All right! I've gotten Chapter 3 up, and thank you all for over 100 views! I'm definitely pleased to have all of this support, and I'm greatly looking forward to gaining more support for this story. Because this is going to be a fairly long one, perhaps not as long as Lucas's Adventure: Book A, but still fairly long.
Enjoy!
It wasn't too much longer before Lance's mother and sister got home. His father typically worked late, and therefore wouldn't be at home for a while more.
"Hey" Lance said.
Lance's mother ran forward and threw her arms around her son. "So the news is true. You really have transformed into a Lucario".
His heart dropped. "How did you find out?"
"At work, they gave us an emergency briefing in the middle of the day. They do that whenever there's a really important story they need to update us on; I think that this definitely qualified".
Lance chuckled. "Yeah, I guess it does".
"More importantly, how are you?" his mother asked him. "It must have been really hard for you to deal with that in front of all your classmates".
"Yeah, well...that's the way it goes" Lance replied. "Although I will say that the reporters came to the house earlier".
His mother gasped. "They did?"
Her son nodded. "They did. And I answered some of their questions, but not all of them. Don't worry too much; I think things are going to be fine".
Of course, Lance was lying to her. Things weren't going to be fine; in fact, they were going to go horribly wrong. The more he thought about it, the more obvious that became.
"Well, I was about to make dinner. Do you want to help me?" Mrs. Grant asked Lance.
The young man considered saying yes. After all, when you didn't help her with dinner after she offered, she would generally not be very happy with you. Lance, for as much as he loved his mother, never wanted to get on her bad side.
But then he noticed his paws, and how they felt extremely awkward. Besides, he wasn't used to doing a lot of cooking on his own.
"No" he replied. "I'm sorry, but, the way I am now, I don't think that I would be able to do it".
"I figured" his mother said. "No matter; that's okay. I think you'll want to get started on your homework, in any case".
"Great minds think alike" Lance replied. After that, he turned around and walked up to his room, trying to be as light on his feet as possible, since the stairs could be quite creaky.
Once he got up to his room, however, he had a difficult time working on the problems.
It wasn't that he didn't have the intellectual capability to do so; indeed, he was often considered one of the smarter students in his school, even though his grades were nothing to write home about. Rather, he was constantly consumed by thoughts of what might happen next, what it might mean that he had just turned into a Lucario.
At one point, he thought he spotted something outside his window. Turning around in his desk chair and looking to the side, he saw that it had been a bird staring at him. This bird appeared to be stalking him.
Whatever. It's not like that bird is going to come in here and tear me apart. If it were a huge flock of them, maybe…
He decided not to dwell on that, and to continue working on his homework.
Just as he was working on a particularly difficult problem, the doorbell rang. Even though he couldn't see the front walk from this vantage point, Lance was pretty sure he knew who it was.
I'm coming, Dad, he thought, hopping out of his chair and heading down the stairs to meet him.
Lance's father was a tall, broad-shouldered man with thinning, dark brown hair and glasses. He definitely looked imposing to just about anybody who could happen to come across him, but Lance saw him as someone else; his dad.
"Hey, Dad" Lance said.
"Lance? I almost didn't recognize you, even though I'd been told what happened!"
"It's fine" his son replied. "I'm just kind of surprised that it all happened, honestly; I never thought that I'd turn into a Lucario, and that it'd be on the news and everything".
"I know" his father said. "And we'll talk about it at the dinner table. There are quite a few things that we'll need to go over".
"What kinds of things?" Lance asked his father. As far as he knew, there was nothing new that had changed in the house, other than the fact that Lance had become a Pokemon.
"Just things that you'll need to do differently now that you have become a Lucario" Mr. Grant replied. "We'll talk about them when we get to dinner".
Lance was in suspense, but he did have a good feeling what his father was going to say. He assisted his parents in setting the table, with dishes such as steak, salad, and bread to be dipped in olive oil.
Once they were all at the table, Mr. Grant revealed what he had been about to say.
