X790, March 16

The doors opened loudly, alerting the occupants of the guild to their guild mates' entrance. "Open the door with your hands!" A dark blue-haired woman behind the bar yelled as she served a glass of wine to a mage. "Your foot doesn't solve everything!"

Sting shrugged it off. "If we lived in a world where everything was the same, you'd be a maid serving tea, Rietta."

"Sting," Rogue warned sharply, before he looked around the hall. "Where's Rufus?"

"Outside honing his skills. Reporter from Sorcerer Magazine is there too," Rietta snapped. With a snap of her fingers, empty cups and plates soared through the kitchen entrance behind her. "So who's the girl between you two?"

Sting and Rogue glanced at the blond-haired girl whose arms they restrained. She had to be around fourteen, from the Twin Dragons' point of view. "Right after we finished our mission, we heard this girl claiming—"

"It's not a claim," the girl interjected. "I AM—"

"—to be Rufus' little sister," Lector finished, crossing his arms. "Personally, I think she's after the fame and fortune."

"Fro thinks so too!" Frosch chirped.

"Ah, another bluffer?" Rietta whistled loudly. One by one, plates of food and glasses floated out of the kitchen on individual trays. Each order was delivered to the correct mage and the trays floated back, stacking themselves neatly on Rietta's palm. "Which one is she, now? Thirty-three, thirty-four? Honestly, I've lost count."

"If she can't back up her lie, then thirty-five," Rogue said, his left eye glaring at the girl.

"Rufus will remember me," she insisted, bright green eyes glittering with pride. "After all, I'm his sister."

"COOL!" Jason shouted, fist-pumping the air. "Saber Tooth's Rufus is super COOL!"

Rufus sighed tiredly, nearly losing his patience with the reporter. Now he could see why Rogue preferred not to be around when Jason came for interviews.

"Show me one of your spells!" Jason requested, his camera in his hands.

The masked man with blond hair put his fingers to his temples. "Memory-Make," he murmured, calling forth his memories to use as the base of his spell.

"Rufus!" Rufus nearly swore under his breath as the doors to the rear courtyard opened. He did, however, appreciate the fact that Jason's attention was now on Sting and Rogue, along with the girl in between them.

"The Twin Dragons! COOL!"

"Is there something wrong?" Rufus asked.

"Nope," Sting replied, popping his 'p'. "Your little sister just wanted to say hi." Letting go of the girl, Sting shoved her towards her supposed older brother.

"COOL! Rufus has a little sister!" Jason exclaimed, jotting it down in his notepad.

"Rufus-nii?" The girl said slowly. "Rufus-nii..."

The Twin Dragons and their Exceed partners stood by silently, wondering how Rufus would react. Even Jason refrained from yelling his catchphrase.

Finally, Rufus smiled. "It's been...so long, hasn't it? Ever since I joined this guild, I've wondered how you were doing."

Sting and Lector gaped at the duo whereas Rogue simply raised his eyebrows in surprise. Frosch covered his mouth with his paws.

Jason, however— "COOL! It's official!"

"I hope you're taking good care of yourself," Rufus continued. "I apologize for my absence these past years, but you were too young back then. Surely, you understand?"

"Y-yeah, I do!" his sister stammered. "I wasn't old enough to join a guild... but soon I will be."

"Excellent. I'd like to see your skills mature properly." Rufus turned away, preparing to reenter the guild hall when he stopped in his tracks. He spun around to face his sister. "How completely rude of me to forget! Can you introduce yourself to us, my dear? My colleagues and this reporter don't know your name." Sting and Rogue smirked, catching onto what Rufus just did.

As expected, the girl paled, shivering. "M-my name? But...Rufus-nii...you know my name. Weren't you supposed to i-introduce me?"

Slowly, Rufus gave his 'sister' a mocking smile. "Is that so? I'm terribly sorry, but I can't seem to remember your name. If I can't find you in my memories, it means you have no value to me. You see, I don't look at trash twice. Especially—" He pointed an accusatory finger at the girl. "—if that trash doesn't hesitate to lie."

"Wait, wait, wait!" Jason made a T with his hands. "You mean this girl isn't your sister?"

Rufus glanced coldly at the girl, who turned as pale as a sheet in dread. "I have no idea who this child is," he stated firmly.

"Another bluffer, this time pretending to be Rufus' sister—UNCOOL!" Jason shouted, scratching out some parts of his notes before writing on a new page. "Well, see ya!" With that, Jason ran out of the courtyard, having all the information he wanted.

"A word of advice for you, little girl," Rufus informed. "The next time you want to pass yourself off as a relative of a Saber Tooth wizard, study the family tree. I don't have a little sister. I never did. And I most certainly don't need to look after a con artist like you."

