Chapter One: A Guild called Fairy Tail
Fiore
Magnolia
Fairy Tail Guild
Three Years Later
"Say that again!"
"What did you say!"
"Naked Teme!"
"Baka hothead!"
"WHY YOU!"
"Enough."
"Erza!" both boys suddenly shouted and were smiling and hugging each other.
The redhead who had spoken stared them down, her arms crossed over her armored breastplate. "That's better. Fairy Tail needs unity, and the two of you fight far too often."
"Erza! Fight me!" the pink-haired boy suddenly shouted, shoving the black-haired boy away.
"Hmph!" Erza turned abruptly at the snort and glared at the white-haired goth leaning brazenly back against a table just off to the side. "Way to keep the troops in line, General-san!"
"Mirajane!" Erza said the girl's name so it was more like the growl from a dangerous beast.
"Ohoh! Did you want something... Titania?" Mirajane jibbed, before the two were suddenly head-to-head, much as Natsu and Gray had been moments before.
A sudden wind flew through the guild hall as the doors slammed open and sparks shot off of all the lacrima and pieces of metal and the temperature dropped a couple degrees. There was a rumble of thunder and just outside the now open doors, everyone could see storm clouds covering what had once been a clear and pleasant day. The whole place suddenly shouted out greetings and complaints in equal moderation, the complaints mostly from the female half of the room that had worn skirts that day about the the sudden draft indoors. "HARRY!"
"Oi, Natsu-otouto!" the newcomer shouted out, the wind dying down as he fully entered. "Thought I told you, you don't get to fight Erza till you beat me, and you don't get to fight me until you beat Laxus!"
"Aw, but Harry-niisan!" Natsu whined.
A blue cat with a green scarf on his back jumped up on the table beside them and said, "Aye! But Laxus won't fight Natsu, because Laxus is hung up!"
"That's stuck up, Happy," Harry grinned and patted the talking cat's head with his free hand. He'd filled out quite a bit from three years ago, but he was still only 10-years-old. Though his birthday was in just another month or so. His black hair was even more wind-swept and wild grown than ever, his emerald green eyes flashed beneath his ever-present goggles, and his blue-white-silver jacket fit him a bit better, but was still clearly too big for him. At the moment, he had a huge burlap sack over his right shoulder that was literally bulging at the seams. The lightning bolt scar on his forehead was on display as his wind-swept black hair was tossed back so it was uncovered at all times. If it wasn't for the sense of dark magic coming from it whenever Harry got really angry, people might have said he was trying to mimic Laxus, the Master's grandson. Harry just said, since he was at least five years younger than Laxus and Laxus hadn't gotten his trademark scar until after Harry had already joined Fairy Tail, that Laxus was copying him.
"Harry, good to see you. Were you successful in your mission?" Erza asked, a slight blush in her face that nobody was going to comment on if they valued their lives.
"Of course!" Harry happily chirped, "Where do you think the giant bag of treasure on my back came from anyway?"
"Oh of course, of course," Erza's blush soon covered her whole face and she looked down and to the side. "Do-do you need any help with it?"
"Nah, it's a light load. Even Natsu-otouto could handle it," Harry shrugged, lifting up his goggles to wink at her. Nobody noticed the steam suddenly coming from her whole head.
"Ne, Harry-niisan?" Natsu pestered his fellow Dragon Slayer as the green-eyed boy unloaded his burden at the bar, where Lisanna was sitting on a tall stool, kicking her legs playfully while the Master next to her sat on the bar itself. "I got a job in another town coming up, can... can me and Happy... please?" he started begging when Harry started shaking his head before he'd even finished asking the question.
"Learn how to Gate on your own, Natsu," said Harry. "Or at least learn something beyond the basics." He was referring to Natsu's own Dragon Slayer magic; Fire Dragon Slayer magic.
"But it's hard!" he whined.
"Aye!" Happy chimed in.
"Brats!" the Master knocked both the pink-haired boy and the blue cat on the heads with his staff. "Anything worth doing is going to be hard! That's obvious! Everyone knows that! Welcome back, Harry."
"Good to be back Master," said Harry with a grin. "And yeah Natsu, the Master is right. Gate Magic was really hard to learn, and I still learned it in a month, and had it mastered less than a year later."
"How come you wanted to learn so many different types of magic anyway?" Natsu asked.
Harry gave the other boy, who was his age though maybe a month or three older than himself, an incredulous look and replied, "I know exactly three different styles of magic Natsu-otouto! And I'm only any good at two of them, and the third is more out of necessity than anything else. Storm Dragon Slayer magic, Gate magic, and Archive magic. And I suck at Archive magic!"
