The late afternoon sun beat down on Magnolia's cobblestones with that lazy, golden light that made everything look prettier than it had any right to. The streets were quiet, the residents going about their normal business as normal people having normal days without any buildings collapsing on top of their heads.
We did not have that particular luxury.
"THIRTY-TWO THOUSAND JEWELS."
Lucy's voice cut through the air of the main street with the precision of a blade, sending an unsuspecting pigeon fluttering off in a panic.
"Thirty-two thousand," she repeated, holding the envelope with the mission payment as though it were a piece of evidence at a trial. "We took down an entire organisation of magical artefact smugglers. Neutralised an S-Class artefact that was destabilising the whole region. We were away from Magnolia for four days. And what's left is. Thirty. Two. Thousand. Jewels."
"If you divide it by six—" Happy began, flying cheerfully above our heads.
"Don't divide it, Happy."
"But mathematically—"
"If you finish that sum, I swear I'll turn you into a wallet."
"Aye, sir."
I was lying flat on my back on top of Erza's luggage cart.
It was an imposing structure, that cart of hers. Reinforced wood with metal fittings, wheels that creaked over the cobblestones, and plenty of room for an entire small family's wardrobe on a three-week trip. Erza pulled it along by the front handle with the ease of someone dragging a shopping trolley, entirely unbothered by the extra weight of an ancient she-wolf sprawled across the top with her arm over her eyes.
The cart creaked over an uneven cobblestone.
I didn't move.
[Your current posture is clinically classified as "spiritual defeat."]
(Thank you, Eos. Very precise.)
"The problem," Natsu declared, with the authority of someone about to say something profoundly idiotic, "was the building."
"THE BUILDING?" Gray turned to face him. "YOU WERE THE BUILDING, YOU IDIOT!"
"I didn't know it was going to blow up when I used my Roar—"
"WHO USES A DRAGON'S ROAR INSIDE A MAGICAL ARTEFACT WAREHOUSE?"
"Someone who was trying to end the fight quickly because they were HUNGRY—"
"THAT IS NOT A VALID EXCUSE IN ANY POSSIBLE UNIVERSE—"
"ERZA, TELL HIM I WAS HUNGRY—"
"Natsu." Erza's voice came out in that tone. That tone. Low, controlled, laden with the specific promise of a very particular sort of pain. "One more word."
Natsu shut his mouth with impressive speed.
"One more single word," she continued, without hurrying, without raising her voice, her eyes fixed ahead as she pulled the cart, "and I'll stuff you into the smallest suitcase I own."
"Which one's the smallest?" Happy asked, with a curiosity that was genuine and entirely inappropriate for the moment.
"The blue one. With the double clasp." Erza indicated with a nod of her head, without breaking stride. "Fits exactly one Natsu, if I fold his legs and spine first."
Natsu looked at the blue case. The blue case, compact, severe, with metal clasps that did not look inclined to negotiate, appeared to look back.
"Has she done that before?" Lucy whispered to Gray.
"No idea," Gray whispered back. "And I don't want to find out."
"I think she's measured him for it," Happy murmured, disturbed.
The street returned to a reasonable degree of quiet.
The cart creaked once more.
"You know," I said, without taking my arm off my eyes, "when I did missions on my own, I never ended up at a loss."
"When you did missions on your own," Erza replied, without looking back, "I had to personally go to your room, open the door, and carry you to the mission board, because you would not move of your own accord."
"That's a lie."
"I have carried you about thirteen times."
"Twelve."
"Thirteen, Azra'il. The last time you pretended to be asleep."
"I was asleep."
"You were reading."
"I read whilst asleep. It's a rare talent."
Lucy looked between us with the expression of someone trying to follow a conversation in a language she didn't know. "Wait. You always had to go and fetch her?"
"Every single time," Erza confirmed, with the serenity of someone who had long since accepted her fate. "Without exception. But once she finally arrived at the mission, it would be over in ten minutes without a single scratch on the scenery."
"Efficiency," I said.
"Laziness followed by efficiency."
"Different approaches to a similar result."
Lucy, who had joined our little procession slightly further back, held the envelope up again with an expression of genuine mourning. "Four hundred and eighty thousand jewels was the original payment. Four hundred and forty-eight were used to cover the structural damage to the warehouse, the adjacent market, the bridge Gray froze by accident—"
"'By accident' is generous," I murmured.
"—the cart belonging to the poor gentleman who happened to be passing at the wrong moment—"
"Poor donkey," Happy said, thoughtfully.
We all looked at him.
"What? I felt sorry for the donkey. He looked cross."
