Chapter 1004: [1004] : Laxus

...

Erza was the first to say what everyone else was trying to work out.

"Who are you, and why is half our street in pieces?"

She directed it at Shin, but her eyes kept moving back to the Lucy across from her, the way a person’s gaze returns to something that doesn’t fit in the picture, checking to see if it’s still there.

Gray answered before Shin could.

"They showed up right after the barrier went down."

He gestured broadly at the street.

"Yeah, I got eyes," Erza said dryly.

Laxus cut through it.

"I’ll be honest—I was expecting this arc to be more interesting." His gaze settled on Shin with the appraising look of someone accustomed to measuring threats by instinct. "Fairy Tail rolls out the welcome mat for strangers now? My grandfather’s guild has really gone soft."

Shin looked at him.

"Your grandfather," he said, "is sick. Has been for a while. And instead of being anywhere near him, you’re here, doing this." He glanced around at the square, the scattered guild members, the busted barrier line still sparking faintly along the cobblestones. "I’m not judging the ambition. I just think you picked a strange time for it."

Something shifted behind Laxus’s eyes. Fast, and gone again.

"You don’t know anything about my grandfather," he said.

"I know enough." Shin kept his voice steady, not unkind. "I also know that whatever you’re trying to prove today, you’re not going to prove it like this."

"Big words from someone who just blew up a public street to get people’s attention."

"That was a demonstration. There’s a difference."

Laxus smiled. It wasn’t a warm smile.

"Then demonstrate something else."

The lightning came without warning—not a bolt, but a sustained field, the kind that saturates the air and makes metal taste like copper, flooding outward from Laxus in every direction at once. Most of the guild members near the edge of the square stepped back without thinking. Even Natsu, to his credit, went tight-shouldered.

Alice stepped forward.

She’d been quiet the whole time, standing a pace behind Shin’s left shoulder, watching with the detached, clinical patience of someone who has spent years sizing up opponents and stopped finding it interesting. She looked at Laxus the way a chess player looks at a board that hasn’t surprised them yet.

"Dragon Slayer," she said. "Lightning type. Stronger than the baseline, but not by as much as he thinks."

Laxus turned his head toward her.

"And you are?"

"The person ending this." She rolled one shoulder, easy and unhurried. "My husband has better things to do than waste time on you."

The word husband landed across the square like a stone into still water. Half a dozen Fairy Tail members looked at Shin at once, then at Alice, then at Shin again.

Natsu pointed.

"Wait, she’s your—"

"Moving on," Shin said.

Alice walked forward into the lightning field and didn’t slow down. The arcs that hit her didn’t stop her. They didn’t seem to do much of anything except illuminate, for a brief second, the faint shimmer of something rising off her skin—four distinct layers of it, each one a different quality of power, stacked and interlocking like armor underneath armor.

God-Slaying Magic. All four disciplines, running simultaneously.

Laxus hit her with a direct strike, the kind he’d used to end fights with.

She took it on one forearm and pushed forward through it.

"Dragon Slayer Magic," she said, as she closed the last few feet between them, "was built to kill dragons. It was never designed for someone like me."

She hit him once.

It was a clean, technical strike—not a brawl, not a display, just a precise application of force to the exact point that would end the problem. Laxus went backward, skidded across the cobblestones, and came to a stop against the base of a lamppost.

He sat there for a moment.

The lightning field dissipated.

Laxus looked up at Alice from the ground with an expression that had moved a long way from where it started.

"God-Slaying Magic," he said.

"Four types," she confirmed.

He was quiet for another second.

"All four, simultaneously."

"Yes."

He looked past her at Shin, and some of the performance had gone out of his expression, replaced by something more genuine.

"Your wife?" he asked.

"Apparently," Shin said.

Laxus pressed a hand to the lamppost and used it to stand up. He looked at the gathered guild around him—people he’d grown up alongside, people who had been watching him spiral toward this moment for months.

He said nothing for a while.

Then he looked at Shin.

"You said you wanted to join," he said. "What for? Someone with that kind of power doesn’t need a guild."

"Everyone needs somewhere to stand," Shin said simply.

Laxus studied him.

Then, surprising everyone including himself, he laughed.

"Fair enough," he said.

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