The three locked in combat in the Kardia Cathedral all focused intently on each other, neither party wanting to give the other any sort of advantage, but all noticed Merc's dynamic entry, footfalls audible even over the cacophony. Mercury was just in time to see electricity rip through Mystogan's mask to reveal the blue hair and red lines on his face; though he's seen it briefly before – those staves Mystogan use have little effect on non-humans – he could tell that Erza hadn't by the way her eyes fill with recognition and an emotion that appeared strangely like fear.
Who Mystogan was to Erza, Mercury had no idea, nor did he personally care. He just knew that Erza was shocked enough that she left herself open, and Laxus knew better than to ignore an opportunity for an advantage. He rushed her, fists crackling with energy, and it was only Mercury's timely intervention that prevented her from taking the attack head on. He sent spears of water racing towards the dragon slayer, forcing his magic to generate pure water rather than brine, even though he knew it would be more draining in the long run.
It was still a better solution than allowing the salt water to conduct Laxus's magic, so Mercury risked it.
Mystogan then told Erza that he was sorry, that he didn't mean for her to find out that he looked like "Jellal." Mercury only recognized the name from the Tower of Heaven paperwork, but refrained from commenting on it. He wanted to tell the two that it didn't matter right at that moment because they were still in the process of engaging an active S-Class threat, but he kept his mouth shut in favor of staring down Laxus.
He was rather annoyed when Mystogan fled, though. Mercury would have words for the masked mage the next time he came through.
"So, you finally decided to join us," Laxus drawled. He and Mercury circled each other, each waiting for the other to make a move so that they could retaliate. Meanwhile, Erza was still frozen, shock evident on her twisted jaw.
Mercury wanted to tell her to snap out of it, but didn't want to draw Laxus's attention to her, so he merely followed the dragon slayer's movement. They'd done this "dance" many times before, back when they were friends, though the stakes had never been quite so high as now.
"Laxus," the water mage started. Nothing came to his mind to follow it up with, though, the sensation of anger welling up once more – and hopefully for the final time. The feeling of a churning gut, of tense muscles, was an uncomfortable one; Mercury much preferred feigned disinterest, but just this once, he knew better than to swallow it down.
Because he would need anger to fuel him.
Both mages knew that Laxus was the stronger of the two.
"Not gonna beg?" Asked the dragon slayer, face twisted in his usual smirk. He already saw himself winning this fight uncontested, the idea that Mercury was weak still ringing out in his head.
And he wasn't wrong – Mercury was weak, at least compared to Laxus. He was much weaker than he knew he should be; even a lack of going on jobs shouldn't have contributed to the fact that he got so tired so quickly after using casual magic, and it was forcing him to come to an unfortunate understanding about himself.
Hopefully, he had enough strength to last until he managed to wrestle Laxus to at least a draw.
"Are you stupid?" Mercury asked instead, ignoring the dragon slayer's question. "Seriously – I mean it."
The arc of lighting that crashed down a foot to the left of the water mage nearly had him flinching, but he managed to at least pretend it hadn't startled him. It was just a warning shot, anyway, intended to do nothing more than make Mercury dance to Laxus's tune.
He refused.
"Why go this far? Why are you so obsessed with becoming the guildmaster of a guild you clearly think is weak?"
Laxus snorted and ignored his question.
"You think you're so smart and mature, don't you, Mercury?" Laxus snarled with that same smile plastered on his face. Unchanging. It was just one of Laxus's masks. "You think you're better than everyone else, so you ride on your high horse and watch the world around you pass by – well, guess what? You're still weak. Even if you pretend you're not interested in anyone else, that you're better than everyone else, it's the other way around."
"Do elaborate, please. I know you love hearing yourself talk," Mercury replied bitterly.
"You're a freak," Laxus said. "You know you don't belong here."
The words stung.
