“You know, if Chanyeol were here, he would be able to reach the guitar AND play it.” D.O playfully taunts his current partner for this job as he goes about fixing the set of guitars that he had tripped over at first in an attempt to reach a pretty steel-string on the higher level of the wall.

“Shut up.” Kai rolls his eyes as he sets the last bass back in place before he can break anything else. “I just need to be capable of catching some goons, okay? Not strumming some pretty wooden box to attract girls.”

“Don’t be bitter.” He punches the younger boy with what he himself perceives to be a soft hit, but ends up sending him to the side a couple of steps towards knocking over another guitar.

“Jeez, Kyungsoo! Watch your strength.” Kai hisses as he regains his balance and rubs his arm.

“Sorry.” The older man smiles.

Kai takes another look at the job flyer he had taken off of the board of the guild’s request board. “I don’t get what’s so special about these instruments. There are guitars everywhere. Why this shop all the way out in Ulsan?”

“If you had been listening to the owner, he explained that there’s a special guitar on display here. The very one that one of the master of the Skyline guild played with his friends when they were in a band.” D.O answers.

“So it’s magical?”

“And expensive. Not to mention that it’s been autographed and has sentimental value.” D.O smiles at the thought, “I used to listen to his music a lot. He donated it to the store owner because this was the place he used to come to all the time, and where he bought all of his first instruments. Since he got big, he thought maybe he would help the business by providing a small trophy for display.”

“That’s nice. But it seems as though it hasn’t really done much for the business…” Kai look around the store, seeing only a couple of boys playing with the drums and guitars and a girl scanning the keyboards.

D.O frowns slightly, “Yeah, well. That master’s golden age has ended and a new generation of music has taken over. This is more of a store for authentic and quality instruments. Only serious music lovers really know about it. But the merchandise here is a lot more expensive.” He caresses the arm of a squier telecaster, “But the people here know music.”

“Hey boys.” The store manager comes out from the back. “Looks like today was safe enough. I think you can take off after I close up shop tonight.”

“Are you sure, sir?” D.O asks.

“No one’s touched him since the past week you’ve been here. They must not want to make a move seeing your Fairy Tail insignias.” He chuckles, eyeing the guitar in the display case near the counter where the girl who had been examining keyboards earlier is admiring now.

“Excuse me?” she calls to the manager.

“Yes, ma’am. How may I help you?” he walks over to the lady.

“I don’t think this guitar is legitimate.” She comments.

“I beg your pardon?” he blinks with a smile.

“The Boohwal symbol isn’t anywhere on here.”

“Well it should be right there at the bottom on the back—“ he clarifies, looking behind the case. Suddenly, his eyes go wide at the sight of the absence of the mark stamped on the back. Quickly opening the case, he pulls the Stratocaster out of the stand and runs his hand over the body and strings. He looks up at the two mage boys in the store, “It’s been replicated and replaced.” He says in a dangerously low and worried voice.

“What?! That’s impossible! We’ve been here on watch the whole time.” Kai protests.

“Was there anyone who had asked to see it? Or did you possibly take it out of the case to clean it?” D.O asks.

“None at all.” The manager shakes his head before he starts typing things into the computer, “I need to check the security cameras.”

Meanwhile, D.O and Kai start questioning the other customers in the store immediately, “Did you spot anyone near this case since you came in?”

“I don’t think so…” answers one boy, “But we only got here a few minutes ago.”

“Hey!” The shout comes from the girl who had noticed the faux guitar, and she’s yelling at someone across the street. “Hey!” she shouts again, louder, before dashing out of the store.

D.O and Kai both approach the door and it’s just a glance, but they manage to catch it of the figure in a black jacket and gray jeans clutching a rectangular case large enough to hold any guitar. “Kai!” D.O shouts, signaling the teleporting mage to catch up to the perpetrator.

“On it!” he says before disappearing in a wisp of black smoke. D.O runs out of the store in pursuit of the girl who’s also following the thief. Just as he turns, he spots the disappearing black smoke ahead of him, but he hears a grunt that sounds like it came from his partner as the large case smacks him to the ground. Kai drops to the ground roughly but D.O keeps running until he passes him, shouting a quick “Hurry!” before continuing after the two ahead of him.

