Chapter XXIII: Extalia, A Chilling Warning, & The Wrath of Saiyans
The Saiyan Ultimatum
What happened next would be seared into King Faust's memory for whatever remained of his life.
As the Royal Army's elite commanders converged, their magic-sealing polearms crackling with anti-Ethernano charges, Teilanne calmly stepped to the front of the rescue team.
She didn't shout. She didn't raise a fist or unleash a dramatic battle roar. Instead, the Saiyan matriarch fixed King Faust with a cold, piercing glare that carried the weight of someone calculating precisely how long it would take to level his entire kingdom.
"Retreat," Teilanne said quietly to her family and allies. "Now."
"Mother, wait! The Lacrima—" Wendy started, her voice tight with panic.
"Will be completely intact when we return," Teilanne cut in, her crimson Ki flaring outward in heavy, rhythmic pulses that caused the surrounding marble floorboards to groan under the sudden gravitational shear. "Won't it, Your Majesty?"
The question wasn't a request—it was a absolute promise wrapped in a terrifying threat.
For the first time since the infiltration began, genuine horror flickered across King Faust's face. He had prepared for desperate mages, reckless explosions, and heroic last stands. He was not prepared for the icy composure of multi-galactic conquerors who had just finished cataloging every single structural vulnerability in his royal sanctum.
"You think you can simply walk out of my throne room?" Faust demanded, though his voice wavered slightly.
"Your Majesty, I have personally seen entire star systems turned to cosmic dust," Teilanne replied pleasant and unbothered. "I've fought entities capable of fracturing planets with a single thought."
She took one deliberate step forward. The surrounding elite guards instantly retreated three steps back, their hands trembling on their weapons.
"You have something that belongs to my family," Teilanne continued softly. "You're draining their life force for your own gain, assuming that the vast gap in our respective power levels works to your benefit."
Beside her, Kizuna's emerald Ikari aura raged out of control, but Teilanne extended her hand, enveloping her son's green Ki inside a dense crimson field. Rather than suppressing his rage, she channeled it—turning raw, chaotic fury into concentrated, deadly focus.
"Let me clarify something that countless star systems learned the hard way," Teilanne warned, her voice echoing across dimensions. "You never make Saiyans angry. Not unless you are prepared to face the consequences of awakening a bloodline born to conquer worlds."
"We are leaving now," she announced, her gaze sweeping across the royal captains. "We will plan. We will prepare. And then we will return to claim what is ours."
A Captain's Choice & Spatial Escape
Uruk and Sala shifted into flanking positions beside their mother, synchronizing their Ki signatures to create an impenetrable kinetic barrier. Behind them, Cumber deployed his Crash Magic in sweeping, precise arcs, carving stable spatial pathways through the kingdom's reality-warping grid.
"The Lacrima will remain untouched for now," Teilanne added, locking eyes with Faust. "We have no intention of endangering our friends with reckless collateral damage. But understand this—every second they remain in your power grid, every drop of energy you steal from them, adds to the debt you owe us."
A sharp metallic sound rang out across the chamber. Panther Lily unclipped his Royal Guard insignia from his chest plate and let it shatter against the stone floor.
"Captain Lily!" one of the commanders shouted in disbelief.
"Former captain," Lily corrected coldly, adjusting his massive sword. "My oath was to protect the citizens of this world—not to stand by while a tyrant harvests souls for power."
Gildarts grinned, his own Crash Magic disintegrating the ground beneath their feet to widen Cumber's dimensional portal. "You've built your defenses to stop Edolas magic, King Faust. But we aren't from your world."
With flawless coordination, the rescue team backed into the shimmering spatial rift, which sealed itself shut behind them—leaving the royal throne room silent, cracked, and thoroughly shaken.
The Secluded Valley & The Counter-Plan
Miles beyond the royal city, hidden in a deep, mist-shrouded mountain valley where dimensional boundaries ran thin, the team regrouped to build their counter-offensive.
Panther Lily knelt on the damp earth, using the tip of his blade to draw a complex schematic of the palace's power grid.