"Hah! Ain't that the truth!" the Master shouted. "Have to use that computer of yours all the time to use it at all!"
"SHUT UP!" Harry screamed, punctuating it with a couple bolts of lightning, frying the Master where he sat.
"But Natsu and I only know one kind of magic each," Happy commented from the top of the bar.
"And so did I when I first got here," Harry pointed out. "The Master, Lisanna-chan and Mirajane really helped me out, and Erza and Gray too. Mystogan especially. Really nice guy. Oh, and you too Natsu-otouto."
"YOU'VE SEEN MYSTOGAN?" the whole place suddenly screamed at him. This was somewhat of a big deal as only the Master and Gildarts had reportedly ever met the mysterious member of Fairy Tail face to face. He was a legend among the guild, if for not other fact than he became an S-Class Wizard the same year that he joined the Guild in the first place. And he joined roughly one month before the S-Class Exam for that year.
Harry stuck his pinky in his ear and wiggled it a bit to get the ringing out of his ears. "My point is that you all showed me that I didn't know everything and that if I'm going to find Azulong and Igneel and all the others, then I'm going to need all the help I can get. And knowledge is power. Especially magical knowledge, which is why I'm still struggling with Archive."
"But Gate is a really useful magic!" Natsu argued.
"That I learned as a reward for an S Class job when helping Gildarts with it. From someone that was a very... talented teacher," explained Harry.
"Then teach me!" Natsu begged.
"I suck at teaching even worse than I suck at Archive," Harry shot him down instantly.
"Aye!" Happy helpfully agreed. Harry shot him a dirty look. Happy was happily munching on a fish and didn't notice.
"You know, you could ask around here, see if anybody would be willing to share or help you learn a new style of magic. Something that may be useful in the future," Harry suggested.
"Macao is trying to show me how to use my flames better, but I don't understand him most of the time," Natsu whined.
Harry shrugged and accepted a drink, of milk, from the lady behind the bar. "Well, Macao is a much better teacher than I am, not that that's saying much..."
"Hey!"
"...So if you can't learn anything from him, or even Lisanna here, I certainly can't teach you Gate," said Harry.
"Hm..." Natsu put his thinking face on and then suddenly brightened as a light bulb went on over his head.
"Oh, Natsu, your ears are smoking!" Happy happily commented as his friend and partner suddenly ran up to the bar.
"Lisanna! Lisanna! Can you teach me?"
"Hm?" the white-haired shape shifter asked with a curious smile.
"I want to learn new magic, like Harry! Can you teach me something? Please?" the pink-haired boy actually dropped to the floor and bowed his head till it touched the ground.
"You want to learn Transformation magic?" Lisanna asked, sounding pleasantly surprised. Everyone that heard this exchange, IE half the guild, struggled to contain their snickering and soft laughter. Everybody knew what was going on between the two of them, but no one was going to say a thing until either one said something first.
"Aye!" Natsu happily confirmed that he wanted to learn her magic.
"Why?" Lisanna's voice had gone suspicious all of a sudden..
Natsu rolled his eyes up and thought about it, and then grinned and replied, "Because it would help out in playing pranks on Gray and help me get away from Erza. And..." Natsu's expression changed for a second, but only for a second before he continued with a bright smile, "And it would be fun to learn!"
Lisanna blinked. And then she smiled brightly and happily said to him, "I'll be happy to help you out Natsu. I'll meet you at your place after my next job."
"All right!" Natsu leaped into the air and high-fived with a winged Happy.
"Can I learn too, Lisanna?" Happy asked with a hopeful tone.
"Of course," she smiled wistfully.
Harry smirked at the white-haired girl as she stepped up to the bar to get her own glass of milk. "Don't say one word, OK?" she said to him while keeping her bright and happy smile on her face. Harry just took a sip from his glass and kept smirking at her. Only after she was turned away, did he whisper, "Better you than me."
"Oh, Harry? I think I may need some help later this afternoon. Would you mind helping me out?" Lisanna's voice called sweetly across the bar.
"Get Elfman, I'm busy," he replied with a dower tone.
"Harry, you should help your comrades," said Erza.
"Um, why are you picking on me in the first place?" aforementioned Elfman whimpered at the mention of his name. His schoolboy outfit with coat and tie and neatly trimmed haircut completed the image.
