Rhodes's secretarial team hit the ground running.
Each of them wore Enchanted Reading Glasses, absorbing and categorizing the chaotic piles of documents at a speed that left the permanent staff speechless.
When other departments needed support, one or two team members could be pulled out at a moment's notice to take meeting minutes or help draft important documents. When a position elsewhere was temporarily vacant, someone from the team could usually fill it. Within days, Rhodes's secretarial team had become the Council's unofficial jack-of-all-trades department.
The entire headquarters was amazed.
A week later, the Temporary Archives finally looked presentable. Shelves labeled. Files indexed. The mountain of paper reduced to organized rows.
Hyberion was quietly beginning to suspect that Rhodes's claim about his people being worth three ordinary clerks might have been conservative.
Take the blue-haired girl. Levy had a near-supernatural talent for library and archive management. Whenever someone from any department needed a specific document, they only had to describe what they were looking for. Levy would narrow down the search area instantly, pointing them to the right shelf, the right box, sometimes the right page.
Her efficiency was so high it was as if she had Super Archive running inside her head.
Then there was the blonde. Lucy's initial drafts had leaned toward elegant rhetoric and literary flourishes. Beautiful sentences, but not exactly standard bureaucratic language.
After a single round of corrections, she produced near-perfect official documents the very next day. She'd studied the formatting and tone of previous Council correspondence, internalized the patterns, and adapted overnight. Within a week, she no longer needed reference materials at all.
The girl with the glasses didn't immediately display a standout work skill. But one day, Rhodes assigned Evergreen to train a batch of new recruits on a whim.
The results were startling. After being "trained" by Evergreen, the recruits returned to their desks practically vibrating with energy. Work efficiency across their section spiked.
Nobody asked exactly what Evergreen's training methods involved. The results spoke for themselves.
Freed, the only man on the secretarial team, was initially unremarkable as well. He was quiet. Professional. Thorough. His catchphrase, "Rules are absolute," seemed like a personality quirk more than a job skill.
Then the finance department received the first batch of financial statements he'd processed. The figures were immaculate. Cross-referenced. Verified to the decimal. The finance staff practically wept with gratitude.
When Freed was temporarily reassigned to fill in as an inspector, he memorized the Council's complete regulatory handbook within two days and proceeded to identify a staggering number of procedures across multiple departments that failed to meet official standards.
Most impressively, he was completely impartial. Even Rhodes, his direct supervisor, received a formal reprimand. Hyberion, the interim Chairman himself, was not spared either.
Hyberion wasn't angry. If anything, he wanted to transfer Freed to the disciplinary department permanently. But that would have to wait. With staff shortages this severe and every Council member still finding their footing, enforcing the rulebook to the letter wasn't feasible yet.
In comparison, Mira's presence was less prominent. But that was by design.
Rhodes refused to let a pregnant woman work at full capacity. If she sat in the tent for too long, he physically pulled her out for a walk. No exceptions. No negotiations.
Even operating under those restrictions, her output matched or exceeded the original staff. If not for her condition, she would have been the most productive member of the team.
Hyberion genuinely could not understand it.
Where did Fairy Tail recruit these people? Their guild had fewer than a hundred members. Did a small guild really need this many capable individuals? It was a waste of talent on a staggering scale.
Could these temporary workers become permanent employees?
He approached Rhodes with exactly that question. And an offer: retain their mage status while working long-term at the Council. The best of both worlds.
All five refused.
Not one of them was willing to leave Fairy Tail.
Rhodes joked that if the Council relocated to Magnolia, right next to the guild hall, he might be able to talk them into it.
Hyberion could only express his regret. If the Council moved there, it really would become a branch office of Fairy Tail.
The newly formed Council gradually sorted through the inherited chaos and began to find its rhythm.
After work one evening, Rhodes spotted Mira's fan tidying up his desk and called out to him. "On your way out, swing by Master Bryliens's section and check if Doranbalt has left for the day. If he hasn't, ask him to come see me."