Cross donkeys were a subject on which I held strong personal opinions. But this was not the moment.
"—and the statue in the central square that Natsu used as a launch platform—"
"It was in the way—"
"NATSU." Erza's voice.
He shut his mouth quickly.
"Thirty-two thousand jewels," Lucy concluded, with the finality of a verdict. "Split between five people plus a cat."
"I don't count as half a person!" Happy protested.
"You shouldn't count for anything, because you didn't do anything—"
"I provided emotional support! I said 'aye' at strategic moments! That has value!"
The cart went over a slightly sloped stretch of pavement. I slid a few centimetres to one side, readjusted, and returned to a horizontal position.
[Your position is slightly off-centre. You will fall in 4.7 metres if you do not correct it.]
(I won't.)
[Trajectory analysis—]
(Erza won't let it happen.)
[...Correct. She has already unconsciously adjusted the cart's angle twice to compensate for your weight shift. You have trained her well.]
(She wasn't trained, Eos. She simply knows me well.)
[It is the same thing, Azra'il.]
Natsu had emerged from his enforced silence and was now walking alongside the cart, looking at me with the expression of a child who had a very important question and terrible timing for asking it.
"Azra'il."
"No."
"I haven't even said anything yet."
"You're about to say something idiotic. I can predict it."
"It's not idiotic." He took offence with admirable conviction. "I just wanted to know if, when you did missions on your own, you also blew things up, or if you really just threatened everyone."
"Both. But with more efficiency and less collateral damage."
"But it's less fun without collateral damage."
"Natsu." I took my arm off my eyes and looked at him with the calm of someone who had made peace with the universe as it was. "We finished this mission with thirty-two thousand jewels."
"Yes."
"The reward was four hundred and eighty thousand."
"Yes."
"Do you understand the mathematical problem here?"
He thought about it. Genuinely thought about it, which took a few more seconds than it should have. "We needed to blow up more stuff to bring down the cost of the destruction?"
The silence that followed was the specific sort of silence that happens when someone says something so fundamentally wrong that the collective brain of the group needs a moment to reboot.
"Gray," Lucy said, in a very calm voice.
"Don't look at me like that."
"He's your rival."
"I didn't choose that. He appeared in my life and flatly refused to leave."
"BECAUSE WE'RE RIVALS—"
"WE ARE NOTHING—"
"WE WERE FRIENDS BEFORE—"
"THAT ONLY MAKES IT WORSE—"
"NATSU. GRAY."
Erza's voice.
The silence returned.
Even more complete this time. The sort of silence that happens when two people simultaneously remember that the third one owns armour and knows how to use it.
The cart continued rolling over Magnolia's cobblestones. The sun dropped another degree towards the horizon. The lamps along the posts began to flicker timidly, still undecided between day and night.
"When I worked with Erza," I said, to the air, to no one in particular, for the historical record, "we used to come back from missions with money. Sometimes with a bonus. Once with a horse the client gave us as a gift because he was so impressed by our efficiency."
"What did you do with the horse?" Lucy asked.
"Gave it back. I live in a dormitory. I've nowhere to keep a horse."
"Fair enough."
"The point is, there was profit." I put my arm back over my eyes. "Actual profit. Money left over after covering expenses. An alien concept to you lot, I know."
"In my defence," Gray said, "this time freezing the bridge was partly the artefact's fault for interfering with my control."
"Partly," I repeated.
"Yeah."
"And the other part?"
"...Natsu provoked me."
"I PROVOKED YOU BECAUSE OF YOUR HAIR—"
"MY HAIR WAS PERFECTLY FINE BEFORE YOU—"
"NATSU." Erza's voice, lower now. More dangerous. "GRAY."
The silence returned.
Lucy tucked the envelope with the thirty-two thousand jewels back into her bag with the care of someone burying evidence. Happy flew a little higher, most likely seeking a safer altitude. Natsu and Gray walked separated by exactly two metres of hostile, unspoken space.
The cart went round the last bend before the guild's main street.
Erza pulled it along with her usual steady rhythm, measured steps, straight back, red hair falling over her shoulders. Every now and then, so subtly that I was probably the only one who noticed, she adjusted the cart's angle.
So I wouldn't fall.
"Erza," I said.
"Hm?"
"On our next mission with them, I want a limited-destruction clause in the contract."
"That doesn't exist."
"It will, once I've finished drafting it."
"Natsu won't obey a contractual clause."
"Natsu will obey once I explain that violating the clause comes accompanied by a personalised physical penalty."
"...That might actually work," she admitted.
"I know."
