On the way to the Brain's base located in a place pointed by Kibbe on a map and confirmed by Gran Doma as one of the secret facilities of the government they talked about the plans for the battle. Can they just subdue a bunch of researchers? Of course they can! They are mere pawns and pawns are usually weak and deprived of real respect for themselves and their own particular magic. What can lab technicians and engineers do about the power of wizards? The answer is: Etherion. In the worst case Brain has a magic cannon like Jupiter. In the best situation Layla will find Brain's base ruined shortly after a major accident. As for the worst possibility Gran Doma assured that those researchers don't have enough knowledge to make their own Etherion. However Gran Doma doesn't know how many things Brain had hidden from him. Because all the reason for the expedition is to prevent Brain from conducting more experiments under government patronage and seizure of the results of their activities, they expect to encounter a few much stronger wizards. The worst mistake of Fairy Tail in confrontation with Brain was to go against Oration Seis without real preparations. As for the rest of their battles... mostly they had to go to unknown places to do things unmentioned by their clients or they were taken by surprise with enemies' attack. Wizards of Fairy Tail prepared themselves only for a couple of battles. That's also the reason for their losses and hardships they had to overcome: Losing initiative.
So Layla proposed that the most important thing to do now is to exchange informations about their kinds of magic and methods they prefer to use to make for everyone possible to realize their opportunities.
Laxus showed his newly acquired Lightning Dragon Slayer magic which for now he can use with roars and punches by coating his fists. He has yet to develop spells meant for utilizing his kind of magic.
Makarov said that he depends on mix of various kinds of magic. He has greater mastery over light magic and also his own variant of transformation magic (aka Giant) while having minor masteries in other elemental and utility kinds of magic, adding to his stable foundation.
Gildarts is a cursed wielder of his crush magic. He can crush anything into pieces and he often destroys not-living things accidentally just by touching them. Useful for destruction but nothing else.
Gran Doma said about his letter magic he utilizes mostly for barriers and formations controlling the ground, a few enchantments he mixed sometimes with light and ice magic plus some utility kinds of magic like reequip and telekinesis. That introduction was followed by a story about Gran Doma being in old days some kind of respectable magic knight that later decided to become a teacher for younger generations.
His guard Andre specializes in simple transformation magic and his own spear magic. Sometimes he adds poison to his spear. His second guard depends on his wand to cast four bullet magic spells at the same time and in addition poison draining, stopping bleeding and pain relief and also minor water-make. However it's not really the same as healing magic. He can't close wounds and help their bodies to regenerate. Sure, he can apply surgical sutures, but only not magical. Still both guards can be considered as quite qualified wizards.
Lucy explained her abilities as for now she wields Celestial Spirit Magic with Nikora as her Celestial Spirit, mastered one offensive spell for it, uses basic enchantment to improve her performance with whip. Also she knows how to create basic defense barriers to trap enemies inside and own gadgets meant to manipulate letters with her letter magic.
Ren has his magic motorbike, and posses earth magic he can use to manipulate terrain, and shot some pieces of earth into enemies as projectiles. However those are not very harmful, and don't have too good range. He memorized the way to make a barrier but wasn't able to master ways to make enchanted letters this quickly. His efforts resulted only in fake versions made with Light Pen.
The last one to introduce her magic was Layla. Layla was a retired wizard. Before giving birth to Lucy she wielded all the 12 Gold Gate Keys giving her access to the power of all keys combined. She she gave out them all excluding Capricon. It doesn't change the fact that she still learned a bit. She has the power to summon three Celestial Spirits and perform Urano Metria. She also has access to her own requip storage in which she stores her battle outfit (usually she wears a lace dress with little flowery accents), her keys, some gadgets like communication lacrima, bandages, medicines, cosmetics, books, clothes and her bow, a gift from Sagittarius. She has also a bit more things but there's too many of them to talk about. Layla discovered that learning requip can help her to not lift some heavy things and show sometime herself as an aristocrat that doesn't need to work. The last magic worth of mentioning she has is organic link and life sacrifice. Those two where related to using living things as a base for connections to different things. The life sacrafice is a trick to empower other spell with the sacrafice attribute. Its power is directly related to the value of sacrafice you make. The value is relative to the life of the user. The closer the sacraficed thing is to the life of user the stronger effect can be achieved. Usually it's not very useful because using it usually means taking life of others making the very act of casting immoral as Zeref. Other uses of organic link magic are related to sensing life of target, channeling some magic power and sealing things with life. Layla's mastery over it is a little bit mediocre, but more than comparable to the Magic Council.
