Chapter 72: Theater and Pirates

It had now been two weeks since the little incident with Laxus and Zeldaris and Aversia were currently sitting in the theater of Onibus Town, a city near Magnolia.

The town was one of the smallest towns in the kingdom and didn´t even had its own magic guild, meaning that the jobs from the city would land in the nearest mage guild, Fairy Tail.

As for the reason Zeldaris and Aversia were in the theater was because Natsu and his team were the ones that were performing it.

Natsu and the others had accepted a job request in which they would perform some small acts before the main event and during breaks.

They had gotten this job from Mirajane because Lucy had explained to Mirajane that she had some serious money problems, because Natsu and Gray would cause so much destruction on their jobs which would then be cut from their pay and would end up with almost nothing.

However, as they arrived at the theater, a grand and impressive looking building, they found that all of the actors had run away.

Apparently, they left because of multiple bad reviews that they and the theater had received and because they were worried that if they stayed any longer than their carrier as actors would never flourish.

Natsu and the others agreed to take the places of the actors, Erza was especially excited to perform as actors since it was one of her dreams.

And over the next week they trained their acting, the play that they were playing was one written by the owner of the theater, a short man named Rabian, called Frederick and Yanderica.

Happy had also helped by disturbing flyers and had been flying between Magnolia and Onibus to tell everyone at the guild.

And finally at the day of the first performance, the theater was packed full, even a few members of the guild were there: Macao with his son Romeo, Wakaba with his daughter and his wife, Cana and Laki.

Zeldaris and Aversia would see the performance a few days later with the Strauss siblings and Ophiuchus, because Natsu and the others would perform for an entire week.

And now that they were finally able to see the performance, it was not what they expected and not in a good way.

Erza was playing the main character of the story, a prince trying to rescue a princess, and was having a bad case of stage fright.

The only exception was when she was fighting against Gray, who was playing the role of the villain.

Lucy was of course playing the role of the princess that needed to be rescued and as for Natsu, he was playing the role of a dragon, which was both ironic and fitting at the same time.

Happy was carrying Natsu.

And at this point both Zeldaris and Aversia were acting as if they didn´t know those four idiots on the stage, but the worst was still to come.

At the decisive battle where Erza had to fight against Gray and Natsu at the same time and it was at this moment that all hell broke out.

Happy was no longer able to carry Natsu and both fell toward the ground, while Natsu was still spewing flames, setting the stage on fire.

While Natsu was falling down, Erza cut by accident Lucy´s costume into pieces, leaving her almost completely naked.

And after Natsu stood up after his fall he and Gray continued their fight with Erza, while also destroying the stage and the background.

Zeldaris and Aversia were covering their faces, they didn´t know these people, they had never met them in their entire life.

But for some reason, the audience was loving it.

After the show, Zeldaris, Aversia, Ophiuchus and the Strauss siblings were backstage with Natsu and the others.

Erza, glowing from happiness, asked them if they enjoyed the performance.

Mirajane and Ophiuchus said that they enjoyed it with their usual smiling and happy atmosphere.

Elfman and Lisanna were a bit awkward when they said that they enjoyed it and Zeldaris and Aversia became gloomy and didn´t answer.

But Erza interpretated it as them being overwhelmed by their performance and in a way she was right.

Mirajane and Ophiuchus did most of the talking with Natsu and the others, but all six of them noticed that Natsu, Gray, Lucy and Happy were exhausted.

When they asked the four, they told them that they had to do three performances per day and that Rabian was withholding their pay until the last day while also calling them things like armatures and lazy bums.

But luckily for them they had only one more day of performing before the seven days were up.

This was definitely not a good thing to hear, but Zeldaris and the others could not do much to help them.

Which is why they helped them to recover a bit.

And after they were finally finished with the job and returned back to Magnolia all five of them took a day of to recover, Erza needed to recover mentally because she was sad that she could no longer perform.

But that was not all that happened, Zeldaris and Aversia had accepted a job request with Lisanna and Elfman.

