Crystal, Ice and Fire ✔

CHAPTER 7

'Can't you hold it together?!' I exploded, after an hour of vomiting. Dragneel had the worst case of motion-sickness I had ever seen.

'Can't... help... it...' he choked out of the window. 'Seriously, though,' Gray said. 'how much did you eat to puke like this? It's never been so bad before.'

'I'll take care of it,' Erza said. Then she punched him really, really hard on the head, knocking him out. He almost fell out of the window, but Gray who was sitting next to the window (and beside me) caught him and pulled him back. His head fell in Erza's lap.

Then, for the rest of the journey, we had to deal with his snoring, which was almost worse.

We were on a train to Modora. Dragneel was "all fired up" at first, but when he finally got it through his thick skull that we were going by train, he immediately backed out.

'Happy can take me instead,' he said. But then he saw Erza, all ready with her Flame Empress armour to haul him in the train, so he changed his mind. And so, here we were.

'You know,' Gray shouted over the snores. 'We should probably throw him over-board. He won't even notice.'

We laughed. It was true, at the rate that he was snoring.

An hour later, we reached Modora. It looked deserted. There was no one at the station. We were the only people who got off. I guess no one wanted to come to Modora with all the robberies going on.

We roamed through the streets, hoping the AD wasn't a joke. Because if it was, I felt very sorry for the person who played it. He was going to get his butt whupped by four powerful wizards, and he most probably wouldn't survive the whupping.

Turns out, it wasn't a joke. Dragneel was disappointed.

A lot, lot of people, seemed like the whole town, was gathered at the town square. Someone was standing on a podium, giving a speech. We decided to wait. After all, the job had come from the mayor himself, and I bet he was the person giving the talk. We weren't really listening, since we had no idea what it was about, even if we had a pretty good guess.

After the talk was over, and that is three hours later (excuse me, my watch is screaming, "IT'S BEEN FIVE MINUTES!"), we made a beeline for the mayor, literally, since Dragneel was pushing people out of the way, and the rest of us were apologizing.

'Hello,' the mayor said. 'How may I help you?'

We decide to introduce ourselves.

'Hi,' I said. 'We're mages from Fairy Tail. Seems like you called for our help...?'

Realization dawned. 'Oh, yes,' he said. 'You're finally here.' He hastily extended his hand and shook all of ours. 'I am Mayor Anderson,' he said. 'But you can call me Frank.'

We nodded. 'Very well,' Erza said. 'What do we need to do?'

The mayor explained the situation to us. Since the past three weeks, there had been various robberies in the city. Jewellery, money, antiques.... Everything a thief would take. They had even succeeded in taking a piano-sized lacrima out of a museum, though nobody so far has even got a glimpse of them.

The mayor was extremely flustered and worried to even talk properly. Lastly, he said that the thief would always leave a mark behind, a sign of their success. He decided to show us. We headed to the museum.

'Fank,' called Erza. 'what of the guards?'

The mayor hung his head. 'They were found dead the next morning.'

We all exchanged glances. Thieves don't usually kill people. I began to think that James was correct. Maybe the dark guild members were the thieves.