Chapter Seven - The Phantom Lords Begin Their Assault

If there was one thing Konata hated, it was working hard. Wasn't the whole point of being in an isekai harem that the superpowered guy took care of everything for you? It certainly wasn't how romantic it was for a guy to bang you and another girl (who had tits the size of your head) at the same time!

No, she knew the answer to that question: the point was to satiate the bloated egos of virgins whose brains had been rotted by too many h-games! Male ones, that was. There was a whole different genre for female virgins whose brains had been rotted by too many h-games. It was the "I reincarnated as an otome villainess and I """"accidentally"""" captured the heroine's whole harem?!" genre. There was probably a more succinct name for it, but it wasn't coming to mind.

Unfortunately, she couldn't keep her mind on questions of which of the various otome boy stereotypes she would most like to have in her harem, because Lee started lecturing her again, which meant she had to pay attention. "You have to focus," he repeated. "Close your eyes. Breathe. Imagine a great library, containing all the knowledge of all history, all the greatest teachers and all the greatest leaders..."

The only upside to being taught this was that it meant, in the long term, she could be lazier: once he'd finished teaching her this skill, her learning speed would be as vastly enhanced as his own, and she could learn various skills way faster. She probably would avoid learning to fight as long as possible, though, since it meant she could keep her contributions to fights being "become a sword and let Erza swing her around." She liked that, since it meant she didn't actually have to do anything.

She was getting real tired of meditating and doing katas or whatever it was she was supposed to be doing, though. A thought occurred to her, though, an easy way to get Lee to leave her alone: "You know, right after the Galuna arc comes the Phantom Lords arc, and if Gray's still here, Juvia might still fall in love with him."

He made a "tsk" noise, shaking his head and pushing up his sunglasses. "I have already taken care of that problem. Gray is on an all-expenses paid vacation with his master, to celebrate the two of them being reunited!" Dammit, he'd already thought of this... "Now, back to work!"

She groaned and hefted her hands up again, clapping her palms together and closing her eyes as she focused her mental energies. This would take months... bluh... months of working. She hated working.

* * *

The whole guild stood stunned in front of the guild hall, which had been pierced by massive metal rods. Lucy felt her heart drop in her chest, seeing this symbol of her burgeoning friendship and new family so utterly destroyed. Even Erza seemed affected, her body tense as she stared at the scene in cold silence.

They were all silent, just staring at the grisly scene. Then Konata spoke up. "Boy, this is so terrible." She had the most atrocious deadpan voice, making light of a terrible situation like this. "It's really too bad we don't have any mages who could just turn back time on the guild hall until it was completely fine again."

Oh yeah! She felt her heart rise back into its proper position in her chest, as Erza loudly snapped her fingers, drawing Lucy's attention her way. "That's it! Lee, with your specific magical talent, a feat such as this should surely be within your domain of ability." Wait. Did she not realize that's what Konata was getting at? Lucy squinted at her, and... it really seemed like she didn't get that that was what Konata was getting at. "We'll find who would do such a harsh indignity to the Fairy Tail guild later."

"Anything for you," Lee said, in such an over the top manner that Lucy wanted to gag. It worked wonders on Erza, though, given the way her cheeks turned a slight pink and she briefly fiddled with her hair for just a second or two before steeling himself. "And for Fairy Tail." He reached out with his hands, clearly in deep concentration. With how large the guild hall was, Lucy started to worry that nothing was going to happen - then one of the iron pillars shot out of it at high speed, almost hitting Happy, who shrieked in a panic.

"What the heck? You can't hit Happy with your dumb time magic!" Natsu said, his hands catching on fire. "He's our friend!"

"My deepest apologies," Lee said, suddenly stopping his work. "I have rarely worked with such a grand subject matter - it appears the pillars are reverting back to their positions before they were thrown or tossed, and thus, potentially going through anyone who stands where they once were! Everyone should move well away from the guild hall, so they don't wind up inadvertantly injured in the process of its rejuvenation."