They weren't true, but Mercury could admit that he'd had similar thoughts before. Sometimes, his skin ached in a way that wasn't human. Those scales grew too fast for him to always pick them off before they fully formed, and he'd stare at himself in the mirror, eyes swapping between the dull gray patches and the black part of his chest. And then he'd go to the guildhall because he had nothing better to do – no jobs to go on, no real friends to talk with – and his body would itch as though reminding him that no matter how much he tried, he wasn't the same as everyone around him.
But it was on the days where he couldn't sit still, couldn't quite get comfortable in his own skin, that people asked if he was alright, eyes full a concern that he hadn't ever experienced living among "his own kind."
Mercury was not human. Everyone knew it. And yet there were still people who cared.
Laxus was wrong.
(The words still echoed in Mercury's head like a persistently bad headache.)
"You didn't seem to have an issue with it back then," Mercury deflected instead of commenting. "You clearly didn't think hanging around with a freak was that bad, huh?"
"Back then, you tricked me, but I won't be fooled anymore. You're no better than a dog – and when Gramps hands the guildmaster position over to me, people like you will be shown their place."
A dog, huh? So that was how Laxus thought of him now; no longer were they brothers in arms that trusted each other with their life, nor partners who would watch each other's backs as they took on whatever the world threw at them. Mercury was just a beast, less than human, and Laxus was the pinnacle.
The water mage was a dog, and the dragon slayer was a king.
Mercury felt oddly numb about it all. He was angry, sure, but that was for the sake of the guild, for the sake of the people who were laying in the street, unconscious, bruised, and battered as a result of Laxus's bullheaded plan. Even the townspeople were brought under his blanket of trust; though not knowing the truth, they'd accepted an oddball amongst oddballs such as himself with hardly a complaint.
Did he simply not care any longer?
"Erza," Mercury snapped. The woman was still standing off to the side, looking oddly stunned – he understood, really, the feeling of seeing someone you never expected to be right there in front of you, but there was a time and place to be surprised, to let it overwhelm you, and this was clearly neither.
She looked up dazedly.
"Are you so weak that you need that bitch's help to take me on? I knew you were pathetic, but going two on one is a new low, Mercury."
The water mage carefully did not respond.
"Erza," he said once more. "You've got about twenty minutes until those thunder lacrima decimate the town. I can't do anything about them."
The insinuation that went unsaid was, "You're in no state of mind to fight Laxus, so I'll handle it." Whether or not Erza understood, Mercury didn't know until she gave a small, uncharacteristically quiet nod and said nothing else, sprinting out of the cathedral to leave the two men to themselves. Mercury hoped the flash in her eyes was just determination.
"You think you can 'handle me? You?'" Laxus laughed gruffly.
Laxus's last impression of him had been from right before they'd had the big fight in the guild hall, when Mercury had denied a chance at an S-Class promotion. Laxus had taken this to mean he was undriven and weak, and clearly that assumption still stood in his mind.
"For someone who hates using his grandfather's name," Mercury said carefully instead of giving a direct answer, "you seem rather attached to his guild."
The water mage was done beating around the bush, so to speak. This conversation was going to go nowhere and waste too much time – who even knew how long there was remaining before the Thunder Palace was activated. Twenty minutes had been nothing more than a guess to spur Erza on.
Each word from then on was carefully calculated. Mentioning Makarov, mentioning the feeling of being weak, casually bringing up the feelings that Laxus had pushed down so long ago in his pursuit of strength… The water mage would no longer pretend to be unaware of the lightning dragon slayer's feelings; he'd make sure Laxus knew exactly how much he knew about the man, how well Mercury knew all of Laxus's innermost feelings that he kept carefully tucked away.
Mercury knew all the buttons to press to make Laxus make mistakes.
(Just how, in turn, Laxus also knew all the buttons that would rile Mercury up.)
Laxus didn't like this thinly veiled accusation that he was after "his grandfather's" guild. The statement did exactly as Mercury intended – Laxus stopped in his circling, racing forward with speed so fast that the water mage could barely track it with electricity on his fists.
