get you this fine evening?"
"Please," the man croaked. "You've got to help…"
"Sure, we can do recommendations!" Mira chirped. "Our guest ale this week is from Sunlake Brewery, that was always very popular back in Magnolia. Or, if you prefer, we're trialling some new cocktails we invented-"
The man seized her wrist with the grip of the living dead. "There's nowhere else I can go!" he shouted. "If they find me, they'll-"
The door slammed open again. Lisanna wondered if they should replace the little chime on there with something more atmospheric – like cymbals, or maybe a miniature thundercloud. Into the bar strode no fewer than ten men in gangster suits, making Lisanna mentally run through her Take Over forms for one suited for group combat even as heaps of jewels appeared in Mira's eyes.
There, in the middle of the squeaky-clean bar, where the Strauss sisters had attempted to recreate the atmosphere of the guildhall that had been ripped from them, the leader drew a gun from his jacket in one smooth motion and levelled it at their one and only customer.
"There you are, little sewer rat," the intruder sneered. "You picked the wrong place to hide-"
"Hello, and welcome to the Gehennan Princess, home of real ales and the finest spirits from around the world!" Mira overrode him cheerfully. "Feel free to sit anywhere, and I'll be happy to take your orders from your table."
Momentarily thrown, the leader of the intruders turned his gun towards the beaming barmaid before relaxing with a smile even worse than his sneer. "You must be the fools who took over from Old Sam. I'm surprised Ermenegildo has let you live so long. Perhaps you're not worth his time, and he's waiting for you to starve to death in your empty tavern instead."
"All businesses struggle in the first few months," Mira advised him sagely. "It wouldn't be a training journey if it didn't include challenges."
"It seems you don't understand how things are done in Alstonia," he smirked. "I will warn you only once. This doesn't concern you. Stay out of the way, or you'll suffer the same fate as your turncoat friend."
The barmaid's eyes narrowed. It was only a small gesture, and to be quite frank, it made her look rather cute. Lisanna was the only one smart enough to edge towards cover as her sister said softly, "I most certainly will not. How dare you threaten my only paying customer?"
"I warned you," he shrugged, and a sound like muted thunder erupted from his gun.
The outcome was not immediately obvious. There was no eruption of blood from the man he was targeting, nor from the unarmed barmaid stood between them. No shattering of glasses. No dramatic explosions of multi-coloured spirits. No puffs of sawdust or collapsing furniture.
In fact, just to make sure he wasn't imagining things, the gunman fired twice more, with just as little effect.
"What…?" he wondered, staring at his weapon.
"Is that all?" Mira's fist uncurled to reveal all three bullets trapped between violet-clawed fingers. Tossing them aside, she let the Take Over spread from her arm to her entire body, replacing the vision of a harmless barmaid with one of infernal horns, blood-red eyes, and a presence that would have sent Satan himself running in terror.
"But- those bullets were enchanted to go through any armour-"
"Now, I don't have a problem with a bit of old-fashioned brawling in a pub," Mira continued matter-of-factly, as if the lanterns weren't dimming and cowering around her. "In fact, I don't think I'll ever be able to feel at home without it. However, it's just common courtesy to buy a drink first!"
Panicking, the intruder fired again.
Mira was faster. The whip-crack shockwave of her motion knocked the two closest goons off their feet as she punched their leader in the gut, before pivoting on one leg to slice open another's cheek with her viciously sharp heel.
Deflecting two more bullets with a flick of her right hand, she released a dark pulse from the left that streaked through the room. Half her opponents went down at once. The less fortunate half received personal introductions to a demon's firepower by way of a flurry of blows and black lightning.
Less than three seconds later, she was surrounded by the groaning bodies of ten goons.
"Don't- don't think you'll get away with this," the leader choked. "Once the boss hears-"
Mira slammed her heel into the ground, punching a three-inch hole into the floorboards right next to his eye. "I'm the only boss here. The Gehennan Princess is my turf now, and the only rules that matter are mine. If your boss has an issue with that, he can take it up with me himself."
