Bonus Chapters every 200 Power Stones
"Normal Dialogue"
'Inner thoughts'
[Year X791]
~ With Shisui ~
"One hour to go until midnight." Shisui announced to his team.
The other four mbers of what would soon be known as Fairy Tail Team B looked up from their various preparations.
"How can you be so sure that sothing's happening at 12 midnight?" Laxus asked, setting down his coat and fixing Shisui with a questioning look. "Didn't previous competitions start in the morning where everyone attends an opening ceremony?"
It was a fair question, and Shisui could see the logic behind Laxus's scepticism. Every Grand Magic Gas since it's inception had followed the sa traditional format. Teams would gather in the morning for elaborate opening ceremonies, complete with speeches from dignitaries and presentations of the competing guilds. The actual competitions wouldn't begin until afternoon at the earliest, giving spectators ti to place bets and vendors ti to sell their wares.
But sothing felt different this year. The return of Fairy Tail's missing mbers from Tenrou Island had sent shockwaves through the magical community. More significantly, Shisui's own resurrection from supposed death had created a buzz that extended far beyond normal tournant excitent. The organizers would want to capitalize on that attention, and nothing generated excitent quite like the unexpected.
"Call it a gut feeling. With Fairy Tail's dramatic return to full strength, the organizers are going to want to do sothing spectacular. Sothing that will grab everyone's attention from the very first mont." Shisui replied honestly, his expression growing more serious as he spoke.
Laxus and Gajeel exchanged glances before shrugging in unison. They'd both learned to trust Shisui's instincts over the past few months, even when those instincts seed to contradict conventional wisdom.
Suddenly, Shisui's entire body went rigid. His head snapped toward the window, his eyes widening as sothing beyond normal human perception registered in his consciousness. The others noticed the change imdiately, their own senses heightening in response to his obvious alarm.
"Sothing's wrong." Shisui said, his voice tight with urgency. "I'll be back before midnight."
Before any of them could ask questions or offer assistance, he simply vanished.
Shisui's enhanced senses locked onto a magical signature that was fading with terrifying speed. Soone's Ethernano reserves were being drained at an alarming rate. Sothing like this did not just happen on a random night. Especially not in the capital city of Fiore, and definitely not minutes before the start of the biggest tournant in Fiore.
He reappeared in the garden hedges of the royal palace, a location that should have been peaceful and secure. What he found instead made his blood run cold.
A little girl lay unconscious on the decorative stones, her small body laid in a position that spoke of sudden collapse rather than peaceful sleep. Beside her, a white cat was equally motionless. But what made Shisui clenched his fist was the mont he saw that both figures bore the unmistakable mark of Fairy Tail, the guild emblem that marked them as family.
He closed his eyes in concentration as he scanned the surrounding area. He searched for magical residue, for footprints, for any trace that might lead him to whoever had done this. The attack was recent, minutes old at most. But as much as he had tried, he was too late. The perpetrator had already vanished as completely as if they had never existed.
Shisui knelt beside the unconscious pair as he checked their vital signs. Both showed signs of severe magical exhaustion but no obvious physical trauma. This hadn't been a random beating or a kidnapping attempt. Soone had specifically targeted their magical energy, draining them to the point of unconsciousness for reasons he couldn't yet figure out.
Rage began building in his chest, but he forced it down. Anger could wait. Right now, the two unconscious Fairy Tail mages needed dical attention.
He gently picked up both small forms in his arms, their combined weight barely registering as he locked onto Makarov's unique magical signature. The Body Flicker technique carried him across Crocus in seconds, depositing him directly in front of Makarov's temporary room at the inn Fairy Tail's supporting mbers were staying at. The Guild Master's shout of surprise echoed through the room as his nervous system tried to catch up to the sudden appearance of Shisui.
"Dammit, Shisui! You're going to give a heart attack with those sudden entrances!" Makarov began to complain, but his words died as he registered what Shisui was carrying. Or more specifically, who he was carrying.
His expression shifted imdiately from annoyance to cold fury as the temperature in the room seed to drop several degrees. When he spoke again, his voice carried the kind of authority that had made him feared as one of the Ten Wizard Saints.
"Who?"
The single word contained multitudes. Who had attacked his children? Who had dared to target Fairy Tail? Who would pay the price for this transgression?