"What do you know?" He shouted as Mercury ducked underneath and to the side, barely dodging. His footwork was light, and Laxus, though powerful, couldn't change directions very quickly when using his lightning magic. His retaliation was further delayed as his feet slipped underneath him on the water that had pooled.
At least Mercury hadn't lost his reaction time.
"I know you, Laxus," the water mage said as he placed his hands together. The magic circle that appeared above them was small enough that Laxus couldn't read it in time to react to the water that surged upwards from the puddle on the ground. "You want your grandfather's guild because you care about it."
"Lies," Laxus hissed. His own magic surged once, decimating the water that approached him as though it were nothing more than a gentle stream. Steam filled the air from the evaporation. "Fairy Tail is weak!"
"Then make your own damn guild, Laxus! There's no need to go this far for a weak guild!"
He'd set this whole thing up, a tournament meant to funnel the strongest fighters to himself so that they could fight for ownership of a guild that he thought was so weak that they were laughable; clearly, some part of Laxus thought they were strong enough to be a threat, and yet he hadn't yet come to that conclusion consciously.
The dragon slayer was either an idiot, or intentionally ignoring the reason he wanted Fairy Tail specifically.
"You want their reputation? I'd have thought that your reputation as a dark guild destroyer would be better than Fairy Tail's chaotic one. Less embarrassing, in your words," Mercury pushed. A line of lighting streaked towards him in retaliation, and again, he dodged, though this one was a lot closer to a direct hit. He felt the feeling of static lingering in the air where his head had been just moments ago, and knew that the fight was about to start in earnest.
"I don't need their damn reputation. I'm the strongest!"
Laxus's electricity leapt off his fingers once more, striking the benches where fervent worshippers would pray for salvation; at any other time, Mercury might have felt pitied for the wooden structures, destroyed by a man who thought himself to be the salvation of the strong, but he was too busy throwing himself out of the way to care.
Mercury crashed into another bench as he rolled away from the follow up strike. The brick floor underfoot was cracked from the impact of lightning as it scorched through everything, uncaring.
Truly representative of Laxus's beliefs; he'd break through anything, any obstacle he thought he saw to stop him from achieving his goals, whether or not it was truly in the way or not.
The pews gave the water mage a short reprieve in the form of hiding from Laxus's vision. He tucked himself underneath one, and, as quietly as possible, crawled forward to move closer to the lightning dragon slayer.
"You can't hide from me, Mercury!" Laxus snarled upon realizing.
With a roar, he let his magic run wild once more. Waves of lightning soared through the air, their paths entirely random as they struck down in every direction. Laxus cared not for the damage it caused, and any of Mercury's potential hiding spots were ripped away, scorched to less than cinders under the might of unstoppable lightning.
The water mage only managed to dodge most of them because the prickle of static on his skin told him where to dodge, which patches of floor were least likely to be assaulted in that moment. Some still managed to clip him, briefly incapacitating his left arm as it seized.
Being hit by pure lightning was just as painful as he remembered.
But it was nothing compared to the pain that was surely coming if the Thunder Palace wasn't subdued, and even if Mercury managed to take down Laxus, it was unlikely that it was going to be stopped.
When the indoor lightning storm came to a decent lull, only the scattered remains of the pews littered the floor; there was no longer a place to hide, unless he managed to slip behind one of the pillars that held up the ceiling. Laxus would surely attack those as indiscriminately as the rest of the building, however, and the roof would collapse on top of both of them.
It wasn't a bad plan if nothing else worked out. Mercury tucked it into the back of his mind, preparing to retaliate.
Laxus was unthinking in that moment, a being that relied on pure instinct rather than rational thought, his mind taken by anger. Mercury, though, wasn't much better. He already knew he was going to be pushed to the edge just to keep up with Laxus, who had been training and becoming all the more stronger while he'd stayed back in the guild.
