We grabbed our tickets and settled into a train compartment, Erza and I.
"So, the city of Oshibana..." I said once we stepped off at the station.
The place was smaller than Magnolia, but it had a cozy enough feel to it.
When we came out onto the main square, Erza asked, "Where's our client?"
"Mm..." I activated Sphere Vision, pulled out the cylinder again, and scanned the city's street signs. "Found the street we need."
"Excellent!"
"Yep," I confirmed. But instead of moving, I turned around.
Erza did the same, and just like me, she stared with flat skepticism at two men in their late twenties holding a newspaper between them by opposite ends, faces hidden behind it.
They were Fairy Tail mages who'd come here on the same train. I'd figured that out on the way after shamelessly reading their lips from a distance using Sphere Vision. Makarov had sent these two to keep an eye on us.
"Hope they won't get in the way too much." I turned and headed for our destination.
"Master cares about us. Don't be too hard on them," Erza said, falling into step behind me.
"Who knows. Maybe he's just checking whether we're spies from some dark guild. We do have a pretty grim past."
"If that were it, those two would be talking about it. And they weren't, right?"
"Nope. But what if!" A smile crossed my face to show I was joking. "Maybe they already figured out I can observe things from a distance, and they're just playing dumb?"
Sphere Vision gave me a fresh picture: the two of them tiptoeing after us in long, quiet strides, newspaper still held aloft.
"Oh, honestly..." Erza just sighed.
We soon found ourselves at a fabric merchant's shop. He was our client. Tall, lean, salt-and-pepper hair, bony fingers.
"Hm? Children?" He leaned over the counter to get a better look at us.
"We're from Fairy Tail. About the thief," I said, which earned me a deeply skeptical look.
"You? Wizards? Even a guild as... colorful as Fairy Tail wouldn't send children out on a job alone. You'd at least have an adult wizard chaperoning you."
"We have a couple, actually," Erza said.
"And where are they?" The merchant's irritation was visibly mounting. "Young people, you're either buying something or you're leaving."
"Guess a quick demo it is, then." I nodded, swept my hand along the counter, and our weapons materialized on it in a flash. Erza's telekinesis lifted the swords and an axe into the air while the mace landed in her hands. "Erza, be a dear and wreck the pl—"
"No! Don't wreck anything! I believe you!" the merchant immediately panicked. But once the weapons vanished, he settled down. "Your Fairy Tail colleagues... are known for their methods. You really are from them. The job about catching the thief..."
Surprisingly enough, our little demonstration got our otherwise reserved and perfectly civil client to cut straight to business.
So, Oshibana had itself a nasty thief. A real piece of work. Strolling in and out of merchant warehouses like he owned the place and walking off with only the best merchandise. The local guards, whom our client described as "perpetually drunk, irresponsible louts," had failed to catch him over two whole months. By that point the merchants were fed up enough to pool their money and hire a magic guild rather than keep banking on local law enforcement's heroism.
This fabric merchant was well-respected among his peers and had stepped up as their representative.
I nodded through it all, then moved on to squeezing actual details about the case out of him. The problem was that what we had amounted to rumor-grade intel. Stuff like "I think I saw someone sneaking around at night with a sack and a black mask with eyeholes" from assorted vagrants and other not-exactly-reliable types. The one real lead, if you could even call it that, was that some guests at a local inn had seen the innkeeper hauling crates to a wagon at night. That seemed suspicious because it was nighttime, the driver looked like an outsider since all the locals knew each other and every single one swore up and down they had nothing to do with the thefts, and the innkeeper's legitimate dealings only ever happened during the day. The whole thing was murky, and the innkeeper especially so. No solid evidence tying him to any fencing operation. But that's where we were pointed.
After the questioning, Erza and I stepped outside, ignored the two mages who'd ducked behind a nearby tree, and walked on.
"Useless guards and merchants hiring us for some common thief. This isn't quite what I pictured for our first mission," my sister said.
"What did you picture? It's exactly what the job posting said."
"That we'd be talking to the city mayor. Or at least the head of the guard. We're wizards. If ordinary people couldn't handle it, there should be something serious going on."
"Hah... Meeting the mayor over some petty thief. Now, if the guy were a wizard, sure. But as it stands, this is a job for a couple of halfway-decent guards."
"But they couldn't catch him."
"Exactly. Which is why something's off."
She turned to look at me.
"That's what I said."
"Yep." I smiled as Erza let out an annoyed exhale.
