We do the job.

Traveling to Shirotsume Town was uneventful. Lucy argued with Natsu and Happy about everything under the sun but it wasn't that hard to ignore.

Once we got there around noon, Natsu was all for having lunch. He seemed rather disappointed that Lucy hadn't wanted to eat as a team for some reason. I went with Lucy to help her pick out her maid uniform. It was a good thing too. The one she went for had like zero cleavage.

We met with the Kaby, the guy who put up the job a little later. He had a disturbing mustache but a really pretty wife. I definitely didn't remove her panties and keep them as a souvenir. Okay, maybe I did. But I think that was pretty restrained of me, given all of the rather wrong things I could have done. Still, I felt bad about even doing that much when the guy told us that the reward had been raised to two million jewels! TWO MILLION JEWELS! Yea, we didn't stick around long after hearing that.

At the mansion we met another man with a disturbing mustache. Everlue was also insane. There was no doubt about that. He called Lucy ugly! My Lucy in the sexiest maid costume imaginable- my Lucy, he called ugly! And then we saw the maids he did think were beautiful and well... the man was a lunatic. That's all there was to say about that.

He refused to hire Lucy but that was okay because I realized we didn't even need that plan anyway. With the earrings, I could just walk into the mansion like I owned the place and take the book. No fuss. No muss. And that's exactly how it went down. Okay, once I found the library it took me the better part of an hour to find Daybreak but that was a small price to pay.

I handed the book off to Lucy outside. She was beyond excited to learn it was written by her favorite author and she set about speed reading it with some magic glasses on the way to take it to Kaby. Yea, she wouldn't allow Natsu to destroy it which was okay by me because we were about to make the easiest two million jewel ever!

My head was split with pain as I pushed off the cobblestones and I spit the warm blood filling my mouth onto the street beneath me. I gingerly touched my head and felt the thick knot on my skull as well as the shallow cut that was getting blood all over my face. I had to wipe it out of my left eye to be able to see. I heard another thunderous crash and I was too dazed to react immediately. Eventually I managed to throw myself to the side and roll a few feet. Blearily I noticed my fortune, that the shattered masonry had hit the ground no where near me otherwise I would have surely been crushed.

What the hell was wrong with this crazy bastard?! It was just a stupid book! Why couldn't he just report it stolen to the guard?! Was it really worth destroying half the town to get it back?!

I looked around quickly and sighed with relief to Lucy standing unharmed with her crab-guy spirit protecting her. She and Everlue were still managing to hold an argument in the midst of all this fire and ruin. Speaking of... I caught sight of a flame-fisted Natsu shoot across the gap between buildings above the street to clash with Everlue's two mercenary mages standing on the other side. Zeref! Between the Fairy Tail mage casually slamming into things and sending fire all over the place and Everlue and his giant pink maid diving through the ground and 'swimming' right through buildings leaving deep gouges and gaping holes in the construction, there wasn't going to be much of this neighborhood left when this was all over. All this for a stupid book! At least now I knew why this job was worth two million jewel-everyone involved was both fucking nuts and really fucking dangerous!

I grimaced around the pain that seemed to be emanating from every part of my body as I got to my feet. Well... for that much money, putting up with all this bullshit and getting the crap kicked out of me would be entirely worth it.

The problem was that there wasn't a lot I could do. Natsu's opponents were constantly moving and I'd never be able to reach one of them in time to do anything useful. In fact, I'd already wasted my sleep spell on the bald/pony-tailed one earlier. Either I'd missed somehow or he'd just shrugged the effect off. I don't know. I could probably reach Everlue as he occasionally stopped moving to demand Lucy tell him what secrets the book was hiding, but I had serious doubts about how effective kicking a guy in the nuts would be when his hands and feet could literally push through solid rock like it was water. The image of the chubby asshole casually passing a hand through my stomach and ripping out my guts was ever present in my mind.

Well, at least Natsu had punted that enormous bruiser of a maid out of the fight right at the beginning.

“Heaven and Hell Annihilation Technique!” My attention was torn to the enemy mages shouting their attack and I winced to see Natsu get struck hard by baldy's oversized frying pan. His body was sent careening through the air to collide with the building across the street, even as he fell to the ground in a pained slump the second mage seemed to teleport above him. I opened my mouth to shout a warning but it was already to late as the blue jacketed mercenary landed directly on Natsu with incredible ****, causing the street to shatter beneath them, dust and rock exploding up into the air and obscuring my view entirely.

I started to dash towards him to help somehow when I was brought up short as Everlue shouted something in rage about exposing his business dealings. Then I felt the familiar vortex of magical energy of a Celestial Spirit summon as he brandished a key. One mystical lightshow later and the guy's giant pink haired maid was back in the fight, bursting out of the street in a shower of stone and dirt.

Wait?! The maid was a spirit?

My stomach lurched as Everlue commanded, “Virgo! Destroy this fool girl and fetch me that book!”

There was an explosion of flame and heat nearby and I flinched but I was too worried about Lucy to pay it any mind.

“Yes, Master.” intoned the spirit as Lucy ordered her own spirit to defend her, “Cancer, take Everlue down for good!” Wait?! What?! My heart skipped a beat as Cancer jumped towards the insane politician rather than intercept Virgo. I was moving before I knew it and casting the charm spell with both of my arms outstretched pleadingly.

Success! The Celestial Spirit stopped in the middle of pulling her pillar like arm back to crush Lucy's comparatively tiny form. Her monstrous head jerked in my direction and I saw her cheeks go rosy. But then she seemed to remember what she was doing and her arm started to descend once more. “No Virgo! Don't hurt Lucy! If you truly love me, you won't hurt her!”

Virgo arm slammed into the street in another explosion of cracked stone and flying debris. A cold hand grasped my heart until I saw an unharmed Lucy dodging away.

“Fire Dragon Iron Fist!” came Natsu's roar from above and I was barely aware of a giant corona of fire descending from the sky before a giant pink-haired suddenly appeared in front of me and I suddenly found myself rather violently buried underground.

Pain and then blackness....

I was sitting on Kaby's couch, actually more like collapsed on Kaby's couch. Every part of my body ached and my head throbbed, bruises and cuts mostly. Pretty sure nothing was broken. I was beyond exhausted and I could barely pay attention to the discussion taking place less than five feet away on the couch beside me. It was about Kaby's dad writing a secret message to him in that book about love and acceptance or something like that. I honestly wasn't following it. Lucy had it covered. We were about to make two million jewels so whatever.

So Natsu had attacked Everlue with his giant fireball of **** somehow not noticing his teammates standing well within the blast zone. Well, I think I know why he ignored me (which was rather troubling for my continued survivability on these jobs). Maybe he (correctly!) assumed Lucy's Crab spirit guy would protect her? I'm just lucky that Virgo-monster decided to pile drive me into the ground before she saved her master from incineration.

And we won. With Everlue **** on the street, his hired hench-mages a burnt mess nearby, and his ginormo maid back to the Spirit World we were free to return the book to Kaby.

So here we are.