He scurried out of the pub on his hands and knees, quickly followed by his goons. If ever they told the story of their humiliating defeat, each would swear that they saw a disappointed look on the demoness's face as they ran… but as Mira turned, untransformed, back to the bar, she looked aghast.
"Oh no," she gasped. "I just scared away our only customers!"
"Totally worth it," Lisanna told her, grinning.
The blood-splattered young man who had started all this forced out a weak smile. "Y-yeah… it was really amazing. I'm so grateful, really I am, but I've, uh, got to go…"
As he attempted to sidle out of the door, Mira took a neat step into his path.
The young man swallowed.
Without a word, Mira pulled out from behind her back a tankard overflowing with freshly drawn ale, which she held out to him like the holy grail beneath her puppy-dog eyes.
The young man looked like he was about to wet himself.
Taking pity on him, Lisanna leaned over and whispered, "She's not going to hurt you. She just really, really wants to serve someone a drink."
Four pints later – in other words, exactly how long it took Lisanna to convince their first and only customer that Mira didn't actually eat people – he finally introduced himself as Ace, and explained to them the situation into which they had stumbled.
There were no mage guilds in Alstonia. There were no Rune Knights. There was no fixed military presence or national guard. The city was firmly outside the jurisdiction of both the crown and the Magic Council.
Yet the absence of law did not mean the absence of order. There may have been no legal guilds in Alstonia, but there were no dark guilds either. The lack of a Rune Knight presence was tolerated by the Council because crime rates were not abnormal enough to warrant the costs of rectification. The city prospered; the inhabitants were no worse off than those of any other major city, in wealth or in happiness. Few outside the city knew the truth of its nature, because on the surface, there was nothing to mark it out as different from their own.
The difference, however, lay in the Familias.
Historically, their number had varied, but right now there were four: the Barzini Familia, the Bayonettes, the Angel's Eyes, and the Danse Arcane. Each had their own claim to being the oldest Familia, and whichever claim held up was invariably linked to whichever Familia held the most power at the time of asking. Some members used magic, others didn't. Magic wasn't the only way to kill a man.
The Familias were the underworld of Alstonia, and the underworld ruled the city above it. Each Familia had their own businesses, districts, and organizations that pledged fealty – and offered protection fees – to them and them alone. They maintained control through fortunes made on the back of their hospitality, money-lending, and other less savoury enterprises, profiting through the exchange of services and the trade of alcohol – and, for some of the Familias, drugs and prostitution too.
Yet while profit was important, so too was winning the goodwill of the citizens. Long ago, the newly emerging families of power had poured their own finances into public services as a means of swaying the people to their side; now, they did so simply for tradition and civic pride. They were bank and bailiff, charity and vengeance, the light and dark of civilization. They were generous to the loyal, antagonistic to the other Familias, but ambivalent, even respectful, to businesses who had pledged allegiance to their rivals. Their quarrels were with each other, not the ordinary people. A prosperous city was a far more valuable prize.
Most importantly, though, the Familias were order. Structure. Justice. No one died without a Familia's sanction. Petty crime was punished harshly. The Familias had their own kind of truce: one where assassination, arson, and blackmail were perfectly acceptable methods of doing business, but only if the circumstances were right – and the right circumstances usually involved betrayal, the wickedest of sins.
So it had been in Alstonia for as long as anyone could remember.
Then, a few months ago, that truce had broken down. The steady underworld equilibrium, which for decades had been the foundation of one of Fiore's wealthiest cities, had shifted and convulsed, threatening the magnificent towers above it. Economic competition became physical warfare. The long-standing segregation of civic powers was now a bitter struggle for supremacy.
The Gehennan Princess had been one small casualty of the underworld power struggle. Its former owner had racked up a huge debt with Ermenegildo's Familia, the Bayonettes, who were calling in all their resources to fund their conflict with the Barzini Familia. He had used the cash from his sale of the pub to flee the city. Knowing of the pub's disfavour with the Bayonettes, no one – whether ordinary citizen or loyal servant of the Familias – would risk being seen as aiding its new owners in these troubled times, not when they had unwittingly helped a traitor to escape.
