"This is the place?"
Harry strolled inside with hands in his pockets. It was a bar, just a nicer one than the last bar he entered in Crocus. Which made sense, because instead of a seedy den stuffed with borderline-criminals, this was officially called a 'lounge'. Specifically, it had been designated as the Guild Masters Lounge, a fancy way of describing a place for pent-up mages to talk and argue about the upcoming contests their subordinates were going to be put through. It seemed like a good first stop for their first day in Crocus.
Harry raised an eyebrow as he took in the crowd. He expected just a few people. Not everyone here was a guild master— Laki was with him, for example, so at least a few of the milling bodies must've belonged to subordinates. That still didn't account for the more than twenty people split between over eight tables.
"Hey, kid, over here!"
Harry picked out the man who shouted for him after a few seconds. It wasn't exactly quiet in the lounge so it took a bit of work.
When he found him, he was looking at a table right in the center of the room, with a noticeable space between it and the others. The lounge occupants were definitely on the rowdy side but Harry noticed them give this table a birth, even though there were only two people sitting there.
Smiling, Harry sauntered to the table, taking one of the open seats.
"So. You're the mini-Makarov I've been hearing about," said the man who called him over. He was on the older side, with straw-colored hair and wrinkles on his face, especially around the corners of his lips, making it clear that the smile he wore was a common thing.
"Makarov was pretty mini to begin with! Hah!"
This came from a squat old woman with a very rectangular face and awfully onion-shaped hair. Even though they were all sitting down, the height difference between her and the men at the table was striking. She squinted at Harry.
"This one's taller on the outside. But does what's on the inside measure up?"
"Don't be too hard on him, Ooba. Most people would fail that test." The smiling man turned to Harry. He had a spiked collar that would've gone well on a guard dog, with identical metal studs sticking out of his floppy witch hat. "I'm Goldmine. I was a member of your guild once, you know."
"Really?" Harry asked.
"Really! You're looking at one fifth of Team Makarov, the toughest bunch of bastards in all of Fiore!" Goldmine flexed, but there wasn't much left on his arms to show off. His boisterous laugh was infectious. "Bob and I went off to do our own things a few decades ago. You'll meet him at some point."
"If they last in Crocus," said the old woman.
"Hey, I've got faith in them. The kids seem alright," Goldmine said. "This is Ooba Babasaama. She's the boss of Lamia Scale."
"Jura's guild," Harry said reflexively.
"Yes." Immediately, Ooba started smiling. "Jura is one of mine, and this is the year he leads us to the top spot!"
"Speaking of top spot," Harry said, "I don't see Sabertooth around."
Ooba and Goldmine shared a look.
"You won't be seeing much of them outside the arena," Goldmine said.
"Thankfully!" Ooba harrumphed.
"They've got their own building in the capital. Beds, recreational space, luxuries, they've got everything." Goldmine shrugged. "You have to be the best to join, and stay the best not to be kicked out, so you get the best treatment while you're in. At least that's how Jiemma says it."
"We'll see what he says once Jura puts those kids on their butts," said Ooba.
"And these people?" Laki had taken a bit to build her confidence, not used to speaking with masters from top guilds. "If this is a lounge for the masters of the teams, then who are they?"
"Guild masters, of course!" Goldmine said. "Didn't you hear? The games are changing this year."
Harry slid his eyes across the room, doing so subtly. He gave all the men and women around them another look, catching the hungry way they looked at the center table. It wasn't about him and Laki. The brunt of their looks were on Goldmine and Ooba, masters of two of the top five guilds in the country. Harry recognized what he saw in the faces. It was ambition, raw and hungry.
He extended his scan to the rest of the room. The lounge was bright and loud, with open windows to let in light and fresh air and a fully-stocked bar manned by a moustached bartender. Other than tables and alcohol, there was one massive screen and five smaller ones. The largest screen was against the wall behind Goldmine. The others were spread evenly around the room, all in places they could be looked at easily.
"You should've gotten a message when you got into the city yesterday," Goldmine said. "Competing teams will check in for the tournament at eleven A.M. That should be…" He tapped his wrist as if a watch was there. "Just about now."
With a whirr, the screens around the room came to life at the same time. There was something like a cheer from the assorted tables. Even the bartender looked up, everyone turning their attention to what seemed to be a stream of the Domus Flau— the enormous coliseum that would host each round of the games.
"Why are there so many people?!" Laki said.
The arena was packed. Each of the screens was showing a different angle, focusing on different parts of the crowd. By a brief count, Harry guessed there were more than three hundred mages present.
"It's only natural, isn't it?" Goldmine said. "Now that they've opened up participation, every guild around the country rushed here as fast as they could."
