The Knight and The Strawberry

chapter 5

Magnolia, Fairy Tail Guildhall.

It was a strangely quiet day around the guild hall. Well rather it would seem that way. The truth was that things were only quiet due to the fact that the S class trials had taken place the previous weekend and many of the guild either decided to rest at home, or were hiding their disappointment at not making the cut.

As predicted by many, Laxus had been the victor of the trials, and had been promptly promoted to S-class. This made him the second S class wizard after Gildarts, and this fact had obviously gone to his head. He had hardly been promoted for a full ten minutes before he charged off on his first S class job. Not that anyone in particular was missing his notoriously poor attitude.

To Ichigo, the silence was a pleasant change. He had had much on his mind ever since he and Erza's return about two weeks ago. To say that the two weeks had been stressful would have been an understatement, but only because Ichigo couldn't seem to answer any of the questions he was having. In his eyes there were too many things that were just off. The master seemed to constantly be in deep thought, but was hiding it behind his usual overly cheerful behavior.

Gray and Natsu seemed to have taken a rather negative interest in each other. Every few days, the two of them would wind up getting into some kind of 'disagreement' as they would call it. These disagreements usually ended with them rolling around on the floor in a wrestling match until Ichigo would break them up.

Speaking of making bad first impressions, one of the new Straus sibling trio, Mirajane, had decided that she needed to be the one to 'dethrone Erza as top female wizard of Fairy Tail'. This didn't make sense to Ichigo considering it had been Cana, not Erza or Mira, who had been the only female in the recent S class trials. Regardless of what he thought though, the two girls refused to get along, sometimes even lowering themselves to Gray and Natsu's level and brawling in the middle of the hall. Or at least they had been until his biggest source of confusion had occurred.

Just a couple days after they had returned, Erza had expressed that she needed time alone and would not give an explanation as to why. She had hardly been seen in the past weeks and he was beginning to get worried about her.

So he supposed saying that he had a lot to think about on these quiet days was a bit of an understatement. He leaned back in his chair as he reflected on the events that had occurred when he and Erza had returned to the guild.

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Guildhall, 15 days prior

Erza and Ichigo walked slowly towards the guild in silence. They had stashed the cart by the training field and left most of the money at Ichigo's house to divide up later. They both had agreed that they didn't need to mention that part when they explained what had happened to Master Makarov.

As they finally reached the doors, Ichigo made to speak. "I can talk to the master if you don't want to."

Erza just shook her head. "No, it was our job, we should both help explain it. Besides you were unconscious for a good deal of the events."

Ichigo just shrugged and dawned his usual scowl and pushed through the big doors. Instantly they were hit with a myriad of greetings. Gray was the first as he was already on his way out the door.

"Hey you two glad to see you made it back. Sorry I can't stop to hear the story. I gotta be in clover by tomorrow." With that the Ice make wizard didn't even break his stride as he continued out the door. Their next greeting came from Mira unfortunately for Erza.

"So the walking tin-can is finally back." The white haired girl sneered from across the hall. "Thought you were supposed to be back two days ago. What happened did your training bra rust up on you?"