Right now, he seemed cool. Take charge. Focused. Goal-oriented. When he did things like this, it was easy to forget that he was an incorrigible pervert. Maybe, being a pervert wasn't so bad, if you were also a good person? Lucy hid out in a nearby building, watching as Lee finished fixing up the guild hall - it took less than a minute from that point, since the damage had just 'finished' being dealt. Once he had done that, he stepped over to Erza, talking about something she couldn't hear...

And stepped away with a prize of Erza's panties. No, being a pervert was definitely bad when you did things like this all the time! Erza may have managed to retain some calm as she snapped her panties back from him, but really!

* * *

Levy had found a nice spot in the open air to enjoy reading in the pleasant light of the sun. Jet and Droy came along with her for reasons that weren't really worth dwelling on. They were nice people and good friends, but she just didn't have any interest in them that way. She'd told them that she wasn't interested, and did her best not to lead them on; if they stuck around hoping something would happen instead of because they wanted to be her friends, that was their own fault.

Jet and Droy simply stood off to one side as she read, absently discussing various matters with each other. She found the white noise pleasing - being a member of the Fairy Tail Guild had accustomed her to people yelling at one another, and compared to that, the quiet, amiable conversation of two friends was a soft rain as far as her ears were concerned. The subject matter of their discussion didn't bear dwelling on.

The book! The book. She focused back on the book. It was all about a very difficult to crack cipher technique, which was similar to a standard Caeser cipher, except you made each character correspond to several other possible characters. In other words, you took, say, the Latin alphabet, but made it so that characters corresponded to multiple different  symbols. It made it extremely difficult to decipher, since one letter - say, E - could be written as five different characters. As such, you couldn't use letter frequency to decipher it. A sufficiently small text could be functionally impossible to decipher, if it was small enough that each character appeared a maximum of once.

She was still reading the book when an incredibly powerful thump emanated from to her side - she turned to look, to see Jet suddenly pinned to the tree she'd been reading under. "J-Jet?" She stammered out, turning to look for what had happened. In the time it took her to do that, another blast of metal from a man near the horizon hit Droy. She started to scramble, but she wasn't nearly fast enough - her leg got hit by whatever it was, and she was pinned to the tree, squirming, trying to get free. She tried to maneuver to make Solid Script: Fire, but she didn't have time, another chunk of metal hitting her wrist, and soon enough all three of them were literally crucified to the tree (though, at least shackled to it rather than pierced), some cruel-looking man staring up at them.

He didn't hit her, once she'd been pinned up there. She'd been hurt, by the occasional miss or near-miss, as she'd tried to writhe her way free, but now that he had them where he wanted them, there was no look of anger on his face. He just looked them all over, as if daring them to attack him back, if they had the capacity. Jet and Droy spat invective at him, but she did nothing, just staring at him, ingraining into her memory the man's features so she'd never forget them. She didn't normally hate anyone, but right then, she hated that man.

When the man concluded that there was nothing she could do, he stepped up to the trio, and tore open her shirt. Her heart stuttered in her chest, her eyes going wide, but to her great relief the man simply took out a stamp and impressed it against her stomach. "What?" He asked, as she looked down at him in relief. "I'm not that kind of guy. Come on."

Oh yes. You're the sort of guy who will attack three people who are just minding their own business, but you're not that kind of guy... she supposed even blackguards had to have their own logics.

Being pinned like that was not comfortable. The human body wasn't meant to hold a position like that for a sustained period. There was the difficulty of physically holding the position, the aches and pains of the various bruising side-strikes, and the gentle trickle of blood where he'd nicked her forehead. She knew that bleeding could be profuse from a head wound, even a minor one, and that was exactly what was happening now...

Her thoughts left her as she slumped forward, hoping that her friends and allies wound find and save her. Black, inky dreams swallowed up her consciousness, and she passed out.

