CH198 (812), Against Expectations (2)

The first store on the map was a second-hand shop, and I was going to look for an old plushy that was in good condition since it had to have been treated with genuine care as well as fondness before being eventually discarded or simply set aside to gather dust, which was likely how it would have ended at the shop. Honestly, those were not easy conditions to fulfill, but they were not too hard either so I was confident that I would be able to find at least some that had been discarded or directly sold off.

Still, I did not forget that Utopia recommended that I choose a plushy that had been left to gather dust instead of being discarded since Mimikyu nurtured through such a plushy would be more compliant, and I was pretty sure that plushies like that were harder to find than the discarded or directly sold of kind. I would have to find plushies whose previous owners had moved on to the beyond leading to some or all of their stuff being sold off, including the plushy I bought.

Well, or at least something along those lines, and while Utopia set no quality requirement for the plushy, I was obviously trying to find a good quality one if I could. Utopia had emphasized that it was the contrast of the emotions poured into the plushy followed by the lack/absence of attention that was important, but I was sure that the plushy being of a good quality could not hurt.

Anyway, once I entered the 2nd hand store, I nodded to the lady who welcomed me before asking her where the plushies were. Once she pointed them out to me I thanked her before I began to Observe all of the undamaged plushies. I did not mind signs of wear as long as they had been mended/fixed up since that showed that the plushy had been used/kept close. I just had to skip the ones that were truly damaged since that showed that while the plushy had been used, it was not with care, and that was not something we wanted for our Mimikyu base.

After singling out the plushies that were in a good enough condition, I Observed them all, and I made sure to read the entire fully expanded description section for each one of them. I ended up reading through 39 descriptions, but none really met Utopia's criteria, so less than 5 minutes after entering the store I left it empty-handed. Still, that was fine since I had expected this to take some effort which was why I had made sure to mark a lot of 2nd hand and antique stores on the map. The next store happened to be a 2nd hand store as well, and it was not too far from this place either, but sadly that one did not have what I needed either.

Well, actually, it had a plushy that theoretically fulfilled the condition, but it was a plushy that had been thrown away by its owner and I definitely did not plan to go with that as my first choice. I just marked the store/plushy as a potential candidate in case I ended up unlucky enough to find no more qualified plushy before heading to the next marked spot on the map, which happened to be one of the three fabric shops I noted down. The only reason I even went out of my way to mark that many was just in case I was not satisfied with the quality or color of the available fabric.

I was not planning to order custom skins for the Mimikyu or anything like that, at least not for now, but I still wanted to ensure that the fabric Mimikyu was going to cover its body in felt and looked nice. Thankfully the shop proved to be a high-end store with its own warehouse, so not only was I able to find the fabric I wanted but they had quite a few bundles of the fabric stored in their warehouse. That was good because the 5 bundles they still had in store were not enough to meet my needs. Each bundle was 75 meters in length which was enough for 37 basic Mimikyu covers or around 25 more intricate Mimikyu covers.

5 bundles would have sufficed for roughly 3 to 5 years depending on which option I went with, but I wanted to be able to ignore this for a while once I dealt with it so I chose to buy 15 rolls of fabric at once which would allow me to forget this for the next 10 to 15 years. I went ahead and bought the 15 rolls of soft, breathable, element-resistant, as well as durable light yellow fabric for 525.000 Poke total which came down to 35k a piece or rather per roll. The rolls were not cheap, but I was paying for quality items made using Pokemon (related) products after all, so that was to be expected.

Besides, if I broke that down to a cost per Mimikyu then each Mimikyu used 1 to 1.4k Poke of fabric depending on whether we went with the basic or more intricate version. Frankly, with how pricey Pokemon stuff could be that was rather cheap all things considered, so I did not mind making a bulk payment like this at all. I honestly had expected to pay more so this was fine. After acting like I was pushing the roles into my space bag, I bid the brightly smiling saleslady and the guy who brought the fabric from the warehouse to the store goodbye before moving to my next stop.

It was an antique store that only had 8 plushies, which was not all that surprising since the stuff that made it here had to fulfill a certain standard, so the plushies that could be found here were more like collector items really. That was probably why they fulfilled the good care bit but not the emotional aspect, or at least none of the 8 plushies they had did. There was a chance that I could still find a viable plushy among collector's plushies, which was why I had antique stores marked in the first place. Not to mention that the low number of plushies meant that I spent a minute there at most so making the visit did not take much time at all since it was practically on the way to the next 2nd-hand store anyway.

I ended up visiting 9 antique stores, and 28 2nd hand shops over the next 3 hours without finding a plushy that truly satisfied me. I found some that were good, definitely better than the first one, but none that truly had me thinking that they were it. The current best plushy was actually from an antique store. It was a collectible Clefairy plushy made 130 years ago in Kanto that was in near-perfect/mint condition and got passed down through two generations before being sold off by the third generation.