"The Lacrima extraction matrix operates on a continuous feedback loop," Lily explained. "Energy is siphoned from the captive mages, routed through primary conversion chambers, and distributed throughout the kingdom."
"What's the primary structural vulnerability?" Sala asked, her tactical mind analyzing the drawing.
"The primary resonance chamber at the core," Lily answered. "If we destabilize that exact node, the entire siphon will instantly invert—returning every drop of stolen Ethernano directly back into the mages."
"And if we miss the node?" Uruk inquired.
"The resonance surge will shatter the Lacrima from within, killing everyone inside instantly," Lily admitted grimly.
Kizuna, now fully in control of his stabilized Ikari form, looked down at the map. "How much time do we have before Faust speeds up the process?"
"The Grand Magic Games begin tomorrow morning," Lily revealed. "Faust plans to drain the Lacrima completely as the main event of the opening ceremony."
Teilanne folded her arms, her crimson energy settling into a calm, lethal rhythm. "Then we have our deadline. We plan, we position, and tomorrow, King Faust learns firsthand what happens when you touch Fairy Tail."
The Truth of Extalia
While the Clive family regrouped in the valley, planning their return assault on the Royal City, Happy and Carla found themselves in circumstances far different from what they'd expected.
The plush, rose-colored silk beneath Happy and Carla felt sickeningly luxurious—less like a sanctuary and more like a velvet-lined cage. When the heavy door creaked open, two unfamiliar Exceed stepped into the light, carrying an air of eerie, unquestioned authority.
"Are you the ones from Earthland who completed their assignment?" asked the larger Exceed, his facial features strangely elongated and unsettlingly familiar.
Beside him, a slender black Exceed waved his paw with rhythmic, mechanical regularity. "Nichiya is naturally curious," the second cat chimed, his tone dripping with bureaucratically flat poise. "I am Nadi. This is your first time in Edolas, isn't it? You have likely never laid eyes on others of your true kind."
Carla's chest tightened as her sharp mind instantly mapped the discrepancies: the cold distance, the clinical references to "assignments," and the way they spoke of Earthland as if it were merely a remote operational sector rather than home.
Leading them outside, Nadi swept a paw toward the sprawling city suspended in the sky. Extalia. A kingdom built entirely by and for Exceeds. But there was no warmth here—no rowdy camaraderie like the halls of Fairy Tail.
"We are not mere cats," Nadi corrected flatly when Happy gasped at the populace. "We are Exceeds. We stand above the frail humans and guide them. Six years ago, one hundred eggs were dispatched to Earthland under the Queen's directive. Your original programming was simple: track the Dragon Slayers and eliminate them."
The ground seemed to dissolve beneath Carla's feet. The dark visions, the oppressive weight of duty she had carried since birth—it wasn't foresight. It was pre-installed software.
"When Edolas developed the Anima," Nadi continued without a trace of remorse, "your directive was updated. Instead of assassination, you were to shepherd their massive magical reserves straight into our hands. You executed your programming flawlessly."
"No..." Happy's voice broke, tears welling in his eyes as the horrible truth settled in. "My mission... was to kill Natsu? We didn't know! We just wanted to save our friends!"
"Knowledge is irrelevant to execution," Nichiya added with chilling composure. "You functioned precisely as engineered."
Meanwhile in the Royal City
The Grand Magic Games had begun with pageantry and celebration, but beneath the festive atmosphere, other forces were moving.
Meanwhile, inside the buzzing thoroughfares of the Royal City, the atmosphere was thick with festival fanfare, but underneath, the gears of a counter-strike were turning.
High above the central plaza, where the massive Lacrima holding Magnolia hung like a suspended mountain, a sudden burst of pyrotechnics painted the sky. Handcrafted by the local Edo-Gajeel, the bursting embers burned through the smog to form a single, undeniable directive: NORTH.
Across the crowded square, Earthland's Gajeel caught the signal and grinned, his iron teeth gleaming.
"Hey! Look up!" Gajeel bellowed, throwing his arms wide and pointing frantically toward the northern pavilion. "Someone's trying to sabotage the Lacrima!"
