With Brenden gone and me no longer having to be on the lookout for any outside threats constantly, my life became rather dull rather quickly.
If anything, I am a creature of habit and repetition, so once something outside of my normal daily pattern changes, I tend to be lost for a while until I can recover, blame it on the TISM, or what have you. Still, I’ve always been like that, and since I needed to find something new to do, thus a few weeks after Brenden jumped into the Instance, I decided it was time to hunt down those P**emon card booster boxes.
Unfortunately, as I VERY MUCH had the voice of a five-year-old, it wasn’t like I could start by calling every single sports card shop in the phone book one by one and asking, as I would be dismissed as a child in a heartbeat, so I did the next best thing.
"O-Town Sports Cards, this is Travis speaking," I heard the voice of a young man come over the phone.
"Hi, I’m calling to see if I can reserve a large amount of those P**emon cards that are coming out tomorrow. Would that be possible?" Going off the script I had planted into her mind, Deeana asked sweetly, as if trying to flirt with the guy so long as she could get the cards I wanted.
"Um…one second. I know we got in a few boxes today, but I don’t know if they are spoken for or not; how large of an order are we talking about here?" He cleared his throat because he wasn’t expecting the voice of what he had imagined to be a cute girl to come over the telephone.
"I was looking to get a few cases, the ones that have six boxes each, if possible."
"Cases….that may be a bit rough…" through the earpiece of the phone, which Deeana was holding between our heads so that I could listen in, I could hear Travis clacking away on a keyboard for a moment before picking up the phone again.
"Well, I have some good news and bad news; it looks like our distributor sent us 5 cases along with an additional 12 loose boxes." He said before hesitating to tell us the bad news for long enough that Deeana asked.
"I see, and what’s the bad news?"
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"Well, it looks like the store owner has set aside 4 of those cases, two for individual sales and 2 for tournament prize support…so at best, I may be able to get you that extra case."
"Really? That’s GREAT; you guys are located on Orange Blossom Trail, right? I can swing by in about an hour to pre-pay for it if that’s alright." Deeana stated in a cheerful tone that I didn’t doubt would have this guy, Travis, blushing.
"Sounds good to me. Can I have your name and number so that I can mark it down as you’ll be coming by?" Hearing how boldly yet nervously Travis asked for Deeana’s number caused me to frown and casually reach up to get a handful of the woman’s breast to calm me down.
’Heeehh, see if I don’t rip your throat and eyes out when we meet Travis…’ I thought with pure hostile intentions, not missing how Deeana seemed to rub her thighs together while I squished her breast gently.
"Sure thing, My name is Dee, and my number is 407-***-****," and so was the first of many phone calls Deeana and I would be making today as I scoured through the phonebook for any shops that sold cards.
With how popular the Cartoon was, I knew that a lot of these card shops would have made decent-sized orders for the cards when they came out, and as expected, of the eight shops that I called within a 50-mile radius, all but one had some inventory coming in or already in storage for their release in two days.
After hanging up with the final shop, I got up and went to my room before coming back with a debit card, the one linked to my Swiss bank account and all of my Book money.
’You can use this without worrying to pay for all the cards. Now, give my father a call to tell him we are going out to the park to play for a while, and we can head around to each shop and pay or pick them up.’ I said telepathically to Deeana, which made her smile sweetly and nod.
---
As we drove across town to the first store, I couldn’t help but feel like things were going a little TOO well; it was no secret to us from the Origin Timeline how valuable these cards would become in 22 years, and the fact that everyone who had already received their shipments didn’t have any missing was concerning.
Then again, I had no idea if there were any other returners here in Orlando apart from myself and Brenden; still, that didn’t mean there weren’t a couple of smarter people who had hit the Distributor and stolen them before they shipped out.
Regardless, when we arrived at the place where that little shit Travis worked, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia because I had spent A LOT of time in this card shop, mainly from 2008-2014, when I was playing a card game called Y**ioh.
I would come here sometimes twice a week every week to play in the local level tournaments, and being back here after all this time was like taking a trip down memory lane.
"Welcome to O-Town Sports Cards; what can I do for you?" A young man whose voice I recognized as Travis’s said from the back of the store.
"Hi. We spoke on the phone about an hour ago about the P**emon cards; as promised, I’m here to pre-pay." Holding her purse, an expensive name-brand one I had forked up the money for so that she could rub it in Amanda’s face before the divorce began, Deeana spoke in a crystal clear voice as she strode across the carpet flooring with poise and grace.