"Moving on... Is the inn far?"
"No. But that's not where we're going."
"Hm?"
A short while later, we were standing in front of the local police station.
"Remember the plan?" I checked with Erza. She sighed, for what had to be the fifth time, and nodded.
"Yes. You talk, I play bouncer. Again."
We went in and walked up to the front desk. Behind the counter sat a woman in her forties with the most aggressively bored expression I'd ever seen.
"What do you two want, shorties?" she said. "Lost a toy? Lost yourselves? Lost the will to live?"
I flicked the job request sheet onto the counter.
"We need all records on the theft case. And a meeting with your chief."
"Nah. Too much effort. Anything else?"
That answer killed me.
Erza and I exchanged a look. I cleared my throat with great deliberateness and put on my most serious face.
"When wizards take over an investigation, you are required to hand over all relevant information. Do you have something to hide, ma'am? Collusion? Want to go down as an accessory?"
In response, the woman slowly leaned back and rolled her eyes. Then her finger pointed down the corridor.
"Go to the end, take the stairs on your right. Walk the next corridor and turn left. There's the chief's office. He's got the archive key. Work it out with him. I'm on lunch."
She propped up a little sign, stood up, and shuffled away with the unhurried conviction of someone going absolutely nowhere fast.
"Government workers," I explained to Erza with a shrug.
Then we walked on toward the indicated office.
We passed a couple of guards along the way. The first couldn't be bothered to notice us. The second was drunk, which doubled his couldn't-be-bothered.
We found the door marked "Bruno Halde" along with his title.
We knocked, and a reedy voice squeaked back, "Who the hell is it?! What are you waiting for?! Get in here! My time is valuable!"
We opened the door. An office of imposing mahogany furniture greeted us. Ornate, expensive, crowned by a grand but narrow leather chair. Wedged into that chair sat a large, sweating man with blond hair who clearly was suffering in furniture several sizes too small for him.
"Children?! Who let you in here?! I'm a busy man! Get out!"
My gaze drifted from his shouting face down to the crossword puzzle on his desk. My expression soured.
"You'd do well to be polite," I said, stepping inside. Erza slipped in behind me. "We're from Fairy Tail."
"Fairy Tail?! You're those vandals?!"
"Shut your mouth and get to work, and we won't break anything."
My fairly blunt rudeness, offered in kind for his, made the man breathe harder and sweat even more. The office already had a smell problem, and this wasn't helping my composure.
"How... How dare you?! Do you know who I am?! I'll have you—"
His grating squeaky voice dug into my ears like nails, and my jaw tightened.
For a moment the office went still, and then it was as if the light itself had gone red.
Killing intent rolled out of me, and with it I Requipped a sword.
"Quiet!!!" I roared, and my blade drove hard into the desk, splitting the space directly between Bruno's legs. "You either start cooperating, or Oshibana will need a new chief of the guard! Am I making myself clear?!"
The man's eyes went wide. He nodded rapidly.
"Lian," Erza's hand rested on my shoulder, worried.
"Haa... I'm calm, sis. Just threatening the man with violence."
"That's not really normal, is it?"
"Depends on the context. And I'm not actually going to kill him. Just scaring him. You get it?"
"Oh. Got it. Though I thought intimidation was my department..."
"In this particular case, I decided I'd do a better job."
Bruno, watching this version of me and having this calm little conversation, kept looking back and forth between us with no idea what he was supposed to be feeling.
"So you're not going to kill me?!" he exclaimed.
But at that, a second sword materialized in my hand in a flash, and a moment later it was buried in the arm of Bruno's chair, the blade uncomfortably close to his neck.
"No. But I will make the next few hours very unpleasant for you if you keep wasting our time."
Erza, in that moment, was genuinely trying to decide whether I meant it or was putting on a show.
The chief of the guard, finally reading the room, asked me to move the blade from his neck and led us to the archive.
"It's in here," he said in a deep baritone.
The key turned in the lock, but rather than follow him into the room, Erza and I stopped and stared at Bruno.
"Hold on, your voice is actually normal? Was the chair just squeezing everything?" I asked.
"Yes... I'm very fond of it," he said, lowering his head sadly, presumably thinking about the damage I'd done to his furniture.
A moment later we were holding a thin folder with about ten sheets inside.
"That's everything. Now please leave."
He said it while sweating, if anything, even more than before.
