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Nemona had been brainstorming since she woke up, which wasn't really helping with the ideas. What did Penny like? She liked anime, but Nemona didn't watch anime. She liked…hacking stuff? Not helpful. There was only one solution to this problem. Nemona grabbed her rotom phone.
"Hey, Florian!" she began, "You busy right now?"
"It's four am," he said, and then ruined his own point, "I'm finishing a history essay, why? Wanna battle?"
"Yes, absolutely!" and then Nemona remembered why she'd actually called, "But…actually, I've got a question for you. You're good at giving presents, right?" Florian hummed in response.
"I mean, I hope so. What are you looking for?" Nemona could hear the sounds of pokemon scrambling in the background.
"Penny! I want to get her a present, because she set up that battle date, and it was so sweet…" Nemona trailed off, and sighed.
"Hmm, okay. Think about things Penny likes," Florian suggested, "She likes anime, eevees, eeveelutions, committing crimes…"
"Ooh, we could hunt down a crime syndicate! Be vigilantes!" There was the distinct sound of Florian dropping his pen and cursing about it.
"No," he said, "We're not freaking Kalos, the only crime syndicate quote unquote that we had was Penny’s anti-bullying pyramid scheme. Don't tell her I called it that."
"I guess you're right," Nemona agreed, "Um, Penny’s from Galar? You know anything about Galar?"
"Uh, lemme think," Florian began, "Applins are a romantic gift, but you can't use that one because I'm already getting Arven an applin. They really, really like tea and curry. Corviknights don't have any natural predators there."
"I can make her curry!" Nemona declared, "She always just eats sad cup noodles, but this way she'll eat a real meal!" Eating good food was important even when you weren't battling. This would be a perfect date!
Florian, managing to scrape together an iota of common sense, raised a problem.
"Nemona, can you…cook?" he asked. Now that she thought about it…At school, she got food from the cafeteria. At home, she got food from the cooks. Any other time, she just made sad faces at Arven until he fed her.
"How hard can it be?" she decided, "I got this."
"Guess you've made a decision," Florian said, "Hey, so, I just finished that essay, and class isn't till nine. You still want that battle?" Nemona’s answering joyful scream could probably be heard all across the dorms.
Nemona didn't get a chance to start implementing her plan until lunch. Arven found her examining ingredients in the school store.
"I can use this for curry, right?" she asked, holding up a package of sandwich meat.
"You most certainly cannot," he replied, "I know you don't want help, but I didn't want help with team composition and you helped, so I'm helping you now. Don't argue." He looked personally offended by her pile of ingredients.
"Did you even pick a recipe?" Arven asked. Nemona scratched the back of her head.
"Uh…" Nemona definitely hadn't even thought of that. Arven looked distraught.
"Right, how many classes do you have left today?" he asked.
"One," Nemona replied. Arven breathed a sigh of relief.
"Perfect," he said, "Once you're done with class, come over to my dorm. I've got cookbooks we can look through."
Nemona spent all of math class about to jitter right out of her seat. When the bell rang, she sprang out of her seat, nearly trampling several students.
"Whoa, where are you going?" Florian asked, stumbling as he was caught in the whirlwind that was an enthusiastic Nemona.
"Cooking lessons with Arven! You coming?" she asked. Florian winced.
"Sorry, I promised Ms. Raifort that I'd help her out with something," he said, "You go have fun. Don't burn Arven's dorm down!"
Arven was in his dorm when Nemona got there, which was great, because she had only just realized she had no idea what she'd do if he wasn't.
"Here," Arven said, shuffling her to his bed, "You sit…over here." He went to the kitchenette, grabbed a pile of cookbooks, and tugged his desk chair over next to Nemona.
"We're going to look through these, pick one, and then go get the ingredients. You are paying for the ingredients." That was fair, Nemona did have a lot more money available than…pretty much everybody else here.
"Alright! I'm going to pick the best curry ever!" Nemona cheered.
"Don't get too ahead of yourself, okay? Pick something reasonable," Arven said, too late. Nemona was already tearing through the cookbooks with a fervor usually reserved for battle strategies. Penny needed nutrition! What could she make that would be delicious and trick Penny into consuming healthy food? This was a present, so it was really important that she liked it.
"How about this one?" she asked, pointing at a spicy apple curry. Arven raised an eyebrow.
"I bet we can manage that," he decided, "The ingredients aren't too bad, I've already got rice, we'll just need…" He trailed off, and went to go rummage around in his cabinets.
"Right, we're going to need tamato berries, oran berries, cheri berries, maybe some pinap berries, apples, and coconut milk for the base." He turned to the refrigerator and began to dig through that.