Ace himself had been another casualty. Many years ago, he had signed up with the Barzini Familia, but with the escalation of hostilities, he had panicked and tried to get out. To his boss, cowardice in the middle of an underworld war was indistinguishable from betrayal. The men Mira had chased off that day would not be the last sent after him.
The city in which the Strauss sisters found themselves was one stretched to breaking point. It wasn't the work of a dark guild or an evil cult, for such forces had not a single foothold in Alstonia. Its troubles were unpredictable, internal, and unlike anything they had encountered before.
"The Barzini and Bayonette Familias are the two most powerful in Alstonia," Ace warned them. By now, the fire was low and the mood sombre, a stark contrast to the atmosphere Mira and Lisanna had hoped for when they had sought a bar to work in. "By protecting me, you have made an enemy of the Barzini Familia; by trying to turn around the fortunes of the Gehennan Princess, you risk incurring the wrath of the Bayonettes. You should get out before it's too late."
"Not a chance," Lisanna told him.
Mira nodded. "Like I told those goons from – Barzini, was it? The Gehennan Princess will bow to none of the feuding Familias, nor will we play by their rules. I hereby claim this independent territory in the name of Fairy Tail."
"What's… Fairy Tail?" Ace wondered.
The sisters exchanged glances. "A home for those who have nowhere else to go," Lisanna explained, smiling. "Family for those who are alone. Sanctuary and support for as long as it is needed."
Mira nodded. "And a spirit that will always endure, even if the guild is gone."
Quite how the story got out, neither Mira nor Lisanna knew, but it wasn't long before word started to spread across Alstonia that the Gehennan Princess was neutral ground.
Slowly, mistrustfully, and then with growing faith, customers began to return to the neglected bar. At first, it was only the desperate – those like Ace, who had incurred the displeasure of one faction or another, and sought shelter until their wrathful bosses realized their resources could be better spent elsewhere.
Then it was those who wanted out, fleeing from the underworld before the growing tensions could explode, eager to exchange a few hard-earnt jewels for a place to lay low for a while. One of the apartments above the pub had been claimed by the sisters, but the others were always available for those who needed them.
There weren't enough patrons to turn a profit, not yet, but that hadn't been the sisters' goal since someone had mentioned a training journey.
They were doing it because they wanted to – because they enjoyed it – and slowly but surely, their enthusiasm was winning out. Customers came for the sanctuary and stayed for the company. Families and businessmen who had grown tired of the infighting chose to congregate at the one establishment they could visit without jeopardizing their own neutral statuses. Ace swung by almost every night, quietly pointing out which of their clients were influential figures in the underworld and using his knowledge of the city to help them identify trouble before it could start.
On the day they first broke even, Mira and Lisanna received their first letter from the Bayonettes.
It was surprisingly courteous, and signed by Ermenegildo himself. He apologized for his haste in dismissing the Princess's new owners, proclaimed his admiration for their entrepreneurial spirit, offered them the resources and protection of the Bayonette Familia in return for their allegiance… and the entire letter was consumed by an evil flame from Mira's hand before Lisanna had even read all the way to the end.
The second letter was not so courteous. Mira used it to mop up a spill on the bar and threw it in the trash.
The third letter was the kind of warning the Princess's previous owner had probably received right before he fled town. It wasn't so much a letter as huge words spray-painted across the front of the pub one night, spelling out in no uncertain terms what would happen to those who betrayed the Familia.
"Honestly," Mira reprimanded, staring up at the mess with her hands on her hips. "How can you betray someone you never worked for in the first place? We bought this pub fair and square. The title deeds are in our names."
"We may know that," Lisanna sighed, "but I don't think this is going to be particularly good for business."
There was something truly demonic about the glint in Mira's eyes. "Oh, I think we can turn this to our advantage, don't you?"
