"This is completely unacceptable. Look at what you've done! Don't think for one second that marrying the Queen means I won't chew you out. As long as you're a member of Fairy Tail, I'm still your Guild Master!"
Out on the open ground beside the villa, Makarov was in the middle of laying into Kabe over what had just happened. As for why they were standing outside the villa rather than in it, that was simply because the villa itself had gotten caught in the earlier explosion. The inside was such a wreck there was nowhere left to even set foot.
Having listened to the old man ramble on for what felt like ages, his ears practically growing calluses from it, Kabe finally turned and glanced off behind him.
"Old man, quit yapping at me for a second. Looks like a few troublemakers even worse behaved than me just showed up. Might want to go give them a good talking to instead."
With that, he clapped Makarov on the shoulder and walked off. A garrison of the Kingdom of Fiore's army stationed in Clover Town had heard the earlier commotion and was already on its way over, and he still needed to go have a word with their commanding officer, to get them to take the rest of the mess off his hands.
Makarov watched Kabe walk off, then rose up on his toes to peer down the road leading to the villa. Sure enough, at the far end of his sight he made out three blurry shapes, two tall and one small. The old man's eyes narrowed at once, glaring with open hostility at the three brats charging this way, the whiskers on his upper lip beginning to tremble.
"Natsu! Gray! Happy!!"
What awaited the three of them afterward was, naturally, an even more furious tongue lashing than the one Kabe had just gotten. Looking at how things turned out, the three of them were in for some seriously bad luck. Not only had their quest target been stolen right out from under them, leaving them nothing to prove themselves with, they now had to sit through a scathing lecture from the old man, and once they got back, an even deadlier punishment was waiting for them.
But Makarov, Kabe, and even everyone else back at the guild weren't about to pity them over any of it. Charging into a quest well beyond their abilities without a thought for the consequences was a dangerous thing to do in the first place. This time, they'd simply been lucky enough to run into someone like Erigor, who wasn't all that strong to begin with. If they'd run into an opponent on the level of Erza or Mira on an S Class job instead, what waited for them wouldn't have just been a failed quest, but a very real, life threatening crisis.
The regional meeting had already been more or less winding down anyway. Add in the chaos Lullaby caused and Kabe's thunderous intervention on top of that, and there was no way it could continue now. After handing Erigor, beaten well past recognition, over to the army once it arrived, an exhausted Makarov said his goodbyes to his old friends and got ready to head back. Only this time, compared to arriving alone, he found himself saddled with four headache inducing brats for the trip home.
On the train, Kabe sat with his legs crossed, thoroughly at ease, petting Happy, who lay flat across his lap not daring to move. Maybe it was just down to being a different species, but Happy barely shed at all, which made things extremely pleasant for a cat lover like Kabe, who adored cats but couldn't stand cat hair. Makarov sat cross legged beside him, arms folded, staring silently out the window, radiating an oppressive weight the whole way. Across from them, Natsu, who'd triggered his motion sickness the instant he boarded, wasn't even worth mentioning. Gray sat facing them looking thoroughly unable to hold still, shifting in his seat every so often, not daring to meet either Kabe's or Makarov's eyes.
After letting his gaze linger on the two of them for a good while, Kabe let out a sudden, cold laugh.
"Heh. Scared now, are you? Weren't you awfully tough back there in the ruins?"
Natsu squeezed his eyes shut and committed to playing dead, the very picture of a boy already passed out cold.
But while Natsu could fake it, Gray had no way to dodge this. Under Kabe's stern gaze, he turned his head away, awkward and stiff, and admitted his fault under his breath.
"I know I messed up. I won't do it again."
"And?" Kabe said, picking Happy up off his lap by the scruff and staring into his beady eyes, voice dripping with malice. "You two didn't actually think a simple sorry was going to cover it, did you?"
Feeling his nerve crumble under that stare, Happy folded at once and started shifting the blame.
"It, it's got nothing to do with me! The idea was Natsu's, and Gray's the one who went and did it. I'm just a poor little cat who got dragged along against his will. If you're gonna blame someone, blame Natsu and Gray!"
Hearing Happy dump the blame entirely onto Natsu and Gray, both Gray, sitting bolt upright, and Natsu, still playing unconscious, felt a flare of fury, silently branding Happy a traitor. But playing cute and acting dumb did nothing against Kabe. Far from letting Happy off, he only doubled down.
"Still trying to talk your way out of it? Guess you haven't figured out what you did wrong yet."
With that, he flung Happy straight into Natsu's face.
After a glance at Makarov, who hadn't said a word through any of this, he announced the punishment for all three of them.
"Gray, Natsu. Once we're back at the guild, I'm getting in touch with Sorcerer Weekly's professional photographers and stylists to put together a custom photo collection of the two of you, dressed in women's clothing, tailored just for you."
At that, Gray's eyes bulged wide and his whole face went white in an instant. Natsu, for his part, couldn't keep up the unconscious act any longer either. He yanked Happy off his face and stared at Kabe, lips trembling.
Kabe paid no attention to the two boys' stricken faces, turning instead to Happy, who had just let out a private sigh of relief at not hearing his own name called.
"Happy, your punishment's doubled. Not only are you posing for the same photos, for the next month you're stripped of your right to eat fish."
"Wha, what?! No, not that, anything but that! I'm a cat! Eating fish is basically my birthright!"
Every hair on Happy's body stood on end. As far as he was concerned as a cat, posing for photos in women's clothing or whatever meant nothing at all, but being banned from fish alone was worse to him than being killed outright.
"Buzz. Objection denied."
Kabe crossed his arms in an X in front of his chest, staring Happy down with a smile that never touched his eyes.
"A cat that doesn't eat fish can always eat mice and birds instead. Say one more word about it and I'll stretch it out to half a year."
"H, half a—!!"
The startled sound had barely left his mouth before Happy caught Kabe's eyes narrowing, and he clapped both paws over his own mouth in fright, nodding through tears in pained resignation.
Goodbye, my beloved fish. I'll think about you every single day for the next month.
With Happy properly cowed, Kabe turned back to Natsu and Gray, whose expressions kept flickering between defiance and dread, and jerked his chin at them, signaling for them to hurry up and decide. Something this humiliating, under normal circumstances, neither of them would ever have agreed to. But watching Kabe, who'd already started cracking his knuckles with an ominous popping sound, and beside him Makarov, who looked like he wasn't paying attention but was actually watching the two of them closely out of the corner of his eye, after a solid internal struggle, Gray and Natsu swallowed their pride and bowed their heads in humiliated surrender.
"Mm, good. That's exactly the attitude you should have after doing something wrong."
Watching the three of them wilt on the spot, Kabe gave their newfound repentance an approving, wicked grin.
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