It took me a few moments to regain my calm, and once I did, I began to ponder what to do. I was honestly leaning towards acquiring ownership over the crystal and the Mega Stone in it. It was a Mega Stone, after all, and possessing it was always better than just letting Utopia analyze it since the production of Mega Stones was rather cumbersome even for Utopia.
It was why I had only a single Sceptilite, which I actually got from Phantump and not Utopia, even though Utopia had so far analyzed a Pinsirite, Ampharosite, and Sceptilite. Besides, the Steelixite was useless to Scrafty and while I could not use it right now either, mine was a temporary disability while it was impossible for Scrafty to ever use the Steelixite. It was better for Scrafty to trade the worthless, at least to it, Crystal with me for something else.
I was ready to give it some other crystals or gems if it wanted that or trade in some proper resources for the crystal if it preferred those. Either way, I decided to get my hands on that Steelixite. That I currently did not have even a single Onix in Utopia, much less a Steelix, was not important at all; I could always add some of those in the future. There was nothing wrong with securing the Mega Stone in advance.
Truthfully, I knew that this was going to be a somewhat, or rather a pretty unequal trade. That was why I decided that if there ever came a time someone discovered that Scrafty actually had a Mega Evolution and I somehow managed to snag a Scraftinite, I would return here to give them the first Scraftinite produced by Utopia, provided that they, as in any blood-related member of their family, were still around of course.
While this seemed like empty talk since the chances of that happening were extremely small, I would truly do it if it somehow happened. That knowledge alone made me feel quite a bit better about the trade I was about to propose, which was all that really mattered if I was honest. Having placated my conscience, I told Scrafty that I really took a liking to that Crystal and asked if he was willing to trade it with me.
When I saw that he was hesitant to do so, I told him that I was willing to give him other shinier crystals or gems in return, or some resources that would help with their training, which I could see tempted him quite a bit. Seeing how those offers aroused Scrafty's interest I went a step further and offered to give him both, a shinier gem or crystal, and some beneficial resources for their crystal. I knew that I had him on the hook the moment I said that, but Scrafty did not jump to accept right away.
He asked why I was so interested in their crystal in the first place, and while I did not tell him about the Mega Stone, I did tell him that it was something that could be quite useful to me in the future but was pretty much useless for them, which was why I extended the request for a trade. Since I used my aura to underscore that I was telling the truth, which I was, Scrafty did not doubt my words at all and ended up accepting my offer to trade the crystal, though he still haggled on what exactly I had to give them in return.
Since I knew the actual worth of the crystal/Mega Stone I did not protest when Scrafty raised the ante/price multiple times once he saw me willing to accept his requested raise after I had given him an initial offer. I eventually ended up settling on giving them an unpolished sapphire, ruby, and emerald, along with a total of 750 kg of workout edibles I made specifically for Po/Pangoro to aid his training/progress.
400 kg of that was from the time Po was a Pancham, though even that was still a bit too nutritious/energy-rich for the iron-stage Scraggy since Po was already a (high) bronze-stage Pancham when I met him. Yet, it was the "weakest" grade fighting/dark type specific food I had, so I told Scrafty to mix some of it in with the regular food the weaker Scraggy ate instead of feeding them just this. The bronze stage Scraggy could eat it just fine before or after their training or during their regular meals.
300 kg was from Po's silver stage period, which was useful for the Scrafty, and I added 50 kg from his golden period in case one of the Scrafty ever broke through or if they reached a point where they wanted to push themselves a little. Disregarding the final 50 kg, the rest was enough to last the Scraggy at least 2-3 years and the Scrafty 1-2 years as long as they used it to supplement their training instead of using it as a regular food substitute.
I honestly thought it was a good deal for Scrafty as well as his group since he exchanged all that for something they couldn't use, and even then he still got three just as nice-looking crystals on top of all that supplemental grub. Anyway, having reached a consensus, I took out the promised goods, stacking the food bags on the floor. I placed the raw sapphire, ruby, and emerald pieces on the stone (desk) before I transferred the crystal to Utopia.
Thanks to this, Utopia gained its second tangible Mega Stone, which was also the 4th one in its database. Once the analysis was done, and seeing how the trade was complete, I chose to leave Scraggy's room to move on to the next one. While I did that, I could not help but wonder if I would be able to find anything else as astonishing as the Steelixite during the inspection of the final room or even the whole Secret Power system.
