Kabe steeled himself and shook hands with the enthusiastic guild masters one after another, exchanging a few words with the ones he was more familiar with. It took a fair bit of effort before he finally managed to wave off the crowd and make his way over to Makarov, who'd already noticed him and cut off whatever bragging he'd been doing to his old friends.
"Hey, old man. Been a while."
Kabe pulled out a chair with a laugh and sat down, then nodded a greeting to Bob, Goldmine, and the others seated at the table. Makarov's face still carried the flush of a man who'd had a bit too much to drink. Spotting Kabe's sudden arrival, he first puffed his chest out proudly, sweeping a glance around his old friends as if to say, "You see that? That's one of my guild's kids." Then, breaking into a warm, delighted smile, he turned to Kabe.
"Laki wrote a few days back saying you were home. I figured I'd swing by and catch up with you once the meeting wrapped up, didn't expect you to come find me yourself."
He picked up his bottle and personally poured Kabe a drink, raising his own for a toast. Their cups clinked together lightly, and Kabe threw his back in one go. Watching Makarov clap his hands happily and reach for the bottle again, Kabe raised a hand to stop him, smiling.
"Master, hold off on the drinking for a second. I've got one piece of good news and one piece of bad news. Which do you want first?"
The moment he heard that, alarm bells started blaring in Makarov's head, an unmistakable sense of dread washing over him. After all his years as Fairy Tail's Master, he knew perfectly well that whatever prompted Kabe to come all this way in person couldn't possibly be good.
"Let's start with the good news."
"Alright. The bad news is Natsu, Gray, and Happy stole an S Class job from the guild in the middle of last night. The job involves a dark guild and a demon."
Makarov shot him an irritated glare, clearly annoyed at being messed with, especially after specifically asking for the good news first. Grumbling internally, he immediately switched to worrying over the three reckless kids instead, brow furrowing.
"Then why are you here talking to me? Go find those three troublemakers already!"
"Hey, don't rush, I haven't even gotten to the good news yet."
Kabe soothed the old man's temper before jerking a thumb toward the villa's front door.
"The good news is, the target of those three idiots' job happens to be heading our way right now. If nothing goes wrong, we should be running into them here shortly."
'Heading our way?'
A flood of questions rose in Makarov's mind at once, though his concern for the guild's children still won out first, and he launched into a tirade against Natsu and the others.
"Those brats, getting bolder by the day, pulling something like this the moment my back is turned. Once we're home, I'm making sure they learn some proper discipline!"
Watching Makarov fume, mustache bristling with fury, Goldmine, who'd been listening from the same table, uncrossed his arms and offered some reassurance.
"Alright, Makarov, it's not like the situation's beyond saving yet. And with Kabe here, you've got nothing to worry about."
He rose and poured a drink for Makarov, still perched cross legged on the table, patted him on the back, then turned his attention to Kabe.
"Kabe, why don't you walk us through the full details. What exactly is going on with that dark guild scum heading this way? Since when did those lowlifes grow bold enough to try something, don't they realize there's a whole roomful of proper guild masters meeting here right now?"
"Heh, these guys are a lot bolder than you'd think."
Kabe then laid out the whole story, from Iron Forest's search for Lullaby and the Council elevating the job to S Class, all the way to their plan to use this very gathering as an opportunity to wipe out every guild master in one fell swoop. The crowd of guild masters who'd gathered around to listen all wore matching expressions of pure shock by the end of it. Being stunned by Iron Forest's audacity was one thing, but what most of them felt on top of that was confusion, bewilderment, and more than a little disbelief.
"Ha? They're planning to wipe us all out in one go and take over the entire magic world? Have these sewer rats been studying dark magic so long their brains rotted along with it?"