"At work, we were given the briefing on what had happened. Believe me, it was very surprising when I learned that it was my son that it had happened to".
Gulp, Lance thought. Now, everybody at his father's work knew what had happened.
It's no big deal, he tried to tell himself. After all, everybody in the world knows now. Why should it matter that my father's colleagues do?
Even so, it wasn't a pleasant thought to have. He didn't want his father's work friends, many of whom he had never met, to know about his transformation. Again, though, there was nothing he could do about it.
"From here on out, Lance, you are grounded, until you have once more become a human".
"Oh, really?" Lance replied. "Do I have to put my life on hold because of this?"
"Yes, unfortunately, you kind of do" his mother replied. "But it really is for your own good. After all, we don't know how safe you would be outside of the home. You can still go to school and all that, but, if you're going to leave the house, I would want for there to be someone else guarding you".
Lance wanted to insist that that would never happen, not in a trillion years. But when he looked at his mother, he saw that she was being deadly serious. This wasn't an argument he could win; his position basically centered on performing as much damage control as possible.
Before he could speak up, Michaela did so for him.
"I, for one, agree with Mom" she said. "I really think that you should stay with a trusted adult".
"But I am an adult" Lance replied, which was true. He'd just turned 18 yesterday, and was supposed to register to vote in Sinnoh's elections today. For obvious reasons, that had not happened.
"She means someone older than you" his father replied, which wasn't helping matters.
"Look", Lance said, "I'm not three years old anymore. I no longer need to be followed by an adult wherever I go. I can at least walk to school on my own, don't you all agree?"
"I suppose I do" his mother replied. "But I think that you should bring your iPhone with you at all times".
"Don't worry. I always do".
Dipping a piece of bread in olive oil that Michaela had mixed up earlier, his father said, "Maybe, but I still think you should take precautions. I get that you wouldn't want to attract even more attention than you already have. But you need to look at it from our perspective".
"From what perspective, Dad?" Lance replied angrily. He knew that he needed to watch his temper; that was occasionally a problem for him, having a short temper.
"We see you as our son, as someone who may need protection" his father replied. "Now that you have transformed into a Lucario, I really would feel better if you had a guard or something".
"I will not allow myself to be guarded by anybody" Lance said. "I can stay safe on my own, thank you very much. Things are going to be all right".
Of course, Lance was just trying to convince himself as usual. He didn't know that for sure.
"Well, dinner's just about over" said his mother. "Michaela, you can help me clean up the kitchen. Lance, I remember when I had the talk with you; I don't think that this is anything you ever expected to be a part of your teenage years, did you?"
The Lucario boy chuckled. "Yeah...not something I thought would happen, not in a million years. It's fine, though. We're going to keep it all under control".
After that, he excused himself from the table in order to get back to work on his homework. Arceus knew that he needed the time.
However, the more he tried to focus on his work, the harder it became. Every time he squinted in order to focus (no, he didn't need glasses, squinting just helped him focus), he saw the scene in class earlier. When he had transformed.
In spite of this, he managed to finish his math homework, and then he moved on to history. During the next two hours, he cursed the fact that he had to do so much homework; when one really thought about it, you had school for a reason. Was doing all of this work outside of school really necessary?
Whatever, Lance thought. It's not as though that's my biggest worry right now.
As soon as Lance finished with his homework, he decided to take a bath. That was something he did sometimes when he was stressed; he sure was stressed now.
He enjoyed the bath itself, but drying his fur off afterwards was quite a task. Much of the remaining water had embedded itself deeper into his fur, which still made the top fur wet. As a result, he had to be extremely thorough with the towel.
Lance was pretty sure that you could dry your fur off with aura, but he didn't want to try that out just yet. Not when he was still getting used to his new form.
Right after that, he went to bed. Normally, he slept with pajamas on, but he slept in the nude this time. The fur covered all of his private parts, so he didn't really need clothes; there was no reason to remain modest.
Unfortunately, as soon as he drifted off, he sank into a nightmare.
