The Scars That Make You Whole

By CrimsonStarbird

The Chosen at the Turn of Time, Part 1

-Stardust Revolution-

"I've had a thought," Lucy said.

From the other side of the table, Zeref let out a groan. "What, again?"

Lucy treated him to her best glare. "You do realize you're not the only person allowed to have ideas, don't you?"

"Sometimes I think I should be," he grumbled.

She frowned at him. Ever since he had returned from… well, wherever he had gone after he had knocked her out without warning the other day, he had been like this: a little bit happier, a little bit more playful, a little bit lighter, as if the weight of his own existence was no longer pressing so heavily upon him. She just wished he'd tell her why.

He had been apologetic when she had come to, her head in his lap and his hands gently threading through her hair, but he had also been evasive. All he would say was that it was something he had had to do on his own, and that he would tell her one day, but not yet.

Whatever had happened, she thought it was good for him. As long as he didn't make a habit of pushing her out, with force or otherwise, she could allow him this.

Now, they were sat quietly at the dining room table. He was working on something that required rune circles and reference books and over four-fifths of the available surface. She was squeezed into the remaining space, ostensibly working on her novel, although her pen hadn't touched the paper in long enough for the nib to have crusted over. There was another desk in her bedroom, but she was happy here, half-listening to the fanciful ideas he bandied about – and occasionally throwing in one of her own.

"Well," she told him, "it's about the hole in the universe, so I suppose how important it is depends on how big a problem you believe that to be. I seem to recall you were really quite worried about it, until you realized it was your fault, at which point the problem miraculously went away."

"I think you'll find that I've been using it to draw down fragments of World Magic quite safely for four hundred years. It only became a problem once someone started pulling Celestial Spirits through it."

"Uh-huh," she said, with no conviction whatsoever. "Well, what if I closed it?"

He stared at her as if she'd suggested something highly preposterous rather than entirely sensible. "What do you mean?"

"I could close it," Lucy shrugged, struggling to find a simpler way to put it than that. "So there isn't a hole any more."

"How?"

"The same way I close all the gates you've made in the stellar sphere."

"You have keys for those," he pointed out.

"The principle's the same, isn't it?"

"…Not really, no."

"I think it is," she persisted. "It's like when Yukino and I opened and closed the Eclipse Gate during the Grand Magic Games. We didn't exactly do that by the book, did we? Neither of us held all the keys, but we got around that problem by doing it together. Not to mention, there were supposed to be Celestial Spirit mages on both sides of the Gate – like Anna and my mother. But we were able to open it from one side, and close it again, just the two of us."

Zeref neither agreed nor disagreed out loud, although he looked thoughtful.

"Maybe I would need Yukino's help, and all the Zodiac keys between us, but if we could do that then I'm sure we could close the rift. This very afternoon, if we had to."

"Hang on, I've not finished studying it yet!"

Lucy rolled her eyes. "That wasn't an actual suggestion, you know. It's just, if it turns out that having a portal to somewhere that doesn't exist randomly open in the sky isn't a good thing, I could get rid of it."

"…Oh."

For someone who had spent several weeks convinced that the hole in space was going to bring about the end of the world, Zeref seemed rather relieved that she wasn't about to take it away from him. She wondered, "Are you going to go through it?"

To her surprise, he shivered visibly. "You would not ask that if you had seen it. I am hardly one to shy away from experimental magic, Lucy, but every last part of me knew that rift was wrong."

"What is on the other side, do you think?"

He shrugged. "Somewhere between worlds. Somewhere that doesn't exist, and yet does. Somewhere… else. It isn't meant for creatures of flesh and blood, of life."

It was Lucy's turn to frown, as thoughtful as he had been – yet her thoughts were not of old magic and geometric runes and astrological phenomena, but something far more practical. "If you did fall through, by accident, do you think you would be able to get back?"

"I do not know what would happen to a living creature who passed through. I cannot even say for sure that my immortality would protect me from it. If it did, though… I see no reason why I would not be able to return, provided the rift remained open."

"But what if it shut? Do you think you would be able to open another rift, from the other side, and get back to the real world?"

Now Zeref was regarding her with a look of deep mistrust. "I don't know. Magic there, if it existed at all, would be… different. It is World Magic, and all living beings are creatures of the One Magic; they are not supposed to interact so. The concept of the stellar sphere, which brought that aspect of reality into being, only exists from this side. Why should the space beyond continue to exist at all, if the connection it has to this reality is closed? I do not know the answer to your question, Lucy; it frightens me that you would even ask."

