"Well they're hurt." Meliodas replied.
"Of course they are hurt, we just fought them!" Gray commented, slowly realizing what Meliodas was implying. "Wait.. you mean before the fight?"
Meliodas nodded as Gray walked up to Meliodas.
"Do you know why we do what we do?" Emma suddenly spoke up.
Meliodas and Gray both turned towards her.
"Why?" Gray asked.
"Because of this." Emma said as she and Ali turned around and began taking off their tops.
"Wait hold up! Why the hell are you both stripping down?!" Gray exclaimed, flustered at the maids' strange action.
"You're one to talk Gray. Your shirt is gone." Meliodas snickered while pointing to Gray's naked upper body.
"The hell?! When did that happen?!" Gray yelled out in surprise as he looked down at his bare, shirtless body.
Both Meliodas and Gray stopped their conversation as they saw the maids' backs and sides , filled with deep scars and wounds, ones that were not caused by Meliodas's sword or Gray's magic.
"That asshole Joe abuses us constantly. If we're even a second late to getting him his morning coffee, he makes us strip down and whips us with his magic for the next hour…" Emma said as she and Alli began to put on their tops again. When they finished putting back on their clothes and turned around, tears began rolling down their faces.
"So naturally, we wanted revenge. We have been stealing all of Joe's family treasures and selling them so that we can ruin him and finally quit this shitty job! And he doesn't just do it to us, he does it to all of the people working here!" Alli finished, wiping the tears from her face.
"What do you want to do now? Whatever you want to do, I am right behind you." Meliodas said.
"Well you're going about it the wrong way…naturally we'll have to turn you in for theft, but we can do something about Bluegarden as well." Gray said, turning to the two maids.
"W-why are you helping us?" Alli grunted, shocked by Gray's kindness to help them despite the fact that they had just tried to kill him.
"Leaving you two like that to die just wouldn't sit right with me is all." Gray responded as he continued to freeze their wounds.
"Letting you two die would be the easy way out. After you two serve your time, live a better life to atone for your sins." Meliodas added in. The two maids looked at each other and began crying.
After Gray had treated their burns, he and Meliodas brought them upstairs and trapped them on the ground floor in another ice prison.
"Well...guess we go wake up Bluegarden." Gray commented.
"Wait!" Emma interjected. "There's other things that Bluegarden's been doing...you can talk to the other servants about it but the way he's been getting all of his "family treasures…"
"He's been working with several assassin guilds." Ali finished.
"I see…" Gray replied. "So that can be used as further incriminating evidence against him."
"Let's go talk to the other servants before we wake him up then." Meliodas said. Gray nodded and the two of them split up.
Meliodas went outside and began talking to the gardeners as Gray remained inside talking to the chefs and other maids and butlers. Most of them remained tight-lipped for fear of losing their job or were unaware of Bluegarden's actions.
As Gray continued his questioning inside, Meliodas walked around the garden, until he encountered a small shack situated a bit further away from the house. Meliodas entered the shack and saw a middle aged man who appeared to be a security guard sitting down staring at several lacrima vision cameras. The man did not notice Meliodas as he entered.
"Yo!" Meliodas greeted. The man had no response. Meliodas approached him and saw he was actually fast asleep. Meliodas pushed him on the shoulder, causing the man to wake up.
"W-what? Where am I?" The security guard questioned. He looked behind him and saw Meliodas.
"Oh...you're that Fairy Tail mage. What can I help you with?"
"You know anything about Bluegarden's affiliations with dark guilds?" Meliodas asked bluntly. The security guard returned a nervous look to Meliodas. He sighed and got up from his seat. He walked up to the door behind Meliodas and closed it.
"Listen...I don't want to lose my job...but I also don't think what Joe's doing is right…" The security guard continued.
"So what do you know?" Meliodas asked.
"I had evidence on lacrima vision of Joe talking to several dark guild members...but Joe confiscated those lacrimas from me and told me to never speak of it again. I agreed but...he didn't know I had made copies of it in case I ever needed them…"
"Oh that's perfect. So you can get him arrested. If you tell the council, they'll have him arrested." Meliodas replied.
"But if I get him arrested…" The security guard mumbled to himself. Meliodas walked up to him and patted him on the shoulder.
"If you don't want to that's fine. I still get paid anyway." Meliodas said as turned around and walked out of the shack.
Meliodas met back up with Gray in the main hall. He looked at Gray, who was only wearing his underwear.