(Once more, his… laziness, maybe, or perhaps denial, had become a detriment to him; it would have to be rectified soon after this, or else it was bound to happen again and again.)
Mercury placed his hands together again and allowed his magic to grasp at the water at his feet; it pulled upwards at his command, and when he swung his arm upwards from the ground, it followed, a whip of water with surprisingly high viscosity whipping through the air to strike at Laxus.
The dragon slayer had to use both hands to block the attack; Mercury took this opportunity to fill his lungs with water and launch it towards Laxus.
It pushed him back several inches. That was all.
Even though Laxus had to blink rapidly to get stray droplets out of his eyes, the dragon slayer was entirely unfazed, even breaking into a harsh laugh.
"Is that it? I knew you were weak, but even this falls short of my expectations."
Mercury knew Laxus was ignoring the already-bruising arm that he held with stiffness; blocking the attack had probably nearly broken the bone, and burst some of the veins held beneath the skin. It was already turning purple. Meanwhile, the water mage's own arm was already recovering from taking on so much electricity. He would surely win in a drawn out battle, so long as he could keep himself conscious and moving to avoid the dragon slayer's attack.
(He was not so confident in his abilities to do so, however.)
"Then don't block next time," Mercury said.
Laxus's smile didn't falter. "You think you know everything, huh? You think I'm weaker than you just because you don't die? Don't worry, Mercury, when I'm done with you, you'll wish you were dead, you hear?"
Mercury shivered at the thought. The words were knives against his already ailing heart; he already did wish he was dead on some days, but hearing it from the mouth of someone he once trusted with his life still hurt more than he was willing to admit.
He attempted to use the spell he'd stolen from Juvia – Water Lock, was it? Lingering water from his last attack rose upwards, attempting to encapsulate Laxus, but it was much too slow; the dragon slayer lept upwards to avoid it just as the water grabbed onto his feet.
Dragon slayers were always too agile.
"I'll show you!" Laxus shouted mid-air, and used his own attack to send bolts of steaming electricity towards Mercury, who was not so lucky to dodge this time. The first bolt, he could just step backwards and to the left to avoid, but the second and third ones had already predicted this movement, catching him first on the side to make him stagger, and then dead on in the chest, sending him flying backwards.
Yeah, it hurt just as much as he remembered. It would have hurt even more if the lightning hadn't shocked any feeling out of his body.
In fact, Mercury considered, body seizing uncontrollably on the floor after his back collided with the preacher's stand, the attack might have just stopped his heart entirely.
For the barest of moments, he couldn't breathe at all. His lungs wouldn't expand as he asked them too, only desperate breaths making any movement in his stilled chest. It hurt so much more than expected.
Everything went quiet, and not just because his eardrums had been blown out, small streams of blood welling in his left ear. Even the calming, demanding voice that he usually heard in his ears, pleading, begging, crying for him to "return home," went quiet.
Right there, Mercury, by human standards, had died under Laxus's hand.
And fortunately, it was by non-human standards that he lived.
With a burning sensation in his chest, a magic drain that creaked through his veins, and ringing in his ears, Mercury could feel the moment his heart started beating once more. It was only then that he managed to tell his lungs to breathe, for once not through his mouth but instead through the more habitual gills on the side of his neck, audibly heaving behind the fabric of his turtleneck that hid them.
He wanted to force himself to stand to face Laxus once more, but his muscles refused to listen to him, jerking around as though they had marionette strings attached to them. His ears rang painfully. He didn't scream though, his jaw clenched almost painfully just to deny Laxus the satisfaction.
This wasn't even the dragon slayer's true power; it was the equivalent of a predator playing with prey.
Mercury saw Laxus give a laugh, though it was silent to his burst eardrums. He approached slowly, taking his time now that Mercury was unable to counter, and started speaking.
… But the water mage couldn't hear what he was saying. The dragon slayer's mouth moved cruelly and silently, a twisted smile on his face as he stared down at the person beneath him.
Laxus really had just tried to kill him.
