The sounds of explosions occurring within the canyon soon became a common occurrence. Contrary to the carefree personas that Fairy Tail mages tend to carry themselves in public, when they are serious about something, they can actually stick to a schedule to see it done.

In this case, the Strauss siblings and Cana were entirely serious about climbing back to the top in the next GMG and were putting in their hundred and one percent into their training to catch up on seven years of lost time. Maybe it's because I never cared much about prestige, maybe it's because I know what will happen in the GMG thanks to my foreknowledge, but I don't feel too invested in winning the games. I do help by becoming their sparring partners when they request for it but other than that, I don't see a real need to totally immerse myself in what would be an anime-cliched "training montage".

I don't plan on participating in the games anyway.

I can gauge their strength from the few spars I had with the four original members of Fairy Tail thus far. I can handle Elfman and Lisanna without problems. Cana may be a little tricky to deal with thanks to the versatility her Card Magic provides but I can still beat her if I put in the effort.

Mirajane though, is the real deal.

With the kind of power she possesses, it's hard to imagine that she is someone who was trapped in time for seven years. It makes me shudder to even think just how much stronger she would be if she wasn't trapped in stasis. While I haven't lost in a fight against her, I had never won too, and neither of us were being entirely serious in our duels, so it's hard to say who is stronger than who but that does not cover the fact that Mirajane is a very powerful mage. I had to nearly either tap into that other side of my power several times in my spar against her, or nearly resorted to using forbidden magics that I only used in dire circumstances, that was how hard I was pushed.

No wonder she made S Class.

'You could easily defeat her with a pinky if you use my power.'

'And accidentally kill her as a result?'

'It would be an accident.'

'Yeah, no, thank you.'

"Penny for your thoughts?"

My thoughts were disrupted when Mirajane approached me where I was sitting with that usual kind smile on her face. She bent down a little while tucking a strand of her long platinum hair behind her ear before taking a seat beside me. Both of us had just finished sparring with each other and were now covered with sweat, mud, bruises, and several little cuts, nothing too unusual given the intensity of our training. Mirajane and I had been spending more and more time alone as of late seeing as how she's the only one among us who can go toe to toe with me. Conversely, I'm also the only one who can keep up with her insane training.

"I recognise that look, you know," Mirajane playfully tapped her finger on my forehead. "It happens to me too when I converse with the demons inside me. Your real magic is Take Over, am I right?"

In hindsight, I should have expected her to deduce the true nature of my magic since she is a Take Over mage too.

"Should have known that you of all people would spot it," I cannot help but sigh when my secret was let out. "Yes, my real magic is Take Over. The Light Magic that I am using is simply an aspect of it, much like a by-product, but usually that alone is enough for me to deal with most threats."

"I take it that you don't use your Take Over unless you are in very dire situations?" Mirajane asked curiously with a tilt of her head. I can see why she was the most popular model in all of Fiore. Just that head tilt alone is enough to make my own heart unwillingly skip a beat or two. She's unbelievably beautiful, with the perfect curves in the perfect places, the sound of her voice just makes you want to turn your head to look at her and you just cannot tear your eyes off her, especially when she is sitting just right next to me where I can smell her intoxicating scent.

I've seen my fair share of beautiful ladies before, but Mirajane is truly the only one who makes me want to look at her more than just the usual passing glance I would give.

"It's not good news for anyone if I ever have to use my Take Over," I admitted, not exactly willing to go into detail about what kind of Take Over I use. Mirajane nodded her head in understanding and never pried further and I'm grateful for that.

"You don't seem very excited about the GMG."

"I don't see a point about it beyond the prize money, and that is only because we can really use that money right now," I replied, "but everybody seems eager about the GMG, and who am I to dampen their spirits?"

"I'm sure your opinion will change soon. The mood in our guild can be very infectious, you know?" Mirajane said with a laugh. "Who knows, maybe you will represent our guild for the games, you do have the strength to do so. Didn't Macao say that you could go toe to toe with Sabertooth's strongest mages?"

"No thanks," I shuddered at the thought of facing those annoyingly stubborn Sabertooth mages once more. While defeating them wasn't difficult, trying to get them off your case would take too much effort for it to be worthwhile.

"Come on, it couldn't be that bad."

"You weren't the one facing them. They are like a bunch of annoying pests, you cannot simply swat them away."

"The strongest mages in the strongest guild in Fiore are nothing but pests to you? Oh my, oh my, someone's not very humble, is he?"

"I don't want to hear that from someone as powerful as you. With people like you around as the guild's S Class mages, I can see why Fairy Tail was the strongest guild seven years ago."

"Is that a compliment? You do know how to make a woman happy."

"If the both of ya are done flirting with each other," Cana's voice sounded out from behind us, cutting our conversation short. "The rest of us are about to prepare lunch. You lovebirds coming or not?"

"Cana, I was in the middle of seducing him," Mirajane replied with a look of mock hurt, to which Cana responded with a roll of her eyes before walking away while chugging down yet another bottle of booze. Mirajane laughed at the sight as she stood up before offering me a hand.