I ignored the request and started going through the case. Technically I could have used Sphere Vision, spent half an hour combing through documents, and found everything myself. But why bother when there's a faster route? Besides, I'd have had to talk to the chief regardless. My suspicions were already proving correct.
"The case is a plant," I concluded, snapped the folder shut, and tossed it aside.
"Wh-what do you mean?! I reviewed every document personally, and I would have noticed any discrepancies!"
Bruno's eyes started darting around.
Erza quietly moved behind him. An axe appeared in her hand, and she readied the flat of the head.
"Never once caught the thief? Loads of attempts by different guards, but no name, no description, not even a decent lead. And no traces of magic found, either. Even if your people were completely incompetent, they should have turned up way more than this. Which means a file this empty can only happen one way: someone with real authority cleaned house on the entire investigation."
My eyes locked on Bruno, making it clear exactly who I had in mind. The man, cornered and tense, had one of his deeper animal instincts kick in. Specifically: under threat, attack.
He swung. A big, heavy fist driving hard at my face. His massive hand hit my small palm. I barely moved.
And then:
"Aaah!" Bruno cried out as Erza's axe caught him across the shoulder with the flat.
The shout came with a crack. Broken arm.
For Erza herself it barely registered as a big moment. She'd been through too much for that, and frankly, someone taking a swing at me had not gone over well with her at all. By the look on her face, she had zero regrets about misjudging her own strength.
"That was a mistake," I told the chief of the guard. "If you'd cooperated, you might've just gotten arrested. At least you'd be in one piece."
"What's going on in here?" a guard finally poked his head in at the noise. He swept a thoroughly indifferent look over his chief sprawled on the floor, over me standing there calmly, over the girl holding the axe, and then turned to leave. "I'll leave you to it."
"Hold it!" I called. The guard stopped and turned back with a pained expression. "Is everyone here on something?! Your chief's getting beaten up. What were you about to do?"
"Hmm... I'd have gone for a smoke. Then something to eat. Then maybe another smoke. Maybe a little walk around town. And then the shift ends and I head home," he recited, shrugging.
"Right... I'm starting to wonder if the report is even faked. Do you have any functional people working here?"
"Active ones, you mean? Sure, some. About a third of us are young still, put in the effort for whatever reason. But look, kid, the pay is bad and crime's almost nonexistent. Why kill yourself over it?"
"So the case really is dirty." I turned back to the groaning figure on the floor. "Talk. Why are you covering for the thief? Family? Blackmail? Payoff?"
"I... I wasn't covering for anyone..." Bruno whimpered.
"Erza, hand me the axe. I'll break his other—"
"N-no! Don't! Fox! He's my cousin!"
"Family, then." I nodded and looked back at the guard still hovering in the doorway. "You heard all of that? Your boss was covering for a criminal. Go get some people. They'll need to take him in."
"Tch," the guard muttered, heading off reluctantly to do what he was told.
I crouched down next to the man.
"Alright, tell me where your cousin is. Either way, he's getting caught. But cooperating with the investigation might look good in front of the judge and get your sentence trimmed. You know how this works."
The now apparently former chief of the guard turned his head toward me with some effort. His eyes wrestled with it for a moment, then he started talking.
With the information in hand, Erza and I walked out of the station, ignored two bushes that looked suspiciously like people stuffed with branches, and headed out with three guards to pay a visit to Bruno's cousin. Fox himself was home and got tied up fast. In his house, specifically in the basement, we found not only the stolen goods he hadn't yet moved through the fencing chain, but also a black eye mask and a pair of blue gloves with matching boots. All of that, plus the thief's name, kept scratching at something in the back of my head. But the case had been pretty loaded, and I never quite landed on what it was.
After Fox's place and a follow-up interrogation, we dropped in on the innkeeper, who confessed immediately once we told him who the thief was and reminded him that his own sentence would be considerably longer if he didn't show some good judgment.
The whole thing set off a real uproar around town. Once everyone was in custody, a short grandmother with a kind face came our way. She had white hair and right now looked anything but calm.
"The Fairy Tail wizards? That's you?" She came up to us, and Erza and I nodded. "Oh, somehow I'm not surprised... All that commotion."
"Everything was proportional. It was a serious situation. I'm—"
I introduced myself and Erza, which drew a sharp exhale from the old woman.
"Where are my manners, I'm so frazzled! Alma Richter, mayor of Oshibana."
"Oh..." Erza's eyes went wide. She'd been wanting to meet the mayor, after all.
