"Excuse me sir?" The man sitting on a bench looked up a little girl's voice. A child, no more than six or seven stood before him.
"Can I help you?" He asked her, slightly curious. Was she lost?
The girl fiddled with her blue dress. "Can you tell me where the train station is?" She asked him shyly. The man raised an eyebrow. Was running away then?
"What's a kid like you need the station for?" She flushed in embarrassment, kicking at the ground.
"I got lost."
"You got lost?"
She nodded. "Yeah. I need to go to Oak Town but I couldn't find the train."
"Oak Town? Kid, where's your parents?"
She looked up at him and shrugged. "Gone."
His gaze softened but said no more about it. He knew what it was like, losing your family.
"It's dangerous for a little girl to travel alone."
The girl huffed. "I'm not little. I'm a mage and I need to find my friend."
The man stood up. "Your friend is lost?"
She shook her head. "No he lives near there."
The man took her to the station his self.
BREAK
"What is your friend like?" Bardo, as the man introduced himself as, asked the girl. Miranda, as she told him, was walking by his side.
"Ryos is really strong and nice. He's a dragon slayer and has a talking cat named Frosch." Bardo raised an eyebrow at her description and wondered if the Ryos was a real person or an imaginary friend.
"Is that so? He must be very powerful then." The man commented and Miranda nodded enthusiastically.
"He's really powerful. One day he's going to be part of the strongest guild in all of Fiore. His partner, Sting, and him are going to be famous."
"It sounds like it. What does he look like, so I can keep an eye out for him?" Bardo continued to humor the little girl at his side.
"Ryos has messy black hair and his eyes look like red dragon eyes. He's a little younger than me but he's going to be really strong." Miranda was making gestures as she spoke, amusing the man beside her.
"Sting is blond and has a scar above his eye. I don't know where he got it though. Frosch is green and he wears a pink frog suit since he was sad the he wasn't a frog. Lector, Sting's cat, is red and he wears a vest. Sting wants to get strong so Lector doesn't get bullied anymore."
Bardo smiled. He had not heard wildly spun tales like that in a long time. The train station appeared all too soon. Bardo was enjoying his conversation with the child.
"There it is. The next train to Oak Town should be leaving soon. " Bardo told her. Miranda nodded, a set look in her eye. He ruffled her hair, surprising her.
"You take care, alright?" She grinned at him.
"I will!" Miranda took off towards the station, shouting over her shoulder.
"I'll come back and visit!" Then she was out of sight.
Bardo waved with a smile before heading home. The little girl reminded him of his wife before she had died. If they had had a child, Bardo wondered if it would have been like the little girl he just met. A guild sign caught his eye as he walked.
Sabretooth. Bardo snorted. That guild could barely hold its own. As Bardo continued on, he found his thoughts wandering towards the little girl and her lost friends, wondering what kind of guild they were in.
BREAK
Miranda sat on the train, looking out of the window. She felt a little guilty about manipulating Bardo into helping her, but he was the only one she Saw willing to with her Fortune Telling. He would be even more helpful in the future.
Six years ago, Miranda had found herself being reborn in a land of magic. A world that only existed in fiction. Six years ago, Miranda, a twenty year old woman in America, had died. She was reborn into the world, her memories still intact from her previous life.
Four years ago, Miranda had learned where exactly she was. She had not been born into one of the guilds or even around them. Miranda had been born and left at an orphanage in Crocus, Fiore's capital. It was only by stumbling across the Crocus Gardens that she realized where she was. The orphanage matrons had had a right old time trying to calm her down after that.
Three years ago Miranda had begun learning magic. In this world there were people who could call down the stars themselves. She was a fish in an ocean filled with leviathans.
Then three days ago, on X777, the dragons had disappeared and Miranda began to make her move. The girl had run away from the orphanage.
Unfortunately, her sense of direction was just as bad, if not worse, than it had been in her previous life. Miranda had gotten derailed and lost in small town on her journey. Fortune Telling had been an easy skill to pick up, and while it did not show her everything, it had helped out a lot. Finding Bardo had been a huge stroke of luck. Now she just needed to find Rogue, who was currently living as Ryos.
If she was to stay alive in this world, Miranda would need powerful allies. With the amount of trouble Fairy Tail got into, that guild was out of the question, leaving the next best choice. Rogue and Sting. The two were only a year younger than her, whereas the members of Fairy Tail were between four and ten years older than her currently. The age gap would make it harder to bond with them.
But Rogue and Sting were a year younger than her, and right now they would be looking for something to fill the gap that their dragon foster parents had left. It was a cheap shot, and maybe a little crude, but necessary.
She just hoped she could find Rogue quickly.