Cooking Up Some Fun
Duke's barbecue wasn't scheduled until tomorrow afternoon. This gave everyone plenty of time to get their own goods ready. After shopping for condiments and snacks, Joey decided to head to the Secret Garden to get some vegetables.
On the way, he saw Alister sitting in the sun eating an ice cream cone. "Hey, Alister. What are you doing here?"
The redhead looked at him, baffled by his question. "I live here, remember?" he asked, trying not to sound annoyed.
Joey chuckled in embarrassment. It had been a while since he passed by the apartment complex the bikers lived at. In addition, he actually hadn't seen them in a while. "Right. Sorry. Say, are you coming to Duke's barbecue tomorrow?"
This time, Alister gave a more pleasant smile. "Wouldn't miss it. It would actually be nice to hang out with some friends again." He noticed some bags in Joey's arms. "Where are you off to?"
"I'm just getting some food for the barbecue," the blonde answered. "Some vegetables to make kabobs with, maybe make some salsa from scratch."
To Alister, that sounded interesting. "In that case, I should probably go shopping too." He turned around and headed for the door. "I'll see you tomorrow then?"
Joey nodded and picked up his bags. "You bet. I'll see you later, Alister." Continuing on his way to the Secret Garden, Joey thought to himself, I wonder if Rafael, Alister, and Valon know about the Secret Garden. For all he knew, no one had shown them the wonderful place. He was just going to have to bring the three bikers with him one of these days.
Coming to the Secret Garden always made Joey feel so relaxed. Who wouldn't feel that way? The air was clean, the sound of the water was soothing, the scent of the flowers was enticing, and the food was delicious. After taking a deep breath and looking at the scenery enough, Joey headed to the vegetable gardens.
He saw a patch where ripe, red tomatoes grew. As he touched it, so did another hand. Joey looked and saw his friend Lita. "Hey, Lita."
"Hi, Joey," she returned. "Fancy seeing you here."
"Yeah," he laughed. He cleared his throat. "Um, sorry, were you going for that tomato? If you were, you can have it."
"Are you sure," the green-eyed brunette asked.
"Absolutely," the blonde insisted. "After all, there's more than plenty to go around."
Lita smiled and laughed. "Well, thanks." And she plucked the tomato and placed it in her bag. As they both started picking tomatoes, Lita said, "I was going to make marinara sauce from scratch. I'm thinking about making one of my homemade pizzas."
"For the barbecue tomorrow?" Joey asked. "I heard you and the girls were coming."
Lita nodded. "Yeah, it'll be great to see everybody and meet all your guys' Digimon."
Joey agreed. "Yeah, it'll be exciting." As the two friends continued talking, they got other vegetables they needed like mushrooms, onions, bell peppers, and chili peppers. After getting the ingredients they needed, Joey and Lita went their separate ways and returned to their worlds.
Back home in Domino, Kaiba was doing some research. After what happened back in Paris, he had been spending most of his spare time doing research on the Dark Masters. He found multiple references to the term, but nothing to what he was looking for.
His thoughts were interrupted when his brother came in. "Seto, I was wondering if Guilmon and I could go to Duke's barbecue tomorrow. I know you're going to be busy working, but I was wondering if I could still go."
That was when the thought came to Kaiba. "Sure, you can go. I just need to make a phone call and make some arrangements." He picked up his phone and began calling Emily.
At Emily's house, she and Yugi and Téa were baking desserts for the barbecue. Feeling her phone vibrating in her pocket, she pulled it out and answered it. "This is Emily," she announced.
"Hey, Briar," Kaiba said.
"Kaiba," she said cheerfully. It was rare of him to call her, but she kept his number stored in her phone in case the two ever needed to call each other. "What's up?"
"Are you going to Duke's barbecue tomorrow?"
"Oh, yes," she answered. "Yugi and Téa and I are baking desserts for tomorrow. Why do you ask?"
"I'm arranging a ride for Mokuba to go," the brunette lad answered. "We can also stop by and help you transport your baked goods on the way." Emily liked the sound of that, but before she could say anything, Kaiba continued, "However, I need you to do something for me."
"What's that?"
"I need you to come with me to the Secret Garden and grant me access to headquarters," he replied. "You see, I've been doing some research on the Dark Masters, but haven't found anything. I think I might have better luck at headquarters considering the fact that we can find information on friends and enemies from other worlds there."
Emily thought about it and figured that it might be worth a shot for Kaiba to go to headquarters. Plus, this would kind of be important for the team. "Okay. I'll do it," she replied.
"Great," Kaiba answered. "I'll pick you up at 10:00."
"All right. See you, Kaiba," Emily said and ended the call.
"What did Kaiba have to say?" Yugi asked.
"He's going to come and pick us up tomorrow and give us a ride to Duke's while he's dropping off Mokuba," the blonde girl answered.
"That's nice of him," said Téa.
"But there's a catch," continued Emily. "He wants me to take him to headquarters in the Secret Garden so he can further his investigation on the Dark Masters."
"Dark Masters?" Téa asked.
"For all we know, they're a group of villains from another world," Yugi explained. "And if we're going to stop them, we need to find out as much as we can about them; who they are and what their goal is."
"Let's not worry about that right now," Emily suggested. "Let's just focus on tomorrow and try to have a good time." Her friends agreed and got back to baking. They were making lemon meringue pies. Since there was going to be a lot of people and Digimon present at the barbecue, Emily decided she was going to make ten of them. Of course, she didn't want to overwork her oven, but she would try to bake the number she wanted to.
Besides, in the event that Emily wanted to make lots of baked goods, she would ask her bosses for their permission to use the kitchen at the bakery. This was one of those occasions. After baking the last of the pies here at the house, Emily would take her friends with her to the bakery to make more sweets. Of course, they would be using their own ingredients instead of what was at the bakery. They would go to the grocery store to get eggs, milk, sugar, salt, and vanilla extract. They would also get nuts and fruits from the Secret Garden.