"Yeah, you just don't want to get wrapped into your sister's hands on lessons!" Harry called back at him. Looking back to Lisanna, he said to her, "I was not kidding when I told Natsu I suck at teaching. Also, keep in mind he'd be challenging me to fight like two seconds into the first lesson. And more importantly," Harry jumped down and left behind a heavy tip on the bar for his drinks, "I've got a job with my name on it waiting for me. Literally." He walked over to the stairs leading up to the second floor. Where the S-Class board was posted.
"Oh, well then, good luck!" Lisanna called with a bright smile and a wave. Harry smiled back, and sighed with relief and kept on climbing the stairs. It wasn't until he was in front of the board that he noticed Erza had been behind him the whole way.
"That wasn't very nice," she stated, staring at the board as if she were looking for a job.
"I'm serious, I can't teach a dog to fetch, let alone teach Natsu-otouto magic," he said back, pulling the job that really did have his name on it off the board. It was a Rescue and Retrieval job. A village in the East was being held captive by a Dark Guild and forced into slave labor, among other despicable things. Harry idly wondered how the job even showed up on Fairy Tail's board and wasn't already taken care of by the Magic Council and the Government, until he noticed the name of the Dark Guild; Oruborus Hydra. The problem was, they weren't officially a Dark Guild yet. Rumor had it, they were very on time with their bribes. "I would just get in her way. And furthermore, it's really cute when those two hang out together like that. I don't want to get in the way of that."
She scoffed and crossed her arms, then decided to change the subject, "How is it that I'm still the youngest mage to attain S-Class?" Erza asked, "And yet the master has granted you permission to take S-Rank jobs?"
Harry grinned at the older girl's, very nearly a woman, straight-forward nature.
"Because I skipped out on taking the exam," he told her.
"Why?"
"Didn't feel like it," he shrugged. "As for why the master is letting me take S-Rank jobs... well, in order for me to take any of those... D-rank jobs that he keeps advertising out to everybody, he had to compromise to let me take one S-Rank job per month. Just so long as it wasn't a year-long one or more."
"Oh!" she pounded one fist into her hand as she realized what he meant, "Where you eat dangerous storms or start small rain showers and things like that!"
"Exactly," Harry nodded. "I'm a Storm Dragon Slayer for bloody sake, not a weather man! Catch is, unfortunately, I have to reserve the job at least a week before I can take it..." he then let out a heavy sigh, "... and I have to take an S-Classed Wizard with me."
"So," Erza blushed very slightly and looked away, "why haven't you asked me before?"
"Because you're always busy on your own jobs," he shrugged. "Anyway, Mirajane offered to go with me, so long as she got half of the reward. I told her she could have all of it except for the magical item, provided she actually did any of the work."
"Mirajane?" she exclaimed.
"Yeah, it was either her or..." Harry frowned and stopped talking.
"You and Laxus are still fighting?"
"It's the bastard's own fault! His attitude is..." Harry fumed for a minute and held his tongue.
"What if I joined you for this mission?" Erza asked out of the blue.
Harry turned to regard her, and then answered, "Ask the Master. My distance is going to be cut by half with two extra people, but I can manage. We'll have to walk the rest of the way to the village, and I'm going to need to eat along the way, otherwise I'll be completely useless."
Erza snatched the request from his hand, looked it over, and said,"I know where you can get exactly that."
Harry was intrigued.
Eastern Fiore
One Day Later
"A hurricane, huh?" Harry observed, the two teenage S-Class Witches behind him on either side.
"It was being said that a number of Weather Mages had predicted this storm making landfall in this area in a day or so. It seems they were off," said Erza, brushing her long red hair out of her face, but the wind just whipped it right back.
Mirajane did the same with her white-blond hair, only to have to do it again a second later. Finally she just pulled her hair back into a pony tail and asked, "Why did you have to bring her along? We wouldn't even need to do this if it had been just you and me, Harry-kun."
"I'm not on a team and I'm not S-Classed," Harry shrugged. "Anyway, you're right, Erza, the storm won't hit until two days from now. This here?" he gestured to the storm currently raging around them, "Isn't even a tropical storm. It's just a standard thunderstorm that's common for this area. I recognize the taste of the wind. A hurricane, on the other hand, is a whole different matter." He quickly took off into the air and was soon eating the storm.