Laki's glasses slipped off her fast, bouncing on the table.
"Every guild…?" she whispered.
"You hadn't heard?" Goldmine's smile slipped. "Anyone can participate this year. They're going to cut it down to the best of the best, and this is the time to do just that."
Ooba squinted at the Fairy Tail mages. "We'll see if you'll be watching the games beside us, or from seats in the audience. If you can't even pass the preliminaries, you have no business facing my kids!"
"You don't have to say it that way," Goldmine chided her. He managed a smaller smile. "What she means is, if you can't get past this, it might be for the best that you aren't in the next round."
Laki grabbed Harry's elbow. "They never said to send our team together! Kageyama was going alone, and Totomaru was sleeping in, and the others were going to go sightseeing— Why don't you look worried right now?"
"They won't fail," Harry said.
Goldmine leaned forward, tilting his hat brim up with a finger. "This is the national stage now. No pulled-punches here."
"Any grudges you've accrued will come out fast!" Ooba said. "Today, guilds can fight without worrying!"
"They won't fail," Harry repeated, using the same tone as before. Conversations around the room were paused as an excitable voice burst out of all six screens.
"Hello, hello, hello Fiore! Wherever you're watching from, this promises to be riveting! So really, let's get right into it!"
A figure appeared above the stadium. Harry thought it was part of the broadcast, until it became clear that the participants were looking up at him. Some kind of physical projection? He had a pumpkin for a head and a cape on. Based on the proportions of his body, he was extremely short. No one spoke in the lounge, listening to the pumpkin-man talk.
"Call me Mato, the lovable host of the Grand Magic Games! And we're getting straight into the action! Below me, you will see the gladiators who've come to compete for the title of best. Pay special attention to their arms!"
The feed zoomed in. Around every mage's bicep was a colored armband. Every team had the same color, either blue or red.
"It's simple!" Mato clapped. Above him, an orb appeared in the sky. It was a massive mess of buildings and roads that looked suspiciously like the skyline of Crocus, folded up in a floating orb. "In a second, I'll send every team flying up to the arena above me— Mini-Crocus! The teams who collect the most opposite-color bands will go to the main event, while the rest of you will be going home! Exciting, right?"
At least a few voices screamed things from the arena below. Not everyone had known this would happen, but most seemed to. The guild masters around Harry weren't acting shocked. Under the table his foot tapped the floor rhythmically. He wasn't worried his guild would fail. He was curious how so many people knew what to expect, while they didn't.
"Any questions?" Mato asked. He cupped a hand to the nonexistent ear on the side of his pumpkin head as at least five voices shouted things up at him. He grinned. "Great! Since you're all so eager, let's get right in!"
Some kind of prearranged magic activated. Following a white flash, all two-hundred-plus mages were teleported upwards, disappearing into the arena that had been prepared.
Goldmine had turned his chair to watch the main screen, but he glanced back. "Worried?" he asked.
Harry inclined his head past him. "You tell me if I should be worried."
Goldmine laughed. "Good confidence!" He turned fully toward the screen. "I hope you can back the talk, kid. I really do."
O-O-O
Totomaru yawned, long and drawn out. "Ha-aaaaaaah…" He rubbed his eyes, his katana attached loosely at his hip. His shirt wasn't quite straight, leaving a bit of his gut hanging out. He grabbed the fabric, trying to push it down. "It's too early for this. What did that pumpkin say? He was too loud, so I tuned him out…"
The fire mage looked around. Wherever he'd been teleported to it looked a lot like Crocus. Not that he'd seen much of the city as he ran to the arena to arrive on time. He should've known better than to drink with Macao and Wakaba when he had to get up in the morning! Damn crafty old men.
He had arrived at the stadium, stopped by some desk, and got handed a red ribbon to tie around his arm. Now he was in the city and in the sky, somehow. When he looked straight up, he could see the Domus Flau staring back at him. It was all weird.
"What's wrong, fatty? Paralyzed?"
Totomaru looked down… or was it looking up? Either way, he looked around, and found himself surrounded by five people he'd never met. They were giving him big ugly smiles. A blue ribbon was tied around each of their arms. The leader of the group had a high pitched laugh, pointing his huge spiked club at Totomaru.
"What's wrong, fairy? Are you lost? Don't worry, Twilight Ogre will put you back where you belong! Your freak of a guild master isn't around to get in the way this time!"
Totomaru scratched his cheek, taking note of the stubble that was collecting there. "Hey, perfect timing! Did you guys hear what we're supposed to be doing? I spaced out…"
That stopped them for a moment. The leader recovered quickest, waving his club in the air.
