After clearing every last dish from the table, the three of them settled back in their chairs with their eyes half-shut and identical contented smiles on their faces.
"That was incredible," Nemona announced, first to deliver her verdict.
As the youngest daughter of the CEO of the Rotom Phone company, Nemona came across as the kind of person you'd find living next door -- easy to talk to, no airs about her. But she was, by any measure, a girl who had grown up with everything. The fact that she was this effusive about a home-cooked meal said everything about how good Urshifu's cooking actually was.
Arven, sitting nearby, hadn't said a word -- but the look on his face said plenty. He was still somewhere else, replaying the meal.
Carl eats like this every day? he thought.
Once the Pokémon had finished their own bowls, Espeon used Psychic to gather all the dishes and float them over in front of Swampert. Swampert caught on immediately, dipped its head at Espeon, and then fired a single low-powered Bubble Beam -- just enough to clean every dish in an instant.
Arven and Nemona both sat up at the same time watching the two Pokémon work. Nemona was studying the energy control technique behind it. Arven was realizing he'd just found a solution to the thing he hated most about cooking.
After a short rest, Carl stood up. "Come on, I'll take you both home. We can get some air on the way."
The truth was that neither Arven's nor Nemona's homes were far from the farm at all. Even on foot, a round trip would barely have taken an hour -- let alone by Corviknight.
Less than half an hour later, Carl glided back to the farm and stepped inside to find Gholdengo already waiting for him in the living room.
"Cha." (Let's talk about the farm's future, Trainer.) Gholdengo fixed its crimson eyes on Carl with a look of complete seriousness.
"My thoughts exactly." Carl settled into the freshly cleaned sofa and reached out to take the notebook that Gholdengo floated over with Psychic.
The notebook looked ordinary enough on the outside, but it was Gholdengo's dedicated tool. Inside were Carl's monthly income and expense records going back through the year, alongside a range of financial plans that Gholdengo had personally drawn up.
For a Pokémon that most people considered borderline legendary, Gholdengo wasn't just powerful -- it had a mind that ran like a supercomputer. In most battles, that supercomputer tended to reach the same conclusion: use overwhelming force. But Carl had never been the type to let a Pokémon's abilities go to waste in one direction.
Ever since catching Gholdengo, Carl had been deliberately giving it things to learn. The subject Gholdengo latched onto hardest, however, was money.
It sounds absurd, but it made a kind of sense. As a shiny Pokémon ostracized by its own kind, Gholdengo had spent years alone in the wild before it ever evolved into its final form. That experience had burned one lesson into it deeply: poor resource management means going hungry -- even if you're the strongest thing around.
When Gholdengo first grasped the concept of money, its supercomputer of a brain ran the numbers and arrived at a conclusion that genuinely stunned it: those thin pieces of paper humans traded around were, in practice, nearly all-powerful. With enough of them, you could apparently exchange them for delicious food.
The plan its brain generated next was, predictably, to acquire large amounts of money by force. Carl shut that down immediately. Gholdengo, redirected, moved on to studying how to make money legally instead.
Back to the present. Carl flipped to the most recent page of the notebook and found the farm map Gholdengo had spent the afternoon surveying. He listened as Gholdengo walked him through the assessment.
First, the total cultivatable land was currently zero. Before anything could grow, Carl would need to spend time clearing and tilling the ground.
Second, while the farm was effectively empty, Gholdengo had found something that impressed it: the property was quite large, and it had a small natural lake fed by underground water sources. A reliable water supply was an extremely valuable asset for a farm starting from scratch. Most serious farms eventually brought in economically productive Pokémon like Miltank, Gogoat, or Wooloo to diversify their output and weather rough seasons -- and when that time came, having a lake already on the property would save Carl a significant amount of trouble.
Third, the area around the farm was home to a healthy number of wild Pokémon populations, including but not limited to Oinkologne, Maushold, and Poliwag -- all species with potential value for the farm.
Carl nodded as Gholdengo finished, then laid out his own thinking on the early development plan.
Clearing land was the immediate top priority. Linoone was the only Pokémon on his team that knew Slash and could help break ground, but for where things stood right now, that was plenty.
During the clearing phase, Carl planned to run some small test crops -- strawberries in particular. Mayor Poco had mentioned that morning that high-quality strawberries were the most in-demand spring crop in the area, by a significant margin. If the test batch turned out well, he'd scale up to a full strawberry operation after the initial clearing was done.
Finally, while he didn't expect to be short-handed for quite a while yet, Carl didn't want to find himself scrambling someday when things got busy. He planned to take walks around the land near the farm during any downtime -- and if he happened to cross paths with a Pokémon that felt right, maybe it would come home with him.
Gholdengo nodded in approval once Carl finished, and the two of them moved on to working through the specifics: how much land to break first, where to start, and so on.
By the time they wrapped up, it was ten at night. Carl checked the Silver Corp sports watch on his wrist and closed the notebook.
"That's enough for today. Good work, Gholdengo." He reached out and rested a hand on Gholdengo's thick forepaw. The cool, solid feeling against his palm was reassuring.
After a long shower, Carl realized there was one more problem that needed solving: with eleven Pokémon currently living in the house, he couldn't sleep the way he usually did outdoors, completely surrounded. He thought about it for a moment, then made his decision.
"Flutter Mane, Serperior, Espeon -- you three are sleeping with me tonight."
"Fu~! (Yes!)"
"Goka! (Hmph!)"
"Bui? (Huh?)"
While Carl was settling in with his three chosen sleeping companions, far across the sea in the Sinnoh region, a golden-haired girl was already up early.
"Garchomp." She extended her slender fingers and ran them along her partner's rough hide. "You're just as ready for today as I am, aren't you?"
The proud near-legendary lowered its head and let her touch it. At her words, Garchomp let out a low, eager growl: "Gaooo! (Absolutely.)"
"Then let's go."