Chapter 9: Gajeel vs. Juvia
"Please. Let's end this," Juvia said, her voice steady but lacking any malice. "Despite what I said earlier… I don't want to fight you."
"Oh?" Gajeel tilted his head slightly. Then, a sharp, battle-hungry grin stretched across his face. "That's fine by me."
The hallway groaned.
It wasn't a simple sound, but a deep, tortured shriek of solid stone being violated from the inside. Metal screamed as thick support beams ripped themselves free from the walls. Pipes burst outward, the surrounding masonry fracturing as if the building itself were being flayed open.
Bolts snapped and concrete split as twisted shards of steel launched into the air, orbiting Gajeel like predatory satellites.
Juvia's eyes widened despite herself. '…I thought he only turned his own body into iron. Can he command all external metal too?'
Gajeel rolled his shoulders, his arms spreading slightly as the hovering steel sharpened at his flanks. "Let's see what's stronger," he said, his voice low, eager, and dangerous. "My iron and metal… or your water."
A cold, silver-gray aura poured from his body. It didn't flare wildly or chaotically; it was heavily compressed, like the suffocating air right before a massive structure collapses.
"So that's your magical aura…" Juvia murmured.
"Yeah," Gajeel replied, flexing his fingers.
The silver aura flowed down his arm like liquid mercury, condensing tightly around his right fist.
When a Mage's power overflows, it leaks out as sheer pressure—and the denser the magic, the heavier it feels to anyone standing in its radius. But for an Iron Dragon Slayer, that pressure was absolute.
His battle-hungry grin sharpened to a razor edge. "Because there isn't an aura alive that's stronger than a dragon's!"
He drove his fist straight into the ground.
The resulting sound wasn't a standard boom. It was a concussive metallic detonation—like a cathedral bell forged from solid iron being struck head-on by a cannon.
The floor imploded. Cracks spider-webbed outward in violent, jagged patterns. The impact compressed the surrounding air so violently that it burst outward in a spiraling shockwave, ripping up floor tiles and blasting dust, stone, and powdered debris into the corridor in a suffocating storm.
The entire hallway vanished beneath a roaring cloud of pulverized ruin.
Juvia didn't just tense; her pupils narrowed to the width of needles. 'Smoke…? No, a smokescreen. He shattered the ground just to blind me. But he can't see through this either… Can he?'
Her thoughts raced through the haze. 'That aura around his fist… was it reinforcement? Did he just amplify his baseline physical strength with pure magic?'
Suddenly, the heavy dust shifted. It wasn't a random movement, but a deliberate, sharp distortion in the haze. Too controlled to be a coincidence.
Something tore violently through the smoke. It was a compressed chunk of jagged metal, spinning at high velocity like a sniper's bullet, ripping through the air straight toward her face.
With no hesitation whatsoever, her head dissolved.
The projectile ripped cleanly through the liquid, scattering her facial features into an explosive spray of water that splashed harmlessly across the fractured floor.
But before gravity could even claim the droplets, another massive shape erupted from the smoke.
It wasn't a projectile this time—it was a full, iron-hard fist. It shot forward with savage precision, aiming straight for her sternum.
An instant before impact, her entire torso liquefied.
The metal arm punched completely through her center mass, bursting out the other side in a violent plume of water before continuing its forward momentum and vanishing back into the thick dust cloud.
Water rained down against the stone in heavy droplets. The corridor echoed with the fading, high-pitched hum of vibrating steel.
Then, the falling droplets trembled.
They didn't simply hit the ground; they responded to an internal pull. Each bead of water quivered, lifted, and began drifting upward, entirely defying gravity as they spiraled together midair. Reforming. Rebuilding.
Juvia's body reconstructed itself in elegant layers until she stood whole once more, water cascading smoothly off her shoulders. Her breathing remained steady and focused.
"You still don't understand," she said calmly, wiping a stray strand of wet hair from her face. "As long as I become water…" Her eyes locked forward, piercing through the settling smoke. "…your attacks won't ever touch me. You can't break through water with brute force, Gajeel."
