I was getting really anxious last week when One Piece didn't come out, so I went and read Fairy Tail, fell head over heels in love with it and wrote this story. Gajeel is officially my favourite manga character ever at the moment.

Please accept my random expansion of the Fairy Tail fandom. I wrote this as I was wondering how Gajeel would handle a job looking after little kids, so I speculated the reasons and motives... not that I'm very accurate, given how little we all know about Gajeel's past.

EDIT: I finally got around to correcting a mistranslation. I wrote this back before the proper translation of Gajeel's name had been revealed and manga fantranslators were just doing their own thing willy-nilly. I originally used the fantranslation that looked least stupid and more accurate. My bad for leaving it so long.

Disclaimer: I don't own Fairy Tail, although I don't know why you would think that.

Little Kiddies

The school principal stared in disbelief at the man who had just come before her looking for work. He staggered into her office covered in burns, dried blood and scabs, dragging his luggage behind him. He presented her with the flyer that she had sent out to all of the mage guilds but she barely noticed that, only thinking that she should probably call a doctor and then see if there was anyone she could call who could remove bloodstains from her carpet.

"Oi, you said you had a job for me."

She stared at him. On top of wounds and scars he had what appeared to be bolts pierced into his ears and face, shaggy black hair and very unconventional attire.

"Um... wh-what were you here for again?" she asked.

"The job!" he yelled at her, waving the flyer in her face. "There's a bunch of little kiddies in need of a magic teacher, right?"

"Y-yes," the principal squeaked, cowering into her chair a little bit. "O-okay, so you want to teach Rheann-sensei's class temporarily? Um... and your name is...?"

"Gajeel Redfox," he replied directly.

"Okay, uh, Mr Redfox... um, well you see," the principal went on, trying to muster some composure, "I'm Mrs Julia Symons, the principal of this mage academy, and the situation I have at present is that the usual magic teacher has broken her leg in an accident involving a motorbike, so she is... er... taking some time off. It's a little troublesome, since it's a brand new class." She gulped. Gajeel's unwavering stare was making her uneasy. "In the meantime, I need someone to take her class. I don't think it should be too trying since it a class of only eight six-year-olds and... um... are you sure you're the right person for the job?" she asked, finally voicing exactly what she wanted to say.

"A job's a job," Gajeel replied nonchalantly. "I just have to do what it requires and you pay me. It's all the same."

"Not it's not," Julia thought. A person like him could have just as easily gone to do a monster hunt or something. Why the hell would he want to come to a school and teach little kids? "Um... alright," she said nervously. "The class is D-2 on the first floor. This school is quite small so I think you'll be able to find it. Oh, and I think it would be a good idea to get some first aid from the school nurse before you went to class... just a suggestion..."

"Thanks for the offer," Gajeel said, picking up his bag and turning to leave the office. As he left Julia's eyes widened and an expression of horror settled on her face when she saw the emblem he wore on his left shoulder.

"Oh dear god..." she murmured once he was long gone. "I just hired a mage from Fairy Tail..."

.

Gajeel figured he could work out his accommodation later since getting help from the nurse took up the time he was hoping to use to make arrangements at a local inn. The classroom wasn't very hard to find. He slammed the door open and dumped his things next to the teacher's desk before looking at his temporary class. The kids sat at two round tables in groups of four, although one student appeared to be absent. The room was clean and colourful posters and artwork by the students was hung up on the walls. The students stared at him, petrified to say the least.

Before even introducing himself, Gajeel scanned the room and found a decently sized portion of blank wall. He picked up a piece of chalk from the blackboard and drew a rectangular outline on that wall.

"I'm your substitute teacher while your normal teacher gets her leg fixed up," Gajeel finally said with a bark in his tone that made the children jump and shy from him just slightly. "And this..." he stamped his foot against the blank wall, "is the new naughty corner. If you fuck up I'm gonna staple you to this wall, got it?"

The children nodded vigorously, showing their clear understanding. Gajeel grinned.

The class work wasn't anything terribly difficult. The children were learning to manipulate magic by drawing figures in ordinary markers and then trying to make them move. Although to be completely honest Gajeel had no idea how to do this since his own magic training had been unconventional. He could, however, help them learn their basic runes – not that basic runes were any use in real battle but hey, they had to start somewhere.

The first day was tedious and annoying. The children seemed to already have the gist of the exercise but they seldom got it right for some reason. Gajeel growled as he sat down on the bed in the room he'd rented for the night. The room was small and the inn was inexpensive but that was just fine since he still didn't have much money. He lay down and tried to remember the way Metalicana had taught him. The human magic school was doing something wrong... somehow. He just had that feeling. He made a note to ask the principal about it the next morning.

.

The next day he went straight to the principal's office in the morning to ask about what the students were actually supposed to be learning. Julia sighed.

