Fairy Tail is the creation and property of Mashima Hiro and Kodansha. We are merely taking it out to get it drunk, put it in compromising situations and take pictures so that when it's sober we can blackmail it for sex.
IMPORTANT WARNING: They say, if you read this chapter aloud backwards and without messing any spelling, Satan comes for your soul! So don't do that.
Irredemediably Collateral and Supplemental.
Chapter Three: Happy's Little Job, Part Two.
Proofreading, Edits and Additional Jabs at Poor Widdle FT by Your Friendly Neighborhood Shadow Crystal Mage.
The small blue cat knelt on the ground, diligently looking through the woods with a fiercely determined expression on his face, making for a very jarring contrast that wasn't either driven or cute enough, just kinda sloppy and awkward to look at. Still, Hikaru supposed he was trying his best, and that was what mattered after all.
My name's Happy, and I'm a proud member of the Fairy Tail Guild! Fish is one of my favorite things in the whole world, but I'm not that fond of 'shrooms! Kinda bad, though, 'cause that day my job was...
"I had no idea," Hikaru mused as she also looked on her knees over the ground, under the shade of the large trees, "you could hire a Magic Guild even for tasks as menial as this. I mean, isn't this a waste of magical resources? Why not just to pay a few coins to random boys picked off the street?"
"Hmmfff? U were suhyin' sumthin', Heekaruh?" Natsu looked up from where he knelt with an inflated mouth overstuffed with mushrooms, several stalks actually poking out of his mouth. It was then Hikaru, a simple soul herself, realized hiring Happy and Natsu's services pretty much amounted to paying random kids off the streets anyway. And even then it would be an offensive comparison to the hard-working random kids.
Happy wagged a short and stubby finger at the short redhead. "These aren't normal mushrooms, Hikaru! These are Slimming Mushrooms, magically enhanced by Mother Nature and the mysterious and ineffable workings of our Lady the Mage of the Beginning, and only can be recognized by magical experts such as ourselves! They're all the rage nowadays in diets, especially with women."
"Oh, I see. When we find some, I'll make sure of saving a few for Nanami-san, since apparently everybody from Ohtori lives in fear of gaining weight..." Hikaru said, nodding at the feline. She had no great use for diets, since she was fairly active and no matter how much she ate she never seemed to gain any weight. It was one of the perks of being a CLAMP character.
"Yeah, apparently, some guy wants us to collect a big basket of the stuff, then send them to some guys and girls he was supposed to pick up at a Gateport," Natsu explained after swallowing a huge mouthful of mushrooms that had been wider than his throat. It had been like looking at a python swallowing a whole deer on Animal Planet, and Hikaru couldn't help but cringe. Without noticing her discomfort, the boy slapped his belly and added, "Looks like he's too lazy to actually deliver on his promise of greeting 'em there, so he figures sending the stuff as an apology makes up for it. Those guys are the worst..."
Back at the Guild's headquarters, Lucy frowned at Mirajane. "But he promised he and Happy would help me kill that rampaging winged chimera..."
Mirajane smiled and shrugged. "Sorry, but he said they had to go pick up mushrooms! Here, he left you this bottle of soda as his way of saying sorry!"
"It's half-drunk, and if I wanted soda, I'd just walk to the fridge anyway!"
"It's not even 'Laughing Bamboo' anyway," Happy said.
"Laughing Bamboo?" Hikaru asked.
Happy nodded. "It's some variety of poisonous mountain mushroom Natsu's always eating..."
"Whuff awe yuh sayin' Huppyh?" Natsu mumbled amid another grotesque mouthful of mushrooms. "Ah'd nevah duh anythin' suh shtupid!"
"Your words and actions don't seem to match!" the cat pointed out.
"Why... Why do they call it 'Laughing Bamboo' if it's a mushroom?" a slightly concerned Hikaru asked.
