The prom was pretty awesome! I went stag, as did most of the people, and it was still a great time. I prefer going stag, because you're not tethering yourself to another person and, besides, I'm single. I'm not at the stage in my life that I really want a romantic relationship. I never have been the dating type.

In other news, happy Mother's Day. Also, my Discord is going pretty well! I'm always going to allow new people in, so long as I get to know you on this site first. I'll PM you an invite code if you wish. We have had a lot of fun over there, so feel free to ask to join. You will probably not be disappointed.

Answer: Did you PM me to ask any questions? If not, I don't have an answer for you guys.

Question: Do you listen to any music while you write? If so, what?

Also, I have made an official goal for this story. I may have said it before, but I hope to reach 100 reviews by the time this is over. I expect the story to be in the 16-20 range in terms of number of chapters, so I'll need more of you to share your thoughts at the bottom of each chapter in order to reach this goal. Even so, I really think we can get there. All you have to do is share your thoughts!

MICHELLE'S POV

The way things had been going, I was glad I had been let out of school early. At least, I was at the time.

On the third Monday in September, the day that Kieran came, my school dismissed at 12:30. In elementary and middle schools, this was the case every other Monday. Normally, I hung out at Olivia's house on these days. We'd sometimes go out to lunch together, hanging out in town, or just stay at home watching cartoons.

I had never been a big fan of these cartoons, but I still sat there with her, watching some My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. We'd ordered a pizza, and we were sitting there, munching on slices of sausage and mushrooms, stacked on top of mozzerella, sauce, and dough. When it came down to it, that was all pizza was.

I was distracted from these semi-philosophical thoughts by Olivia speaking.

"So...how's your brother doing? The guy who turned into a Zoroark?"

I thought about it. Ever since Lucas had gotten back from Canada, he'd been spending more and more time up in his room with Samuel. Whatever had happened there, it had to have been something that made him think a lot. This was not surprising, since I had always considered him a bit of a nerd, even if he did not see himself as such, but the fact remained that he was an intellectual. He liked to ponder the meanings of things, and I didn't think this would have been an exception.

"I think he's okay" I said. "He's probably got a lot on his plate, with everything that's been going on lately".

Really, that was the honest truth, at least as honest as I could make myself tell.

Suddenly, Olivia took out a Pokeball. It was the color Blue Diamond (#4F2A7A). "What's this?" I asked her.

It wasn't the usual color for a Pokeball. Even though they did sell them in different colors, most of them were just plain red. Literally, #FF0000, the color that is all of the red there can be, but no green or blue.

"This is my pet Vulpix, McCloud" my best friend said. "I have a feeling that you're going to need him. I'll let you borrow McCloud, just for now. Are you okay with doing that? Do you want to do that?"

I pondered this question. I didn't know why Olivia would like me to borrow her Pokemon, even for a little while. It made no sense. I wasn't a trainer, for one. I had no aspirations of becoming one, and, besides, most trainers started at the age of ten. I was already fourteen, so I was a little old to begin.

Even so, I got the feeling that Olivia did have good intentions. There was a chance that McCloud might come in handy later, should I decide to borrow him now. And, as much as I didn't want to deprive my best friend of her Pokemon, I decided that I was going to say yes.

"I'll do it" I said. "I took Pokemon health class last year, I'm taking it again this year. I know how to take care of a Vulpix".

The question was, would a Vulpix be helpful for me? How would I know if I needed McCloud or not? There was no way to.

Stepping out the door a few minutes later, I began heading home. My brother would just be getting out of school right about now. Unlike the elementary and middle schools, Lucas's high school did not get out early every other Monday.

I realized that I looked forward to meeting him. This might be one thing I would actually enjoy today. School, even though it had been a shorter day, had been as boring as ever. In what respect would I need to know all about mathematics during the rest of my life?

However, there was something I cared about far more around the corner. Something that did not put me in a good mood.

Once I got to my street, I saw that there was a great conflagration coming from my house. At least, that was what it looked like. The fire had luckily not spread to the adjoining homes, but my own house was more than likely ruined.

Is Lucas in there? I thought to myself, panicking inwardly. I didn't know if I wanted to know. You could say that I was afraid of the truth, whatever it would turn out to be.

Inside the house, there were bursts of orange and purple. At first, I had a hard time figuring out what this was likely to be. However, I soon realized that this was exactly what I would expect to see if there was a battle between Fire and Poison types raging within my home.