That being said they could start to prepare their own battle plan and try cover their weaknesses before the battle. Gran Doma started:
"I'm still worried about you participating in the battle. I mean you too, Lucy. I'm sure you can beat two thugs if provided with right opportunity, but I'm not sure if you can perform something like that if you face more. Not with your little body at least. If I could prevent you from doing that I would just ban you from participating in the battle, you lucky brats." Gran Doma snorted.
"Gran Doma, Lucy is more mature than you think. I won't be surprised if she can beat even your guards." Layla retorted. She felt like this is going to be a hard argument.
"I knowledge her skills, but that's all. A few hits and Lucy would be out or worse. I'm even more worried even more about Ren. He sure is good for his age, but not to face mages. I only hope he'll be allowed only to watch and will eventually run away if something dangerous will occur."
"I have my motorbike for that." Ren interrupted.
"Right... your motorbike. That heavy thing for now makes you slower. Let me say that: If you won't be able to pull out that thing faster than a mage will reach you, it's useless. You're just putting yourself in danger! And why?" Gran Doma mocked him hoping to make him embarassed. Subconsciously he knew that the one that manages to make the other too regretful of anything will win.
"I just want to see if those experiments of Brain are for real." said Ren. He won't fall down for a mere word so easily.
"Do you want just see that? Why?"
"Because then I would know if Lucy was right about Brain being bad guy."
"I assure... To put things fair I have to admit that even I don't know if this is right. I'm here because I believe that Layla was right and Brain is bad guy."
"You see? We both just want to check the truth." Ren was thinking he was approaching the victory. Unfortunatelly...
"Look, we're different! I look for Brain because I'm from the government and that makes me partially responsible for Brain. We're not the same." Ren wasn't prepared for that.
"..."
Ren this time lost the argument. The guards were looking like they just have seen some kind of spontaneous battle of lyricisms. They were thinking that this is the end so Gran Doma continued with a triumph monologue.
"Look, I think you shouldn't but I won't be able to prevent you from going with us. And I guess she's your friend and you want to support her but you can't do much. Understandable. In some ways even right thing to do. However as you are now you'll be a distraction for Lucy so it's meaningless."
"..."
"If you want to support her at least I want you to learn one new spell that will make your performance maybe even possible."
"?" Ren was confused. He was mocked and then he has to be granted with a lesson?
"Layla, can you give him a lesson regarding how to use Requip?" continued Gran Doma in a bit calmer tone.
"Huh? You mean that..." Layla asked before...
"Yes, the one from that book I BORROWED you once and you never returned it!"
"Sorry..." that was unexpected. Layla understood that the president in front of her is just trying to take them all by shame first. That was his mistake.
"Anyway... Did you at least studied it carefully like you promised?" Gran Doma set a trap again.
"I think so."
"So now explain him shortly how to develop his own Requip space! Damn! I don't want to deal with something like this. However you should." Gran Doma snorted again.
"Fine." Layla pretended to take it calmly.
"And if possible do that for Lucy too. She has some experience with accessing spaces so she should learn that easier." Gran Doma again said calmly. That was making things more confusing to guess what he wants.
"Are you mad at me?" Layla lightly throwed a 'control question'.
"Yes, I tolerated you taking Lucy because I believe you she has some knowledge about the future making her more aware of the dangers we can encounter. But Ren? That unnecessary risk is a disgrace for what I represent!" Gran Doma snorted again.
"Take it easy! It might be fine. We just need to be sure he won't be beaten up or taken by researchers to some kind of dark guild. He will be a part of our emergency plan." Layla used simple disregard knowing it won't work. But that doesn't matter.
"What are you implying? You're playing another game with me? Just be honest and admit you're doing reckless things by taking him!" Gran Doma mocked again.
"If by any chance we're going to lose and not be able to run away, this little boy can be our witness that'll inform the Council about things we discovered. Otherwise we must prepare one of your guards or members of Fairy Tail, or Lucy to do the same." Layla tried to say something 'calming' again. It didn't matter anyway.
"Funny... Why do you want to give him such role?" Gran Doma played his offended intellect again. However Layla grinned.
'Ha! You took a bait.' Layla grinned internally.
"Because we're doing so 'dangerous' and 'unresponsible' things you mentioned!"
"..." Gran Doma was surprised. He realized that the more he'll mock Layla the more she will be able to talk he mocks himself.
'Damn.' He was sure he even heard 'woah' from his guards! He regretted provoking Layla to change her stance.
Lucy and Ren dropped their jaws. Something that they wasn't able to defend without relying on their own feelings that might be called unreasonable was just solved by covering it with 'reasonableness' of Gran Doma.
