I know this is going to be my hottest take ever, but:
I know Mashima too well to hope for this but the only thing that can save Natsu's bastardization in 100YQ is having Ignia wipe the fucking floor with him.
Natsu's behavior and insistence on fighting alone, especially Ignia, just leans into Ignia's ideals and not the narrative's, which is friendship and found family. What Natsu has become, with Mashima glazing him into the ground and insisting upon him, has just ruined him as a main character for me.
Natsu shouldn't be agreeing with his greatest enemy, especially when he has preached the opposite of Ignia's ideals for years. How his Guild is his strength, how family is the best thing he has. He even told Gildarts that he failed the quest because he went alone but now Natsu is going back on that which makes him sound hypocritical.
So, I want Ignia to pound his ass into the ground. I want to see him grind Natsu's ego under his heel. Natsu has flown higher and higher and I want Ignia to send him to rock bottom so that this man may FINALLY get some goddamn character development. I want Natsu to realize that he has internalized Ignia's ideals to his own detriment. I want him to realize that he's been throwing his friends to the sidelines, and I want him to beg them for forgiveness for that. I want them to take Ignia out as a team.
I want this manga to rub Ignia's faulty ideals in his face, not prove them right.