The towers of the extravagant new guild appeared on the horizon, its Fairy Tail flags fluttering in the evening breeze. Imposing. Expensive. Probably more intact than I would have expected to find it, after four days without supervision.
"Thirty-two thousand," Lucy murmured, one last time, to herself.
"Could've been less," Happy offered, genuinely trying to help.
"Happy."
"Yes?"
"Quiet mode."
"Aye, sir."
The cart creaked over the cobblestones at the guild's entrance. I slid to the side, calculated the trajectory, and dropped to the ground with a lightness that contrasted sharply with my last few minutes of deliberate uselessness.
Erza looked at me. With that particular expression that meant many things at once, including "you're impossible," "I love you anyway," and "never do that again, even though I already know you're going to do it again tomorrow."
I smiled.
"Good mission," I said.
She sighed.
"Let's go in."
The guild was in its natural state of controlled chaos when we walked in.
Controlled being a generous word. There were at least two brawls in progress that I could identify without even trying, someone had set fire to something in the far left corner of the hall, and Elfman was standing on a table shouting something about manliness that I chose not to process.
The usual.
Erza parked the cart in a corner with the precision of someone who had, after years of practice, found the perfect angle, locked the wheels with her foot, and cast a brief, assessing glance across the entire hall. Two seconds. Enough time to catalogue every potential trouble spot and mentally decide which one deserved immediate intervention.
None, apparently. She turned towards the counter.
I followed, settling onto a stool with the care of someone who planned not to move for a considerable while.
Mirajane appeared on the other side of the bar with that all-knowing smile of hers, carrying two cups that no one had ordered.
"Welcome back." Her eyes swept over the two of us with the efficiency of a stocktake. "How did it go?"
"Productive," Erza said.
"Thirty-two thousand jewels," I said.
Mira blinked. "Out of the four hundred and eighty?"
"Natsu blew up the warehouse," I explained. "Gray froze the bridge. Lucy was haggling with the smugglers whilst we were trying to arrest them, which technically worked, but took forty minutes longer than it should have, and I took the opportunity to have a nap on top of a statue, which Natsu then also blew up."
"The statue, or you sleeping on it?"
"Both, in the same explosion. Efficient, at least."
Lucy appeared beside me, dropping her bag on the counter with the specific weight of someone who'd had a long day. "Thirty-two thousand," she announced, to Mira, as though she needed an official witness to the crime. "What's left is thirty-two thousand."
"I heard." Mira slid one of the cups towards her. "Chamomile tea. You look like you need it."
"I need five hundred thousand jewels and a team that doesn't destroy everything it touches."
"About that," Mira said, in the tone of someone about to strategically change the subject, "actually, the timing is perfect. I've been wanting to talk to you two about the festival."
Lucy looked up from her cup. "Festival?"
"The Magnolia Festival." Mira leant slightly over the counter, with that particular energy she had when she was excited about something. "Every year the town holds a big festival, and Fairy Tail takes part with a parade. The Master and I have been working on the preparations for weeks."
"I had no idea there was a festival," Lucy said, genuinely surprised.
"Every year, without fail." Mira pulled a colourful leaflet out from under the counter and passed it to Lucy. "And there's something else. The guild also runs an internal contest during the festival. Miss Fairy."
Lucy opened the leaflet. Her eyes travelled down the page and then stopped.
"Five hundred thousand jewels," she read aloud, with a tone completely different from when she'd said thirty-two thousand.
"For the winner, yes."
Lucy's eyes swept up and down the leaflet with a speed I respected. "Wait." She looked up. "I remember seeing this in a magazine. Last year's." Her eyes went to Mira, then back to the leaflet, then back to Mira, and the red began to creep up her cheeks in a progression I watched with interest. "Last year's winner was..."
"Me," Mira confirmed, with a serene smile.
"In that dress," Lucy finished, in a slightly strangled voice.
"In that dress," Mira confirmed, with exactly the same tone.
The red on Lucy's face reached new heights.
"It was a good dress," I said.
Erza pinched me.
It was not a gentle pinch. It was a deliberate pinch, precise, on the side of my arm, delivered with the same determination she applied to everything in life.
"Ow."
"That was an accident," she said, looking straight ahead.
"It wasn't."
"It was."
"Erza, you looked me in the eye before you pinched me."
"I was checking whether you were paying attention."
Mira was laughing. Not the contained, elegant bar-laugh, but a genuine one, which she was making minimal effort to hide. "Azra'il, are you planning to take part this year?"
"No."
The answer came before she'd even finished the question.
"Not even the parade?"
"Especially not the parade."
