Erza was on a mission. Possibly the most important of missions.
When she marched into the guild hall, heavy box tucked safely under her arm, Gray was the first of the team that she spotted. Target acquired.
"Gray."
"What's up, Erza?" Gray watched in bemusement as Erza flounced over to drop the box onto the table beside him and sit down. He searched her face and frowned at whatever he saw. "Are you alright?"
"No. Something terrible has happened, and I need your help."
His eyes turned dead serious as he took in her grim demeanor. "Of course. What happened?"
"It all started because of…this!" Erza threw the lid of the box open with a grand flourish.
Gray blinked at the contents. "Because of strawberry cake?"
The worry was fading from his face now, to be replaced by something almost exasperated. Erza was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
"Yes. I have a problem, namely that my cake expenditures have lately begun exceeding my earnings. How am I supposed to buy armor? Or get food? Or pay rent?"
Gray propped his elbow on the table and rested his cheek on his fist, now looking thoroughly unamused. "Maybe spend less on cake and budget for the things you actually need? Geez, Erza, don't do that. I thought this was a real emergency or something, and it's all about cake again. Not cool."
This was not going as well as Erza had planned, but her heart had hardened with determination and she forged on. "This is an emergency! How am I supposed to live with this? So, being the genius I am, I came up with a solution. A wonderful solution."
"A solution that doesn't involve budgeting or money management, I presume," Gray muttered under his breath.
Erza graciously ignored him as she warmed to her theme. "It would be much cheaper if I could make cake instead of always having to buy it."
"That…is actually surprisingly practical of you," Gray said, taken aback by her ingenuity.
"But it still has to be the same cake, so I went to the bakery to get the recipe."
His admiration waned abruptly. "I take it that went well. Erza, you can't go up to a bakery and say that you want their secret recipe so that you don't have to pay them for their services anymore. You really thought they'd hand it over?"
"No, but I was prepared."
"Oh no…"
Erza grinned, eyes alight at her own genius. "I held the chef and owner at sword-point until they agreed to hand it over."
"Oh, Erza," Gray groaned, dropping his face into his hands. "You didn't. They actually gave it to you?"
Erza scowled as the problem came full circle. "No," she said peevishly. "They managed to escape and lock me out, and now I'm banned. Banned! I'm not even allowed to buy cakes there anymore! This here is the last cake I'll ever have from them!"
"…Sorry, but I'm not going to help you plan an assault on a bakery."
She smiled as she once again remembered the brilliance of her plan. "No, no, I already tried that. What I'm going to do is figure out their recipe on my own! Using this last cake, I'm going to figure out how to recreate it. And you're going to help me. But first, I'm going to eat a slice because I deserve a treat after going through all that hassle."
Producing a fork from thin air—Erza was nothing if not prepared, and she always set aside a small corner of her requip space to house her stash of emergency cake forks—she dug into the cake happily. She needed to leave enough to taste test and compare to her coming confections, but surely it couldn't hurt to take a nibble now.
