The laughter that followed did more damage to Macao than any punch could have.
His face went red, and he rounded on Chase.
“What do you mean, a lousy gorilla?
I took down nineteen of them in one go, you bastard!” A man’s pride ran on its own rules.
It didn’t much care how terrifying the person insulting it happened to be.
“Only you would keep count.” Cana Alberona, slumped over a nearby table, let out a burp and drawled the rest without lifting her head.
“If it’d been me, I wouldn’t have needed Natsu and the others to come pull me out.” Macao’s mouth twitched, another crack running through whatever composure he had left.
“Speaking of which, Cana,” Chase said, turning on her with a smile, “have you settled your tab with the Council yet?
Still running from that one, are we?” Cana went still.
Then she slapped her cards down on the table and shot to her feet.
“You bastard, who are you calling broke?” Chase let her stench of stale ale roll past him and moved on to the next target.
“Vijeeter.
Word is you went dancing across the castle roof in the middle of the night, got chased off like a peeping tom, and only lost them by diving headfirst into a dumpster.” “And you, Loke.
Still haven’t lost your mind running off with a council member’s granddaughter?” “The one grinning like an idiot, yes, you, Alzack.
Still using that sniper scope of yours to case the women’s bathhouse?
Has Bisca put a bullet through you yet?” Every name Chase called out lit up another face across the guild hall, and the temper in the room climbed a notch each time.
By the time he ran out of names, the whole guild was roaring.
Off in one corner, Lucy sighed like none of it was anything new.
She had shoulder-length blonde hair and had, apparently, already learned better than to expect otherwise.
“Just like the rumour,” she said, and then, half to herself, eyeing the guild hall as it teetered on the edge of a full brawl, “That’s Chase Lynn Edgardon.
S-Class.
The card mage who can’t set foot outside without starting a riot behind him.” She looked around at the wreckage-in-progress.
“That tracks.” Boots crossed the floor behind her while she was still talking to herself, and a shadow fell over her table before she’d finished the sentence.
By the time she looked up, Chase was already standing over her.
“You’re Lucy?” He dropped into the seat across from her without waiting for an invitation, crossed his legs, and helped himself to the glass of chilled orange juice sitting in front of her.
He drank it in one go and set the empty glass back down, handle turned politely toward her, as if that fixed anything.
Are we close enough for you to be drinking my juice without asking?
Whatever Lucy actually felt about that stayed behind the polite, faintly strained smile she’d apparently decided a newcomer ought to wear.
“Um.
Excuse me, Mr.
Chase, do you know me?” Chase folded his hands and said, easy as anything, “You’re new, but you’re already pretty famous around here.” “Oh!
Aha, you’ve heard of me too?
Was it the papers?
I didn’t think word would travel this fast.” Lucy scratched the back of her head, looking almost bashful about it, though her shoulders had gone straight with pride.
“But don’t worry, I won’t let it go to my head.
I’m still new, my magic’s nowhere near as strong as Natsu’s or anyone else’s.
I’ll work hard and catch up.” “I heard it on the way in,” Chase said.
“I see.
So all of Magnolia’s already heard about me.” Her smile got wider.
“They told me you flooded half the port at Hargeon your first week and left the whole town in an uproar.
I got an earful about it myself, and I wasn’t even there.” Lucy’s smile locked in place, then cracked at the edges.
Somewhere behind her eyes, Aquarius’s temper rose back up in a wall of water and came crashing down all over again.
No way.
Which idiot’s been running their mouth about that?
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’ll be more careful next time, I promise!” Lucy shot upright to bow, forgetting entirely that she was still sitting, and cracked her forehead straight into the table with a sound loud enough to carry across the hall.
“Ow!
Ow, that hurts!” She sat there clutching the bump rising on her forehead.
Fairy Tail’s tables and chairs were, for reasons nobody had ever needed to explain twice, built to take exactly this kind of punishment.
“Even worse than I expected,” Chase said, sighing.
Lucy, still ringing from the impact, blinked at him.
“Sorry, what did you say?” “I said you and Natsu really are cut from the same cloth.” Cut from the same cloth.
As in the port.
As in a resume that read like a natural disaster report from any angle you turned it.
Lucy’s mouth opened and closed twice with nothing coming out.
That was more than the guild could hold in.
Laughter broke out across the hall, guildmates doubling over, a few of them slapping the tables hard enough to rattle the mugs, tears standing in more than one set of eyes.
When it came to property damage, Chase outranked Natsu by a wide margin.
At his peak he’d once racked up ten separate complaints and compensation claims from the Council inside of two weeks, which was the actual reason Master Makarov had finally shipped him out on a ten-year mission in the first place.
The whole guild hall was in a good mood about it.
The only casualty, as usual, was Lucy’s dignity.
“Hey, Lucy, you know Chase is actually the biggest troublemaker we’ve got, right?
Even Natsu can’t touch his record.” Happy’s blue head popped up out of nowhere, tucked against her chest, grinning ear to ear.
Lucy’s eyes went wide.
“So when he said cut from the same cloth, he meant— ugh!
With Natsu?!” She rounded on the cat, glaring daggers.
“You couldn’t have mentioned that a little sooner?!” “Why does Fairy Tail even have someone who’s proud of setting destruction records?” “And stop popping up from weird places!” She had a whole list of complaints and burned through them fast enough to trip over her own words.
“Aye!
If you’d told me sooner I wouldn’t have gotten to watch you turn this red, Lucy.” Happy darted out of reach, one paw over his mouth, cackling.
That cat.
Lucy ground her teeth, fists balled at her sides, temper climbing toward its ceiling.
None of it looked anything like the strongest guild in Fiore she’d read about back home, not the members, not the guild master, not the S-Class mage currently asking about her measurements.
All she had left standing was a smile, awkward and doing its best impression of polite.
“Anyway.” Chase held a hand out to her.
“Welcome to Fairy Tail, Lucy.” Whatever she’d been about to say next died on her tongue.
A few seconds passed, and something in his grin must have gotten to her, because she smiled back, took his hand, and shook it with more enthusiasm than she probably meant to show.
Strange as all of them are, this is still the best guild there is.
“So,” Chase said, still holding her hand, “what are your measurements?”