Porlyusica’s skill turned out to be genuinely impressive, whatever her attitude about it.
By morning, Erza’s shoulder had gone from an angry, weeping wound to something closing cleanly, and my ribs had settled into a dull ache instead of the sharp stabbing pain from the day before.
We were both moving comfortably enough by the time the sun was properly up, which, given what we’d walked in with, felt like something close to a miracle.
“Told you she was good,” I said.
“You didn’t tell me anything,” Erza pointed out.
“You’d never met her before yesterday either.” “I had a good feeling.” She didn’t dignify that with a response.
Makarov came to collect us himself around noon, looking considerably more composed than he had the day before, and led us back toward the guild with the unmistakable energy of a man about to deliver a speech he’d given many times and still meant every word of.
“Fairy Tail isn’t just a guild,” he told us, somewhere along the walk, hands clasped behind his back.
“It’s a family.
Every wizard who walks through those doors — brawler, drunkard, pervert—” he said this last part with a resigned little sigh that suggested personal experience, “—every single one of them is bound to every other by something deeper than a guild mark.
We fight for each other.
We grieve for each other.
We celebrate every small victory like it belongs to all of us, because it does.” He glanced back at us.
“You’ll understand, given time.
Fairy Tail our guild name means (?) “Do fairies really have tails?
Do they even exist…
Like them this place as eternal mystery…
A never ending adventure “That’s a lot of talk for a guild with a naked kid in the lobby,” I said.
“The eternal mystery includes the naked kid,” Makarov said, entirely unbothered.
“Get along with your new guildmates.
Ask me anything you like about magic, incidentally — I happen to be one of the Ten Wizard Saints, so I daresay I know a thing or two.” That got my attention properly for the first time.
One of the ten strongest wizards on the continent, and he sprints across a guild hall in a panic over two kids walking in the door.
Love this place already, honestly.
We arrived back at the guild to find Makarov’s enthusiasm only building as he ushered us both up in front of the whole hall.
“Everyone!” he announced, voice booming easily over the general noise of the guild.
“As of today, the fourteenth of March, Year 777, we have two new members joining the Fairy Tail family!
Erza, and Jack!
Give them a warm welcome!” The response was immediate and loud — cheering, someone starting an off-key chant of our names, mugs raised, and within minutes, what Makarov called a banquet had somehow assembled itself out of thin air, tables groaning under food and the whole hall dissolving into celebration like this was just something Fairy Tail did on a Tuesday.
Erza, for her part, looked deeply uncomfortable with the entire display.
“I don’t need this,” she said quietly, once Makarov had stepped away to argue with someone about the noise level.
“What I need is Jewel for proper clothes.
I still smell like seawater and dried blood.” “Tell Makarov that,” I said.
“Politely.
He seems like the type to actually listen.” She did, eventually, cornering him mid-celebration to ask, bluntly, if there was work she could do to earn some Jewel rather than accept charity outright.
Makarov just laughed, warm and unbothered by the bluntness.
“Mingle a little first,” he said.
“Meet your guildmates.
I’ll give you both some Jewel to get properly outfitted — call it a welcome gift, not charity.
Pay me back once you’re older and earning properly, if it eases your conscience so much.
We’ve got dormitories too, one for the boys, one for the girls — live there, pay rent whenever you’re able.” “Separate dormitories,” Erza repeated, glancing at me.
“That’s how it’s done,” Makarov said, already wandering off toward some new commotion.
I, personally, thought separate dormitories sounded perfectly reasonable, and said so.
Erza did not agree.
“We should stay together,” she said, arms crossed, in the tone of someone who considered the matter already settled.
“We’re joining a guild specifically so we don’t have to just be two kids surviving alone anymore,” I pointed out.
“That’s kind of the whole point.
Also, I’m seven and you’re eleven, and I don’t especially want to share a room with girls, and I doubt you want to share one with a bunch of boys either, plus boy are not allowed in girls dormitory .” “That’s not the point—” “It’s exactly the point.” We went back and forth on it for a solid few minutes, guild noise churning on around us completely indifferent to our argument, until she finally relented with the kind of huff that made it clear she still didn’t agree, just didn’t have a better counterpoint left to offer.
