Erza's Past Has Come Back to Haunt Her

Earth Land, Ishgar, Kingdom of Fiore, Akane beach.

September, x784.

After leaving the room, Alfonzo and Erza quickly made their way to the restaurant where Elicia, Cana, and Ultear had already been seated.

Though Erza was putting on a strong front while being escorted by Alfonzo, it was clear to the others, who had known her for a few years by now, that something was bothering her. Still, they would not trample on their friend/sister's pride by making  a big deal over it. Instead, they would make the sour mood disappear by the end of the night by turning the resort upside down.

Proving the thoughts of the others correct, through dinner and even once they moved onto the hotel's casino, Erza clung to Alfonzo as if he were a security blanket. Though, Alfonzo didn't mind having Erza pressed up against him for prolonged periods of time in the slightest. In fact, he was happy to be her safety pillar for as long as she wanted.

Once inside the resort's casino, the group decided to split into three smaller groups. While Elicia did not gamble, she decided to go with Cana, who was liable to cause trouble after having too many of the complementary drinks. Meanwhile, Ultear decided to explore the casino on her own and try out any games that seemed interesting to her.

That left Alfonzo to explore the casino with Erza. Currently, about twenty minutes after the group separated, Alfonzo, with Erza seated in his lap, was sitting at a poker table watching Erza play Texas Hold Em with three other guests of the resort.

"Ha! Full house!" Erza cheered after turning over her cards.

"The beautiful lady is the winner." The dealer said while pushing the pot in front of Erza.

*Bang!*

"Damn it!" One of the men at the table with a pair of golden rimmed glasses shouted in frustration as he slammed his fist onto the table. "I lost again!"

"What kind of luck does this girl have?" Another, much older man asked in a resigned tone.

"Deal the next hand!" A third man with bloodshot eyes and alcohol on his breath shouted, desperate to win back what he lost.

"*Sigh* This is why I don't' gamble." Alfonzo muttered with his arms wrapped around Erza's waist.

"What do you mean?" Erza asked curiously. "From what I've seen, you have really good luck."

"I do." Alfonzo replied with a nod. "Plus, I know quite a few gambling techniques that are almost like second nature to me. So, I see a lot of people end up like them when I play."

As Alfonzo spoke the last sentence, he gestured towards the other three men at the table with is chin.

In fact, In Alfonzo's last life, the reason he had enough money to start his repair business was due to a week spent in Las Vegas when he turned twenty-five.

At that point, he was living off the money he received from the government because of his disability. Finding a job as someone with a visual impairment in the United States that pays well enough to sustain a person's livelihood was much tougher than one might expect. So, on a trip to get away from it all, he and a few of his closest friends went to Vegas to relax.

On that trip, Alfonzo managed to hit the jackpot on one of the highest paying slot machines. Then, after getting the money and putting most of it aside, he spent a few days watching gambling tutorials on his smartphone. After learning them, to make a long story short, he was politely asked to leave the casino and never come back.

While Alfonzo was remembering things from his past life, a young man with tan skin and blond hair, wearing the attire of a dealer, approached behind the current dealer.

"Dealer change." The tan skinned young man said in a low tone.

Nodding in response, the dealer set the deck of cards in his hand on the table and left to go on break or retire for the evening. After that, the tan skinned young man, with his head lowered, picked up the cards and began shuffling them in a flashy way.

Noticing the new arrival, Alfonzo narrowed his eyes, knowing what to expect from this point forward. Erza, on the other hand, looked at the new dealer with curiosity. For some reason, she found him familiar, though she could not put her finger on why exactly.

"Now that the dealer has changed, let's see if that luck of yours will continue, Sister Erza." The dealer said, raising his head to reveal a face with a manic smile.

The young man had wavy, blond hair, black, beady eyes, and tan skin with a small S-shaped tattoo under his lower lip.

"Shô?" Erza asked in disbelief as the image of a young boy from her past overlapped with the young man in front of her.

At the same time, Elicia and Cana were sitting at the bar. While Elicia was getting bored from just watching Cana drink to her hearts content, a large man approached them.

"Pardon me, ladies." The large man said in a deep voice.

The first to react was Elicia, who looked the man up and down. A moment later, a flash of recognition flashed in her eyes as she narrowed them.

What Elicia saw was a tall, muscular man with black hair, a black right eye, an eyepatch covering his left eye, and a metal plate covering his lower jaw wearing a pair of black pants to cover his much less developed legs,  a light blue cloth draped over his left shoulder that hung down past his waist in the front and the back, a white sash, and a white piece of cloth around his head that resembled a turban.

"Ah, here comes another one." Cana said in an annoyed tone after glancing over her shoulder. "Beat it, buddy. We're both already taken."

After speaking, Cana reached over and grabbed Elicia's left hand with her own and showed off their engagement rings.

At first, the large man was taken aback by the insinuation that he was there to hit on the women in front of him. However, he quickly regained his composure.

"I'm not here to flirt." The man said calmly. "I've only come to ask you, wizards of Fairy Tail, one question."

Hearing that, Cana sighed in annoyance before she turned around to face the large man. Looking him up and down, her slightly intoxicated mind made her blurt out the first thing that came to mind after she saw how much less muscular the man's legs were compared to his upper body.

"Whoa!" Cana exclaimed. "Someone's been skipping leg day."

Hearing that, the man's eyebrow twitched. Still, he decided to push on, his next words causing Cana to also narrow her eyes.

