"Don't get carried away!"
The short old man jumped up and smacked Kabe hard right on the forehead.
Even though he was shorter than twelve-year-old Kabe, that one hit still sent Kabe flipping backwards onto the ground. The pain had him clutching his forehead and rolling back and forth.
"Ow ow ow! It hurts! You damn old man, what are you doing?! How can you hit such a small kid like me, do you even deserve to call yourself an adult?!"
"I don't believe for one second that a brat who can punch a tree so thick it takes several grown men to wrap their arms around it, and knock it askew, is any kind of ordinary child."
Clenching his fist, Makarov shot a glance at the big tree nearby. Its roots had snapped where Kabe had punched it twice earlier, and the trunk now tilted heavily to one side. His voice was vicious as he spoke.
He liked to lure... cough, recruit young kids into the guild, yes, that was it. But that did not mean he wanted just any random child. The reason he had invited Kabe, aside from the very interesting tail that came attached, was that he had also taken a serious liking to that terrifying physical strength.
"So be good and join Fairy Tail already, you clueless little brat."
Kabe had never been someone who bowed to authority in his previous life, and even now, in the world of Fairy Tail, he was not going to kneel easily, not even in front of a powerful mage like Makarov who held the title of one of the Ten Wizard Saints.
However... it was a different story when someone grabbed his tail.
"W-wait, wait a second, I was just joking earlier. Actually, I've always secretly admired Fairy Tail... for a long time now."
Makarov had grabbed that interesting tail and brought it up to inspect it more closely. Hearing the weak, barely-there voice of the brat under his hand, he blinked curiously.
"You sound... a lot quieter than you did just now."
"Y-you're hearing things... maybe I'm just hungry."
The old and the young faced each other, one standing, one sprawled on the ground, their gazes locked in midair.
Suddenly, Makarov experimentally tightened his grip on the tail in his hand.
Kabe's body instantly went limp, as if all his strength had been sucked out in an instant. Even his eyelids drooped weakly.
But the moment that grip loosened, Kabe bounced right back, his big, watery eyes staring at Makarov again with fake shining "affection," as though nothing had happened at all.
After Makarov repeated the pattern of squeezing and releasing a few times, and Kabe's condition swapped back and forth between powerless and full of energy, the old man's lips slowly curved upward. It was the look of someone who had just found a brand new, very entertaining toy.
Seeing that, Kabe knew struggling was useless. He completely surrendered, lying flat and motionless, eyes lifelessly fixed on the distant sky. A tiny tear glimmered at the corner of his eye and slipped down.
...
A few minutes later, two small figures emerged one after the other from the forest and stepped onto a proper road.
Looking at the road that ran barely a thousand meters away from where he had been before, Kabe ground his teeth in frustration. He regretted it to death. Why hadn't he tried walking out first instead of messing around and showing off, only to end up as this damned old man's prisoner?
Makarov could not care less about what was going on in his head. Walking shoulder to shoulder with him, he laughed and chatted as they went.
"Don't overthink it, brat. Our meeting today is a fated encounter. Just look at that tail of yours, you're obviously a member of the legendary fairy race."
"Who's a fairy? You're the fairy, you bald old kidnapper fairy."
Kabe's indignant retorting and mocking did nothing to affect Makarov's good mood. The old man simply continued talking to himself happily.
"This is wonderful. Whether or not fairies have tails has finally been answered today. From now on you'll join our guild as a fairy and become our guild's mascot. Ah, I really want to hurry back so little Cana and the others can see you. A mascot this cute is rare among all the guilds."
"Hey, what are you treating the adorable body of a ten-something pretty boy like?! I'll kill you, you dead baldy old man!"
Kabe cursed nonstop in his heart. If he had not just arrived in this world today, how could he, a dignified future Super Saiyan, have been subdued by some damned old man who could not even keep his hair?
Unwilling to accept this, he lowered his head and let his eyes dart around.
'No way, I have to escape before he drags me back to Fairy Tail!'
As he was in the middle of a mental brainstorm, running through one escape plan after another, Makarov suddenly stopped walking. He turned with a smile and spread his arms wide.
"We're here, Magnolia, the town where our Fairy Tail guild is located."
'So close...!!!'
Kabe stared at the road behind them, which was only three or four hundred meters long, then looked ahead at the bustling little town full of people coming and going. His expression instantly turned ashen.
'So I only transmigrated into a little grove just outside Magnolia?!'
Realizing this, Kabe felt his entire soul go numb. But what could he do? One second he had just popped into existence in a dense and unfamiliar patch of forest, and he had never had any experience with wilderness survival. Being able to start a small campfire with random tips he remembered from short videos was already his limit. How could he have dared to blindly wander around in a forest he did not understand at all?!
The joke fate had played on him was far too cruel. The blow was strong enough that for the rest of the walk he seemed listless and empty.
He did not even know exactly how Makarov got him into the Fairy Tail guild building in the end. All he knew was that when he finally snapped out of it, he was already surrounded by a crowd of faces that were both familiar and strange.
...
Time rolled back to a dozen or so minutes earlier. Makarov, who had been all ready to proudly introduce his beloved town to Kabe, scratched his shiny head in confusion as he watched the boy suddenly wilt, his expression going blank for no apparent reason.
"Brat, I was only joking about the mascot thing. Whether you want to join or not, you should at least come to our guild and fill that empty stomach first."
Thinking the kid had been scared by his earlier words, Makarov hurried to soften his tone and comfort him.
But Kabe still kept his head lowered, looking completely lifeless, which left Makarov totally at a loss as to what exactly he had done wrong.
'Did his brain stop working from hunger? Sigh, poor kid. Forget it, I'll just take him back to the guild first.'
Feeling a pang of pity, Makarov patted the boy's arm to signal him to follow. Thankfully, the kid was not completely broken and still responded to the sounds and movements around him on a basic level.
Seeing Kabe slowly follow along, Makarov relaxed a little and quickly turned back, leading him toward the guild.