(His chest hurt, squeezing, as that rotting mark pulsated like it had its own heartbeat.)
If it was anyone else, he would have killed him. If it had been Erza, if it had been Mystogan – maybe even if it had been his own grandfather, Laxus would have killed him.
The lightning dragon slayer drew close to him – too close – and grabbed the man beneath him by the collar of his shirt, lifting him into the air to stare him into the eyes, fingers roughly and painfully looped under his gills. This time, Mercury couldn't help but wince. Laxus planned to make an example of Mercury, maybe take out any anger aimed towards the guild out on him, but Mercury forced a laugh through his spasming jugular instead. It didn't sound like it belonged to him, a rancid, hysterical laugh that fit a lot more. Laxus looked unnerved, to stay the least, but he didn't release his hold on Mercury's neck.
Mercury didn't stop laughing. Instead, he froze the water on the ground.
Laxus clearly didn't know he could do that.
Icy spears lept upwards from the puddles of water that were made by Mercury's previous attacks. They were no longer pure water, now contaminated by the cathedral's floor, but ice was nowhere near as good a conductor of electricity as water was. Mercury didn't even care any longer – he knew he could keep going even after taking a lightning blast to the chest, and he cared little about the pain any longer.
The water on Laxus's pants and coat froze into incredibly heavy blocks of ice, sticking his body to the ground.
Mercury could feel the drain of it all immediately. He knew that ice magic wasn't really that different from water magic, it was just the process that was different; freezing the water required him to hold the individual molecules in place until they formed a crystalline structure, and he doubted anyone who hadn't lived underwater for as long as he had would have the sense to do so the way he did. It was entirely inefficient. The long walks that he had been taking in the harbor recently were the only thing that gave him the confidence to do something like this; he was as magically charged as he'd been in months, maybe even years.
Laxus's legs were weighed down by thick ice. His eyes widened as he dropped Mercury to the ground and tried to jump upwards, out of the path of the icy spears that quickly closed in on him in a horizontal arc, but his shoes were frozen to the floor. He didn't get any upwards movement, and the bunt ice slammed into his back, forceful enough to break what was holding him in place at his feet and stab holes into the dragon slayer's cloak.
He went tumbling into the wall, falling into an ungraceful heap, stunned for the moment.
Mercury forced himself to stand, limbs now mostly under his control, save for the occasional twitch. His ears still rang loudly, though it was quickly fading as his regeneration kicked himself into overdrive, finally aware that yes, he was fighting, and no, he was not going to win.
Laxus's face was pinned to the wall by the heavy mass of ice pressing against his back, though only for a moment. He was quick to regain his awareness, sending shockwaves of lightning to course from his body to the ice and shatter it. At the very least, Mercury was confident that Laxus was shaken, brian rattled from his abrupt slam into the wall. The lightning dragon slayer had underestimated his opponent once more, and for once, said opponent was able to gain the upper hand, if only for a moment.
And boy, was Laxus mad about it.
If he hadn't been moving entirely on instinct earlier, he started doing so then. Obscenities tore through his mouth, so profane that even a bandit would have cried from vitriol of it, and Mercury's impromptu water clone wasn't enough to distract him from targeting his former friend. Lightning engulfed the whole room, including himself, and this time Mercury did scream. It wrested itself from his body even though he tried to hold it in; Laxus's anger had increased the intensity of his attacks, and he overcame the loss of accuracy by simply filling the whole room with them. Mercury could faintly see the outline of scales on Laxus's arms through half lidded eyes, and knew that he'd finally gotten serious.
Mercury forced his body to stand, though it felt like every heartbeat sent another waterfall of trembling coursing through his veins. His hair was burnt at the edges, smoke silently rising from it. He'd only ever fought Laxus using dragon slayer magic once, the arrogance brought from some bandit raid or another having sufficiently pumped his ego enough that he thought he might manage the feat.
(He hadn't been able to. Not even close.)
