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 Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2010 8:37 pm
Selling dodgy stones was... well... dodgy. Alistair chose his day carefully, picking a day when Camphoreon was particularly foggy and gloomy. Rain was almost a certainty. Alistair hoped that meant people would rush home before trying the stones out. If worse came to worse, he was careful to position his little 'shop' in a nice gloomy alleyway that led to all sorts of other places. That, and well-soled shoes, and he was golden.
Hell, he had to be when the 'stones' were just shiny bits of glass and about as useful in evolving pokemon as wishing really, really hard. Scraps remained in his pokeball for now, on the basis that people just loved asking questions like, 'Waaaait... if you've got a thunderstone for so cheap, why haven't you evolved your eevee?'
People. They always got all intelligent just when you didn't want them to... He fixed a particularly wane smile on his customer. "Yes, it's a sorry day for me. My grandmother's in Fuchsia City right now and has a bad case of pseudopertusistosis. Very deadly, that is. So that's why I'm selling off these stones so cheap, see? Gotta get there quickly. I spent six months collecting them all, but family's more important..."
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Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2010 9:23 pm
If the weather had been nicer or her feet not quite so in pain or if the local casino hadn't already accused her of 'counting cards', she would have noticed that this man had just told her his granmother had 'fake whooping cough'. As it was, the thoughts running through her head were about that stupid casino. It wasn't counting, it was statistics, but try telling that to the bouncers when they're throwing you out. They wouldn't even let her cash out and get that thunderstone she'd wanted to finally evolve Tesla with.
"Yes, yes. Very sad. I'm sorry for your situation. How much?" She was impatient, obviously.
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Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2010 10:04 pm
Oh, Alistair so loved the impatient customers. They were so eager to get their hands on the stone that they rarely noticed the little imperfections. Or the big ones, for that matter, like the fact that the evolutionary stone was made completely out of glass. Still, he was getting cold (yes, he was a pansy when it came to the weather, but he'd rather be a warm and comfortable pansy).
"Tell you what... let's just call it a thousand so we can both get out of here, yeah? The boat's going to leave in just a little under thirty minutes..." yes, he made a point of mentioning the boat again. Hopefully, people would remember that when their 'stones' failed to do anything but glitter in the light.
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Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2010 10:44 pm
Nyx loved a bargain, and a thousand was much less than it would cost in a casino or even at the department store in Goldenrod. "That sounds wonderful." She reached into her purse and pulled out the money for the stone. The gloomy weather made it hard to see that the stone that would transform Tesla into a powerful Raichu instead of a cowardly Pikachu.
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Posted: Sat Nov 13, 2010 11:33 pm
Let's see... thunderstone, thunderstone... Alistair made a show of searching various pockets before he pulled out the green stone. Well, greenish. The real tricky bit was getting the little lightning bolt thing inside, which fully explained why thunderstones were his worst work; the easiest ones were the leaf stones. You just had to carve something vaguely leaf-like in there. If anyone asked, why, you just claimed it was from Kanto or something!
It was amazing what people would believe, so long as they thought they had a good deal. "Here you go, miss. Pleasure doing business with you," he said with another one of those grins he had perfected through years of smiling. "You're very lucky. That's the last one I've got." Aaaand it was about time to go now. As soon as he had the money in his hands, he started to back off. Yeah, it was definitely time to call it quits, before the rain really started.
Oops. Too late for that. Rain fell in a light mist, the really annoying kind that wasn't quite wet but definitely wasn't quite dry either.
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Posted: Sun Nov 14, 2010 12:05 am
"Mm. Thanks." Nyx nodded at the man, took her stone, and hurried for shelter as the rain started. When she was almost under the cover of some nearby building's overhang, she started eying her new prize. It was shiny, and about the right weight, but something struck her as odd. There was something off about the lightning bolt in the middle of the stone. She shrugged. Sometimes stones had imperfections, but they still worked. But she was eager to evolve her pikachu.
"Tesla," She released a black pikachu from one of her pokeballs and held the thunderstone out to the small rodent pokemon. "Touch this."
The electric mouse pokemon did as it was told, though it looked nervous about what was supposed to happen when he did... but nothing happened. "Son of a- Up." Tesla ran up his trainer's arm and clung to her shoulder as she began running back to where the vendor's shop had been.
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Posted: Sun Nov 14, 2010 5:52 pm
The plan was a good one. It had been very well-thought out (at least, given Alistair's usual degree of planning). The past tense was incredibly important. In the span of time it took him to set up 'shop' and palm off a couple of stones, construction on the road----the one that was meant to be his escape route----had started. Machoke and other strongarm pokemon bustled around, carrying heavy materials to... do something with. Alistair had no idea. He lost interest when it didn't involve something sparkly.
"But it's raining!" he whined, trying to inch his way past the tape. "Come on, I just need to get home..."
"Then you'll have to find another way around, sir," the reproachful construction worker said, clearly not the type of man to be taken in by a pair of pretty blue eyes. "Please stay back. There's plenty of other ways."
Alistair whined again and started back dejectedly. Well, fine... it wasn't like...
Ohshit. He did his very best to become one with the wall in the shadows, flinging himself against it as the woman that he had sold the last 'thunderstone' to came into his field of vision. A black something clung to her arm; he wasn't certain, but it looked vaguely like a pikachu, but those didn't come in that color.
Then again, eevee didn't come in black either. Maybe if he just stayed here very, very quietly, she wouldn't notice him. Some predators had eyes that were keyed on movement, after all. Unfortunately, the world loved despair. His despair especially.
In the shadows, he sneezed. Loudly.
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Posted: Sun Nov 14, 2010 6:28 pm
Her head swung around, much like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park when the flashlights came on, and focused in on the person who sneezed. It was darker where he was, but she could make out that it was the person she was looking for.
"Hey! You!" She started to close the distance, stomping the whole way. "You sold me a defective stone!"
The pikachu tried to make itself appear as small as possible. Nyx was yelling and that usually ended in an explosion or a battle of some sort.
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Posted: Sun Nov 14, 2010 7:14 pm
Ohh, s**t. This really was too close. Alistair looked up the alley: construction crew there, certainly no escape. Back down the alley was currently being closed due to a very angry woman, which was absolutely his least favorite kind of woman. There really was only one option.
Well, more than one, but fighting wasn't something he considered. Fixing his most winning smile, he tried to take control of the situation.
"Now, let's not be hasty, yeah? It could be that it's just taking a while to work..." pfft, yeah right. Here he was just hoping she had never used a stone before. From everything he'd heard, they tended to be pretty instantaneous.
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Posted: Sun Nov 14, 2010 7:36 pm
"Highly unlikely." Nyx handed the stone to her pikachu, who clutched it tightly with no signs of evolving. The owner looked none too pleased. Perhaps being a member of Team Rocket had made her forget that there were other bad guys in the world besides herself and her coworkers. She placed her hands on her hips and looked expectantly at the man.
"Your dying grandmother with 'false whooping cough' would be disappointed." Yes, the biological engineer had figured it out, finally. If Miss Nadja found out how she'd been had like this, she would be unhappy with her favorite scientist to say the least.
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