Lightning struck him, but he merely caught it in his hands and swallowed it as quick as it struck. Once the lightning and thunder had stopped, he disappeared into the cloud layer and things got weird for a minute. The clouds started to spin more rapidly, until one could actually see a vortex, going up higher into the sky. In short order, it looked more like water going down a drain, but it was dark clouds going up into the sky. Before too much longer however, the blue sky appeared and only a few puffy white clouds remained as the sun shown clearly and the wind died down to a bare minimum. Harry flew back down to the girls, brimming with energy.
"OK, that gave me enough to get us there and finish the job, but I'm going to want to come back for that hurricane in two days. Hope the folks here appreciate the extra day of sunlight I gave them for free," he laughed and grabbed both girls arms.
"How is it you can eat a whole storm, but Natsu can only handle a small amount of fire?" Erza asked.
Harry shrugged as he focused on his destination and his blue and silver magic circle appeared beneath them. "He's only mastered the basics, and I'm going to be burning off more than half of what I just ate in this Gate here," he answered, "And besides, I do a lot more than just refill my magical energy with a full on storm. What did Master call it again? Oh yeah! I maximize my potential. Basically means I make it so I'm as strong as I can be all of the time without having to power up."
"What does that even mean?" Mirajane snapped at him. Harry just shrugged and then activated his Gate.
The magic circle appeared and three bright blue rings circled them, making them transparent with the first, disappeared with the second, and gone with the third. Several hundred miles away, in the middle of the town square of the village they were rescuing, a magic circle appeared and then ejected three energy rings at virtually the same time, by the third pass the Fairy Tail wizards had arrived, and Harry was on his knees, gasping and sweating.
"Yeah, I'm definitely stopping by to get that hurricane on our way back," he gasped.
"We don't have time for that," Mirajane said, her voice lacking its usual sarcastic bite.
"Indeed," said Erza.
Harry looked up and noticed that he had dropped them off in the middle of the village, as he'd intended, but what they had not planned on was the entirety of the Ouroburos Hydra guild surrounding them and having lethal spells already primed and aimed at them.
"Well... bloody hell," Harry cursed, got to his feet and used what remained of the power he'd just devoured.
"Dragon Force!" he screamed as power exploded from him, and he transitioned into Dragon Force mode. All of the spells shot at them were stopped by the vortex of power and wind and lightning that Harry had put around them as he powered up, either absorbing the elemental spells or knocking aside everything else.
"Kanso!" Erza called, and was soon bearing her Armadura Fairy Armor.
"Take Over: Satan Soul!" Mirajane snarled, transforming into her demon self.
"At last count," Harry told the others, "Ouroburos Hydra had a little over three hundred members. First one to one hundred wins, and then gets to help out whoever is behind."
"DEAL!" the S-Class mages shouted and immediately jumped into melee. Not about to fall behind, Harry started them off by taking a deep breath and shouting, "Arashiryu no HOKO!"
A few hours later...
"I won!"
"No, it is clear that I defeated 105 of the foes before either of you, I am the clear winner."
"Like HELL! I won! You wanna fight over it!"
"Any subsequent battle will not change the facts."
Harry sighed and chose to ignore the bickering girls behind him, instead approaching the Village Elder and presented the job request. They were all immensely grateful, in spite of the fact that their village essentially no longer existed, but they were willing to work to rebuild. Right on time, after all the fighting was over with, the Army showed up in force.
Thankfully by then, Erza and Mirajane had stopped arguing long enough to collect their reward from the now defunct Dark Guild's leftover resources, and Harry collected the magical items that had piqued his interest in the first place. For an S-Rank job, it was over in less than a few hours, which was a new record Harry believed. Sadly, Erza and Mirajane both burst his bubble by reporting that the record was still held by the Master of the Guild when he was still just a member of the guild, and his team completed an S-Rank job in 32 minutes and 43 seconds. And that counts from the moment they picked the job off the board to coming back in to report it was successful. So far, only three teams had ever come close, only missing it by a few minutes or even just a few seconds.
"I thought S-Rank jobs were supposed to be potentially lethal?" the ten-year-old asked the teenagers.
"It's why S-Class mages are the only ones that can go on them," Mirajane told him, her arms held suggestively behind her neck. When he glanced back at her, she winked. He smirked and winked back. She blushed and looked away. (Hey, just because he was ten years old, almost eleven, didn't mean he didn't know how to play the game.)
"There are also two S-Class mages and an over achieving Dragon Slayer that could take the S-Class exam whenever he wanted to, and also the fact that we took them by surprise," said Erza.
"The only surprise was that we were so much better than them, and that they were probably only expecting two instead of three," Mirajane argued. "They were there and ready for us, waiting. They had even prepared attacks the moment we arrived."
