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CHAPTER 36
MORE SQUIRRELS

Feeling well rested from yesterday, I actually woke up early again for once. I thought I'd maybe get to the guild hall before Gajeel would, but I was wrong. He was already there sitting at a table with his new cat companion, Lily. He seemed to really like the little guy.

"Well, am I not too late this time?" I asked as I got a seat at his table.

"Not as bad as yesterday… now we just gotta wait for the brat." He said, not showing much emotion. "So, what's the plan for today?" He asked after a short while to break the silence between us.

"I'd like to wait for Wendy to be here before announcing it." I said, not wanting to reveal my awesome plan right away.

"You'll be waiting all day, then." Juvia said as she approached us. "She trusted Juvia with this unfortunate message to tell her teammates that she won't be able to attend today." Juvia said in her usual strange way of speaking in third person.

"Did she give any reasons?" I asked, wondering what could be the reason for her not being able to show up for the team meeting today.

"It appears she has overworked herself yesterday when she was already not feeling well herself… Poor child." Juvia said with a rather sad tone in her voice.

Of course she did. What was Gajeel even thinking when he threw her right into that massive brawl with all the others. I sighed. I didn't want to get into an argument about it, but I'd have to make sure it wouldn't happen again.

"Thanks for letting us know, Juvia." I said. She merely nodded and then left right away, probably back to stalking Gray or whatever she normally did in her free time. "Well, since Wendy isn't coming today, let's do a regular job today?" I suggested as I turned back to Gajeel.

"Fine by me." He said, and we both got up to get to the request board. "There was an interesting job on the board I saw earlier… Let's see where it was." He mumbled as he had a closer look at the board.

"You men were looking for this?" Elfman, who also happened to be at the request board, said to us and showed us a job request paper he held in his hand.

Squirrels, squirrels, squirrels – Need help A.S.A.P.!
Requirements: Competent wizard willing to beat up squirrels.
Payment: 30 000 Jewel
Rank: B

"Oi, that's mine!" Gajeel growled as he pointed at the paper Elfman held up.

"It's in the hands of a real man now, so you'd better go look for something else!" Elfman said, not impressed with Gajeel's reaction.

"We've dealt with killer squirrels before… Let's team up and do this together?" I tried to negotiate. If these squirrels were anything like the last one we fought, this job might be too tough for Elfman alone to handle. And with Wendy missing in our team, we could use a third person for this, I thought.

"Hm…" Elfman was thinking as he looked intently at the two of us. "That sounds good to me!" He then decided after a short pause.

"You're okay with that, Gajeel?" I asked just to be sure Gajeel would be willing to go along with it.

"Geehee, sure."

And with that, we left the guild hall. According to the details listed on the request paper, the location of our job was at the same roadside as where we were previously to deal with the squirrel problem. Just how bad could it be, I wondered as we walked there.

"By the way, Gajeel. Didn't you say you disliked Wendy's pick for that previous squirrel job we took?" I asked him, a bit curious as to why Gajeel seemed so stubborn about taking up this particular job.

"That was before it turned out we got to fight against a monster squirrel…" He grunted.

"A real man is fine with taking up any job!" Elfman said with an optimistic grin on his face. "…Whether that involves fighting monsters or not!"

His usage of the word man could get a little annoying, but I liked Elfman's positive attitude.

Once we arrived at our job location, just outside the city walls of Magnolia, it felt as though we had entered a warzone. It was much worse than I'd have imagined. Broken market stalls and wares lied scattered all across the roadside. The place was mostly abandoned, with only a few merchants still there, taking shelter behind or under the pieces of their stalls, most likely protecting the little they still had left. A little further up, three monster squirrels could be seen. It looked like they'd begun another raid as they were running back and forth with stolen wares in their big arms, piling it all up somewhere at the edge of the forest.

There was no time to waste; we couldn't let these squirrels get away with this any longer. We all rushed past the ruined market, straight towards the squirrels. I could hear a few weak cheers from the merchants that were still there as we arrived at the scene.

"Three of these squirrels and three of us. We all know what to do." I said, making it clear we would all take on one squirrel each.

"Geehee, that won't be a problem!" Gajeel could hardly wait to give his fists some work to do.

"A manly plan, I approve of this! Let's do this!" Elfman exclaimed enthusiastically as he walked up to his target squirrel.

I would take the one in the middle; he looked similar to the big squirrel Gajeel and I fought before. Big, tough, and with a mouth filled with sharp fangs, and huge claws on both feet and hands. These squirrels were certainly not to be underestimated. Though, I should be fine taking one on by myself. While my first encounter with one did give me some trouble, I had gotten stronger since then.

"I am Rex! Nuts Rex!" It roared at me like the monster it was. "I am here to avenge the defeat of my li'l bro! You shall die!"

"How cute, but the only one who'll be dying here will be you." I calmly replied, not letting myself be intimidated by this thing.

There was a good bit of distance between us; this would be a good opportunity to get off a few spells before he closes in on me, I thought. I Prequipped myself with armour and sword, and immediately launched several Lightning Shock spells at my opponent. The flow of magic felt easier and more flexible to manipulate than ever. The casting of these basic spells almost came naturally for me now, hardly taking any concentration at all. I really had improved.

The spells landed right on target, but the squirrel's fur seemed to absorb the majority of the shock.

