Shoot and Run || Gruvia, Jerza and Gale, minor Nalu || Wattys 2017

.Pristine.

- - -

Now Playing~ Dark Side, Bishop Briggs

"Welcome to my darkness, I've been here a while"

- - -

"At this point, if everything is going according to plan you should be in a room, with your mouths gagged, hearing nothing aside from my voice."

The recording played over and over again, static buzzed occasionally interrupting a syllable or two as those 26 words repeated themselves over 25 times, the 26th creeped in making the three youngsters listening to it grit their teeth and cringe.

"At this point, if everything is going according to plan you should be in a room, with your mouths gagged, hearing nothing aside from my voice."

The recording faded into silence...

The "voice" that spoke was unrecognizable, hidden - or more camouflaged - under layers of static and voice modification making the voice sound monotonous, unreadable and blurred.

"What was that?" Levy said, the ongoing tapping of her white stilettos echoing off the marble floors of Chief Zeref's office. Her slim fingers constantly fiddled with the ends of her cream colored skirt or her matching blazer as her left arm rested lazily on the armrest of one of the three pristine white sofas in Zeref's pristine white office.

"Good question Ms. McGarden," Zeref answered his dark eyes piercing hers, she squirmed under his stare, "I too would like to know the answer."

Juvia stared intently at the device, it looked like one of those tapes that were used significantly before she was born, "Alright let's try a different question then, how did this message reach you?"

Zeref shifted his gaze to the blue eyed detective who stared at him as unflinchingly as he had stared at Levy, he tried his best to hold in the impressed smile that was threatening to creep onto his face, "Good Question Ms. Lockser, this tape was thrown into Head Detective Mirajanes office, exactly 24 hours before she came back to headquarters after failing her mission." He emphasized the word tape as if it was something the three new detectives in front of him had never seen before. Juvia had heard of tapes, and she'd seen pictures, but she had never sen one in real life before.

Jellal hummed, "I think both me and Juvia have the same analysis of this, but she makes it sound considerably cooler than I do so I'm going to let her explain."

The blue haired girl nodded, sliding further down into Zeref's pristine white sofa and digging her hands further into the pockets of her cherry red, vastly oversized, fleece jacket. She ran her worn out white sneakers up and down against the sides of her dark jeans, when she spoke her voice was almost as monotonous and emotionless as the one on the tape, "There's not much to it, actually it's fairly straight forward," she ran her left thumb over her chapped lips, "we have been informed that the original teams - the team chosen to tackle the case currently given to us, their teams investigation was going smoothly until exactly 48 hours before Mirajane Strauss returned to the FTCD.

According to Lisanna - who they had been reporting into - everything had been going smoothly according to every single member of the previous team, until a static blocked her connection with each of the detectives.

Exactly 24 hours later this tape is found in Mirajane Strausses office, 24 hours after that she returns, more so, we were informed that following the tapes - exactly 26 minutes later - 26 men were caught trying to break into the FTCD, Jellal please continue."