How Bad Could It Be

Prologue

A/N: If you've read my profile, you know that I want to write original stories but Mary-Sue fantasies keep taking over my brain. This is the most dominate one and I want to purge it as soon as possible. The only characters I own are the ones that haven't been in the Lorax movie. I know I'm a little late to the game but, when the Nostalgia Critic reviewed The Lorax movie, I was so enchanted with the Once-ler that I ended up watching the actual movie. Just so you know, the Pipsqueak in Theresa's time is not the same Pipsqueak from the movie, it's his grandson. I also think baby Bar-ba-loots are called puppies like baby skunks are called kittens.
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Ten years passed since Thneedville planted the very last Truffula seed. Ted Wiggins was getting his Phd in business and Audrey was in graduate school, studying to be an environmental lawyer. Once-ler still lived in his Lerkim as the self-appointed caretaker of Truffula forest and occasionally visited Thneedville. Their hatred towards him was diminishing but the people felt that he still had to make up for his past deeds. The animals moved back in and the Lorax continued to act as the voice of the trees and guardian of the forest.

Theresa Williams laid stomach side on the grass, drawing the Truffula trees and the little bar-ba-loot playing with his friends in her sketchpad while taking in the scent of butterfly milk. Theresa brushed her golden blonde hair out of her ocean blue eyes as the bar-ba-loot came to her.

"Hey, Pipsqueak," she said, using the sweet voice she reserved for animals and showing him her sketch. "You like it?"

Pipsqueak made a noise of approval.

"You wanna see the rest, little guy?" she asked smiling.

Theresa put her drawing utensils in her backpack and her sketchbook on the ground, flipping the pages and explaining each drawing to Pipsqueak. Then she turned her head to make sure no one was nearby and removed a pack of cigarettes from her pocket.

"Don't tell Grandpa, or the Lorax," she whispered to him and then lit the cigarette in her mouth, inhaling smoke into her lungs.

Then she got to her fanart, something that needed far more explaining for Pipsqueak than her forest drawings.

"And last but not least, the guardian of nature herself, Mothra and her two fairy companions," Theresa said to Pipsqeauk.

"I thought I was the guardian of nature," a scratchy annoying voice said.

Recognizing that voice as the Lorax, Theresa quickly got to her feet, put her cigarette out and stomped on it as hard as she could.

"Mothra's the guardian in the fictional Godzilla universe and you're the guardian in real life," Theresa hastily explained, returning to her normal voice.

"Yeah, I've heard of Mothra, and I already saw you smoking so don't bother hiding it," The Lorax said, crossing his arms and leaning on a tree trunk.

Theresa dragged her foot with the cigarette under it back and nervously laughed.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Theresa said.

Pipsqueak tickled Theresa's leg causing her to laugh and lift it up, revealing the cigarette she was trying to hide. Then the puppy grabbed the cigarette and gave it to the Lorax.

"How did that get there?" Theresa said with feigned innocence while glaring at the puppy.

"River, you're better than this," The Lorax said while throwing the cigarette into the river.

"Look, just don't tell Grandpa, okay?" Theresa pleaded. "He already thinks I'm enough of a screw up as it is."

"Beanpole doesn't think you're a screw up," The Lorax reassured her. "He thinks, just like I do, that you've got a lot of promise and you're not living up to it, and your parents are no help with that."