Yes, dad. So I just dump the MTs that I ground to collect because FD exposed the unlock to a bunch of contingencies intentionally or otherwise? Very unhelpful advice.
There are a bunch of single-mission ways to get 25 MTs at once, so obtaining them again could be very quick if you got lucky. Selling them and coming back later isn't a bad option.
If you can find someone friendly with a carrier, they could hang on to them for you for a while.
You only need 25T, so you could keep the Python as your active ship, re-outfit it for combat (one size 5 internal as a cargo hold isn't going to significantly reduce your combat capability) and go bounty hunting in the Sirius system with it - this will help the lockdown end faster.
You only need 25T and you're flying a Python which can carry over 200T in a haulage fit, so you could do the haulage-based unlock requirements for some other engineers while you wait.
There's probably someone selling modular terminals from their carrier, so you might be able to buy new ones later that way.
You could give up on the whole bubble engineer scam, and catch the next carrier out to Colonia, where the engineers have much simpler unlock requirements, provide everything you'd get from Qwent and much more, and are conveniently close together so you don't have to spend a day hopping around the bubble every time you want a ship engineered.