Dark Magician Girl stepped up beside Chase and gave the unfolded commission form a quick once-over with her wide eyes.
She didn’t answer right away.
After a moment’s thought, she turned instead to look at Mira, standing next to her.
“This looks pretty good, Mira.
Will you come with me?
I want some nice photos with you in them.” Beyond her own obvious appeal, a good part of why Dark Magician Girl had become a popular magazine model in the first place came down to Mira, her actual senior in the business, putting in a good word for her early on.
She’d always wanted to appear in a magazine spread alongside Mira, gentle as she was, but the timing had never quite worked out.
Then Chase had taken the ten-year mission, left the guild with his deck, and set off for the continent of Guiltina, and Dark Magician Girl’s little wish had gotten shelved indefinitely.
Now that a real opportunity had finally shown up, she wasn’t about to let it slip away.
Mira tilted her head, brow furrowing, clearly troubled.
“But the guild’s been really busy lately, and I haven’t actually gotten a request from Sorcerer Weekly myself…” “Does that matter?
The guild has a master.
It’ll be fine!” Dark Magician Girl took the commission form right out of Chase’s hand as she said it.
“And if Sorcerer Weekly has a problem with it, I’m not going at all!” “It’s really because Chase came back that things got this complicated…” Mira shot him a resentful look.
She genuinely wanted to go on the commission, wanted the photoshoot with Dark Magician Girl too, but.
Never mind the trouble of helping Master deal with the fallout from Chase leveling half a city.
She also had a backlog of old, unresolved cases to get ahead of, ones that had piled up during his absence, precisely so they wouldn’t hand the Council anything more to work with.
On top of that, there were the complaint letters still trickling in, every one of them needing a response.
Chase caught the look, felt an immediate stab of guilt, and turned his head away like he hadn’t heard a thing.
Dark Magician Girl went quiet, stunned, the light in her eyes dimming fast.
She could talk her way around most people, but the actual culprit here was her own idiot master, and there wasn’t much to be done about that.
“If we really squeeze it in, it’s not impossible!” Mira caught sight of Dark Magician Girl’s lips pressing together like she might actually cry, and softened instantly, hurrying over to take her hand.
“Really?” Dark Magician Girl’s whole mood lifted.
“Yes!” Mira nodded, emphatic.
My little sister’s happiness matters more.
If the numbers don’t add up, I’ll just pull an all-nighter when I get back.
Chase saw straight through her in an instant, let out a quiet sigh, and stepped between the two of them.
Dealing with paperwork and guild admin was, if he was honest, more exhausting to him than squaring off with Ignia had been.
But as a man, and as the actual cause of this whole mess, it wouldn’t have been right to just stand back and do nothing.
After a brief moment to steel himself, Chase ran a hand back through his hair, working it into something suitably rakish, and said, with total confidence, “Mira, go ahead without worrying about it.
I’ve got your work covered while you’re out.” Mira blinked, surprised, and gave him a slow, thorough once-over.
Whatever she was thinking, it showed on her face as absolute certainty.
The odds of Chase actually handling this competently are about the same as Natsu not getting seasick on a boat.
Just as Chase was gearing up to make a real impression, something invisible seemed to knock the wind clean out of him, and he dropped to his knees, hands braced on the floor, looking genuinely wounded.
“A real man!
This is where I step in!” A booming voice rang out, and Elfman strode in, wooden clogs clacking against the floor.
He raised both arms high, radiating pure masculine determination.
“Mira!
Leave all the work to me!” “In a certain sense, Elfman, you’re not that different from Chase,” Mira said, gentle about it.
Elfman went silent, stunned, and instinctively dropped his hands to the floor right alongside Chase.
“I believe I heard two pretty, adorable girls were in some kind of trouble.” Following Elfman, someone else appeared.
Loke strode up in front of Mira and Dark Magician Girl and, with a flourish, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with one finger.
