Fairy Tail - Chapter 7: The Weak Point of a Mage

Synopsis: The smaller Vanish Brother notes that the mages of Fairy Tail think highly of themselves, which the larger brother confirms saying they do hear about them a lot. However, they agree, a mage is still a mage, and are no match for professional mercenary soldiers. Natsu taunts them by lighting fire spelling 'Come on' on his finger tips, saying that he can take them both at once. The brothers don't like him looking down on them like that, but remain calm and attack. The smaller sweeps at Natsu with the pan, which Natsu dodges, only to be grabbed by the larger brother and thrown into a bookshelf and through a wall. Natsu grabs a stair's railway, but the smaller brother pursues him. Natsu has to dodge the pan again, and lands on the next floor down - apparently where the maids had attacked them and still lay - asking if it's okay for them to break their employer's house like this.

The smaller brother asks Natsu if he knows what the weak point of a mage is, which Natsu suggests is an inability to handle transportation, which the mercenary vapidly says must be a personal problem. He says that it's the body, and moves in to attack Natsu again while he explains. Mages can't learn magic without studying to improve their intellect and spirit, and as a result their bodies do not receive the same level of training, leaving them physically weak. Compared to mercenaries such as themselves, who train their bodies day and night, mages just don't compare. They are no match in either power or speed. The larger brother pipes in and recounts a previous encounter they had with a mage who had spent years to master a curse to break an opponent's bones. Before he could cast the spell however, they had attacked him and broken his bones on their own, therefore wasting his years of effort in only one hit.

The two brothers attack together again, saying that if mages can't use their magic, they are only as strong as an average human being. Natsu points out the flaw in this ideal, as none of their attacks have managed to hit him yet. The smaller brother says Natsu must have trained himself some after all, but the larger says he shouldn't be able to dodge 'that' attack. They decide to reveal to him why they're called the 'Vanish Brothers', and the larger one jumps into the smaller one's pan. The smaller brother hurls his brother high upward, declaring this to be their 'Heaven and Earth Extinct Slaying Attack'.

While Natsu naturally looks up, the smaller brother finally manages to hit him with the pan. When he turns on the smaller brother, the larger finally lands and smashes him to the ground. 'If you look to the heavens, we are on Earth, and if you look to Earth, we are in the heavens!' they proclaim, thinking the fight to be over as nobody has ever survived this attack. Unfortunately for them, Natsu jumps up relatively unharmed, and the brothers freak out and wonder if he's really a mage at all.

Natsu decides to return the favor, and fires a 'Salamander's Roar', letting loose a large pillar of flame from his mouth. The brothers are happy at this turn of events, and the smaller one catches the attack in his pan, saying it is an item with 'anti-flame magic', and gives him an ultimate technique - 'Flame Cooking'. The pan apparently absorbs fire, multiplies it's power, and allows him to hurl the attack back at Natsu. They again think the fight is theirs as Natsu goes up in flame, but Natsu rushes out while on fire and grabs both their faces. He launches a brutal fire attack on both at once, the 'Salamander's Wing Attack', defeating them instantly.

The brothers are shocked that they were defeated, and Natsu leaves to go looking for Lucy. The large maid however lies nearby, where one eye begins to glow.

Using 'Wind Reading Glasses', a magical item that allows one to read a book anywhere from two to thirty-two times faster, Lucy has succeeded in reading all of Day Break. She says she would never have imagined such a terrible secret, and can't allow the book to be burned. Instead, she has to return it to Melon. Before she can move away from the wall, the Duke's arms shoot out and grab her own arms to pin her in place. He demands to know what this secret is that she found, but she refuses to tell him, declaring him to be an enemy of literature.

Thoughts: The theme of most of this chapter being about how weak or not a mage might be physically really caught my attention well and held it throughout. If you think of video games, the magic-users do tend to be weaker with their physical attacks, and if all you do is read and never do anything physical, it is obvious that you're never going to be able to stand up to someone physically strong in that sort of fight. It's just their bad luck however, that Natsu is tough both ways.

Natsu doesn't really have a valid point about whether it's okay for them to destroy the house like this, considering how much the Duke himself is doing it. He must not really care about his flooring too awfully much.

I guess the brothers actually are blood brothers, or raised as brothers, rather than it just being a name for them. At one point, the larger brother refers to the smaller one as 'nii-chan', which is the term for an older brother if I recall correctly. So the 'mama' he continually refers to probably is their actual mother then.

The 'Heaven and Earth Extinct Slaying Attack' is a cheap move to be sure, but it works, and if you're a mercenary I guess you can't be too bothered with what's 'fair' and what's not.

The pan being able to absorb fire was a neat trick, though if I'd thought about it, that's kind of an obvious power to give it. I mean, why else would you give your villain a giant pan as a weapon?

And of course, Natsu wins in the end, not having needed any help after all. He may have to fight the maid again now though, what with her one glowing eye and all. She has a vaguely robotic look in that panel too...is she possibly an android of some sort?

I don't knw about anyone else, but I really want a pair of Wind Reading Glasses now. Those sound insanely useful, I'd love to be able to read stuff up to thirty-two times faster than I already do. I'd be completely caught up on everything I wanted to be then.

Anyway, Lucy wants to return to book to Melon but doesn't seem very angry at him, so I'm really wondering what the big secret is now. If Duke doesn't know about it, and it's not something bad about Melon, what in the world could it be?

As the chapter ends with Lucy captured, that just leaves my predictions yet again. I was more-or-less right that the Vanish Brothers were going to be tough enough to give Natsu a pretty good fight but still not be a threat, but I was wrong that he wouldn't take care of them in just this one chapter. I guess I should have figured even the big fights this early in aren't going to be dragged on too long. Lucy does appear to have to deal with the Duke herself, but right now Happy isn't there with her, so she may have to handle him entirely on her own. Surely he's not that tough though, all he's done so far is burrow in and out of his house... I'm thinking he'll either be pathetically easy and the maid is going to be the real problem, or there's actually more to this guy than meets the eye and Lucy is going to need Happy's help after all. Either way, the maid is going to re-appear to play some part in this. I'm also thinking that we've only got about three chapters left of this arc probably - one more to explain what's going on with the book, one more to finally wrap up all the fighting, and then a final 'bookend' type one.