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A few years ago, the story goes, a baker's wife had a terrible craving for chocolate. Nothing seemed as if it could soothe her sweet tooth - no candy bars or syrups, no ice cream or store-bought cakes. This put her in a mood most foul, and she went to her husband and said, "You! You are a baker; you can make me something!" But the baker said, "I wish I could - but I work hard all day for the donut franchise, following dull recipes and making dull foods, and I come home tired." So his wife said, "Enough! You hate your job, so we will do this. You will make me something; if it can cure my craving, we know it will be good. So we will quit our jobs, we will sell our home, we move to the city, and we will start our own bakery."

The baker thought on this, and decided it was good. So he went to work, blending the finest ingredients. He used his heart and soul and skill to raise a batch of the finest chocolate cupcakes that you ever did taste; and when his wife bit into one, it was as though the universe around her had been filled with the perfection of chocolate. So they did as she had promised - quit their jobs, sold their home, moved to the city - and opened a bakery, called Cravings in the City. And every month, for mysterious reasons, his wife would again desire chocolate; and every month the baker would make a special batch, of which she would eat one, and he would sell the rest.

Once a month, and only once a month. It was like marshmallow Peeps at Easter, or pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving; it kept it special. And every month since she'd moved to Destiny City, Robin had come here and gotten her special, once-a-month cupcake.

There was just one problem; word of mouth had spread over the last year of these ambrosial cupcakes. Robin had been arriving to find, more and more, that fewer of the cupcakes were left by the time she got hers. It soon became clear that stopping by at noon to pick up her cupcake was no longer good enough; she had to start coming an hour earlier, and then another hour earlier, and then another. And now here she was, just past nine in the morning - the absolute earliest she would ever get up on a Saturday morning - arriving at Cravings in the City. Sleepy-eyed and yawning, the pink-haired girl made her way to the display case where the cupcakes were set on a platter behind a sign reading "Today Only! Chocolate Cravings Perfection Cupcakes, 4.99", and stopped in shock. For, where there would be twenty-four cupcakes displayed at the store's opening at eight in the morning, there was now but one.

ONE.

And someone else was already there, waiting to be served. Waiting, no doubt, to be served Robin's cupcake.

This would not stand. This would not stand at all. The pink-haired girl sidled up next to the other girl (who was taller, and clean, and very much like the image of girls that Robin strongly disliked), sizing her up sharply. It was time for a preemptive strike, before that girl got any silly ideas about walking out of here with that delicious bit of baked heaven.

"That's my cupcake, you know. They're holding it for me."

What's this? A counter-claim? Robin's mouth quirked down and to the side. There was no time to re-evaluate the situation; both gauntlets had been thrown now. If it was to be a duel, then Robin would have to be quick on her feet.

"You'll have to take that up with the baker now, won't you?" Leaning casually, Robin rested her forearm across a counter in an almost possessive gesture. That the gesture had gotten her one step physically closer to that cupcake - behind glass as it was, she was still signalling it was hers - was just an extra bonus. "See, I'm friends with the owner's sister. They won't let anyone take my cupcake. Especially if it's because someone thinks a little money makes them entitled." The girl spread her lips into a wolf-like smile. "They don't fall for that sort of bluster 'round here."

Which was just as much a bluff as Elegancia's month-in-advance story, of course; but Robin lied with an air of absolute confidence. The only real clue that she was fibbing, in fact, was that mischievous gleam that she always got in her eye when she was bending the rules.