They made as big a show of removing the graffiti as their enemies had done in painting it, bold in the light of day. They had no need for specialist equipment – they cycled through their Take Over forms instead, much to the awe of the crowd: cat for balance and bird for flight and ox for strength, while Mira showed off more forms stolen from Tartaros than Lisanna had even known she'd possessed, radiating a presence so intimidating that it froze the soapy bubbles in mid-air.
If the threat painted across their building was what had drawn the crowd, then the sight of Mira in her Alegria form whistling to herself as she scrubbed it off was what they remembered as they walked away.
"Tonight, the Gehennan Princess will be open as usual!" she announced, and although no one was foolish enough to cheer, the pub's takings that night exceeded that of all the previous nights combined.
"Ermenegildo will make good his threat," Ace warned Lisanna that night, over a bottle of champagne she had opened for the occasion. "No Familia can overlook a provocation like that."
"Good," she grinned. "Because neither can we."
The first assassins who broke in through Mira's bedroom window received a bit of a shock.
Awoken by the gunfire, Lisanna sprang out of her own bedroom to the sight of four gangsters limping down the corridor, accidentally maimed by the ricocheting of their own bullets, screaming about diamond scales and monsters from the deep. A half-awake Mira blinked blearily at Lisanna, surprised to find that she had instinctively transformed into the form she had stolen from Torafuzar after Tartaros… and downright terrified when she saw the huge redecorating job the assassins had left her with.
That, in the eyes of the Bayonettes, was war.
And war, in Alstonia, was not the brief, bright clash of magic that had settled conflicts back in Fairy Tail.
Rather, a bribe to this supplier and a threat to that distributor's mother decapitated the Gehennan Princess's supply chain. The defecting Bayonettes who had sought shelter with the sisters found themselves pursued with a vengeance hugely disproportionate to their transgressions. It was rare that the weather forecast predicted anything other than cloudy with a chance of Molotov cocktails.
And they fought back. Mira used her old contacts from the Fairy Tail bar to open a new supply line for every one that closed. Most jumped at the chance to break into the enormous yet insular market Alstonia offered, and the ever-expanding choice of imported spirits tempted patrons back to their side. Their menu changed daily, applying their ingenuity and experience – and advice from Elfman – to whichever ingredients they could get their hands on.
Their Take Over forms had all but become the Princess's official uniform. Lisanna's white tiger form was popular with the patrons, and highly unpopular with the Bayonette Familia, whose increasingly creative attempts to infiltrate the Princess invariably fell foul to the tiger's territorial instinct. Mira could often be seen lounging on the bar in her Alegria form, so easy for her now that she transformed at the slightest danger without even realizing she was doing it. Pulses of dark energy deflected firebombs hurled through open windows with such ease that none but her sister even noticed the momentary danger. She was imperial and she was unstoppable.
No one knew who had painted the Gehennan Princess that appeared on the bar's sign one night, but no one had any intention of removing it.
Thus the only independent bar in Alstonia was still going strong when the first Familia fell.
The Angel's Eyes was the first to collapse beneath the pressure. The Strauss sisters had played no part in it, and angrily rejected Ace's proposal that they turn it to their advantage.
The citizens of Alstonia, however, had other ideas. Survivors of the fallen Familia flocked to the Gehennan Princess. Some wanted freedom from the fighting. Some could not stomach the idea of working for their Familia's conquerors, and sought out the independent faction instead. Some ignored all the evidence pointing to strict neutrality and hailed the Princess as the source of the Familia's downfall, and came to pledge their lives to the destruction of all Familias and the freedom of the city.
All brought with them money and resources, power and contacts, information and spies and a festival sky's worth of explosive passions.
None of which Mira and Lisanna wanted.
Not even the money. The Gehennan Princess was doing pretty well by this point, and they weren't the kind to accept charity when they didn't need it, let alone take down payments for a bloodbath they had no intention of starting.
