Chapter 40: Planning Recovery

After several days training his fundamentals, Rick had advanced as much as he thought he could for now. Fortunately, he'd also developed a plan that might give him the edge he needed against Mike. The difficulty would be surviving his plan.

The first step involved checking what resources he already had. He had scheduled a sparring match with Lisa for that day, so he headed out to meet her at the park. Doing some research online suggested that high end lucrim massages could do a little healing work, and they definitely helped with recovery, but he didn't want to depend on the impossible.

"Hey, Rick!" Lisa greeted him with her usual smile. "You ready to spar?"

"More than ready. I need to update you on some things, but let's do it while we're recovering."

They started sparring in their usual location, though this time Rick didn't hold back. He was interested to see that Lisa responded easily, pulling out a technique he'd never seen before. Every time he made contact with her aura, he felt slightly numb. Though he could push through the numbness, by the end of their match his entire body tingled as if it had fallen asleep.

"That's new." He shook his hands, trying to get sensation back into them. "At a higher intensity, that could be disabling, maybe even lethal."

"Actually, it's not new - and I didn't mean it to be dangerous. You were just taking it really seriously, so I reacted automatically." As they sat down, she glanced over at him in concern. "Are you alright? Usually you don't let your emotions get to you."

"Well... that's a bit of a story."

He told her about the upcoming fight against Mike briefly. Though he'd intended to skip anything related to Melissa, somehow he ended up telling Lisa about that as well. It didn't matter, since she'd probably learn by implication the next time she gave his sister a massage.

When he was finished, Lisa shook her head. "That's awful. I wish... well, there's no point saying it, but I wish we lived in a world where things were fair. If everybody had equal amounts of lucrim somehow, or aura didn't exist..."

"I don't think it would change anything." Rick slowly rubbed his eyes. "Some people would still find a way to gain an advantage and then lord it over others. If it wasn't lucrim, it'd just be money or something else."

"Yeah, but I imagine the fact that the powerful can become immortal and blow up mountains doesn't help."

"Heh, that's fair."

"So why did you tell me all this?" Lisa put a hand on his shoulder. "If there's anything I can do, I'm happy to help. It's just... there's no way I can fight, if that's what you were asking. I might be an okay fighter thanks to you, but I don't think I have it in me to be in a serious fight."

Rick quickly shook his head to ward off that suggestion. "No, I wouldn't ask you to do that. But since I'm going to get heavily injured during this, I wanted to ask you about your limits when it comes to healing. I know massage therapy isn't meant for that, but I had to ask."

"I'm better with internal problems than anything external." Lisa shifted away, tugging a few blades of grass out of the ground and slowly tearing them apart. "I mean, nobody can massage a wound back together. Most of what I do isn't exactly repairing damage so much as helping the body function better. But when it comes to damage to your lucrima, I can help with that. So if you have a broken leg, you want a hospital or a healer, but if you're trying to regain strength in the leg you broke, maybe I can help."

"Hmm. How long would it take to do the majority of the recovery? I know it's a long road to get back to 100%, but what about being fighting ready?"

"The most extensive course of therapy I offer is two four hour sessions in one day. That's what I do for professional fighters who need to get back on their feet as quickly as possible."

Rick nodded. "Good. I don't know if our sparring is worth enough for that, but I think I'm going to need it. Hopefully you'll give me an advance."

"Sure, but..." Lisa tossed her pieces of grass aside and focused fully on him, her face filled with concern. "I hope you're not doing anything too crazy, Rick. The way you're talking about this makes me think you're going to get yourself almost killed."

"Yes, most likely. But since I don't have a choice, I'm doing my best to prepare for it."

She shook her head slowly. "I know they threatened your sister, but... surely there's another way? I'm not saying that I have an alternative, and I'm not judging your decisions, just... do you really think Mike is going to beat you that badly?"

"I don't intend to give him a chance." Rick sighed and got to his feet, forcing himself to smile again. "Thanks for sparring, Lisa."

"Aren't I supposed to be thanking you? I mean, I will, if you need the recovery."

"If you still have time before you need to go, I actually wanted to ask you several other questions."

"Yeah, sure." Lisa got up and walked along beside him, guiding them toward the walking path that circled around Eastpark. "What's up?"

"One of the most obvious components of recovery is medicine, but trying to research about it, I feel... well, dumb, to be honest. There are so many different sources online and I don't know enough to be sure which ones are accurate. Practically any herbal supplement or mystic herb site starts setting off bullshit alarms for me, so I can't judge between them."

To his surprise, Lisa laughed oddly. "Oh, you don't want to get me started on that. My mother is really into certain treatments and... really, don't get me ranting."

"I don't mind. It might be educational."

"Well... if you say so. Not exactly sure where to start, though. You're looking for medicine that can bring you back from serious injuries, right?"

"And ideally help me grow stronger from them, yeah." Rick shrugged. "I realize that's asking a lot, hence why I kept finding suspicious-looking products and sites."

"That's not asking the impossible, though. Some of my clients look for general health advice, or at least talk a lot about it, so I think I can give you some good suggestions. But I'm not an alchemist or a doctor, so you should take everything I say with a grain of salt."

