We showed up at the guild around noon, once everyone had at least somewhat recovered from the previous night's drinking, and Erza and I barged into Makarov's office.
"What do you two want?" The old man was nursing his hangover, pressing a cold jar of pickles to his forehead.
"Guild business. One small favor and one piece of bad news," I said, all business.
"Oh... Look at Mr. Serious. Well, go on then, out with it," the old man said, took a swig of pickle brine, and settled in to listen.
First, I asked which missions were available to us. He told us there was a job board on the first floor for all mages. Pick whatever you want, bring it to Makarov, and he'd decide whether the one taking the job could actually handle it. He also mentioned there was a separate board upstairs with harder missions, but those were strictly for S-class mages, and we had no business going anywhere near them yet.
Then I asked if the guild kept an armory of some kind, somewhere we could rent weapons for Erza and me. The old man scratched his mustache and said no, nothing like that. But once he heard what our abilities were, he said he'd vouch for us with a blacksmith he knew so we could get our gear. We'd just have to pay for it later.
After that, I moved on to the favor.
"Can you treat something like this?" I pulled down the top of my shirt and showed Makarov my back. He choked on his pickle.
"Kgh-kgh! What kind of creature did this to you..." The sight sobered him up completely.
"A person, actually. One particular mage. But let's not speak ill of the dead. The bad news is something else..."
"Grandpa Rob... He's the one who told us about Fairy Tail," Erza said quietly, staring at the floor.
"Rob?!" Makarov's eyes went wide. He clearly recognized the name. "He's alive?!"
"He... He died... Protecting me..." Tears welled up in Erza's eyes.
I stepped over and put an arm around her.
"We can't share the details, I'm afraid. There are serious reasons for that."
The guild master took off his cap and let out a heavy sigh.
"Don't blame yourself, girl." After a few seconds he looked up at Erza. "I'm certain he died happy, knowing what he was able to do. No one here will hold it against you."
After a little more silence, the old man suggested we not dwell on it.
"We have a healer. Come on. She doesn't live far."
And just like that, we followed Makarov.
The healer lived in the forest east of Magnolia, and we were heading toward one enormous tree. According to Makarov, it had doors and windows built right into it. In other words, a treehouse.
"Our healer's name is Porlyusica. She's an S-class mage, and we used to be on the same team a long time ago," the old man said as we walked. "She's extraordinarily good at what she does, but she's also... well. A misanthrope."
He stopped and looked at us.
"Meaning she hates people, right. Feel free to just say it, we can handle it," I said.
Erza was in a gloomy mood, so she just gave a quiet nod.
"Which is why she lives alone in the woods. So she doesn't have to see anyone," I continued, voicing the obvious.
"Sharp kids. I'll have to introduce you to Levy. She's a bit younger than you, but just as bright." Makarov looked pleasantly surprised.
We kept walking, and before long we were standing in front of the rather well-appointed door of the treehouse. An old woman stepped out a moment later. Pink hair twisted up in a bun, sharp red eyes, red cloak with a tall collar that jutted up like a row of fangs. And her expression... She looked at us like we owed her money and hadn't paid up in over a year. Deeply, profoundly displeased.
"What do you want, you old stump?" she addressed Makarov warmly. "You know I don't like being interrupted. These children... If they walked here on their own two feet, they're healthy enough. Get lost."
"Porlyusica, it's actually more complicated than that. Kid, show her." The old man turned to me.
I noted that I was standing in front of someone who would have little patience for lengthy pleasantries, so I gave a short introduction, waited for my equally brief sister to do the same, then turned around and showed my back.
"Well. That's a problem," the old woman said, leaning in to study the damage. "But fixable. What about you?"
She turned to Erza.
"My sister came along for moral support. We couldn't exactly leave her behind," I said, turning back with my most innocent face. The old woman responded with a grunt.
"Fine. Follow me."
Stepping inside the treehouse, I noticed that Porlyusica lived quite sparingly. No luxury, just functional furniture: a bed, a worktable covered in vials, potions, and various alchemical tools, crates and barrels, and in designated spots, a fair number of mushrooms and plants growing exactly where they'd been planted. The most interesting thing to me, by far, was a large cabinet packed full of books on herbology, artificing, and medicine.
My eyes lit up the moment I saw it.
The old woman went to her table and started rummaging through a drawer. She pulled out some kind of ointment, walked over, and handed it to me.
"Here. Morning and night. And eat more skin, pork rinds, whatever you can get, so it heals faster. Understood?"
"Yep."
As a doctor in my past life, it was obvious to me that the body needed resources to repair itself. And equally obvious that pork skin, for instance, would have exactly what was needed to rebuild my own.
What did surprise everyone was when I scooped a small amount of the ointment onto my finger, rubbed it across my lips, and touched it with my tongue.
"Hey! That is NOT for internal use!" Porlyusica snapped.