When it came to the handful who became upset upon being turned down, they took the money and put it aside. That became what Ace jokingly referred to as the City Restoration Fund – mostly for the nearby businesses whose shopfronts didn't stand up quite as well to the downpour of Molotov cocktails as the Princess's, but sometimes to restore a public park destroyed by an inter-Familia shootout or repair infrastructure damaged in a high-speed chase.
Rarely were the gifts presented to the Princess as obvious as an eye-watering cheque, however. More and more frequently they came in the form of an advantageous supplier contract, an unexplained reduction in bills, or special offers which always seemed to be on when they needed to make a big purchase. After the third ridiculously favourable deal they struck in a row, Lisanna gave up trying to convince the negotiators that they were clearly misreading their notes and decided to just roll with it, as Mira had been doing from the start.
They had more suppliers now than they'd done back in Magnolia, and yet selling food and drink from the bar had come to comprise a mere fraction of their profits. When the teenage daughter of a bakery chain owner had fallen pregnant by the son of the Barzini patriarch, who had immediately disavowed her, threatening the wrath of the Familia upon anyone who assisted her, Mira had hired her on the spot. They had found her work she could do in the bar and helped her make provisions for the future… and her family and friends had insisted on paying their Familia tithes to the Gehennan Princess instead. That, they claimed, was the kind of community they wanted to build in Alstonia. A jovial but childless old hotelier, who came to the bar every week to hear stories of guild life from the sisters, had been sadly killed in another underworld clash – and no one was more surprised than they were to learn that they had both been left a substantial interest in his business in his will.
It seemed that the Princess's sphere of influence grew every time Lisanna took her eyes off it. What had started as a spontaneous decision to buy a bar had become… well, to be quite frank, she wasn't quite sure what it was. To her, she and Mira were doing what they had always done: offering hospitality, escapism, warmth, inclusivity, and a friendly ear to those who needed them the most.
It just happened to be on a far larger scale than before.
With multiple businesses in their names. And donations flowing into their coffers from all over the city. And ordinary citizens worshipping them for all the unwanted money they had invested back into the strengthening and beautification of the city. And a whole bunch of ex-gangsters, trained assassins, business magnates, and cartel kings, quietly recruited by Ace, at their beck and call…
Alright, so it did sound a bit dodgy when she put it like that.
It really wasn't like that, though, Lisanna thought. She and her sister had no intention of engaging in any Familia warfare, no matter what half the population of Alstonia had convinced themselves. They were a neutral force. They didn't want to fight, and they certainly didn't want to rule the city.
All they wanted was to run their little bar in peace. Was that really so much to ask?
Then, in true mafia fashion, the Bayonette Familia had made them an offer they couldn't refuse.
"Is Mirajane not in today?" Ace asked, from the seat at the bar that had unofficially been his ever since their first meeting. The other patrons considered him a permanent fixture of the Gehennan Princess.
"No, she's not," Lisanna confirmed.
Back when they had started out, neither she nor her sister had been able to leave the Gehennan Princess for long. It was too tempting a target without its resident guardian mages. Now, between the bodyguards and hitmen who had decided that the Princess would have their services whether they were wanted or not – not to mention the fact that public favour was as strong a protection as any kind of magic here – they had agreed that there was no need for both of them to remain on the premises during opening hours.
Lisanna continued, "She's got a job, actually."
"A job? She already runs one bar personally, has a majority stake in a dozen others, and I know she handles the logistics for at least three import businesses – how many jobs does she want?"
"Not that kind of job," Lisanna grinned. "A mage job."
"A… mage job?"
"We are guild mages, you know. The whole entrepreneurial thing Mira has going on is really just a hobby."
"But there are no guilds in Alstonia," Ace objected. "There's no need for them. The Familias deal with the problems of those who are loyal… or, at least, they used to, before the underworld war began."
"Then who's to help when the Familias themselves have a problem? This request came from Barzini himself."
Ace's eyes widened at the name of his former boss, and then narrowed again as he considered the implications. "That doesn't sound like something the head of a Familia would do."