Mercury bit his tongue. He silently wished he knew how to enchant things without water magic; if he used those here, he'd get fried for sure, whether from the electricity or the pure heat radiating from Laxus.
He could hear people in his head shouting through Warren's telepathy, a combination of arguing and planning to get rid of the Thunder Palance, but he had no spare thoughts to focus on it. Laxus sent another wave of lightning at him, though it was much smaller this time as he tried to acclimate once more to the coursing dragon slayer magic, so Mercury was able to to skillfully dodge.
The telepathy cut for a moment, and then he heard the distinctly loud voice of Gray shouting that everyone needed to get their shit together.
Mercury agreed. He needed to get his shit together, too.
It was by some twisted, convoluted thought process – maybe from anger, or maybe it was insanity – that Mercury decided he should provoke Laxus even further; maybe provocation wasn't the right term for it at all, and he was simply letting the words that had been bubbling beneath the surface ever since their last fight tear out.
"Laxus!" He shouted. "Are you fucking stupid?"
He had to swipe underneath another blast of lightning, followed by the guttural roar of a dragon slayer that had lost himself to rage in order to keep speaking.
"Why would you throw it all away? A family that loves you, a grandfather that would do anything for you, and for what? For a guild you say you don't care about?"
Mercury was jealous that the dragon slayer had such privilege to reject people who truly cared; if he had been born in Laxus's place, would he have made the same choices?
No, Mercury knew. He would hold tightly onto those people. People who wouldn't scorn him for being different, people who wouldn't cast him out to live a life in a place where he ultimately did not belong, could not survive in.
Laxus was a privileged asshole.
"You know nothing!" Laxus insinuated once more, screeches louder than the shouting in Mercury's head of other guild members. They were going to perform a suicide attack to take out the lacrima, sacrificing their own bodies to stop the dragon slayer's idiotic plan to use the town as hostages to get what he wanted.
"What the hell do I not know – tell me! Why are you going so far?!"
For a guild Laxus secretly loved. For a family Laxus secretly desired the approval of.
"That's rich coming from you, Mercury! 'Tell me,' – tell you what? You always act like you know everything about us when you never told us, never told me anything!"
Mercury sent another cascade of water, practically a horizontal waterfall, at the dragon slayer, but it evaporated before it even reached him. Lightning bolts struck around Laxus in a circle to stop any of the remaining water from getting close enough to even touch him.
"What did you do when I told you things about myself? You spat them back in my face! Why should I tell you more, give you more things to use against me?"
The words Laxus had said that day still hurt. Mercury told himself they didn't, but the water mage was the best liar he knew.
(He was always lying.)
"No," Laxus's voice became oddly calm, a growl. "You never told us anything. Why was I still finding things out about you even after we removed you? You tell those weaklings things, but not us?"
Both of them took a pause, halting their attacks.
"I've told them nothing, because I've learned from you. I'm not going to let them hurt me again."
"Is that why they knew you had a kid? A whole child, and none of us knew about it? No, Mercury, you keep too many secrets."
This wasn't even particularly about the guild anymore. Somehow, the conversation had turned back to Mercury, as though this whole situation was his fault to begin with.
(Was it?)
"What the hell did you want to know about me? My whole life's story? Superficial shit like that so you could just be an asshole about it again later?"
Laxus snarled, "You never even trusted us enough to tell us things you thought were superficial, huh?"
Mercury realized the contradiction in his own words.
If it was superficial, why not bring it up to the Thunder God Tribe? If it wasn't superficial, why not bring it up anyway, if not for a distrust of Laxus, Evergreen, Fried, and Bixlow?
It wasn't that he hadn't trusted them. He'd seen some of the worst parts of them, too, from Bixlow being called a cursed child and beaten to the point of near death before being saved by Mercury and Laxus, to Evergreen's mother nearly selling her to a band of traveling bandits before, again, being rescued by the two Fairy Tail members. Even Fried had his own story to tell – despite born into a somewhat well-off family, he'd been ostracized due to him being the product of an affair, and eventually he'd been forced out when his mother had passed.