Near the verge of tears due to embarrassment, the girl attempted to run away, only to be grabbed by the arm by Sting. "Oh, no you don't," he declared, pulling her back before throwing her on the ground. "Did you really expect to fool us and get away without a scratch? Kid, we've had to deal with people like you for three years. How do we know you won't try this again?"

"I-I won't, I p-p-promise," she stuttered.

Lector fluttered to the ground, shaking his head. "Lady, we've heard that phrase so many times. But do they learn? Nope. You just gotta learn what we do to you guys the hard way."

"Any suggestions?" Sting asked, cracking his knuckles.

"Do what you want," Rufus told Sting dismissively.

"Leave me out of this." Rogue turned away from the scene, preferring not to take part in the activity.

"Fro wants out, too." Frosch followed his partner back to the guild.

Sting shrugged. "If you insist." He threw the girl over his shoulders like a potato sack, eliciting an indignant yelp from her. "If you need me, I'll be at the dumpster!" he called over his shoulder.

"Incredibly tiring," Rufus noted, removing his hat.

"How did it go?" Orga asked, sitting down in the chair opposite of Rufus. The black lightning mage returned hours ago from escorting a certain someone back to the guild.

"You should have seen it, Orga-san!" Lector exclaimed. "Rufus nearly had us all with the act, and then he asked the girl for her name!"

Orga snickered. "I bet she was planning to get a name out of Rufus, and live with it for the rest of her life. So what did you do afterwards?"

"I threw her out," Sting joined in, his hair slightly damp from a recent shower. Even a trip to where he went gave him a bad smell.

"Really? Just like that? No dramatic exit?"

"You didn't let me finish. I threw her out—at the dump where she belongs."

The three men laughed, amused by the fate that Sting gave the bluffer.

Ever since their first year of being Fiore's number one guild, people were claiming left and right to be a relative of a Saber Tooth mage. Sure, some of them passed the test—parents obviously, and the occasional siblings. But then there were the fakers: the lowest of the low. The ones after the fame and fortune and didn't care how they got it. Usually, they would play on the long-lost relative act. It got so bad that by the second year of Saber Tooth's reign, Jiemma gave his subordinates permission to interrogate the bluffers if they caught them in the act.

If they passed, give them nothing.

If they lied, give them hell.

"Incoming!" Orga ducked as three serving trays zipped over his head, but stacked themselves messily on the counter.

"No, not like that," Rietta said to a purple and white haired child. "You're close, but the form is messy. Where is the drama? Where is the flair! Where is—this!" In an instant, all empty serving trays soared back to Rietta and stacked themselves neatly on her hand. With a flick of her hand, the trays floated back to vacant tables. "Try again, Hestia."

Hestia spun around on her stool, scanning the room for all the trays that Rietta scattered. Slowly, they all floated off their surface, hovering there for a few seconds. "Second wave!" Rietta called out, causing any members standing by to duck as the trays flew back to the counter. This time, they eclipsed perfectly, not one tray out of place in the stack.

"All right," Rietta whistled appreciatively. "Any better and you could run the bar with me." To this, Hestia grinned widely.

The clock struck ten times, to which Orga rose from his seat. "Wrap it up, chef. It's way past Hestia's bedtime."

"But Orga-san—wah!" Hestia yelped in surprise as Orga picked her up with one hand and carried her up to her dorm on the third floor.

"Careful with her! She's precious cargo!" Rietta yelled up the stairs.

Hestia was the adopted child of Saber Tooth's guild master, after her own mother gave up on her. But Jiemma saw the potential she carried, so he took her in and raised her to mature that power. This meant that Minerva was her older sister, which made the entire guild treat her with respect. However, Minerva rarely gave her adopted sister a second glance.

"It's about that time too, isn't it?" Rufus got to his feet and started for the doors. "I'll have to depart for tonight. Turning in late isn't good for my memories."

That night, as he tossed and turned in his sleep, Rufus had the strangest dream.

~Dream sequence~

Rufus was thirteen, having been a teenager for months now. But this scene wasn't very cheerful.

He was standing before two graves, dressed in black. Everyone else was too. The dream was rather fuzzy, making it so that he couldn't see anything but the surnames: Lore.

'That's right,' Rufus thought in his dream. 'My parents' funeral. So where is—'

Looking around, he found not his late grandmother, but a young girl holding onto him, crying. The Rufus in reality frowned as his dream self hugged the child, attempting to comfort her.

The dream ended too soon, dissipating as he himself woke up.

'But if that was me, then who was that girl?' Rufus thought as the last wisps of the dream faded.