"Yeah, uh, that was my fault," Harry raised his hand and admitted sheepishly.
"What did you do?" both girls asked in unison, glaring sparks at each other afterward.
"Like I told Erza, I have to reserve the job a week in advance," Harry explained, "So, I sent a messenger ahead announcing that I would be coming, what time I expected to be there by, and where I planned to arrive."
Erza and Mirajane exchanged incredulous looks and shouted at him, "WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?"
Harry just shrugged, "It seemed like a good idea at the time. Anyway, you two go ahead and get started. I'm going to go catch that hurricane now. I'll catch up when I can, and I should have enough energy to get us all the way back to Fairy Tail, or at least Magnolia."
"Now wait a minute!" Mirajane shouted.
"Harry, explain why you did that!" Erza ordered.
"Bye!" Harry waved as he Gated out, the three rings of energy flashing over him before he disappeared entirely.
"Ooo! I hate it when he does that!" Mirajane growled.
"Hmph," Erza crossed her arms and said nothing, but she was clearly peeved at her comrade's irresponsibility.
"Kids," they both muttered simultaneously. Then they glared at each other and the animosity continued to mount the further they walked.
Further to the West, and down by the coast, Harry took a few minutes to catch his breath after that last long-distance Gate. In all honesty, his magic power could really only handle close or mid-range Gates without any significant drain, but anything outside of 10 miles was going to take more magic out of him than he could easily replenish without major rest, or the power boost of a storm.
That was the true reason, he silently admitted to himself, that he wouldn't teach Natsu Gate magic. Natsu was only a few months older than him, but his magic power was at about half of what Harry himself had. If Natsu could use Gate, he'd be wanting to use it all the time and would try to use it to get to every job, and Natsu often had jobs that took him miles outside of Magnolia, places that often required a train or carriage to get to and from them. If Natsu, who had roughly half the magic power Harry had, were to travel hundreds of miles, like Harry had done, to sustain himself he'd either go into a coma, devour a tenth of the total food supply of all Fiore in one sitting, or he would need to devour a fire big enough that it would engulf all of Magnolia and all the surrounding woodlands as well. At a minimum.
Thunder boomed. Harry opened his eyes and looked up. The clouds were even darker, and the wind had picked up to roughly twice what it had been during that thunderstorm he'd eaten earlier. Frowning, Harry sniffed the air and took a good long look at the sky and the horizon out over the ocean.
It was odd. The storm shouldn't be hitting until the next day at the soonest, but it was already making landfall?
"Oh well," Harry shrugged and took off into the air. It must have picked up speed or something, he thought as he began to chow down on the storm clouds, sucking it up and converting it to magical energy as quickly as he could. He'd replenished his reserves after only a small percentage of the whole, but the storm was still coming. If anything, it had gotten even more powerful, he noticed.
Anticipating the feast he was about to partake, Harry gleefully transformed into Dragon Force Mode and started circling the hurricane, eating up the edges and not stopping once. Unfortunately, he never noticed that his spin increased the storm's spin, and thus the power of the hurricane, and though he was keeping it contained to a smaller area that just made it all the more dangerous. Until he gobbled up the last of it in one giant suction spin.
It was only after he finished that Harry realized he had literally taken on more that he could swallow. Even with the magic he was burning through with Dragon Force and his other active magic, what he had just taken in would blast him apart from the inside out if he didn't find some way of releasing it!
He'd have to go back and get Erza and Mirajane later, he figured. If he Gated to Fairy Tail and then back to where Erza and Mirajane should be, that should burn off what he didn't need and then still have enough left over for one last Gate.
Focusing on 'Home' in his mind, he cast the Gate spell, fully intending on appearing in Fairy Tail's Guild Hall and then move on to where Erza and Mirajane were. Instead, he felt ALL of his magic going into the Gate spell, but by then it was too late.
The Magic Circle opened up and swallowed him up and then it exploded.
If he had further paid attention, Harry might have noticed his fellow Fairy Tail wizard, Mystogan on the cliff, and that the storm had a funny aftertaste. But then again, that funny aftertaste added a real kick to the storm and is what made him lose himself and devour the whole thing, where normally he would have stopped after getting his fill and no more. And he never would have tried to eat a storm while in Dragon Force mode! That was just crazy, but crazy is what he'd been.
Because, Harry hadn't just eaten a hurricane-class storm, he'd devoured and absorbed the largest Anima sent into Earthland to date.
Mystogan raced back to the Guild. He had to inform the Master of this.
To Be Continued...