Curse of Compassion

Chapter 6

Three more days passed before Mikal was fully recovered. The first month of her stay with the Sabertooth came to a close with a pool party at Sting's request. It was supposed to be Mikal's late welcome party, but she suspected he only called it that as an excuse to antagonize the Fairy Tail guild.

Mikal learned that the two guilds were rivals, no thanks to Sabertooth's Sting and Rogue and Fairy Tail's Natsu and Gajeel.  Sting saw the chance to throw the ultimate pool party in order to prove to Natsu that their guild had the better pool.  So as soon as Mikal was well enough, she had to deal with a bunch of idiots throwing tantrums over trivial issues. Lucky her. 

A few hours before the "welcome" party, Mikal and Yukino went into a store called Bikini Babes that exclusively sold swimsuits, coverups, beach towels, and anything else that related to ocean sports. Yukino had Mikal try on her old swimsuits, but Mikal was unable to fill them out. Or rather, her chest didn't fill out the bathing suit top. To fix this, Yukino practically had to drag Mikal with her to the store. There were a few selections of bikini suits to choose from, but almost none of them had a smaller size.

"So, how is your side of the search going?" Yukino poked her head over the other side of the clothing rack.

"Not very well, I can't seem to find the right size. The smallest one I see is a C-cup!" Mikal furrowed her brows and let out a frustrated groan. "Like seriously, how is there not a single B-cup in this store?"

"Not that, silly! I mean with your cure and all."

"Oh. I still haven't found anything." Mikal said with a disassociated tone as she examined a bikini top in the light.  "I'm beginning to wonder if I should be looking elsewhere."

"You know, since Fairy Tail will be coming over tonight you could ask Natsu for help."

"Natsu?" Mikal thought for a moment. It hadn't occurred to her that Natsu Dragneel, who defeated Zeref, would be the best person to ask about Zeref's spell books. "You're right, this would be the perfect opportunity to ask him. And this way, I don't have to walk all the way over there!" Mikal heard Yukino's giggle through the clothes and smiled to herself. This could be the first lead in years. She prayed to the gods that something good would come out of this party.

"Question, what is Rogue's favorite color?" the question was blurted out without thinking. You idiot! Why would you ask such a thing? You still don't know anything about him! You can't fall in love anyway with your stupid curse, so why does his opinion matter?

"Hm? His favorite color? I don't actually know. If I had to guess from what he wears all the time though, I would say red and black are good candidates.  Why did you ask that all of a sudden?"

"No reason." 

"For someone as tough as you, you are a horrible liar." Yukino came into Mikal's row a few seconds later armed with a handful of bathing suits and a mischievous expression. "Go try these on, I think they will flatter your body shape."

"How the heck did you find so many?" She gaped at the sheer number of clothes handed to her.

"While you were busy daydreaming about Rogue, I realized we were looking in the wrong aisle," she teasingly raised an eyebrow at Mikal.

"I swear it just came out! I don't know why it even popped into my head!" Mikal huffed and ran into the changing room to escape the conversation.

Mikal realized that Yukino wasn't done teasing her when she took a second look at the bathing suits handed to her. Over half of them were black or different shades of red. Her ears and cheeks felt like they were set ablaze as she stared at them, and there was a weird fluttery feeling in her stomach that she knew--and dreaded--all too well.