"It says most meats can be used, so let's just make it with the slowpoke tails I've got in the fridge, and then you can choose whatever you want for when you make it on your own," Arven decided. Nemona nodded along, reasonably deciding to follow his lead when it came to what was going in the food.
"Wait, honey!" Arven said, clearly having just remembered, "I just realized I ran out of honey. Are you writing these down?" Nemona, having never made a grocery list in her life, hadn't been writing anything down. Frantically, she typed the list down on her phone.
“Bring Meowscarada out, an extra pair of paws will help us carry everything.” As he said that, Arven put a carrying bag on Mabostiff. It was extremely practical, and also so cute Nemona could just keel over and die from adorable. Lil doggy bag! Mabostiff was gonna carry groceries! She should totally get Lycanroc a backpack, it would be so useful for trips.
The group headed out for groceries. It probably shouldn’t have been surprising that the grocery store was crowded, but this really wasn’t Nemona’s scene. Thinking about it, of course most people went out for groceries after classes were done! When else would they?
“Ooh, can we get cookies too?” Nemona asked, flailing her hand in the general direction of a display of almond cookies. Arven, who was busy comparing two different brands of combee honey, didn’t even look up.
“You’re paying, you can buy whatever you want,” he said. He would most certainly regret that. By the time they left, both teens had ended up letting their teams out to carry the absurd amount of groceries, and Arven had nearly fainted upon seeing the receipt. Sometimes having rich parents was good, actually.
The group lugged the groceries back to the dorms. Pawmot and Greedent, neither of whom were really helping carry groceries so much as performing the necessary duty of providing moral support, ran chittering around everyone’s feet.
Despite the struggle, and a terrifying moment where Garganacl nearly swung a large jug of milk directly into the head of Director Clavell, they made it inside. Once the groceries were put away, all of the pokemon besides Mabostiff returned to their balls, thankfully freeing up some space in the not exactly spacious dorm.
“First thing first, we need to prep our ingredients.” Arven’s instructions all seemed simple enough. First, they cut the tails into cubes, and Arven came to the terrifying realization that Nemona had never used a chopping block. While those were set aside, he let Nemona cut up the apples and other vegetables, since she clearly needed the practice, as he started what they needed for the curry base. When she was done, and without even needing the first aid kit, it was time to make the curry roux.
“You can buy this from the grocery store, but homemade tastes better,” Arven said, not looking up as he turned the berries into paste, “Plus, you can make a bunch of it to store for later, choose the proportions yourself, all of that.” Nemona nodded along.
“Are the butter and flour browned yet?” he asked. Peering in the pan, Nemona could see that it was.
“Great!” Arven handed her the berry mixture, and said, “Pour that in, mix it well, and then take it off the heat. We’re going to cook the meat up now.” The tails made a satisfying sizzling noise as they cooked.
“Right, now that the meat’s done, we add the veggies. Once it’s sauteed, we’ll add the coconut milk and broth.” Even without the berries added, it was starting to smell delicious. Nemona was getting real hungry. Absentmindedly, she went to grab an apple slice, and got her hand smacked for it.
“Who are you, Koraidon? No snacking on the ingredients!” Sighing, Arven reached into a cabinet.
“Here, you can have one of my homemade granola bars so that you don’t starve before we finish,” he said, handing the bar to Nemona. She immediately shoved in her mouth, cheeks bulging out like a skwovet. Shaking his head, Arven added the broth and coconut milk to the curry. While the two of them waited for it to boil, Arven showed Nemona how to operate the rice cooker, because who ate curry without rice? The rice cooker was way less complicated than she expected.
“Seriously, I can’t believe you all made it this long without learning how to feed yourselves anything more complicated than a sandwich!” Arven complained, as he added in the curry roux with some mirin, “If I wasn’t here, you would have starved to death in the wilderness.”
“Penny wouldn’t,” Nemona decided, “Cuz she wouldn’t leave her room.”
“Cruel but true,” Arven agreed, and handed Nemona the spoon, “Keep stirring this until it’s smooth, then we let it thicken.”
“And then we eat it!” Nemona cheered.
“Yeah, then we eat it,” Arven confirmed. Aside from a minor slip up when Nemona stirred the curry far too aggressively, the curry was finished without any major incident. Nemona was practically vibrating with excitement as Arven served each of them a bowl. She nearly flung her spoon as she dug in.
“It’s so good!” she said, grinning ear to ear. Arven looked relieved.
“Yeah, for your first meal, this turned out pretty well,” he agreed, “Now you just have to make it on your own.” He handed her the wrapped up bundle of curry roux. Nemona was pretty certain she had this. She totally remembered all the steps! As she left, a distinctly flustered Florian passed by her.
“Hey, do you guys have any leftovers of what you were cooking? Don’t worry about why, can I have some?” he asked. Nemona hoped he was having as good a day as she was! Nemona scurried off to prepare for dinner.
