**DISCLAIMER** I don't own Fairy Tail, Mashima does. **DISCLAIMER**

Ok. With the disclaimer out of the way, on to a couple things in the reviews.

PersonaUserOrpheus3245: I've seen one episode of Naruto, so I know next to nothing about it, honestly. Except now I know it apparently has A class mages. On another note, this is my fanfiction so if I say there are A class mages there are A class mages. Then again, I've grown fairly certain you comment on stories only to feel like you're superior to the writers, so I'm sure you don't care.

For anyone who's interested in why I included classes other than 'S' class, well, it seems absurd to have only one power classification for a mage. We've already seen that there are requests on the non S-class board that could get you killed. For example, the job Macao took to eradicate Vulcans could've easily spelled death for any number of FT mages. I saw a couple Fanfictions with A and B class mages and decided to incorporate that ranking system into this since, as I said, it only makes sense to have more than 2 rankings.

Anyway, on to the story!

As Mard Geer completed the curse, the book sprung open. "Now that we have awakened your most powerful demon, even you cannot hope to stand against us, Lord Natsu."

He then frowned as the book, rather than taking the form of a demon, dissipated into black mist and rushed off into the hall. Mavis could see the disappointment on his face as he stared after it, apparently confused by this turn of events.

"That's the greatest demon?" He asked, turning back toward Natsu. "It doesn't even have a physical form.

"I told you that you might not want to open that," Natsu replied to the demon. "You know less than you believe, Mard Geer. My most powerful demon wasn't contained in that book. His power resided there and nothing else. Your ignorance will be the end of you."

The black-haired demon's smirk twitched. His eyes glinted with a hint of trepidation. "Even if your greatest demon wasn't in that book, he will still come here, now that his power is awakened."

"I have no doubt that he'll be here shortly," Natsu replied calmly. "What he does afterward, of course, is entirely his decision."

Mavis frowned. Hadn't Natsu given all the etherious an inherent desperation to find a way to kill him? Wasn't that their purpose? In the few conversations she had with him, that certainly seemed to be the case.

"Nonsense. He is a demon, like us. Of course he'll side with us." Despite the confidence of Mard Geer's words, the black-haired etherious seemed more hesitant than before.

"That's only half true," Natsu replied, glancing toward Mavis as he spoke. "The truth is that I used the power of that demon to revive someone, and then sealed away the power until he could grow strong enough to control it. I realized that if I revived him without allowing him the freedom to choose, it wouldn't be a true revival. I believe he's ready to receive the power now, of course. Otherwise I would've stopped you."

"I find it hard to believe that the black magician would've worked hard to revive anybody," Mard Geer responded, the confident smirk coming back to his lips. "But now I know you're bluffing. You couldn't have done anything to stop me in your current state."

Mavis felt her mouth fall open as the magic cancelling bands suddenly fell from Natsu, and he sat up on the device. His face was still expressionless as he reached out a hand toward Mard Geer.

"I was going to make you disappear," he said quietly, "but after all you've done I think that is far too lenient. Instead, I will strip you of your power." In a flash the demon transformed into a book with the words "Mard Geer" on the cover. Natsu's eyes seemed to turn almost golden as the book opened and the pages began flipping rapidly. Letters switched around inside the book as she watched, and she remembered that she knew very little of Natsu's magic. It would make sense that he would have mastered many forms, having many normal human lifespans to do so.

Then, a moment later, his eyes still glowing with that same golden light, he tossed the book into the center of the room. As the book transformed back into the familiar black-haired demon, every cell door in the room opened simultaneously as people started emerging.

Mard Geer reformed with his face still frozen in a sheer state of shock, but it reformed quickly to a sneer as he raised his hands. "Do you think any of these can do anything to me?" He scoffed. "I will simply kill them all and start over. Thorns!"

Mavis flinched, waiting for the thorns to spring up around the mob of people that were slowly emerging from their cells. Waiting for the screams that would erupt as flesh was torn and people began falling. Her eyes automatically closing so she wouldn't have to see the suffering.

But the screams never came. Her eyes popped open as she heard Mard Geer's voice instead, the confident smirk gone from his tones and near-panic setting in. "My thorns! My power! Why can't I access it?!"

"This is your punishment," Natsu said coldly. "When you had power over them, you did whatever you wanted to them. Now they will do whatever they want to you, and you will be powerless to resist them. And just so you know, I also made sure your sense of pain was double what it was before."

"No! I get it Lord Natsu! We made a mistake! Restore my power and I swear I'll never hurt another human again. Please!" Mard Geer's voice rose over the murmuring of the cloud, increasing in pitch to a near wail as they closed on him from all sides.

Shuddering slightly at the demon's pleas for mercy, Mavis returned her attention to Natsu. He had moved from his prior position and was coming to her. He came to a stop beside her as the demon's screams began to fill the air.

"N-Natsu?" She said tentatively as he unclasped her restraints. Her first instinct was to be overjoyed, but the expression on his face still hadn't changed. Did he hate her for tampering with his etherious? For changing them into the demons they'd become? Had she forever lost her chance at a relationship?

