A New World, a Fearful Way

by Votederpycausemufins

ch. 26 education

“So these herbs might work for a substitute for the potion ingredient we’re missing.” Lea was continuing to work on reproducing potions. “Bluegrass might have the herbs at her shop. Kya! Can you come here?”

Lea waited for a response before remembering she wouldn’t get one. “Oh, right. Um, Matrix, can you come here?”

In a few moments Matrix had come into the room. “What do you need?”

“Well, I’ve been trying to create a way to reproduce potions and super potions and all that, but there’s one chemical I don’t believe I’ll be able to find on Equus. I’ve narrowed it down to a few herbs that exist here that might be at Bluegrass’ store. If I give you a list, can you see if you can get them.”

“Yeah, I can do that.”

“Thanks Matrix!”

Lea started back with her work before Matrix came over to her and said, “Don’t worry Lea. We’ll find them soon enough. At least we know they can’t be too far away thanks to Citrus.”

Lea hugged him. “Thank you. I kinda needed that.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll be back in about an hour.”

“See you then!”

Lea continued to work on what she already had. She still had an extra oran berry from planting that she was using for her tests. Lea also had enough cuts and bruises that she could test the results on herself.

With nothing else to do, Lea decided to look up where the plants she needed might be found. That way when this whole thing with Ire and Quarry blew over, she might be able to get the herbs if Bluegrass didn’t have them.

After reading through her book of plants, Lea found out something slightly horrifying. All the plants she needed came from the exact same place, and it was impossible to find them anywhere else. Every single herb and plant she wanted came from the one and only Everfree forest.
Lea went to the back of the book to see if she could find a reason as to why it was. After finding one such reason, she read it aloud. “Many rare and valuable herbs are found in the Everfree Forest due to it’s chaotic nature. It allows strange plants to grow that can have odd effects. Some notable plants found here are poison joke, heart’s desire, and the very rare plunderseed plants. There are reasons to believe that the forest still exists either because trying to get rid of it will also rid us of these herbs and plants, or because certain plants have stopped any deforestation(see timberwolves).”

Lea closed the book and placed her head on her desk. “Uggh! What if I can’t figure this out? My boss was right. I need more experience in school.” She banged her head on the desk a few times.

“Why did my mom have to die? Why did they have to take my dad? Why can’t I just have a normal life? Is that too much to ask?” She looked up. “Arceus, why do you hate me so!”

“Is this a bad time?” Lea turned to see Ben in the doorway.

“What do you need?” Lea asked, pushing aside her work.

“I came to check on how you were doing. For the most part it was quiet, then I heard a bunch of ‘thuds’.”

“That was just me banging my head on the desk. I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to use for remaking potions.”

Ben looked at some of the work she had done. He whistled in amazement. “Man, this looks a little more complicated than I thought it might be. I didn’t realize you were that experienced.”

“I’m not. Half of this I only just reviewed from some of the textbooks I was able to get. The only way I’m going to be able to do this again is with those books. I wish I could have gotten a normal education.”

“Why couldn’t you?” Ben asked.

“I also had to take care of my family-slash-pokemon and work a job. And that’s hard enough at my age.”

“Aren’t you like twenty-three or something?”

“Younger than that. I’m seventeen.”

Ben paused for a second. “Sorry, say that again. I thought I heard you say seventeen.”

“I did.”

Ben paused again, opening his mouth a few times, but not saying anything. finally he said, “Yeah, I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t blame you. I learned enough from my dad and his friends when I was younger, so I was able to skip a few grades in school. I was able to skip two more grades on my own, since basically all I had to do in my free time was read and study.”

“What about a T.V. or art or something like that?”

“For a while, I couldn’t afford a television. I also suck at art, writing, and stuff like that. Though on the other hand, I’ve been told I’m at least a decent singer. Anyway, eventually the money I had left by my dad and some of his friends started to run out, and I had to get a job of my own. In doing so, I had to drop my classes and find a job that would accept me with my education and age. It was actually Pryce who helped me with finding one that would accept me.”

“Wait, wait, wait! Pryce? As in the gym leader?”

“Yeah, he was one of my dad’s friends.”

“Who the hey was your dad?” Ben asked.

“Not telling. I want to finish my story… So, as I was saying, I got a job, and after I got comfortable with it, I was able to take online courses when I got the chance. Mainly I did math and science since that’s what my job needed. There were sometimes I was so focused on studying that Kya, Matrix, or Angela would have to check on me and force me to take a break and even sometime for me to eat something.”

