Sorry for the lateness and bulkiness of this chapter. There's a lot of exposition, but it's necessary setup for a joke. I portray the guild setup here much the same as real estate agencies (with minor differences), and it's the setup I use as background for pretty much all of my fics.

The main joke in here is one that I have been seriously contemplating devoting an entire fic to. It's such a fun rabbit hole to consider.

I hope you enjoy.

CoLu Week 2018

Day 4: Pyramid

Lucy contemplated the plans spread out on the kitchen table before her. It had somehow become their default spot for negotiation and planning, though in part that was mostly due to it being one of the only large, flat elevated surfaces left in the mansion. Three pieces of glassware held the corners of the drawing secure and still as she inspected it, the fourth weighed down by Macbeth's slumbering form.

There was a lot that needed to be done, it turned out, to turn a building into a functioning guild hall.

It also took a lot to turn Crime Sorciere's present organization into a properly functioning guild model, for that matter.

Groaning, Lucy sank into her seat, plunking her head into the table in imitation of Macbeth. "Why is this so difficult?" she wailed into the paper.

"Because everything in life is," Cobra responded behind her.

Lucy raised her head, and turned slightly in order to level her fiercest glare at the dragon slayer.

He scoffed at her. "Is that the best you got?"

"No," she grumbled as he sat down in the chair next to her. "I'm just too exhausted to deal with you right now."

"So what's the problem today?" he inquired, peering over the plans. "None of this makes much sense to me, but I'll give it a shot."

"How generous of you," Lucy replied sarcastically. Despite her words, she straightened up in her seat, and pointed at the upper floor of the mansion. "We need to decide how many rooms we want to keep as bedrooms, and how many we want to convert to other purposes. Which means figuring out whether you all wish to live here full time as the founding guild members, or do a kind of live-in plan for new members. I think Jellal is working out the particulars with the Council, but I think he wants to turn this place into a kind of halfway house for rehabilitating mages like yourselves that have run afoul of the law. It's a good idea, and I'm not against the property being used for that."

That last part was a little bit of a white lie, and one that Cobra surely picked up on, but in a rare display of kindness, chose to ignore. "So what's the problem, then?" he asked.

"Money." Lucy sighed heavily. "I've already got a huge mortgage on this place, as I'm sure you're aware. There's no way I can secure a construction loan on top of it. Jellal was able to pony up a security deposit and first month's rent when we signed the rental contract, but unless I go on a well-paid job soon, we won't be able to afford even the smallest change to this place." She shrugged helplessly. "And you know what my team is like, so saving money is a little difficult for me as it is, even without me dividing my time up between them and this place."

Cobra hummed in thought, his eye darting over the plans and taking in the proposed alterations. "Wouldn't it be up to us to pay for it? Since we're the ones that need the place changed."

"Eh." Lucy held up her hand and made a wobbly gesture with it. "Yes and no. It's my property, so capital expenditures are mine to deal with, and fixtures required for business are yours. Which is... which is where things get a little nebulous." She heaved another sigh and rubbed her temple with her fingers. "Neither Jellal nor I really want to hire a lawyer to sort it out on our behalf, but it's beginning to look like that will be necessary in the long run. Though it'll all be moot anyway if I can't drum up enough money to hire one in the first place."

"Sounds tough," Cobra stated. "How does a traditional guild make money, by the way? Brain's flow of income was never exactly obvious to the rest of us, and we weren't interested besides, so I don't really have a frame of reference."

His interest in the matter perked Lucy's spirits up slightly. "It's kind of like a pyramid structure," she told him. Reaching down to the pile of supplies by her feet, she placed a blank sheet of paper onto a clipboard and drew a triangle on it.

"I thought those were bad things," Cobra muttered as he watched her draw.

"Pyramid schemes are a pretty common way of scamming people, it's true," agreed Lucy. "But they're also pretty useful for displaying money flow." She drew two horizontal lines near the top of the triangle, sectioning off two small sections. In the bottom, largest section, she wrote Guild Members.

She tapped that section with her pen. "As you're probably aware, in a typical guild structure a job is posted with a set reward, which the guild members take and earn upon completion. What most people don't realize, is that the monetary amount posted on the job is not actually the full amount being paid out." To the side of the pyramid, she scribbled Clients and wrote 1,200 Jewel under it, and then circled both. "Say a client is willing to pay 1,200 Jewel for a job. Of that amount, 1,000 will be posted as the reward on a job flyer, while 200 will be retained by the guild as payment for coordination services. In addition, clients will also pay a small posting fee." Lucy wrote a plus sign and 50 under the 1,200 Jewel she inscribed earlier. Then she labeled the middle section Guild and wrote in 250 Jewel below it, and then added 1000 Jewel to the Guild Members section.

Glancing up, she asked, "Following me so far?"

"Sure," Cobra said, his gaze still intent on her makeshift diagram. "But what's the upper section of the pyramid for?"

Lucy drew a vertical line down the middle of the final section, labeling one half Era and the other Gov. "Guilds have to pay fees and taxes to both the country they're located in, and to Era for services provided. These fees and taxes go towards services for mages, and they form a large part of Era's operating budget from what Levy and Mest have told me."

Cobra thought about it for a moment. "I guess that makes sense."