Chaos erupted as royal guards surged blindly toward the false alarm. Stripping off his cloak in the pandemonium, Gajeel lunged at the base of the gigantic crystal, slamming his iron-encased fists directly into its magic-conducting lattice.
The impact resonated like a dying bell. Instead of a clean crack, the Lacrima pulsed with a violent, unstable luminescence, its internal energy humming wildly out of control.
Gajeel recoiled slightly, squinting through the harsh light. "What the heck? This thing's about to blow..."
Back in Extalia
"You're wrong," Happy said quietly, stepping directly between Carla and the Extalia officials. The sheer conviction in his small voice cut straight through Nadi's bureaucratic smugness. "We're not puppets. We're not weapons, or tools, or lines of code in your command project. We are Fairy Tail mages."
He pictured Natsu's goofy, unrelenting grin—the boy who had shared his food, fought by his side, and never once looked at him as anything less than a true partner. He thought of Lucy, Erza, Gray, and the warm, chaotic guild hall they called home.
Carla wiped the tears from her eyes and forced herself to her feet, her trembling jaw setting into hard resolve. "Fairy Tail protects its own," she added. "Whatever programming you built into us failed the moment we learned what real love feels like. Family is stronger than duty."
"Impossible!" Nadi stammered as Nichiya's face twisted in outrage. "The directives are absolute!"
"Our nature," Happy countered with a fierce, quiet pride, "is to protect our family. Everything else is just noise."
"Traitorous Fallen!" Nichiya shrieked into the hallway. "Guards! Subdue the defective units!"
The Flight to Freedom
Grabbing Carla's paw, Happy bolted down the marble corridor. Armored paws thundered behind them as the royal guard swarmed, but the two broke through a service exit and tumbled headlong into a runaway supply cart. The wooden vehicle careened wildly over the precipice of the floating continent, plunging them into a terrifying freefall before crashing hard into the dirt of a countryside farm.
"Get off my land! And get inside before someone sees you!" barked a gruff, hoe-wielding Exceed named Lucky. His kinder wife, Marl, quickly offered them shelter and warm food.
As Happy worked the fields under the harsh sun, the physical labor gave him space to process the weight in his chest. A memory surfaced—a quiet evening outside the guild hall months ago, when Teilanne had sat beside him during one of his rare moments of doubt.
"Happy," the Saiyan matriarch's calm, measured voice echoed in his memory, "do you know what the most dangerous lie in the universe is? It's the lie that tells you your worth is determined by what others intended you to be, rather than what you choose to become."
Her crimson eyes had softened with deep warmth. "The strongest individuals I've ever met became strong precisely because they refused to be defined by expectation. Your value isn't in your origin, Happy. It's in the choices you make every single day."
The realization burned inside him like a torch. He looked back at Carla, and then to Marl and Lucky.
"Our friends are in danger," Happy said, brushing the dirt from his fur. "We have to go save them."
"Friendship doesn't care if you're human or Exceed," Marl said softly, her eyes glinting with old heartbreak as she spoke of her own lost child, taken years ago by the kingdom. "Our hearts are all the same."
Running to the edge of the high cliff overlooking the Royal City far below, Happy felt the lingering phantom of doubt attempt to pull him back. In Edolas, magic required complete spiritual alignment—the anxiety in their hearts had sealed their Aera away.
"We have to move forward," Happy declared, taking Carla's paw. "We aren't flying because of a mission. We're flying because we choose to!"
Together, they leaped into the abyss.
For one terrifying second, the wind rushed past their ears. Then, luminous, pure-white wings burst from their backs, catching the thermals with powerful, rhythmic beats. The sky opened up before them.
Far behind on the cliffside, tears streamed down Marl's face as she watched the blue cat soar into the clouds. "It seems he can fly after all..." she whispered. "Our son... grew up to be such a kind child."
Unaware of the truth of his bloodline, Happy flew forward, his gaze locked on the distant Royal City. Behind him soared Carla, both of them fueled not by an ancient directive, but by the unbreakable bond of the family they had chosen.
To be continued ...
Next Time- Chapter 24: The Convergence of Fury