Zane wandered the hall floor, searching and searching for the person he had been ordered to talk to. Faces and faces passed by him, but none seemed to be the one. He had saw her earlier, but had to continue walking a while for the sake of being with his guildmates. Now that he was free from them thanks to a flimsy excuse, Zane couldn't find the woman. He'd been searching for quite a while now. That incident in the men's bathroom didn't exactly help either. "Must you really speak with this woman, Zane? I know she requested it of you, but I can't help but worry anytime you interact with the females of your species..." Beelzebub's worries were mostly warranted. Most of Zane's intelligence (which was already pretty low in the first place) went completely out of the window when a lady was involved. But this was different. He had asked the woman a question at the pageant the other day and she had refused to respond right then and there, instead telling him to ask her himself. That was precisely what he was going to do.

And then he spotted her, standing alone on the balcony. It was quite a cliche scene, actually. At every single fancy ball in some fairy tale or novel the protagonists always stood alone on a small balcony. "I mean, who actually just stays alone on the balcony? Why hasn't anyone come yet?" Zane asked Beelzebub, complaining about the overused trope. "...But you're about to come. The balcony will no longer be empty once you arrive." Huh. That made a lot of sense, actually. Stepping out into the cool air, Zane let out a sigh of satisfaction. The temperature was much better out here. Looking to his side, he prepared to confront Alisa Vollan. It had been a good number of years since the two of them spoke to each other. One of them had certainly gotten much, much more famous than the other...

"It's been a while, Alisa." Zane said to her, placing his hand on the balcony. "Not that you'd recognize me now, anyways. I was much different when we met in Baska all those years ago." Zane was an elf back then, and an extremely shy one at that. He really had broken out of his shell. "My interactions with you suggest that perhaps that shell was there for a reason." Regardless of if Alisa remembered him much from back then or not, she'd certainly remember the question he posed to her at the pageant just the other day. Or maybe not. If she had forgotten that already her memory was certainly the worst among the guildmasters of Fiore. "So, since you told me to ask you myself... what do you think of world-famous mage Christian Zane?"

Alisa seemed to have some recollection of Zane judging on the way she greeted him back. Zane was a tad surprised. Most people didn't have a perfect memory like he did. "Your memory is selectively flawless, not perfect." Beelzebub commented, instantly picking up on the small internal compliment Zane gave himself. "What do you mean?" Zane asked, curious about just what it was that Zane's memory was selective about. "You already know."

Zane leaned against the balcony, crossing his arms. Beelzebub worried about his clumsy host falling off just a little. Zane had a number of things he was guessing he might hear from Alisa. Beelzebub also had a ton of predictions, most of them negative. Neither of them could've guessed what Alisa actually ended up saying in the end. It was probably the most shocked Zane had been in, well, his entire career as a mage! "...Huh?" He asked directly after her first answer. Usually Zane spoke in long, complex and needlessly showy sentences. But not this time. This was about the most speechless he had ever been in years. "Am I hearing her right? YOU of all people not giving yourself credit? It's the exact opposite!" Zane nodded lightly to himself, exhibiting his bad habit of letting his inner conversations with Beelzebub show on his face.

Alisa's further words gave Zane a slightly better idea of just what she meant. She must have pieced together the fact that he was in Eternal Nightmare, a fact not many had yet learnt. He admittedly kept it hidden from most. But what could've caused her to pick up on it? Was she some sort of deductive genius? The female Sherlock Holmes? An omnipoten- "You locked arms with two members of the same guild, Zane. Has your 'perfect memory' already let that detail slip?" Oh. Zane supposed that was a good point. He noted passing by Alisa on his way into the ball as well. It was only natural she had the chance to look at him too. "I guess you must have saw me with them, huh?" Zane asked, his tone a bit more serious than his usual goofy demeanor. Eternal Nightmare... in some respects, Zane had tried to forget he was even in that guild. Their tattoo rested on his sole, a place he basically never saw. He'd made no such declarations about his allegiance to anyone outside of the guild. He barely spoke to those in the guild itself.

"I'm not following any of them." Zane shifted his eyes from Alisa to the cityscape that lay past the balcony. "Guilds are just guilds. They're not who we are. Do you know why I joined Eternal Nightmare?" Zane asked, chuckling to himself as he recalled those events years ago. "I wanted to look cool. And I still do want to look cool. Guilds, groups, allegiances... all that stuff is just style. No different than clothing to me, really." Zane's thoughts on the matter were definitely much different than they were back in Fairy Tail. Back then he seemed much more intent on being a part of a community.

The changing factor in his personality was never Zagan or the creation of Eternal Nightmare, a guild that he named himself. He already knew what led him to care so little about things like honor or loyalty. It was the demon in his head. "I am as good as a man as I give myself credit for, Alisa. It doesn't matter if I'm an Eternal Nightmare member today or a Blue Pegasus member tomorrow." Zane turned his gaze back to Alisa as he stopped leaning on the balcony so goddamn much. The change really calmed Beelzebub's nerves. "The Christian Zane you see before you is just as free as the one you met before. Even more so, really. I know what I want to do at any given moment. And what I want right now is..." Zane paused for a moment, dramatically pointing at Alisa.

"...That drink! Where in the world did you get it?! I've been searching around for a good while now, but all I've come across is bad shrimp..."