A/N: Pearl uses some strong language in this chapter. It's nothing too offensive, but I thought I'd warn you.

After Platinum left, I headed back to the kitchen where I found Pearl and Whitley waiting for me. They had already finished cleaning up, and now wanted to know what Platinum had come to talk to me about. (I'll admit I was a little surprised at first that they were both curious about it, but I suppose it's not every day that someone from one of the richest families in town comes calling on me.)

I told them exactly what Platinum had said, about what her friends were doing and what she was supposed to do and why she didn't do it, but I called her Missy the whole time and left out the part where she told me her real name. It seemed to be a valuable piece of information to her, and she was showing a great deal of trust in me by entrusting that information to me. I didn't want to blab it to everyone else and make her regret telling me. (In fact, I don't think I'll share it with anyone at all unless she says it's okay.)

When I finished, Whitley simply stared at me in shock. Pearl, on the other hand, looked like he was ready to punch something, and I took a step away from him to make sure it wouldn't be me. He ended up deciding to just slam his fist down on the counter as he shouted, "What the hell! Assholes!"

I gave him a look, and he sighed, exhaling air and tension from his body. (Pearl knows I don't like it when he uses bad language.) "Sorry, had to get that out," he said. He took on a pensive look and added, "That explains why I had so many dissatisfied customers today. But…" He scowled. "It sucks that we don't really know who all is involved, even though I've probably met them all. We can't assume that every customer who gave us a hard time today is connected to the situation."

"Don't worry," I assured him. "Missy will talk to her friend and then we won't have to deal with it anymore. Revenge isn't as important as making sure that it stops."

"Did she say when she would talk to her friend about it?" Whitley asked.

I shook my head. "She just said that she would come by sometime tomorrow and tell me how it went."

Pearl sighed. "So now we're all playing the waiting game again."

Unfortunately, I am not very good at the waiting game.

First, I arrived at 8 am to start baking fresh muffins and pastries for the new day. But I couldn't get as absorbed in my cooking as I normally do; my mind kept drifting to the events of yesterday and I kept having to pull myself out of my thoughts and focus on the task at hand. So, as opening time approached, I was way behind schedule to bake everything I needed to.

Then, when Whitley arrived a few minutes after we opened, she found me pulling ingredients for cookie dough together in a panic. "Wh-what's the matter?" she asked frantically.

"The cookies you finished yesterday – those were the ones for a graduation party this afternoon!" I cried. "I never even baked the cookies for the birthday party!"

"Oh," she said, sounding relieved. (It was quite the opposite of my frenetic state.) "You mean these cookies?"

She pulled a box out of the fridge and let me look inside. "That's – when did you do this?" I asked.

"I spotted that order on the counter yesterday while you were decorating Ms. Berlitz's cake and did it myself," Whitley said. "You were too absorbed in what you were doing to notice, I suppose."

"Oh," I said sheepishly, scooting out of the pantry. "Thank you." But I didn't get up off the floor immediately; Whitley's comment renewed the nervous anticipation for Platinum's return that bubbled in my gut. It wasn't until Whitley uncertainly called my name and asked me if I was going to get to work that I scrambled to my feet and attempted to put my mind back on baking.

However, the next couple of hours were nothing but a dazed blur. I knew that Whitley and I had received a few orders, delivered a few orders, and made some more baked goods for the shop, but I didn't really remember it happening. My mind was too busy replaying moments from the previous night and pondering how I should act when Platinum arrived today to take note of what I was doing.

She hadn't arrived by the time I took my lunch break, and I was starting to worry. What if she had been mugged or kidnapped while she was walking home last night? What if her parents had found out about what she and her friends were doing and grounded her as punishment? Or, more reasonably, what if she had simply changed her mind and never went to talk to her friend at all? These thoughts plagued my mind all throughout lunch.

(But at least they didn't stop me from enjoying my lunch. Like Pearl says, nothing short of a nuclear war could get between me and food.)

As I was heading back into the kitchen, I ran into Pearl, who looked like he was about to take his lunch break. However, he also looked like he had something on his mind – his brow was furrowed, and he was frowning. "Dia," he began, "are you okay?" (Well, that's certainly not what I expected him to say.)

"Whitley says you've been acting weird today," Pearl continued. "Are you sick or something?"