"Let's see... The ointment is built on cold-pressed silverleaf sap, cold-pressed to preserve the essential oils, with grated root of quiet mandrake, clearly simmered in a double boiler until just caramelized, and a pinch of sleepy poppy pollen, deactivated through alcohol sublimation to strip the toxin while keeping the regenerative effect... I can taste a binding base of mountain boar fat, filtered through charcoal, and a faint but sharp note of crushed cave crab shell, ground by hand in a granite mortar. Anything else would have lost that specific mineral aftertaste, the one that helps knit tissue back together... And there are about five more ingredients I can't identify. Refined work, Master Porlyusica."
Having flashed my knowledge, I laid on the flattery. What I got in return was the sight of a stunned Makarov and a thoroughly baffled old woman.
"You... you actually know medicinal alchemy?" She said it like she couldn't quite believe the words were coming out of her own mouth.
"Just a little. Read a few books here, sampled a few herbs and other ingredients there. I can also enhance my sense of smell and taste. That's about it," I said, blinking at her innocently, following the plan I'd just worked out in my head.
"Finally, someone in this guild of simpletons who understands that magic exists for something other than punching people in the face."
"Right... And, speaking of which..." I moved toward the climax of my little performance of showing off and careful flattery. "Would you perhaps lend me that volume on basic medicine? I know our company might not be exactly welcome here. But if we could handle minor things like what happened to my back ourselves, we'd at least have reason to bother you less often."
"Please," Erza chimed in on instinct, seeing me beg, pulling off a perfectly pitiful face.
Silence settled in. The two of us got a very unfriendly stare. Then Porlyusica snorted.
"No need for the theatrics." She turned, walked to the shelf, and a moment later pressed the book into my hands. "Take it. Honestly, I don't mind the company of sensible people, provided they have at least a gram of brain to their name," she said, then narrowed her eyes at me. "One more thing. You damage that book, I'll break your legs. Now get out."
Holding the source of knowledge with appropriate reverence, I gave a respectful nod, then turned around and got out of there as fast as was polite. Erza, clutching my ointment, followed on instinct.
"Go on without me," Makarov just barely managed to say before the door clicked shut behind us.
A smile spread across my face.
"But she didn't mind talking..." Erza said, puzzled that we'd been kicked out, glancing back at the door.
"Introvert," I shrugged. "Social interaction in measured doses, and only with the right people. We're not close to her the way Makarov is, so she's not going to put up with us any longer than that."
"Hmm... Yeah, I think I read something about that," my sister murmured thoughtfully.
Then we headed home to our apartment, where I settled in with the book.
As a doctor in my past life, with a massive base of medical knowledge already in my head, medicine in this world came easier to me than almost anything else. So many of the underlying principles were ones I already understood, which meant studying mostly came down to mapping my existing knowledge onto local nuances and particularities. Which is why, alongside spatial magic, medicine was going to be my second calling.
About an hour later, we were back at the guild. After a trip with Makarov to the blacksmith's, I picked out a pair of swords while Erza chose three weapons: a sword, an axe, and an iron mace. The old man, knowing the nature of our magical abilities, strongly insisted we both learn one moderately simple spell: Requip.
After that, we stopped by the guild library and met Levy, a blue-haired girl who practically lived in there. Once we'd gone through the book describing the spell the old man had mentioned, Erza and I headed out to the guild's backyard to practice what we'd just learned.
"Come on..." Tongue caught between her teeth, Erza stared at the hovering mace, trying to make it disappear into her spatial storage.
That was the whole idea behind Requip: store objects in a pocket dimension, pull them back out when you need them.
My approach was different. Cold and methodical. I slowly shaped the properties the book described into my magic, trying to shift the sword in front of me into storage. I was almost there when a voice came from nearby.
"Um, ahem." Gray cleared his throat as he walked up.
This time, miraculously, he was only missing his shoes. Shorts and a shirt, that was it.
The mace flickering in Erza's hands, still refusing to vanish, dropped to the ground. A vein bulged on her forehead.
"What do you want?!" She spun toward Gray. "Want to get punched in the face again?"
I wasn't distracted. I finished the spell, the sword disappeared into my spatial pocket, then I stood up and walked over to my sister to get a look at this guy.
"I... wanted to apologize." Gray was watching Erza with noticeably more caution now. He was tense around me, too. "I was out of line. That's it."
"Hm," I said. "Maybe you're not a total lost cause."
Genuinely surprised, actually. In my book, the kid was showing a pretty remarkable amount of good sense. Or maybe someone had pulled him aside and told him to smooth things over before he got punched in the face again. Either way, didn't really matter.
"Also. Last time I tried to use magic, but you knocked me out before I could. Could we spar with magic this time?" Gray asked.
"Last time I was using magic too. Just for physical enhancement. Either way, my sister and I are busy right now, and for the foreseeable future. No money, need to complete a job. You get it."
"Could I come with you, then?"
Erza and I glanced at each other at exactly the same moment.
"No," came our answer in unison.
The kid had acted like a jerk, so it'd be a while before we were on good terms with him. Some things leave a mark.
"Got it. Good luck, then," he said, fairly neutral, and it seemed genuine, before he walked away.
"He's almost like a person now," Erza observed.
"That's what a punch in the face does! Works like a vaccine for bad manners." I cracked a grin and smacked my fist into my palm.
