CJ: Mwahaha, I finished the next chapter!
DB: Yea, and only after a two month hiatus.
CJ: Okay fine, I do owe the fans an apology, but you're not one to complain.
DB: (Glares off to the side)
CJ: Anyway, I do have to thank my co-author and all of you for being patient with me. So why don't I...
DB: (Clears throat)
CJ: Oh yea...umm. Just a warning to all of you, there will be a few sexual references, but its far from the 'M' level. Now you can...
DB: Hold on. I think you forgot to mention that normal talk is in a normal font, "Radio transmissions and telepathic talk is in italic double-quotes," and 'Private thoughts are in italic single-quotes'.
CJ: You just did that, so...(checks a list)...okay, NOW you all can read.
"Mnm...Ray..." the Lucario in bed mumbles, stirring and tangling herself in the sheets. She reaches over and grasps next to her, as if expecting someone or something to be there but only finds empty air. Realizing she was alone, she sits up; the sheets tied around her and hiding her curves. Her eyes reluctantly open to reveal their soft red to the world then look down to confirm that nothing is next to her on the king-sized bed. She heaves a sigh,
'Where did he go now...' she wonders while pulling the sheets off and walking over to the closet. Once there, the pokemon slips on a vest that matches the blue of her fur and pulls the zipper up to fasten it. Once clothed, the Lucario gently runs a paw through the aura-receptors on the back of her head, pulling them out of the vest. Normal Lucario wouldn't have to worry about this, but then again, she isn't normal.
The aura-receptors on a normal Lucario look a little like dreadlocks, but her's look more like straight, flowing hair that a human would have. They are thinner, long enough to reach the bottom of the shoulder blades, and a lot more than just four. It wasn't just the "hair" that's different but also the chest spike; it is a lot shorter than a normal one, so small in fact that it is little more than a bump on her chest, hidden between her, well...breasts. She's also quite a bit taller than the average height for a Lucario, almost six-feet to be exact.
The Lucario groggily walks out of the living room and over to the counter, finding a note present on the marble counter beside the fruit bowl. She picks it up while rubbing her eyes, careful to avoid stabbing herself with her wrist spikes which are actually a little bigger than a normal Lucario's.
"The dragons are awake...how convenient, espically after what happened last night too," she laughs, smiling and closing her eyes. 'Its funny how romantic I can make Ray,' she giggles to herself.
'I should probably head off to Altomare. Its going to be nice to finally see some of his family, especially when its in the floating city itself,' she notices the open window and shakes her head as the memory of her briefly waking up just in time to see Ray fly off. She would've told him to wait or done something to slow him down, but she was just too exhausted from her previous actions to get up and do something about it.
After quickly eating a couple berries, she mimics Ray by standing on the edge of the windowsill. Only waiting to take a deep breath, she falls backwards like Ray, her arms spread open as the exhilarating feeling of wind rushing by fills her. Looking below her to see the blue ocean rushing up, the Lucario only smirks before shifting her weight to fall head-first.
Finally, about fifteen feet from the ocean's surface, she juts out her arms to catch on a branch growing from the cliffside. Using that branch like a springboard, she bounces back up and away from the rocky wall. Elegantly twisting around in mid-air to land feet-first, the Lucario actually stands on the water's surface for a second thanks to concentrated aura on her feet.
Before this briefly-existing land could give way, she jumps forward; re-focusing the aura pads each time she goes up in the air. After a few steps, she stops re-forming the aura pads because she's actually running on the water!
"Hooray for Extremespeed!" she yells, zooming away over the ocean, leaving a mirage of Lucario in an after-image behind her as well as a giant wake of water that would put any speedboat to shame.
"N-no way!" Latios exclaims as his eyes start bulging, "What happened to you? Did you find Mom?!?" he starts barraging Ray with questions. Ray tunes out all of them except for one.
"No. I haven't found sis." Everybody stops what they were doing and looks at him. "But hey, I'm back." Ray says with a forced smile. He and Jabir stand for a second before the younger Latios runs up to Ray and hugs him.
"Good seeing you again uncle Ray."
"Uncle?" Ray and Jabir look over at Jin, who was clutching her head in confusion. The two Latios release one another to let Ray walk towards the confused girl.