Layla wasn't interested in continuing this friendly clash of disagreement skills. She turned to Makarov.
"Let's just start doing our things. Makarov, can you teach your beloved grandson something useful about forcing lightning into more proper spells?"
"I'm not sure. His magic overcome a drastic change due to dragon's power being involved. As you probably know the dragon attribute is rare since all the dragons deceased excluding you-know-who."
"Is that necessary? I'm already powerful enough to beat some freaks in smocks and probably someone even stronger."
"It's not necessary, but it's helpful. You have an experienced grandfather that senses the strangeness of your magic and has experience with elements, which probably includes also lighting element. For now he's the best teacher I could hope for you. By the way did you know that his own father was a wizard that was using mainly lightning magic?"
"Huh? Grandpa, why didn't you tell me?" Laxus widened his eyes. Who would not be curious about own ancestors? Even then most of the would think they cannot remain ignorant about their own family.
"You didn't ask." Not to mention that the story of Yuri is related to Fairy Heart. If told wrong way it would make Laxus greeddy like Ivan. He also learned that death of Rita is related to Lumien Histoire and got interested in it whole turning himself for worse.
Layla blinked to Makarov knowingly indicating that she just created an opportunity for him. Whether he will take advantage of this, it depends of Makarov. Laxus was just unhappy child that probably didn't have any real role model. His father? Trashy second-rate villain that was interested mostly in power and blinded by his petty private revenge for not supporting his ways to obtain more power. Makarov? He's a kind guy, but kindness alone won't make you interesting or moralizing. Someone from the guild? Don't make me laugh! When it comes to crisis they might be like heroes, but usually they are bunch of irresponsible degenerates solving their little quarrels with a show of strength. If you think about the environment for Laxus that way, it's quite obvious, why in the previous timeline he just masterfully outplayed entire guild! It was the best known way of solving his little quarrels. Then it happened that he went too far and had to be expelled to set the example of what Fairy Tail isn't.
With these theories in mind Layla began explaination for Requip. That magic is related to space manipulation. The idea is simple. Every material substance is spacial in sense of taking up space. That space is tied to body. The trick now is to bend that space into storage and connect the activation of changes in that space to the spirit of the user. The result will be part of space swapped with another part of space. Nevertheless manipulating space is hard. It requires a lot of time spent on expanding and organizing your Requip space and there's always a limit of how far one's space can be expanded. Users of Requip space are usually well versed in Holder Magic. Erza was exceptionally good to the point of being able to summon swords in the air, but she was depending on items like swords and armors.
Lucy naturally has a lot of similarity in this regard. Her Celestial Spirit Magic is usually a Holder Magic. Writting magic is almost a Holder Magic. Even her Star Dress is a spell greatly resembling Requip. She's probably gonna perform easily. As for Ren... He has yet to discover his strengths and weaknesses. He may have some talent and be able to store multiple weapons, armors, and tools or be able to keep with him only few things or he won't be able to manipulate his own space at all. Even then it doesn't mean he can't own his Requip space. It means only he can't create one by myself. If owns the Requip space, even Happy without any knowledge can use it.
Bending space isn't something easy to understand. Of course some realms are connected and people sometimes travel that way from one place to another, but this time space is mentioned as a property of human as a form of his being but transcending boundaries of human body as Requip space must be empty to some extent like human body is surrounded by empty space. If space is basic range or limit of things that can exist Requip space deals with changing that limit. That alone is weird enough to make someone think that something impossible happens here. If not for the fact that those things exist and are actively used by Makarov and Layla, Ren would just assume that's not real. The explanation alone was so crazy that trying to recall it after hearing made their heads hurt. Lucy had easier time as she understand the idea of different personal space. Usually her friends violated space of her home a lot even when they weren't breaking anything there. With that example Lucy explained to Ren how it is possible to touch space of something without touching that thing, but arising suspicions were still there. He almost thought: 'What would happen if a user of Requip died?' but wasn't used to talking or thinking about space like this so he didn't knew if such questions are accurate. Layla saw this so she started introducing the technique to form the storage after a break.
"I thought you're not going to go with me." started Lucy.
"And I though that after saying something like that you would stop because your lie was revealed. Instead you were continuing your preparations."
"Ren, why did you return only now? We would have much more fun together."
"Because I won't be able to beat those guy anyway. I'm not like you. I can't just beat thugs. So I tried to develop something more suited for me, but still it's not strong enough."
"What's this?"
"Mrs. Layla, can I show that?"
"It depends if this is exhausting. Otherwise that would obstruct our little training."
"For now I can cast that spell seven to ten times in a row."