“How could anyone hand such tedious, boring clerical work to two idiots?
Mira, I’ll take your job for you.” Loke’s tone was perfectly serious.
“You just go on a date with me later.
Bring Dark Magician Girl too.” Way to take advantage of someone else’s bad luck!
If Lucy had been there, she’d have shouted exactly that, at the top of her lungs.
But Mira wasn’t Lucy.
Just as she opened her mouth to politely turn him down, a loud crash sounded from outside the door.
A second later, a door panel that had just been kicked clean off its hinges arced through the air in a beautiful parabola and struck Loke square in the forehead.
Struck by that particular stroke of misfortune, Loke coughed up a mouthful of blood and went flying several meters before slamming hard into the bar.
“Is that bastard Chase here?!” Natsu stormed into the guild radiating pure aggression, seemingly oblivious to everyone else in the room.
Behind him, Happy poked his head out, a literal bird’s nest perched on top of his own head.
Why the bird’s nest?
Because the man and the cat Chase had launched clear across the sky the night before had ended up spending the whole night out in the forest beyond town.
“Damn it, ambushing me in front of two beautiful girls, Natsu?!
You planned this, didn’t you?!” Loke shot up from the wreckage of the bar, and the moment he registered who’d hit him, his hand flew to the ring on his finger.
A magic circle flared to life, firing a beam of golden light straight at Natsu.
Natsu reacted fast, throwing his arm up and knocking the beam off course a split second before it hit.
The redirected light shot across the room and landed square on the wine barrel Cana was holding over her head.
The barrel shattered, drenching her in wine.
Cana wasn’t about to let that slide.
She grabbed the nearest stool and hurled it straight at Natsu.
Natsu answered with a Fire Dragon’s Fist, smashing the stool to splinters, sending wood and sparks flying across the hall.
That was all it took.
Guild members caught in the blast radius slammed fists on tables and dove into the fight, shouting the whole time.
The whole guild erupted into exactly the kind of chaos everyone seemed to enjoy.
“These brats!
Not one moment of peace, ever!” Makarov finally couldn’t take it anymore, came storming down from the second floor, and dealt with everyone personally, one by one, until the chaos finally settled.
Mira filled him in on the whole story.
“I see.
Well, isn’t that simple.” Makarov stood up on the wreckage of the bar counter, his gaze sweeping the bruised, battered crowd before landing on Loke, a sizable bump already rising on his forehead.
“Loke.
While Mira’s off doing this commission with Dark Magician Girl, you’re covering her work.” Dark Magician Girl might technically be Chase’s card monster, but as far as Makarov was concerned, she was just another one of his kids, and he was more than happy to grant her this small wish.
Loke looked wounded by the whole idea.
Just as he opened his mouth to protest, Makarov’s tense expression cracked into something sly and more than a little sinister.
“Wasn’t your whole condition that you wanted to date Mira and Dark Magician Girl?” “Well, since the two of them are tied up with a photoshoot for Sorcerer Weekly, Mira’s brother and Dark Magician Girl’s owner will just have to stand in for them.” Loke’s eyes went wide, like he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.
A date.
With those two.
Chase and Elfman?!
Before he could get a single word of protest out, two thick, muscular arms shot out from either side and locked around him.
Elfman, ever the picture of manly self-sacrifice, seemed genuinely fine with it.
Throwing away his own dignity for his sister’s sake was practically his whole personality.
Chase was a different story.
He leaned in even closer, breathing hot air right against Loke’s ear.
“Alright.
Let’s start our date, Loke.” “What the hell are you even saying?!
Who in their right mind wants to date a monster like you?!” Pinned between the two of them, Loke’s composure shattered completely, goosebumps rising across every inch of him.
He wrenched himself free of those two miserable, muscular arms and scrambled away as fast as he could manage.
“Don’t forget your promise, Loke,” Chase called after him, cheerful about it.
Loke ran even faster.