After leaving the library, Kabe headed straight for the guild's request board and started scanning the posted jobs.
Mira, who had snuck after him, saw this and her eyes lit up. She hurried over.
"You getting ready to take on a job?"
Kabe kept his eyes on the rows of request slips without looking back.
"Yeah. For various reasons I have been resting for a few days already. It is about time I picked a job and moved my body again."
Mira nodded in complete agreement.
"True. Even that armor girl and Natsu have gone out on missions.
Us sitting around in the guild all day is not exactly productive."
"Us?"
Kabe caught that word immediately. He finally tore his attention away from the board and turned to look at Mira, who was smiling sweetly up at him.
If it had been the grown up Mira Jane from the original story flashing that kind of smile, Kabe would have only said "cute" and left it at that.
But on the current Mira, who was still very much a delinquent little punk, that same smile only made his guard shoot through the roof.
Seeing the "you are totally up to something" look on his face, Mira snorted and simply dropped the act.
"I will get straight to the point.
Take me with you on this next mission. I can take a smaller cut of the reward, or even nothing at all, but I really need a veteran to show me the full process of a job from start to finish."
"You really are planning to shear this one sheep for all it is worth, huh..."
Kabe sighed and, without thinking, reached up to touch his face.
"So I am really that charming now? Charming enough that even Mira will not give up on me?"
He basked in his own narcissism for a moment, then asked the thing that mattered most to him.
"Have you actually got your Take Over magic under control? Let me say this first, if you are just going to be dead weight, then even if you do not want a single jewel, I am not taking you on a job."
"Quit looking down on me."
Mira was clearly unhappy with his attitude. A circle of golden light flared beneath her feet.
"Take Over, Satan Soul!"
The flare made Kabe jump. He was just about to shout at her to stop when he realized that Mira's body had not fully transformed.
Only her arms had turned, the skin now covered in pale green scales, twisted into a pair of demonic claws.
Seeing that, Kabe let out a long breath.
"Just partial Take Over, huh. You scared me. I knew it, no way even Demon Mira Jane picks up full body Satan Soul this fast."
"What are you muttering about? Demon what?"
Mira frowned, confused by his whispering.
"Nothing. Uh... just a title I suddenly thought suited you."
"A title, huh? Now that you mention it, once I become a famous mage in the future, I really will need some kind of cool epithet.
'Demon' is not bad. I like it. I will use that from now on."
She rolled the words around in her mind, liking them more the more she thought about it. Her impression of Kabe climbed a few more steps.
"As long as you are happy."
Kabe waved it away casually and turned back to choosing a request.
"I am going to keep picking. You go talk to the master on your own.
If he does not approve, there is nothing I can do."
"Leave it to me. Just watch how I talk that old man into it."
Mira practically skipped away to go harass Makarov.
Kabe continued to run his eyes along the request board.
"Clear out the pirates that keep harassing the trade route...
Ugh, too much work for too little cash. Fifty thousand? You trying to feed a beggar?"
"Bodyguard needed, escorting archaeologist to explore ancient ruins...
Reward is ancient documents recovered from the site? Yeah, that is more of a future-Levy kind of job."
He kept reading: a handful of monster subjugation jobs, treasure hunts, curse lifting requests.
Either the reward was insultingly low and the client was fishing for suckers,
or the mission would drag on for months,
or it simply was not a good match for his skill set.
Kabe vetoed them all in his head.
In the end, his gaze stopped on one rather interesting request.
"Urgent! Multiple witnesses have reported sightings of a mermaid near the coast.
In need of a water specialist mage to capture her for me.
The sooner the better. Money is no object!"
Below that, in the reward column, the number "1,000,000J" was written in huge bold characters.
The corners of Kabe's mouth curled up. He plucked the request off the board without hesitation and walked over to the bar, where Makarov was currently being pestered half to death by Mira.
"Master, I will take this job. Do we have any more detailed information?"
Makarov was struggling to pry Mira's hands off the hem of his coat. He snatched a moment to glance at the sheet in Kabe's hand.
"This one came in just today. All I know is that the client is one of the kingdom's high ranking nobles.
The deadline is five days. If it is not done in five days, it counts as a failure."
"A noble, huh. No wonder they are willing to throw money around."
Hearing that the employer was nobility, Kabe did not feel annoyed. In fact, he was even more satisfied.
Because for these loaded nobles, as long as you complete the job well and bring back something that satisfies them, they are actually very willing to pay... generously.
As for those stories about them pulling rank afterward and stiffing people on reward money, that might happen to small-time guilds, but the odds of it happening to Fairy Tail were very, very low.
Fairy Tail was notorious for being completely unrestrained.
And as one of the Ten Wizard Saints, Guild Master Makarov was famous for being insanely protective of his kids.
Over the years, plenty of nobles with more money than sense had been "taught a lesson" by Fairy Tail.
They could go crying to the king or the Council all they wanted. At most, the end result was Makarov getting a slap on the wrist and writing a few more self-criticism papers.
Any noble with a functioning brain cell left did not go poking that hornet's nest anymore.
Over by the bar, Mira heard that Kabe had already chosen a job and could no longer sit still. She shook Makarov's sleeve like a madwoman.
"Old man, hurry up and say yes, or I will strip you naked and send you out the guild door!"
"Stop, stop, stop, enough! I will agree, all right? I will agree!"
Makarov was completely rattled by her utter lack of restraint. In the end, he had no choice but to surrender.
The moment he said the words, Mira cheered, shouted something at Kabe, then ran straight back toward the library to tell her siblings and get ready to leave.
At the bar, Makarov watched her whirlwind of a figure disappear from sight, then poured himself a glass of booze and sighed.
"Mira has a lot of talent. Given time, she will definitely become an amazing mage.
It is just that this impulsive, overbearing personality of hers...
If she does not fix it, one day she will pay for it."