A couple of hours later, Erza and I are walking along to meet with the client for the request. It's been weeks since I was last outside the city, so seeing the countryside is a thrill, especially since I'm not being carried around half-conscious by my brother this time.
"So where is this client you talked about?" I look to Erza, hoping for an answer, seeing as I have no idea where we're going.
She looks at her map, then points down into the valley in front of us. "It should be one of the biggest buildings there. We're looking for the local merchants' guild. They're looking for someone to clear out the forest so that their caravans and members can travel through the forest without being swarmed by the bugs."
"Okay…" It sounds like an important request to me. Getting stung by magical bees can't be good. I've been stung by normal bees, and it hurt a lot. If they've got magic to make it worse, then I can't imagine how bad it must be.
We walk into town and start looking around for the merchants' guild. I doubt that it'll be too hard to find. I've heard from the others that all guilds tend to display themselves prominently so that everyone knows who they are. Building up a reputation and stuff.
After turning our tenth corner, we come face to face with a big blue building with logos all over it. I turn to Erza, excited. "Think that's it?"
She checks the map again and nods. "Yeah, that should be it right there. Now, all we have to do is go in and talk to the master, and we should be able to start with the extermination."
Erza leads the way inside the building as I look around, completely star-struck. So this is what a different guild can look like…? It's so… clean. And it's true, it's much more orderly and organized than the Fairy Tail guild hall, where the tables are all haphazard, and barely anyone ever bothers to clean up anything.
Once at the counter, she looks up at the attendant and clears her throat. "We're here to see the guild master about a job."
The attendant looks down at us. "Sorry, we don't let kids join here."
Erza shakes her head. "We're not here to join, we're wizards from Fairy Tail, we're here about the bees."
The attendant frowns at us, then shrugs. "Alright, but you two seem a bit young to be wizards." She leaves the station and heads to the back, out of sight, but not out of hearing range.
I listen in carefully on the conversation. "Sir, there's a couple of little girls here, claiming to be wizards from Fairy Tail. Should I have them escorted out?"
"Hm…" This voice sounds more like an older man. Though not as old as Gramps. "No, I'll go out to meet with them. Until we confirm whether or not they have guild emblems, it would be wise to treat them courteously."
Footsteps start coming closer, so I nudge Erza. "Hey, they want to see our guild marks."
She slaps her forehead once. "Of course, I should have expected that. Well, I suppose that we can show them to the master here. That should get us the details of the job quickly." Then she nudges me. "By the way, how did you know that?"
I tap my ear lightly. "Me and Natsu can hear really well. We can smell really well too. I think it's because of our training with Igneel, or it might just be us. I'm not sure. But I've never met anyone who can hear or smell as well as we can."
"I see…" Erza looks like she approves, which is good, since I want to earn some points with her. "Ah, it looks like the master is here."
The older man approaches us as the attendant takes her place back behind the counter. "Hello young ladies. What can I do for the two of you today?"
Erza rolls up her sleeve to show off her guild mark. "We're here to take care of some bees that you had complaints about." She lets her sleeve drop and holds out the flyer. "My name is Erza Scarlet, and I'm a wizard from Fairy Tail."
She elbows me, so I roll up my sleeve. "Sorry, I'm with Fairy Tail as well, my name is Haru Dragneel." My green guild mark catches the light and the master's eyes drift to it. "This is my first time on a job, so Erza is showing me the ropes."
"I see…" The old man doesn't sound too impressed, not that I expected him to be. "Well, I suppose it won't hurt… The bees are off in the forest to the north. They've been swarming our caravans and merchants whenever they get too close to the hives. The bees used to only be a problem in the far reaches of the forest, but they've been expanding their hives towards the road, and it's been a serious hazard for our members. If you can clear out all of the bees, you will get your fee."
"Sounds good." Erza smiles at me. "Ready to put that wind magic of yours to good use?"
I grin right back at her. "Of course! I haven't been training my butt off this last month just to sit around the guild forever!"