"Well, if you'd read the curriculum like I asked you to, you would already know that they're just starting basic magic manipulation," she answered him, feeling the burn in her eyes from lack of sleep since she'd tossed and turned in her bed all night worrying about the results of hiring a member of Fairy Tail. "We start them on basic, familiar and unfocussed activities such as drawing and hope that through that they learn to focus their magic."

"And 'hope'," Gajeel noted, nodding his head and leaving without a word. He knew that there was something a bit wrong with this system. He stomped back to the classroom and slammed the door open again. The absentee was back in class and the students were gathered around him taking in hushed urgent voices. Gajeel could still hear that they were talking about their new teacher and how scary and mean he was. He sighed.

"Oi, there ain't enough room on the wall to pin you all up, so sit down, brats!"

The children gasped and rushed to their seats on command. The new kid glared defiantly. He had messy blond hair and dark brown eyes. He somehow reminded Gajeel of Natsu. The kid suddenly stood up and pointed a finger at Gajeel.

"Listen up, you!" the kid yelled. "I'm the boss in this class and I won't let you bully my friends even if you are the new teacher."

"Oh yeah? And what are you gonna do?" Gajeel deadpanned, deciding to humour the kid even just a little bit.

"I'm the best at magic in this class! I'm gonna beat you! Don't think that I'll even give you enough time to let you chain me to the wall!"

It only took Gajeel two strides to reach the kid, three to drag him to the 'naughty corner' and four seconds to conjure up three giant staples to wrap around the kid's ankles, waist and shoulders. The boy struggled but he couldn't free himself from the thick, heavy duty bindings while Gajeel pretended to wipe dust off his hands.

"Let me correct you kid," he snarled. "I'm the best at magic in this class. Now you're gonna stay there until I decide to let you off." He turned back to the rest of the class and they immediately straightened up in their seats. "Go get your books, we're gonna continue studying the runes."

A shy, timid boy with a dripping nose and dark brown hair in a bowl cut raised his hand shakily. "Um... usually we start the day warm-up exercises and magic manipulation..."

"Do you want to join your buddy on the wall?"

The boy shook his head and got up to follow his classmates to get their books.

"Hey! What about me?" the new boy exclaimed. "I have to study too."

"Well, you're just going have to miss out for now," Gajeel drawled, "won't you?"

The child bared his teeth and growled at Gajeel. Gajeel ignored him and went to the teacher's desk, counted heads and marked all of the kids down as present.

While the students quietly did their workbook exercises (and the blond noisily struggled on the wall) Gajeel tried to think back, staring out the window at the fine day outside. All this classroom magic was too difficult for children their age. Drawings were too abstract. He was back to basics now. He'd never had the chance to think about his past so thoroughly before but meeting Natsu had put things into a new perspective. A life of violence and delinquency had helped him forget, if only for a little while. He used to think he'd been abandoned simply out of selfishness, but the story of the disappearance of Igneel shed a new light on his situation. He couldn't help but remember and even dream about how much Metalicana had cared for him.

"U-um..." stammered a little girl with short blonde hair. He looked up to find the entire class (save the new boy) standing in front of his desk. "We're all finished..."

"Hm, okay," he said, gesturing for the kids to just put their books on the desk. "We're going outside now." He stood up and ripped the staples off the wall and put them in the waste paper basket.

"What? Why?" the noisy new kid shouted.

Gajeel rounded on him. "You can either shut up and come outside with the rest of your class, or I can chain you to the wall again."

The boy gulped but tried to put on a brave face. "I'm coming..."

It was still summer but there were many leaves on the ground in the schoolyard. Gajeel instructed the children to find their own space at least a metre and a half away from the next student and sit down under the trees. He sat down himself and surveyed the class, making sure he could see them all.

"Okay, what do we do, Mr I'm-the-best-at-magic-in-the-class?" snapped the blond boy, still sour about his punishment.

"If you open your mouth again you're going to be chained to a tree," Gajeel retorted. "From now on, you're not going to do those stupid drawings anymore. You're going to try to make all these leaves on the ground float."

The children blinked. To them it sounded difficult, but Gajeel knew it had to be easier than trying to make a drawing wiggle.

"All you have to do is let the magic out, don't focus on anything." That had been one of his first lessons with Metalicana.

The students were obviously nervous at first. They were used to being schooled indoors, playing with simple but abstract ideas and then applying them to the real world. It was the gutsy blond who tried it first, as Gajeel expected. He was very good and it wasn't long before the leaves on the ground around him were starting to lift, swayed by the natural wind. He smiled broadly at his accomplishment and tried to make the leaves float higher but by releasing too much magic he accidentally set them on fire. He screamed and scrambled to stamp out the little flames while his classmates laughed. One of the girls – a brunette with her hair in a high ponytail – unwillingly let out a burst of magic during her bout of laughter and the leaves around her shot up above her head, giving her a start. They floated down gently. Impressed by that result, the other students eagerly tried to do the same. Some of them did better than others but they generally succeeded and that's all that mattered.