I also thought that I would need to keep an eye out for any good Onix and even Steelix since I needed to add the latter to Utopia if I did not want the development of Utopia's first Steelixite to take centuries, and that was not even for a high class one since it would take even longer for a formed Mega Stone to rise in grade. The Onix/Steelix issue aside, I ended up leaving empty-handed after I visited the Hitmonlee-Hitmonchan pair's room, which while a bit disappointing was not all that surprising.
Still, since I was done with my round of visits, I called for everyone's attention so that I could move on to the next step of my grand plan. I told them that I wanted to invite all of them to dinner. In fact, it was not just them, but all the fighting types around that I was planning to invite to dinner, so I told Machoke and the others that we should move on to the largest room so that I could set up my cooking/grilling station there.
I along with some of my assistants would then start preparing dinner for all of us while they went around sharing the news of me providing dinner to anyone who joined us with everyone; Or at least everyone who did not get lured over by the commotion or the scent. I was naturally going to Observe all fighting types that came over to join us, and while I was not sure how many exactly that was going to be, I was assuming that I would be able to spot some Tyrogue, Hitmonwhatever, Machop, and Machoke with good potential that I could consider recruiting.
It/Tasty food was a time-tested method that had proven reliable every time I used it so far, and I was sure that it would not fail me this time either. I brought out my usual cooking/grilling stations along with my usual cooking assistants, and we directly began grilling the veggies prepping everything else. I was planning to go with the standard grilled veggie salad and grilled meat combo with something cold to drink on the side.
As I suspected, the smell and noise produced by us lured over fighting types from tunnels that Machoke and co had not entered yet. The new arrivals were definitely surprised by us and somewhat distrustful until I released my aura, which left them with only their curiosity, and had more than one of them approach me asking what we were doing here.
I naturally told them that I was inviting everyone to dinner. I also encouraged them to call over their families, friends, as well as all their neighbors, before referring them to Machoke and the other from the first batch for more details as soon as they showed back up in the room. The combination of those two methods resulted in Machoke coming up to me after just 10 minutes.
He declared that everyone who was currently present in the Secret Power dwellings had joined us here in the general meeting/assembly room/chamber. I thanked him for the effort and asked him to share my information with everyone. I also told him that he could tell everyone that they did not need to restrain themselves. I had noticed that only a few of them had approached Lucario as well as the others even though I could feel that all of them were eager to approach them.
Machoke nodded and smiled at me before sharing my words with everyone, which opened the floodgates and caused the number of Pokémon approaching mine to surge. More than that, some, mostly the young ones, apparently took my words as me being chill enough since they began to crowd around our grilling setup as well to watch us as we cooked/ worked the grill station.
I sneaked/levitated little pieces of grilled meat to them to give them a little preview and to take a look at their status sheet while I was at it. While they enjoyed the tasty morsels I gave them, I judged whether they were good enough for me to offer them entry to Utopia or not. Unfortunately, most of them failed to meet expectations, but there were some pleasant finds among them.
I ended up checking a total of 136 Pokémon. 43 of those were evolved like Machoke, Hitmonlee, and Scrafty, but only two among them had light green potential, though the fact that both were already at the silver stage had me mentally disqualify them as well. The other 93 Pokémon I checked were "little ones". 15 of those were Scraggy, 29 were Tyrogue, 43 were Machop, and the final 6 were Makuhita. Those came as a bit of a surprise since I had not expected to see them here, or the few Hariyama that had shown up with them.
Nonetheless, I checked them out all the same, and one of them even made the cut along with one of the Scraggy, 4 Tyrogue, and 6 Machop. Among them, one of the Tyrogue and a Machop even had light blue potential, which definitely exceeded my expectations. I made sure to mentally mark these 12 to avoid missing them later on. While it was not certain that they would join us, I still had to be able to make the offer to see how things went, though I was going to wait until I had checked everybody before I brought that up.
Anyway, when we began handing out the first round around 20 minutes later, these 143 were among the first ones who got to eat their dinner. The other 107 only got their food once these early birds had been handed their paper plates. I obviously did not forget to check the newcomers as well, which led to the number of marked Pokémon rising to 17.
Over the next 2 hours, we served 6 more rounds with the first three of them consisting of 250 portions/plates. The final 3 had to be upgraded to 500 portions/plates per round since some Pokémon went for a second or even third serving and the previous number would not have sufficed to meet the demand. All in all, I ended up checking over 1100 fighting types, including the 250 of the first batch.
The latter rounds expanded the number of marked Pokémon from 17 to 53. There were actually more Pokémon with greenish or better potential than that, but I removed those whose stage made their potential less appealing as well as those that were obviously leaders of more than just a family.