Closing her eyes, Juvia brought both hands to her chest, her fingers lightly interlacing.
'My magic draws moisture from the air… from plants… from the hidden breath between these very walls. I don't create water out of nothing. I gathered it.'
The air in the corridor shifted instantly. The ambient humidity vanished as if inhaled by an unseen, titanic lung.
The corridor dried in a single second, the dust settling instantly and the stone losing its damp sheen. Wisps of visible vapor spiraled inward, drawn toward her open palm in tightening, violent currents.
Above her hand, a clear, perfect sphere of water formed.
'It looks to the world like I make water from nothing… but I'm only harvesting what's already here.'
She lifted her hand. At first, the perfect sphere seemed completely harmless. Then, it began to shrink. Slowly. Deliberately.
Its diameter decreased while its mass and density skyrocketed. The surface tightened, growing glassy and mirror-like. Tremors rippled across its surface as layer after layer of liquid was forced violently inward, the kinetic pressure stacking to an impossible degree at its core.
The air around her hand warped faintly from the stress.
'More', her brow furrowed, her concentration absolute. 'Compress it further. Condense it to its absolute limit.'
The sphere became the size of a marble. It grew heavier and heavier, until the very space beneath her palm seemed to bend under the artificial weight.
Her eyes snapped open. "And now…" She released her control.
The sphere did not explode with flame, nor did it roar. It unfolded. The compressed mass snapped back to its natural volume in a fraction of a second.
"Skywater Magic—" The release was a literal tidal detonation. "—Sky Exorcism!"
A massive, circular blast of water erupted outward—a collapsing tide unleashed in every direction.
The hallway was completely swallowed whole as the surrounding walls were hammered by crushing, high-pressure waves.
The fractured floor disappeared beneath a roaring, turbulent surge. Steel groaned as the bedrock shuddered.
Mist heavily saturated the air. Water crashed violently into itself, rebounding off the ceiling and multiplying the chaos as the waves collided again and again.
The smoke and dust were completely gone, erased beneath the absolute flood. Within moments, the corridor had become a churning basin of deep water.
And floating lightly atop the surface, as if gravity had politely stepped aside for her presence, stood Juvia.
Her sharp blue eyes scanned the flooded ruin. 'Where is he? Did he get swept away by the current?'
She turned her head slowly, checking the perimeter.
"Not bad, little one." An amused, arrogant voice drifted across the water. Juvia's gaze snapped upward.
There, perfectly balanced atop a curved lattice of metal that had risen from the wall like a forged perch, stood Gajeel.
He wore a sleeveless, light-toned top hanging loosely over his torso, with a thick, pale scarf wrapped around his neck that fell over one shoulder like a warrior's mantle.
His exposed arms bore dark, flame-like markings curling upward from his forearms.
His trousers flared slightly at the bottom, bold yellow-gold stripes cutting down the fabric as red flame motifs licked across his thighs.
"I'll give you credit," he said, a thin, cutting grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. "An omnidirectional attack like that was clever. You cleared the smoke, taking away my visual advantage. And you tried to drown me in the exact same move." He let out a short huff of laughter. "Smart. Solid effort."
Juvia's face soured immediately. "Don't call me little one," she snapped, holding up both hands with her fingers spread wide. "I'm eight years old!"
Gajeel rolled his eyes, resting a hand on his hip. "Should that impress me?" But inwardly, his thoughts were entirely different.
'She's younger than me… and her raw talent might actually exceed mine.' He remembered Metalicana's words from the lake. 'According to what the old man said, when a person refines their magic enough, they can turn directly into their element. I guess that means she has a water attribute. But is it really just water?'
His stare hardened into something deeply analytical, replaying their earlier exchanges.
'The way she dissolves right before impact… maybe her magic is a specialized variation. Assuming that's the case, it gives her the perfect illusion of turning into water, but there has to be a structural catch.'
Meanwhile, Juvia studied his stance just as closely. 'His physical strength is already monstrous, and he reinforces his muscles with magic. He's no fool when it comes to a real fight, either.' Her expression tightened.