"He has no one else to turn to. His only son has been kidnapped by the Bayonettes. They'll murder him if Barzini doesn't hand over his fortune and swear allegiance to the Bayonettes by midnight tonight."
"And Mirajane agreed to help her enemy? Just like that?"
"He's not our enemy. We're neutral, remember?" A familiar scowl wormed its way onto Ace's face, which she ignored. "Besides, it's a mage job, so naturally there's payment involved. If she rescues his son, Barzini and his Familia will withdraw entirely from the feud. Most of the fighting will end just like that."
"In other words, he offered you exactly what you want."
"No, he offered us exactly what the city needs," Lisanna corrected.
Ace shook his head fiercely. "There is no way this isn't a trap. You and your sister are the only people in the whole city who wouldn't think suddenly being given a job like that is suspicious. You're too affected by nostalgia to stop and think it through! He wants to get Mirajane outside the safety of the pub – hell, he and the Bayonettes are probably in it together! Once Mirajane is out of their way they can go back to scrapping over what's left of this wretched city-"
"My sister will be fine!" Lisanna interrupted angrily.
"Not even she can take on the two most powerful Familias at once!"
"And she won't. If it proves to be a trap, she'll break free and come back home. She's the one who has always insisted we've got to stay out of the fighting. We've told you a thousand times – we are not here to take over Alstonia!"
Ace slammed his hands down on the table. "Goddammit, Lisanna, what will it take to make you fight? Would you be acting this way if the Barzini Familia was comprised of demons? If they traded in dark artefacts rather than knock-off liquor? Called themselves a cult rather than a Familia? Do you think the only evil men in the world are the ones who worship Zeref? What if I wrote it down on a piece of paper, slapped a seven-figure reward underneath, and pinned it to a corkboard – is that the only thing that can get you to act?"
"The citizens don't want to fight-"
"The citizens don't want to have to fight!" he shouted over her. "They want this conflict to be over! For every day that you insist on pretending that the war between the Familias has nothing to do with you, you're letting each and every one of your citizens down! If the Princess has ever been more than just a hobby for you, then get out there and save your city!"
"I…" She faltered at first, and then said, whispering, "I can't leave the Princess unguarded…"
"The Princess will come with you. We all know there's no better chance than this."
"What…?"
Ace was already standing on the table. He hurled his pint glass to the floor and it smashed like a meteorite crashing down, a command for silence, an omen heralding the end of an age.
"Our enemies have made their move!" he bellowed across the room. "Our own Demon Mirajane has been captured by Barzini and the Bayonettes, the corrupted Familias whose greed is on the verge of tearing Alstonia apart. It is time for our final stand! We will take the fight to them! Let us save our Princess and take back our city!"
They had not dared to cheer back when Mira and Lisanna had first defied the Bayonettes' threat; now, the sound that rose up from the belly of the Gehennan Princess almost brought the building down around them. When Lisanna set out for the destination on the fake job request, Ace at her side, every patron of the Princess set out with her.
By the time they reached the junkyard where Mira had been lured, the crowd had swollen to unbelievable proportions. Lisanna had not known so many people even lived in Alstonia, let alone that they would all flock to the Princess's call, adding gun or torch or magic or simply another voice to the march.
And when they arrived, it seemed that Lisanna had been wrong about her sister staying neutral. She had fallen surrounded by more victims than Lisanna could count. The devastation she'd wrought when she'd chosen to fight rather than flee had not been merciful.
The triumph of those who had survived the Demon Mirajane's outrage lasted only until they turned around. The Princess's militia crashed against them less like a wave and more like a line of tanks, its progress not hampered in the slightest by the Familia goons caught within its treads.
As the two overstretched Familias cracked and broke beneath the onslaught, Lisanna fought her way to her sister's side. Mira lay exhausted on the ground, but as she stared up at the night sky, there was a smile on her face that outstripped the stars above. "We did it," she whispered, exulted.
"What, took over the city?" Lisanna asked dryly.
