บท 35: 33. The Girl Blessed By Rain

"So, what do you think of this mission?"

"Their scales are pretty valuable, but…an entire nest of them was sighted?"

"700,000,000 J, go to Mt. Hakobe and find a missing family. We don't even have to fight the blizzardvern in the area."

"But we're fire mages and Mt. Hakobe is in the middle of its annual snow storm…I doubt we would hear, let alone see the wyverns before they're on us…"

"You worry too much, Lyssa! Come on, let's go register this with Giles."

Before I could even hit him on his head for his stupidity, the eighteen-year-old made his way over to the bar counter where the moustachioed Giles was idly cleaning glasses. The moment he realised Totomaru was standing in front of him both the mission flyer and his identification card were already on the counter.

Sighing, I made my way over from the stairs just as Giles was putting on his glasses. When he read the flyer his gaze briefly drifted off somewhere in the guild before locking back onto the two of us.

"Your first S-Rank mission, hmm? And its search and rescue?"

"Yep! Figured that it would be best for us to go and find them since I'm pretty confident they're near freezing to death."

"Are you aware of the dangers the white wyvern nest has been posing to the area?"

"No. No, he isn't."

"Relax! We can find them pretty easily, and when we do we can make our way down the mountain as fast as possible, no wyvern fighting involved! And if we do, then we can sell the scales of the wyvern for a pretty hefty sum!"

Giles just rubbed the bridge of his nose with a barely contained sigh. Leaning on the counter, he looked Totomaru in the eyes with as serious of an expression as he could.

"Listen, I'm only going to allow you to accept this request because I don't want the family stuck up there to be in danger longer than they have to."

"Yes!"

"But-"

"But?"

"You have to take someone else with you."

"Oh come on! Do we have to?"

"Listen, you'll be doing us all a favour."

"Just…tell us who it is before he has an aneurysm…"

Giles nodded before pointing to a table in the far corner of the guild hall. There was a girl with blue hair and a thick wool raincoat, as well as a dark blue cossack hat. She was repeatedly making teru teru bōzu dolls with mindless, almost desperate, motions.

"Who is she?"

"The reason it's been raining for the past week."

Both Totomaru and I looked at Giles as if he had just grown a second head.

"Listen, I know I'm the pot calling the kettle black right now, but there is no way that girl has that much natural magic power."

"It's not just her magic power," Giles said as he poured a little bit of water onto the granite countertop from a pitcher. The liquid slowly began to move towards the same direction as the girl, but there was no magic power connecting the two. "Her affinity for water is the highest I've ever seen. She doesn't even know how she's making it rain, but that's why she came here. Or rather, dumped here."

""Dumped?""

He nodded, pulling out a letter and setting it on the counter for us to read.

"Her parents sent her here in the hopes that she'd learn how to stop, even saying they would send her money for rent but it would be up to her to put food in her stomach. All she's been doing is making those dolls and hasn't even taken a glance at the quest board. The staff here have been giving her food for free but…"

"It's not a sustainable way to live…"

"Yeah. The girl has learned the Water Body spell prior to coming here, whether by instinct or at the request of her parents, I don't know. She'll be able to get through the blizzard easily because of it, and the pressure of her water would be capable of cutting through a wyvern's scales. If you can give her a portion of the money, and maybe some guidance, the staff here will be grateful."

"How old is she?" I asked him. For a girl to basically be disowned by her parents for something out of her control, she had to be even more devastated than I could imagine.

"She just turned eleven half a month ago."

Totomaru turned to me with a wry smile on his face, "I'm sleeping on the couch for a while, aren't I?"

"We still have the non-master bedrooms untouched, right?"

"Yeah, but I threw the beds out so we could buy new ones."

"Then yes, you will be. Unless you were planning on moving into Aladina's?"

"Nah, we already have the first floor walls knocked down and most of the rooms are empty except the necessities, so I wasn't gonna leave the job half done. She and the kids might move in in the future, though, assuming things continue to work out. Bigger house and all that."

"Wait, what are the two of you talking about?"

""We're taking her in/kidnapping her.""

Totomaru smacked the back of my head while Giles just looked at us dumbfounded. "Why are you…?"

"Relax, we've got the space," Totomaru said, "We're currently combining two four-story tall townhouses. We've got six bedrooms to spare and we can go get a new bed and move her in with us without much hassle."

"You'll have to get her to agree first…"

"We know, so we're just going to give her the offer."

"*Sigh* Okay... Come on. I'll introduce you."

After Giles made his way out from behind the bar he guided the two of us through the dimly illuminated guild hall. When we approached her, the girl was completely unaware of our presence even when Giles sat down. She was completely enraptured in sewing together the little white ghostly dolls.