"So you get any leads?" Meliodas asked.
"Yeah, one. One of the butlers said there's a room Bluegarden never lets anyone into, one that he's been even more secretive of than his treasure room." Gray replied. "The issue is no one knows how to open the door."
"Well where is it?" Meliodas asked.
"It's behind a bookshelf in his bedroom. Bluegarden is still asleep so we should be able to get in there."
"Sounds like a plan." Meliodas said as he and Gray began to walk towards the staircase.
"Put some damn clothes on first!" Emma yelled as they walked by her.
---
Gray and Meliodas entered Bluegarden's room and looked around. It was a large room with various pieces of art on the walls. In the corner of the room was a piano. At the back, aligned in the center, was a king sized bed where Joe was passed out.
"So according to those maids, they drugged him out on narcotics." Gray mentioned.
"Then we have plenty of time to look around." Meliodas said. Gray and Meliodas looked around the room until they found the bookcase that one of the servants was talking about. Meliodas pushed the bookcase aside. Behind it was a strange black door. The door had no handle and had strange markings engraved on it.
"Never seen a door like this." Gray commented. "Time to bust it open."
Gray got into his ice make stance as he faced the door.
"Ice Make - Battering Ram."
A large column of ice shot out from in front of Gray and hit the door with a loud bang. The ice shattered instantly as it hit the door, vanishing completely. Meliodas turned behind them and saw Joe was still fast asleep.
"What the hell is this door made of?!" Gray exclaimed. "I didn't even dent it?!"
Meliodas looked at the door curiously and walked closer to it. He put his hand up to the door and touched it. The door felt cold to the touch. As Meliodas kept his hand on the door, he could feel the door draining his magic slightly.
"Hey Gray, come feel this." Meliodas said. Gray walked up to the door and also placed his hand on it. His eyes widened as he realized what the door was doing.
"This is an anti magic door...no wonder I couldn't break it down…" Gray commented. Meliodas and Gray took their hands off the door and stared at it.
"How the hell are we supposed to break through something this sturdy without magic?" Gray asked.
"I got it." Meliodas replied. Meliodas gestured for Gray to move out of the way as he moved to stand right in front of the door.
Meliodas clenched his left hand tightly and bent his knees slightly, leading forward with his right leg.
"HAAAGHHH!" Meliodas yelled as he threw a punch at the door. For a brief instant, Meliodas's fist sunk into the material of the door before the door finally broke off its hinges, launching straight into the room behind it. The door hit the wall with a loud clang that shook the entire house before falling to the ground.
"What the hell was that?!" Gray exclaimed, shocked at Meliodas's brute strength. Meliodas ignored the comment and walked into the room. The room was a small cube, roughly three meters by three meters. Around him, were various boxes filled with papers and invoices. Meliodas looked around further and saw a small opened box filled with lacrimas on the ground. 'Oh that must be what that security guard was talking about.'
"Guess this must be the evidence the servants needed to really get that guy arrested." Gray commented as he stood at the doorway and stared in the room.
"Let's push the shelf back into place and wake up Bluegarden then." Meliodas said. Gray moved out of the way and Meliodas pushed the shelf back, covering the hole where Meliodas punched through the door.
"So what do we do about that." Gray said as he gestured towards Joe, who was still asleep.
"Well you're already naked. Why don't you crawl under the covers with him and give him a kiss?" Meliodas replied with a cheeky smirk.
"The hell?!" Gray yelled as he looked down at his body. He frantically looked around the room and saw his clothes were not there. "Where did I put my clothes?!"
"Pretty sure you stripped them in the main hall somewhere." Meliodas replied. "We'll get them again on the way down."
Meliodas walked up to Joe, who was sleeping peacefully. Meliodas leaned in closer right up to Joe's face.
"Hey wake up!" Meliodas yelled. There was no reply as Joe did not budge or open his eyes.
"You think he's dead?" Meliodas asked.
"We could pour some water on him." Gray suggested.
"Well they have a pool in the back right? Could just throw him in there."
"You think he'll drown?"
"One way to find out." Meliodas said as he walked towards the window. Outside he could see the massive garden of the estate. Below them, was a large swimming pool.
"Okay let's bring him downstairs and throw him in I guess." Gray said as he began to walk towards the door when suddenly he heard the sound of glass shattering. Gray quickly turned around and saw Joe's body was no longer on the bed and there was a massive hole in the window.