Why was my house being used as the venue for a battle between two Pokemon armies? Well, that was anyone's guess.

As soon as I reached the house, I saw Lucas and Samuel, both standing in the driveway. After greeting them quickly, I decided to let McCloud out here. Hopefully, if the Fire types won this battle, my house would not be that destroyed. I sure hoped that the winning side would hold off on damaging the house more than it already was.

A moment later, I saw that the Lucario and Zoroark were not alone here. In addition, there was a gaunt man with shoulder-length white hair on a Crobat about thirty feet in the air.

"We need to talk" I told the man. "Can that Crobat carry all of us?"

"It can" the man said. "It's pretty strong".

The mysterious man flew down to the ground and allowed us to climb onto the back of his Crobat. It was kind of like a ramp, it was that easy to get on.

"We're going to have to have negotiations now. To make sure we don't kill each other" the man said.

Lucas cynically said, "That thought had never even crossed my mind until now".

Really, I wanted all of this to stay relatively civil, particularly as we flew two hundred feet into the air. Our house now looked somewhat like a toy. I wished that we had been wearing safety harnesses, because if we fell, we'd be dead. End of story.

I didn't know what to think about what was going on. Never had I ever imagined that I'd be holding onto a Crobat, hovering 200 feet above my home, which was being destroyed in a battle between Fire and Poison. Which side would come out on top?

I looked over at Lucas, though. It was a big risk, since he was sitting behind me, hanging on for dear life. Despite his tall stature, he was afraid of heights. This was something I was very aware of.

But he was angry.

LUCAS'S POV

I couldn't believe that Kieran had the nerve to do what he was doing. He, most likely, was responsible for the raging battle currently being waged inside my house. Not only that, but he seemed to also want me to go on a quest with him. Those things don't go together.

The thing was, Michelle really seemed to want to do it. For the most part, I did get along with my sister rather well. Indeed, probably much more than the majority of brother/sister pairs. Even so, this was one thing that I would not see eye to eye with her.

For one, she hadn't even met Kieran, ever. I had, and it hadn't been pleasant; both of us had almost died. Given that alone, I had little reason to trust the man.

"Hear him out, Lucas" Michelle said again. I barely heard her, however. All I was focusing on was the house down below, slowly being burned and poisoned. Soon, it would no longer be fit to live in, if indeed it still was. Even that was doubtful.

"Why should I?" I asked my younger sister. "You don't know him the way I do. You don't know what he's done, why he's doing what he's doing. I'm sure that he ordered the Poison armies to come here".

"To be fair", said Kieran, "that is true. I wished to collect the necklace, in order to study it more".

"It's gone" Samuel said.

I looked at my Lucario friend. "What do you mean, it's gone? Where did it go?"

"The doctors took it when I was at the hospital after being stabbed" the Lucario replied. "There's no way of knowing where it is, now. Probably it got incinerated".

My eyes widened. "That's dangerous, though! What if one of the doctors transformed into a Zoroark?"

Looking at my claws, I tried to think about just how impossible it would be to start an IV this way. Part of that was no doubt due to the fact that I had no medical training, but I imagined that it would be far harder as a Zoroark even for someone who was trained.

I felt bad for all of the patients who would have to be treated by this doctor. Clearly, he wasn't going to be a big help.

"That's the dangerous part" Samuel said. "There's no way of knowing what will happen to anyone in possession of the necklace. It's been two weeks since then, and Michelle hasn't transformed yet".

My sister felt her body, including running her hands along her legs, as if to make sure that they were normal skin and not fur. Granted, that was probably the exact reason.

"We need to do this, Lucas" she said. "The catch-up work might bite us in the asses later, but right now we have to go with this man. What's your name?"

"Kieran Mortimer" the young man said. "Misery loves company, and I am quite lonely".

"What's that?" Michelle asked. "It doesn't make any sense".

"It's my motto" Kieran replied. "Maybe, sometime, I'll tell you what it means".

We sat there on the Crobat for a while before Kieran said, "So, do you guys want me to call off my forces?"

Samuel glared at him. "Are you kidding me? You could have called them off before they even attacked the Londons' house. Instead, you had to utterly destroy it. To what end?"

Kieran didn't seem to have an answer to that. Of course he didn't. There could be no excuse for what he had done. If his goal had been to try to force us to cooperate, that might have worked, but it certainly wouldn't make me want to go on this quest. Not by a long shot.

