Chapter 142: Chapter 142
Marshall and Erza hadn’t spoken to each other for three days!
Everyone else assumed they’d had some kind of argument, but only the two of them knew just how painfully awkward the real reason was.
The very night after the incident, Marshall completely redesigned the spatial enchantments built into his clothes.
Previously, he had never imagined anyone else would handle his private belongings, so for convenience he had connected several hidden storage interfaces directly to the same personal Subspace Dimension he carried with him.
That shortcut was exactly what had allowed Erza to accidentally activate one of them.
Marshall refused to let anything like that happen again.
He spent an absurd amount of time rebuilding every hidden storage enchantment as its own isolated pocket dimension.
From now on, activating one piece of clothing would never interfere with anything else he carried.
Problem solved.
Technically.
Unfortunately, fixing the spell didn’t erase what had already happened, nor could either of them erase the memory.
Thus, an unspoken understanding—and an equally unspoken embarrassment—hung between them for days.
Marshall recovered relatively quickly.
He was mostly annoyed at himself for making such a careless design mistake.
After spending the next two days venting his frustration by relentlessly teasing Lucy, his mood more or less returned to normal.
Erza, however, was affected much more deeply.
For the first time, the phrase Marshall has grown up stopped being an idle observation and became something she genuinely had to confront.
He wasn’t the tiny child she remembered anymore!
He was getting older, developing his own privacy, his own worries, and parts of his life that even someone as close to him as Erza couldn’t simply treat with the same casual familiarity as before.
Erza was normally serious and composed, but she was already nineteen.
She wasn’t ignorant about relationships or the differences between men and women, especially after borrowing more than a few questionable books from Levy over the years.
Knowing something in theory, however, was completely different from accidentally stumbling into an intensely private situation involving someone she had always regarded as her little brother.
How was she supposed to face him normally after that?!
Convinced she had embarrassed herself beyond recovery, Erza fell into a spiral of overthinking.
And the more she thought, the more memories surfaced.
She and Marshall had already experienced so much together.
Unlike the increasingly distant and painful memories of the Tower of Heaven, her memories with Marshall were warm.
Comforting.
Happy.
When she looked back carefully, she realized that an astonishing number of the best moments in her life somehow involved him.
Without Erza ever consciously noticing when it happened, Marshall had become an inseparable part of her world.
So...
It was only one embarrassing misunderstanding.
That shouldn’t change anything between them, should it?
They were family.
They were closer than almost anyone.
Perhaps she had simply failed to notice that Marshall had reached an age where some of her old habits—hugging him without warning, treating him exactly as she had when he was smaller—might embarrass him now.
That explained why he sometimes turned red and became strangely stiff when she pulled him into an affectionate hug.
Maybe he had simply been too embarrassed to say anything.
As his big sister, she should be more considerate.
As his big sister, she should be mature enough to break this awkward silence first.
As his big sister...
Erza’s thoughts stopped.
’Big sister?’
For some reason, the words suddenly felt much less simple than they once had.
Marshall was unquestionably family.
But if that was all she felt, why had one awkward accident unsettled her this badly?
Why had she spent three days replaying it in her mind?
Was she merely embarrassed because she had crossed one of his personal boundaries?
Or was there something else about her own feelings that she had never seriously examined?
What exactly was she so bothered by?
And were her feelings toward Marshall truly nothing more than the affection of an older sister?
For the first time... Erza wasn’t sure.
...
Several days later, Marshall’s life had more or less returned to normal.
His Thought Projection continued researching the Gugas while his main body spent most of its time lazing around the guildhall and occasionally training his Heavenly Body Magic.
He was already extremely close to reaching Level Three.
Once he crossed that threshold, he should finally meet the requirements for Fairy Glitter.
More importantly, deeper study of celestial power might give him additional inspiration for his artificial-life research.
After that breakthrough, Marshall’s next planned research subject was Mira.
More specifically—
The original demon she had absorbed.
The demon inside Mira wasn’t one of Zeref’s creations.
It appeared to be an exceptionally rare naturally occurring demon, which made it particularly valuable now that Marshall had become fascinated by demon biology.
If a true demon’s fundamental power came from emotional energy, then perhaps Mira had never actually discovered the correct way to draw out everything hidden within her Take Over.
Then Marshall remembered her old nickname.
The She-Devil.
’Hmm...’
Perhaps Mira had unconsciously tapped into some aspect of that power before without realizing what she was doing.
If so, Marshall might be able to help push her strength significantly higher.
There had also been plenty of smaller entertaining developments around the guild over the past few days.
Reedus, for example, had returned from his long period of seclusion with dramatically improved strength.
A man who had previously been considered fairly ordinary could now fight Macao and Wakaba almost evenly.
That development hit Macao particularly hard.
He had become so depressed that he spent half his time drinking in the guildhall, forcing his own son Romeo to comfort him instead of the other way around.
Romeo was seven years old this year and currently the youngest Mage associated with Fairy Tail, effectively taking over the role Marshall himself had once occupied.
The boy was a complete Fairy Tail fanatic.
He adored the guild and was incredibly proud that his father was one of its Mages.
Romeo used Fire Magic and possessed respectable talent—probably better than Macao’s, at least.
He was also one of Natsu’s biggest admirers and constantly begged him for lessons.
Unfortunately...
Natsu’s teaching ability was difficult to describe politely.
Speaking of Natsu, he had been behaving strangely lately.
For some inexplicable reason, he kept approaching girls around the guild and asking them to form teams with him.
Unfortunately for Natsu, his reputation was so terrible that practically nobody agreed.
Marshall eventually became curious enough to listen to his thoughts.
The truth nearly made him laugh aloud.
Natsu was trying to use the girls as bait to indirectly recruit Marshall.
After the Eisenwald incident, Natsu had finally realized just how absurdly useful Marshall was as a teammate.
He could support almost any fighting style, cover nearly every weakness, rescue people instantly if something went wrong, and—most importantly—he wasn’t particularly interested in fighting, which meant he wouldn’t steal Natsu’s opponents!
In Natsu’s mind, Marshall was essentially the perfect support unit.
What Natsu coveted most, however, was Reparo.
If Marshall came along on every mission and could repair the damage afterward, didn’t that mean Natsu could destroy things without worrying about the consequences?
It was a beautiful dream.
Naturally, Natsu had already invited Marshall directly and Marshall had rejected him without hesitation.
Natsu was simply too slow to understand that everyone in Fairy Tail already knew how ridiculously valuable Marshall was on a team.
A Mage who knew a little of practically everything and could fill almost any role received more invitations than he could possibly accept.
If Marshall never learned to say no, he wouldn’t have enough hours in the day.
But Natsu wasn’t someone who gave up easily.
When asking directly failed, his mighty brain produced another brilliant strategy.
’Marshall doesn’t like forming teams with guys.’
’So if I form a team with a girl first...’
’Then I can use her to lure Marshall into joining too!’
Hearing that breathtaking chain of logic nearly broke Marshall’s composure.
There was another problem with Natsu’s plan anyway.
Reparo could only reverse physical states under certain conditions.
If something had been completely burned and its material composition had fundamentally changed, simply reversing localized time wouldn’t necessarily restore it perfectly.
So Natsu’s fantasy of gaining unlimited permission to destroy everything around him was doomed from the beginning.
Aside from those harmless bits of nonsense, there was one other development worth mentioning.
Laxus had returned.
And the Thunder God Tribe had come back with him.
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