Mira shook her head. "We built a place where people can feel at home."
"Yes," Lisanna conceded. "I suppose we did."
The following morning, the fourth and final Familia surrendered to the Gehennan Princess. Even before the official declaration was made, the bar – which wasn't supposed to be open at this hour, but hadn't quite got round to closing from the previous night yet – faced a constant flow of visitors: prominent citizens paying their respects to Mira and asking after her recovery; bodyguards swearing allegiance; businessmen inviting them to form new partnerships; members of the defeated Familias suing for peace; industry representatives making hefty donations to the City Restoration Fund…
In other words, it was business as usual for the Gehennan Princess.
The subsequent weeks were ones of reformation and consolidation; of taking stock of what they had and planning for the future. The unrest caused by the Familias' infighting did not vanish overnight. Wounds of old rivalries festered, prone to eruptions of violence in the streets. There was a delicate balance to strike between enforcing order through quick brutality – and they had more than enough goons on their payroll now to pull that off – and waiting for the Familias' remnants to come round on their own, never mind who was hurt in the meantime.
Still, the city wanted to heal, and so heal it did.
Mira would not admit to being in charge of the city, even though she absolutely, definitely was. Her influence spread like the roots of the tree of life through Alstonia, an invisible, inviolable foundation for growth.
At the centre of it all was the Gehennan Princess. In the apartment above it, the sisters relaxed and reminisced about their guild; from the secure chambers below, they coordinated their men, passed the underworld's judgement upon those who threatened the peace, and struck deals with business owners from all across the city.
It was to the bar itself, however, that they always returned, there to serve a drink and a smile at the end of a long day, for that was the warmth upon which their empire had been built.
Two weeks before Lucy and Levy came looking for them, evil entered Alstonia.
No one knew what to make of the first murder-suicide.
It had none of the hallmarks of Familia violence. There was no bloody calling-card scratched onto the bodies. No threatening message to their sponsors. No indication that anyone would benefit from the deaths. No corpses dragged to the Princess and displayed there for the world to see. Neither of the victims had more than a tenuous connection to Mira and the Princess – or to each other.
No, it looked as if two drunk strangers had got into a fistfight in the street, one had pulled out a knife and stabbed the other, and then, overcome with remorse, had taken his own life too. Tragic, but personal, and without wider repercussions.
The next night, it happened again.
Another pair of strangers. Another midnight backstreet. Another two corpses, both dead by the same knife.
Rumours began to swirl within Alstonia's protective bubble. Some thought it the work of a crazed murder cult, which had somehow grown unnoticed right under their noses. Some blamed black magic; others blamed a madness they feared was contagious. They wondered who would be next. They wondered how short-lived their city's peace would prove to be. They wondered what the Princess was going to do about it.
After all, threatening the city was a far better way of bringing down its rulers than threatening the Gehennan Princess itself.
Of course, the Strauss sisters had not ignored the danger. Ever since it had become clear that this was not a one-off tragedy, they had put their best people on the street – experienced gangsters with the pockets of their expensive suits crammed with firearms of all shapes and sizes, keeping their ears to the ground and their eyes on the shadows.
The third pair of victims died right in front of them.
A visible military presence hadn't been able to stop a loving boyfriend from suddenly pulling out a knife and disembowelling the girlfriend he had been chatting to only a moment before; warning shots had not dissuaded him from turning the knife upon himself.
There was no doubt that this was deliberate. It was indiscriminate, yes, but someone, somehow, had chosen to target a couple right in front of the Princess's sentinels… and yet they were no closer to understanding what had happened.
The Princess implemented emergency measures. The attacks only happened at night, and only to those outside, so all bars, theatres and other evening institutions were instructed to stay open all night, offering shelter to those who did not want to leave all paid for by the Princess. Instructions were issued to all citizens not to travel alone or in pairs after nightfall. People whose prior interaction with the underworld had been limited to the occasional tithe and staying as far from Familia politics as possible suddenly found themselves escorted around the city by silent, watchful gunmen.
