This arc would open with Juvia practicing her newly acquired Eye Magic based on the monocle where she’d show that she is good enough now to give herself really good vision with a bit of effort and be able to see into a few other spectrums with a lot of effort. She’d be doing this practice with Cana, who would demonstrate that she’d also been improving and show off a few new ‘system’ cards (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Memory, Thought Speed, Senses) she’d created by expanding on the idea of her Health card.
Following this, Juvia, and everyone else, would sense a massive magical presence approaching. Juvia would panic because by the gods above and below if Makarov’s presence is a mountain, then this is a fucking planet.
As it turns out, this presence is not in fact a threat and is actually Gildarts. A couple hours later, Gildarts arrives and goes to speak with Makarov.
Soon after, Juvia and Cana are called to the Guild Master, where they find Gildarts. Makarov lets Cana and Gildarts have a small heart to heart before the meeting starts while Juvia stands there awkwardly and hopes Cana doesn’t bring up the fact that they’re dating.
Makarov then explains that Gildarts has found evidence that Hades and Brain are searching for a long thought mythical super-weapon called Nirvana and appear to actually be having success. Makarov informs Juvia and Cana that they are to get Minerva and go with Gildarts to go figure this shit out. Juvia thinks she’s underqualified but then looks at the absurdity of Gildarts’ power and decides that they should be covered power wise.
She also asks what the hell is up with Gildarts’ magic and Gildarts explains that him having ‘Crash’ Magic is a big fat lie to keep people from being too afraid of him. In reality he was born with magic reserves so completely absurd that he had little ability to actually control them, and they ran rampant in his body until he could gain some semblance of control over them which resulted in his body becoming ridiculously strong. As he grows older, his reserves also grow which prevents him from ever attaining any kind of fine control and actually Bonding any magic, while also making him effectively immune to any magics that try to act on him directly (i.e., Mind Magic, Law Domains, Voodoo, Life Drain, etc.).
He fights with either his absurd physical capabilities or by forcing enough magic into a thing that it blows apart like a bubble stretched too thin – this normally takes more magic than any 3 Saints have combined, but Gildarts’ reserves are, well, absurd. This style makes him the most powerful combatant in the world that isn’t a God or Acnologia.
After this Cana splits off to have a proper reunion with her father while Juvia goes to fetch Minerva, who, in the time since they’ve been back, has mostly been adjusting to living in a society either by herself or with other members of Fairy Tail, with a bit of time spent on improving her Telepathy so she can sneakily use it to learn to socialize better.
A bit of fluff later, the team sets of on a journey to find the evil doers.
The journey takes them to various corners of Fiore where they investigate Dark Guild activity as well as research Nirvana in order to track down Hades, Brain, and the rest of the Grimoire’s Pages as they find out their Dark Guild is called.
During their journeys they also team up with a Jura Neekis, who is also investigating the Grimoire’s Pages.
Eventually, they track down Nirvana’s location to one of Fiore’s Southern islands, where they find the Grimoire’s Pages nearing the completion of their plan, whatever it may be. Hades has disappeared into the cave containing Nirvana, with the rest of the guild – Brain, Cobra, Azuma, Bluenote, Zancrow, Ultear, and Rustyrose – guarding the entrance.
Juvia, seeing something strange, moves to engage Brain while the rest of the team split off into their own battles.
Azuma and Bluenote try their best against Gildarts – you can call it ‘delaying action’ if you want to be nice.
Jura fights a pretty even battle against Cobra and Zancrow.
Minerva fights a mind-bending battle against Ultear (Psionics vs. Time Magic).
Cana, after getting beat around a bit while figuring out Rustyrose’s magic, eventually shows him that being a monologuing arrogant douche is a bad thing to do in the middle of a fight.
Once Gildarts pops Azuma and Bluenote, he runs into the cave where he discovers that he is too late to stop Hades.
Meanwhile, Juvia is fighting rather conservatively while keeping her Eye Magic focused on Brain’s magical lattice. Brain is getting progressively more and more frustrated as his own Gravity and Archive magics and Klodoa the sentient staff’s own Lightning and Telekinesis magics are proving utterly incapable of harming Juvia’s water form.
This continues until Brain’s frustrations tip him over into unleashing Zero and confirming Juvia’s suspicions. Zero’s Fiend Make Magic, in combination of Klodoa, serve much better in keeping Juvia at bay, but are similarly unable to actually harm her.
Eventually, Juvia appears to be winning, getting progressively closer and closer to Zero, until he does something unexpected. Brain’s magical lattice detonates in a massive explosion of magical white noise that would’ve destroyed Juvia had she actually had any of the water that composed her in the vicinity and wasn’t using her Eye Magic to watch the battle from the maximum distance over which she could maintain control of her water.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The suicide bombing, however, served as a mere distraction, the actual assault following closely on its heels and Juvia blacks out.
When she wakes, she finds herself in her body from Before and in her bedroom from Before (aka my body and my room, since this is, after all, a self-insert). She is sitting in her chair, at her desk and all appears to be normal. The only thing indicating that her reincarnation wasn’t a dream is the kaleidoscopic mass of warped space floating above her hand and apparently writhing in anger – trying to escape some unseen bonds.
A moment of getting herself together later, she realizes that this thing above her hand is the Outsider she spotted in Brain and that it was trying and failing to take her over.