Still, I decided that it would be a good idea to see what he had to say. Hopefully, Samuel would be able to tell if he was lying or not, or at least if he had bad intentions. I knew that aura could do that...couldn't it?

"Okay" I said. "If I don't throw you off this Crobat right now, will you tell me the reason you came here? What was your whole thought process?"

Kieran shrugged. "The reason was, I had a dream".

"Never trust dreams" Samuel said. "They rarely mean what you think they do".

"In any case", the young man said, "I dreamed that I was tethered to this house in some way. I don't mean with a literal tether, but it might as well have been, you know what I mean?"

"I do" I said. I didn't want to tell the story to Kieran, because I found it slightly humiliating, and he wasn't going to be the most trustworthy audience for it.

"Lucas here was feeling that same thing towards a specific flower, and this flower happened to be heavily guarded by a group of Bellossom" Samuel said.

"Is this going to end with Lucas being put to sleep?" Kieran asked. "I didn't see that".

"Guys, you're kind of embarrassing me" I said. "I want to go back down, check what damage was done to my home. And I want to lay it all on the line, this is your fault, Kieran Mortimer".

"What good does blaming me do?" the young man asked, throwing his arms in the air. "I wasn't doing anything I thought was wrong".

"Keyword, thought" Samuel said, slugging Kieran in the back of the head.

"Samuel, was that really necessary?" Michelle asked the Lucario.

"Yes" Kieran said. "I mean, no, it wasn't necessary, but you should have known better, Samuel Cranmore. Trust me when I say that you do not want to get on my bad side. Do you understand that?"

Samuel nodded, looking pretty nervous now. I didn't blame him, of course; I would have felt the same way in that same situation. As much as I hated Kieran, as much as I wanted to slap him upside the face until he was spitting up all of his teeth, I knew that this would be unwise. I couldn't just do that and not expect to face any repercussions.

"Can we go down now?" I asked. "I want to survey the damage done to the inside of my house".

"I mean, I'm pretty sure it's toast, but you can do that if you want to" Samuel said.

"You may" Kieran said, pulling Crobat into a nosedive.

"Whoa, nelly!" I exclaimed. It was quite something to be doing a nosedive straight at your house. Luckily, we landed before my neck could snap off from whiplash.

"Go on in and take a look" the young man said, with a smile that told me that I wouldn't like what I saw.

The house was completely trashed.

I'm not saying that just to make it sound bad, either. The house was destroyed, completely unlivable.

It still smelled strongly of Weezing gas, and I tried not to breathe it in too deeply. This was a problem in and of itself, and I didn't want to endure the same feeling of suffocation that Kieran's Weezing had inflicted upon me. That was an experience I was not keen to relive, thank you very much.

The armies had been called off by Kieran. All it had taken was a whistle, and they had both left. Why he had brought in his Poison type army was anyone's guess. Why a Fire type army had come in to do battle with the Poison types was also anyone's guess.

As I walked through the rubble that had once been my kitchen table, I thought, Is Mom still alive in here?

I didn't care for my mother too much. Clearly, she didn't care about me nearly as much as she did Michelle, and that was kind of a deal-breaker for me. After all, isn't part of being a good mother of two not showing favoritism towards one over the other?

The table had been reduced to smithereens, as had most of the cabinets. The acrid stench of burnt marble permeated the place, and there was still smoke in the air. And, lying in the corner of the kitchen, there was something large and charred.

I was going to ignore it. At first, I thought it was just an oddly shaped pile of charcoal. However, when I looked at it more closely, I realized that it was a body. This left only one possibility.

"Mom?"

I knew that she couldn't hear me, but there was no denying that this was her. Normal height, hair parted to both sides, glasses...yes, this looked just like Denise London.

And she was dead.

I couldn't believe it. I felt a few tears welling up, but I forced them back. I was not going to cry over my mother, who hadn't even cared about me that much anyway. Really, it had been all about Michelle from the very beginning of my sister's life.

She hadn't been a perfect person, but she did not deserve to die as she did, trapped inside the house, probably cooking or cleaning up the kitchen, as two opposing armies fought tooth and nail to obliterate each other for seemingly no reason.

I didn't know what to think.