Natsu looked at her. "I understand you didn't mean for that to happen, Mavis, but I'm still disappointed. But then again, I can't fully blame you for what happened. The fault really lies with the etherious who chose to use their power in that way."

Mavis felt relief wash over her. Natsu wasn't mad at her after all, at least not too much. Still, it did little to allay the deep sorrow of knowing their relationship could never progress further without one of them dying.

Before she could ask anymore questions, he turned toward the door, his eyes alert as though he were expecting somebody. Mavis rose slowly from the device, looking in the same direction. Did he hear somebody approaching? Or…

Before the thought completed itself she felt it. The huge rush of magic power just beyond the entrance to the room. She looked to Natsu again, and noticed that he seemed a little tense. That was bad news. Anything that could make Natsu tense would be a real problem…

The doors burst open, and three people Mavis recognized from her time spying on the guild came rushing through. The first was Zeref Dragneel. Natsu's formerly deceased older brother. Just behind him were Mirajane and Lisanna Strauss. They all looked a little beat up, but the intense magic power she felt was definitely radiating off Zeref. The others were dwarfed by it.

She tensed up, instinctively clutching Natsu's arm as Zeref stopped across from them. The black-haired dragon slayer spared her only a brief glance before focusing his gaze on Natsu, his eyes cold and hard.

"Give me one good reason I shouldn't kill you right now," he growled, a black and demonic red fire circling his hands.

Natsu shrugged. "I can't really give you any reason not to do so. In fact, that was my deepest desire until around 100 years ago. But things have changed since then, and now I really hope you'll hear me out."

Zeref's eyes flickered to Mavis again, and she shrunk into Natsu. She was the one he should be angry at. If it weren't for her, the etherious would've never stepped out of line.

"Out of respect for the first master, I'll hear what you have to say," Zeref responded. Mavis sighed a little in relief.

Natsu nodded. "I'll be as brief as possible, then. Your memory should be returning now that the demonic power contained in your book has been released. I'm guessing it's still jumbled, though. Most of it can wait, but I'll fill you in on the important details now."

"First, you died over 400 years ago when a dragon attacked our village. You, mom, and dad… I was very young then, but somehow I survived the attack. But I was lonely. I wanted you at least to come back…"

"Because of that, I started learning magic even before I could read. And man, was it boring. I had to learn all that dumb stuff about how magic interacted. What kind of magics there were. Everything I really hated because at that time I would rather have been out punching things… But I stuck with it because I wanted a way to revive you."

"The professors at the magic school I ended up at saw through my experiments and advised me to stop before I incurred the wrath of Ankhseram. They even tore up my research papers that dealt with my ideas for reviving you. But that just drove me to continue in secret. Eventually I did indeed incur Ankhseram's wrath. On the day I turned 14, everyone in my school died… And not just the people. Everything that was alive. Even the plants and animals that were on the school grounds. Not one of them remained alive."

Mavis frowned as sadness washed over the pink-haired man's face. "From that day, the more I valued life, the more things around me would die. But I never did. I couldn't die. I even tried a few times, but it just didn't happen… So I continued my work in solitude, creating the etherious in the hopes that they would be powerful enough to kill me. It was through the experiments with the etherious that I discovered a way to resurrect you…"

Natsu took in a deep breath. "You were resurrected with the power of the greatest demon. One with such power I dared not even name it. At first, it was my intent to have the demon's power inside of you, so that you would think of nothing else but killing me. Then, when we finally met, you would fulfill my wish. But then I thought better of it. I realized that if I resurrected you as a demon, it wouldn't really be you. You would just be a likeness of the brother I once had recreated into a being born from my sadness and loneliness. So, rather than subject you to my will in that way, I sealed the demon's power in a book until you became strong enough to control it."

"It was initially my hope that when we met again, you would use that power to finally put an end to my miserable existence, but 100 years ago I met somebody rather special… Somebody that made me wish I could just live a normal life again after all those years in solitude. That was Mavis, and for a short time we were very happy."

"But in the last decades that my body has slept, my mind remained very much alive and active. Perhaps this is irreverent, but what kind of god would curse a kid barely in his teens with a curse that kills everything around him just because he was too stubborn to give up on reviving his brother? I began to think that maybe Ankhseram was just a little bit vindictive, and then I thought of something else. In order to revive you, I had to create a demon with more power than a god. But if that demon had enough power to break the god's hold over life and death, then the demonic power can also break the curse that binds me and Mavis."

Natsu glanced at Mavis, and she saw the trepidation in his onyx eyes before he turned back toward his brother, who now had access to the power of the strongest demon in the world. "So I guess what I'm asking is for you to break Ankhseram's curse on me… on us, so that we can just live a normal life."

Zeref frowned, his eyes never leaving Natsu's. "So you want me to kill Ankhseram?"

"Well, not exactly." Natsu replied. "It's true, that would be the easiest way to break the curse, but I couldn't ask you to do that regardless of how I feel. If Ankhseram dies, he'll leave a void in the balance of power that the gods maintain in the world. In order to prevent that, his power and status will instantly be transferred to the one who kills him…"

"You're saying there's another way to break the curse?" Mavis couldn't help speaking up, her excitement momentarily overcoming her reservations.