"I'm fine!" I replied immediately.

"She went to the bathroom and when she came back you were eating the cookie dough that you were supposed to be rolling into a cookie cake."

"I was…sampling it."

"Does that normally involve eating so much dough that there's barely enough left over for the cake itself?"

I blinked. "Did I really eat that much?"

"Yes, Dia," Pearl said, exasperated. "Maybe you just need to go home and get some rest. You've been working pretty hard lately, and it might be catching up to you."

"B-but I can't leave!" I protested. "Pl…plus, Missy is coming today and I have to meet her!"

(Whew. Almost gave away her name there.)

"Is that what this is about?" Pearl sighed, shaking his head. "Getting this distracted over a rich girl is always a bad sign, Dia. But," he said quickly, silencing my complaint, "I know I can't just force you to forget about her. So you really should go home and let Whitley take over the kitchen for the rest of the day."

"But what if…Whitley can't handle all the orders?" I objected. "I have to be here, Pearl…"

"Dia, with how distracted you are today you're gonna hurt us more than you help us," Pearl said candidly. "It won't matter that Missy's gotten her friends to stop sabotaging us if you drag us down yourself. Look, I'll call you after I talk to her and tell you what she says, okay? If she wants to talk to you in person, I'll send her your way."

I sighed and finally conceded defeat. This argument really wasn't worth it. But as I was starting to gather up my things, Pearl left me with one final reminder: "I just want you to remember, Dia…rich people are notoriously arrogant. They usually have little regard for the lower classes. Some of them are just clever enough to put up a facade of actually caring."

It was probably better for both the bakery and me that I went home early. I didn't attempt to use work as a distraction from my thoughts; instead, I spent time playing with my Pokémon – which soon proved to be a much better distraction, anyways. I took a bag of extra muffins that I had brought home from the bakery and tossed them in the air for Lax, my Munchlax, and Kit, my Lickilicky, to catch. It was a game we usually played at the end of the day with all the food Pearl and I would have thrown away otherwise.

(Kit has the advantage because he can catch things with his long tongue, but Lax's bottomless pit of a stomach motivates him to try some creative methods to get to the food first. We normally play it outside because they can get competitive. The only inconvenience is that my house backs up to a major road, so the road noise is a little loud sometimes.)

I didn't want to miss Pearl's call, if he called while we were playing, so I decided to bring the game inside this time. Lax quickly discovered that he could use the furniture to gain a lot of height, but I had to ban that practice after he took a huge leap off the back of the sofa to grab a banana muffin in midair and crash-landed on one of my favorite Proteam Omega action figures, breaking it. (Yes, I'm an adult and I'm still a fan of Proteam Omega. You have a problem with that?)

So anyways, after I had properly mourned the loss of the first Demon Brioche figure I ever bought, I banned Lax from using the furniture to catch muffins. I then wondered if maybe I shouldn't play the game inside after all – but I didn't dare risk missing Pearl's call, and I couldn't just stop the game now when Lax and Kit were so fired up. So, I decided to quickly move all the valuables lying around the living room so that they wouldn't get accidentally destroyed.

(Maybe I should have done that before we started playing. Well, things are always clearer in hindsight.)

On the end table by the sofa, I picked up a picture of my mother that Lax had nearly knocked over earlier. The picture was from her youth, during the peak of her career as a Pokémon Coordinator; she was showing off a Ribbon she had just won in a Super Contest with her Glameow. Glameow was winding herself around my mother's legs while she held up the Ribbon, and she had a huge grin on her face.

(I wonder if I can get a picture of Platinum smiling, too?)

Suddenly, the phone rang. I dropped the photo back on the table instantly and scrambled over to the telephone table, between the living room and the kitchen. (Why didn't I think to move the phone closer? I knew I was expecting a phone call…I always think of these things after they're relevant.) I picked up the phone without even looking at the caller ID to see that the number didn't belong to the bakery. "Hi," I said breathlessly. I was about to continue and ask what Platinum had to say, but the voice on the other side of the line responded before I could.

"Diamond." The voice was polite, calm, and elegantly gentle. Exactly the opposite of Pearl's, but still breathtakingly familiar. I nearly dropped the phone in shock, and I certainly couldn't find any words to reply. Evidently, I was silent for a little too long, though, because she repeated, "Diamond? Hello?"