The job was to help guard ships of a certain company that had lately been targeted by bandits and pirates.

There were even speculations that a dark guild was involved, which was not unusual.

Dark guilds engaged in the underworld and almost all of them were under the wings of one of the three big dark guilds but that didn´t mean that they had no problems in getting money, food, or other things.

Meaning that they had to somehow get over the rounds which resulted in minor dark guilds, especially those under Oración Seis, sometimes raid villages, transports, and other things.

The four of them traveled toward the city of Hargeon.

There they met with their client, the current head of one of the largest shipping companies in the city.

After greeting them he went straight to the point and explained the situation in detail.

The ships of the company had been attacked for almost two weeks now and only his ships, other ships had not been attacked.

The client had only two possible explanations in his mind, that the pirates, bandits, and dark guild members were searching for something specific or that they had been hired by someone to deliberately attack the ships of the company.

And he thought that the latter of the two was the most likely since the company didn´t transport many valuable things and were more specialized to ship large masses.

"But we can worry about the reason for these attacks later, first we need to put a stop to them. And this is were you four will come into play. I want you four to guard the next shipment, it will be a caravan of three ships who are heading toward the kingdom of Bosco, onboard will be raw materials. The pirates and bandits usually attack after the ships are out of sight of the harbor and I don´t believe that it will be different this time. You will defend the ships and if possible, try to capture a few of them, so that we can interrogate them later. Any questions?" said the client after he finished his explanation of the situation.

Zeldaris and the others said that they had no other questions and left to find an inn for the night.

"So, what do you guys think about all of this?" asked Zeldaris as the four walked through the street.

"I don´t think that a dark guild is involved, although it happens sometimes that they attack transport ships, but those are extremely rare and usually quite risky. Those cowards would not risk so much for so little." said Elfman.

"Dark guilds need to be careful, one wrong move and the armies of the kingdom, the Rune Knights or members of a legit guild would be sent after them. And in the worst case their hideout would be found. Meaning that they need to be quick and leave as few clues as possible." added Lisanna, she found that there was something weird about the situation.

"Maybe they just have a few mages under their ranks and are being mistaken as a dark guild because of that. People often mistake pirates or bandits with some magic users as dark guilds." said Aversia, trying to find an explanation.

The number of people that can use magic is only 10% in Fiore, with a population of around four million people, this means that only 400 000 people can actively use magic.

And of these 400 000 people less than half were part of guilds, either legit guilds or dark guilds, meaning that a lot of large groups could have a few magic users with them.

"The possibility is there, but not all dark guilds are careful and survive. For example, Naked Mummy, they had attacked multiple banks and merchant guilds and yet they somehow have not been dealt with to this day." said Zeldaris, who could not understand why that idiotic dark guild still existed.

Aversia rolled her eyes and sighed before saying, "That´s because Naked Mummy is too much of a little fish. They are only after money and are otherwise not heavily involved with the underworld. The damage that they cause is not much and they generally do not kill, although not out of kindness or something like that. The council and the kingdom have already enough to manage with the bigger and stronger dark guilds and do not have the time and manpower to go after every dark guild."

This was not the first time that Aversia had to explain this to Zeldaris, who was baffled, as to why the council didn´t do much against these small dark guilds, every time news about Naked Mummy and other small dark guilds reached Magnolia.

Zeldaris and Aversia had also destroyed a few dark guilds since they joined the guild.

The four continued their conversation until they found a little inn in which they could stay for the night.

The next day, all four woke up early and meet up with the client at his office.

He told the four that the ships are almost ready to set sail and that they should quickly get on board.

Not long after and the caravan of three ships set sail out of the harbor and begun its voyage toward Bosco.

Zeldaris, Aversia, Elfman and Lisanna stood at the stern of the ship and watched the coastline that slowly became smaller and smaller, it was a beautiful day and the view of the city, and its surroundings was just beautiful.

It would still take some time until the caravan would reach the point where they usually were attacked and even if that were not the case, the people on the lookout would notice them as soon as the robbers appear.