"We're gonna knock your teeth out, and take that little fabric scrap you're wearing!" he said. "Then, we'll win these whole games, and prove our guild is the best there is!"
Totomaru looked at each of them. "That doesn't sound very possible. You guys are weak."
They gaped at him, but only for a second.
"Get that fatty!" screamed the leader.
O-O-O
"Those guys," Harry said sourly. "I thought I finished them off."
"They must have moved to a new town," Laki said. She was holding onto the edge of the table, remembering the years spent under Twilight Ogre's thumb. She'd put her glasses back on in order to watch one of the smaller screens, where Totomaru's fight was being shown. "They're a real guild. Even without money, they could complete more missions to get back on their feet. They might be even stronger now, after going through that."
"Grudges," Ooba said. She was watching the main screen, where Lyon, the white haired man that visited Fairy Tail with Jura, was battling two teams with a stampede of icy animals. "I warned you they'd come bubbling out."
Slowly, Harry smiled. "Didn't I tell you? I'm not worried."
Something in his voice made Ooba look over. Her eyebrows met in the middle of her wrinkly forehead. She made a little noise from the back of her throat, causing Goldmine to look over as well. After a second, the man whistled.
"I guess you were right!"
Less than a minute after the fight began, the small screen was showing Totomaru's back. No one was paying attention to his gut peeking out of the bottom of his shirt now. His head was turned to the side, light glinting off the blade of his sword. Smoke curled off his skin. Around him, all five Twilight Ogre representatives were flat on their faces. Some of their clothes were smoldering.
"Hey, isn't that…"
Harry heard some of the guild masters at another table speaking. They'd been watching the confrontation, cracking jokes at the expense of the foolish mage who wandered off on his own. They weren't laughing now.
"You know him? C'mon, let's hear it," said another at the table.
The man who spoke first got to his feet. "It is! I didn't recognize him because of how much he changed! That's Totomaru, from the Element Four!"
"Phantom Lord?" asked one of the others. "I haven't thought of them in forever."
"How'd Fairy Tail pick him up?" asked another.
"Hey, do you think he ditched his teammates because they'd get in his way?" one of the masters joked.
Before anyone could answer, another of the small screens changed what it was showing. One master yelled angrily as it cut out in the middle of his guild's fight. Others looked over, and whispers started.
"How many armbands is that?" someone asked.
Ultear was sitting on a bench, her legs crossed. Meredy was next to her, the two of them sharing a casual conversation amidst a storm of pink and purple.
Ice constructs sprouted from the ground, knocking out and entrapping mages who came too close. Pink swords flew between the ice attacks, slicing through mages to leave them unconscious and twitching. Wherever a mage fell, an orb would float by and suck the armband off of their arm, dropping them in a growing pile at the girls' feet.
Another TV screen changed. There were complaints at first because it seemed like there was no fight, just mages running around looking for one. It took a sharp-eyed guild master to call out what they were seeing. "Watch the armbands!"
From the mages' shadows, arms would snake up and pluck off their prize, doing it so delicately that they noticed nothing. Entire teams were stripped one by one. By the time they realized they'd been robbed, there wasn't even an enemy to take their anger out on.
A fourth screen changed to show Fairy Tail, putting one guild on the majority of them. This time, there were gasps.
No one could see what happened. By the time the broadcast realized there was something big to see, it was over. At least fifty people lay on the ground, their clothes charred and their faces scraped up. A single figure moved between them. Jellal walked from one person to the next, checking the color of their armband and taking any of them that were blue. The collection process was taking longer than the fight had.
"I wonder if there's a prize for getting first?" Harry said.
"If there is, it'll be close who gets it," Goldmine said.
Fairy Tail was on all but two of the screens, but that didn't mean nothing was happening on the others. Jura Neekiss had joined Lyon, and together the two were laying waste to anyone who came near them. The few attacks that looked dangerous were dispelled as soon as they formed by a smirking boy Harry didn't recognize. Toby was running around collecting armbands with a huge grin on his dog-like face. Sherria Blendy was doing most of his work for him, generating powerful black-colored winds that sucked up ribbons five at a time.
Ooba slammed both hands on the table. "Spin, my children! Show off all your beautiful angles! Hahahaha!"
Harry found himself watching the main screen, though.
It was focusing on a team of five, spread out just enough that they barely fit on the same screen. He recognized each of them from the airship the day before. They were just watching, until—
In the middle, Minerva whipped her hands up, spreading her fingers. "Go!"
Her magic enveloped her, then spread out. Small balls of bluish-green color were fired through the air, moving like missiles. Wherever they found enemy teams, they exploded, trapping mages inside. Armbands were stripped away, carried by the colorful magic back to where Minerva was standing.
