Chapter 78: Earth Empress Armor

"I am fired up!" Natsu yelled his famous catchphrase.

Not giving Natsu even the chance to run away and trying to face these knights and or Jellal alone, Zeldaris grabbed Natsu´s scarf and hold him back.

"It is good to see that you are so enthusiastic about this, but we have to plan our next steps carefully."

"And by that, Zel means that we are getting the fuck out of here." Aversia added, surprising everyone, especially Erza.

"But… But… But…" was all that Erza was able to mutter, her mind was not able to cope with the situation.

Zeldaris sighed and glared at Aversia.

"You could have at least gone a bit more into detail, Ave."

Aversia just shrugged with her shoulders and enjoyed the confusion that her words brought upon everyone.

Zeldaris sighed one more time before he started to explain, "Don´t worry, we will still deal with Jellal and his so called 'knights,' but not here. First of all, this place is now a god damn ticking time bomb and I don´t want to be here when this place is going to be blown sky high. Secondly, even if we leave this place, they will come after us, after all their target is Erza. And lastly, do you really want to even take the risk of being here when the council decides to blow this tower up?"

'Also, all of this is pointless, Zeref is still alive. Meaning that the ritual to resurrect him would fail no matter what we do. But explaining that Zeref is still alive is not a good option, the chaos that this information would bring is something that I am not able to predict and besides there are other methods that are available.'

"Is that really all?" Simon asked, not convinced by Zeldaris´s arguments.

"We will go to some small islands that are not too far away from here and wait for Jellal´s knights to come to us and fight them there. After that we will wait, make ourselves comfortable and enjoy some nice fireworks and call it therapy, because it is painfully obvious that you four and Erza need some." Aversia explained the rest of the plan.

"Wait, have you two planned all of this from the beginning?" Natsu asked.

"No, we just had the same idea after hearing what Jellal just told us." Aversia answered, not sure what Natsu meant with his question.

"Then how, did you know what the other was thinking."

"Are you really asking this? It´s because we know each other since we were born, we know each other better than anyone else." Aversia said with pride.

"Ok, but what about Happy, I won´t go until we rescue Happy."

And as if the world wanted to prove Natsu wrong, Happy came flying through the giant hole, crying, and yelling Natsu´s name.

Surprised and happy to see his friend save, Natsu spread his arms wide and Happy flew right into his embrace.

"All good?" Zeldaris asked, to make sure that everyone agreed to this.

Lucy, Juvia, and Gray agreed without any problems, although they were ready to fight for Erza, the plan that Zeldaris and Aversia made was logical and would take away the advantage that the enemy had.

Erza was torn apart, on one hand she agreed with their strategy, on the other hand, she wanted to deal with Jellal as soon as possible.

But in the end, she gave in and agreed as well.

As for Simon and the rest, they agreed after Erza agreed, although they were not really convinced.

All of them walked back toward the front gate, where they could take one of the ships.

On the way, they met multiple groups of people that were running toward the docks, trying to leave the tower and save their lives.

When they finally arrived at the front gate and the docks, they saw that most ships were already ready to sail and packed full.

Erza thought that Zeldaris and Aversia would take one of the ships that were already ready and kill all of the people on it, but instead they decided that they would take one of the ships that were still empty.

Simon, Wally and Shô told them that it would take some time until they could get the ship ready to sail, but the two half dragons just told everyone to get on.

As everyone was getting on the ship, Zeldaris and Aversia loosened the ropes that hold the ship in place and after making sure that everyone was on board, the two half dragons flew into the air, with the ropes still in their hands and begun to fly while towing the ship behind them.

Shô and the other three could not believe their eyes.

With the high speed, it took them not more than half an hour to arrive at the small group of islands.

They were not to far away from the tower and you could still see the tower clearly from them.

But they were also large enough to give everyone enough room to fight, while also giving Juvia access to the sea.

"So, what now?" asked Gray as they inspected the islands.

"I would say, get ready to fight, because they are almost here." Zeldaris said with a grin.

Gray, Natsu and Erza immediately looked into the sky and saw multiple shadows approaching.

There were seven people riding on flying blood beasts, while one person was flying in the air with the help of a magic powered jet pack.

Zeldaris and Aversia were staring at thew person that was flying via the jet pack, mostly because of how bizarre he looked.

His physic was similar to that of Laxus but had the head of an owl.

His body was mostly bare and only wore short green tights and high sneakers.

He also had wristbands and his biceps were adorned with long feathers that hanged down and were fastened there with a band.

The two of them were simply to confused by his appearance, although they know that they were currently not much better.

Erza on the other hand was looking at one of the people riding on one of the flying beasts.

She was woman with long pink hair that was tied on top of her head into two large buns and the rest reached down past her waist.

Her face was framed by two bangs, who reached down to her chest.

She had a curvaceous figure, peach skin and a beauty mark beneath each eye and wore red lipstick.

Her clothes were a log, lightly loose white kimono with a red stripe in between two black stripes around the waist as well as a red triangle at the bottom of her dress, decorated by flames and skulls motifs, open at the top to reveal her shoulders and a fair amount of cleavage

It was closed around the waist by a large black belt adorned with a horned skull.

She also had ribbons tied around the sleeves, a buckled strapped around her neck and traditional sandals with extremely high platforms soles.

Her guild insignia was incorporated into her kimono and seen at the end of both of its sleeves.