"There's more," Lucy warned him, and restrained a giggle at his resulting sigh. "For simplicity's sake, let's say that the amounts due the government and Era are fixed at 5,000 Jewel each." Outside of the pyramid, Lucy wrote in 5,000 Jewel on each side since she hadn't left enough room in the diagram itself. "So basically, the Guild has to make enough money to pay off those obligations, and make enough to fund repairs to guild halls, or providing other things for mages. Fairy Tail has a souvenir shop and a bar with a kitchen to help supplement the income from the jobs, but the margin of profit on both is actually very small if I understood Max correctly when he explained all of this to me."

Holding up a finger, Lucy waggled it at Cobra. "But there's actually a second structure that some guilds use instead of this one."

"Seriously?" Cobra muttered. "Isn't just having one confusing enough?"

"Apparently some guilds combine the two methods as well," Lucy informed him. "Which I imagine makes the guild accountants cry."

"I don't blame them. So what's the other method?"

"The guild members pay a monthly fee to the guild, and keep all of the job reward. I think there's still a posting fee that the guilds retain, but yeah the members get to keep everything. If they don't go on jobs, though, they run the risk of incurring a large debt to their guild, however, so I'm not particularly fond of this method."

"Wouldn't you run much the same risk the other way, though?" Cobra pointed out. "If you don't go on jobs, you won't have money for your bills anyway."

"I guess you have a point," Lucy acknowledged. "I guess it kind of depends on personal preference." She smiled at him. "So… how does Crime Sorciere handle its finances?"

Cobra shrugged. "Communal fund, maybe? I'm not sure. Jellal keeps track of it all in his head, so I try to tune him out when he starts thinking too much on it. Usually when one of us needs something, we just ask Jellal to fork over the Jewels for it."

Lucy blinked at him, a little gob smacked. "And that… works for everyone…?" she ventured.

"Pretty much, yeah." When her stunned silence continued for longer than he liked, Cobra added, "Listen, it's not like we've ever had proper spending money of our own with how we grew up. I doubt we'd know how to manage it, honestly."

Pursing her lips, Lucy frowned. "Call me strange, but even if you do make mistakes with your income, it's still yours to make the mistakes with. Financial autonomy is a pretty important thing to have, you know?"

Cobra shrugged. "If you say so."

Seeing that she wasn't going to be able to press issue further with Cobra, Lucy decided to let it go for now. "Alright, it's your decision to make. But maybe we should look into hiring a guild accountant before anything else, yeah? That way Jellal doesn't have to… to keep it all in his head."

"You're surprised by that," Cobra observed with delight, a cruel smile spreading across his face. "What, is that something the great Heartfilia Heiress can't manage herself?"

"Hell no." Lucy laughed at Cobra's taken aback expression over her blunt, honest answer. "It's a lot to keep track of. I hire an accountant to go over my personal taxes every year."

"Do you make them cry?" Cobra asked, his smile returning.

Lucy hesitated a second too long without responding, resulting in Cobra letting out a great laugh that filled the kitchen. "You do, don't you?!" he howled with laughter.

Giggles filled Lucy as she, reluctantly, admitted that Cobra had her pegged. "Okay, you've got me there. In my defense, my life is an utter mess. So the accountant really should have realized that my finances would be, too."

"However you wanna justify it to yourself."

A groan emanated from the third occupant of the kitchen, the fourth paperweight on Lucy's plans of the mansion. "You two are too noisy," Macbeth complained.

"Sorry," Lucy apologized to her former enemy. "If you prefer, I can return to talking about finances. Maybe that will put you back to sleep?"

Her suggestion only sent Cobra into a greater fit of laughter than before and set her to grinning in wicked delight as well. Macbeth sent Lucy a disgusted look before standing up and stalking out of the kitchen.

Privately, Lucy had to admit that Cobra had a nice laugh.

Suddenly, Cobra's laughter ceased entirely. "Wait a minute," he said. "So how is it that Fairy Tail makes any money?" He waved her off when she opened her mouth to repeat her earlier lecture. "No, no. I get the basic system. But with Fairy Tail having to pay all sorts of damages and fines, how are they able to make enough money to keep the guild going?"

Lucy hesitated. Her first instinct was to propose the bar and souvenir shop's proceeds to make up the deficit, but then she remembered how little profit those endeavors actually made. In fact, the bar's proceeds largely came from the members of Fairy Tail themselves. Some of whom had racked up a significant unpaid tab. Then, with all of the furniture that the members regularly destroyed… Lucy had never heard of the guild members being forced to pay back the guild for any damages to guild property. Somehow, Makarov had pulled together enough funds to completely redo the place as well back when she first joined.

"For that matter," Cobra continued, either oblivious to the gears turning in Lucy head, or uninterested, "how is it that Fairy Tail can get away with destroying so many towns and such with pretty much no repercussions? You'd think somebody would be pissed about their home being gone."

Although she wished she could deny it, the fact of Fairy Tail's destructive leanings was extremely common knowledge. It was hard to reconcile how much Fairy Tail obliterated with the height of the guild's popularity.

"It… it creates construction jobs…?" Lucy offered tentatively. "Puts that back into the economy…?"

Cobra stared at her dead-on, his single violet eye unblinking. "Is Fairy Tail getting…"

It was Lucy's turn to cut him off. "Let's not finish that thought."

He considered it for a moment, but eventually nodded. "That sounds safer, yeah." Briefly shaking himself, he then shrugged and changed the subject. "You hungry?"

"Starving."

With that, the two tried their hardest to put their lingering suspicions out of their minds.