Lucy shook her head insistently. "Zeref, are you not thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I'm thinking that I'm not getting close enough for there to be any chance of me falling through the rift by accident until I know for sure that you're not about to close it on me," he stated.

"No, I mean-"

That was when something burst through the window.

Lucy was on her feet before she realized that there had been no burst of sound, no shattering glass – only a streak of something blue and enormous. It surged around the kitchen without so much as a ripple of air in its wake. As she twisted to try and keep it in sight, it slowed down just enough for her to catch glimpses of impossible things – a flash of claw, a shimmer of scales, a mouth opening wide enough to swallow her whole – and then, in a whoosh of air, it collapsed in on itself and was gone.

The silence left in its wake was the loudest one she had ever heard.

Slowly, Lucy lowered the hand clutching her keys. "Okay," she said. "What the hell was that?"

"I don't have the faintest idea," Zeref said, and she was relieved to find that he sounded as stunned as she felt.

There was a pause as both of them waited for answers the universe had no intention of supplying.

"Group hallucination?" Lucy suggested, with a nervous laugh, eyeing the entirely unbroken window.

"I doubt it. I thought I sensed-"

There was another silent explosion of light. It came through the door this time, a translucent blue blur that was far larger than her kitchen, and yet it fit comfortably within those walls, because only a fragment of it existed at any one instant. She caught a flash of eyes and teeth and the sense of something huge, something too boldly powerful to ignore.

But that too was gone as quickly as it had appeared.

"This is going to sound weird," Lucy ventured, "but there was this one time we stumbled upon a dragon graveyard underneath Crocus, and Wendy summoned the ghost of a dragon using Milky Way, and, well… I thought it felt a bit like that."

He cast her a sharp look – enough to remind her that he was the living expert on that magic – but he only said, "I suppose it does seem similar. But Milky Way is a magic of communication, allowing the soul of a dragon on the far shore to reach back to this one for a short while, and this feels more like…"

His words faded as light blazed again. This time, Lucy could make out the scything tail and straining wings of a ghostly dragon, dancing on the edge of existence. Its colourless gaze was focussed on Zeref, its jaw forming silent words as it disintegrated in front of them.

"Like it's fighting to stay in the world of the living," Lucy finished numbly. Fireflies of blue light swirled around her, fading one by one into a sudden, mortal chill. "Zeref, it was trying to tell you something!"

Without warning, Zeref was sprinting out of the house as quickly as the spectral dragons had entered it.

"Zeref!" she shouted, following. If he heard, he ignored her. She caught up with him halfway down the street, took one look at his near-frantic expression, and silently kept pace beside him. Her questions could wait.

Another pulse of otherworldly light streaked towards them. "Where is he?" Zeref demanded of it.

To Lucy's surprise, the scaly apparition swirled around him, as if trying to pull him along. When it, too, could no longer hold on to their reality, he only ran faster. The houses around them thinned and became trees, the main road became a track no longer popular enough to justify filling in every little pothole, and the footpaths became raw grassy verges, sloping down into a ditch… at the bottom of which lay a man covered in blood.

Lucy could tell from a glance that the blood was all his own. His chest was inside-out, as if someone had reached in with both hands and simply torn it open. Crimson stretched out along the dry grass behind him like the shadow of a dragon's tail.

There was no sign of what had attacked him. How far had he crawled, for his strength to fail this close to Crocus?

She fumbled for the communication lacrima Levy had given her, glad that she'd had the presence of mind to grab her bag when she'd left the house. With any luck, they'd still be close enough to the city for her to connect to the Rune Knights' emergency system and summon an ambulance.

If the man was still alive by then.

Steeling herself and looking closer, Lucy felt a jolt of recognition. She'd seen photos of this man in the Weekly Sorcerer. Written an article on him for it, in fact, because when the highest-ranking mage in the kingdom suddenly and publicly defects to an enemy nation, even the Weekly Sorcerer could be tempted to foray into international politics for a week or two.

The thought of what could have done this to the Wizard Saint God Serena sent a shiver down her spine. The lacrima hummed in her hand as it tried to connect.

Zeref, meanwhile, had dropped down beside the wounded man. "What happened?" she heard him demand. "How-?"

The man rasped, "Thought your trail didn't smell too old… what are you doing in Fiore?"

Zeref didn't seem to hear the question. "Who did this? What happened?"