Natsu turned to her for a moment, his black eyes locking onto her. "Surely in all the reading you did, you learned of the ancient customs of single combat."

Mavis nodded. Of course she had. The ancient customs that were passed down from the gods in the beginnings of human civilization. Though the customs had fallen out of use in recent years, they allowed anybody to issue a challenge of single combat to another. The challenger would give his conditions for the fight, and if he won, his opponent would grant whatever conditions he set.

Of course, the challenged person would then issue the counter-scenario. What would happen if the challenger lost. The challenger would then have an opportunity to withdraw his he did not withdraw, the battle would take place immediately. Once the winner was determined, the conditions of the winner would be carried out immediately.

"You should understand that the gods themselves honor these traditions, then." Of course, it only made sense. They were handed down after all. But wait, did that mean Natsu intended to have Zeref challenge Ankhseram to single combat?

"This is why I say that it's harder," Natsu said. "You can challenge Ankhseram to a battle with the conditions that he will lift the curse on both of us if you win. Obviously the danger is that he will then set his own terms as to what will happen if you lose. That's why this is dangerous. While I have no doubt of your ability to kill Ankhseram, defeating him without killing is another matter entirely. There's no doubt that your strength is enough, but he has the endurance of a god, and the experience of thousands of years of life. I'll understand if you do not want to do this, especially for someone who has caused your guild nothing but grief."

~~~~~~Zeref~~~~~~

It was a lot for him to take in. He'd been mentally prepared for the revelation that Natsu was his brother. After all, he'd overheard the guild master talking about that on Tenroujima. He couldn't trust his memories right now either. Since that strange power rushed in, it was like all these weird images jumbled with his memories of Igneel in the past. He saw other dragon slayers. Even a mother and father. He was having a lot of difficulty telling truth from reality.

Still, his instincts told him Natsu wasn't lying. Since joining Fairy Tail, he'd learned that he should trust his instincts, even when his brain told him he should be more careful.

But then, logically, Fairy Tail's first master was there, right? That meant Natsu couldn't be all bad. And if he was honest, other than his eyes, which looked like those of an old man, Natsu did have the overall look of someone who was still in their early teens.

Still, the prospect of fighting a god terrified him. He felt the new levels his magic power rose to after the demon powers were restored, and it felt like he could beat a god. Yet feeling it and actually thinking about doing it were entirely different things. Gods were the most powerful beings in the universe, after all. Other than the pretentious 'god' Serena, so named because he was the most powerful mage in Ishgar.

"Hey wait a minute!" Zeref looked to the side to see Mirajane, her fists clenched and her aura spilling out. "Why should Zeref do something like that for you? You're asking him to risk his life to free your sorry ass from a curse?!"

"I realize I have no right to ask anything of him," Natsu replied, his onyx eyes fixing on Mirajane. "However, this is something that he must decide. Also, I would advise you not to do that."

"Not to do what?" Mirajane sneered. Despite her attitude, her eyes were visibly shaken. Zeref could only surmise that she'd been planning an attack on the pink-haired man in front of them.

Natsu ignored her, focusing his onyx orbs on Zeref again. "So what will it be, Zeref?"

Zeref frowned. What should he do? If what his brother said was true, then he wouldn't even be here if it weren't for him. On that level, didn't he at least owe him something for his current life? But still, this was Natsu, the most powerful and most mysterious mage in the history of earthland. Dubbed evil by some, whether he deserved the title or not. Besides, it wasn't like he asked to be resurrected. Maybe he would've been happier if he just stayed dead in the first place.

No, that was a lie. He couldn't look back at his years with Igneel, and then at Fairy Tail, and say that he would've been happier if he just stayed dead. He wouldn't trade his current life for the world. So in that way, he certainly did owe his brother.

"It's also true that Fairy Tail wouldn't exist if not for Natsu," Mavis' voice broke into his contemplation. "He taught all of us our magic, after all. If not for that we never would've formed the guild."

"You taught the first master magic?!" Mirajane sounded shocked. Well, Zeref couldn't blame her. It would've been a shock for him if he hadn't suspected they had some kind of relationship from their encounter at the island.

"It's a story I'll tell you in full later," Mavis said with a smile. "If we can break this curse… Otherwise, I won't trust myself to be near any of you for an extended period…"

Zeref sighed. In his mind it was still a gamble, but if there was a chance to give his brother and the first master a second chance at a normal human life, he wasn't going to pass it up.

"Very well, I'll do it." He hoped the tone was as calm as he intended it to be as he tried to force his heart to still within him. The uncertainty of the battle sent his adrenaline pumping in a way he'd never experienced before. The words coming out of his mouth surprised him, but with those simple words it was decided. Zeref Dragneel would fight a god.

There it is. Sorry for the short chapter, but I wanted to cut it off before the Zeref/Ankhseram fight. Which will be coming up next... Will Zeref be able to overcome Ankhseram? What will the price be if he fails? Find out in the next chapter...

BTW, you may have to wait a few weeks 'cause I feel an update or two for 'Salamander of Alvarez' coming on :D