Welcome, all my loyal readers, and nice'ta'meetcha to the ones just joining us now. I hope I don't disappoint you! I'm pretty happy with this one, I hope you guys will be, as well^^ I tossed hosts at my favorite pair in The Tsundere, now I'm tossing geisha at them, just because jealousy is such fun. Ahh, I'm so cruel! But it's so entertaining to torment both Gajeel and Levy that I can't help myself!

Ah, and this isn't a sequel to "Magic Can Be..." sorry. This is another slightly AU one that struck me as fun.

Also, as usual, I don't own Fairy Tail, nor am I making any profit off of this. You've probably figured that out already, though.

The Trouble With Geisha

Chapter 1: Woman's Intuition

"Weren't... um..." Levy hesitated as she leaned against the bar, looking both ways for a moment before going on. "Weren't Gajeel and Lily supposed to be back by now?"

"Oh, they're pretty far away," Mirajane said. "And knowing them, they probably took a detour or two along the way home." She didn't seem very worried, so Levy nodded and turned back to her book. She had expected them to be back by now, though. Not that they had said anything to her before leaving, or anything, but still-

She frowned slightly, wondering why she was suddenly feeling worried. Was it female intuition? Or was she just paranoid that Gajeel had gotten himself killed somehow and nobody would know until he didn't come back for a year or two? No, he wouldn't die that easily! It had to be something else...

Levy frowned, still feeling a strange sense of unease. Maybe, she thought slowly, something she didn't want to know about was going on. Like maybe Gajeel was flirting with someone-not that she cared if he flirted-not like she could imagine him flirting with someone, she added, trying to picture Gajeel with a woman. He would probably terrify them!

But still, she thought, her vivid imagination kicking in, she could almost picture it. Gajeel and Lily, lounging on pillows as geisha filled their cups with sake-her hand tightened into a fist before she shook her head. There was no way something like that would happen!

Not if she had a say in it, she thought, standing. "I need to go," she told Mirajane, grabbing her book and racing out the door.

"They headed south!" Mirajane called. "By train. A small town called Gyolla!"

"Thanks, Mirajane-san, but-but I didn't need to know that!" she lied, now intent on going there. It was completely imagined, but the more she thought about it, the more real it seemed. She wanted to see if there could even be a woman bold enough to flirt with a guy like Gajeel!

"We just finished a job," Lily said as he looked up at his partner. They were walking through the desert, with no shade, or water to be seen. The only thing they had was the food in Gajeel's bag, which they were hoarding. "How did we wind up here, again?"

"Let it die," Gajeel muttered.

"You just had to try that card game, didn't you," Lily went on.

"It was a sure deal!" Gajeel said, looking quite offended by that statement. "And I was drunk," he added. "I don't even remember what the game was," he admitted, frowning as he tried to remember. "Besides, it's your fault. You're the one that wanted to see the geisha."

"And we were fine until you got involved in the game," Lily summed up. "They sure were pretty, weren't they?" he said a bit sadly.

"You're a cat. How do you know what's pretty? They all smelled funny and wore too much makeup." He frowned, remembering what he could of the night before. "That's probably how we lost the other half of the pay. Damned expensive ladies," he admitted.

"You're just sore because none of them were Levy."

"Of course they weren't Levy," Gajeel blustered. "Levy ain't a geisha." Although he was so bored that he could picture her as one. Wow... that was cute. He toyed with the image for a while, wondering why they didn't have cosplay nights at the guild. He swore it'd go over good. They had plenty of cosplay freaks, after all.

"Why don't we hijack a train?" Lily asked.

"Nah, the Guild Master'd kill us."

"We'll die long before he could kill us if we keep going this way."

Gajeel went silent as he thought it over. "Fine," he said. "But we won't hijack it. We'll just... hitch a ride."

"Yeah... so where is the train, anyway?"

The two kept walking. It was almost dark before they jerked, both hearing the distant whistle of a train. Without a thought they took off at a run, or in Lily's case, a flight. The train looked like a godsend, large and shiny in the soft pink light of the sunset. They didn't think as they raced for it, grabbing onto a ladder on the side and hauling themselves onto it.

"Wait..." Lily said as they climbed to the roof. "Aren't we going in the wrong direction?"

Gajeel looked up, then cursed and fell onto his back with a thump. "Dammit. We'll go with this until we get back to the train station, then switch over to one headed for Magnolia," he decided, closing his eyes.

"Alright," Lily said, dropping onto his back as well and letting his eyes close. This, he decided, this was the life.

"Excuse me," a nervous looking little man said, stepping in front of Levy's chair. She glanced up at him curiously, her book still held open in her lap. "You're a mage, right?"

"Hmm? Yes, yes I am," she said. "Is there a problem?"