The thief is on a skateboard, and he’s gaining speed. He knows he shouldn’t, but he does it anyway; D.O lifts his foot up from the ground and stomps it back down, sending the sidewalk rifting towards his criminal. But first, the girl goes up, “Whoa!” she shouts before jumping to the side on the stairs of someone’s doorway. D.O is thankful that she managed to protect herself because he hadn’t thought of her at first, despite how brave she was in trying to perform a good deed. The wave travels through the rest of the sidewalk and when it reaches the culprit, he’s thrown off of his skateboard. “Oof!” he grunts as he hits the ground.

D.O is almost to him when he curses and throws his arm out in front of him, his fingers spread out with a glowing circle appearing in front of his hand. Another wizard! No wonder he was probably able to sneak past everyone in the store, “Skate magic: Fly!” Suddenly, his skateboard transforms into a sleek, high-tech long board and rolls towards its owner. He jumps on top of it mid-air and suddenly he’s in the sky, out of D.O’s range.

A tuft of black smoke appears on the roof and Kai jumps down, knocking the thief off of the skateboard. They were coming towards the ground fast. But the guitar has to be kept intact! The crook growls before shouting another spell, “Skate magic: Roller blades!” and just like that, magical roller blades appear at his feet and shoot a jet of electric blue from his heels, sending him cartwheeling over in the air and Kai dropping towards the ground.

Luckily, his partner manages to teleport safely to the ground in a confusion of smoke before he’s back to chasing after the guy on the jet roller blades again. D.O chases after him as well, using his earth magic to shoot obstacles from the ground to trip him, but he’s good at dodging. Kai keeps popping up by his sides but he’s dodged again and again. “Skate magic: Accelerate!” the perpetrator shouts and in a flash of light, he’s—

“Hiya!!” A flash of pink appears on top of the skater, sending him reeling off of his wheels, but he skids to a stop on his now wheel-less feet. And before he can cast another spell, the girl who had chased after the skate mage from the music store jabs him in several areas in the torso and legs in less than 2 seconds, and he drops to the ground, immobilized.

The skate mage lies on the ground, still grunting and full of energy, but he can’t seem to move. D.O watches as the girl in the pink acrobat outfit opens up the case to check if the guitar is intact. She lifts it up to check for the Boowhal symbol on the back and smiles at the sight before shutting it again. Kai walks up to the three panting, “Wow, how did you do that?”

“A Chi Blocker…” D.O looks at the girl with quiet interest, “That was incredible. How did you catch up to him so quickly?” he asks, pulling magic-nulling handcuffs out of a pouch attached to his belt and cuffing the fallen thief, not that he needed them at this point. The girl had totally immobilized both him, and his magic use for the time being.

“I ran.” She shrugs with a smile, nodding towards the roofs she had been running along and jumping across to catch up and gain a lead to jump the skater. “So you guys wanna bring this back to the shop first?”

Her smile is so sweet and innocent, it’s hard not to fall for it. D.O and Kai pick up the thief from either side when Kai turns towards the girl, “Grab onto me.”

Instead of questioning the attractive teleporting wizard like most would, the Chi blocking girl bounces towards them with a tight grip on the guitar case and hooks her arm around Kai’s without hesitation. Although somewhat surprised, Kai immediately sets a haze of smoke around them and the next second, they’re back in front of the music shop.

With much relief and thanks, the manager collects the guitar back and calls the authorities to pick up the criminal. And after he’s picked up, the manager returns with the reward for the job. However, D.O turns it away, “We didn’t actually catch him. If it wasn’t for this young woman here, we might have lost him since he was so fast. We had no idea he was actually a wizard as well.”

“That doesn’t matter, you all got the job done. Just take this and split it between the three of you. Form a team, why don’t you! I’d say you’ll make a great one. Thanks so much for your help.” He smiles once more before sending them off.

When the three are out walking together towards a restaurant for dinner since the sun had started setting, Kai starts counting the money, “Well, you heard the man. Here’s your share for helping us. Thanks a lot for the help. We’ll treat you to a meal.”