"Platinum. I'm here," I said in a rush. Heaven forbid she think I hung up on her after she bothered to call my house… "How did you get this number?"

(Perhaps not the greatest starting line, but it was the best I could think of. And it's a reasonable thing to ask, right?)

"Pearl gave it to me," she replied, "after I called the bakery and informed him of this morning's events."

"Thank you, Pearl," I whispered to myself. "What were…this morning's events?" I asked Platinum.

"I confronted my acquaintance about her sabotage plot," she explained. "She challenged me to a Pokémon battle. If I won, she would cease her underhanded attempts to undermine your business. If she won, she would continue her assault – and I would have to continue to assist her."

I gasped. "You wouldn't…"

"The fate of her business was potentially at stake," Platinum said. "It was only fair that I risk something important as well. Of course, in the end it did not matter what I stood to lose," she added smugly, "as I defeated her quite readily."

"Yay!" I said cheerfully. "Good job!"

"Thank you," she replied.

"But," I continued, "weren't you going to stop by the bakery to tell us what happened? Why did you call instead?"

There was a sigh and silence from the other side of the line. "I made an unfortunate error during the battle," Platinum finally responded, "which resulted in my injury. I am required to stay in bed for now to expedite my healing."

"Oh, no! I'm so sorry," I cried. "Is there any way I can help?"

"Fret not," she said. "My family's butler is taking excellent care of me. I shall recover within a few days' time."

I opened my mouth to speak, but stopped myself and suddenly grinned. "I'd wish you to get well soon, but I just made you a cake expressing that sentiment yesterday."

Platinum giggled. However, the sound was cut off by a sharp intake of breath. "Are you okay?" I asked concernedly.

"I am still a little sore," she admitted. "It may be beneficial to stop talking and get some rest."

"You should," I agreed. "Thank you for calling me."

"It was merely the polite thing to do," she replied. Before I could say anything else, she hung up.

I held the phone to my ear for a few moments more before slowly lowering it down to my side. She'd never said anything about when she'd call me back, if she would at all, and she didn't give me the chance to ask about it. However, I didn't want to call her back when she had just asked me to stop talking to her and let her rest.

But the one thing I absolutely couldn't do was let the beautiful Platinum Berlitz slip out of my life just as quickly as she had walked into it.

Suddenly, the phone in my hand rang again. I checked the caller ID before I answered the phone – "DP BAKR". So, it really was Pearl this time.

"I'm guessing you talked to Missy?" Pearl asked me over the phone.

"Yeah," I said.

"She asked for you first thing, you know," he said. "I told her that you'd gone home early. Then she asked for your phone number, but there was no way I'd do that if I didn't know why she couldn't go see you in person. I wanted to make sure she wasn't trying to weasel her way out of having to actually leave her comfortable little mansion when she said she'd stop by in person." I could practically hear Pearl's scowl. "She didn't even tell me anything about how the confrontation with her friend went, even though it affects me more than it affects you. She's such a pain in the…well, you know. What did she tell you?"

"Well, she said she got injured while she was fighting her friend who owns the bakery," I said.

Pearl scoffed. "See, all she told me was that she got injured in a battle. She didn't say anything about who she was fighting or why." He paused. "Keep going."

"She won the battle, so her friends are gonna stop sabotaging us now. But…" I folded my free arm across my chest. "I can't help but feel responsible for it. Her getting injured, I mean. I was the one who insisted that she confront them, after all."

"And what would we do if she hadn't?" Pearl said. "We still don't know who these friends are. If we couldn't find them, we'd just have to endure waves of entitled customers until they got tired of this little game."

"I know, but still," I sighed. "She didn't sound very good over the phone. I'm worried about her."

"So? There's not much you can do about it."

"Yes, there is," I said. I lifted my chin up high and declared what I had decided from the moment that she hung up the phone. "I'm going to go visit her."

"Dia, that's ridiculous," Pearl scolded me. "Do you even know where she lives?"

"No," I replied, "but I can figure it out."

"The address of the Berlitz estate isn't online or in the phonebooks or anything," Pearl informed me. "They value their privacy."

"I'm not surprised," I said, thinking of how Platinum was keeping her name a secret. "I'll just have to find it another way."

Pearl sighed. "Good luck finding it, then. You're gonna need it."