And then, just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, I heard a knock on the door behind me. Standing in the middle of my ruined kitchen, trying to deal with the muddle of conflicting emotions, that was the last time I wanted to see anybody, least of all…

"Kieran!" I yelled.

The young man held his hands up. "Sorry for giving you the scare, Lucas. I think it's about time that we leave. I have a feeling that I know where we're going to head. Do you still feel that tug?"

At first, I was going to say no. I was still pretty deep in my grief to respond, to be honest. It was hard to convince myself of the fact that I was even capable of feeling the tug.

However, once I focused, once I was actively looking for it, I felt the tug deep within my hairy chest. Somewhere, within my Zoroark body, the harness had been wrapped around my heart, and I was tethered once again to that flower, three hundred miles from here. Was there just something about that flower that was so powerful that it couldn't be tamed? Could I not simply find some other way to work with Kieran in order to find the truth.

Ugh...the very idea of working with Kieran made me want to vomit and tear my great red ponytail off. For all I knew, he was responsible for my very changing into a Zoroark! He could be the cause of this whole thing, and I was considering working with him. I was seriously pondering the idea of bunking with the devil, as some would say.

And yet, I didn't see any other option but to tell the truth. If it was Kieran who had been the driver of this whole mess, I desperately wanted to know. I wanted to give him a swift kick in the ass for it, because he sure as hell deserved it.

"Yes, Kieran. I still feel the tug towards that flower. I even remember the exact hexadecimal code. Is that our target right now?"

Kieran nodded, looking wary. "It is regrettable that your house was burned down. You know, it didn't have to be this way".

I bared my fangs at him. "Are you shitting me? There was no other way? No other fucking way? My mother's dead thanks to your Poison types!"

The man waved his arm to the side. "There really was no other way. I don't have a regular team, but, at least for the moments they are with me, my Pokemon are quite loyal. They'll follow me to the ends of God's Earth. Can the same be said about your friend, Samuel Cranmore?"

I bared my fangs once again. "Samuel would not betray me. Never!"

Kieran cackled. "You might think so, Lucas London, but you can never know. You never can tell what your friends are going to be willing to do when their lives are on the line. It's the most primal of human emotions, the fear of death. Nobody wants to wander the darkness, the unknown on the other side, yet sooner or later we all have to".

For a few seconds, I was almost impressed by Kieran's philosophical talk. However, the implications of it were dire.

Could I really trust Samuel Cranmore, the teenager I had befriended due to being in the same boat as him? We'd both turned into Pokemon, and we were both staring down this mystery. Both of us forced to face Kieran Mortimer head-on.

"Samuel is different" I replied brazenly. "He'll be loyal".

Kieran could only smile sadly. "That's what they all say".

SAMUEL'S POV

Lucas looked visibly distraught as he walked out of the house with Kieran. I had been hesitant to leave him alone in the house with that man, but it had been the only option, the way things were going. After all, Crobat could easily have turned on us, since Kieran's Pokemon seemed to be extremely loyal to him.

Apparently, we were going to be going back up to Quebec. I didn't know what to think about that. Not a day would have passed, now, that we would not have been up in Canada for at least part of the time.

"This time, it'll be easier to find" Kieran said. "We had some navigational issues on the way up on Friday, but I figured out the way. It's pretty much three hundred miles, straight north. It's not that hard to find when you know where to look".

I nodded. The irony was that it had been easier to find on the ground than it had apparently been from the air. However, I didn't really care.

Back then, Kieran and I had been enemies. Now, we were reluctant allies, although this uneasy alliance might just prove to be the real danger. Only time would tell.

"Let's go" Michelle said. "I just want to get into the air. How about you guys?"

Without asking either Lucas or myself, Kieran pulled something out from his jacket pocket. It appeared to be an enormous belt, until I realized that there were four of them.

"Safety harnesses" the man said. "You don't want to be focused on holding on the entire time, you want to enjoy the view. Am I right?"

Kieran clipped them into various points on Crobat's fur before showing us how to tie them around our waists. If we fell off of Crobat, the tether would catch us, and we could be pulled right back up onto the back of the bat.

Once all four of us were buckled in, Kieran ordered his Crobat to fly. And fly we did.

Soon, the destroyed home of the London family looked just like a toy from the sheer height we were at. In one respect, you could think of this as tragic. In another respect, you could see this as good news, that maybe what we had lost was not so great that there was no way we could make up for it.