"Acnologia. He cheated." God Serena spat out the words, along with what must have been the last fluid ounce of blood in his body. "I'd have obliterated him in a fair fight, so he didn't dare! He…"

The rush of passion that had accompanied those words burst like a bubble, no substance beneath it, nothing but emptiness and a prayer. In a whisper, he continued, "He took me by surprise… as soon as he realized he couldn't get what he wanted from me…"

"What… what does he want?"

"What he's always wanted." The dying man choked out a laugh. "The dragons. All the dragons. He already has half of them. I tried to- but he-"

Zeref didn't seem able to tear his gaze away from the man's horrific wounds. His hands were shaking. "I'm sorry." The words came out rushed, garbled. "I can't- I'm sorry-"

With a last burst of fire in his eyes, God Serena seized the front of Zeref's robes. "Kill him," he managed to gasp. "Save them. Tell them it was me who sent you. Tell them it was all because I got away…"

By the time Lucy's lacrima finally connected, he was gone.

And as she began giving details to the operator, Zeref looked up with the most hopeless, most lost, most terrible expression on his face, and in a twist of magic, he was gone too.

In the middle of a house that wasn't his, but which offered him sanctuary like none other, Zeref paced back and forth in the vain hope that pacing might distract him from his thoughts.

He didn't want to think. If he thought, he would feel something, and whether that something was the sparking fuse on the powder keg of fury or the grief that could drown this world in black death, he was certain that he did not have the strength to withstand the consequences right now.

It wasn't as if he had particularly liked God Serena.

The man was arrogant, faithless, and single-minded. All he had wanted was to fight Acnologia – and not for the good of humanity, or to avenge a loved one, but because he coveted the Black Dragon's title as the most powerful being in Earthland. He would side with whoever he thought would get him to that battle quickest; he cared as little for Alvarez and the Spriggan Twelve as he had for the Wizard Saints he had betrayed to join them.

When Zeref had accepted him into their ranks, he had done so purely with the imminent war in mind, and the chaos God Serena's defection would cause amongst their enemies. He had to think of his Twelve as nothing but tools in order to spare them from his curse, but with God Serena, he hadn't even needed to lie to himself to achieve it.

But that didn't matter.

God Serena had belonged to him.

Yet he had been captured and mortally wounded by Acnologia, and Zeref had not known until it was already too late.

He had been away from his empire, hadn't known, hadn't cared, hadn't suspected there would be any danger until he decided to declare war, and that it would come only from Fairy Tail when he did.

And in his absence, the Black Dragon of the Apocalypse had swooped in and picked off one of his own with impunity.

It wasn't just the first advance of a pawn after four hundred years of mutual non-aggression. It wasn't just the declaration that, after so long spent waiting for the last of the dragons to return to a realm where his claws could paint with their blood and his tongue could taste the expiring of their lives, he was back to complete the task to which he had, so long ago, sacrificed his humanity.

It was an unprovoked attack.

All of a sudden, Zeref could see, with that horrible blazing clarity, what he had missed before now – and no doubt would have continued to miss, living in oblivious bliss with Lucy, while all the reasons why he could never ever have that peace were piling up like a snowdrift against the door, transforming their home into a prison to starve them-

Arms wrapped around his waist. They were cool where his anger was hot, steady where his fear was frantic, an anchor in the maelstrom of emotion; Lucy rested her head in the crook of his neck and whispered, "It's okay. You're not alone."

There was solace in the simple gift of proximity. It calmed him far more than any words. A not insignificant part of him didn't want to be calm, wanted to blaze in glorious rage against the monster who had so callously taken one of his own, but he trusted those arms that held him more than he trusted his own unruly emotions. If Lucy said this was not the time nor place, he believed her.

"You probably already know, but the paramedics declared him dead at the scene," she told him quietly. "There was nothing anyone could have done with injuries like that. They also… identified him as God Serena, the former Wizard Saint."

After a moment, she added, "Do you want to talk about it? If it will help, I mean."

He didn't, not at all – but he had learnt, by now, that nothing would help quite so much as Lucy listening.

Slowly, so as not to disturb the uneasy equilibrium of his emotions, he nodded. "He was a Second Generation Dragon Slayer, like your Laxus. Rather than drawing his power from a single dragon lacrima, he had eight of them embedded in his body. When he could go no further, I think he smashed them one by one, releasing their souls in one last cry for help… but I couldn't save him. He didn't even matter to me and I couldn't save him."

He could sense how much willpower it required for her not to take the bait – not to do anything that might fuel the emotions he was fighting against – but her arms around him never slacked. When she spoke, her voice was so even, deliberately focussing on the facts. "You knew him?"