"I got there too late. Whoever did this was already gone."
The door burst open as Bisca and Max rushed into the room, their faces flushed with concern. They'd obviously been nearby when Makarov had shouted, and their protective instincts had brought them running.
"Shisui?" Max called out, confusion evident in his voice. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be with your team preparing for—"
His words cut off abruptly as he noticed the unconscious forms in Shisui's arms. Understanding dawned with horrible clarity.
"WENDY?!" Bisca's voice cracked with emotion as she saw one of their youngest mbers lying motionless.
"Shisui, lay Wendy and Carla on the bed. Max, contact Porlyusica imdiately. Tell her we have a magical ergency and that she's needed here now. Bisca, find Elfman and tell him to prepare himself. He'll be replacing Wendy on the team." Makarov ordered.
Both younger mages nodded grimly and departed without argunt, understanding the urgency of the situation. In monts, the room was quiet except for the shallow breathing of the two unconscious victims.
Makarov turned back to Shisui, his expression hopeful despite the circumstances. "Can you heal them? Your magic—"
"I can handle most physical wounds." Shisui interrupted, shaking his head. "But near-complete Ethernano depletion is beyond my abilities. This kind of magical exhaustion requires specialized treatnt."
Makarov sighed heavily, the sound carrying the burdens of years spent watching his children suffer. "I'll take it from here. You should return to your team and prepare yourself. Sothing tells this attack is connected to whatever is happening behind the scenes."
The Guild Master's words triggered a mory, and Shisui found himself thinking back to a conversation they'd had two months earlier. He'd just returned from his S-rank mission with more than just a successful completion report. Cri Sorciere had shared intelligence that had troubled both n deeply.
In recent years, Jellal had explained that they had been consistently detecting a mysterious magical power gathering at the location of each Grand Magic Gas. The signature was unlike anything they'd encountered before, neither light nor dark but sothing altogether more ancient. Despite their best efforts, they'd never been able to identify its source or purpose, but its growing strength suggested sothing significant was building toward this year's competition.
Back in the present, Shisui nodded at Makarov's suggestion, pushing the mories aside to focus on the present crisis. There were still forty-five minutes left before midnight when he rejoined his team, but his entire aura had changed. The relaxed confidence he'd displayed earlier was gone, replaced by sothing harder and more dangerous.
His teammates picked up on the transformation imdiately, their own expressions growing serious as they recognized the signs of a man preparing for battle.
"What happened?" Laxus asked.
Shisui explained the attack in clipped, professional terms, describing the scene he'd found and the condition of both victims. As he spoke, he watched anger build in each of his teammates' faces. They'd initially planned to approach the gas with restraint, holding back their power to avoid unnecessary destruction or attention.
But the attack on Wendy and Carla changed everything.
Forty-five minutes passed with agonizing slowness as the team prepared themselves ntally for whatever was coming. When the clock finally struck midnight, Shisui's gut feeling proved right as a hologram of the event organizer began announcing an unprecedented change to the traditional format.
There would be a preliminary elimination round, they declared, designed to reduce the 112 participating teams to a more manageable 8 competing teams. This had never happened in previous gas, confirming Shisui's suspicion that sothing unusual was driving this year's competition.
"I don't care." Laxus growled, electricity beginning to dance around his knuckles. "Let them throw whatever they want at us. I'll show everyone, especially whoever attacked our family, why it was a mistake to ss with Fairy Tail."
Suddenly, their inn began to shift and rise, lifting high into the air as the building transford into sothing resembling a tower. Around them, similar structures carried other teams skyward
"Let the Grand Magic Gas' Preliminary Sky Labyrinth round begin!" The announcent echoed across the night sky.
Shisui's eyes, which had remained closed in ditation for the past forty-five minutes, snapped open to reveal his Sharingan. The red glow seed to cut through the darkness as he took his first step forward into the path that had just been ford ahead of them.
The gas had begun, and Fairy Tail Team B was ready for war.
~ End of Chapter 102 ~
You can read advanced chapter on [email protected]/The_Editor982
SHARINGAN IN THE GRAND MAGIC GAS BABYYYY! IS IT OVERKILL? OBVIOUSLY! BUT THEY SHOULDN'T HAVE TOUCHED WENDY!!!
Reviews
All reviews (0)