At the Loud house, Lincoln walked to the door once he heard somebody knocking, and he opened it to see his best friend Clyde... Dressed like One-Eyed Jack.
"Hi Clyde," the boy greeted. "What's up with the One-Eyed Jack outfit?"
"Hi Lincoln, did you forget?" Clyde replied as he went inside. "We were going to roleplay as Ace Savvy and his trustworthy sidekick today."
"Oh, sorry, I had so many things to do this week that I completely forgot about that," Lincoln scratched the back of his head. "Give me a couple minutes, and I'll get the stage ready."
"Got it."
Then, the boys waited... And nothing happened, prompting Clyde to ask, "Shouldn't have something weird happened by now? Or at least an explosion of sorts?"
"Most of my family are outside on the backyard, so all the weirdness is over there," Lincoln answered with a shrug. "As for the explosion, Lisa's here, but she's been oddly quiet lately. Anyway, just sit down tight and I'll go get the scenario ready!"
So Lincoln ran to the backyard, to set up the greatest superhero roleplay scenario he could, while Clyde couldn't help but go upstairs and into Lisa and Lily's bedroom. After all, something exploded in there at some point, so something must've been up, right?
Well, not exactly: The only other person there was Lisa, who seemed to be busy trying to solve something.
Lisa? Having trouble with something? Now that's something you didn't see everyday.
"Lisa?" Clyde asked, causing the scientist to flinch and turn to look at him. "Do you need help with that? I could-"
"I-It's nothing I need help with, honest!" Lisa exclaimed, trying to keep up her calm demeanor, while seemingly ignoring Clyde's costume. "J-J-Just go back to playing games or reading comics with my brother unit-"
"Actually, he told me to see wait while he sets up the roleplaying scenario," Clyde answered as he sat down next to Lisa. "Apparently, he forgot that today were going to do the roleplay, so he'll be busy setting up the stage. And since I got nothing to do, I came here to check up on you."
"That still would give you about five minutes at best," Lisa replied, focusing solely on her cube. "And what I'm dealing with is something that I have been trying to fix for hours! I honestly insist that you go back
"Is that a rubik's cube?" Clyde inquired, causing the prodigy to flinch in shock. "Can I give it a shot?"
"Heh, fine, if you're so intent on wasting your time," Lisa handed Clyde the cube and folded her arms as she added, "But like I said before, I've been trying to get it back to normal for hours and I have failed. And certainly, if I can't fix it in hours, there's no way that you-"
Clyde revealed the finished rubik's cube and shouted, "Done!"
The prodigy's eyes grew wide and her head slowly turned to the fixed cube, hoping that the guy would just be bluffing. Sadly for her, this wasn't the case: Clyde had managed to do in about a minute or so-maybe even less-what she couldn't do in many hours.
"Wha-Whe-Who-H-How-?!" Lisa stuttered as she snatched and looked at the toy, before snapping at Clyde, "How did you do it?!"
Clyde grabbed a nearby box, which was the one Lisa got her cube from, then pointed at the picture of the unchanged cube.
"The cube itself was rather simple, since only three of it's sides were colored. So I just needed to look at the image shown in here to figure out what I was supposed to get."
Judging from Lisa's flabbergasted look, using the image as a guide never even crossed her "genius" mind. So of course, she threw the cube away and stood up.
"T-T-T-That was a fluke!" the tiny genius stated as she adjusted her glasses. "Clearly, if the thought of using the image as a guide had crossed my mind earlier, I would've finished it in no time!"
"Well, that does make me think, why didn't such a simple idea cross your mind immediately?" Clyde pondered out loud, no doubt angering the tiny genius in the process. "Certainly it should've been the first thing to come to your mind-"
"Shut up and solve this!"
Lisa handed Clyde a pen and a sheet of paper, which had four unsolved math problems written on it. "Are these-?"
"Math problems. More specifically, 5th grade math problems," Lisa stated, folding her arms and looking away as Clyde took out a calculator and started to solve the problems. "You've most likely seen these at least once in your current school year, and if you haven't, I recommend you send some complaints to the school. 'Cause really, sometimes they can be so incompetent, I'm surprised they don't have lawsuits filed against them."
Clyde just rolled his eyes and continued to focus on the problems, while Lisa continue to ramble, "Anyhow, consider this your second test of intelligence. The first one was a fluke since there was a guide you could use to... Well, guide you, but there are no guides this time! So you're basically stuck with only your knowledge and any appropriate tools and materials at your dispo-"
The geek casually handed the solved problems to the prodigy and said, "Done," this time with a slightly annoyed tone.
