While everyone was taking a long, nice rest, the council had an emergency meeting regarding the theft of Lullaby.

In fact, they had it since morning and were franticly searching for the thief and the flute.

After all Lullaby had the ability to kill everyone that heard it´s music, except the one that plays the flute.

Another thing of importance was how the flute had been stollen in the first place.

The council stored the flute in a secret location and not in the headquarters of the council since the headquarters was a too obvious place.

The council had multiple hidden storage compounds across all over Ishgar and in these were some of the most dangerous and deadly artefacts that the council managed to collect.

It was almost completely impossible to find them and to get the artifacts inside, because of the seals and defensive mechanism inside.

 And yet, someone managed to infiltrate one of them and stole Lullaby.

Soon, they found out that it was Eisenwald that stole the flute and begun to fear for the worst.

And the worst happened, the demon Lullaby awakened.

But was shortly after defeated, without killing a single person.

To make matters awkward for the council, it was Fairy Tail that defeated the demon and Eisenwald.

But the fact that it was Fairy Tail that did all of that was hard for them to accept, although there had been some minor collateral damage and other things.

Only two members called Siegrain and Ultear had no problem with accepting that and even actively praised Fairy Tail for it.

“If Lullaby had killed all of the guild masters, then a lot of heads would have rolled, even in this room.” said Siegrain.

“Impossible! Are you planning on pinning the blame on us?!” said a member.

“Think about it. They managed to steal an object of such a caliber, which the dark mage Zeref himself created, with relative ease. Not only could this mean that the people and countries would lose trust in us, but that the main branch of the council could lose faith in our abilities as well and fire all of us.” Siegrain replied back.

None of the other members could retort back, because Siegrain told the truth.

If the main branch of the council would think that the current council in Ishgar was not capable, then they would fire them and hire new ones.

“Then what are you proposing?” said another member.

 

The next day, returned everyone back to the guild with no problems whatsoever.

Lucy decided to head straight home, she had enough adventure and action for now and just wanted to relax.

Natsu and Erza went also back to their home, to prepare themselves for tomorrow.

The thing is, Natsu accepted the request from Erza only under one condition and that was that he would fight Erza after coming back, needless to say that Erza excepted.

The two decided that their fight would happen tomorrow at noon.

Makarov, Zeldaris, Aversia and Gray returned to the guild to inform the others and prepare for tomorrow.

And so, at the day of the fight, every member was gathered before the guild.

Mirajane and Zeldaris had prepared foods and drinks for everyone.

Canna was holding a betting booth, most people betted on Erza, including Happy.

Makarov would be the referee for this match, while Zeldaris and Aversia would make sure that Natsu wouldn´t hit the audience with his attacks.

Gray, Elfman, Mirajane, Lisanna and Lucy were talking about their thoughts on the upcoming match.

“Is it really ok for two of the strongest members to fight like that right in front of the guild?” asked Lucy.

“Strongest? What do you mean by that?” asked Lisanna.

“Well Erza, Natsu and Gray are the most powerful members of the guild, right? As long as you ignore those two monsters.” Said Lucy, she pointed at Zeldaris and Aversia at the latter half.

“Who the hell told you that?” asked Gray in bewilderment.

Mirajane smiled brightly, before bursting into tears.

“Ah… It was you Mirajane…?”

“You made her cry.” said Lucy.

“It is true that Natsu and Gray are some of the strongest members of the guild, but there are still enough members that are stronger than them, even if you don´t count Zeldaris and Aversia.” Said Lisanna.

“Then what about Erza?”

“Aversia is stronger than Erza, no doubt about it. Which would mean that she is the second most powerful female member. She has the nickname of Titania for a reason.” said Ophiuchus, who came out of nowhere.

Erza´s nickname was Titania, the queen of fairies, although no one knew who started calling her that, it became quite popular.

“As for male members, there are Laxus, Mystogan, Gildarts and of course Zeldaris. It is difficult to say who of them is the strongest.” said Lisanna.

“I just thought that Natsu, Gray and Erza would get along perfectly.” said Mirajane, while still crying.

“Huh? Wasn´t it you that was worried that Natsu and Gray wouldn´t get along when Erza wasn´t around?” asked Lucy.

“Either way this will be an interesting fight.” said Elfman.

“Is that so? I am expecting Erza to win overwhelmingly.” said Gray.

“Natsu do your best!” yelled Lisanna.

Meanwhile, Natsu and Erza were talking some things before the begin of the fight.

“How long has it been since we last thought like this?” asked Erza.

“I WAS A LITTLE KID BACK THEN!! I HAVE CHANGED!!! I WILL WIN TODAY!!!” yelled Natsu.

“I am going to fight for real too. It´s been a while since I truly assessed myself.” said Erza and used her magic.

She summoned her Flame Empress Armor; the armor was partly draconic in design but was also really exposing, a theme that many Erza´s armors had.