“Really?” the girl smiles her bright smile as she accepts the money with two hands, “Okay!”

“I’m Kai, by the way. And this is D.O.” he gestures to the shorter man beside him.

“I’m Tai. It’s awesome to meet you! You guys are from a guild right? That’s why you can use magic and came here for a job?” she asks enthusiastically.

“We are. Heard of Fairy Tail?”

Tai almost stops short when she hears the name, “You’re joking.”

“Of course not.” Kai replies smugly.

“Prove it.”

At the same time, Kai s his jacket and pulls down the collar of his t-shirt to show the insignia on his left as D.O turns and shows the symbol on his right bicep. “No way!” she shrieks, “You guys are from Fairy Tail! That’s amazing! I can’t believe it! I’ve always admired that guild like crazy!”

As the boys elaborate on stories about their guild, much to Tai’s delight, they finally reach a nice restaurant and seat themselves in a booth and await their pastas and soups. Tai thinks Kai’s adventures with his best friend, a wind mage, are a riot when she hears of them. She’s even more interested in hearing about D.O’s actual partner, who’s an actual dragon slayer!

Once their food arrives, D.O turns the tables, “Fairy Tail’s all good and fun, but I’m more interested in where you learned your Chi blocking skill.”

“Oh, well I joined the circus a few years ago since I lost my parents then.”

“My condolences.” D.O voices quickly in a soft voice.

“Thank you. Anyway, since we’re a traveling circus, I’ve gone to a lot of places and learned a lot of things. When I was in China, I learned about Oriental medicine that healed people by targeting their pressure points. So after a while, I applied it as a form of defense to hinder people with the same technique. There are a lot of pressure points, and I could do lots of different things when I hit different places. I’ve learned to just stop magic use without paralyzing the body and other things like that. But it’s a slow learning process because I’m kind of teaching myself.”

“So you don’t actually use magic at all? You’re just really super cool on your own?” Kai inquires.

Tai giggles a little before shaking her head.

D.O has always been hungry for knowledge and he had lots of questions he wanted to ask, but he figured that since the girl was self-taught, she probably didn’t know as much as she could. He asked anyway, and she was able to quell a bit of curiosity, but he still wanted to know more. By the time the three are outside, she’s standing between the two Fairy Tail wizards, chatting up with D.O while Kai has an arm slung around her shoulder as they walk down a park pathway. She doesn’t mind the touchiness at all. In fact, both her arms are around the boys’ waists, pulling them close to her.

“So how did you like beating down a guy today?” Kai asks.

“Well since I was doing something good in saving a prized possession, and I even got paid for it, I’d say it was pretty fun. It was more fun seeing you guys use magic though. I love magic.” She replies with her signature bright smile.

“Is that so? Why don’t you take it up as a job then? It’s super fun. You could join our guild!” he suggests.

The three have finally reached the parking lot where her circus troupe has parked for the week. The boys let her go and she turns to face them, “Me? In your guild?” she asks, her eyes bright with curiosity.

“Yeah! Come back with us to Fairy Tail, it’ll be a riot! Everyone will love you.” Kai urges.

“You would make a great Fairy Tail member, actually.” D.O smiles.

“But I’m not a wizard.” She replies obviously.

“I think you’d be accepted with open arms in our guild. You fit in perfectly with us.” D.O argues, “You like magic, don’t you?” Tai nods vigorously, “Well Seoul is rich with wizards and guilds. It’s the perfect place for you to be around magic.”

“Really?” Tai tilts her head to the side in thought, turning away from the boys for a moment before cartwheeling back several turns and pivoting swiftly to cartwheel forward once. But instead of landing on her toes on the ground, her legs catch around D.O’s waist before she pulls up near the earth mage’s face, “You think so?” she smiles hopefully.

Although a bit startled at the strange position she chose to catch his attention – Kai is watching from the side with a raised eyebrow as well – D.O doesn’t fail to smile encouragingly back at the girl, “Absolutely.”

“Okay then!” her smile becomes brighter at the aspect of a solid invitation to join a dream guild of hers. She holds onto D.O’s shoulders as her legs unlatch and drop together in a perfect stance right in front of D.O’s own feet, “I’ll come with you guys.”