It had been 4 days since Lea and her friends had gone to the police station to see Quarry and Ire. Many of the ponies in Hoofington had come to help her fix up the building to make it safer and a better place to live. The front doors were no longer boarded up as ponies and pokemon were coming in left and right. One griffon had even come to visit and he decided to start up a donation box for the building of the center.
It was finally made official the day before when Lea signed for the ownership of the building. Since the building was old and unused, it was pretty cheap, for a building. There was enough bits from the donations alone to pay for the building, but only just.
The gems Lea had found in the safe she sold to a jeweler. There was enough money from them to cover the expenses for the rebuilding part. Citrus was the main pony on the job of renovations and Caddi was working on figuring out what Lea needed for the building, while also learning a few things from the pokemon staying there. Matrix had decided to take to the streets and look for anyone they knew. So far he had had no luck.
Lea, after they had fixed the bedroom (the first room to be fixed) had kept herself busy in there. A room connected to it became her own office. She was watching the finances while studying and learning about whatever she could. She had a large pile of notes next to her desk that she wrote with a pen after she figured out a comfortable way to write with it in her mouth.
“Lea, will you take a break from all that work?” Matrix came in asking her.
“No! there’s so much I have to do! If I don’t do my job, this could all fail!”
Matrix stared at her a second before starting to drag her out the door.
“What the hey are you doing?!” Lea asked him.
When he finally got her down the stairs, he told her, “We are not going to have a repeat of back home, okay? You always tried to work as hard as you could to keep us in a home and we understood that, but you worked too hard and never took a break when you needed it. We almost didn’t get to celebrate our birthday together because you were too wrapped up in your work.”
Matrix’s words hit Lea like a brick. She had almost lost that. Lost it because of her own actions. “Alright, I’ll come.”
“Great! You need it.”
Matrix explained to Citrus and Caddi where they were going. The two umbreon left the building and went searching on the streets for any signs of their friends. Along the way, they stopped at a few shops to see if anything they were selling might be helpful to the home project. Nothing they found really helped, until they came to one gardening store, where the owner welcomed them the second they walked in.
“Welcome to Bluegrass’ gardenin’ store. Ah’m Bluegrass. Whatcha need?”
The earth mare was a nice grass green with a blue mane and tail. She had some pokemon with her as well. Following her in was a cherubi, a bayleef, and a bellossom.
“Grass types, figures.” Matrix whispered to Lea, who swatted at him.
“Hi, I’m Lea and this is my brother Matrix. We’re working on building a pokemon center and wanted to see if there was anything we could use here.
“Ah, you’d be the pokemon we’d thought was a criminal. Sorry ‘bout that. Could’ve done better.”
“Nah, I didn’t handle the situation right either. It was just as much my fault as any of your’s.”
“Now that’s mighty kind of ya. Hmm, let’s see… we got anythin’ that might helpful to ‘er?” Bluegrass asked her pokemon.
The bellossom perked up and left the room and came back a second later with a few berries.
“Pokeberries?! Where did you get those.”
The bellossom started to pantomime something out, but Lea stopped her. “You can just explain it to us. We can understand you.”
“Oh,” The flower pokemon blushed. “I’m so used to only talking to my friends and having to try and communicate silently to anyone else. Anyway, we visited a town called Ponyville a few days ago because Bluegrass like to go there every so often and visit the forest there to find some seeds from the odd plants. Recently, there was a harsh battle that occurred there between one of the legendaries and one of the legendary-like occupants of this world.”
Lea shuddered at the idea. “Two legendaries fighting can be devastating. Do you know who they were?”
“I heard it was Zygarde and someone named Discord, who embodies chaos.”
Both moonlight pokemon paled slightly. A battle between order and chaos was bad enough, but the physical embodiments of them would be a hundred times worse.
“Yes, that’s how we reacted too.” The bayleef spoke up. “Anyway, Arceus and Princess Celestia stopped the battle and Arceus sort of healed part of the forest, but instead of the normal plants that were found there, he replaced them with berry trees and such. We brought back a few of them to grow our own and have some to eat.”
“That’s great! Do you have any we might be able to grow?”
“Those berries?” Bluegrass asked. “Sure, we’ve got a ton. By the way, we’ve only got a couple, and ah was wonderin’ how many kinds of berries there are. Fifteen? Twenty?”
“Hmm, let’s see.” Lea started to count off the berries in her head. “At least 50 berries that I can remember, but I’m probably forgetting a few.”
“50 kinds! Woo, that’s a big haul! We only found ten kinds. Been meanin’ to give ‘em signs, but I didn’t know what they’re called and couldn’t ask these guys.”
“Well, let’s see what you have.” Matrix told Bluegrass.
Bluegrass led them to the back room where she had the berries set out and separated. Fortunately for Lea and Matrix, they were some of the better berries to have. Upon seeing so many berries, Lea’s stomach growled, making her realize it was past lunch time and she had yet to eat anything.
“Haha! Guess you’re hungry! Go ahead and have a few. We’ve got plenty and we can always go and plant more.”
Lea ate a few oran berries. They were her favorite, and Bluegrass had plenty. Once she swallowed, Lea started to help list off the berry names.
“So the blue ones I was just snacking on are called oran berries. They help restore a pokemon’s health.”