The two child prodigies stared across the ruined, flooded corridor, their internal conclusions landing at the exact same time.
'She's a total child prodigy!' Gajeel thought.
'He's a literal monster in a child's body!' Juvia thought.
"That said—" A predatory grin slowly carved its way across Gajeel's face, sharp, feral, and unyielding. "There's no way in hell I'm losing to you."
Across from him, Juvia's expression didn't waver. Her gaze turned entirely still—focused and piercing. "Even so… I cannot lose," her voice was calm, but a heavy, dark weight sat beneath her words. "Not until I hunt down every single member of that clan."
The water around her feet rippled with her intent. She lifted her right hand.
Tiny droplets gathered at her fingertips, trembling in midair as if synced directly to her pulse. With the slightest extension of her fingers, the droplets stretched. They thinned, sharpened, and instantly curved into vicious crescent shapes.
Scythe-like blades of highly pressurized water formed one by one, their honed edges so refined they shimmered like polished glass under the dim light. A faint, high-frequency hum filled the corridor as the liquid vibrated at a lethal density.
Gajeel moved first. He leaned forward, and the metallic structure beneath his boots bent to his will, launching him through the air like a guided projectile.
'If I fight her at a distance, she'll have the complete advantage. Range is her game,' he calculated, the wind tearing violently past his ears.
"Water Slicer," Juvia called out. The blades fired. Not wildly, and not recklessly—they carved forward in clean, surgical arcs.
"In that case…!"
Gajeel twisted midair. His body rotated smoothly, the first water blade grazing past his shoulder close enough to hiss against his fabric.
The second passed directly under his arm. Behind him, the solid stone wall split open with a sharp hiss, a deep crescent gash etched into the rock like the clean mark of a guillotine.
"—I'll just come straight to you!" He surged forward, the metal screeching beneath his feet as he accelerated.
Juvia didn't waver. Her eyes remained locked onto his approaching arms. 'He's not transforming his limbs into iron weapons? Why? Wouldn't that increase his striking power?'
He closed the distance in a heartbeat. His grin widened. Two sharp, blindingly fast jabs shot forward, clean and direct.
They passed straight through her face. Her head liquefied on impact, dispersing into a splash that reformed instantly behind his fists.
'My Iron Dragon's Club and Spear didn't do a damn thing to her earlier,' Gajeel thought, his reflexes driving his movements. 'I know how her body reacts now!'
Without a shred of hesitation, he clasped both hands together and brought them down in a crushing hammer strike. Her upper body dissolved again, water bursting outward in a heavy spray.
His eyes narrowed. This time, he watched the dispersion closely. Shedding from her liquid form with every heavy impact were tiny, scattered droplets that detached briefly before pulling back into her main shape.
'There it is!' His boots scraped against the metal beneath him as he rebalanced his weight. 'There has to be a physical limit to what her water body can dissipate and pull back together. If I can find that exact weakness, I win!'
He steadied his stance for half a breath. Unfortunately, against a prodigy, that half-breath was a fatal mistake.
Compressed water spiraled instantly into Juvia's open palm.
Gajeel's eyes widened. 'Crap! Another high-pressure sphere?!' He was too close to evade. Left with no choice, he crossed his forearms in front of his face. 'Doesn't matter. I'll just block it and—'
The sphere struck.
It didn't explode outward; it vibrated. A violent shockwave pulsed through his guard on contact, a compressed wave of pure kinetic force detonating straight through his defensive posture.
The impact screamed up his forearms, metal grinding painfully against bone as his stance shattered completely.
His body jerked backward and launched through the air. He tore across the flooded corridor, skidding violently over the water's surface before slamming heavily into the far wall.
The collision completely pulverized the stone. The structure collapsed around his frame in a burst of fractured debris, and the displaced water crashed wildly against the rubble.
Juvia lowered her smoking hand slowly. "I put significantly more magic into that one."
Gajeel shot up from the debris almost immediately, a manic, unhinged grimace twisting across his face. "That was nothing!" he shouted, his voice wild with raw defiance. "I can still fight!"