"Got it." The clerk didn't question it. Their work intersected with every department, the prison system included. Odd requests were routine by now.
Mira noticed that the other two staff members had already gone home. She looked at Rhodes curiously. "What do you need Doranbalt for?"
Rhodes's expression shifted. Something more serious beneath the surface.
"There's something that needs to be clarified." He picked up his bag. "Let me take everyone home first."
"Alright!" Mira clapped her hands once, bright and decisive. "Everyone, put your things away. Quitting time! You've all been working so hard lately. Drinks are on me at the guild tonight."
Lucy and Levy cheered in unison. "Thank you, Mira!"
Freed and Evergreen were more measured. "Thanks."
Rhodes sent them all back through the Gate, then stepped through a second one himself, returning to the Council tent just in time to see Mest appear at the doorway in a blink.
The kid had used Direct Line to teleport straight here. Impatient as always. If Freed ever caught him using teleportation magic to skip walking through the hallways, there would be a lecture.
"Come in." Rhodes settled into his chair. "Find a seat."
"No need." Doranbalt remained standing, slightly stiff. "Mr. Rhodes, is there a problem with the reform plan? Or do you need to verify information about a prisoner?"
"Neither." Rhodes paused. "And you really don't have to be so formal. We're actually..." He trailed off. This wasn't the kind of thing you eased into. "Never mind."
He cast Void Vision first. A quick sweep of the surrounding area. No monitoring spells. No eavesdropping lacrima. No one lurking outside the tent.
Clear.
Doranbalt watched in confusion as Rhodes completed the check. "What's going on?"
Rhodes pointed at him with his right hand.
Doranbalt's mind went blank. A sharp, brief pain flared in his right shoulder, just beneath his collar. On the skin hidden by his clothes, a mark appeared. The Fairy Tail guild emblem.
He didn't bother pulling back his sleeve to look. He was too busy trying to make sense of the avalanche of memories suddenly crashing through his head.
"Wait. Wait a minute." He pressed a hand to his temple. "I'm... Mest? A member of Fairy Tail?" His voice cracked between confusion and denial. "No. Don't joke around like that. What did you do to my memories?"
Rhodes leaned back. "You're an expert in Memory magic yourself. Check it. Sort through it carefully. You'll be able to tell whether I planted anything or whether it was already there."
Mest sat down heavily. For once, he didn't refuse the chair.
His most recent memory recovery had been after the Grand Magic Games. Makarov had urged him to come back to the guild, but he'd refused.
He'd told the old man he wanted to stay embedded in the Council. Gather intelligence on Tartaros from the inside. He'd return once Tartaros was dealt with.
About a month later, Makarov had planned to bring Rhodes to meet him properly. But that was the day the Council headquarters was bombed. The timing couldn't have been worse.
Org genuinely needed protection, and Mest was the only person in position to provide it. The reveal was shelved.
Then the Tartaros operation happened. Then the new Council was formed. Everyone had been drowning in work. Neither Rhodes nor Makarov had found the time to circle back to this.
But now, with both of them serving as Council members, there was no longer any need for an undercover agent inside the organization.
So Rhodes had used the method Makarov taught him to help Mest recover his full memories. Time to close this chapter.
Mest sat in silence for a long time, piecing things together.
He understood now. The inexplicable warmth he'd always felt toward Fairy Tail. The instinctive trust. The way it kept surfacing no matter how many times his own memory alterations should have buried it.
It had never been random. It had been real.
He gave a thin, crooked smile. "It feels like a lifetime's worth of things just hit me at once."
Rhodes studied him. "You've been rewriting your own memories for years. Are you really sure there aren't any side effects?"
Mest shook his head. "The magic itself is safe. It just feels... uncomfortable. Like waking up and realizing you've been sleepwalking."
Rhodes nodded slowly. "You told Makarov you'd come back once Tartaros was finished. Well, Tartaros is finished." He looked at Mest directly. "What are your plans now?"