Honestly, the only reason it was not perfect for what I needed was that the contrast from care to abandonment was not that great since the Clefairy plushy was actually played with and treated with care by the 1st and 2nd generations before being directly sold off by the third, so there was no abandonment from the actual playmates that had an emotional bond with the plushy as the third generation did not even bother with it before exchanging it for cash. There was still a treatment contrast but it was not as stark as I would have liked, though I would still go with that one if I failed to find something better.

Anyway, I chose to take a lunch break at this point since it was already 2 p.m. The lunch break had to be kept short since my Gym Challenge was at 5 p.m. I did not have much time to waste if I wanted to try my luck at finding a better plushy. I still had to buy the wax for the Litwick Nurturing Matrix after all. The quality of the wax in the one store I visited so far did not satisfy me, so I still had to see if one of the other two would or if I would have to add some more stores to my tour map.

I ended up finishing my lunch in less than 20 minutes and after two unsuccessful visits to 2nd hand stores, I arrived at the 2nd specialty store I had marked that sold wax. Impressively enough, the store actually had Combee Wax, though they did not have anywhere near the amount I wanted, which was understandable since I had quoted a rather absurdly high number. The salesperson goggled at me when I asked if I could purchase a ton of that Combee Wax, preferably B-Class. He asked me in a neutral if minutely strained voice if I was joking with them.

Once I had convinced them that I was serious they gave me a vague look before sharing that they did not have that much Combee Wax in storage, B-class or otherwise. A kilogram of C-class wax allowed the matrix to nurture a Litwick in a month while using 3 kg of B-class wax instead would have reduced that to 2 weeks. Unfortunately, my plan to buy a ton of wax which would have allowed me to not worry about resupplying for a long long time fell through, but I still managed to convince the salesperson to sell me all their available stock of Combee Wax.

That netted me 350 kg of C-class Combee Wax and 20 kg of B-class Combee Wax, which was enough to nurture 6 Litwick within 2 weeks each before switching to a one-per-month rate for 350 Litwick. While it was not the decades I had been hoping for, I still managed to ensure that I would not have to bother resupplying for a decade, so I happily paid the 250k Poke before leaving the shop under the flattering gaze of the employee. I let my second thought stream deal with the setup of the Litwick Nurturing Matrix while I made my way to the next marked shop on my map, hoping that I would find the perfect plushy for the Mimikyu Matrix.

I ended up visiting tens of stores without finding the plushy I was looking for and once it was a quarter past 4 p.m., I decided to finally give up the search. After that, I made my way back to the antique store that sold the Clefairy plushy and paid 18k for the plushy, which was a lot for a plushy. Still, needs must, and I definitely needed it, so I paid the money without any hesitation. I placed the Clefairy plushy inside Utopia and let my 2nd thought stream handle the setup of the matrix, as I made my way out of the store.

Just as I began heading for the Fallabor Gym since there were only slightly more than 30 minutes left until 5 p.m., and I had to be there 10 to 15 minutes in advance, my 2nd thought stream found out that it might be better if I changed the fabric to a light pink one instead since the Clefairy plushy meant that the Mimikyu nurtured by the matrix would prefer a pink cloak. The disguise design they would later adopt would be that of a Clefairy instead of a Pikachu as well, so a light pink fabric instead of the light yellow one I bought would genuinely be more fitting.

Once I heard that I hit the brakes and rushed toward the fabric store I bought my fabric from instead. Since I was running, and I was using psionic platforms to avoid traffic, it took me only 2 minutes to arrive in front of the store. The reason why I ran like that instead of flying or teleporting, was that those were not allowed within the city without permission. Meanwhile, my approach was not against the rules since they had probably not considered it while putting together the regulations.

Anyway, I entered the store and the saleslady recognized me right away. Thankfully she was helpful enough to not make things hard for me and I was able to exchange the light yellow fabric for a light pink one without a fuzz. I "only" had to pay an extra 15k to make up the difference since the pink rolls were apparently slightly pricier than the ones I bought. Still, despite their cooperation, I still only had 17 minutes left until my Gym Challenge by the time I left the store, so I briefly considered sending a message to my family and friends that I was about to start my challenge before I decided to wait with that until I was at the challengers/waiting room of the Gym.

Instead, I followed the map app and rushed towards the Gym, running above everyone's heads since there was no way I would be able to make it on time otherwise. Thanks to my sky-running I made it to the Gym in only 3.5 minutes, but instead of hurriedly entering the Gym, I stared slightly slackjawed at the small crowd waiting for me at the entrance. Seeing me like this Mom glared at me before asking me where the hell I'd been before scolding me for being nearly late. Not to mention that I seemed to have made them wait at the door of the Gym for nearly an hour since they had apparently been planning to surprise me.

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