The woodland seemed ominously quiet.

Seph paused and now that even the sound of her own shuffling was silent, all that could be heard was the susurration of the leaves in the gusty wind. She peered out the window beside Laxus' bed, finding her eyes travelling to the mountain that rose the highest in the distance, more steep than any other she had seen. It was probably the same as the others, just one boot hold and one hand hold at a time—no more, no less. The wind from the slightly ajar window blew around her tousled fur before she sighed, rolling over and trying once again to fall asleep. She and her team had a job alongside some of the others tomorrow, after all, and she wanted to have enough energy for it. She tossed from one side to the other, the bed that had been so carefully made becoming a tangle of covers as the night wore on, thoughts tumbling through her mind in rapid succession.

She remembered the days when it was hard to even leave her dumb little room that she shared with some many others, always being told by stranger nearly in the same situation as her to stay back from the fight. When she was little, she didn't understand why, but now she really did and it hurt her like no other thing in the world. Many nights, she went sleepless, and it felt like she was falling right back into it. The monster she once called a good friend would be yelling and blaming someone for everything wrong with his own life and the person he was yelling at wouldn't say a word. It was the same old story. Tomorrow, she would have another scar as always. She would bite her lips so hard that they would start to bleed, trying to block out the shouts with the pillow on her ears, but nothing would help. The fear paralyzed her. She hated herself for not standing up to him, but what could she honestly do? Nothing would change if she was the only one fighting.

Taking a deep breath, she focused on how the room temperature was perfect and how her favorite night light was on, her forest green eyes peering into the ceiling as if it was interesting. It was one of those quiet and pleasant nights, time only marked by the numbers changing on the alarm sitting on the bedside table, and she could only hope that in the meantime, she would not be aware of every second of every minute. Her mind was constantly regurgitating the worries of the day the worries of tomorrow, and the worries of yesteryear, yet she had no new or brilliant solutions to offer.

She could only do what she had always done—take each day at it comes.

The path grew wide where the soil was soft and then narrow in the rocky passes, having times where it was barely there at all, simply no more than a mild disturbance in the dirt. Upon the forest floor laid trees of yesteryear, falling in storms long forgotten. The seasons had been harsh, stripping away the bark and outer layers, yet rendering them all the more beautiful. Birdsongs came in lulls and bursts, the silence and the singing working together as well as any improvised melody, the light streaking through the boughs in both brilliant and shadowy beams. In the summer, they would be gold, illuminating the greens into virescent rots, but on these wintry days, the fogs casted those same beams of light into sepia tones. The trunks of fallen trees bared icicles, every twig and blade of grass growing winter "leaves" of ice crystals, frost deeper than the fleece in gloves.

It eventually ended up with trees grown so thickly that there was no undergrowth at all. About the feet of the travelling Mages were only the browned remnants of branches and needles that had fallen in the recent high winds. If there was a path, none of them could see it, so instead they wended their way through the skinny trunks that grew so tall, racing for their share of the sun's rays. In places, they were so thickly clumped that they had to alter their path or risk their supplies becoming wedged.

"Are we there yet?" Evergreen asked with a tone of complaint. They hadn't even been walking for more than an hour, if so, yet and they still had about another hour before they got to their destination. The ground was smoother under their shoes, but under her high heels, it must've been very rugged.

"Not even close." Lucy sighed, sweating a little bit as she gave Erza a sideways glance, the redhead merely continuing ahead of them without much trouble despite her massive cart of luggage. Out of all physics logic, it should've tipped over more than once in the past hour of hiking, but it… had not done that at all.

In the distance, there was a large river just rushing along as if mocking them for going so slowly and everyone made sure to stick as close together as possible. Seph gave a content smile; looking through the water of the lake was like peering through perfect glass, not smudged by the sticky prints of small children. The stones at the bottom were as many hues of brown and gray as there were on a painter's wheel, likely more. After a few minutes of looking, she could notice some that were more reddish or closer to white. Looking up as she walked, a bird on a branch moved its head from side to side like it was clockwork, like there was a switch in its brain that flicked to choose the direction to look but not the speed of the motion. Every turn was rapid, almost too fast to see, but in the moments it was still, she could see the glossy black eyes set in the plumage of an impossibly bright blue.