"Where is Erza Scarlet?" The man asked as he looked down at the two women.

Meanwhile, in another part of the casino, Ultear was standing in front of a giant, spinning roulette wheel. In fact, this roulette wheel was the largest one on the continent, with the largest possible pay out. Depending on how you bet before the spin, you could make anywhere from double your initial bet, to 1,500 times the amount.

"Come on! Come on! Mama needs a new pair of shoes!" Ultear shouted, getting lost in the excitement of the other gamblers around her. "Let's go! Show me 1029!"

That's right, for this spin, Ultear had decided to make the highest, and least likely to succeed, bet. She had put 100,000 Jewels on a single number. If it landed on any other number on the board, she would lose everything. However, if the ball landed on her number, she would walk away with 150,000,000 Jewels, her projected income from completing S-Class quests for seven or eight years.

To her surprise, the ball landed on Ultear's number when the roulette stopped spinning, resulting in the crowd falling silent. A moment later, Ultear snapped back to her senses.

"Did I really… win?" Ultear asked in a disbelieving tone. The, once her mind completely registered what happened, she shouted happily. "I won! I really won!"

With Ultear's exclamation, the rest of the gamblers also snapped out of there state of disbelief. Although there were a few people that shot envious glares at Ultear, most of the people were simply high on the atmosphere and started cheering for the newly rich young woman.

"Congratulations, Doll." A male voice said in the tone of an old school gangster. "That's some fine luck you've got there."

"Yeah, you're really lucky, Meow." A young woman's voice added with a feline verbal tick.

Looking back at the source of the voices, Ultear saw a rather strange pair of man and woman looking at her with grins on their faces.

First, the man had black hair and thick lips while he wore a royal blue suit, a white collared shirt, a red tie, a red bowler hat, a pair of sunglasses with oval-shaped lenses, and a white scarf loosely wrapped around his neck. But what made him stand out the most was the fact that his entire body seemed to be composed of building blocks of different sizes.

Then, there was the young woman. She had  a curvaceous figure with decidedly cat like features with her eyes, mouth, and nose resembling those of a cat. She also had four whisker-like tattoos, two on each side, on her cheeks. Also, her hair was styled into cat ears on the top of her head while the rest was tied into twin ponytails in the back.

The young woman's attire consisted of a pink dress with a white bow tie on the chest, pink frills on the lower portion, white leggings, and a yellow jacket with white stripes and black trim over top of the dress.

"Oh, yeah, I got really lucky this time around." Ultear replied modestly with a smile.

"So, can we ask you one question, pretty please, Meow?" The young woman asked while leaning forward slightly, anticipation glinting in her eyes.

Expecting the question to be something along the lines of how she managed to win, Ultear nodded her head with an awkward expression on her face from not knowing how to answer. However, when she heard the man's question, she narrowed her eyes.

"Where can we find that dame, Erza Scarlet?" The man asked while tipping his bowler hat slightly. "You're from the same guild, so we thought you'd know, ya see."

Simultaneously, from two different parts of the casino, Elicia, Ultear, and Cana asked the same question.

"Who are you and what do you want with Erza?"

Back at the poker table, Erza was still in shock. Yet, she somehow managed to squeeze out her next question.

"Shô, is that really you?" Erza asked in a shaky tone. "Why are you here?"

"You're breaking my heart, Sister Erza." The young man, Shô, said in feigned sadness. Then, his tone grew dark as he continued.  "It almost sounds as if you didn't want to see me after all this time. Well, I guess that makes sense, considering how you abandoned us all those years ago."

"No, Shô, I…" Erza said, stammering out a reply. "I didn't… I had no choice…"

By now, the other gamblers had left the table, feeling that something was wrong. So, Alfonzo, Erza, and Shô were the only ones at the table currently.

"*Sigh* It looks like your past has come back to haunt you, Erza." Alfonzo said, beginning to comb his fingers through Erza's hair. "It looks like the two of you need to have a long talk and settle some misunderstandings."

As Alfonzo spoke and tried to calm Erza, neither she nor Shô noticed the glint of hatred that flashed past his eyes. Though, it was not directed at anyone present. Still, because of his knowledge of the canon, Alfonzo already knew that Shô had come from the Tower of Heaven. The same Tower of Heaven Zeref Cultists started building and kidnapped many people to build. The same cultists responsible for the abduction of the village where he was born in this life and the ones who killed his and Elicia's parents.

"Alfonzo." Erza said, turning back to gaze at Alfonzo affectionately.

Meanwhile, Shô was at first taken back by Alfonzo's words and the way he tried to get them to reconcile. However, when he saw the way Erza looked at the man in front of him, and finally noticed that Erza was currently seated in his lap, he grew angry and jealous. Jealous that Erza had found someone to replace himself and his friends in Erza's heart.

"You have no right to interfere in the business between us!" Shô shouted angrily as he drew one of the cards in the deck he was holding and injected magic power into it.

"Shô, you can use magic?" Erza asked in disbelief after feeling Shô's magic power. "When did you learn that?"

"I'll teach you to mind your own business." Shô said while ignoring Erza's question and thinking that he could use Alfonzo to get Erza to agree to return to the tower without a fight. Then, he chanted his spell. "[Card Magic: Card Conversion]."

Immediately, Erza realized that Shô was about to attack Alfonzo. Instinctively, she reached out, hoping to stop Shô as she spoke frantically.

"Shô, please, stop!" Erza shouted with worry in her tone.