“Oran spelled O-R-A-N, right?”
“Yes, that’s right. Now these heart shaped ones are called pecha berries. They help cure a pokemon that’s been poisoned. By the way, it’s spelled P-E-C-H-A.”
“Pe-cha ber-ries! Got it written down. What’s this one that looks kinda like a cherry?”
“Those are cheri berries, but cheri is spelled C-H-E-R-I, not -R-R-Y. They help cure paralysis.”
“Paralysis?! Pokemon can paralyse you?!”
“Well, there’s still a chance you can move, but it’s not good to have the chance of not to move, otherwise you can’t defend yourself in a battle and can’t dodge an attack.
“Anyway, this next, purple colored berry is called a chesto berry. It wakes a pokemon up that’s been put to sleep by something like sleep powder or rest. There’s even been a strategy nicknamed resto-chesto where a pokemon uses rest to regain their health and used the berry to wake back up.”
“Ah have a question.” Bluegrass told Lea. “Not about the name. That’s just chest with an O at the end. Na, ah wanna know how they can eat it if they’re asleep.”
“You’d have to ask Matrix. He’d have a better answer than me.”
“Woah! Hey! Don’t ask me. I’ve never tried.”
“Um…” The cherubi whispered. “not to be rude, but mostly it’s just an instinct we have, much like breathing when we sleep.”
Lea repeated what the cherubi had said to Bluegrass.
“Okay then. Now what about these berries.” Bluegrass pointed to a group of yellow berries with blue markings.
“Those are Aspear berries. They’re used if a pokemon is frozen by an ice attack, and please don’t ask me how they work exactly either. So far, I’ve only gotten my hands on a few to use normally, and any others I use for making treats like pokeblock… I’ll tell you about them a different day.”
“Can ah just have the spellin’ of them?”
“Oh, yeah! A-S-P-E-A-R.”
“Give me a second… there! What’s next?”
After a long debate about berries later, Lea and Matrix left the shop with a basket of berries. Bluegrass didn’t want any payment for it since they helped so much, but Lea insisted on giving at least a few bits for the berries. Finally Bluegrass had accepted the money, and the two umbreon were on their way home.
Upon arriving back at the building, they found the renovations had come along as planned. Caddi was taking a break and talking to Midnight. Citrus, after hearing Lea plant to grow some berries, brought them up to the roof. The roof had been made a place for flying and grass pokemon to go to, since it was outside and a good place to grow. Somepony had set up a large planting area, and there were already a few tree saplings in the soil.
“While I’m a unicorn,” Citrus started to explain. “most of my relatives are earth ponies, and almost all of them are farmers. I’ve picked up a few things from my visits, and it should be enough to help with this.”
“Thanks! I’ve also done a bit of research on berry trees myself, so that should help too.”
“A little?” Matrix asked her.
“Okay, okay, fine. A lot of research, but mostly because I wanted to be prepared if anything else started to happen to it.”
Citrus gave a confused look, not knowing what they were talking about.
“Oh, uh, back home we had a berry tree of our own. One day during a rather bad storm, it got hit by lightning and I was scared it would die. Especially since we used the berries so much, I built them into planning our finances.”
“That makes sense. If it died, it would effect your live pretty badly.”
“Yeah, it would. But would you like to learn what I know, well the basics.”
“I guess so, but remember, it’s not my strong area, so don’t go overboard.”
“Okay, I got it. Berry farmers give the plants five stages. First is when a berry has been planted.”
“Wait, you plant the berry and not a seed?”
“Yeah, that’s kind of the biggest difference between them and normal berries. Anyway, the second stage is a sprout. The third is a plant, such as a bush or tree. Fourth is it’s flowering state and fifth stage bears fruit.”
“Yep, basically the same as any plant, but it’s a good refresher. Anything else I should know?”
“Yeah, they grow super quickly. World record is about 96 hours.”
Had Citrus been drinking something, she would have had a glorious spit take. “96 hours! Are you kidding me?! That’s only enough time for a sprout to grow!”
“Berry trees grow fast. Besides, that’s only the world record. Usually it takes a week.”
“That’s still a super fast time! Anything else I should know about?”
“Well, pests and weeds can be a problem, though not too much of one. Also, depending on what you plant next to each other, one of the plants may yield another type of berry with their own.”
“Example please?”
“Hmmm, let’s see if I can remember one.” Lea pause a few moments to think.
When she finally had an answer, she pulled out two berries from the basket. One was an oran berry, and the other was a pecha berry. “If you plant this oran berry next to this pecha berry, one of the plants has a chance to have not only the berry they normally have, pecha or oran, but can also have a few qualot berries as well.”
“Okay, so I should or shouldn’t plant them near different berries?”
“We should. The more kinds of berries we get, the better! Once we get the other berries, we can plant those for a crop. I can make a quick list for you.”
“Alright. I’ll go down and ask if any of the pokemon want to help, you go do what you need to Lea.”
“I’ll see you later Citrus. Matrix and I are probably going to go back out, just so you know.”
“Don’t run into any trouble, you’ve had enough as it is!”
“Okay, mom!” Lea said sarcastically as she left. But while she had been joking, Lea thought it felt nice to finally have someone to call that.