Erza turned her head slightly. "But you took part last year."
"I know. I was there. It was an error of judgement I have no intention of repeating."
"What?" Lucy was looking at us with the expression she wore when she sensed there was a story and wasn't sure she wanted to hear it. "What happened?"
"Nothing," I said.
"Azra'il was a clown," Erza said.
Lucy blinked. "What do you mean, a clown?"
"In the literal sense," Erza continued, with a calm that entirely belied the fact she was clearly enjoying herself. "Clown costume. Make-up. Sweets to hand out to the children."
The silence Lucy didn't voice aloud, but that was entirely visible on her face, communicated precisely that she was trying to build the mental image and failing.
"I can't picture you dressed as a clown," she finally said.
"No one can, before they see it," I agreed. "And afterwards, most of them wished they hadn't."
"The children cried," Erza added.
"The children were being dramatic."
"Azra'il. You asked a line of five-year-olds which of them felt 'depressed, exhausted, and utterly without purpose'."
"It was a warm-up question."
"Half of them raised their hands."
"Shows they were honest children. I respect that."
Lucy was looking at me with an expression I could only describe as archaeological horror, the sort of expression worn by someone excavating a site and finding disturbing evidence at every layer. "What else did you do?"
"I performed a puppet show."
"That sounds harmless."
"Every character died," Erza said.
"Every one," I confirmed. "The hero, the villainess, the princess. The demon too, but that was accidental — the puppet's frame was structurally weak."
"How did they die?" Lucy asked, in the voice of someone who already knew she didn't want the answer.
"In a variety of ways, each thematically appropriate to its own narrative arc."
"Azra'il."
"The princess's was the most poetic. I thought the children would appreciate the symbolism."
"The children were five years old."
"Symbolism has no minimum age requirement."
Lucy had put her hand over her mouth. Her eyes were huge. "You traumatised children with a puppet show."
"I presented an honest narrative about the human condition."
"And then," Erza said, with that particular patience of someone recounting a story she'd already told herself many times in her own head, "she set the puppets on fire."
"It was the visual climax of the performance."
"With a fire spell."
"For greater dramatic impact."
"In the middle of the parade."
"The timing was perfect."
Lucy lowered her hand slowly. "You set the puppets on fire in front of children."
"The children were already crying anyway," I said, with a reasonableness I found entirely justified. "The fire at least gave the experience a cathartic ending."
"That is the most disturbing thing I have ever heard, and I live with Natsu."
Mira was properly laughing now, her shoulders shaking slightly as she pretended to be very busy arranging cups behind the counter. "So this year is going to be interesting too."
"This year I'm not taking part in the parade."
"I need to put everyone somewhere, Azra'il."
"Put me in the audience."
"The audience isn't an official role."
"I'll invent one. Audience Supervisor. I guarantee people are paying attention."
Mira jotted something down in a little notebook that had appeared from nowhere, with the expression of someone who had already decided what she was going to do and was merely documenting the process. "I'll see where I can fit you in a way that minimises the risk of childhood trauma."
"I put more effort into that parade than into any mission this year."
"I know. That's exactly what worries me."
"I can promise to try."
"Promising to try isn't a promise."
"It's the most I have on offer."
Mira jotted something else down. Probably "keep away from children" in large letters.
"And the contest?" Mira asked, looking up from the notebook. "Miss Fairy?"
"No."
"Won't even consider it?"
"Mira."
"It's five hundred thousand jewels."
"No."
"But if Erza takes part," I said, and felt, without needing to look, Erza go slightly quieter beside me, "I'll be in the front row cheering."
Erza went red with admirable speed.
"I didn't say I'm taking part," she said, with a dignity her flushed face entirely contradicted.
"You didn't say you're not, either."
"Azra'il."
"I'm only saying, if you do, I'll be there. With a sign. Perhaps two."
"You are not making any sign whatsoever."
"I'm already planning the design."
"Azra'il—"
"Big letters. Sparkly. Perhaps with your face on it."
"If you make a sign with my face on it, I will bury you six feet under."
Lucy was looking between the two of us, leaflet still in hand, the five hundred thousand jewels clearly competing with secondhand embarrassment for space in her mind. Mira had stopped pretending to jot things down and was simply watching us with the smile of someone with privileged access to the best entertainment in Magnolia.
"One week," Mira said, returning to her notebook. "The festival starts in a week. So I need confirmations of participation as soon as possible."
"Confirmed that I won't traumatise anyone on purpose," I said.
"It's a start."
"It's the most you're going to get out of me, Mira."
She wrote it down. With a calmness that concerned me slightly.