Mercury knew the Thunder God Tribe, and he knew Laxus, whose own past had been just as troubled.
But they didn't know him. And if it wasn't distrust, why hadn't he talked about himself?
He wanted to smack himself. Maybe all of this could have been avoided if he'd just opened up a little to them, trusted them to do right by his past and still accept him as he was.
"I-"
Mercury couldn't say anything. Laxus was, for once in his life, right.
"It's too late, Mercury. Can't you feel it? The Thunder Palace is about to go off, and then there won't be anything left of this guild. If I can't have Fairy Tail, no one will."
Laxus was still insane, even if he was correct about Mercury.
The water mage lunged forward in one last final-ditch attempt. Even if he could hear his guildmates organizing in his head, that didn't mean he wasn't going to try one last time to knock some sense into the dragon slayer.
"Are you crazy?! You'll be branded a criminal – you'll be hunted down to the ends of the continent, and for what? For ego? For pride? Stop this now, Laxus!"
Laxus did not listen.
"I'd be doing the Magic Council a favor."
"And what of all the innocent people in Magnolia! They'll be taken out, too!"
Either Laxus had not thought that far, or he simply didn't care. Whatever the reason, Mercury knew words alone were not enough to convince him to deactivate the Thunder Palace, and any force he'd be able to muster would not be nearly enough to force Laxus to deactivate it, not with how little time they had remaining. A few seconds, at best.
Laxus was a bastard, that much was clear.
Mercury put his hands on Laxus's collar just as the detonation was about to start, and the man beneath him didn't try to fight it. He'd already thought that he'd won, and that in seconds, the entire town of Magnolia would be demolished, along with everyone in it, save for himself.
Lightning based attacks had no effect on a lightning dragon slayer, after all.
Even if that meant sacrificing Fried and Bixlow and Evergreen, even if that meant sacrificing every innocent person in the town who was there for the Fantasia Festival; families, tourists, children, all expected to die for Laxus's message.
Explosions rang out, but they were too high in the sky to take out the town.
Mercury would have sighed in relief if the telepathy wasn't still in effect; he heard it, first hand, exactly how pained the cries through the link were as his guildmates took the brunt of the attack – an attack that should have had Mercury as its target, because this was his fault and he was the one who could regenerate near endlessly.
Instead, there he was, knee planted in a stunned Laxus's chest.
"It didn't work, Laxus. Now what? Now what insane plan are you going to enact to get people to follow you? Guess what, bastard. Nobody in Fairy Tail will ever listen to a thing you say even if Master does name you guildmaster. They'd rather die than listen to a bastard like you who considers strength to be the most important trait a person can have."
Laxus glared up at him. The dragon slayer didn't like when he was the one underneath someone else's foot.
"It's not over," he snarled.
Mercury had thought it to be a desperate bluff of a defeated man until a spear of thunder crashed down on his back.
All strength he'd had, drawn from anger and indignation and righteousness faded as, once again, his heart struggled to keep any semblance of a normal pace. Two serious shocks, apparently, had been too much for it. With a small groan, he fell backwards from the dragon slayer's chest.
It was painful. How many times had he thought that today?
Mercury tried to keep his eyes open, but it was tough, tougher than it should have been. He'd taken worse in the past. The regenerative power that he relied on, however, had seemed to stumble after doing its job in making sure his heart continued pumping, all the strength he'd saved falling away as though it had never been there in the first place.
He could feel the place where the bolt had hit him, covering his back in burned flesh. An exhale caught in his throat, the world spinning.
Maybe this time, he was going to pass out for a bit – but he couldn't. Not now. Magnolia was still in danger.
Laxus stared down at him just as a flaming presence approached.