Lisa snatched the paper, scanned the problems, and shouted, "How did you solve them so quickly?!" in disbelief.
"Well, for starters, you only gave me four problems, when Mrs. Johnson tends to give us at least eight, so I had very little to work with in comparions," Clyde sternly answered. "And also, I just had to use the calculator to divide the two sets of numbers, then sum their results into the answer."
"First divide, then sum?" Lisa repeated, once again in disbelief.
"Another simple process that didn't cross your "prodigy" mind? I'm noticing a pattern here," Clyde remarked before he got up and walked to the door. "Anyway, Lincoln should be finished with the stage by now, so-"
Suddenly, a wild Lisa blocked the way!
"No, not yet!" she growled. "I have one more test for you!"
Clyde, having grown tired of the scientist's "tests," folded his arms and sternly asked, "Okay, Lisa, what's up with you? First you insisted on me going to see Lincoln, and now you insist on giving me these tests out of nowhere? I mean, what gives?"
"I-It's not that I don't want you to go have fun with Lincoln," Lisa looked away. "It's just that I don't want you to come out of here making me feel like you're smarter than me."
"Smarter than you? Lisa, you're a confirmed prodigy," the geek pointed out. "There's no way I'm smarter than you-"
"I know that!" Lisa snapped, then took a deep breath. "But what you've recently done, and the simple manner in which you have done so, has made me grown insecure. Please, just one more question, and then I'll let you go meet Lincoln, okay?"
Clyde sighed, and silently nodded, cheering up Lisa a bit.
"Alright, take your time with this one, since I have to do the same every time my family asks me to solve this," Lisa took a deep breath and asked:
"If Pop-Pop's on a train headed east going 80 miles an hour and he has 230 miles to his destination, how long will it take him to arrive to said destination?!"
Clyde didn't even hesitate, once the question was fully clear, he nonchalantly said:
"Close to 3 hours. Either 2 hours and 40 minutes or 2 hours and 50 minutes, depending on the time equivalence of 10 miles."
Lisa's silence after hearing the answer basically spoke for itself. And so did her collapsing on the ground and whimpering, though this did prompt Clyde to go help her get back up.
"Lisa, what happened?!" the boy asked as he released the genius, only for her to fall on the ground butt-first. Well, at least she wasn't completely on the ground. "What's wrong?! Are you feeling okay?!"
"I don't know... I just don't know anymore..." Lisa whimpered, sniffing and crying as Clyde got on his knees and checked to see if she was physically okay.
And she was, but in terms of emotional wellbeing, she looked rather... Devastated. "You just completely blew me away: How could you manage to find a simple solution to all the problems I've given you, while I either completely miss or fail to recognize the easiest solution?"
"To be fair, I gave you a slightly vague answer on the third question-" Clyde said, trying to cheer up the genius...
"You still got it more or less right!" Lisa snapped, flailing her arms up and down. "I just can't help but wonder now: Were the past few times really justt flukes? Am I just not as smart as I thought? As everybody told me I was?"
"Lisa, the problem isn't that you're not as smart as everybody says you are," Clyde put a reassuring hand on the genius's shoulder. "It's just that you're suffering a common problem among prodigies: You're so good in one field, that you're either just average or below average on other fields."
Lisa turned to Clyde with a teary-eyed frown as he continued, "And besides, since the basis of your prodigy...ness, is based on thinking for complicated situations with overly intricate complex thinking, that you're a lot less used to go for a much simple route, which if I've learned anything these past few years, is that the simpler route is typically the better one to take."
The miniature scientist turned back to the ground and meekly asked, "What am I supposed to do now?"
"Well, if you're up for it, I suggest that you stop doing complicated things, and just try to do something that's a bit more simple," Clyde brushed Lisa's hair in an affectionate manner. "Who knows? Maybe you'll get used to it?"
The genius turned back to Clyde, and blushed a little as she felt part of her worries and insecurities vanish at the sight of Clyde's supportive smile. And she continued to look at him as he got up and left the room for real, closing the door slowly to wave goodbye to the little genius. And with him out of sight, Lisa wiped off her tears and crawled all the way back to her desk.
She got up her chair, then looked to see the center was empty, while there were a couple things on the left and right side.
On the right side were some simple math equations and logic problems, all of which were still undone, probably so one of her siblings could solve them. Now that she thought about it, she never really did these herself, it was mostly for her other siblings.
And on the left side were a set of algebraic problems, theorems, thesis, and several other things that would be far more fitting for a teenager or even an adult to take, but not a four year old.
So of course, she looked at the left side... Then grabbed a problem from the right side and begun to solve it as she thought:
"I might as well start going simple from now on."