"He was working for me. He disappeared a week or two ago. I thought nothing of it; in fact, the idea that an enemy might have taken him did not even cross my mind. Now he's dead. And I didn't even know until it was too late."

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

He shook his head, stepping away from her. "That's not the worst of it, Lucy. I have an ally, another Dragon Slayer, who hasn't been seen for several weeks. I knew it wasn't like her to vanish without warning, yet I brushed it off. What about Gajeel? He went to track down Avatar on his own, but they were defeated weeks ago. So why hasn't he returned to Levy? And I don't even know if Wendy or the others are safe, because while I've been hiding away here, thinking about nothing but you and me, the world has been moving on-!"

It wasn't until Lucy touched his cheek that he realized how frantic his voice had become. He clenched his fists, mentally scrambling for the methods he used to regulate his emotions, hoping they could sedate his fear like they did the others.

"Don't jump to conclusions," she urged him. Her eyes were a much softer brown than Anna's, the earth illuminated by sunbeams, and they brimmed with concern. Then she said, unexpectedly, "You would know if Natsu had been hurt, wouldn't you?"

The boldness of the question caught him by surprise. "I- I suppose I would," he conceded. "He's… been on the move for a while. I don't know where he's going, or why, and I have no intention of finding out, but…"

"But he wouldn't be doing that if he were Acnologia's prisoner," Lucy finished for him. "And as for the others – God Serena told you to save them, not avenge them. Even if Acnologia does have them, they're still alive, Zeref."

How could she be so optimistic, holding on to the same shreds of rumour as him? "They were alive when God Serena escaped," he pointed out flatly. "But Acnologia killed him. Who's to say he hasn't now killed them all?"

"I don't think killing them is all he wants. God Serena went missing a few weeks ago, you said, but he was only killed today. Doesn't that suggest he wants more from them than just their lives – something he realized he could not take from God Serena?"

"Perhaps…"

He prevaricated, but she did not. "It isn't too late, Zeref! We can still stop this!"

"How?"

"By taking the fight to Acnologia." Her voice was so steady, growing stronger with every word. "Ever since we returned from Tenrou Island, we've turned our backs, hunkered down, and got on with our lives, hoping he would not single us out again. We've let him get away with whatever he wants for too long. Let's stop waiting for him to come to us. Let's destroy him where he stands."

And in that moment, to him, she was the sun: an all-consuming passion, brave and brilliant and true. It was no crude, mechanical force which drove the planets to surround her, but a subtle twisting of space that she herself could not see, but which made their steady orbits the most natural paths to take. Hers was the resolution of the eternal constellations, blazing in the void – and he understood, then, why they had been set so far away from the Earth. They were so overwhelmingly beautiful that all of humanity would have thrown themselves into their flames long ago, had they been able to.

He would have given anything to believe in that light.

But he had lived through more than she had, and witnessed the deaths of far more hopes than she had ever known.

And he said, "We can't."

"Why not?"

"I can't beat Acnologia. No one can."

It was clear from her bemused expression that she wasn't taking him seriously. "Don't tell me you don't have a plan to defeat Acnologia. You have a plan for everything."

"I don't," Zeref told her, and that was the truth.

Because he was never supposed to fight Acnologia.

He had plans, yes, countless plans, but for the past few years, each and every one of them had been directed towards a single end: obtaining Fairy Heart. Acnologia simply wasn't important. He only cared about the Dragon Slayers; Zeref's scheming was as irrelevant to him as his ageless hunger was to Zeref. Even the danger Acnologia posed to Natsu had become less significant as Zeref had given up on his brother obtaining the ability to kill him as a way out, and focussed instead on the opportunity Fairy Heart's existence offered him.

When Acnologia did feature in his plans, it was always as an afterthought – a reminder to himself to seek him out in the past and kill him before he turned, just to be sure that he could never threaten Natsu again. That was the only circumstance under which he had even imagined having to face the Dragon of the Apocalypse.

But he had chosen the future.

And he hadn't stopped to think that the future might contain Acnologia.

Acnologia, at full power and unwilling to put aside his ancient grudge against the children Zeref and Anna had given so much to protect.

A foe that Zeref knew the sheer impossibility of defeating better than anyone.

He hadn't planned for this.

He hadn't planned for anything since the moment he had released Mavis from her tortured half-life, shattering everything he thought he knew in the process.

He couldn't do this at all.

"Well then," Lucy said, cheerfully, "it's a good job I do have a plan, isn't it?"

"…What?"