We flew north, and the air got colder and colder. For the most part, we were only a couple thousand feet in the air, but what you have to remember is that, the later in the day it gets, once you're past a certain point, the colder it gets as well. Not only that, but the wind was directly in our faces. While this might be exhilarating, it was also frigid at times. Even though I had the large blue coat of fur, I would have loved to be wearing a jacket, and maybe ski goggles as well.

At a certain point, we must have passed over the Canadian border, but it was just about impossible to tell where that was. After all, we were several thousand feet in the air, and we had no way of knowing how far or fast we were traveling. For all I knew, we could have passed the village already.

"I think we're getting close" Kieran said from the front of the Crobat.

Looking down, I could tell that he was right, at least when I was paying close enough attention. The log cabins seemed to be present as was usual in the village, and pine trees were all over the place. Even though the sun was starting to sink at this point, it was clear to see the flowery fields, and I could have sworn that I saw a Bellossom down there.

"This is the place?" Michelle asked. "It's beautiful".

"I know" Lucas replied. "I think I know who we're staying with, too. They are very nice people. Well they're not people, per se, but they're still very hospitable".

It was clear to me that he was talking about the Greenlakes. "Are we staying with the Greenlake family this time?" I asked Kieran.

The young man clearly didn't know who we were talking about. He shrugged his shoulders, and then said, "If you know these people, we're going to stay with them. Just for the night, though. In the morning, we're going to have to get moving again".

"Sounds good" Lucas said. "It's been quite a day".

I had known that Lucas's relationship with his mother had always been a little wanting, but looking at him right now, there was pain in his eyes. Clearly, he hadn't been wishing for his mother to die. I wasn't going to get him to talk about it before he was ready, though. That would just be cruel, and I didn't want to be cruel towards Lucas London.

KIERAN'S POV

We touched down in the village about an hour before sunset. However, it wasn't easy to find the house of Zoroarks that Lucas and Samuel had stayed at over the weekend. We had to have them guide us quite a bit, something that wasn't very easy to do given that most of the houses looked pretty much the same.

The entire time, I was thinking about how Lucas had reacted to seeing me. He really did seem to hate my guts, and he was justified in doing so. After all, I had tried to kill him back on that hill above the village. He had good reason not to trust me.

At the same time, he would need to trust me, something I didn't know that he was capable of. As we walked away from Crobat, I thought about how I could get him to put his faith in me. After all, we needed each other on this quest.

I was convinced that this flower, if Lucas had felt the tug towards it, held the key to what was going on. I knew this even more than I knew that I was terminally ill.

Speaking of which...what would be the right time to tell them what was wrong with me? Certainly, it might make them trust me more. Still, were they ready for that information? Much like Hazel Grace Lancaster from The Fault In Our Stars, I was a ticking time bomb. How long could they stay with me if they knew I was going to be checking out of this world soon? Would they see me as a terminally ill man with nothing to lose, someone who couldn't possibly be trusted for anything?

Samuel was able to lead us to the right place, and he knocked on the door. I didn't know what I was expecting to see on the other side, but soon a blue-haired Zoroark came to the door.

"Is this you again? The people who spent the weekend with us?" the Zoroark, who was clearly a female, asked.

"I'm Samuel Cranmore with Lucas London" the Lucario said. "If your name is Carla Greenlake, we did stay with you, remember?"

"Ah, yes, I am Carla" the blue-haired Zoroark said. "Well, you may spend the night with us once again. Why don't you explain what is happening to us over dinner, because we would like to know why you are here once again, if you do not mind".

"We'll talk about it with you guys inside" I said. "My name's Kieran Mortimer".

"Ah, Kieran...what a nice name" Carla the Zoroark said. "And who might you be, young woman?"

Michelle clearly didn't like being referred to in this manner. "I'm Michelle, and I'm Lucas's sister".

"Very well" Carla said. "Why don't you come inside? We have a lot to talk about".

Enjoy the semi-cliffhanger! I know this is a weird place to put an author's note, but I hope that you liked this chapter nonetheless. I had a good time writing it.

You want a stats check? Okay, I'll give you a stat check.

Reviews: 57

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This was not my longest chapter, but I think it was a healthy length. It brings my average up to just about 4,300 words. By the end of the story, I'd like to have the average length be well over four thousand words per chapter, but we will see.

In any case, this has been SnowLucario. I will catch you guys later.