"No, you know a lot more than me. Even just simple things... I see arguments about natural herbs versus synthetic versions and I just don't know who's right. Are the synthetic versions really inferior to the traditionally-grown plants? Or is that just being stubborn in the face of progress?"

"It's both!" Lisa smiled and began explaining, gesturing expressively while she spoke, though he couldn't derive any meaning from her gestures. "It depends on the plant, so you have to follow the research. In a lot of cases, the synthetic versions are just as as good as the traditional versions, just cheaper. You're right about those: people just like paying more to think they're getting a better product. But in some cases, the best synthetic attempts don't do as well in head-to-head tests, so the original plant has some emergent property they haven't duplicated in the lab yet."

"Hmm, then I'm going to have to rely on you."

"Don't worry, I waste a lot of time reading up on these things! Well, I guess not wasting... anyway, there are actually some cases where the synthetic version isolates the active ingredient from the original and is thus much more effective... though that means it's also more expensive. So sometimes a premium price is just for suckers, but sometimes it's because of a superior product.

"Fun fact: the most successful synthetic was so massively successful that the 'natural-only' crowd can't compete and people don't even think about it: serum. Go back thousands of years and only kings and queens drank it, and even a few centuries ago it was valuable. But now you can buy it in a 6-pack from the store, and even the cheap stuff is more potent than the serum kings and queens got. Isn't technology amazing?"

It was interesting to hear her speak about a subject with such passion, so Rick found himself smiling as he listened to her. Though it wasn't relevant to what he needed, he decided he might as well ease another curiosity. "What about all the family-exclusive or hidden sect formulas? Is there anything to them?"

"Those are really a mixed bag." Lisa gave a formless shrug. "There are some groups that have incredibly powerful formulations, without question. Some are actually state secrets. But the world is just chock full of special families and combat sects, and all of them wanted to pretend they had hidden knowledge."

"So some of them are worthless?"

"Absolutely. There have been a few clinical trials that went really poorly, the 'powerful secret medicine' not doing much better than the commonly available alternatives. A few did even worse than placebos! Or there was one that only did as well as common medicine because it was literally just a mix of aspirin and serum. Apparently they'd made the creation process so opaque, even their alchemists didn't know that's all it was."

Rick chuckled, for the first time seeing how reading a bunch of scientific literature could be fun. "I'm guessing they don't let people test their secret medicines very often, then?"

"You got it. But if you want a rule of thumb: be skeptical of hidden secrets. A few medicines are so powerful they're kept secrets, but for many, ask this question: if their medicine was so good, why don't they gain more power by just patenting and selling it?"

"Good point. Trying to keep all of this in mind, though... I feel like it's a bit overwhelming. It will be hard to make a good choice."

"It might seem that way, but you can really sort through the options." Still walking, Lisa pulled out her phone and began to navigate somewhere. "Here, let me show you a site where you can order most things at wholesale prices."

"Wait, you can buy lucrim medication online?" Even as he said it, however, he felt dumb for assuming you couldn't. Why wouldn't the industry have modernized, given the profitability of their field?

"Oh, the internet actually made things way easier. It's a stereotype, but a lot of alchemists are introverts, if not full misanthropes. The people who are really crazy about developing their medicines are happy to support themselves via online sales and never have to interact with people."

She showed him a website and he pulled it up on his phone. It looked like any other online store, simple to navigate and remarkably clear about the contents of each product. Now that he saw the name, he thought he'd seen a few people talking about getting their medicine from there, but he had assumed it was a secret location, not just a website.

"So..." As Rick paged through lists of healing medications, he found himself overwhelmed by the choices. "Is there any way to get a good deal? Because I need as much as I can get, but I don't have a lot of money to burn."

"There actually is one easy win: generic medication." Lisa poked at his screen to navigate somewhere else. "When the patents run out, companies make way less money on a drug, but it's still perfectly good. Usually they find a different way to get the same effect and thus get new patents. They pretend the new drug is an improvement, but often times it doesn't do any better in tests."

With Lisa's help, Rick found and identified several generic medications that provided rapid healing. They were still expensive, given their powerful effects, but nothing like he'd been expecting. Certainly nothing like what he'd expected could be shipped directly to his house.

Buying generics meant that he had more money left over than he expected. Though it would mean lean times for the next month, he decided to spend everything except his emergency fund on one final medication: something that would help him grow from a near death experience. After considering several different options, he found what he wanted.

It had a long scientific name, but in ancient times it had been called Deathbane and recently it was marketed as "Life's Edge." Just buying a small package of one dose would cost an obscene amount, plus it required a more expensive shipping option so that it wouldn't be stolen or damaged in the mail. But the lucrim numbers it gave looked promising, the user reviews were solid, and Lisa didn't have any objections to it.

When he prepared to place the order, however, she looked at him in concern. "This is so... I mean... again, I'm not telling you what you should do. Do you really think you're going to come that close to death, Rick?"

"That is the plan." He placed the order, trying not to think about how much money he had just spent.

It would be worth it. Hopefully.