"As I was trying to tell you before we were interrupted earlier, what if we sent Acnologia through the hole in the universe and then closed it up behind him?"

Zeref stared at Lucy.

Lucy beamed back.

All the strength seemed to vanish from his legs, and he collapsed onto the sofa.

"Typical Fairy Tail," he muttered, with surprising passion. "You discover a great anomaly in the universe, and your first thought is, what can I use this to destroy?"

Predictably, this only made Lucy grin. "But would it work?"

Zeref ran a hand through his hair. Possibilities whirled in front of him, too many to grasp, and not enough time to give any of them the thorough consideration they deserved. "Acnologia is no fool," he reminded her. "When he draws close to the rift, he will feel the exact same thing I did. There's no way he will pass through it."

Lucy rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I wasn't planning on asking him nicely."

"Of course not, you're a Fairy Tail mage, I don't know why I ever imagined that you would," Zeref sighed.

Too excited for his attitude to get her down, Lucy persisted, "What if we lured him to the hole in space, forced him through it, and then Yukino and I closed it? It wouldn't matter if he couldn't die, or could consume magic, or anything, because he would have no way back to reality!"

"Maybe…" Just as she wasn't letting his doubt drag her down, he couldn't risk letting her optimism carry him away. "This is going to take some serious thought, Lucy. For instance, even if we can find Acnologia, how exactly are you planning on luring him to a random spot in the middle of the sea?"

She dismissed this scepticism with a wave of her hand. "I don't know why you're looking at me. Planning is your job."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I've had to go through weeks of figuring out how to implement your ridiculous 'let's reunite Fairy Tail' idea. Now, it's my turn to the be the ideas person, and your turn to actually put the effort in."

Before he could object, she smiled warmly and sat down beside him, taking his hand in her own. "Besides, this is what you do best, Zeref. Maybe we'll be enemies very soon, but right now, we're allies. Let's do this, and do it together."

In her words he heard a faith he could never, ever share: an irrational, baseless, unshakeable faith in him. It was alien, it was incomprehensible, yet she held it as proudly as she did the Fairy Tail mark on her hand or the golden ring of keys at her hip.

She could have gone to her guild, rallied her friends and any Dragon Slayers she could find, and thrown themselves at their enemy with all the straightforward honesty for which Fairy Tail was famous. Instead, she was asking him to lead. She would entrust their best chance of defeating Acnologia to him without a second thought.

He barely noticed the way her fingers linked with his. His mind was already formulating a plan.

It was time to take a stand for the future he had chosen.

"Sting and Rogue?" Yukino frowned. "They were fine last time I saw them, though I've been out of town for the past few days, visiting Sorano. Why?"

"I only want to explain this once," Lucy evaded, although not unapologetically. "I'll tell you when we've reached the guildhall."

Running into Yukino on the outskirts of Jasmine had been a stroke of luck – or so Lucy had thought. Turned out, it wasn't making the question 'would you like to help me and Zeref push Acnologia through a hole in the universe?' any easier to ask. If getting them all together first meant she could put it off for another five minutes, she'd take it.

Shortly after she had managed to calm Zeref down, he had teleported to Levy's flat to ask after Gajeel, while Lucy herself had contacted Lamia Scale. Neither result had been promising. Levy still hadn't seen scale nor claw of her partner since Bishop's Lace, while Lyon had been so cheerful as he told Lucy that Wendy and Carla had set off for Fairy Tail two days ago that she didn't have the heart to tell him they had never arrived. She only had the garbled words of a dying man as evidence that Acnologia had taken them, but she knew Zeref believed it – and no matter how strange it seemed for the Black Dragon to be moving with stealth rather than the overwhelming power he had displayed on Tenrou Island, with every passing hour, the dread in her heart was coming to agree with Zeref's assessment of the situation.

Furthermore, although Zeref was confident that Natsu hadn't been kidnapped, he had also refused point-blank to involve him in the battle against Acnologia. When Lucy had tried to argue it – how could she fight the strongest of all dragons without the strongest Dragon Slayer she knew by her side? – Zeref had told her in no uncertain terms that to have one of them on this mission meant forswearing the other. They could not work together. It was a physical impossibility; the magic Zeref had woven in his darkest years had seen to that. Natsu would not listen to Zeref, let alone obey, and Zeref asserted that if he was going to do this, he was going to do it properly – he would be in charge, and anyone who would not follow his instructions would only get in the way.

Still, Lucy might have continued to argue it, if not for the dismay hidden behind Zeref's blunt refutations. That, more than anything, convinced her that this was an inescapable truth.

