It was an ordinary day for the Fairy Tail guild in the year X791. Makarov sat at the desk in his office, filing through the requisite mountain of paperwork. He found the daily ritual to be enough of a pain; not helping matters was Mavis, sitting at the corner of his desk and kicking her legs idly. He could only take the sound of her ankles knocking against the wooden desk for so long, and he looked to her.

"I mean no disrespect, First, but is there any particular reason you're lazing about in my office?" he asked, futilely attempting to hide the furrow in his brow.

Mavis shook her head and looked to the ceiling, a small smile on her face. "None in particular, though I do get the feeling that something big will happen in here today," she replied.

Makarov blinked and averted his eyes back to his paperwork. "Are you sure a hunch is the best thing to go off of, for this kind of thing?"

It was then that Makarov heard the former guild master shift, and he turned back to her, only to discover that her face was looming directly in front of his own. The shock almost made him fall out of his seat. When his heart stopped trying to jump out of his chest, he noticed that her smile remained, though a certain smugness lingered in it.

"Well, I am called the Fairy Tactician for a reason," she told him, leaning back and holding a hand to her chest.

Her response gave Makarov pause. He started to protest her nonsensical rebuttal, but an abrupt knock at his office's door cut him off. A voice from beyond the door, which Makarov recognized as Laxus's voice, declared, "Gramps, we're back from that mission. The person we were assigned to escort desperately wants to see you."

Unconsciously, Makarov let out a weary sigh. Making a point not to spare Mavis a further glance, he said back, "Let them in."

The door opened ever so slightly, and through the crack Makarov could hear the chatter of Laxus and his underlings, the Raijin tribe. In particular, he heard Bickslow's signature shriek of a laugh, likely in response to something that only he found funny. A small light, no larger than Makarov's hand, glided through the open door, and the door closed immediately after.

The entity before Makarov confused him; he looked to the First and found a similar confusion on her face, though she tried (and failed) to hide it. He turned back to the hovering light and prompted it, "And to what do I owe this visit?"

"Well, I commended that handsome blond man–your grandson, he said–on escorting me so well," the entity started, its voice not unlike the ringing of a bell. "As such, I felt it necessary to come to his guild and congratulate its master, for maintaining such a fine group of people."

Makarov laughed to himself as quietly as he could manage, which wasn't very much so. He rubbed the back of his bald head and was about to reply, but was cut off by Mavis's voice.

"Are you a fairy?" Mavis asked, her excitement evident in her voice. Makarov wasn't entirely sure when it had happened, but the First had floated over to the entity and now hovered in extreme proximity to it.

"Why, yes, I am," the fairy replied, an awkward chuckle escaping from her as she hovered away from Mavis. This revelation jolted Makarov to attention, and he took a closer look at his new guest. What he saw only drove him to further questions.

"Excuse me, but I notice you don't have a tail," he said, inquisitively rubbing his chin.

The fairy said nothing for a long while, and no other sound escaped from it in that time. Makarov cleared his throat and shifted in his seat, in an attempt to fill the void.

Finally, the fairy answered, "Of course I don't have a tail. Why would I?"

Makarov's breath caught in his throat. He inhaled sharply, his nostrils flaring, then asked, "B–But what about the eternal enigma? Of whether fairies have tails or not?"

"I'm sorry, the what?" Further silence followed, until the fairy started to laugh without stop. Repeatedly, it would try to say something, a marked disbelief evident in what little it would say, before it would return to uncontrollable laughter.

Makarov slammed a fist down on his desk, an inadvertent use of Titan magic causing his desk to break into countless tiny splinters. His gaze snapped to meet Mavis's, who had again made a sudden movement, that time to Makarov's bookcase. "First, explain what's going on!" Makarov declared, straining to not start screaming at the top of his lungs.

Mavis started to grab at books from the shelf at random, frantically flipping through them and systematically tossing them behind her. "How could this be?!" she asked. "But all the research I did–"

"All the research you did was bogus!" the fairy roared in laughter, its amusement subsiding shortly after. It continued, "Well, that was fun. Thanks for the escort, and thanks even more for the laughs, weirdos."

With that, the fairy departed, and Makarov hopped to the bookcase, joining Mavis in the frantic search for information. Even after they read for hours, and the sun had long since set, their tireless search came up fruitless. They both sat slumped by the bookcase, which was now empty, and its former contents now strewn about the floor.

Panting, Mavis turned to Makarov. "I can't believe it," she said. "All that research, for nothing. The foundation of this guild, a lie. Sixth, I feel sick." She started to retch, but through it she managed to continue, "I think I'm going– I think I'm going to–"

Before she could finish her statement, her eyes suddenly went blank, foam seeped out of her mouth, and she collapsed onto the floor. Makarov looked over to her, just in time for her to start ascending to heaven. Or whatever the Fiore equivalent was.

"Fiiiiiiiirst!" Makarov cried as she rose through his office's ceiling, tears in his eyes. He sighed morosely after she was long gone, and put a hand to his chin. Only then did the ultimate difficulty in this situation present itself to him:

How would he tell everyone else in the guild?

The next day, most everyone in the guild was shocked to hear of the emergency meeting Makarov had called. When they gathered in the main hall that morning, most everyone was there. The only exception was Gildarts, though they all knew how difficult it would be to merely communicate with him, much less convince him to come to the guild hall.

Discussion was quick to permeate through the various cliques of the guild, each of them wondering what possible reason Makarov would have for such a last-minute call. The only ones with any sort of inkling were Laxus and the Raijin tribe, for Freed was the one to suggest that it was related to the mission they had completed the previous day. However, upon further consideration, they wondered what the entity could have possibly said to the guild master to make him worry so, and they soon dismissed the notion as ludicrous.