"A pleasure. I assume you'll need us to stay for witness statements—"
"No! Absolutely not!" the old woman grew even more animated. Erza and I exchanged a glance.
"You don't need our testimony?" Erza asked. "Attendance at trial?"
"Oh, there's no need to trouble yourselves, distinguished Fairy Tail wizards..." She was trying to get rid of us, I realized.
Apparently my guild's reputation was even worse than I'd thought. Otherwise, why would they be this eager to hustle us out of town before we, I don't know, accidentally burned the place down?
But this situation... it was murky water, and I could smell blood in it. We had an opening to squeeze out a little extra, and I was not about to let it go.
"In that case, we'll need to collect payment from our client. And... this may not look great, but we did the city a considerable service by exposing a criminal at the very top of its law enforcement. It might be appropriate, in return, to expect some additional compensation. We're prepared to wait at a hotel, of course..."
"No! That is, yes! Everything will be handled within the hour! You can go buy your train tickets right now."
And so Erza and I went to our client, picked up train tickets along the way, and swung by the mayor's office. They pinned a little medal on us, handed over a check with what sounded like a big number but was actually a pretty symbolic five hundred thousand jewels, and then the three of us posed for a photo for the local paper.
"Safe travels," the old woman waved, and the town hall doors swung shut in our faces.
"That didn't quite go the way I expected. I imagined it differently," Erza said.
"We just skipped ahead. Instead of working clue by clue, we jumped straight to the main culprit. Which was obvious enough, honestly." I shrugged.
"Mhm, I see. But in the books I've read, things always went step by step. Those writers, they even lied about that." She balled her fist at the fact that reality rarely matches how it's depicted.
We walked on a few meters down the path, and then, like they'd been shot out of cannons, or rather out of a bush, two mages burst out right in front of us.
The first, Wakaba, had brown hair swept up in an Elvis-style pompadour, glasses, and a pipe in his mouth. The second, Macao, had a spiky blue crew cut with a little stubble at the mustache and goatee.
"Didn't see that coming, did you, shorties?!" Macao announced. "We've been watching over you this whole time!"
"We noticed you a while ago," Erza said. Not cruelly, just matter-of-factly.
"Back in Magnolia. Your surveillance and stealth skills are terrible," I finished them off.
"Whaaat?!" they said in unison.
"Seriously?!" Wakaba confirmed.
"Yes," I said. "Although, in fairness, no one around you was really paying attention. Maybe we're just observant..."
Seeing how genuinely crushed they were, I dialed it back a little. Though the reason bystanders had ignored them was probably that this town had all kinds of characters, and people had seen stranger things. Two guys pretending to be bushes? At least they weren't torching the streets, so everything was fine.
"Ahem! Regardless," Macao squared his shoulders with great ceremony. "Congratulations on completing your first mission, shorties! Clean work all around! And you even got a bonus from the mayor! Master is going to be proud of you!"
"This calls for a celebration!" Wakaba puffed his pipe, and the smoke shaped itself into two champagne bottles that clinked together, then burst open in a spray of foam.
"We have a train to catch," Erza reminded them.
"Have fun celebrating," I wished them, and Erza and I turned and walked off.
"Hey, wait for us! We'll celebrate at the guild!" Macao called, and so all four of us set off together.
Soon we were on the train.
"Riding without a ticket isn't right," Erza said pointedly, sitting next to me, aiming her disapproval at two very specific mages.
"Relax, kid. If you don't get caught, it's fair game," said Wakaba, still smoking his pipe. Which, for the record, was also not allowed on the train.
In response, Erza stared at him with profound displeasure. Her sense of justice ran deep.
And that was how our first mission ended. We had some money now. Not a fortune, but enough to cover the basics: housing, food, clothes, and a bit of time to actually train our magic. We did join a guild of wizards, didn't we? Then we had some work to do.
"Excuse me, young man! Smoking is prohibited in here! You're stinking up the whole car!" A train attendant appeared at our compartment. "And these seats... I don't remember them being reserved. Tickets, please."
"Uh-oh, busted..." Macao announced.
Wakaba, though, didn't miss a beat.
"Come on, sweetheart... let's not sweat the small stuff. You free? How about a date?"
The attendant gave him a flat, measured look, then let her gaze travel slowly down to his hand. Specifically the one with the wedding ring on it.
All I could do was press my fingers to the bridge of my nose. It was going to be a long ride home.