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CHAPTER START---
"Ah," Oberon winces as a burning sensation flows through his body.
Sitting on a medical table in a pair of shorts, his left leg to his waist is already wrapped tightly in medicated bandages as his treatment continues.
The doctor, a middle-aged woman with a single streak of grey in her brown hair, carefully plucks grains of sand from the shredded left side of her patient.
Constantly spraying him with more numbing medication whenever he winces, already having burnt through half her supply due to his rapid healing. The very same rapid healing that caused his muscles and skin to regrow around grains of poisoned sand and dust, running his body temperature up into an absurd fever by the time they arrived back at the town.
Now Oberon sits on her table as she carefully plucks away bits of sand and infected flesh from whatever poison was coating it. The entire left side of his body was still bare, muscle and flesh exposed. His left arm was now in a splint, pieces of bones sealed in layers of wraps as the limb remained at his side.
Even now, with his incredible healing abilities, his entire body aches. His face was much the same, showing exposed bone and blackened flesh along the left side, and the woman could almost see his ribs through the shredded meat on the left side of his chest.
Working her way up his body, she'd already dealt with the most contaminated areas, and was meticulously combing through his body and plucking out every grain while wrapping him in bandages.
"Ah!" Oberon screams as she tears a few grains out of exposed muscle. He then grits his teeth as she sprays more numbing agent before applying medication.
Glancing at her last few bottles of the numbing agent, she frowns while wondering, for what felt like the millionth time, what could have happened in the desert to cause this.
But above even that, she was morbidly curious about exactly what this boy was to survive such monstrous injuries.
Oberon squeezes his eyes shut, trying and failing to ignore the medicine burning away at him while she works, and is thankful when his Communication Lacrima beeps.
He glances at the table beside him, where his bag was, and floats the spherical Lacrima over to him before tapping it with his right hand.
"Oh, you answered quickly," Makarov says as he appears in the Lacrima. "What the hell happened to you?"
"I got into a—" Oberon winces. "Into a bit of a fight, but I got the job done. Now it's just to turn it in and get paid."
"I see. I was just calling to check in on you. I figured you would have gotten to Minstrel sometime today or tomorrow."
"We got here this morning. After I'm done getting patched up, we'll be leaving, all before sunset."
"Good. And your injuries? Those look serious."
The doctor takes this chance to speak up. "Your boy should be dead. I'm not sure how he's even alive."
"I'm tougher than I look."
She doesn't look away from her work while speaking. "You will need months to heal. Bed rest for the first few weeks. The poison was strong."
"I didn't even feel it until we were halfway here."
"You also need to clean these wounds and change the bandages," she says. "Five months before fully healed."
Oberon smiles at her. "I heal fast. I'll be fine in a few weeks."
She looks up, glaring at him, then sighs and goes back to tending his injury. "No combat. No excessive movement. Relax for a while."
"That's the plan."
"You heard her," Makarov says. "Finish the job, then come straight to the Guild. Those books you ordered got here this morning, so that should keep you from crawling up the walls while you recover."
"Yeah. That sounds nice, Master. This job was…messy."
Makarov nods. "That is unfortunate. I tried to warn you, but sometimes this is what it takes to reach the summit. I just wish you could have had a few more years before experiencing such things. We can discuss it properly when you get back to the guildhall."
"Yeah. Is there anything else I need to know?"
"Not that I can recall. If you leave today, then you should get here in time to bet on the S-Class Trial participants and cheer them on."
"Honestly, I didn't think I'd get back in time. If I don't reach the guild before the announcement, can you tell Enno to put me down for the betting limit on Macao?"
"Sorry, but you can only make bets in person, those are the rules."
"Damn it, fine. I'll see you all in a week or so. If there is anything, just contact me."
"Heh, I should be the one telling you that, considering the state you're in."
"I'll recover," Oberon frowns. "You don't have to worry so much."
"My job is to worry about my guild members as if they were my own sons and daughters. Well, grandsons and granddaughters."
"Right. Thank you, Master Makarov. And I'm sorry for making you worry. Hopefully, one day you won't have to worry about me anymore."
Makarov scoffs. "As if you could ever make me stop worrying. Anyway, I need to go now. I'll call tomorrow for an update on your condition."
"Got it." The connection ends, and Oberon gently floats the Lacrima back to his travel bag.
Nearly two hours later, Oberon stored his travel bag in a Storage Card and secured the card holder in his pocket before stepping out of the back room.
Wearing a loose jacket over his injured body, along with a pair of shorts and shoes. The entire left side of his body, from his feet to his face, is bandaged, with his left arm in a splint at his side.
He takes the medicine from the doctor and pays her very well before stepping into the main room of the clinic, seeing a few people on cots lying about while he walks past them.
He looks to the far side of the room and sees the two men he saved and brought back sitting in the corner, leaning against each other as they get some rest.
'At least I saved two people. I wish I could have brought those girls back, too…I bet if I knew the language, I could have explained things to them. Yeah, I could have saved them if I had known how to speak to them.'
Oberon steps onto the main street of this small city, noticing a few carts set out to serve food and drinks as the sun begins its descent toward the ocean.
'I can worry about learning languages later.' He looks at the few food carts and follows his nose to one serving a baked pastry he'd never seen before. 'This is more important right now.'
As Oberon walks over to the food cart and patiently waits in line, the street grows busier as the orange hues of sunset begin washing over the city.
Meanwhile, he is completely oblivious to the men watching him from a nearby rooftop.
Looking down on the main street, Jura and his three allies focus on Oberon, eyeing him with curiosity.
"I thought he'd be—"
"Taller?"
"Older?"
"Subtle?" the last man asks.
Jura sighs. "Harder to find. But I hear Fairy Tail wizards tend to stand out. And this one has hair like the night sky, that's easy enough to pick out in a crowd."
"What's the plan, Jura?" One of the three men asks.
Jura looks around, taking note of every building, the width of the street, and the distance between Oberon and the harbor.
"I need all of you to be extra diligent for this," Jura says. "We'll be confronting him on the main street. That's the most open area for my Magic. Otherwise, I risk destroying the buildings and homes.
We have to be quick and efficient. I don't want anyone getting hurt, especially any of these people. We also can't allow him to fly to the harbor. We don't know what boat he arrived on, and his Gravity Magic will probably make him impossible to catch if he gets away."
"Then we have to confront him after he's caught," one of the men materializes an ornate blue rope from his palm. "I can do that."
"You will, but be wary of his injuries. Approach from his right side. He was in the clinic for quite some time, and his injuries appear severe. We don't want to hurt anyone, including him."
"How do we go about this?" One of the other men asks.
Jura turns to him. "Use your Magic to get both of you close. I will keep some distance to contain him if needed."
"And me?" the last man asks.
"Stay here. You will keep him in your sighs. If he starts flying, ground him. But remember, minimal injuries. Target his right side, we don't want to make his injuries worse."
The three men nod, and Jura signals for them to move out.
A moment later he sees Oberon standing at the cart eating a pastry before ordering another, and Jura feels a pit in his stomach for what's about to happen.
Yet, for the first time in his life, he wasn't sure why he felt such hesitation.
'Is this because we're going to confront a child?' he wonders. 'Guild Wizard or not, the boy is still a child. But this feeling. Something is off about this situation.'
Jura ignores his gut feeling and leaps across the rooftops and down into an alley, stepping onto the main street to take his position.
CHAPTER END---
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