And this time was no different, because shortly after the coastline was no longer visible the lookout noticed multiple ships that were coming toward them.

Zeldaris and the rest made their last mental preparations before rushing toward the left site of the boat.

Zeldaris and Aversia were able to make out multiple points on the horizon and they quickly became bigger and bigger.

"At least a dozen ships. They seem to be frigates, but I could be wrong, since I don´t know much about ships in general." said Zeldaris.

"We cannot be sure that this is the whole fleet, we need to be careful." said Lisanna.

The enemy fleet separated into three groups and every group targeted one ship.

"We can´t let them get near the transports. I and big brother Elf will try and stop them, we will go with what we discussed before." said Lisanna before jumping into the ocean.

Elfman was right behind Lisanna and both siblings disappeared beneath the water.

The crew could only stare in bewilderment as half of their guards just jumped of the ship.

They didn´t had the greatest opinion about those mages that the head had hired and this definitely didn´t help.

"Don´t worry about it. This is just part of the plan." said Aversia in a rather board manor, she didn´t even turn around to look at the crew and just watched the ocean.

But shortly after she begun to smile as she watched two silhouettes in the water swam toward the enemy ships.

The crew, however, did not agree with her opinion and were getting restless and desperate.

Most of them were on multiple ships that had been robbed by those bandits and they had been promised by the head of the company that this time they would take care of them finally.

And yet all that these mages had done against them was jumping into the ocean and standing around, doing nothing.

Zeldaris and Aversia on the other hand were relaxed and waited for the show to begin and to be completely honest, one of them was already enough to blow the fleet into pieces with minimal effort, but that was not their objective and rather counterproductive.

But suddenly, multiple projectiles flew toward them and all of them were targeting Zeldaris and Aversia.

The crew members that were not to far away from the two half dragons quickly tried to seek cover, but Zeldaris and Aversia didn´t even budge, because all of them were of magical nature.

The two half dragons simply opened their mouths and begun to inhale, the magical projectiles flew straight into the two mouths and devoured.

As there was no sound of the magic colliding with the ship or any other sound that would be created in such a situation, begun the sailors to carefully come out of their hiding spots, only to see how Zeldaris and Aversia were eating the magical projectiles.

None of them had ever seen something like this, the projectiles were practically flying into the mouths of the two, shocking the whole crew.

And nobody could blame them, after all the ability to eat and devour magic is something that is unique to slayer magic, which itself is quite rare.

After every projectile flew into the mouths of the two half dragons, they continued to look at the approaching ships.

"Well, with how weak those attacks were, we can definitely rule out that dark guilds are involved, because that was just way too weak." said Aversia, who was both happy and disappointed at the same time.

Now she and Zeldaris only had to wait for the show to begin.

Luckily, they didn´t had to wait much longer as a giant wave, almost as big as the ships themselves, appeared out of nowhere and crashed into one of the ships, while something jumped out of the water and onto one of the ships.

It was Elfman that jumped out of the water, he had used his magic to transform himself into a merfolk, a humanoid race that lives inside the ocean and can sometimes be seen on land.

And the moment Elfman landed on the deck of the ship he used his magic to transform into the beast and started to wreak havoc on it and the crew.

None of the bandits on the ship could stand against Elfman, heck none of them could even injure him.

When they tried to attack him with swords or spears, they shattered into pieces.

Bullets didn´t even leave a mark on him and the magicians on the ship were specialized on long range attacks and were otherwise quite weak.

Also, all of them were users of holder type magic, meaning that after Elfman took their items away or destroyed them, they could no longer use their magic.

While Elfman was giving the crew of the ship, probably the worst day of their live and guarantied nightmares for the next couple of weeks, one giant wave after the other appeared and slammed into the ships.

By slamming multiple waves against the ships, the crew lost control over them and were no longer able to control them properly.

With the situation seemingly handled, all Zeldaris and Aversia had to do was just relax and enjoy the show.