How long had they been walking again?

She accidentally crashed into Laxus' leg, stopping and rubbing her head a bit before realizing that the path was full of small brown frogs no bigger than a dollar, hopping along lively. Erza couldn't roll through there and yet, Seph found herself grinning because ordinarily, she wouldn't have a chance of catching one, but there were dozens of them at the moment, so how could she miss? She crouched down, crawling forward a little bit, and as she scooped one up, she felt it lie cold against her skin. She hadn't considered herself to be particularly warm, but to this frog's cool and delicate skin, she must have felt like she had a furnace inside of her. She felt a frisson of awe to see its eyes, sticking up and glossy like any storybook prince-to-be. Its legs were hunched, trying to leap, but she kept her grip as tight as possible without bringing any harm to it, getting back onto her feet as Laxus kneeled down to look at the frog with her.

"I thought frogs were supposed to be green…" He mumbled a bit, a slight grin pulling at his lips due to seeing her so ecstatic over something smaller than her.

"They can be, but frogs have the ability to camouflage themselves, changing their color at their own will as their mood or surroundings change as well." She told him merely just starting to explain. "Frogs have three types of pigmentation or chromatophores. There's the melanophore, a brown pigment, iridophore, a highly reflective pigment, and xanthophores, a yellow pigment. When needed, frogs could put these pigments to use, so this one is brown because of the trees and the dirt."

"… Cool." Laxus responded after registering what she had told him, and once all the frogs had passed, Seph kneeled down to let the frog hop after its group, the group of Mages starting to move again.

With each stride, her mind became more clear and more resolute, determination driving her on as she registered the million different hues that the woodland floor held. The differences were magnified by the moisture, variation on variation, and mingled in were some stones, adding their grays to the mosaic beneath her feet. The trees were veiled in the lightest of mists, their trunks somber brown with sable cracks that gnarled the bark, and as her eyes traveled to the edge of the woodland, they became silhouettes against a blanket of white. The town outside of the woodland looked to be a maze of narrow-winding streets, and the colors reminded her of children's toys. Every red was the exact same one, a brilliant cherry scarlet, and every blue was a bright royal hue, neither dark nor light.

After they weaved through the labyrinth of roads, the paths eventually converged and unveiled the piazza, everyone staring at them along the way and even right there, none of them even trying to be discreet. Seph didn't focus on that for once, though, she just focused on the flocks of pigeons gathered everywhere with people feeding them crumbs of bread and taking photographs. The buildings were an amazing jumble of different styles: rickety wooden shops, marble and brick houses, huge stone churches… They passed a greengrocer with his window full of apples and oranges, and a grocery store, and an electrical shop. They were making their way to the tallest building, though, that's where their client was, but that didn't stop some of them from looking at stuff and experiencing some things you could only experience when you traveled somewhere new.

Then, Seph caught sight of a young man sitting on a bench, appearing to be reading a newspaper. He almost belonged… but not quite. He dressed in scrubby jeans and simple black runners, but he wore a black cloak like some sort of magician with a flash of red silk beneath the collar and some sort of device on his wrist, one that he probably hadn't meant for anyone to see as he shook his wrist to cover it with his sleeve. He wore a fedora, covering his hair with the fabric and covering his eyes with a shadow that nearly screamed suspicion, but Seph didn't dare to continue looking when one of his baby blue eyes peered over his newspaper in her direction.

When they arrived at their destination, which was a very tall building designed with brick and metal, Erza gave three very powerful knocks on the big wooden door, all of them waiting a moment before a middle-aged man answered the door. He was round about his middle with thinning hair, a dusty brown flecked with gray.

"Are you the group from Fairy Tail?" He questioned carefully, clearly optimistic beyond his hardened gaze, and Erza put a fist on her hip with a firm nod.

"Yes, we're here because of the job request sent in by Arthur Driscoll." She responded, causing the man to discard his hardened gaze in favor of his optimistic one, a smile pulling at his lips.