She had considered asking Laxus or Crime Sorcière's Erik, but Zeref had dismissed this idea. Second Generation Dragon Slayers were of little interest to Acnologia, since they had no connection to living dragons in body or magic – that, he hypothesized, was why God Serena had been killed.

Which meant that Sting and Rogue were their last hope if they wanted to lure Acnologia out.

Provided they hadn't already been taken, of course.

The closer they drew to Sabertooth's guildhall, the more apprehensive Lucy became. "It's quiet," she murmured.

"Of course it is. This isn't Fairy Tail, you know," Yukino joked.

But it was too quiet.

Granted, the last time Lucy had visited Sabertooth – during that Tora Tora Tora Eating Contest, which she regularly revisited in her nightmares – wasn't exactly a typical day. And Yukino had a point; she couldn't judge all guilds to the same standards of liveliness that Fairy Tail upheld.

This wasn't just civilized, though. It was silent. All around them, the city swelled with quiet activity, yet Lucy had seen no one go in or out of the guildhall. No matter how much she squinted at the shadowed windows, she had yet to catch a glimpse of motion inside.

Her hand stretched towards her keys as she and Yukino entered the guildhall together.

And inside, there were bodies.

Slumped in chairs, strewn across tables, sprawled upon the floorboards.

Yukino's hands flew to her mouth. Lucy's didn't leave her keys.

There was no sign of a struggle. No blood, no lingering magic, no great gaping hole where a dragon had torn through the roof and into the people below.

Just silence, as if all of Sabertooth had simply wasted away where they stood.

They'd been too late for Gajeel. Too late for Wendy. And now Sting and Rogue's guild… how far had the world fallen, while Lucy had been wrapped up in her own selfish paradise?

"Master Sting!" Yukino shouted, dashing into the room.

Sabertooth's Guild Master had been sat at the head table when it – whatever it was – had happened. A sparkling empty plate sat in front of him, a polished knife and fork on either side, waiting for a final meal that now might never come. Sting himself lay on the floor, fallen from his hard-won throne.

As Yukino ran over, he stirred. "Yu…ki…no…"

"Sting!" she shouted, falling to her knees beside him. "What happened? Are you alright?"

His lips barely twitched when he spoke. "Too late… we can't go on…"

"Was it poison?" Yukino spoke frantically. "Magic? A curse?"

"Acnologia?" Lucy demanded. "Was it him?"

"Tell us, Sting! We can still save you!"

"No good," murmured the White Dragon Slayer, as his eyes faded to grey. "The Princess… our only hope…"

Yukino seized his shoulders; it was taking all her willpower not to shake them thoroughly. "Minerva? Where is she? Sting, tell me, please!"

"Weak…" he rasped. "Fading…"

And then he was still.

"Where's Minerva?" Yukino shouted, jumping back to her feet at once. Lucy was already looking. Her heart twisted a little more as her gaze ran over familiar, unconscious forms – Rogue, the two Exceed, Rufus, Orga – but no Minerva. Had she gone to find a cure? Would it be faster to look for her or try to find a doctor-?

The decision was made for her when the door burst open. "I have returned triumphant!" proclaimed the fierce voice of Sabertooth's Princess – and she strode into the guildhall, punching the air with one hand and dragging something even larger than she was with the other.

Something that looked a lot like a food cart on wheels.

Something whose sign announced itself the purveyor of Manly Meals on the Move.

"The hell?" Lucy choked.

It was as if true love's kiss had awoken the sleeping princess.

A wave of energy swept across the guildhall. Dull eyes sparked with a sudden eerie light. Corpses sprung to their feet. The pall of lethargy was cast to the wind as a hundred Sabertooth zombies shambled, and then staggered, and then ran towards Minerva's food cart, and woe betide any table or chair or ally who got in their way. In the blink of an eye, the graveyard had turned into a brawl to rival any of Fairy Tail's.

In the midst of it all, Sting had managed to snatch a steamed bun from the cart, raising it to the skies with a fanatical cry. "Yes, yes, YES! Too long we have had to endure without the ambrosia of Elfman's cooking! Now, at last, we can experience true gourmet satisfaction once more!"

He took a bite, and then closed his eyes in sheer bliss. "All other food is as ashes compared to this, the nectar of the gods – and with it, we are REVIVED!"

Over the sound of his guild fighting tooth and nail for the pilfered provisions, his maniacal laughter soared.

"Lucy," Yukino said. "I am truly sorry that you had to see this."

