Chapter 409

Thread of White and Black is the 409th chapter of Hiro Mashima's Fairy Tail.
Gray and Natsu team up to take down the Underworld King, but he begins to overwhelm them. Meanwhile Rogue and Sting battle their former Master. As he ridicules them for having deviated from his ideology of a Guild and continues to thrash them, they respond that his regime was the true weak one and they now live for their comrades and perform a combination attack to take him down. Drained of their power, they tell the other two that everything is now up to them and collapse. The Fairy Tail duo respond confidently and finally manage to make a comeback.
==Summary==
Gray and Natsu immediately begin their assault on Mard. The Demon calls forth his Curse, but it is easily neutralized by the two Slayers, only for them to realize that is was just a distraction as Mard flies up from behind them and carries them into the air by their heads. Mard scrapes their faces into the ruined battlements of Cube as they continue to ascend, remarking that this is the only fate that awaits humans who dare oppose Demons and that he will scrape them and their petty emotions away.
Elsewhere, the Twin Dragons are faring no better against Jiemma. The duo realizes that he is the one who dragged Minerva into this whole mess. The Demon sneers at them and calls her a useless tool whose only use was to preserve his own line for posterity. Sting punches him angrily, but to no effect, instead being hurled back himself, the same happening to Rogue immediately afterwards.
As they battle, Jiemma mocks them for believing that they had taken Sabertooth from him and claims that their weakness had ruined its reputation of being the strongest Guild. Standing up, Rogue and Sting respond that their strength during Jiemma's regime was a false one; it was actually a weakness for not considering guildmates as friends. To overcome the weakness, they say that they have decided to start over completely, beginning with taking down Jiemma.
Jiemma appears amused by their words and attacks them again, stating only individual strength matters. But Sting calmly retorts that strong Guilds exist right beside them, kind Guilds whom they had the good fortune of meeting and learning from. Jiemma slashes the two and furiously yells that depending on others is the peak of weakness, but they hotly retort that they live for one another and would show him that power, executing a perfect combination technique to defeat him.
Completely drained themselves, they tell the Fairy Tail team that the rest is up to them and fall to the ground. Hearing them, Gray and Natsu finally manage to free themselves from their opponent's grasp and smash the astounded Mard's head into the wall they themselves were being dragged along a moment ago.
==Characters in Order of Appearance==
#Natsu Dragneel
#Gray Fullbuster
#Mard Geer Tartaros
#Jiemma Orland
#Sting Eucliffe
#Rogue Cheney
#Erza Scarlet
==Battles & Events==
*Natsu Dragneel & Gray Fullbuster vs. Mard Geer Tartaros (started)
*Sting Eucliffe & Rogue Cheney vs. Jiemma Orland (concluded)
==Magic, Curses, Spells, and Abilities used==
===Magic used===
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*Blast Magic
===Curses used===
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===Spells used===
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===Abilities used===
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*Hand-to-Hand Combat
*Flight
==Navigation==