"Come back to Fairy Tail with you?"
Hearing the First Master's request, both of them froze in place. They'd only come here on a whim, wanting to pay their respects and maybe get a little peace of mind out of it. They hadn't even gotten around to asking anything of her yet, and somehow she'd already latched onto them first.
Kabe in particular found the situation almost too much to process. In the original story, Mavis's first appearance technically happened today, during the S Class exam. But she didn't actually become a real part of the plot until seven years later. If he brought the First Master back to the guild this early, wouldn't the rest of the guild get the shock of their lives?
Unsure what to do, Ultear looked to Kabe, wanting him to make the final call. Meeting Mavis's hopeful little gaze, Kabe found himself unable to refuse and nodded.
"You're the First Master. If you want to come back to the guild, nobody's going to stop you."
"Wonderful!"
Mavis's face lit up with a brilliant smile, and her whole body drifted upward with excitement, already too eager to wait before starting the trip back.
Seeing this, Kabe shrugged at Ultear.
"Well, guess we don't need to ask for the First Master's blessing anymore. We're just bringing the source directly."
Ultear pressed her lips together, a jumble of emotions she couldn't quite untangle. After tidying up the site a bit, the two of them, plus their new ghostly companion, set off on the return trip.
Watching Mavis drift along easily keeping pace with him, Kabe said nothing more and scooped up Ultear, streaking off with a long trailing tail of light straight toward Magnolia. It took barely ten minutes before the three of them arrived above the outskirts of the town.
Wanting Mavis to see what present day Magnolia looked like, Kabe touched down on the outskirts, planning to walk the rest of the way into town. The moment he landed and set Ultear down, Mavis drifted a full circle around him.
"Impressive. I don't sense any magic power at all, yet you fly that fast. Is it something similar to demon power, some other kind of power system separate from magic? That's quite rare."
"Something like that. It's called ki, a special kind of energy everyone has, even the weeds and wildflowers by the roadside."
Kabe had explained this question about ki more times than he could count by now. These days, his go-to explanation to outsiders was basically the same theory Mavis had just guessed at herself, and in the end it always got chalked up to some special innate talent of his unique race, the Saiyans. No one had ever once questioned it, even after all this time.
Seeing that he had no intention of elaborating further, Mavis didn't press the matter, nodding and letting her attention get swept up almost immediately by how utterly different present-day Magnolia looked from the town in her memories.
"So many people, this is nothing like the run down Magnolia I remember, back when barely any outsiders ever came through."
"The walls, the buildings, even the cobblestones under our feet, all new. And the town's grown so much bigger too."
"Oh, that bakery is still here? The storefront's been redone, but that smell, there's no mistaking it, still exactly the same as before."
"What's that shop over there selling? Magic soda? Some kind of alchemical potion?"
The whole walk into town, Mavis chattered away nonstop like an endlessly curious child. But strangely enough, no matter how loudly she called out, or how closely she pressed in to observe someone, every passerby seemed to walk right past her as if she weren't there at all, only occasionally glancing back to greet Kabe and Ultear behind her.
Ultear had noticed the oddity a while ago and shot Kabe a questioning look. Kabe did know the reason, and explained to Ultear.