The guildhall was void of much human presence, so it wasn't hard to hear the conversation that began at the bar a even though it was roughly 15 feet away. "Laxus, aren't you going to even try to stop this from happening? You are the guild master, after all." Mira pointed out.

"What'd be the fun in that?" He smiled in his signature cocky way. Even looking at him sometimes was enough to make Lucy's cheeks turn slightly pink. "Titania will beat the shit out of him, they'll fix their issue, and the sheep'll disperse. I'm not trying to get in her way."

"One of those sheep is your grandfather, you know."

"Cheeky old bastard." He took a large swig of beer from his mug. "Top me off, will you?"

"Isn't it a little early for you to be getting hammered?"

"Hey, I don't tell you how to live your life." Mira decided that was fair enough and drew him another mug from the tap.

**A little while later**

Lucy was feeling better after Erza had stood up for her, and after she had watched her drag Natsu out of the guild hall to beat him senseless. She stretched and stood from her seat, her chair making a slight noise as it rubbed against the floor. Out of instinct, Laxus' head snapped around to locate the source of the noise, and Lucy found herself fixed on his gaze, frozen momentarily like a deer in the headlights. Laxus smirked at her, then returned his gaze to Mira. Lucy almost melted as she walked across the room. She climbed the stairs that were next to the bar. On the second floor was the main office where Lucy was employed, filing papers and doing minor accounting tasks for Laxus. She was finally feeling capable of getting some work done, and she wanted to seize the opportunity while it was there. Besides, she definitely needed to take her mind off of the events of the last 24 hours.

She sat at the desk that was positioned near the back wall of the room. The giant windows were alive with the sunlight that poured in through them, and the entire room was aglow with the elegant rays. What a perfect day to be productive.

She looked at the stack of papers before her on the desk. She knew that she had been putting this off for way too long, as the pile was enormous, probably at least a foot tall. However, she was determined right now, and she resolved that she would organize everything into its proper place by the day's end. She decided that the best course of action would be to utilize the floor so that she would have adequate space to work, so she lifted the papers, placed them on the floor so as not to scatter them everywhere, and began sifting through them, first separating them into piles based on where they belonged in terms of their respective binders or filing cabinets. Just as she had finished categorizing the documents about an hour later, heavy footsteps made their way toward the office door, to which Lucy paid no mind, for she was completely absorbed in the task at hand.

"Should I come back later?" A deep voice startled her. She looked up to see Laxus leaning in the frame of the doorway with his arms behind his back. "You look like you're in the middle of something," he chuckled. Lucy struggled to keep her cool.

"Oh, no, it's fine! I mean I am busy, but if you have something you need to do, I can always put this away and pick it back up some other time."

"Actually, I could use your help with something." He needs my help? She gulped.

"Okay, sure. Just give me a minute to clean up here" She began squaring up her piles, laying them on top of one another in a perpendicular fashion so that they didn't get mixed up again. She placed them on one of the many filing cabinets next to the small blue loveseat that set against the wall adjacent to the back wall. As she was doing so, there were two things that Lucy had failed to notice: 1.) That Laxus was holding his own stack of papers and 2.) That he had closed the office door.

xxxxxx

Hey, everyone! As I said in the previous chapter, I made this one a little bit shorter for buildup's sake. Things really start to heat up in Chapter 11! Stay tuned!