Gajeel snorted as he thought to himself. Formalised magic training was really designed to hold kids back.

.

The lesson continued like that until lunchtime. Two of the boys even went to the next level and used their own magic to make the leaves dance and follow them as they ran around. Gajeel was taken back to the dandelions that danced around him at his command while his tutor watched him from a slight distance. Gajeel would have nothing to do with them after lunch – the kids would go to lessons on reading vernacular, writing and mathematics.

Julia had noticed the class outside and rushed to the office window to watch them. She was a little bit peeved that the substitute teacher was disregarding their curriculum but she couldn't bring herself to intervene, despite Fairy Tail's reputation for destruction and misconduct. He scared her too much. However, she had work to do so she tried to return her focus to her desk.

She jumped back to her feet when one of the children outside cried in pain. She ran back to the window, seeing Gajeel hunched over a blond lying on the ground in a foetal position. She gasped and dashed out of her office.

Gajeel looked down at the boy clutching his knee in pain. It was a bad scrape – blood had even been scraped off onto the concrete and it was bleeding heavily. He sobbed but tried to restrain his tears. The other children crowded around them worriedly, dancing leaves forgotten. Gajeel picked the child up with ease and balanced the boy on his hip. The blond was clearly surprised by this action of sympathy from a seemingly cold-hearted teacher. Meanwhile, Gajeel remembered the time Metalicana cradled him against cool metal scales during a fever. The boy eventually relaxed enough to let his head fall against Gajeel's shoulder, tears still falling.

"It hurts, doesn't it?"

The boy looked up briefly and nodded.

"What's going on here?" Julia exclaimed, bursting out into the yard. She stared at the surprisingly tender scene before her in confusion. "Um..."

"This idiot kid tried running on the concrete," Gajeel explained. "He tripped. I'm gonna take him to the nurse."

He walked past the confused principal casually. The rest of the class followed like sheep and waited outside the sick bay for their teacher and classmate. While the nurse cleaned and dressed the scrape Gajeel noticed a bottle of magic bubble formula on the bench. He nicked it discretely.

The next day he taught the children to focus their magic by popping the bubbles.

.

The regular teacher had recovered by the end of the week and while she was still on crutches she was able to return to work. Gajeel stood before the principal and accepted his payment. It wasn't much but it paid for meals and for rent.

"You did a wonderful job," Julia commended him. "I have to admit, I was worried at first because you're from Fairy Tail but the children came such a long way under your supervision."

Gajeel just nodded, knowing the guild's reputation for damaging things.

"Although... the janitors said that every day when they took the trash from that room there were giant staples in the bin and... why were there so many holes in the wall?"

Gajeel just shrugged. "One of those kids likes to misbehave."

He walked away while Julia grappled with trying to figure out exactly what that meant. He had to get back in time for the harvest festival after all.

.

"So, how was your job?" Lucy asked bitterly while Gajeel tore through a lunch of scrap metal and soda. Gajeel glared at her, and Levi – from a great distance – applauded Lucy for her bravery. "You didn't scare them away too quickly, did you?"

"Everything was fine," Gajeel growled back in annoyance. "At least when I do a job I don't bring down the freaking building, Bunny Girl. Now get lost before I kick your ass."

Lucy blushed, wondering how he'd heard about that mission. Instead of argue – just in case he really did kick her butt – she stomped over to the message board to see if she could find another job that she could do quickly to get some back-up rent money (just in case she didn't win the beauty contest). Natsu was still out of order and Gray and Lluvia weren't due back yet.

"Actually, I was surprised too," Mirajane said. Gajeel looked up, not expecting her. "You don't really seem like that kind of person."

Gajeel shrugged. "I like kids."

Mirajane giggled. "I never would have guessed. Here, I want you to try this new drink."

She put a heavy cup full of something steaming, shiny and viscous with a slight glow. Gajeel looked at it sceptically. "What the hell is that?"

"It's the new metal drink I made just for you. I thought it would only be fair since Natsu gets his fire drink and you're pretty much the same as him."

Gajeel stared at her with wide eyes. Nobody at Phantom Lord would have done this for him and she had less of a reason to. He'd destroyed her guild, chained her to a wall and now she was getting him a drink? These people at Fairy Tail were crazy.

"Drink it now while it's still hot, otherwise I think it'll set," Mirajane said, leaving to go and serve others in the guild. "So, there's a gentle side of you after all," she thought, remembering the message the principal of the school had sent to Makarov.

Gajeel swirled the contents of his cup.

Just cuteness. I think he's a bit OOC though.

I am very naughty... writing this when I should be on hiatus...