"That's good enough. You can cast."
Ren nodded, took a few steps, put his both hands on the ground.
"Earth Magic: Uneven Road!"
Then in range of ten meters appeared a lot of holes in regular spacing. They were shallow and small, big only enough to place there one foot.
"So this is my spell."
"And what's the idea for that?"
"Let's say that some researchers are going to chase me. I can do that so they have to watch their steps to not fall to the ground."
"That won't work if the researchers are able to jump over ten meters."
"I assume that researchers don't jump that far."
"Sounds practical. However that won't protect you much from the real enemy. I think some of them will be able to jump more than ten meters or will know some earth magic."
"*sigh*"
"Still it's quite practical. I actually have an idea how to use it."
"Really?"
"Probably. We'll see that later. For now I have some questions for Lucy."
"Yes, mom?"
"Can you help me with your little spell?"
"Do you want Lucy to help you?"
"Yes, why not? Honestly I need her to get some edge over Brain."
"Is it about that spell?"
"I want to learn your star dress. For now you're not going to use it in battle, right?"
"I can, but I promised to not use my zodiacal Spirits so I can only summon my Nikora for fight."
"I want you to lend me your Taurus. That way Taurus can fight too. Would you agree?"
"Of course I would."
"Can you also explain to me how to use Star Dress?"
"Sure."
Explanation was simple. Lucy by accident discovered a trick to incorporate magic power of her spirits into her body. In the critical moment of the battle with Tartarus she broke the key of Aquarius to summon Spirit King. By examining her broken key she discovered that in fact it didn't lost all its functions. It's just that the only thing she was able to do is to draw some magic power from the Gate of the Water Bearer. The obvious conclusion was that the keys have that function possible to exploit under some conditions, not necessarily by breaking keys. She did some research in hope that she'll able to make Aquarius come back, but to no avail. Instead she developed the method to utilize discovered function and that method is Star Dress. Celestial Spirit Magic manifests Celestial Spirits from their world, but they're doing that by using their own spiritual power and magic. And here's the idea. If she can manifest whole spirits with their magic artifacts and temporary bodies, manifesting their traits and magic power should also be possible. So at expense of user's magic and with some strain put on their spirits the user is able to manifest spirits' power in human body. Of course manifestation of Celestial Spirit's power has a lot of limitations. First, she can manifest only a fraction of the power of her summon and that fraction can't be greater than the manifestation of her Celestial Spirit. Second, despite being able to manifest multiple spirits in previous timeline Lucy was able to draw the power of only one spirit at once.
"And why didn't you draw the power of two spirits at one?"
"I tried, but this is much more draining than summoning three spirits at once. Even if I'm able to do that it doesn't mean I can really put that to use. The effect would last shortly and without clear idea how to combine magic power of two spirits it won't work. I don't have such understanding of Celestial Spirits so I don't dare."
"Right... Usually it's stupid to go with such spells in the middle of a battle."
"That's already everything you should know. The spell is even easy. The only issue is that for Star Dress you can only use Taurus and Capricorn. I'm not even sure if they have any specific kind of magic."
"Maybe we can work around that?"
"Just use Star Dress first. Then we can think about solutions for problems with developing advanced versions."
Layla was able to freely use Taurus and Capricorn forms after half an hour. Effects were indeed simple to achieve. Using star dress with Taurus generated clothes with cow patterns and a whip. If she used Layla punch in this form, she would probably cause something way worse than just some pain, and bumps on head. Her strength was enough to make earth shake. On the other hand Capricorn's Star Dress generated goat horns, black glasses and black-purple clothes. Instead of shaking the earth she felt she could move quickly, and silently, with some kind of charm even, giving metaphorically a sense of weighting as much as feather.
"Effect is subtle. It's hard to even tell if it's from Capricorn's physique or magic." said Layla while cancelling her star dress
"You see what I mean. Prima facie Taurus and Capricorn seem to not have any particular magic."
"Lucy, this doesn't exclude the possibility that they actually have magic."
"I can't deny that. However I also can't recognize that kind of magic. Remember that despite my experience I couldn't recognize that I have the star attribute."
Layla was a bit disappointed as understood that developing a new kind of magic is complicated. Celestial Spirit Magic was indeed different from most kinds of magic. It was annoying. She thought that Lucy was close to breakthrough, but given the circumstances she just couldn't progress. As for Ren... he was just a bit amazed with the fact that Lucy's mother mastered a spell thus quickly beyond his comprehension.
"Let's leave it for now. Star Dress should be enough. We tested some things. Now it's time to return to the concept of bending space. Try with your the most personal things you own." announced Layla.