----------------------------------------
I looked at the thing that had tried to eat my soul as it struggled.
“I’m sorry” I told it, a downright evil grin spreading over my face. “But this body is already taken.”
It froze, and I let it feel despair for a moment. Then…
I closed my fist.
----------------------------------------
Following this, Juvia takes another look around the room, and especially out the window where she notices that it stares off into a black void, almost like space except where in the sky there would be stars, here the void is inhabited by circuit like lines of blue with much smaller lines of white sitting a bit behind them.
These lines seem to have something flowing within them, and Juvia realizes that these lines are actually her magic lattices. She confirms this by reaching for her magic and watching the lines visibly shift in response.
This shift, however, comes after a pretty significant delay. Confused by this, Juvia shifts the blue lines, which seem to be more responsive closer to her. As they come closer, the delay between her commands shortens, until they reach the window, and a second later, come through and Juvia touches them.
Immediately she feels the connection between herself and her Water Magic expand and deepen to levels scarcely imaginable before and immediately wakes.
No longer is there a distinction between water that makes up her and water that she summons, so long as there is water under her control, she will always be able to reform. No longer is there any difficulty perceiving through her mists.
Now, instead of emptying her reserves to move lakes and create tidal waves, her control is so efficient that she can do so with the same effort she created lances of shredding water before. She can summon clouds and with her control over temperature even create a facsimile of a thunderstorm.
But, as she looks over the battlefield, she realizes that this wouldn’t be enough to stop Hades.
Hades has taken control over Nirvana and is using it to demolish the countryside as the rest of the team, having either won their battles or had Jura or Gildarts help them win, desperately struggle to stay out of its way.
Nirvana looks like a titanic stone beholder, with four legs instead of eye stalks and shooting building sized beams of Balefire out its eye. Juvia also notices a familiar purple object embedded in its back.
When Juvia gets back to the team, she is informed that the thing’s advance seems to be unstoppable, with no force either Gildarts or Jura could produce being able to slow or harm the thing, hence they’ve resorted to destroying and moving the ground under its feet to slow it.
Gildarts also tells Juvia that he saw Hades merge with the purple gem embedded in Nirvana just before it awakened.
Juvia in turn tells the team that she has become a Saint and begins to help keep Nirvana at bay while using her eye magic to study the purple gem and its connection to Nirvana.
Upon being asked, Juvia also informs the team that she became a Saint by connecting her magical lattice to what she now recognizes as her soul.
Cana, after hearing this, pauses for a second. Then she looks down at the deck of cards that she’s worked on her whole life, that represents her abilities, her identity as a mage, and as of recently, aspects of her own being.
She then decides that becoming a Saint is actually pretty easy and becomes a Saint. Upon ascension, her deck evolves into a sort of Gamer system which allows far more intuitive use of her stat card abilities, an inventory, the ability to unleash the contents of her card without actually having to pull and throw a card, and generally boosting the effectiveness of her magic.
Juvia, in the meanwhile, has confirmed that the purple thing is, in fact, a Great Heart like the one she and Cana had found in the Catacombs, and that Hades was using it as a Phylactery.
A chance glance at Klodoa during the battle lets Juvia figure out how Hades is controlling Nirvana.
From Gran Doma’s research she knows that the Great Heart, while capable of Life Make Magic, is mostly geared towards control. From her research and the power of Nirvana, she knows that Nirvana is an Artifact and that Artifacts develop sentience. From seeing how Hades’ soul inhabits the Great Heart and Nirvana by extension, and how Klodoa’s soul doesn’t seem to fit quite right in the staff, she concludes that Hades has used the Great Heart to supplant Klodoa and possessed the Artifact.
She informs the team that the only way to stop Hades is to break the connection between the Great Hear and Nirvana, whether that be by breaking the thing or just popping it off.
This turns out to be a difficult proposition as the Heart appears to share in Nirvana’s invulnerability. That is until Minerva tries a telepathic assault on it. No one can tell that this has any effect except Juvia who saw Hades’ soul flinch from the attack.
Juvia directs the team to keep herself and Minerva alive while they stand still to focus on unseating Hades’ soul from the Great Heart.
Minerva can’t tell what effects her attacks are having since she can’t perceive souls and Juvia can’t see the specifics of Minerva’s attacks since she can’t see minds and Minerva can’t spare any power on looping Juvia into the telepathic link.
This results in them having to figure out the correct metaphors to try to explain to each other in English what they’re doing and what’s happening while whole swathes of land around them are retroactively destroyed.
Eventually though, they succeed and eject Hades.
Hades does reform, but while the battle has exhausted most of the team, one member is barely winded and extraordinarily frustrated at finding something he can’t break – Gildarts. Suffice to say, Hades doesn’t last long.
Following this, Juvia guides Minerva in reinstating Klodoa’s soul in its rightful place, but makes sure that he is inserted improperly, in such a way that removing him would result in the destruction of all the channels required to control Nirvana, similarly to how a barbed arrow goes in smoothly and wreaks utter havoc if pulled out. Minerva, for good measure, also puts Klodoa into a hopefully permanent coma.
The team celebrates for a bit before searching the area and finding Hades’ notes which state that the Great Hearts are produced by Zeref for some unknown purpose.
With this grim news, Juvia, Cana, Minerva, and Gildarts head back to Fairy Tail, while Jura takes a more roundabout route to inform Crocus and head back to Lamia Scale.