VERiTY (Fairy Tail Fanfic)

3. Tiny Tag-along

"Laxus, I'm going on a job. Stop following me."

"No!"

Eir stared at the kid. Laxus had his backpack and everything, like he was planning this all along. He was absolutely sure he hadn't told anyone except the Master that he was going on a mission today... ah, Master must've told him, huh.

"You're too young to come along," Eir told him, "I'm not strong enough to bring about someone I need to protect."

"I'm already ten years old! Grandpa said I could have my guild mark once my birthday comes!" Laxus denied quickly, "and I can protect myself! I'm a Dragon Slayer now!"

"When I was your age--"

"You're only two years older!"

Eir sighed. Who gave Laxus a crash course on common sense? I thought common sense didn't exist in this show and I could bullshit my way through everything.

"You've never been out of Magnolia in your life," he told the kid, "I don't want you to get lost while I'm working."

"I won't!" Laxus was persistent this time, his voice levels increasing with each word, "take me with you! Take me with you take me with you take me with you--"

Everyone in the guild was staring straight at Eir. Well stop watching, Makarov, can you do some fucking parenting, your grandkid is kind of probably throwing a tantrum right now?

"Take me with you take me with you take me with you take me with you--"

And heck, Laxus has some great lung capacity. He's still going at it.

"Okay, alright!" Eir caved, yelling out in utter resignation, "just don't get in my way, got it?"

And immediately, the little devil brightened up. "Yay!" he cheered.

Gritting his teeth, Eir took Laxus' hand and picked out his wallet, reconsidering how much money he had in there. Dear god, he'll need to take more jobs if he's going to have to pay for both himself and Laxus every time.

"I'm off," he said in the vague direction of the Master.

"Bye bye grandpa!" Laxus waved cheerfully.

-

It was a simple job-- a tree fell into the railway after a thunderstorm, and removing it was tricky because of a landslide, so they decided to just remove a whole section of the forest while they were at it.

They already have local Water mages, so they just need a Wind mage or a swordsman to cut down the rest of the lumber so they can clear the route as soon as possible and get the trains running again.

The reward was 30,000J. The train tickets are 100J each, to and fro would be 4000J in total-- he'll need to get Laxus lunch, too. And that souvenir he promised. If he's lucky, he'll be able to retain about 16,000J of the reward...?

(Agh. Headache. Is he seriously worrying about money at twelve years old?)