"And what are we going to do?" Lisanna asked her sister that night, up in the apartment the sisters still shared in spite of all Ace's attempts to move them into one of the ex-Familia mansions.
"What do you mean?" came Mira's distracted response.
"What's our plan? How are we going to catch the person behind these attacks?"
"We're not. Our people are."
"But no one stands as good a chance of finding the villain as we do! There's probably dark magic involved, and since there are no guilds here, hardly any of our mages have ever fought in a proper magical battle, let alone against a dark mage-"
"I know," Mira accepted tiredly. "But we have a duty to protect the Princess, and the people of the city."
Lisanna blinked. "Isn't catching the culprit the best way to do that?"
"We're not guild mages any more, Lisanna. How is it going to look if you and I start prowling the streets to find the killer? The families who seek shelter at our pub every night will feel abandoned. The men and women who are already putting their lives on the line to try and stop the murders will feel undermined. All the citizens who have faith that the Princess can protect them will lose it if they see us desperate enough to do the legwork ourselves – and it'll be even worse if we fail. This is about more than just us. We have responsibilities, now."
What will it take to get you to fight?
So Ace had asked Lisanna, on the night of the Princess's triumph. In truth, she still didn't know the answer to that question, but she hoped with all her heart that it was the same answer she would have given ten months ago. "None of that matters compared to stopping this, Mira! We have to fight!"
"I can't fight, Lisanna!"
"What's that supposed to mean?" Lisanna snapped. When Mira glanced away without response, she accused, "So, it's fine for you to fight two Familias at once to take over the city, but not to save our people from an evil mass murderer?"
Mira folded her arms. "This isn't Fairy Tail any more, Lisanna. This is Alstonia, and it plays by different rules."
"Mira, we have been making our own rules from the moment we arrived in this city! Look at how much has changed! Why shouldn't we act as we see fit, rather than how some Familia overlord would be expected to act? So what if the Princess as it is today falls apart? Alstonia is so much stronger, now! It will survive! It'll find another way of doing things, just like we did when we lost the guild!"
"You say that as though you want to go out looking for our six-time murderer on your own."
Lisanna's voice rose to a dangerous pitch. "You say that as though you're going to tell me I'm not allowed!"
"Have you any idea how dangerous-?"
"I do!" Lisanna burst out. "Of course I do, but I'm a guild mage, and whether they're threatening my family, my friends, or my way of life, I will not let an enemy walk free without having done everything I can to defeat them! And, just for the record, this city isn't my home. It was never supposed to be. It's just a training journey, remember? I love the Princess, and the people I've met here, and I'll wish it all the best when I leave – but I will leave, just as soon as Fairy Tail gets back together!"
"I agree with you," Mira said, in a way that didn't quite match how her eyes were narrowing, or how that demonic presence, which never seemed to vanish these days, was swelling around her. "But if you think it will make me let you go out looking for this man – if it even is a man, and not a curse or worse – then you are sorely mistaken."
"So I should stay safe and sound at home while people are dying out on the street?"
"Everyone should stay safe and sound at home until we've found out who and what we are facing. Including you. We can't fight an enemy we don't understand."
"Fine," Lisanna snapped. "Fine."
"We have more to think about than just ourselves right now," Mira insisted. "Seeing either of us go out to try and catch the culprit singlehandedly would set a dangerous precedent for the people who look up to us-"
"I said fine. I won't do anything on my own. Is that good enough for you?"
"Thank you." Even Mira's smile, beacon of light that it was, seemed strained that night. "It means a lot to me."
"Don't mention it," came the equally strained response.
Despite Mira's obvious suspicions, Lisanna Strauss never went out to combat the evil that had invaded Alstonia.
That was the night, however, that a certain caped crusader was first seen running along the city's skyline.
A/N: Hopefully this chapter has answered some of your questions, but there's a lot of mystery still to be uncovered in Alstonia. Thank you all for your reviews / follows / favourites / general support! I wish you all the best for 2021! ~CS