Chapter 52: Faces from the Past
The casino continued its relentless hum of activity around them, chips clacking against felt and wheels spinning in endless cycles of chance and loss, but Gray had forgotten all of it the moment Juvia mentioned leaving Phantom Lord. He studied her face in the garish light of the slot machines, searching for any hint of deception, any flicker of the enemy she had been just days ago, but all he found was an earnestness so naked it almost hurt to look at.
"You really left them," Gray said slowly, more statement than question.
Juvia nodded, her blue hair swaying with the movement. "Juvia could not stay. Not after what the guild did to Fairy Tail, not after what they tried to do to Gray-sama's friends. Master Jose, he only ever saw Juvia as a weapon, a tool to point at his enemies. Juvia does not want to be a tool anymore."
Gray leaned against the slot machine, crossing his arms over his bare chest in a gesture that was entirely unconscious. "So what now? You are just gonna wander around as an independent mage?"
"For now, yes. Juvia must find her own path, her own way of living." Her voice softened, took on a hesitant quality that seemed entirely at odds with the woman who had once tried to boil him alive. "But Juvia has been thinking... wondering... if perhaps there might be a place for her someday. In Fairy Tail."
Gray's eyebrows shot upward. "You want to join Fairy Tail? After everything that happened?"
"I know it is too soon. I know Juvia has no right to ask." She clasped her hands together, twisting them nervously. "But Juvia watched your guild during the war. Saw how you fought for each other, how you protected one another. It was beautiful. Juvia has never had anything like that. Juvia has never had anywhere she truly belonged."
Before Gray could respond, a heavy hand clamped down on his shoulder with enough force to make him wince. He spun around, ice already forming at his fingertips, and found himself staring at a man he did not recognize. Tall and muscular, with dark skin and a shaved head, the stranger wore an expression of cold intensity that sent warning signals screaming through Gray's instincts.
"Where is Erza?" the man demanded, his voice a low growl that cut through the casino noise like a blade.
Gray's eyes narrowed. "Who is asking?"
The man's grip tightened, his fingers digging into Gray's shoulder hard enough to bruise. "I will not ask again. Where is the woman called Erza Scarlet?"
Juvia moved without thinking, her body dissolving into water and reforming between Gray and the stranger in the space of a heartbeat. Her expression had shifted from nervous uncertainty to something far more dangerous, the protective fury of a woman who had finally found something worth defending.
"You will remove your hand from Gray-sama," she said quietly, "or Juvia will remove it for you."
The man barely glanced at her, his attention still fixed on Gray with unnerving intensity. 'Simon's eyes flickered with something that might have been recognition, might have been dismissal,' and then he spoke into a small device hidden beneath his collar.
"I have located two of her companions. The ice mage and a water woman. No sign of the target yet."
A crackle of static, then a voice Gray could not quite make out.
"Understood." Simon released Gray's shoulder and stepped back. His form seemed to dissolve into the shadows themselves, darkness pooling around his feet and rising to swallow him whole. The last thing Gray saw before Simon vanished completely was the cold certainty in those dark eyes, and then he was gone as if he had never existed at all.
"What in the hell was that?" Gray demanded, rubbing his shoulder where the man's fingers had left deep impressions in his skin.
Juvia's water form rippled with agitation. "Juvia does not know, but she does not like it. That man, he was looking for Erza with deadly intent. We must find her immediately."
---
Across the casino, bathed in the warm glow of crystal chandeliers and surrounded by the sophisticated murmur of high stakes gambling, Erza Scarlet sat at a blackjack table utterly unaware of the danger closing in around her. Lucy sat beside her, watching with amusement as Erza approached the game with the same focused intensity she brought to everything else.
The dealer's position rotated, a new figure sliding into place with practiced ease. He was young, blond, with tanned skin and a small tattoo shaped like the number five below his lower lip. An earring with diamond ornaments dangled from his left ear, catching the light as he began to shuffle the cards with movements so fluid they seemed almost hypnotic.
Erza's breath caught in her throat.
The young man looked up, and his dark eyes met hers across the felt table. A smile spread across his face, slow and strange and not entirely sane.
"It has been a while, nee-san."
"Sho." The name escaped Erza's lips like a prayer, like a wound. "Sho, you are alive, you are actually alive, I thought, I thought you all"
"Alive?" Sho's voice carried a note of something dangerous, something fractured. "Oh yes, nee-san. We are all alive. Wally, Simon, Millianna, all of us. We survived the tower, survived the years, survived everything. The question is, did you?"
Lucy looked between them, confusion and alarm warring on her features. "Erza, what is he talking about? Who is this person?"
Before Erza could answer, Sho's hands moved across the cards with preternatural speed. He fanned them out across the table in a single fluid motion, and Lucy's blood ran cold as she read the message spelled out in their arrangement.
D-E-A-T-H.
Sho's smile widened, taking on an edge of genuine madness. "Why do not we enjoy a special game, nee-san?" His voice dropped to a whisper that somehow carried perfectly across the table. "Except we will not be betting with coins. Let us bet with our lives."
Erza stared at the cards, at the face of the boy she had once carried on her back through the darkness of the tower, the boy who had called her big sister and meant it with his whole heart. The boy who had planned their escape, who had wept when she lost her eye, who had been as much her family as anyone in Fairy Tail.
And now he looked at her with eyes that held only accusation and a hunger for something she could not name.
"Sho," she began, "I never betrayed you, I never betrayed any of you, Jellal lied to you, he"
"I know what Jellal said." Sho's voice cracked, the madness flickering to reveal something raw and wounded beneath. "I know what we all believed for eight years. But knowing and believing are different things, nee-san. And right now, I do not know what to believe at all."
He began to deal the cards, his movements mechanical, inevitable.
"Let us play. Let us see what the cards decide."
Erza's hand drifted toward the edge of the table, toward the space where her armor waited to be summoned, but something in Sho's expression stopped her. This was not an enemy she could fight with steel and requip. This was a wound that needed words, needed truth, needed time she did not have.
Around them, the casino continued its endless dance of light and sound, oblivious to the drama unfolding at one small table in its vast expanse.
And across the room, hidden in shadows that should not exist, Simon watched and waited for his moment to strike.
The big arc Natsu had been looking forward to, training for, dreading and anticipating in equal measure, had officially begun.