"Good attitude." Erza's smile becomes a little more confident and professional as she turns back to the guild master. "If all goes well, we should be back later today with the news that the forest road has been cleared of these bees."
"Yes…" The old man doesn't sound too sure, but he'll soon learn not to doubt us.
We get a lot of weird looks as we leave the building, but Erza doesn't say a word until we're outside. "Don't let it get to you. We just haven't built up our own reputations yet. Once we have reputations of our own, no one will doubt us or look down on us. We just have to be patient and work hard."
"Yeah…" I look over to the north, towards the forest. "First things first, we need to clear out those bees. The last thing we need is for someone else to get hurt because we couldn't do our job."
Erza laughs a bit. "Yeah. Like I said, that's a good attitude to have. Keep this up, and I'm sure that you'll have a good reputation in no time."
With high spirits, the two of us start walking over towards the forest. And as we approach, I hear something I don't like. "Erza, wait a minute."
She stops and looks back at me curiously. "What is it?"
I close my eyes and focus on the sounds. "I can hear them… the bees."
That gets her attention immediately. "You can hear them? Do you hear a lot of them? Or is it just because we're getting closer to the hives?"
I frown, concentrating harder. "They're close, and there's a lot of them. I think that we're going to need to sneak up on them, otherwise we're going to get stung. If we can get close enough for you to start dropping hives, then I can tear them to shreds. If they swarm before you start dropping hives, I could miss some of them." Insects are something that I'm well acquainted with, after living for so long in the wilderness with Natsu and Igneel.
"Alright, then I'll see what I can do about cutting down those hives." Erza peers into the woods, looking for what's causing the buzzing in my ears. "Okay, I think I can see them, but we're going to have to get closer. I'm still working on throwing weapons, so I don't know how accurate I'll be at this distance."
I nod in agreement. "Then I'll follow behind you and wait. And once the hives are on the ground, you get behind me while I make them disappear."
"Let's go." Erza moves in front of me as we approach the forest, sword drawn. "I'll move as fast as I can. Get ready and follow me, then we'll turn around at the other end."
I nod, ready to follow through with the plan. And as soon as she takes off running, I follow right in her footsteps. As we run down the path, the bees start getting agitated. "Erza, now!"
In an instant, she takes down the first hive and it hits the ground. We sprint faster, and she takes down hives left and right. They smash on the ground, releasing the bees, who mobilize before giving chase to the two wizards in their territory.
Once we reach the end of the road and the last of the hives, we skid to a stop, and I turn around, readying my magic. I concentrate as much magic as I can in my chest, puff out my cheeks, and release it in a deadly cyclone of sharp wind blades. "Wind Dragon's ROAR!"
My magic tears through the swarm of bees, ripping most of them apart in seconds. It took a lot of magic to produce that roar, but there are still more bees to take care of, so I ready a different attack. My magic focuses in my hands this time, and I spring forwards towards the swarm. "Wind Dragon's Wing Attack!" I spin through the air, sharp wind blades extending from my arms like the wings of a dragon, just like Igneel taught me. Bugs drop to the ground around me, and I don't stop spinning until I can't hear even a whisper of their wings.
I touch back down and look around at the bees that litter the road. Erza marches up to me, looking around at the bee carcasses as well. "Wow, looks like all of that training really did pay off."
I shrug slightly. "Natsu may be physically stronger than me, but I picked up magic faster than he did. I guess it's a trade off. I'm better at it, but I can't use it as much as he can."
"Quality over quantity, huh?" Erza picks up my point quickly. "Well, we should look around to see if there's any that we missed. And once we're done, we can report back and get our reward."
"Yeah…" I gaze off into the trees, my ears straining to hear even the smallest of sounds. But apart from the animals that are supposed to be here, I can't hear anything that seems strange to me.
All of the hives on the ground are empty and half destroyed, so with a little bit of magic, I smash what's left of them into gooey pulp. On the other side of the road, Erza is doing the same thing, just with her foot instead. Frankly, I think it's a little gross for her to be crushing them with her foot. At least I'm not getting any of the stick, smelly goo on me. She's the one who's going to need a bath later.