Having forced Natsu and Gray awake, Happy tried the same trick on Gajeel, going in for a full round of frantic scratching. But before he could get started, he seemed to forget that Gajeel's Dragon Slayer element was iron, and having a face thicker than iron wasn't just a figure of speech in his case.
Clang.
"Owww!!"
Happy let out a pained yelp, clutching his right paw and hopping around in a circle. The guild members watching all burst into a round of thoroughly unsympathetic laughter.
Amid the commotion, Gajeel finally blinked his eyes open, groggy and disoriented. The first thing he saw upon waking was Happy, tears in his eyes, howling in pain right in front of him.
"Where'd this cat come from, making all that racket."
He paused for a second. Wait, forget the cat. The real problem is that damned redhead woman!
Shaking his still slightly dizzy head, he scanned the room and quickly spotted Erza, who had already taken a seat at one of the tables.
"You! That woman! That last one didn't count, fight me again!"
He said it while already striding toward her. Natsu and Gray, nursing their bruised faces off to the side, watched in shock as he marched off to pick a fight with Erza of all people. Just as the two of them were quietly admiring Gajeel's guts, impressed by his apparent death wish, Gajeel abruptly stopped in his tracks.
It wasn't that his nerve had failed him. He'd simply finally noticed Kabe, sitting right beside Erza, watching him with obvious interest.
"You, you're Kabe! The Wizard Saint! The Destroyer!"
Gajeel shouted the words out, thoroughly worked up. Nobody paid his reaction much mind. Anyone meeting Kabe for the first time tended to react about the same way, and by now everyone was more than used to seeing it. But what Gajeel did next caught everyone completely off guard.
He dropped the idea of confronting Erza without a second thought, closed the distance to Kabe in just a couple of strides, and politely extended both hands toward him.
"K, Kabe, sir, could I shake your hand?"
"Uh, sure, of course."
Kabe stood up with a somewhat bewildered expression and offered his right hand. Without another word, Gajeel clasped it tightly with both of his own and shook it, practically vibrating with excitement, launching straight into an introduction of himself.
"I'm Gajeel, the new guy at the guild, and also your biggest fan! Mr. Kabe, I've admired you for so long. A few years back, before you took down Jose Porla, that old man actually tried to recruit me into Phantom Lord. I was on the fence about it back then, and I honestly almost said yes. But it was you, a guy only two years older than me, who beat Jose head on when he was still a Wizard Saint, and that's what kept me from taking a wrong turn. Ever since then, I've been keeping tabs on you, watching you climb through newspapers and magazines, bit by bit, from your first days as a Wizard Saint all the way to becoming the strongest in all of Ishgar today. I was actually planning to hold off a while longer, build up a name for myself out there first, before joining Fairy Tail on my own terms. Never expected Guild Master Makarov would find me first, and on my very first day joining the guild, I'd get to meet my idol in person!"
Listening to Gajeel's excited monologue, Kabe could barely keep his smile from cracking.
This overzealous fanboy, this is really the same aloof, cold, antisocial Gajeel from the original story? Are we sure the old man didn't grab the wrong guy, or that the real Gajeel wasn't secretly swapped out somewhere along the way?
Even with the personality not quite matching up, the iron hard body and the Iron Dragon Slayer Magic he'd inherited from Metalicana were undeniable proof that the man in front of him really was Gajeel, no doubt about it. And besides, a Gajeel who idolized him and treated him as a role model was a lot easier to deal with than the antisocial thorn in everyone's side from the original story could ever have been.
Watching Gajeel, once he'd learned about the relationship between Kabe and Erza, dutifully head off to clean up the guild and sort out the mess he'd caused, Kabe stopped dwelling on the little oddities in his behavior. Once Gajeel finished up his chores, Kabe called the kid over and asked him about his life over the past few years. Gajeel had nothing to hide from his idol and readily told him everything.
Like Natsu, Gajeel had one day found the dragon that raised him simply gone, and had set off to search for him. Only his luck hadn't been nearly as good as Natsu's, since he never ran into someone as kind as Guild Master Makarov, and his childhood had been comparatively rough. Comparatively being the key word, since once he'd grown up a bit more, he'd quickly made a name for himself in the mercenary world thanks to his powerful Dragon Slayer Magic. It was around that time, when he was still just starting to make waves, that Jose had approached him with an invitation to join Phantom Lord.