"So am I," Lucy agreed, with feeling.

"I go away for three days, and this is what my guild becomes? I knew they were pining after Elfman, but going all the way to Magnolia and stealing his food cart is…"

Lucy blew out a breath in sympathy. "I know, right?"

"I mean, did they even consider just asking him for a few recipes?"

"I don't think they considered very much at all," Lucy agreed, nodding towards the bar.

Atop the counter, unnoticed by the brawling Sabertooth mages, sat a certain Take Over mage in full Alegria form: one leg crossed over the other, claws splayed upon the polished counter, patiently waiting for the fighting guild mages to realize that it wasn't each other they ought to be frightened of, after all.

Mirajane Strauss glanced over at Lucy and winked. Despite herself, Lucy grinned back, even as she reached for her keys with greater urgency. "Virgo, get Sting and Rogue out of there. I need them alive."

The Maid Spirit vanished into the floor, and Lucy and Yukino excused themselves from the main hall before things got messy. Lucy closed the door on the first wail of terror – as the Sabertooth mages began to learn why stealing from Fairy Tail was bad, but stealing from the Strauss family was worse – and waited for Virgo to tunnel up through the floor of the Master's office, the dishevelled Twin Dragons crawling along behind her.

"Hey, Lucy!" Sting greeted brightly upon seeing her. "Nice save-"

His words cut off in a virtual twist of his throat as he saw Yukino sitting upon the Guild Master's chair.

The thing was, she wasn't frightening. She couldn't intimidate an entire guild the way Master Makarov could, or send a room spiralling into sheer terror the way Mira was previously doing on the other side of that not-quite-soundproof-enough door. But her disappointment was deep and true, a sombre note reverberating from every fibre of her being, and it touched the heart in a way that fear never could.

Right up until the moment a guilty but hopeful Sting offered her the steamed bun he had been hiding behind his back. "Here. You're not you when you're hungry."

Then, Yukino proved she could roundhouse-kick with the best of them.

Rogue asked, "Just out of interest, Yukino, have you ever considered running for Guild Master?"

"We have a Guild Master," Sting grumbled, as he unpeeled himself from the wall.

"Yes, but you got the position by default," Rogue countered calmly. "Not because you were particularly qualified."

"I've never met a Guild Master who put the needs of his stomach over the needs of his guild," Lucy weighed in, grinning. "But that's twice out of the last two times I've seen you."

"Master Sting is still learning," Yukino protested. She had at last found her voice, and it was, of course, to defend the man she had just kicked into a wall. "But he will be a great Master one day. Far better than someone like me."

"I think you would be good at it, though, Yukino," Lucy added, warming to the idea. "You know when to be sensible, and you're approachable, too. I can really see that working."

Yukino glanced away, embarrassed. Rogue seconded, "I don't think it's about power, confidence, or experience. They might be important, but they're meaningless without that indescribable quality of a Master. You have it." Then, unexpectedly, he nodded towards Lucy. "You have it, too."

"Me? Don't be silly."

Yukino gave her a betrayed look. "So, it's silly when it's you, but it makes perfect sense when it's me?"

"Yes!"

"And which one of us singlehandedly reunited their guild?"

"I… had help?" Lucy tried.

Rogue and Yukino exchanged a smug glance, as if a great hypothesis had just been satisfied.

Sting spoke up, "On that note, Lucy, why are you here? If you're looking for Elfman, he went back to Fairy Tail a few days ago… as you may have noticed."

"It's not about Fairy Tail. I was hoping to talk to you three about something unrelated, actually."

She explained her fears about Acnologia and the vanishing Dragon Slayers, and wondered, privately, if the starvation which had confined the Twin Dragons of Sabertooth to their guildhall for the past few days was the only reason why they had avoided Acnologia's attention. She mentioned the rift in space, and the theory that, if they could force Acnologia through it, she and Yukino would be able to combine their Zodiac keys to seal him outside their universe forever.

"So, let me get this straight," Sting spoke up, once she'd finished her pitch. "You're recruiting Dragon Slayers to defeat Acnologia once and for all, but rather than actually fighting him, you want me and Rogue to act as bait so that you can lure him to a literal hole in space and push him through?"

Lucy shifted uncomfortably. "Well, when you put it like that, I'll admit it sounds-"

"Brilliant!" Sting finished. "Where do I sign up?"

"…Really?"

"Course! You're in, right, Rogue?"

"I wouldn't miss it for the world," his teammate agreed. "Yukino?"