The weather was unbearably hot and humid. The sticky air rang with the sound of cicadas chirping in the distance.
Lance ran, in his Lucario form, through a large field of grass. He'd only been down to this region once before, but he knew where he was. There was absolutely no denying it.
He was in the jungles of Hoenn. That would explain why it was so hot; indeed, it was hotter than it had been back in suburban Pastoria.
Not surprising, he thought. Humidity no doubt is a factor in that.
Lance knew that it was only just a dream, so he wasn't that scared. At the same time, he had a feeling that he should be scared, that something was going to go wrong here.
Don't worry, he told himself. This is a dream, not a prophecy.
But what if it was?
After he'd been running for about five minutes, there was the sound of thunder, followed by the rapport of gunshots.
Lance had never been in the midst of a combat situation before, but he knew a thing or two about how to avoid gunfire. Within ten yards, he fell into a pool of muddy water. A swamp.
Well, this sucks, he thought. Guess I'm not going to stay dry after all.
Of course, that wasn't going to happen anyway. In the jungle, the humidity had to be at least three hundred percent. You simply weren't going to get away with only a little bit of sweat; no, you would sweat bullets.
Bullets…
Lance was forced to duck as a bullet sailed over his head. Even with him ducking, it missed nicking his aura-sensing organs by inches. The bullet slammed into a tree a decent distance away, causing the tree to fall down.
The tree swayed, before crashing down on top of Lance, completely obliterating his chest spike.
Lance groaned in pain. If growing a chest spike had been excruciatingly painful, this was ten times worse. It wasn't something that he would have wished on his worst enemy; the pain was terribly intense.
Eventually, he was able to open his eyes and realize the truth: That this was all a dream.
Lance sat bolt upright in bed. Looking at the clock, he saw that it was only a few minutes before his alarm was set to go off. He always got up at six, and the clock read 5:56.
Might as well get up now, he told himself. It's not like I'd be able to go back to sleep after something like that.
After doing a few stretches, Lance went into the bathroom and brushed his fang. Walking downstairs, he saw no reason to wake anyone else up; it was clear to see that the rest of the house was still asleep.
It's just as well, really. Otherwise, they'd be heckling me about how I need to have someone escort me to school. How old do they think I am? Eight?
After making himself a quick bowl of cereal, he decided to go get the paper from the front yard. He had a pretty good idea what the front page's headline was going to be.
His neighbor from across the street, Mr. Enfield, was doing the same, walking hand-in-hand with his two-year-old daughter. Said daughter looked extremely scared to find that a Lucario was staring back at her.
"Daddy! Get him away from me!" she yelled in her childish toddler voice.
"Don't worry; I don't bite" Lance replied. "It'll be fine".
"Okay…" said Mr. Enfield. "Karla, he's just a boy who turned into a Lucario. He's not actually a Lucario. And he's not going to harm us, okay?"
Karla frowned, but she didn't say anything else. After that, Mr. Enfield led his daughter back indoors.
Wow...that was crazy. Good thing that I'm not some vicious Lucario who's going to bite her to bits. Otherwise, Karla would be dead. And her dad, too.
Lance didn't allow himself too much more time to think about it as he continued the two-mile walk to school. He could have biked there, but he figured that it was better to appreciate life at a slower pace. It felt good to be walking, with the light breeze on his face, even though it was quite hot already.
When he got to school, he looked around and found his friend Michael. However, Michael didn't appear to notice him.
He must think I'm a freak, Lance realized. Well, that fucking sucks. I really wish he'd realize that it's not my fault I'm a fucking Lucario.
One thing that it was necessary to say about Michael was that, once he had made up his mind, it was very difficult to get him to change it. As a result, he would probably always think of Lance as a freak, even if he managed to turn back.
Oh, well, he thought. Who needs him, really?
The bell rung to go inside, and Lance knew that it was going to be a living hell. Perhaps not as bad as being in the middle of the jungles of Hoenn under fire, but still pretty bad.