"Well, we have a little problem," he said. "But you don't have to, if you don't want-"

"No, it's fine, if I can help I will!" she said, closing the door and putting it back into her bag. She swung it over her shoulder, following him as he left the rail car and entered the next one. It was a kitchen. She looked around blankly, wondering what, exactly was going on.

"Well, miss, you see, our chef swears she saw a demon man attack the train," the little man said, looking quite red in the face. He reached up and tugged at his collar, obviously uncomfortable with the situation. "She refuses to come back until we find him."

"A demon man?" she repeated. "But I didn't hear any attack. Was anyone hurt?" she asked.

"Well, she does tend to exaggerate," he admitted. "But it's true that there's a possibility of someone being on board that shouldn't be. You see, we had a certain number of plates prepared for dinner, but two of them suddenly turned up missing. Of course, we could blame that on someone on board, but no one was in that area other than the employees that fill the plates."

"I see," she said, feeling a bit adrift. Why had she come on this train? Oh, right, she had gotten a strange feeling that something had happened to Gajeel. Of course, she had grabbed a small job in the area before leaving, telling the rest of Shadow Gear that she just wanted to pick up some small cash for a new book, but still-

"You can find him, can't you?"

"I'll do my best!" she promised cheerfully. "But is 'demon man' the only description you can give me?"

"Well, she did say he had a flying beast from hell with him, she said it looked like a black cat with wings," he said. "Miss? Is there something wrong?"

"N-no, of course not," she said, feeling pale. "I'll do my best!" she promised him again, with less enthusiasm than before. "Now you probably have lots of work to do, don't you?"

"Oh, I feel so much better now that we have a mage looking into it," he said. "Thank you, thank you," he added with small bows as he left. She waved and faked a smile until he was gone.

"Gajeel Redfox, you get out here right now!" she demanded as soon as he was gone. She didn't even blink as an upside down head peeked through the door. "Just what do you think you're doing?" she demanded of him, her hands on her hips.

"Ah... hey, Levy," he said, flipping into the rail car. "We can explain."

"I blame it on the geisha," Lily said as he came in through an open window.

"Geisha?" she asked, her eyes huge as her image from the day before danced through her head. "What geisha?"

"It's a long story," Gajeel muttered, crossing his arms over his chest and pouting. "And it's his fault," he added, pointing at Lily.

"You didn't argue too loudly," Lily complained. "He barely talked to them, anyway," he added for Levy's benefit. "Well, until the card game, that was. And that's how we wound up here."

Levy frowned, secretly happy that nothing seemed to have happened. "Well we can't have it get out that Fairy Tail mages were terrorizing trains!" she told them. "So we're going to have to come up with an explanation."

"Well..." Lily said, frowning slightly. "Nobody's really seen us, right? Other than the cook?"

"That's true," she said.

"Then why don't we give them a real demon?" Lily said. "You still got that bottle?" he asked Gajeel.

"You mean from the mission?" Gajeel asked, swinging his bag off of his shoulder and opening it to dig through it. "Yeah, right here," he said, tossing the bottle to the cat.

"What is that?" Levy asked.

"Djinn," Gajeel said. "Little monster that likes to... play tricks on people. Was a pain in the ass to capture."

"That's why this mission took so long," Lily agreed.

"We are not unleashing a monster on a train just because you two hitched a ride!" Levy said, outraged.

"Well I sure as hell ain't covering up my mark," Gajeel said, sounding equally outraged. "Besides, all we did was hitch a ride!"

"You stole two dinner plates!"

"Huh?" Gajeel and Lily said, looking equally blank. Levy stared at them, trying to figure out if they were covering up something, but Gajeel didn't tend to be a good liar when it came to things like this. "All we took was some water," Lily said.

"Then someone... or something else stole them?" she said, frowning. "But that means there's more than just you that's on this train," she said slowly. "You go find whoever it is," she ordered them, poking Gajeel in the chest. She was angry with him, she decided. Him and his-his geisha!

"I think she's not happy with you," Lily pointed out.

"Hitching a ride was your idea," Gajeel muttered with a dark glare at his partner.

"I'm mad at both of you!" Levy declared, unknowingly pouting in an adorable manner. "Geisha!" she added. "I would have expected it from Jet and Droy!"

Gajeel and Lily looked at each other. "We'll go find the stowaways," Lily said, rather than reply to that statement. No matter what they said, it'd probably get them in trouble.

Gajeel looked at her for a moment before roughly rubbing the top of her head and disappearing through the window once again. Levy reached up, readjusting the headband he had messed up and sighing. That was probably as close to an apology as she was going to get, after all.

Not that-not that he owed her one, or anything, she added, flushing brightly, they were just friends and his free time was his own. It's just-well, she did feel better now, at least. And his outrage at the idea of covering up his mark made her happy. He really was proud of that mark, wasn't he?

"Now I've got to tell the conductor," she said. "And see about using this mission to pay for their board."