"Let's go, it would not do well to keep the rest waiting, right?"

I took her hand as she helped me up, although I could not help but keep thinking as we walked back to camp that her hand was really soft and smooth.


Maybe it was because our lives fell into a monotonous routine, but our training trip came to a close in the blink of an eye. It wasn't long before we had to pack up and leave the canyon if we did not want to be late for the GMG.

However, Mirajane received a task from Master Makarov to help him follow up with several administrative matters on the guild's behalf. From what I was let known there were many complications on the administrative side of things when the Tenrou Group returned. People who were thought to be dead for seven years suddenly coming back to life without ageing a single day would do that. It's not hard to imagine the paperwork hell Master Makarov and Macao had to handle ever since their return.

What I wasn't expecting was for Mirajane to request for me to accompany her, saying that she had been gone for seven years and it would make things smoother if a familiar face of the guild were to accompany her. It's true that my name and moniker is well-known across Fiore as the Ace of Fairy Tail while the Tenrou Group was absent. I was Fairy Tail's Ace until Gildarts returned, my presence alone could make the process a lot smoother because there is no doubt that I am a Fairy Tail mage. It would be hard to fake my identity.

Thus, we split ways from the rest of the group and headed for another town. Mirajane and I did a rough estimate of the time we needed to get things done and it seems like we would be able to rendezvous with everyone else back at Crocus with more than enough time to spare. If all goes well, we could maybe even afford to tour the place for a few days before heading for Crocus.

"That should settle everything," Mirajane let out a contented sigh as we both strolled out of the bank that we had been in since early this morning. We had to go through an arduously long process with the person-in-charge on many matters, mainly regarding the paperwork needed to restore the bank accounts of all the Tenrou group members who had gone missing in those seven years. Per Fiore's regulations, their bank account balances had all been wiped clean when they went missing for more than five years and subsumed by the bank themselves. What Mirajane and I did was to provide the supporting documents needed for the banks to restore those bank accounts and their balances back to what they were before the people from the Tenrou group went missing.

Whenever people talked about Mirajane, their first impression of her would be about her fame and beauty as the top model for the weekly sorcerer or about her strength as one of Fairy Tail's S Class mages. I don't think many people realised just how good she is at navigating through the murky waters of legal jargon and dealing with all the bureaucracy crap. I wouldn't have known about it myself until I saw it with my own eyes.

In fact, I have no idea why I'm here when my assistance was barely needed.

"Sorry that I hadn't been of much help," I apologised as we walked down the cobbled streets of the town, the setting sun casting a dark orange hue. This town is where the headquarters of the largest bank in Fiore is at. We had reached this town in the early morning and headed for the bank. We haven't had the time to search for a place that we could possibly stay for the night so that's what we are doing now, looking for an inn so that we could finally rest.

"You helped plenty. I don't think that person would have worked as fast as he did if you weren't glaring at him behind my back," Mirajane teased and I awkwardly rubbed my nose with a finger, knowing that she had a point. I was annoyed by how slow the bank was taking things so I might or might not have glared at them to incentivise them to work faster. The public knows that I'm not the most sociable mage in Fiore anyway, so I don't mind playing the role of the villain here.

"You were imagining it," I decided to vehemently deny that I ever did such a thing, even if I knew that Mirajane never bought my lie for a single second.

"Did I now?" Mirajane asked with a teasing smirk before breaking out into a light laugh. "Alright, alright, it was all the trick of the light and I was imagining things."

We managed to find ourselves an inn to stay the night. Mirajane had been here before, saying that there was a place here which serves extremely delicious fish and chips, assuming it was still in operation throughout her seven years disappearance. We did manage to find the place in the end and it is still around. True to her words, the fish and chips are to die for.

"Food seems to be your hobby," Mirajane commented when the topic of our conversation turned to the kinds of food I had savoured during my journeys. I simply nodded.

"It's one of life's simplest pleasures that I can safely indulge in."

"Ever thought of becoming a food critic?"

"Beating up bandits or dark mages is a lot more fun, gets all the pent up energy out of the system," I answered. "Besides, government-sanctioned violence, you know?"

"Macao did tell me that you like to toe the line of the law," Mirajane hummed in thought. "Living quite the dangerous life if I do say so myself."

"And you disapprove of it?"

"Nope! On the contrary, it seems to be fun!"

"You guys are all clinically insane," I muttered under my breath while taking another bite from my meal, finally seeing for myself the true Fairy Tail brand of crazy from their core members.

"We take that as a compliment, you know?"

Clinically insane, definitely clinically insane.


"Mira, Argus! Glad that both of you could make it here in time!"

Makarov was the one who greeted us when we finally located the lodging the guild was staying at during our duration of stay in Crocus. This place would be for our guild's exclusive use during this period.

"Argus! I could finally meet you in the flesh. How's life so far? Doing fine, I hope?" Makarov kept up with the idle chatter while leading us up to a private room upstairs, presumably to be able to talk behind closed doors where the staff working here would not be able to eavesdrop on us. He brought us to a spacious private room where several people were already waiting for us within it.

