This chapter was great. Everyone went their way and that's cool. As I said before, it was a chance for Mashima to explore characters individually. If you called Lucy working as a reporter/editor congratualations. I hope this arc will be about Lucy and Natsu travelling the world trying to gather everyone back. If you look closelly, Gray was near Juvia, and looks like Levy wasn't with with Gajeel... Is she with Raijin Shun? Lucy put them together for some reason. Also the Strauss siblings are not together nor is Elfman with Evergreen. And no sign of Makarov on the board, at least to me.
So none of the main guilds are participating in the GMG huh? Saberthoot has a reason, they're no longer interested in showing their power to everyone like how Jienma wanted, and I guess Lamia Scale didn't feel the need to enter as their main rivals Saberthoot and FT woudn't be there either. Or Mashima just didn't want to introduce their changes early.
Natsu is the challenger? I sort of thought so when i saw the GMG happening, he looks damn cool but it seems he got even more OP, like Gildarts OP. Burning everything like that, maybe Mashima exagerated a bit. Let's see what how he does against the first pos timeskip boss.
All in all that was a great way to return, hope Mashima takes some time working around the disbanded guild issue instead of rushing the plot. "The flames's mensage", that sort of fit my the put the guild together theory. Anyway 5/5 can't wait for the next chapter.