Lucy and Layla were going to Magnolia. Despite looking diffrent from how Lucy remembered this town, great canal crossing by Magnolia was still there and most building had other colour. Lucy told a few stories from familiar places and her habit to step on the edge above the canal. Lucy often fell into the water. Slowly coming closer and closer to the guild in the center,
"How could you afford this apartment without family funds?"
"I always had to go fast on the next mission to be able to pay for a month."
Finally they reached their destination. 'Old' headquarters of the guild was still there and was undestroyed by Gajeel. Future hardships was still before it so it wasn't that great, but it wasn't bad in any way. After all the building is just some stone, wood and roof tiles. Some work, money and it can be rebuilt. It would be said that is a monument to our guild. It says: "We exist and we're not going anywhere!" (even if some of our members temporally have something important to do, but they surely going to return here as long as we're a family.). In this case it says this rather loudly as it's impossible to not notice greatest building in Magnolia. Indeed It's like that despite being possible to be little bigger and greater. Nostalgic feelling filled Lucy and with pride she said.
"It's here, mom! Here I spent my best few years"
And when Lucy was about to touch the gate wall at her right was bruttally destroyed leaving unconcious man in the pile of rubble. Lucy took despaired look on her face and Layla lightly laughed.
"So it seems to be a good place, right?"
"Don't even tell me. To be honest, I have to say that sometimes I don't know what the devil possessed me that I still like this place but despite doing stupid things they are good people and strong mages ready to take care of me in bad times and adventures with Natsu were fun."
"If you think so... Let's come in. We need to talk with Guild Master."
They opened the gate and seen the scene of Makarov worried look. The guild was so messed. Guild members are still messing around and they're doing it in the worst possible way - by destroying buildings and furnitures.
"It's good thing that type of scene is reserved for guild members. Otherwise we would look so ugly."
And the moment of his worries was so clear as day. His conciouness realized that state of things is not normal in any way. Usually chaos was so dominating. Chaos always won with order here, because it was... well organized. Most of members have their will to have their share in the chaos. Everyone knew well what to do to make chaos. But now was silence. He heard a quiet but resonant sound from the gate. He looked around and saw a beautifull women and a girl that looked pretty clean, innocent and... important. Those present froze after turning their attention to the occuring phenomenon.
"Good morning, Guild Master Makarov. We're here to talk with you. I'm Layla Heartfilia and this is my daughter Lucy Heartfilia."
Layla stepped in and walked slowly. On her path were broken pieces of wooden chairs, spilled beer, and other tricky obstacles as bodies of beaten yet far from dead people. She constantly ignored them with her power of dignity. In fact it wasn't just dignity. An experienced merchant needs to know that starting a scandal because of bad habits of customers may be easy way to waste your chance to make money and Layla spent her years as a merchant. Later on the pages of history of the guild it was noted that some members believed that even banana peel laying on the floor didn't dare to break the atmosphere and got out of her way.
"Mrs Layla, I'm sure it would be better, if we'll go to the office. I'm sorry for all of this."
"Oh, no, no, it's okay. I rather like clean places, but that place isn't mine and I'm here to talk about business."
"Mom..."
"But anyway we can't do this here."
"What are we going to talk about?"
"Lucy"
Lucy came closer to Makarov and whispered to his ear. Lucy was little higher than Makarov so it was easy.
"Lumen..."
Grand master eyes widened.
"How do you..."
"Not here. It's too dangerous to let others know about it."
"So why does your daughter...
"We'll explain, but really we can't do that here."
Office was small room filled with small furnitures and there was a good reason for that. Makarov is just short and having bigger bigger desk would be just impractical. It wasn't destined for having guests. However with help of Laki Makarov managed to get some chairs. When Lakie left room, Lucy said:
"I'm wonder if she can learn green magic from Warrod. Creating wood shouldn't be that diffrent from creating trees."
"I don't know. I think I can consider sending her to train under Warrod. Actually he's retired. You seem to know a lot."
"You flattering me a lot. Did you hear about Western Continent?"
"Yes, something strange is happening there, but it's isolated, so we don't know much about it."
"I'm here because I know something. Alvarez is rulled by Zeref! He's known as Spriggan."
"It's fairy tail. Zeref is too old to be alive."
"It seems that Precht didn't tell you. Zeref is a cursed boy. Curse makes him unable to age and die. As convenient it seems to be unfortunatelly his curse kills every life around him that he appreciate. He's a living calamity even worse than Acnologia. Despite this he's still want to do something good. The point of existence of Alvarez is to build force able to defeat Acnologia. The problem is... his curse one day will lead him to abandon the rest of his morals and that is, because..."
"Good objective to protect life without good respect for life is just empty shell. Our morals work because we have a fundamental respect for value of life."
Layla decided to interject.
"I don't want to say that's not important, but I want you, Lucy, to say, when we have to be ready for Zeref and Acnologia."