"The two of you returned just in time too. Argus, meet Fairy Tail's Team B. Children, I'm sure you already heard of him, but this is Argus. Treat him well."

"Doesn't seem like he amounts to much, and he smells funny," A tall muscular man with long spiky black hair commented from where he was seated on a couch and munching on some nails. I don't need to be a genius to identify him as Gajeel Redfox, the Iron Dragon Slayer.

"Funny, I was thinking of the same thing about you too."

Gajeel slowly let a predatory smirk cross his face after hearing my reply.

"Gihihihi, he'll fit in here alright."

"Gajeel, be nice," A woman with blue hair chided the crass man before turning back to me and introducing herself. "Juvia Lockser, Water Mage."

"Laxus Dreyer, Lightning Dragon Slayer," The other large man in the room grunted out before elbowing the drunk woman slumped across the table in the room, eliciting no response from her in the process. "This drunkard is Cana, Card Mage."

"We already met," I assured him before I turned to the corner of the room where I sensed a familiar presence that had no business doing here. "But why are you here, Jellal?"

"One day, I will find out how you kept doing that."

The space where I was looking at shimmered briefly before dissolving away from view, and someone who wasn't there previously was now there. Jellal Fernandes walked up to us and judging that the only person who was surprised by his sudden appearance was Mirajane, everyone else already knew that he was there.

"Jellal, this is Crocus. You have some balls of steel to waltz in here like that."

"I wouldn't take that risk if the situation wasn't so dire," Jellal explained himself. "To keep it short, Crime Sorciere sensed the presence of Zeref's magic in Crocus, specifically from the arena and that presence gets much stronger every year around the period the GMG was held, you already knew about this."

"Yeah, you said that you guys could never get close enough to investigate without alerting the council to your presence," I replied, a little pissed that his actions had jeopardised the reputation of my guild because if anyone knew that he was here with us, it could land Fairy Tail into some serious trouble.

Did he ever do the same thing in canon? I really could not remember.

"And so, I was thinking, if I could be a member of Fairy Tail under another identity-"

"Cut that thought. That's some wishful thinking you have there, and you know it."

"Precisely," Jellal agreed, "and believe me, I do not want to implicate Fairy Tail into our mess as well, but somebody has to investigate the source of Zeref's magic that we had been sensing every year in Crocus during this brief period of time, and since like you said, I cannot do it myself…"

I realised that I had walked into Jellal's trap when I spotted that knowing grin on his damn face.

"You sneaky little rat."

"Thanks in advance, Argus."

"So that settles it! Argus will join Fairy Tail Team B as its fifth member, and Cana as the reserve member!" Makarov happily ended the discussion with a clap of his hands, bringing our attention back to him once more. I tried to protest, because it really wasn't my intention to participate in the games and I really have no wish to take part in it, but I felt a hand being placed on my shoulder and I looked back, only to find that it was Mirajane. The smile she gave me felt like a really dangerous threat and so, I heeded the advice of my survival instinct and aborted whatever I tried to do.

"Meredy and Ultear said hi!" Jellal turned to take his leave, but not before calling out to me as his body started to fade away from view. Was that merely a Thought Projection? It's a very high level mastery he had over that particular magic. No wonder he was given the title of Wizard Saint until his imprisonment.

"I can't believe I got dragged into this mess, just like that."

"Don't worry, if Jellal vouched for your abilities, then I trust his judgement that you know what to do and how to handle yourself," Makarov waved it off with that usual silly grin on his face. "On a more serious note, we also cannot afford to ignore anything that has possible relation to Zeref, especially given that this is Crocus where we are at, the capital of Fiore. And if we add the things we had been through at Tenrou, where Zeref's existence was a key reason why we were trapped in time… Sorry to do this to you, Argus, but this is the only option left without jeopardising the guild through agreeing to Jellal's suggestion of having him participate in the games under the identity of another prior member of ours. We cannot afford to ignore anything that has a possible association with Zeref."

"The GMG is just such a damn drag," I sighed, not knowing how or why people found it fun to fight another for sport. Fighting is fighting no matter how you sugarcoat it and there will always be casualties in a fight. Fights are simply a means to decide the victors and losers, where the victors dictates the fate of the defeated. What fun is there to find in that?

Now that I had the time to think about it, I think I remembered that Fairy Tail had indeed sent in two teams for the GMG in canon, but it's been so long that I really could not recall what turned out from that. All I remembered was that eventually, dragons appeared, and like usual it was a damn miracle that nobody died from that shitfest similar to every other subsequent arc of the canonical storyline.

'Dragons? Haven't seen any of those in a long time.'

'I don't want to.'

'But I want to.'

Maybe there is merit to helping Crime Sorciere after all, because if I could somehow help them make headways into their investigation, maybe I could prevent the dragons from appearing at all.

This world is not a fairy tale, tragedies do occur and they occur frequently. My plan definitely sounded like a more logical and rational course of action instead of letting the power of canon do its own thing.

Investigating the source of the presence of Zeref's magic. Alright, I can do that.

After all, I am a God's chosen vessel.