That was about when Gray and Cana wandered over, apparently curious about the new arrivals now that the initial fanfare had died down.
“So you’re the new guys ,” Gray said, thankfully wearing a shirt at this point of time .
“I’m Gray.” “Cana,” the card girl added, already shuffling her deck absently.
“You two looked like death yesterday, not gonna lie.” “We’d had a rough week,” I said.
Erza, beside me, had gone quiet in a way I recognized from the boat — polite, guarded, already looking for the nearest excuse to retreat somewhere alone.
She started drifting toward an empty corner table before either of them even finished their next sentence.
I grabbed her sleeve before she could fully commit to the exit.
“Stay,” I said, quiet enough just for her.
“You don’t have to talk much.
Just — stay near people for a bit.
Please.” She glared at me, but stayed.
Gray and Cana turned out to be easy enough company, all things considered — Gray complaining about Cana’s uncanny knack for predicting his clothes going missing, Cana needling him right back about it, both of them chill enough not to push when Erza’s answers stayed short and clipped.
It held together fine for a while, until Erza’s patience for socializing finally ran dry entirely, and she made it clear — politely, but clearly — that she was done for the day.
“We’re going shopping,” I told Gray and Cana, by way of exit.
“Clothes emergency.” “See you around,” Gray said, already wandering off to go find whatever shirt he’d lost this time.
Shopping, as it turned out, was not going to be the simple clothes run I’d been picturing, because the first place Erza dragged us toward wasn’t a clothing shop at all.
“Armor,” she said, standing in front of a smith’s shop like it was the most obvious first stop in the world.
“We need shirts, Erza.
Shirts.
Not armor.” “I need armor,” she said, already walking inside.
Right.
Requip.
The knight thing.
Should’ve seen this coming.
I followed her in, mentally filing this under “things that make more sense once you remember she’s basically a walking arsenal now.” Finding armor sized for an eleven-year-old turned out to be exactly as difficult as it sounds.
Most of what the shop had was built for grown adventurers twice her size, and the one piece that came close to fitting was, predictably, the most expensive option on the rack.
“I’ll just take the cheap one,” she said, eyeing a battered, ill-fitting set clearly meant for someone with a much smaller frame than even hers.
“That thing’s held together with rust and hope,” I said.
“Keep looking.” “It’s fine, Jack.” “It is not fine.
Look for something else.” We argued about it long enough that the shopkeeper started looking mildly entertained by the whole exchange, but I held my ground until she finally gave in and kept searching, and we eventually settled on a set a size too large for her — not ideal, but sturdy, and something she could grow into rather than out of within a month.
It was somewhere in the middle of all that searching, waiting on a bench while she tried on yet another piece, that I finally asked the question that had been sitting in the back of my mind since the tower.
“What did Porlyusica say?
About your eye.” Erza’s hand went briefly to the bandage still covering it.
“She said I could get an artificial one.
A prosthetic.
It will work as a real eye , and looks like one .
“You should do it,” I said, without hesitation.
“No reason to keep looking at a reminder of that place every time you catch your reflection.” She was quiet for a moment, turning the armor piece over in her hands instead of looking at me.
“It’ll cost more Jewel,” she said.
“On top of everything Master already covering.” “So we say thank you properly,” I said.
“Not by refusing to take what he’s offering out of pride.
By actually taking it, using it, becoming someone worth having taken a chance on — and then paying every bit of that kindness back tenfold, once we’re actually in a position to.
That’s not charity you’re stuck owing forever.
That’s an investment he’s making in us.
Might as well be worth investing in.” She looked at me for a long moment, something in her expression softening slightly.
“…Tenfold,” she repeated, like she was testing the shape of the promise.
“Tenfold,” I agreed.
“Minimum.” She almost smiled at that — not quite, but close enough that I counted it as a win — and went back to trying on armor while I sat there, half-exhausted, half-strangely content, watching two kids slowly starting to build something that actually resembled a life.