Erza recognized this insignia and became tense.

"They are from Death´s Head Caucus! Everyone be careful!" Erza warned everyone.

Simon, Wally, Shô and Miliana became pale and frightened, they had access to a lot of information about the world and knew about this guild.

This was the number one assassin's guild in Ishgard.

Every time that they participated in something, they would only leave corpses behind and had even influenced and changed the outcome of multiple wars by themselves.

They were also one of the few dark guilds that were not part of any of the members of the alliance.

Which allowed them to sell their services at anyone that could afford it.

After a minute or two, the group finally arrived over the islands and all seven of them jumped down, while the owl man landed on the ground.

"I greet you all. My name is Ikagura, leader of Trinity Raven of Death´s Head Caucus. We are the knights that lord Jellal had mentioned." said the woman with pink hair.

The other members were a man that looked like someone from a death metal band and five people that looked like the definition of a cross between assassins and ninjas.

"We are also here to bring justice upon you, for breaking the rules. Ho Hou Ho" said the owl head, confusing Zeldaris and Aversia even more.

(AN: Seriously, Fukuro is the most bizarre character in all of Fairy Tail, in my opinion.)

Instead of answering, Zeldaris, Aversia, Erza, Natsu, Juvia, Lucy and Gray simply rushed forward.

Erza went to face Ikagura, Natsu, Zeldaris and Aversia went toward the owl head and Gray, Lucy and Juvia went toward the member of the metal band.

Ikagura smiled and revealed a normal looking catana that was still in its scabbard.

The only unusual thing about it was that it had a longer blade and a longer handle, giving it almost the proportions of an odachi.

(AN: In the manga, her blade was only normal looking and there was not really something interesting about it. While in the anime they gave the blade it´s unique look.)

Ikagura took a stance and draw her blade, sending multiple slashes flying.

Most of them were heading toward Erza and she had a tough time blocking all of them, while some of them were flying into random directions.

Zeldaris and Aversia simply blocked those that were heading toward them with their arms but noticed that the slashes were actually able to penetrate their skin and were able to injure them.

Meanwhile the owl head activated his jetpack and flew into the sky while saying," I am Fukuro, the warrior of justice and a member of the Trinity Ravens. I will punish evil doers such as you. Hou Ho"

The five-ninja assassins were rushing toward Zeldaris and Aversia.

Juvia on the other hand had trapped the metal band member inside her water lock and threw him onto another island.

Gray used his magic to create a passage toward the island, on which Juvia had thrown the metal band member.

They and Lucy were crossing over the passage as Fukuro suddenly appeared out of nowhere and grabbed Gray and took him with him before Gray could even react.

"Gray, my darling!" Juvia yelled.

"Don´t worry about me. You and Lucy take care of that guy, while I take care of this stupid owl!" Gray yelled back while trying to free himself from the grip.

Juvia gave Lucy a quick disapproving glance before she and Lucy continued their way toward their opponent.

Erza on the other hand finished blocking all of the attacks that Ikagura had sent flying toward her.

"My, my, you are pretty impressive. The rumors were not lying when they talked about your skills, this should be an interesting battle. But first, you should change into something more fitting." Ikagura said with smile and at the last part cracks appeared on Erza´s armor and shattered shortly after.

Erza kneeled down from the pain before standing up again and said, "You want a challenge, then let me give you one! [Requip: Earth Empress Armor]"

The armor that Erza summoned was one of the few armors that Vulcan had made for her.

It looked like it was completely made out of stones and rocks, with massive gauntlets that made her arms and hands look much bigger.

Spikes that were coming out of the shoulders.

Overall, the armor looked rough, and it only looked barley like an actual armor.

"Is this a joke? You seem to look down on me!" Ikagura said, she saw this armor as an insult.

"Then come and face me!"

Without answering, Ikagura draw her sword again and sent multiple slashes flying again, only this time they were much bigger and more powerful than before.

Erza didn´t even try to dodge these attacks with and instead decided to take them head on.

Surprisingly however, the slashes were only able to chip of parts of the rocks and were not able to penetrate through them.

Seeing that her attacks were unable to hurt or even stop Erza, Ikagura jumped smiled.

"It seems that it was I that had looked down on you. Then let us test that so called armor of yours! [Yasha Senkuu]"

Ikagura swung her sword and sent a single slash flying.

Again, Erza didn´t try to dodge the attack and even if she tried, she would not be able to dodge it.

This time, the damage was much greater, and the slash penetrated the rock armor, but after reaching a certain point, it was blocked and a sound of metal clashing on metal rang out.

Ikagura had never expected this and was stunned for second, giving Erza the remaining time which she needed.

Ikagura herself was not Erza´s goal, but she had to get near enough for her attack to work on her.

Erza summoned her weapon, a war hammer that looked like it was made out of brass.

Erza swung the hammer with all her might and hit the ground.

"[Eruption]"

The ground erupted and multiple giant spikes came out of the earth hitting everything in a giant area.

Noticing her mistake, Ikagura used her swordsmanship to quickly cut through all spikes that came toward her.

The area became quite as Ikagura looked in astonishment at Erza, who in turn was glaring at Ikagura.

But there was something wrong, the rocks that formed her armor slowly begun to fall off and revealing what was beneath it.

AS Ikagura saw what emerged from beneath the rocks she begun to chuckle, amused by what she saw.

"it seems that our fight is only truly beginning now."