Disclaimer - I do not own Fairy Tail
This is a magic-swap AU. Hopefully, it turned out alright!
Levy trailed behind Gajeel, trying to keep up with his much larger strides. They were trekking through a deep forest, avoiding the pathways due to the Dark Guild that was known to be lurking within the cover of the tree's.
"Gajeel, could you be a little quieter, please? Don't you know that the best offence is not to engage at all?"
Gajeel shrugged in front of her, and she sighed as she scurried through a small clearing to catch up with him.
"Are we nearly at the cave?" she asked as Gajeel read the map. She had never been very good at navigating, and these woods were definitely not the place to start learning. Gajeel nodded, silently pointing over the top of her head at the mountainside.
"Can you get us up there, Shrimp?"
Levy sighed, annoyed at being the hired muscle for every single one of their missions. She grabbed a hold of all of their gear and slung it over her shoulder. Using her superhuman strength, she quickly scaled the mountain before ducking into the cave that Gajeel had indicated. She poked her head over the edge to see Gajeel scrambling up behind her, struggling despite his more muscular form. She held her arm down to help him, and as soon as he held on she swung him up.
"Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is having a little Shrimp like you being so much stronger than me?"
Levy tried to argue, but she knew that it would reach deaf ears. She had spent her whole life being underestimated because of her size, and since the mountain of a man in front of her joined the old guild, it had been no different. Whenever they went on jobs together, the client immediately thought that he was the muscle, and not her. And then, as soon as they had joined the council, she could hear the whispers about the odd couple through her acute hearing, and they just got worse the more missions they completed.
"Oh, it's the little one that's the dragon slayer?"
"Yeah, the massive one is the translator, fucked up, right?"
She made her way to the front of the cave to scout out for any of the members of the dark guild that the council had sent them to eliminate while Gajeel took his notebooks out of his bag. The first council team had told them the location of the cave, along with the fact that the forbidden spell the dark guild was looking for was hidden in there. It was their job to write down and translate the forbidden spell, to try and find out what it did, before destroying it and getting the hell out of there.
Levy could hear the guild moving in the forest beneath them, getting closer by each minute. The dark guild had been searching for the last few weeks, and this sector was the last they had to look in. The council had sent in their best team to try and get the job done before they even knew the council was onto them.
After a few minutes of trying to track where the members of the guild were heading, and trying to listen to their conversations to see which magic they were using. The dark guild was incredibly sneaky, and none of the recon teams had been able to discover much about them. None of them had mentioned anything about magic yet, but she could never know if there would be clues in their speech. All she could hear was the scribbling of Gajeel's pen on his paper, and the shuffling of the mages below. Silence, just how she liked it.
"THROUGH THE GATES OF HELL!"
Levy jumped at the noise behind her, not expecting something so sudden. She knew that Gajeel liked to sing as he worked, but would he be stupid enough to sing something that loud when there were wizards beneath them.
"Gajeel! We are less than half a mile away from the closest members of the dark guild! Could you keep it down, please?"
Gajeel scoffed, not bothering to look up from his work. Levy had no idea how he could understand the squiggles on the walls that meant less than nothing to her, but his magic seemed to allow him. How someone so big could have developed a magic so non-combative she would never know.
Levy turned around, trying to refocus her ears on the guild members below her. They seemed to be closer than before, their journey towards where they were speeding up. Levy estimated that they had less than half an hour before the first ones reached the cave. She could hold off maybe ten at once, depending on their magic, but there were far more of them than there were of her. Even with Gajeel's limited attack spells, they would stand no chance if the guild found them.
"Time's running out, Gajeel. I give you 28 minutes and counting."
Gajeel scoffed again, knowing that he would get this done in 15 minutes, max. Why they had bothered dragging him out here for such a simple translation he would never know. Even the dumbest of people in the guilds translation department would have been able to translate this.
"Don't worry, Shrimp, I have this down on pat."
Levy sighed, used to Gajeel's over confidence. The amount of times she had to bail him out because of something that he thought he could handle was just too high to count at this point. She could make out thirteen members within half an hours walk away now, and that was if they weren't alerted to their presence. At a sprint, she estimated that some of them could make it in fifteen minutes, max.
"AS WE MAKE OUR WAY TO HEAVEN!"
That was it. She heard one of the mages stop in their tracks, indicating to the others to stay quiet and she turned around to tell Gajeel to stop. But she was too late.
"PRIIIIMO VICTORIA!"
Levy swore under her breath as five mages started to run towards them, having heard Gajeel's singing from their location.
"Well done, you massive idiot! You've just reduced our time to get this finished and get out of here to fifteen minutes at the most! Not only that but now they know that we are on to them!"
Gajeel shrugged, still refusing to look up at her. The blatant disregard for any kind of stealth angered Levy even more, and she started to shake in frustration.
"They don't know that it's someone that knows about them, or that it's the council. We'll be fine."
With that, Levy swore again, before turning around and enabling her Ir0n Dragon's armor. She didn't know if anyone could use ranged attacks yet, and it was always better to be safe than sorry. The silver of the scales contrasted with her blue hair, and she cursed the way they glittered in the sunlight. When she was protected, she was pretty much a beacon to anyone in the vicinity. She hid in the shadows of the cave as much as possible while still being able to watch the clearing below her for the sight of the enemy mages sneaking up on them.
"AIMING FOR HEAVEN, THOUGH SERVING IN HELL"
Levy felt bile rising in her throat as she heard the voice from behind her again. Could that twat never keep silent for just one second? Before she could stop herself, the anger burst out.
"For FUCK sake, Gajeel Redfox! Can you keep your fucking voice down? How have you got knowledge of so many languages and yet not know the meaning of stealth?"
As her anger grew within her, scales started to press out from her skin to form dots all over her body, adding an extra couple of inches of protection in case of attack. Something that she knew was going to come in handy if Gajeel kept on like this. The man in question had finally closed his book, and was leaning on the wall looking at her with his normal calculating glare.
"Have I ever told you how fucking sexy you are with your scales like that, Shrimp?"
Levy would be lying if she said she wasn't caught off guard. Sure, they had been dating for a while, but she always assumed that Gajeel was nonplussed about her scales, or even scared of them like her previous boyfriends were. Taking advantage of her shock, Gajeel dropped his notebook on the floor and took a few steps towards her. Levy could barely feel his soft hands on her waist as he pulled her towards him, her armor was so thick around her torso to protect the vital organs that lay beneath. She felt a ghost of his lips against her neck, which pulled her out of her shock.
"Now is really not the best time, Gajeel..."
The solid script mage put his finger up to her lips to shut her up as he moved his lips down to her shoulder, pushing the fabric of her top down as he did.
"Relax. I put a rune barrier up across the mouth of the cave as soon as you said that they were onto us. They can't hear us, see the cave or get through."
Levy sighed. No matter how annoying Gajeel was, he always seemed to do the right thing in the end. If the council knew how many times they ended up shagging on their missions, they would go mad...
A/N - The worst thing about this prompt week, is I want to expand on pretty much all of these stories! The temptation to go through the whole story of Levy and Gajeel and write it with a Magic Swap is far too high right now! Or to write it with EVERY ship magic swapped! *drools at the thought*
The song that Gajeel is singing is Primo Victoria by Sabaton. Because I cannot write lyrics, as you will see tomorrow.
Did you love it? Did you hate it? Let me know!
See you tomorrow!