The buff shirtless man did his work without any grace. He threw himself at teams bellowing and laughing as he blasted away with black lightning. The feed picked up his voice. "Lightning God's kick! Lightning God's Fist! Lightning God's Bellow!"
The blond and black haired pair moved as a duo. With flashes of light and beams of darkness, they wiped out teams even faster than their shirtless teammate. Soon, the area around Sabertooth was scattered with more downed enemies than Jellal had defeated.
Harry found most of his attention on the flamboyantly-dressed man in all red. He looked to be doing the least out of the team, but there was something strange. Shadows carried armbands to him. So did orbs that looked identical to Ultear's. When an enemy mage got close to him and attacked with fire, he casually fought back with purple ice, just like what Ultear used. A pink sword finished the mage off the way Meredy would have. His versatility was so overwhelming that there had to be some kind of catch. Harry hadn't seen enough to know what that was yet, though.
The feed zoomed in on Minerva's face, smirking as the armbands piled around her. Teams were dropping like flies now. Weaker teams were hiding, just trying to hang onto their own ribbons, completely abandoning the idea of getting more. The gap between the top guilds and those beneath them were apparent.
"At least they got the chance to try," Goldmine said, thinking along the same lines as Harry.
"Maybe in a hundred years they can spin as beautifully as my kids," Ooba said.
Mato reappeared, floating above the arena. His arms were crossed as he floated, his legs out straight. "Tiiiiiiiiiiiime's up! Would you look at this, folks? There's only seven teams left! Would you believe me if I said that's the amount we were hoping for?"
Even the teams that tried to hide had been picked off. The only ones left were teams that had collected multiple ribbons, as proven when a scoreboard appeared next to Mato. The top entries were all blurred out as well as the numbers next to them, but seventh place was visible.
"First," Mato said, "We have… Quatro Cerberus!"
All the screens were showing the same thing now. It snapped to an image of a bunch of eccentric, punk-looking mages led by a man with his hair in a bun.
"What matters is that we got through," Goldmine said. "We'll climb those rankings like a ladder once the real games start!"
Quatro Cerberus had gotten ten ribbons, meaning that they took down the equivalent of two teams. When the entry above them unblurred, it showed they were only five points behind sixth place. Blue Pegasus.
This team had three handsome men, a short man with a bunched up face, and a buxom blonde woman who looked utterly out of place in present company.
"Those are Bob's kids," Goldmine said. "He's got plenty to be proud of."
"In fifth place—" Mato was carrying on swiftly. "—racking up an impressive thirty ribbons as newcomers, we have Raven Tail!"
"Raven Tail… Any relation?" Goldmine asked.
Harry was staring at the screen. There was only one familiar face on this team, a pretty woman with purple hair that had a shock of white through the front. The others barely looked human, from a man with uncanny wide eyes and an unchanging expression to a short man with orchid-colored skin. The other two looked to be made of wood, or were at least wearing masks that concealed every inch of their faces.
"Possibly," Harry answered Goldmine, staring at Mary Hughes' smirking visage.
"Fourth place… any guesses?" Mato was having a fantastic time. "If you said Mermaid Heel, the most gorgeous guild in the land, you were spot on!"
The screen showed an image of Kagura, holding her sheathed sword's tip against the ground while sitting on a fat defeated mage. Behind her were four other female mages, including a woman with cat features who was chasing one of the fifty ribbons they'd earned as if it was a toy. Harry was pretty sure the cheers they got weren't just for their magical abilities.
There weren't many spots left now.
"Come on now," Ooba muttered. "Come on now…"
"Third place is… Lamia Scale!"
Ooba didn't look happy. There was Jura and their team, waving to the camera and smiling, a shiny number eighty appearing on the scoreboard next to the name.
"They did good!" Goldmine said.
"And we'll do even better by the end," Ooba said fiercely.
"The top two!" Mato kicked his feet. "The best of the best! The ones on top! Who could it be? Who will be the team to beat? The only way to find out… is to make the reveal!"
He threw his hands out. The top two names appeared at the same time. Anyone who had been watching knew who it would be. They wanted to see the numbers.
Sabertooth: one hundred and ten.
Fairy Tail: one hundred and five.
"Who else but Saaaaaaaaaabertoooooth!"
Mato was so excited that he did a summersault in the air. Fireworks went off to announce the start of the games, bathing the sky above Crocus in booms and sparks. Outside, people cheered. The noise even caught on inside the lounge, most of the masters not taking their guild's eliminations to heart.
Goldmine smiled apologetically at Harry. "They might be bastards sometimes, but Sabertooth are worth their reputation. Don't feel down about it."
Harry smiled back.
"Why would I? You said it yourself, Goldmine. This is just the start."