"I really want not to go so fast to the point. I'm not sure, when Zeref attacks. Most likely we have eighteen years from now before Zeref going all out to war, because then he might be ready to handle both weakened Ishgar and Acnologia. Assumimg that the Magic Council will be strong enought we likely have more time."
"When that time comes I'll probably be dead. But I don't understand. Is Zeref so interested in Ishgar because of Lumen Histoire?"
"Yes."
"Why now? He can come here alone and just take Mavis's body. He can do that and we don't even have power to fight back considering we don't dare to use Fairy Heart. Why?"
"I don't know either. Maybe Zeref despite being prodigy mage having a lot of time to think about it is just an idiot or maybe he doesn't really want to defeat Acnologia or maybe he want to give us a chance to defeat him or maybe Zeref loves Mavis so much so for now he can't do that. I don't really know what he thinks."
"Zeref in love with First?"
"Yes."
"Indeed this world is coming to the end. Your intelligence about Zeref is just impossible, Lucy. But how?"
"I'm sorry to interrupt, but I hope ask if you can know something about it. Lucy has the knowledge about the future self from the other timeline."
"I don't understand."
"Let me explain. Eighteen years later there was a girl named Lucy. She was a member of Fairy Tail during war with Zeref. Because of that she knows a lot about the future. When one of the strongest members fought with Zeref something happened and now consciousness of Lucy from the future is in body of my little daughter. We need to know how is that."
"Did you think about ability to fore..."
"Yes, but in this case it's too powerfull. To know something that would happen eighteen years later? How much magical power would she need?"
"I this case I can't help etiher. We, old mages, know a lot about magic only because we can feel it better than anyone. As we experienced more kinds of magic we can assiociate with each other more sensations of same kinds of magic. But Lucy doesn't even give such impression of power residing in her body. I'm helpless. If it's magic, and she uses it involuntarily, we have to wait until she finds out when she's doing it and when she's not. Then we can start to think about how it happens."
"Okay. We should expect this. There's a lot to talk about the future and we're going to reveal all of what we know about future problems, but we don't have that much time to do everything today. For now we here to do four things. To talk with with you was only first."
"What are three other reasons?"
"As we told you Lucy was a member of Fairy Tail and I'm sure that in the future Lucy would want to be in Fairy Tail again. But I'm also her mother and it's worrying to see my daughter wanting to be in this enviroment. No offense, but what I see here is a mess. I'm sure there's a lot of complaints.
"I'm sorry for their behaviour."
"Even so I don't think I can stop Lucy, so I only want to ask about one thing. Why do they brawl so often?"
"It's their will to compete. It's strong."
"So why they do that here?"
"I don't really know. When people see people doing bad things no one ask about causes."
"Do they have a place for fighting?"
"No."
"So we'll start here. We need to make a place, where guild members can fight each other without causing problems. Ideally it would be out of Magnolia. Heartfilia Konzern can even fund it."
"We appreciate it, but I don't know If it works."
"We'll find out eventually. Another thing is Lucy's education. Lucy want to be enchanter. From her 'other' life she should remember how to perform Celestial Spirit Magic, so there's no need to educate her about it. At least she know the theory behind it and has a lot of experience. We only need to get special items so she can start. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for her enchanting skills. She's in need to have a teacher. I have my connections and can use it to find someone, but I'm sure as great Guild Master as you would know someone fitting good to help Lucy to hasten her progress."
Makarov turned to Lucy.
"What can you do for now?"
Lucy pulled stick out of nowhere and made it glow. Makarov's eyes widened.
"Only that much. I started two weeks ago. Most of contents of books... I can't understand it. I only managed to learn how to make stick glow."
"Two weeks? Average mage usually needs months to perform simple tricks and you saying you can do that in two weeks? I would say you have some talent. Maybe it's not terrifying but you have a potential to become strong enchanter. I can give you recomendation and send to Gran Doma. He's somewhat upset about us but he'll give me a face if It's only about education and you have some manners."
"The last matter is who is in the guild. There're some persons I remember as my friends. Erza, Natsu, Mirajanne, Elfman, Gray, Canna. Do you know about anyone being here?"
"Only Canna and Gray. I had a time learning that Canna is a Gildarts's daughter. Does it matter?"
"Well... Gray's master is a great piece of ice sealing Deliora. Literally. And her daughter is suffering her misery because she has no mother. That daughter has to hide because Magic Council would imprison her to research extraordinary ammounts of magic power in her body. If we don't do something, she'll end as member of Precht's guild..."
Makarov interrupted.
"Too much! There's a lot to do! If you keep telling me about all this issues I'm not sure I'll be able to drink beer again!"
Lucy let out heavy sigh.
"And that's only begining. I know. It's too much. Let's leave it for now."
That way Lucy and Layla came out of the office. The guild was suprissingly clear and walls were repaired. Some even were drinking tea instead of alcohol. Lucy was wondering about cause of that event.
'Mom uses some kind of sex appeal I cannot even see?'
"Mom, what happened here?"
"Oh? Here? Lucy, this world is rulled by figures. If all conditions of the figure are met, the universe just try to adjust to it."