It was the best armor against Natsu, since it had high fire and heat resistance.

“Looks like Natsu is lucky. The old man didn´t had the time to work on that one yet.” muttered Zeldaris.

“You know damn well that we only recently finished going over, and reforging, most of her weapons and only recently started with her armors. We also don´t have all the materials at hand for most of the armors.” answered Aversia.

“Don´t remind me. The number of weapons was terrifying and the old man’s attitude about his work was a terrible combination.”

“He is a perfectionist. But do you think that Lady Irene would have chosen him as her disciple if he wasn´t one?”

“True.”

 

“Flame Empress Armor? Bring it on! Now I can give it my all without regret!” said Natsu and engulfed his fists in fire.

“Ready… Go!!!” said Makarov, giving the go for the match.

Natsu quickly rushed toward Erza and attacked, but Erza easily dodged backwards and countered with a sword swing.

Natsu dodged and kicked out.

The two were evaluating each other and continued like this.

Soon enough, Natsu had to take some distance from Erza and used his fire breath.

Erza dodged by jumping upward and the flames headed toward the audience but were stopped at the last second by a sudden wall of grey flames.

Erza, using the momentum of the fall, brought the sword downward toward Natsu, who in turn wanted to meet it head on with his fist.

“Stop!” said someone, as a sound wave flew through the air, stopping Erza and Natsu dead in their tracks.

Everyone else also stopped what they were doing and looked at the figure that appeared.

It was an anthropomorphous amphibian, which wore the robes of the council.

Signaling that it was a messenger of the council.

“I am a messenger of the council and herby invite Makarov Dreyer to a meeting with the council. He is allowed to bring Zeldaris and Aversia with him as escorts.” said the messenger.

Everyone was shocked as they heard this.

Makarov was more confused than shocked, he knew that the council would not stay quiet, he thought that they would blame the guild, or at least one of their members, for the damages that happened with the Eisenwald incident, but never this.

He thought for a moment before saying” Ok.”

“Then please follow me.”

Makarov followed the messenger, Zeldaris and Aversia also begun to follow, they knew that they had no other option but to follow.

Everyone else could only look in silence.

 

They travelled not to the headquarters of the council of Ishgar, but the Fiore branch of the council.

Makarov had been quite a few times to this branch, mostly because of all the problems that the guild members caused, mostly Natsu.

It was also the branch were Mest was currently stationed at he visited Mest once a month to talk with him.

Mest was able to find a few things out, but nothing major at this point.

 

Inside the building, they were brought to a large room.

The room was mostly empty, except for a large table, at which the ten members of the council were sitting.

But something was wrong.

Zeldaris and Aversia could see the members, but all of their other senses were telling them that there were only three people in the room.

Needles to say, they were wary and had their guard up.

“Don´t worry about it. They are just a projection. A spell that every member of the council knows. With it they can address their duties at the other branches without traveling to them. Which is one of the reasons why all of the members are mages, besides the obvious one.” told Makarov to Zeldaris and Aversia.

The two relaxed after hearing Makarov´s explanation and had to agree that this kind of spell would truly be perfect for them.

“Now then, if you three are finished then we can get to the reason as to why we have summoned you here.” said one of the members, he looked like what most people would think of a mage, an old man with a long beard and the stereotypical hat.

“The reason as to why we have summoned here today, was to tell you on how we are going to deal with the whole Lullaby fiasco and with the Fairy Tail guild. As you can imagine, we are in a quite tricky situation where people might lose their faith and trust into the council and our ability to govern and protect the world of magic. At the beginning we wanted to use one of your members as a scapegoat, but Siegrain and Ultear proposed a different method.”

Zeldaris and Aversia could follow the reasoning to this point, although that didn´t meant tat they agreed with it.

“I will not bore you with the explanation and will just going to tell you that we will make it look like that it was the Rune Knights that defeated Lullaby and saved the guild leaders.”

“Is that everything you wanted to tell us? If so, then you could have simply noticed me with a note or something and not drag me her just to tell me this.” said Makarov while sounding pretty annoyed.

The faces of some members distorted from anger and annoyance but held themselves back because it would be useless to lash out.

As for the member that was talking, he just smiled and disappeared.

Most of the other members also disappeared except for two of them.

One was a young man with blue spiky hair and a large tattoo on the right side of his face.

The second one was a young woman with long black heir that reached down to her waist and was holding a crystal ball in her hand.

“My name is Siegrain and this is Ultear. The two of us are quite fond of your guild, because of you guys it is never really boring. And we were quite surprised when we heard that it was the Fairy Tail guild that defeated Eisenwald and Lullaby, and saved everyone.” 

“What do you want?”

Siegrain was surprised by Makarov´s words at first but quickly started to smile.

“To get to the point, I want you guys to do me a little favor in the near future. It´s a job request if you want to call it that and of course you will get paid for it. As for the task itself it is simple. It is to investigate and infiltrate a place called the Tower of Heaven.”