"Hello again, little miss," Giles said with a gentle tone, but his presence still surprised the girl enough that she ended up stabbing herself with her sewing needle. She wasn't harmed though, as the finger the needle went through turned into crystal blue water.

"S-Sorry. Juvia got startled is all…" the girl said, responding to herself in the third person.

"It's perfectly fine. These two here would like to take you on your first quest. Would you like to go with them?"

"Juvia…doesn't know…"

I sat down beside her prompting her to look at me as I stuck my hand out towards her with a smile, "I'm Lyssa Wysteria. Nice to meet you."

"Juvia Lockser. Nice to meet you too…" she said as she tentatively shook my hand.

"Giles here told me how you had problems controlling your magic. That's true, right?" I asked, the girl nodding in response. "Well then, I can help you."

"""You can?"""

Ignoring the two beside us, I consciously let my body temperature rise to its natural level. This simple act caused those around me to start to sweat and the beer being poured from kegs to foam.

"I have to lower my own normal temperature pretty often. It's a natural side-effect of my primary magic type. I'm sure I can help you do the same thing, and I'm confident I actually know how."

"Y-You can help Juvia?"

The girl's eyes shined with optimism and hope. It was clear something about the rain had caused problems for her since she was young, and judging by the complaints I've heard the past week about the rain I could probably guess what.

"Yeah, I can even help you out on the way to do the guild requests, but I do have to admit that it will be dangerous. You can back out now if you want to, but I'll still help you later no matter what."

"Juvia will help you! Just…please teach me!"

Amused by her outburst, I unconsciously began to pat her head while laughing.

"Easy, no need to yell. But good! So, let's start with being friends, yeah?"

As if testing the laws of reality, her eyes and smile somehow grew brighter as she gripped my hand even tighter than the timid handshake she mustered up earlier.

"Yes! We'll be the bestest of friends!"

"Alright! Come on! Let's go prepare for the mission!"

Pulling her hand the two of us ran through the doors of the guildhall. It immediately became clear once we were out that it wasn't raining anymore. The sun was high in the sky and graced everyone underneath it with its warm glow.

I felt Juvia lag behind me, causing me to turn around and look at her as she was taken aback by the abrupt change of scenery. Meanwhile, I had to suppress a smug smile that was making its way onto my face.

"This is…"

"See? I told you I would teach you how to get control!"

—

"So, my emotions were causing it to rain?"

"That they were. The more magic a person has the more violently their emotions affect their magic, and subsequently the type of magic they have the most natural affinity for."

"But the rain has followed Juvia since she was born?"

"Mages are naturally attached to nature through magic, so I would wager that the crying you were doing upon birth made the water element think you were sad. Rain is often symbolised as either a sad or calm thing, so nature likely reflected your sadness or what it thought was sadness. The more sad you got due to the rain's presence in your life the more it rained, causing a loop of sorts."

"I see…"

On the train ride to Hakobe Station and the lodge where we would begin our climb upward towards Mt. Hakobe, I tried to explain to Juvia how the rain likely came into being.

The way it followed her around and the desperation she seemed to have to get it to disappear, if the anti-rain dolls she was making were any clue, all pointed me towards the way her emotions likely affected the environment around her.

The basis for my theory was how the Captain always tried to drill into my mind how hatred is a powerful emotion for pyromancers and something that we needed to control, with the several times I turned the grass around me to ash during the times I myself got aggravated during training sessions being a prime example.

The way her happiness seemed to literally shine away the rain proved me right, but I just didn't think it would be as easy as it was.

My guess is that if she was as sad as I assumed she was during her childhood, then she might be emotionally stunted to some degree causing all of her emotions to be more extreme than normal which simultaneously raises their influence on her magic.

Totomaru had drifted off to sleep the second we got onto the train, meaning he missed the opportunity for me to impart some wisdom to him and when we arrived at Hakobe Station I had to wake him up.

But no matter how much of a headache waking him up was, what we saw after getting off the train was so much more annoying…

Standing there were two people, the taller one being an eighteen-year-old boy with blonde hair, a scar on his face, and a pair of headphones. I recognized him as Laxus Dreyar, the Lightning Wizard who became one of Fairy Tail's S-Class mages last year and the grandson of the guild's master. He was talking to someone that looked like a hunter and beside the hunter was a woman we were supposed to meet, our client.

Beside him was a familiar girl with white hair, blue eyes, and a dark purple jacket. The second she saw me her expression immediately lost all sense of calm as her rage became as visible as the vein that was about to burst from her head.

"What the hell are you doing here!?"

A/N: Juvia would have had a happy childhood in Ireland because no one would've known she was the one behind the rain. It will literally be raining 5 out of 7 days next week where I live.

On another note, did anyone else in Ireland have that thing when they were growing up where they would have a parent shut them up after the daily news started to say the post-weather report obituaries and be like "I have to make sure no one I knew died yesterday." Just me?