"Nut Launcher!" The squirrel cast a magic spell. A large, hollow wooden log materialised out of thin air. It grabbed it with one of his muscular arms and placed it on its shoulder. With a loud boom, shots were fired from the wooden cannon. Several large nuts came flying at me at high speed; I held the blade of my sword in front of me, hoping to be able to parry the shots. I sliced the first one in half, blocked the second one with the side of my sword, dodged the third one. The fourth nut followed too quickly for me to react to it and struck my arm, just below the plate of armour over my shoulder. My entire arm went numb, as if it had been paralysed. I could hardly move it at all, but I was lucky it wasn't my sword arm.

I took back a slight amount of energy from my magic-created sword, shortening the blade. While it would be less effective for extensive melee combat, it should make it easier for me to wield using only one arm. The only problem was that this squirrel seemed fairly resistant against my lightning techniques.

Another barrage of nuts were fired from his Nut Launcher, but this time I had prepared myself for it. "Photon Barrier!" I created a small barrier, only covering the bare minimum to protect myself with. With a small barrier, the density of electric particles was much higher than with a large barrier, making it much more effective at taking out projectiles that entered the field. The bullet nuts got blown up by the particles of my barrier as they came into contact with them.

I found out from the previous rounds of fire that the Nut Launcher needed some time to recharge before it could be used to fire again. This could be my chance to safely get an attack off. If regular Lightning Shocks weren't going to do the trick, then I'd just have to use more power, I thought, and held the blade of my sword directly aimed Rex Nuts, who was already preparing a follow up attack. I channelled a great amount of magic at once through my arm, onto my sword, which began to glow, and sparks of electricity were visible all around it.

"New technique! Focused Strike!" A large magic circle formed around the blade, spinning around for a second before shrinking to a smaller size. As it did, the glow surrounding my sword turned into an intense, white light, with a sphere of compressed electricity forming at the tip. I closed my eyes at this moment, with the only thing in my mind the location of my enemy. I could sense his source of energy, a distance away from me; the shape and size of this source, as clear as crystal, visible in mind, marking my target.

At that moment, a broad beam of concentrated lightning shot from the blade of my sword, the recoil pushing me backward slightly. Even with my eyes closed as I cast this spell I could see the intensely bright light coming from it. My arm holding the sword was violently shaking as I continued firing the beam; I was having difficulty to keep it still while channelling this much magic through it.

Suddenly, something knocked on my head. I immediately lost all focus, loosening the grip on my sword and accidentally dropped it onto the ground.

"Oi. Ain't that a bit overkill?" Gajeel casually said as he stood next to me and looked at where I had been shooting my beam at. A long trail ran over the ground in front of me of nothing but scorched earth. Not even the grass had survived. Had my technique been this destructive…? I honestly was a little in shock at what I'd just done.

As the smoke cleared, the monster squirrel appeared to have survived the blast, but it looked heavily wounded; sparks of electricity were coming from its fur. Even with its resistance to lightning attacks, my technique had been pretty effective. Firing off another Focused Strike would require too much energy, though. I'd have to try to finish it off with physical attacks, I thought to myself as I got ready to defend myself from the angry squirrel. But Gajeel wouldn't give me the chance to go for another round and proceeded to bash my squirrel into the ground with an extended iron club arm.

"Tch, all that wasted magic and still not finish the job…" I could hear him mutter. It's not like it was my fault this thing was able to withstand my type of magic so well, at least I'd managed to do some good damage to it. I was somewhat thankful Gajeel finished it off for me, as with my weakened second arm, it would have taken me quite some extra effort.

I turned around and watched Elfman fighting in his beast form against the third squirrel. It didn't seem like he had too much trouble with his opponent and he was about to round things up. He looked pretty fearsome when he transformed himself into that huge beast. I was glad he was on our side when I looked at him fight. The squirrel didn't stand a chance against the brutal pummelling from Elfman and attempted to flee when it saw its two allies were defeated by us. Elfman leapt over its head and landed right in front the panicking squirrel. He began to hammer on it with his monstrous fists, the squirrel completely defenceless against the flurry of punches. As a finisher, Elfman grabbed it by its leg, swung it around above his head and flung it over the horizon. I almost felt a bit sorry for the squirrel, even though I realised how much of a hypocrite that would make me considering how I fired a destructive beam of lightning at the one I'd fought. I certainly was glad Wendy hadn't come with us on this job. All this violence against the squirrels would've made her cry…

The few merchants who'd stayed behind cheered at us and thanked us from the bottom of their hearts. I really hoped this would be the last we got to see of these squirrels, or else we'd have to beat them up even harder next time. We shared the reward money equally between the three of us.

"Man, it's over already! That hardly counted as a warming up!" Elfman complained as if he was disappointed by today's job, even though he had a huge grin on his face, showing that he must've enjoyed himself.

"Well, what'd you expect from a bunch of squirrels. They better come at us with more power next time, geehee." Gajeel laughed. He must have had a great time, too.

"You two are insane." I chuckled. Both of them were so much into beating stuff up, it was amusing to me. I had to admit, though, that I enjoyed my fight today. It had been one of my first one on one fights so far. I felt my connection with my flow of magic had greatly improved since last time, which had allowed me to channel such a huge amount of energy through my body all at once without triggering heavy exhaustion.

As we walked back to the guild hall, I hoped Wendy would be feeling better tomorrow.