Soon, Makarov appeared atop the upper floor railing from which he made most of his announcements, and the guild mostly fell silent. The exception to that "mostly" was, of course, Natsu, who yelled, "Hey, Gramps! What's the big idea with this meeting?"

A Titan magic-infused punch left Natsu pancaked into the opposite wall and taught him another lesson in respecting his elders. Few if any were surprised by Makarov's response to Natsu's brutishness, but quite a few more were surprised by his following action. With a morose sigh, he sat down on the railing, abandoning his standing position. He laid his clenched fists upon his crossed legs and bit his lip.

Before anyone else could ask what was going on, however, another of Makarov's sighs broke the silence, and he finally started to speak. "My children, I must apologize, for I have betrayed your trust."

A chill fell upon the guild at once, and the mutterings began anew. Laxus, in particular, ignored the revitalized discussion amongst his underlings, and simply muttered, "Gramps…"

"The Fairy Tail as you know it is built on a foundation of lies," the guild master continued, the weariness in his voice becoming ever more evident. "I cannot do anything to mend this broken guild, but I can inform you of its ruined state, and advise you to take your own path from here on out."

"Get to the point already!" Natsu yelled from his position stuck in the wall. He braced for another assault from the guild master, but it never came. Instead, he faintly made out Makarov shaking his head, and in his stead Lucy just slapped Natsu.

"Be more mindful of the situation," she said, trying and failing to maintain a jovial smile. Natsu paused, then nodded in light of her words, and the two of them turned back to the silent guild master.

He let out a final sigh, then finally, Makarov declared to all present, "Fairies don't have tails."

The following silence in the guild progressed in three stages. The first stage was one of confusion, where none present managed to quite understand what they had just heard. The second stage was one of denial, where the guild was still mostly silent, but a few laughed futilely amongst themselves and discussed how crazy their guild master was being. The final stage was one of despair, where silence still dominated the hall, but most members now muttered silently to themselves about the insanity of what they just heard.

It was at this point that Makarov spoke again. "I'm sorry for having failed you all," he said, shaking his head. Not a second later, he sprang to his feet and tore off his outfit, revealing beneath it gaudy tropical attire. Reaching for a suitcase that had before been hidden behind the railing, he continued, "Welp, my boat out of the country departs in twenty minutes, so I guess I gotta get out of here." With that, he departed, with a wave and a declaration of, "Have a nice life!"

It was then that pandemonium descended upon all still present. The silence broke out into a cacophony of different sounds and ways of coping.

Gray reached for any clothing he could find and wrapped it around himself: Natsu's scarf and vest, Laxus's coat, and anything else within reach. At one point he reached for Juvia's hat, but in an instant she shrieked at him to get away and fled to the opposite corner of the guild hall.

In an instant, Bickslow and Freed had become two entirely different people: that is, each other. The former had discarded his helm and slicked his hair back, crossing his arms and silently admonishing all around him. The latter donned the helm his partner had discarded and agreed to all he said with a shrill laugh, letting his tongue flail about. Their female compatriot, meanwhile, was sobbing about what awful creatures fairies were, and how anyone would dare to admire or trust them.

Levy, who had been reading a novel before their guild master's announcement, was now tearing the novel to shreds, yelling about the lies contained therein. Gajeel rushed to her side and pulled at her arms, sobbing and begging her to preserve the knowledge the book held.

Mirajane had transformed using her Satan Soul magic and was rampaging all about the hall, leaving the furniture torn asunder and quite a few members of the guild incapacitated.

Natsu silently sobbed to himself about the betrayal, curling himself into a ball in a far corner of the room. Lucy was kicking at him and yelling about how "Gramps" surely had a reason for what he was doing; they just had to beat it out of him.

Cana swore off drinking, hoisting the keg of alcohol that was previously next to her over her shoulder and hurling it across the hall. She then ran around the hall, threatening anyone who dared to drink that "damned fairies' betrayal" and smacking any glasses of the drink to the floor.

Elfman had become a woman, and Lisanna had become a clone of Lucy. Nobody was quite sure how those had happened.

The only person who maintained some semblance of sanity amidst all the madness was Laxus, who headed to where his grandfather has given his final speech. He called out to the other members of the guild, pleading with them that they could overcome this hardship and come together as a guild once more.

Right as he finished his plea, the guild hall around them collapsed from the chaos it was forced to contain.

The members fled every which way, intent on continuing their own brands of madness.

It was an ordinary day for Gildarts in the year X796. He had finished another 100-year quest, this one without any chance encounters with world-ending dragons. On his return to the guild hall of his beloved Fairy Tail, he had heard a few rumors of the guild disbanding, but nothing significant enough to lead him to give such rumors any credence. He just couldn't wait to return to the guild and party with the other members of his beloved guild!

This resolve made the destroyed hall all the more shocking. Amongst all the wreckage, the only person he found was Laxus, who was sitting atop a box that somehow stood amongst the building's remains. He rushed to the dragon slayer's side and shook him to attention, asking, "Hey, what happened here?!"

Laxus shrugged. "Fairies happened."

Gildarts gave him a bemused look. "What do you mean?"

Laxus looked away from his fellow S-class mage, thinking, then turned back. He presented the dilemma in the simplest way he could: "Hey, did you know fairies don't have tails?"

Gildarts's eyes widened, and his mouth drew into a hard grimace. "W– What did you say?" he asked.

They say that, that day, the scream of despair from the Fairy Tail's S-class could be heard all around the world.