"Keep it a secret?"
"At a time like this, you little rascal, you still want to—"
"!!"
"Ugh?!"
Boom! Boom!
Just as Erza was about to give a good talking-to to a certain little rascal who had no sense of the situation and still wanted to fool around at a time like this, she suddenly felt a series of tremors like an earthquake, accompanied by rumbling booms drawing closer from the distance.
"Huh?"
(??ˊ????????)??????
"W-what's going on?"
"Something doesn't seem right..."
"An earthquake?"
"What kind of earthquake shakes in pulses like that?"
"Could it be..."
"It sounds like it's coming from the bay."
"What on earth is happening?"
"..."
Clearly, Erza wasn't the only one who noticed the unusually obvious commotion. Annie and the others in the dilapidated guild hall—its ruined interior still bristling with steel pillars—felt it too.
"!!"
"It's coming from the bay behind the guild!"
The tremors were growing stronger, the rumbling booms clearer, and a strange crashing of waves was mixed in with them. Erza's expression turned grave. She stopped fooling around with the troublesome little rascal and ran straight for the guild hall's back door.
"Hey!"
!(;??o??)o
"Wait! I want to go see, too!"
-=????????=??????????(??Д`)??
Naturally, after feeling the extraordinary commotion, all the Fairy Tail members—including Annie—followed Erza and the little runt. They poured out through the back entrance of the guild grounds and rushed to the seawall by the bay.
"..."
"That's..."
"Ah!"
"Is the guild walking?"
"No!"
"That's Phantom Lord's mobile fortress, their war stronghold!!"
"What?!"
"Phantom Lord's come to attack?"
"A whole enormous castle's been moved over here? That's ridiculous..."
"T-this..."
"What do we do?"
"I never imagined they'd attack like this..."
The Fairy Tail guild members were stunned into silence by the sight of the gigantic thing approaching their guild across