It was about an hour after grocery shopping and starting on her own curry that Nemona realized that she’d…never actually asked Penny if she was free. Whoops! Well, there was no time like the present. Time to call her!
Penny barely got a word out before Nemona started to speak.
“Are you free for a dinner date?” she asked, “I already started planning and I totally forgot I hadn’t asked you!”
“I mean, I guess?” Penny sounded unsurprisingly confused, “Wait, how did you forget-”
“Perfect, it’s settled, come meet me at my dorm in an hour!” Nemona said, hanging up. Now she just had to finish the food and set up the space! How many berries did she need to put in again, twelve? Yeah, twelve sounded right.
Nemona had just finished wrangling her dorm into a romantic dinner spot when Penny knocked on her door. She’d traded out her normal sweatshirt for a slightly cleaner one, and was wearing a large pink bow on her head that had clearly been borrowed. There was a spot under one eye where she’d clearly attempted to put on eyeliner, given up, and tried to scrub it off. She was also holding her Sylveon to her chest for moral support. Penny was so adorable Nemona wanted to run in circles and punch a wall.
Instead of that she lunged forward and squished both girl and eeveelution in a tight hug, then yanked them into her dorm.
“So, you set up that battle, and it was so sweet and cute and nice, and I wanted to do something for you! I made dinner, and I figure maybe you can put on an anime you like while we eat, does that sound nice?” Nemona asked, looking hopefully at her girlfriend. Penny was blushing, because her ears were bright red. That was all Nemona could see of her, since she’d shoved her face into Sylveon’s fluff.
“That sounds nice,” Penny said, muffled. She finally removed her still somewhat pink face from Sylveon.
“Do you want me to go put on a show?” she asked, gesturing to Nemona’s computer.
“Yeah! You do that, and I’ll set up dinner!” Nemona sprang into action as Penny went to go pull up something to watch, gathering up bowls and cutlery. When, after much swearing at the school internet’s awful connection, the opening to some new sports anime of questionable quality started playing, Nemona had their food arranged on the counter, with borrowed chairs on either side.
“Is that…curry?” Penny asked, staring at it in shock. She took a spoonful and put it onto a saucer for Sylveon.
“Yep! I asked Arven to teach me how to make it for you!” Nemona replied. Penny, beginning to blush again, busied herself by mixing the curry aggressively into the rice.
“He’s so malewife,” she said. Nemona, only having the vaguest idea of what her internet-poisoned girlfriend meant through obvious context clues, agreed. Penny shoved a spoonful of curry into her mouth, blushing heavily. Blushing way more than earlier, actually. Wow, she was really red.
“ Too hot! ” she yelped. Oh no. What?
“What?!” Nemona panicked, taking a bite. It was, in fact, really freaking hot. Hotter than lava, hotter than sun, hotter than getting hit with Torch Song. What had she done wrong? On the floor, Sylveon had apparently decided that life was pain, and was laying on her side, mrrping miserably.
“I’ve got milk here somewhere!” Nemona shouted, frantically digging through the refrigerator. She did not, in fact, have milk. Curse her lack of foresight for anything not related to pokemon battles!
“There’s vending machines, those’ll have some!” Nemona declared. Penny scooped Sylveon off the floor, and the group raced outside. The area was almost entirely abandoned. Almost.
“Shoosh, you gotta get back in the ball, okay?” Florian was whispering to what appeared to be a fat, on fire, fish looking thing. He was holding a lemonade and a container of curry.
“What the heck is that?” Penny asked. Florian looked confusedly at the contents of his hands.
“Arven gave me leftover curry?” he replied. Shaking her head, Penny groaned.
“That’s not what I was asking and you know it!” she said. The fish thing retreated to its ball, which Florian dropped in his bag.
“Don’t worry, everything’s under control! Have a nice date!” he said, and then he jumped onto Koraidon and climbed up the exterior wall. Penny watched him, jaw dropped.
“Aww, I’m glad he’s having a good time,” Nemona said. Penny screamed into her hood.
“Why,” she asked, “Why am I dating either of you.” Nemona ignored that in favor of grabbing some milk.
“Drink this, it’ll fix the mouth burns,” she said. Once both of them had guzzled their milk, and Penny had given poor Sylveon a capful, they headed back to the door.
“Man, this night didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to,” Nemona said, with a wince, “Sorry I poisoned you and Sylveon.”
“I think you applied burn, actually,” Penny said, “But it’s okay. Do you want to go back and just finish the show? We can order food to the dorms, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried that.” Nemona hadn’t actually, and that sounded way nicer than eating more super hot curry.
“Yeah, and then tomorrow I’ll ask Arven what I screwed up.” Together, they entered the dorm and snuggled up for a long anime binge and takeout.