"Oh, that's me! Please, come in, I'm very grateful that you've arrived so safely!" Arthur welcomed them, pulling his door open and lifting an arm up to show them inside his house.

As they walked into the home, a blast of air conditioned cold streamed past them and some light jazz drifted from a room out of sight. There was a few children's toys cast onto the floor in a haphazard fashion, but there was otherwise nothing of concern besides perhaps the many potted plants that reached upwards with broad and spreading leaves. There were stairs leading up to a second floor, and then more above them leading to a fourth floor and maybe onwards, with rooms above them and little footsteps running around every now and then over the sound of their own. Inside the living room they passed was a comfy-looking couch, paired with two comfy-looking chairs, a small wooden table, and a big fireplace equipped with an iron truss, a kettle, and a pot, with no fire currently going.

They were lead into the dining room, elegant in a minimalist sort of way, and urged to sit in which none of them dared to go against the offer. The table dominated the space, an elongated ellipse of oak with the raw bark at the edges—the tree had been a victim of a violent storm a few years back, upended root and all—the chairs coming from the same tree, each one beautiful in its simplicity, all clean straight lines and high backs. The floor beneath it all was slate and with the cream walls and tall mullioned windows, it was a fine place.

"Oh, where is that blasted boy…" Arthur muttered with an exasperated sigh as they all sat, making his way to the doorway to call up the stairs and into the other rooms. "Quentin! Quentin, we have guests!"

As if being whistled to like a dog, a finely-dressed man came down the steps gently with such grace that no one felt as if they had seen anyone match, topping Arthur's finely-pressed dress shirt and simple jeans. Quentin had a neatly ironed uniform, a white dress shirt under a silky red vest and a black tie that looks so tight around his neck that it was suffocating him like a python wound, but he seemed so simply fine, carrying a pleasant smile on his lips. The only thing slightly off about his nicely-dressed ways was how scrubby his jeans seemed to be and that fact that his black shoes were runners, not dress shoes. His hair was slightly shaggy, enough for him to flip the dark brown out of the way, and his baby blue eyes tried to shine past the inevitable dullness they carried.

Something in Seph's mind clicked, but she honestly felt scared to speak.

Arthur talked to Quentin, who nodded his head multiple times before taking off down the hall to do something, and then Arthur took a seat with all of them, still smiling widely and optimistically.

"The townspeople put this together—" He started off, handing over a paper to Erza. Laxus brushed a hand over Seph's head and she glanced up, noticing his reach for her before she lifted her arms up, allowing him to pull her up and into his lap. She relaxed on his knee, leaning against the table just as he was, and felt grateful for the little things. "These are a list of testimonies and eye witnesses' accounts of what has been happening. Unfortunately, we don't have any answers just yet, but we wanted to make sure that you all have as much information as possible. We will be providing you with rooms at our finest inn alongside the reward when you complete the job as our thank you for your help."

Seph could barely remember the job over all of her other thoughts, but she managed to put two and two together to think of it. They needed a large group because they had to split up to search the city after they arrived and settled in due to some group running around and terrorizing people, kidnapping others of any age or gender that they could possibly get their hands on. They took pets as well, apparently, which made Seph a little uneasy only because she really didn't know why people would be stealing pets if they're already kidnapping people. That's what they were there to find out, though, so… There was no point in questioning what they would find out eventually at the moment, honestly.

Oh, how she wished that she had the skills of a great detective, to have the mind and eyes for clues equal to those of famous untanglers of mysteries. Not to parade her knowledge, returning lost diamonds and catching dastardly killers, not to share with the masses the secrets behind the downfall of kings and the rise of emperors, not to unravel the elaborately spun lies of conmen. No, had she the deduction of Holmes and Poirot, she would quietly solve the commonplace. Small things like what happens to all of her missing socks… and just to make jobs like these much easier on her brain.

Her poor little brain that couldn't figure out why she thought that Quentin could've possibly been sitting on that bench in the plaza when he was so nicely set up in this home. He couldn't have possibly made it from there all the way to the big house…

Could he?