The Celestial Spirit mage nodded firmly. "If I can help, I will. And I know Princess Minerva and the others will agree. We'll be glad to stand with Fairy Tail in this fight."

"…Ah." Lucy felt her heart sink. She'd known this would be the hardest part of convincing them. As their attention turned to her with a new intensity, she took a deep breath. "There's a reason why I wanted to talk to you three privately, rather than announcing it to your guild. This isn't a Fairy Tail mission. In fact, it's by invitation only."

"Why?" Sting demanded, surprised. "Surely having more people on our side can only help!"

"I thought so too, at first, but…"

But Zeref had talked her out of it. On one hand, it went against everything she believed, but on the other hand… she'd met Acnologia. She understood why even an immortal mage was afraid of him.

She explained, as Zeref had done to her: "Acnologia is the Dragon of Magic. Against him, everyone on our team is a liability. We can only take those we absolutely need for the plan – being you two as the Dragon Slayers to lure him in, and Yukino to seal him outside space with me. Besides, if five hundred guild mages suddenly jump out of hiding and attack him, Acnologia will realize it's a trap. We'll never get him to where we need him to be – and given that said location is a tiny patch of sky above the sea in the middle of nowhere, it further limits the people we can invite to those with the power of flight. This… isn't going to be like any battle we have fought before."

The most important reason, though, remained heavy and silent on her tongue. Zeref was leading this mission. He was the one who had come closest to defeating Acnologia before; he was the best chance they had of pulling this off. However, to be able to utilize his team effectively, he needed to know that his instructions would be obeyed in the midst of battle. A guild mage – unused to taking orders at the best of times, let alone when they came from their guild's sworn enemy – deciding to take matters into their own hands in the middle of the fight could well be the greatest threat to their success.

Lucy didn't like it. She would have felt safer with Erza and Mira by her side. And yet, even with the best will in the world, she knew that a single day wasn't enough to convince them to trust Zeref. And trust, in that kind of battle, was far more important than raw power.

Throwing together the strangest combination of people at short notice, where the internal dynamic of the team was of equal importance to its power… that was what she'd meant, when she'd said it wasn't going to be like any battle they had fought before.

"Who's we?" Rogue asked suddenly.

"Sorry?"

"You said, 'we can only take those we absolutely need', but you also said this isn't a Fairy Tail mission. If that's the case, then who's the we? Who's leading this mission we're about to sign up to?"

"…Right." Lucy blew out a breath. "This is the bit you're not going to like."

"This is? Not the bit where you want to use us as bait in a crazy-ass plan to beat Acnologia in a mission we're not even allowed to bring our friends on?" Sting joked.

"Yes, all that rather pales in comparison to this," Lucy agreed in utter seriousness.

The Dragon Slayers exchanged glances. Yukino managed an encouraging smile. "Don't keep us in suspense, Lucy."

Nervously, Lucy let her gaze run over their faces, a combination of curious and apprehensive. This wasn't how she'd thought she would do this. Not that she could think of a better way, admittedly.

But she had to start somewhere.

She had told Zeref that she would do it; that she wasn't ashamed of her feelings for him; that, difficult as it might make things with her guild and her friends, she would find a way to make it work. She loved him, and she knew he loved her. That was worth any amount of trouble.

"The mission to fight Acnologia is being led by Zeref," she said. "The Black Mage. And, because it's probably best to get everything out of the way up front, I should also tell you that we are kind of in a relationship."

Chaos ensued.

It put the guild's starvation-caused brawl to shame.

Elsewhere, it was safe to say that recruitment for the collaborative mission was going a little better.

Distance was no obstacle to magic which encompassed all of infinity, and a single twist of space had Zeref standing on the half of the globe that belonged unequivocally to him.

August met him at the palace gates. "Assemble the others," Zeref ordered, by way of greeting. "I want to see them in the council chamber as soon as possible."

"At once, Your Majesty."

"Also, see to it that my airship is fuelled, armed, and ready to fly at sundown."

"If you will it, but… is it not too early to prepare for war? I understood that we were not invading until September. Several of the Twelve are still absent from Vistarion-"

"We are going to war, yes," Zeref overrode him. "But our target is Acnologia. For too long he has taken from us without repercussions. Now, we are going to take back."

"And… the invasion of Ishgar?" August asked hesitantly.

"Indefinitely postponed," Zeref said.

And, because Zeref had that indescribable quality of authority far more than anyone currently in Sabertooth's guildhall, for he had spent centuries cultivating it, that was the end of that.