* * *

Levy woke up like the whole thing had just been a dream. There was no lingering pain, no blood sticky and clotting on one side of her face. The only reason she didn't think it was a dream was that looming over her was the most handsome man she'd ever seen, staring down at her with what she thought was a look of concern on his face. She couldn't tell quite for certain, since his eyes were shielded by a pair of sunglasses. "Are you feeling well, O, Lady McGarden?" Lady McGarden? She felt her heart pounding in her ears at that, and not from some lingering fear of that strange man who had attacked her. "The cowardly fiend that attacked you was nowhere to be seen, but he left a mark upon your stomach." Her head immediately turned down, fingers going to the thing, but it was gone. Even her top was back together. "My magic removed it, just as it removed the bruises and cuts of battle. It is my first time healing such extensive wounds that have had a chance to linger - are you feeling well?"

"Y-yes. Thank you." She wanted to hold herself close to him, to snuggle her body against his, but then she saw that Jet and Droy were also injured, their bodies lying down. "Please, heal them too."

"Of course. I simply wished to leave no doubts as to if it worked properly," he told her. He gently laid her down, powerful arms so soft despite their muscles as she was laid to rest, and he turned to her two unconscious friends. A few seconds later, they were snapping up, ready to fight.

They were also greeted by the entire Fairy Tail Guild, which let out a great cheer of applause that they were all good. Then Master Makarov raised one hand, and everyone fell deathly silent. "They have attacked our guildmates, with cowardly ambush tactics. This goes beyond what is acceptable." The roar of the crowd left whatever he said next lost to her in its particulars, but the message was clear: they were going to go fight the Phantom Lords, right now, heavy footfalls coming as the group rushed forward as a mass.

Only one girl seemed to be the exception - Konata, she recognized, after a second - grabbing the man who had saved her by his (quite limited) shorts, making him stop and turn round to face her. "You seem to have forgotten something," she said, her voice getting quieter. "Don't you want to protect Lucy?" Protect Lucy? Levy didn't remember seeing one of the latest members being in any particular danger, but she supposed she was out of it for a bit.

"Oh! You remind me all too well of important matters when I might otherwise forget. It was truly wise of me to bring you with me upon this quest."

"Yeah, it sure was," Konata agreed with a lazy smile.

"What's this about protecting Lucy?" Levy finally asked, as she rose to her feet.

"Oh right, you're awake now. Hey! I think that one of our guildmates might be in danger, since she's not part of the crowd going after the Phantom Lords! Let's go help her!" There was something off and affected about the way the girl spoke, so she turned to her savior. Lee! Lee, that was his name. It was so short it was hard to remember. Lee. She'd remember it.

Lee looked serious, nodding with grim determination. "We must find her with the utmost haste, for more reasons than one."

"Yeah, I can think of at least two," Konata replied, rolling her eyes and miming hefting up an invisible pair of breasts she simply did not have in reality.

"I'll help too, if you think I can," Levy said. Jet and Droy naturally chorused alongside her.

"The more the better," Lee agreed. "There is strength in numbers, after all." He raised one fist into the air - almost involuntarily, Levy mimicked it, then felt incredibly embarrassed when nobody else did, her cheeks heating up as she lowered her hand. "I'm glad to see someone who is as enthusiastic about making and keeping friends as me," Lee said, with an easy smile.

That made her feel a lot less embarrassed.

"Yeah, great. Let's go save Lucy? C'mon?" Konata said, tugging at his pants. "I mean I guess it's fine if you want something bad to happen to her-"

"No! I shall endeavor to ensure Lucy's safety. We are comrades in arms, after all!" He pumped his fist again, and again Levy wound up copying him and feeling rather embarrassed when nobody else did. "Come!" He grabbed Levy's wrist with one hand, Konata's with another, and the three started to race down the streets of Magnolia. Levy's cheeks grew flush once more, but it wasn't with embarrassment this time.