It was, mercifully, a Friday. After today, he would have a weekend to recover from the day, and, judging by the many stares he was getting, he would most definitely need it.
His first class was history. With note-taking, he had a few problems, but he was able to make it through just fine. It was a little frustrating, however, to hold the pen the way a Lucario would.
The history teacher tried to make it easier for him, but it was a double-edged sword. While he did slow down and allow Lance to copy down all of the notes, the extra time was quite embarrassing for him, as he was the only Lucario in the room, with everyone else staring daggers at him.
The next class was science. Much like history, writing and typing were slightly difficult. Thankfully, there were no labs today; Lance was very often clumsy, and being a Lucario only made things more difficult for him. He didn't want to think about how the liquids might react with his fur, because he had once singed off a corner of his pant legs with boiling water. That had been as a human.
At break period, he sat alone in the corner of the courtyard. As it was, he wasn't the most sociable person in the school, and now he was more isolated than ever before.
Next came gym. That had been the class he was looking forward to; he'd be able to show off his skills as a Lucario. He figured that he'd be able to dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge better than he could in his human body.
He thought that, but he was wrong. Dead wrong.
Even as a human, he was a fairly easy target. In spite of being fast, he was tall and broad-shouldered. What was more, the balls he did throw were often caught by a player on the other team, meaning that he was put out even more frequently than his dodging record suggested.
This sucks, he thought, as he was put out by a caught ball on the other end for the fourth time that game. He was stuck sitting there, waiting for the doctor to tag him. Once that happened, he could get up and continue, but keep attracting more attention. Make it stop already!, he wanted to yell, but didn't for obvious reasons.
After that, most of the rest of his classes passed without much incident, although he did get more than a few stares. Honestly, he was getting sick of all those stares, but it wasn't like he could do anything about them. He was a Lucario, after all, having been a human just over a day prior.
When he finally got out of class, he ran away from the school, determined that he wouldn't be seen by any of his classmates until Monday.
Along the way, nothing of major note happened, although Lance kept praying that Mr. Enfield wouldn't be out on the front walk with Karla again. If that was the case, things weren't going to be good at all.
Lance got home and used the hidden key to let himself in. After that, he looked around the house for any signs of life.
"Mom? Dad? Michaela?" he called. He didn't think that any of them were there, since no cars were in the driveway, and, what was more, all of the lights in the house had been off. However, a guy could hope, right?
"Don't move" said a gruff voice near him.
Lance's heart stopped. Someone had broken into his home.
He refrained from doing so, convinced that the owner of the voice must have a gun or something; that would explain why he sounded so confident. He certainly didn't want to get shot.
"What's going on?" Lance asked nervously. He tried not to sound too defiant; he didn't want to scare the man into using the gun on him, if he had it. He could tell it was a man; the voice was just too deep.
"We need to take you to headquarters" the man said. "If that is okay with you. Your family has already been notified of this".
My family? How could they have ever offered their consent to THIS? Me being taken to some headquarters by some mysterious man? Why did they think this would be a good idea?
"What is it for?" Lance asked. He very much wanted to know why they wanted him, and why his family had clearly given their assent to it.
"We have a big opportunity to tell you about. You need to come with us".
The man stepped out from the pantry, and Lance was able to see who it was.
It was a police officer, wearing a typical blue jacket, as well as the typical hat that cops wore. He had an extremely stern expression on his face, as though he were angry at Lance.
"Did I do something wrong?" Lance asked. "Last time I checked, I didn't commit any crimes".
"You're not in trouble" the cop said, although, judging by his tone of voice, he sure seemed to wish that Lance was in trouble.
Fuck you, Lance thought. He wanted to break away, but he could tell that doing so would not have a good result.
"You'll have to ride in the police car to the station" the cop said. "We can't have you just walking or driving yourself. Do you have your license?"
"No, just my permit".
"Well, in any case, we can't have things looking too suspicious, so you're just going to ride there with us. Once we're there, we'll tell you all about what's going to happen. Understood?"
Lance nodded. He understood, all right.