As for the Digimon, they were in Emily's bedroom playing together and talking to each other about how life was like living with their partners. They also played card games, video games, even watched a couple of movies.
At the bakery, Yugi, Téa, and Emily made more pies. They made apple, banana cream, blueberry, cherry, peach, pumpkin, pecan, strawberry lemon, and a new recipe Emily came up with: strawberry banana cream. It wasn't hard transporting the pies back to Emily's house. The friends would take the ones that had finished baking back to the house.
It took all day to bake the pies. By the time the three friends finished, it was already close to sunset. Yugi and Téa needed to get home for dinner. Emily thanked her best friends for their help. Yugi and Téa got their Digimon and promised to meet up tomorrow for the barbecue. Emily sighed at how crowded her house was with all the boxed pies taking up all the space in her living room. Well, at least Kaiba was nice enough to provide reliable transportation. Even so, his limousine may not be able to carry one hundred pies. She got her cell phone and called Duke.
The dial tone rang a few times until Duke's voice was heard. "Duke Devlin here," he announced.
"Hi, Duke, it's Emily."
"Hey, Emily, what's up?"
"I need your help."
"Is everything okay?" he asked, concerned.
She sensed the concern in his tone and replied, "Everything is fine. I just baked a lot of sweets today and I need help transporting them to your place. I'm sure you're probably already going to be busy getting everything ready tomorrow, but I was wondering, do you think you could drive by my house and load some of my baked goods in your car?"
Duke was silent for a moment, thinking about what to say. Finally, he said, "Yeah, I think I might be able to stop by and help out."
"Thanks, Duke. I really appreciate it."
"Not at all," he insisted. "Since we're going to be having a lot of people, I imagined you'd be baking a lot of desserts."
The blonde girl chuckled sheepishly. "Yeah. Well, I'm going to call Rafael and ask him if he and Alister and Valon can help out."
"Okay," Duke replied. "Do you want me to come by in the morning?"
"Yes, please," she said politely.
"Okay. I'll see you tomorrow."
"See you," she returned, and ended the call. Afterwards, she went through her contacts, looking for Rafael's number. Seeing it, she inhaled sharply before making the call. Emily didn't normally call him unless she needed his help, but this was one of those times, so she decided to just suck it up and get it over with. It wasn't that she didn't like Rafael, but like she always established, he was just sometimes too much for her to deal with. Finally, she made the call.
At the bikers' home, while the boys were having dinner, Rafael heard his phone ring. He looked at it and saw Emily's number, causing him to smile with glee. He looked at his friends and asked, "You guys mind if I take this?"
"Go ahead," Alister said approvingly.
"Might as well," said Valon.
Rafael excused himself and answered the phone. "Hello?"
"Hi, Rafael," Emily said.
Just hearing her voice was enough to make him happy. "Emily," he said happily. "I was just thinking about you. Of course, I always am."
Once again, the blonde girl laughed sheepishly. "Oh, gee."
Sensing it in her tone, Rafael had a feeling that Emily was in a bind. "Are you okay, Emily? You sound like you're worried."
"Oh, no, I'm fine," she insisted. "I was just calling to ask if you could help me with something."
"Hey, for you, Princess, anything," he insisted.
"Okay, well, I made a lot of desserts for Duke's barbecue tomorrow and I was wondering if you could help me transport them." Then she remembered. "Oh, but I'm sure you've already got your own food you want to bring with you, so maybe you guys are probably already going to be busy."
"Hey, hey, hey," Rafael said calmly, "I'm never too busy for you. Of course I'll help you out. After all, we're going to the same place."
"You will?" Emily asked. "I mean, you don't mind? I just would hate to trouble you."
"It's no trouble at all," he insisted. "After all, the guys and I have a car now, so that'll make it easy for us." Since Rafael, Alister, and Valon got new jobs after moving into town a few years ago, they were able to pool most of their funds together to buy a car. It was mostly under Rafael's name, but they all took turns driving it when they needed to. Kaiba even insisted on buying a car for Alister, but the redhead wasn't sure if he could accept. They were friends, but Alister didn't feel like he could accept anything from Kaiba.
"Well, I do appreciate it," Emily said. "Think you can come by tomorrow morning? Duke will be over to help out too."
"I'll be there," he promised. "Rest assured. You just take it easy." With that being settled, the two blondes bade each other good night.
When Rafael returned to the dinner table, Valon asked, "What was that all about?"
"Emily baked a lot of desserts for Duke's barbecue and she needs help getting them to his place," he answered.
"And you immediately agreed to help her," Alister concluded.
Rafael looked at him and said, "You know I would do anything for her. She's my girl."
"Yeah, right," the redhead scoffed. Alister didn't dislike Emily. In fact, he cared about her very much. There was no romance between the redhead and the blonde girl, but they were still friends. It was just the one-sided love that annoyed him. Alister kept warning himself that one of these days, somebody was going to get hurt. If only Rafael would listen to him.
Valon returned with a bowl of ice cream. After finishing his dinner, he decided it was time for dessert. "Do you think the car will have enough room for her baked goods? We're already going to be loading it with our own food for the barbecue."
"Emily said she's getting extra help, so it won't be a problem if we can't take everything," said Rafael.
"Well, that's a good thing," Alister said. He thought about Max and said, "I hope Max will be there tomorrow."
"Me too," Valon said in agreement.
Rafael gave a sniff of disgust and turned away as his friends began talking about Max. He didn't understand what either of them saw in her. He picked up the empty dinner plates and brought them to the kitchen sink. After finishing their dessert, Alister and Valon worked together to put the leftovers away and wash the dishes.