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| - The daughter of Irene Belserion and the general of a foreign country, Erza was conceived four hundred years ago, prior to the Dragon King Festival, but was kept from growing in Irene's womb by magical means. She remained unborn during Irene's several-hundred-year-long physical stint as a Dragon, and was finally born after her mother, who regained her human shape courtesy of Zeref, tried to become a true human again by enchanting herself onto her unborn child. When this failed, Irene considered Erza to be worthless and discarded her in the back alleys of Rosemary Village. Erza remained in the village, and grew up there, alongside Kagura and Simon. When Rosemary Village was attacked by a Zeref-following cult, Erza managed to save Kagura from capture by hiding her inside a crate, but got caught herself as a result. She was enslaved by the cult and forced to build the Tower of Heaven, a structure developed for the purpose of resurrecting the Dark Mage, Zeref. She was imprisoned together with several other slaves, most of them were children. Among these children were Jellal Fernandes, Shô, Simon, Wally Buchanan, and Millianna. While they were asking each other for their names, she said that her name was just "Erza," so Jellal decided to give her the surname "Scarlet" after her scarlet hair so they would never forget it. Despite the harsh conditions of her enslavement and labor, Erza became close friends with the other children. She also formed a strong bond with Rob, an elderly Mage from the Fairy Tail Guild, who taught her about Magic and his guild. One day in X776, Shô came up with a plan for the eleven-year-old Erza and all their friends to escape from the tower. They were unfortunately caught by the guards, who decided to send the escape's mastermind to the tower's disciplinary chamber, while the rest would be deprived of food for three days. Seeing how fearful Shô was, Erza prepared to take the blame herself, but Jellal announced himself as the mastermind instead. However, the guards reasoned that Erza was the one responsible and sent her to the disciplinary chamber, where she was tortured to the brink of death and lost her right eye. Jellal rescued her, but was captured soon after. Finally fed up with their torment, Erza staged a revolt against their captors so they could escape and save Jellal. The revolt appeared to be successful at its inception until the tower's Mages arrived to repress the slaves, causing most of the other slaves to retreat. During the attack, Erza watched in horror as her friend Simon's lower jaw was blasted off by a magical attack, while Rob sacrificed himself to defend Erza from another Mage's attack. In her rage, Erza's latent Magic Power was activated for the first time, and she used it to turn all of the discarded weapons and tools around her against the guards, finishing the revolt. As the other slaves boarded ships meant to ensure their freedom, she reunited with Jellal, but discovered that he had changed; the kind and compassionate boy she knew him to be was suddenly twisted and violent, using Magic to slaughter the defenseless guards around them. Jellal had been possessed by what he claimed to be the spirit of Zeref, and decided that the only way for them to attain true freedom was to complete the Tower of Heaven and revive Zeref. Erza refused to help him, prompting Jellal to cast her out of the tower by herself, only letting her live because she helped take care of all the guards who would have opposed him. Before letting her escape, Jellal told Erza to keep the Tower of Heaven a secret from the government, as well as to never return to the tower, threatening to destroy the tower and kill everyone in it, including their friends, if she disobeyed. After washing up on the shores of Fiore, Erza made her way to and joined the Fairy Tail Guild. She habitually began to wear armor and acted distant from the other members. After Gray, who tried picking fights with the reclusive Erza, saw her crying by herself and questioned why, she began to open up to her guildmates more. Around this time, Fairy Tail's master Makarov brought Erza to see Porlyusica, who gave her an artificial eye to replace the one she lost. With her eye healed Erza shed tears of joy, which only came out of her real, left eye, though Erza didn't mind as she said she had already shed half of her tears. When Mirajane first joined the guild, Erza tried to welcome the girl and commented that she had heard about her strength. However, the Take Over Mage left the building without speaking a word. As the years passed, Erza became more and more strict until she could be called the guild's disciplinarian. She took responsibility for breaking up fights between Gray and Natsu. At the same time, however, she was driven to constantly fight and bicker with fellow member Mirajane, which eventually ended after Mirajane greatly mellowed out in the wake of her younger sister Lisanna's apparent death in X782. In the year X780, Erza passed Fairy Tail's annually held S-Class Mage Promotion Trial, becoming the youngest member of the guild to do so at fifteen years of age.
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