Mercury knew that it was Natsu, either finally coming to make good on his promise on fighting Mercury when everything was over, or to come get vengeance for the pain his guildmates had just been put through. Maybe he'd finally realized that this wasn't a game when Lucy's life had been put in danger – Mother knew the boy hardly cared for himself, was nowhere near self aware enough to come to the realization that he could die, but when Lucy was involved, he seemed unstoppable.
And the water mage did not want to accept his help.
"L-Laxus," he choked out, meeting those flaming eyes.
"I told you. If I can't have Fairy Tail, no one can. That old man clearly doesn't care enough about this guild if he's willing to let me walk all over it."
Mercury wanted to correct him, to tell him of the bad state that Makarov had been in when he'd left, but it was hard enough just trying to wrestle himself into a position that didn't give the dragon slayer direct access to all of his organs.
He feared what Laxus was going to do next; not to him, but to the town. To the people in it.
Mercury was the only one nearby to put a stop to it.
Laxus began to gather his magic in a way that was distinctly unlike him. It wasn't the electric magic that Mercury knew to expect from the man; instead, it produced a clear, twinkling sound. Like stars. A sound that shouldn't have been coming from lightning dragon slayer or even just regular lightning magic.
The spell belonged to neither one.
It reminded Mercury of that ominous presence that resided in the guild's basement.
Of the great Fairy Tail spells.
Fairy Law.
"Laxus!"
Mercury remembered a particularly late night in Fairy Tail several years ago. Years before their first fight. Laxus was just a teen. They'd just come back from a job together that had nearly ended in tragedy – would have ended in tragedy if not for what Mercury was.
Laxus had cursed his own weakness.
So the two made a plan. They'd break into the restricted section of the library and learn the Fairy Tail Great Magics.
Laxus hadn't been able to use it at the time. His magic capacity had been too small, and when they'd been caught by Master the next morning, they were forced to swear they wouldn't use it. It could cause great harm if used before mastered, Master had exclaimed.
And though Mercury knew how to use it, he couldn't actually do it; the theory was much different than the actual thing, after all, so he'd simply forgotten about the experience until now.
Laxus, however, had not forgotten.
He was fucking insane.
"This guild is mine. I'll get rid of everything that's in my way, including you!"
Mercury could regenerate from basically anything; fatal wounds, small scratches, any wound inflicted on him healed quickly enough. Even now, by the time Laxus was casting his spell, his chest had stopped hurting – although it certainly still ached in other ways – and the burns had started to slowly fade.
But would his body regenerate from being completely and utterly annihilated at the hands of a madman who would rather kill whatever stood in his way than find a way around it?
What the hell was he thinking?
Mercury forced his limbs to move, to get up and do something, but there was hardly anything he could do. The spell was already being activated, and Master's words echoed in his head.
If the spell was canceled mid-way through, there would be disastrous consequences for the caster.
In the split second he had between standing up and lunging towards the dragon slayer, cursed thoughts slipped through his mind.
He could attempt to stop Laxus and risk the blowback rebounding onto the dragon slayer – whatever form that may take. Death, maybe, from the severity of the Master's words, or something even worse; maybe Laxus would become an existence like himself. "Living," but not quite in the way that humans did. Master wouldn't have told them not to use it if it wasn't going to have serious side effects.
Or he could let Laxus finish casting the spell, and suffer the consequences. Mercury had no idea how far the spell would go; it could have been limited to just Laxus's sight range, to him, or it could span all of Magnolia – but how much of the city would Laxus truly consider to be his enemy? If it was just himself, he wouldn't care; Mercury deserved it. All of this had somehow become his fault, and being obliterated didn't seem like such a bad way to go…
The whole town – they didn't deserve any of this. None of Fairy Tail did.
But Laxus…
Mercury couldn't do it.
He couldn't make the choice. Risk Laxus on something that was sure to happen and affect only him, or risk the whole town on an outcome that wasn't even certain.
The water mage's arm fell away from where it was outstretched in Laxus's direction, falling to his knees as the power released itself from the dragon slayer's body.
Mercury let Laxus cast Fairy Law.