"'Cause after I eat a few it always starts looking like bamboo, it kinda tastes like bamboo, and eating too many makes me laugh uncontrollably, heh heh heh..." Natsu explained after another huge swallow, grinning from ear to ear like an idiot. Or an even bigger idiot than usual anyway.
"You wouldn't know all of that if you never ate any of the stuff!" Happy accused.
Natsu's face twitched. "D-Don't be ridiculous, winners don't do Laughing Bamboo, and this wasn't Laughing Bamboo, I think it was... ugh... Morning Sprout," he gurgled, taking a hand to his stomach.
"Morning Sprout?" Hikaru echoed, and then yelped as Natsu's body shook, and a large mushroom sprouted from the top of his head. "Eeee!"
"Aye! Morning Sprout alright!" a vindicated Happy said. "See, Hikaru? That's why you can never be too careful about these things! It takes a real expert on magical plants like me to tell apart poison mushrooms from edible ones like this!" he added, holding a mushroom that appeared perfectly identical to those Natsu had just consumed in a paw.
"Nonsense," Natsu grumbled stubbornly. "These poisons weren't mushroomous, my fine is language, I'm healthy perfectly, the mushroom growing out of me is healthy perfectly too, and Princess Celestia, the Lord of Nightmares and the Lifemaker are all me at smiling. How are you so sure anyway that is the right mushroom right?"
"How am I sure?" Happy demanded. "I'll show you how I'm so sure, with a test! Hikaru! Eat this!" he said, extending his piece of mushroom towards the Earthling.
"... thanks, but no thanks, Happy-kun," said Hikaru, who was a simple soul but not THAT simple.
"You too?!" a suddenly stark white Happy gasped, backing away from her. "Okay, fine, I get it! I'll eat it myself, then!" he announced, holding the mushroom over his open mouth.
"Happy-kun, no!" the girl shouted. "What, what if it's actually poisonous after all?!"
"I'm sure it's not!" Happy insisted. "And if we bring the wrong mushrooms we'll soil Fairy Tail's good name, so please make sure to say how I saved our collective honor in my funeral!"
"If you're so sure it's harmless there won't be any funerals, but-!" Hikaru began, but by then Happy had already swallowed the mushroom whole. "Oh, geez, Happy-kun...!"
"What is there to be all 'Oh geez' about?" the cat asked then, back to a normal (for him) tone and with his paws on his hips. "I told you this was Slimming Mushroom, not- Oh, geez," he pouted as a mushroom almost bigger than his own head suddenly sprouted from it.
"Um, well, yeah, I don't know what to-" Hikaru babbled uncomfortably.
Happy ran away bawling. "The joke loses all its power the second time around...!"
"That, that's your biggest problem with it?!" Hikaru called out after him.
Standing by her side and folding his arms, Natsu huffed, now with a dozen of different mushrooms jutting up from his scalp. "What an idiot, eating a Morning Sprout like that..."
Hikaru looked at him and winced. "Maybe we should get you guys a doctor...?"
"WAH!" Happy wailed. "No fair! Natsu gets all the best gags!"
A tiny blue man who was just arriving, wearing nothing but a white cap and pants, came to a sudden halt and gasped in horror. "You bastards! What the smurf have you done to my house?!"
The End!
"- we only came to deliver these Slimming Mushrooms-" Natsu weakly explained, standing with Happy before the shattered ruins of the Gateport.
"Well, yeah, all deliveries have been suspended indefinitely, pal," answered the hulking armored guard standing behind the yellow police line. "Looks like some terrorists just blew the whole Gateport system up, starting from here. Funny thing, though, first time ever you Fairy Tailers arrive at a disaster area AFTER the damage's done...!"
Natsu and Happy looked at each other, then the boy blinked. "You know what this means then, right?"
"Aye!" the cat happily exclaimed. "We get the 'shrooms for ourselves!"
"Yaayyyy!" they chorused, quickly unwrapping the large package and starting to dig in like hungry wolves...
"I think I'll have to arrest you for drug possession all the same," the guard commented as he saw the mushrooms quickly springing up from their heads.
To be Continued.
