Ina froze.
“Damn pirate, get ready to die!” Bob had already locked onto the pirate captain and hauled back on the trigger.
The bullet, wrapped in magic, streaked out and closed the distance in the blink of an eye.
But just as it was about to punch through the captain’s skull, a warped patch of green light bloomed in the air in front of him.
The bullet tore straight into the distortion and vanished, gone in a way that felt deeply, bizarrely wrong.
Chase’s pupils contracted, and he set his pastries down abruptly, looking at the pirate captain with real surprise now.
If I remember right, that magic is…
“What?
How is that possible?!
What just happened?!” Bob had gone pale, the sniper rifle slipping from his hands and clattering to the deck.
“A cute little trick, but with magic that weak, where’d you get the nerve to try it on me?” The pirate captain chuckled and rose slowly to his feet, the skull necklace at his throat clicking softly together, a sound with something almost hungry in it.
He stepped to the bow of the ship, raised one blackened arm, and grinned wide.
“Boys!
Let’s start today’s hunt!” The crew answered with a chorus of gleeful, chilling laughter.
A moment later, magic circles bloomed across the pirate ship’s deck, one after another, and the pirates began rising into the air on levitation magic, lifting off like a swarm of wasps.
Laughing, they spread out to surround the stranded merchant ship, dead in the water and going nowhere.
This, clearly, was the whole source of their confidence out here on the open sea.
Any guard or mage stuck fighting from a fixed deck, without the ability to maneuver in open air, was nothing but a stationary target waiting to be picked apart.
One by one, magic circles lit up across the pirates’ palms, a scatter of colored light bright enough to outshine the last of the setting sun, all of it converging on the merchant ship from every angle at once.
Danger hung thick in the air, impossible to miss.
“Bob!
Send me everything you’ve got left!
We cannot let them touch Mr.
Lambert or Chase!” Ina took a hard breath, forced down the fear rising in her chest, and sprinted to Bob’s side.
Bob was still staring blankly, shell-shocked by the sight of his own bullet vanishing into nothing.
Ina grabbed his shoulder and shook him, hard, until he snapped back and channeled the last of his magic over to her.
With his power layered onto her own, Ina pressed both hands flat against the deck and shouted with everything she had.
“Barrier Reinforcement!” A magic circle bloomed beneath her in soft red patterns, and a wall of light spread outward from where she knelt, expanding until it wrapped the entire ship.
Almost in the same instant, the pirates unleashed their magic, one attack after another.
Fire, lightning, howling wind, all of it slammed into the barrier at once, the shockwaves tearing loose the neatly stacked cargo containers and sending fruit scattering across the deck.
The whole ship shuddered under the impact, like it might come apart at the seams any second.
“Damn it, hold on, just hold on!
My magic—” Blood began welling up along Ina’s arms and at the corners of her mouth, the strain of it visibly tearing into her.
Even so, she gritted her teeth and held on.
She could see Captain Lambert and his crew, huddled together in the cabin, shaking.
These people are what this commission is for.
I can’t give up on them.
Not even if it costs me my life.
“We are mages of Black Pheasant Legs!” Ina shouted up at the sky.
Unfortunately, her guild wasn’t Fairy Tail.
There was no dramatic swell of music to underscore the moment.
Just a single, crisp snap.
The barrier shattered outright, swallowing Ina’s scream and scattering into a thousand drifting points of light.
The merchant ship, its shield gone, lay completely exposed to the pirates now.
Strangely, they didn’t press the attack.
Instead, as if sparing the three of them on purpose, the pirates simply hung there in the air, laughing.
Like this was just routine for them by now.
“Heh heh, little girl, go on, show us whatever else you’ve got!” “Huh, so these are the Fairy Tail mages?
Weaker than I expected.
What a letdown.” “That red-haired one’s got a decent figure on her, though.
Don’t any of you touch her.
I’ve already called dibs.” Hovering there, certain of their own victory, the pirates traded comments freely, no restraint at all.
Ina, badly hurt and half-buried in wreckage, struggled to lift her head, confusion cutting through the pain.
What were they just talking about?
Where does Fairy Tail come into this?
I’m a Black Pheasant Legs mage!
Off in his corner, under the parasol, Chase set down his tea, uncrossed his legs, and sat up straight.
“So that’s why every mage sent on this commission got hit without exception.” He tapped one finger against the table, eyes on the S-Class commission form spread out in front of him.
“Marshall White…” Since arriving in Asroba, Chase had never once let on, not to anyone, Lambert included, that he was actually a Fairy Tail mage.
The only person who actually knows that is Marshall.
The one who filed this commission.
When Chase had first taken the job, what bothered him most was the disappearances themselves: every mage sent out here, gone without a trace, none of them ever coming back.
If Marshall’s the one actually pulling the strings behind these pirates, everything lines up.
He’d obviously know exactly where and when to point his targets, since he’s the one recommending which ship they take.
And that whole insistence on capturing them alive?
Probably just a way to handicap whatever mage took the job, tilt things in the pirates’ favor.
Not some story about a murdered wife and daughters.
But why go to all this trouble just to lure mages out to sea in the first place?
It’s not like the guy’s got some grudge against every guild in Fiore and decided to declare war on all of them at once.
Add in that space-warping magic the captain had just used, and Chase had the distinct, uneasy feeling he’d stumbled into something much bigger than a simple pirate hunt.
“Hiding somewhere inconspicuous really does get you a lot of useful intel.” “This S-Class commission isn’t something you just coast through, huh.” Chase let out a slow breath, set the whole tangle of questions aside for later, and got up, stretching.
Who cares what Marshall’s actually planning.
Catch every one of these pirates, and every question answers itself.
And that, after all, was exactly the commission he’d taken in the first place.
“Alright, enough of that.
Leave these mages to me.
Rest of you, go loot the ship!” The pirate captain roared the order out to his crew hovering overhead, then took one heavy step to the bow, curling his fingers into a claw as he stared down at Ina and her two teammates on the deck below.
Dense, oppressive magic erupted off him like a volcano going off, thick enough to make the air itself feel hard to breathe.
That’s real S-Class magic, no question.
Black smoke billowed and coiled together into a massive, jet-black claw that tore across the water straight for the three of them, pinned in place with nowhere to run.
Am I going to die here?
“In the end, we couldn’t keep our promise.
Couldn’t protect Mr.
Lambert.
Couldn’t protect Mr.
Chase.” The claw grew huge in the reflection of her eyes, and Ina, along with the other two, curled against the deck, trembling, and still somehow forced herself to keep watching, despair written across her face.
The massive claw tore straight through the ship’s railing and came barreling down the deck, ripping through wood like it was nothing more than foam.
“I don’t want to die like this.
I really don’t want to…” A tear slid down Ina’s cheek.
“Just like that, I die?” “That’s not necessarily true!” Through the haze of her own despair, Ina thought she heard a deep, steady voice.
Before she could even decide whether it was some kind of dying hallucination, blinding light burst across her vision.
Lightning cracked, thunder rolled, and a tornado tore into being right in front of them, wood splinters caught up in the whirl of it, tearing the deadly claw apart on contact.
Whirlwind: a Quick-Play Spell, capable of shredding an opponent’s magic outright.
Ina and the other two, having just barely escaped death, could only stare.
Six wide eyes, all fixed on the same tall, straight-backed figure.
Standing in the middle of the light and the last flickers of lightning, the man hadn’t moved an inch, his dark red coat whipping wildly around him.
On his bared right arm, the Fairy Tail emblem caught the light and shimmered.
That’s…
Mr.
Chase?
He’s actually a Fairy Tail mage?!