He took one aggressive step forward, and his entire nervous system stabbed back in retaliation. A sharp, burning pain ripped through his left arm like a jagged blade being dragged across raw, exposed nerves.
"GRAAAAHHHH—DAMN IT!!" He staggered, clutching his left arm tightly.
Dark streaks of blood ran down his forearm, dripping steadily into the water-covered floor below. His teeth clenched together so hard they audibly creaked. 'My arm… was that wound from her water slicer earlier, or the pressure of that blast?' The pain pulsed again, sharp, hot, and angry.
"That looks painful," Juvia's voice came calmly through the mist. Her expression remained entirely vacant, almost detached, as she slowly drifted across the flooded hallway.
The water beneath her feet didn't even ripple; she simply floated over it, carried by an unseen, steady force.
Gajeel glared through his messy hair. "You're using Floating Magic too?" he snapped, his breathing heavy. "How do you know multiple disciplines of magic at your age?"
Even he, trained directly by a dragon—by one of the true apex predators of the world—only knew a single, absolute discipline. Yet she moved between different magical abilities like it was a routine exercise.
Juvia tilted her head slightly, her gaze peaceful. "It isn't particularly difficult when your talent is as great as mine," she said plainly, without an ounce of arrogance. "You shouldn't feel bad about your performance."
Her eyes studied his bleeding arm quietly.
"You're one of the stronger opponents I've fought. Even compared to adults… you and I far surpass most of the older generation." She descended lightly onto the surface of the water directly in front of him. Then, she extended an open hand. "You can't continue fighting with injuries like that. Let me help you."
SMACK!
Gajeel aggressively slapped her hand away with his uninjured right arm.
"I don't need anyone's pity!" he roared, his crimson eyes blazing. "Don't start thinking you've already won this exchange. I'm just getting started."
He bent his head, caught a loose strip of cloth from his sleeveless shirt with his teeth, and tore it free. "After all…" He wrapped the fabric tightly around his bleeding forearm, yanking it taut with a sharp, brutal pull to stanch the bleeding. "…I'm a Dragon Slayer."
Juvia watched the makeshift bandage tighten around the wound. Her vacant expression didn't change. "Oh, I'm well aware of who you are." Her voice remained entirely calm. "Gajeel Lionheart."
Gajeel's hands froze mid-knot. Slowly, his head lifted, his gaze locking onto her. "…What's that supposed to mean?"
"Master José has spoken about your asset many times," Juvia explained, her hands folding neatly behind her back. "He holds your raw strength in very high regard. He told me quite a lot about you. Including the fact that you are some type of dragon slayer…"
"Well, naturally," Gajeel replied, letting out a rough scoff as he finished the knot. "The Master values strength above everything else. That's why this guild stands firmly at the top of the country."
Juvia continued as if she hadn't heard his boast. "…He also mentioned something else." Her blue eyes fixed on his face. "He said you're searching for a dragon with metal scales."
Gajeel's gaze sharpened instantly, all traces of childish competitive anger vanishing. "You mean Metalicana." The name came out low, heavy, and thick with hidden emotion. "What do you know about him…?"
"Nothing at all," Juvia immediately raised both hands in a calm gesture of surrender. "I truly know nothing about that dragon." She lowered them again, her focus intensifying. "But I am searching for a certain kind of person. And I was hoping… you might help me find them."
Gajeel's eyes narrowed. 'So that's it.' His thoughts sharpened quickly. 'She pretended she didn't want to fight from the very beginning. But that whole display—the magic, the pressure—she was just showing off her power so I'd respect her strength. She wanted me to be more willing to answer her questions.'
A crooked, understanding grin slowly crept onto his face. 'She's smart… I'll give her that.'
"Have you ever heard of the Ebonveil Clan?" Juvia asked softly.
Gajeel's crimson eyes widened in absolute shock. '…Ebonveil?'* His thoughts jolted violently as a single face crossed his mind. 'Isn't that Albion's family name?!'