"Hmm..." My sister went quiet and thought hard, and then something seemed to click, like a cultivator hitting a breakthrough. She may have grasped something fundamental today, something that was going to become a core part of who she was.
On that note, we went back to training. I kept sending things in and out of my spatial pocket while Erza kept trying to get the spell to work even once.
"Come on, sis! You've got this, I know it," I cheered her on an hour later as she stood there, out of breath.
"Ha... Ha... HA-A-A-A-A!!!" The mace in her hands flickered and still didn't disappear. "Oh, damn it!"
Erza hoisted it over her head and slammed it into the ground. The earth cracked in every direction for a meter.
The shockwave jolted me off my feet.
"That's some serious power."
"Ha... Yeah."
"Okay, Erza. Here's the deal. If you get it on the next try, we go straight to the bakery and get your favorite cake."
Her eyes lit up. She clenched her teeth, filled with total determination, and raised the mace.
"For the CA-A-A-KE!!!" she roared, and the weapon shimmered in her hands and vanished. A brief silence. "...IT WORKED!!!"
"Ha-ha-ha! There you go!" I walked over to pull her into a hug. Then had to use telekinesis real quick to catch the fairly heavy mace that had just materialized directly above my head. "Watch it."
I set it down on the ground.
"Oh, hehe, sorry," she scratched the back of her head sheepishly, then accepted the hug.
Well. No harm done. I was genuinely happy for her. And glad that everything I'd done watching over her in Tower R had paid off, that she hadn't lost her ability to feel real joy.
"I think I understand how it works now," Erza said, and a moment later grabbed the axe lying nearby. With a bit of effort, she managed to send that one into her pocket dimension too.
True masters of Requip can equip and unequip their gear at lightning speed, even mid-battle, and not just weapons but full armor and even clothing. We were a long way from that. For Erza, this technique had come much harder than body enhancement or telekinesis. Mostly from unfamiliarity. The mental approach required was different from anything she'd done before, and what exactly she was supposed to be interacting with wasn't immediately obvious.
Once I'd loaded our weapons into my spatial pocket, not a particularly big one admittedly, and Erza was left with just the axe, we headed for the bakery.
Except...
"Heads up." Thanks to my instincts and Sphere Vision, I caught the flat of the axe just as it materialized above my head.
"Oh! I really didn't mean to!"
"Ugh..." Her startled voice was met with a heavy sigh from me. "But you were thinking about how not to let that happen?"
"Yeah..."
Magic, as it turns out, has a mind of its own sometimes.
Oh well. Rome wasn't built in a day.
We made our way to the bakery and ordered our favorite sweets like proper people.
Then we headed back to the guild. Standing before the job board, we were faced with dozens of flyers, missions of every conceivable difficulty level.
"Teaching at a magic school for children, thirty thousand jewels. Crystal mining, forty thousand. Hunting a bear that's been raiding farms, sixty. Magic performance, one hundred..." I muttered to myself, going through the listings.
"What about this one?" Erza pointed at a flyer.
"Hunt the Forest Vulcans, five hundred thousand... No, sis. Those talking apes are genuinely dangerous. Way too risky for us right now."
"Mm," she groaned, dissatisfied, but didn't argue.
"This one looks solid." I picked up a flyer and held it out to her.
"Catch a thief?"
"Yep. It's in Oshibana, so basically right next door. And for a hundred and sixty thousand, all we have to do is catch one ordinary person."
"Hmm... This job has future detective written all over it."
"We taking it?"
"Yeah!"
Before long we were standing in front of Makarov, wearing our most confident expressions, while he looked back at us with open skepticism.
"Kids. This might look like a simple mission, but it takes both brains and muscle. Maybe you'd be better off gathering some medicinal flowers in the forest? Slower money, but a lot safer."
"We can handle it," I said, keeping my composure.
"That so?" The old man stroked his mustache.
"Yes," said Erza.
"Hmm. You've shown you're fairly smart, so fine, go ahead. But take it seriously! Don't bring shame on the guild!"
"Sir, yes, sir!" Erza snapped to attention like a little soldier. I found that endearing and added my own contribution:
"Yep! The criminal's house will be burned to the ground, we'll beat him senseless, and haul him to the nearest precinct. And we'll punch the cops too, just in case."
"Hey! That is NOT what I meant! You've been listening to how other people run their missions, haven't you?! Well, let me tell you, they set an example alright, but only of what NOT to do! Don't be like them!"
My sister and I exchanged a glance and nodded carefully.
"..." Makarov said nothing to that, though you could tell he was holding back another comment or two.
In any case, at that moment my impish expression gave way to total innocence.
"One more thing, Master..."
"What?" The old man immediately sensed something was coming.
"Could you lend us a little money? We're short for the train tickets..."
Erza's ears went pink with embarrassment. Our budget would've been fine not long ago, but she'd had such a pitiful look on her face at the bakery that we ended up with more cakes than planned. And then I hadn't been able to help myself either, and the total climbed a little more...
"Ah, phew, is that all?" Makarov waved it off. "Of course. Debt is something of a family tradition around here..."
And so, with his blessing to do everything properly and a reminder to pay him back, Erza and I set off for the train station. Time for our first mission as mages of Fairy Tail.