“How do you forget to eat? Wouldn’t your stomach remind you?”

“Mainly I was so focused in what I was doing at the time I would ignore my stomach growling. It mostly didn’t work, buuuuut let’s just say I was a little underweight.”

“You’re not going to be starving yourself here, are you?”

“Uuuhhhhhhh…. nnnnoooooooo…”

Ben stared Lea down. “Maaaaayyyyybe…”

Again, Ben just stared at her, “*sigh* Sometimes it’s going to happen, but that’s just because it’s happened before and I haven’t broken the habit. Mainly, I’m just kinda happy that we were brought over to Equus when we did. The next project the wanted me to do for work, I have no idea how to do. And don’t even try to ask what it was, That’s how little I understood it.”

“Yikes! Why didn’t they give the work to someone else?”

“They didn’t know my real age, so they thought I was at the point where it would be easy for me. I mean, even you thought I was older than I really am.”

“Well, you’ve got me there. Hey, is there anything else you’re planning to do?

“I’ve already crossed a few things off my list that I wanted to do, but can’t.”

“Such as?”

“Well, I was thinking about maybe eventually rewriting some of the information given in the pokedex back when we were on earth. Now that we’re here, I don’t think they exist anymore.”

“Why did you want to do that?”

“It started when I still had my dad around, and a friend from school told me her brother had caught a magcargo when he was away and he had come back the other day. When I went over to see, I got to use his pokedex to learn about the magcargo, but it just said, ‘Its body temperature is roughly 18,000 degrees F. Flames spout from gaps in its hardened shell.’ and that’s hotter than the surface of the sun. If it were really that hot, it would vaporize a person that tried to come near it!”

“Okay, I can see why you might want to fix something like that.”

“Another project I was going to try was fix this busted music player, but I can’t figure it out. Kya’s going to get so angry when she finds out… Anyway, I also had another project I had started on back on Earth, but without my apocalypse papers, and with how Arceus might react if he found out, I can’t.”

Ben looked at her, horrified. “What could you possibly have planned that would cause you to name the papers after the end of the world, and that Arceus might destroy you for?”

“I kinda never put my pokemon into pokeballs unless they seriously needed it. Healing them in pokeballs also made it easier. One time, I thought about what if we had pokeballs that were a one time use, that catch the pokemon for a limited amount of time, so that way, they could be healed. I also wasn’t sure how, but I thought maybe it could also work for humans. That way, if someone were really sick, but you couldn’t move them easily to get medical help, you could use this thing instead. I have no idea how I’d make it, but it was a cool idea.”

“Okay… I can kinda see why you’d want that, but apocalypse papers?”

“It was a group of documents that I kept together that, if the end of the world ever happened, I wanted to have.”

“Okay, now the name makes sense. Is there anything you need help with before I take off? I promised Wish I’d go help him with something. Don’t worry, I’ve got a pony to look out for anything while I’m away, but it shouldn’t be long.”

“Nah, go ahead. Matrix should be back any minute now, and I can try finishing up the samples for the potion reproduction. I want to finish quickly before I get second thoughts on being my own test subject.”

“If I find out you’ve mutated yourself, so help me, I will-”

“Just go!”

Author's Note:

new chapter woo!
don't really have anything left to say except apparently getting angry at you guys here in the last chapter worked. now i feel bad

edit: i was playing showdown before heading to bed and was able to share this story with a person i was battling with. the game suddenly crashed, and i could get back to it. If you happen to be the person i was with, and you're reading this, that is what happened.

Comments

[reader238]

testing a prototype healing potion seems like a bad idea especially when there are people out to kill you and would likely switch it out with something harmful when you are not looking

[Votederpycausemufins]

5599835 good thing she's staying by her project 24/7 and there's at least one guard at all times nearby
the testing on herself...... eeehhhhhh, i'm gonna be having fun with that, especially since i'm including a certain blue plant

[reader238]

5600814 oh you mean the blue dahlia?

[Votederpycausemufins]

5600957 tell me you're joking

[ZephyrStrife]

Hehe... I just imagined Mick getting smacked in the face with a stack of papers before Emma picked them up and read them titled as Lea's Apocalypse papers

[Votederpycausemufins]

6278676 the papers aren't actually labeled as such though. just a yellow folder with a bunch of random papers in it