"Yep. I'm your uncle," Ray chuckles. Jin didn't know what to do from there, she's just too lost. Ray only shrugs before glowing white and changing shape into his pokemon form.
The slightly larger Latios smirks. "Believe me now?"
Jin slowly nods, amazed at the Latios that wasn't her brother. "W-we have an UNCLE?!?" Jin stammers before glaring at Jabir.
"Well, yeah! I thought you knew!" Jabir exclaims while changing into his Latios form.
"I didn't! You don't tell me anything!"
Ray laughs to himself. 'Just like his dad, always keeps to himself.' Jin is now in her Latias form and floating higher then normal to bicker with her brother at his eye level. It is actually a little amusing to hear the smaller Lati yell at her brother in high-pitched squawks, then hear him retort with deep warbles.
"STOP!" Lorenzo bellows, halting all other conversation. "You're giving me a headache! Go settle this in the garden or something!" The old man adds while standing up, accidently dropping Pikachu to the ground with a thud.
"PI!" The mouse yells, having clunked his head against the floor.
"Come on you two, you guys heard Lorenzo." Ray remarks. The three Latis were about to leave before Bianca butts in.
"Hey! Don't leave me out of this, I'm like a sister to these two!" She pouts, pointing at the Lati siblings before crossing her arms.
"Pika!" Pikachu adds, scampering over to the others while rubbing the slight bump on his head.
"Well, hop on then." Ray says to Bianca, who only stares at him.
"Go ahead, I don't mind." Ray adds while lowering his body enough to let Bianca climb up on his back, after taking off the sword case and handing it over to Jabir. The younger Latios only stares blankly at it, having no idea what it is. Pikachu gladly hops onto Latias, who giggles while fitting Ash's hat to her head. The three then disguise themselves, hiding any luggage or passengers, then quickly fly out an open doorway and into the sky.
"I'm getting too old for this...I need some Advil..." Lorenzo grumbles while wandering into the kitchen.
"So you prefer being called Joshua?" Ray asks, relaxing on a large sturdy branch, still in Latios form.
"Yeah, I think that its more suitable," Latios replies, relaxing on the same branch as Ray. Both of them lying on their backs and staring at the clouds through the foliage of the garden; Josh propped against the trunk of the tree and Ray against the large pillow of leaves at the end of the branch.
"Jabir's kinda weird anyway," Jin remarks, floating upside-down in the air, staring at the two Latios while Pikachu settles in the soft down of her belly.
"Yea, same with Jin," Josh states, "No offense to Dad or anything...and Cheryl doesn't really fit like we thought it would."
"Yeah...I liked it, but its not quite right...maybe..." Jin puts a claw to her lips, "Hmmm."
"Jennifer? Jen's pretty close to Jin," Bianca suggests as she swings her legs from a branch near the Latios.
"I don't know, I'm used to sis and Latias not Jin."
"What about...Lucia?" Bianca offers.
"Lucia?" Jin parrots while flipping over, almost dropping Pikachu (who was wearing Ash's hat), for a second time. Luckily, the small pokemon grabs onto her down to hold on.
"I like it," Josh states.
"Why not?" Ray shrugs, tugging his golden case a little closer as it rests on his stomach. The name fits her anyways.
Latias smiles, "Its perfect! Thanks guys!" The other three start laughing while watching a terrified Pikachu cling to Lucia's back as she flies in circles. The little guy had just climbed around to the larger pokemon's back when she took flight, and is screaming in poke'speak that he was going to fall off.
"So Uncle Ray, where did you go?" Lucia asks, stopping to let Pikachu climb up to her neck.
"Just call me Ray, and I've been all around the world...Hoenn, Orre, Kanto, Sinnoh, and Johto not to mention various archipelagos. I've gotta be flexible for my job."
"You have a job?!?" Bianca and Lucia exclaim.
'Wow. They're so surprised at the most normal of things.' Ray thinks to himself before answering, "Yeah, a girlfriend too."
"Really?" Josh asks, perking his head up.
Ray lets out a single chuckle, "Yeah, she's probably on her way to Altomare as we speak. Knowing her, I wouldn't be surprised if she shows up in the next minute or so."
"I thought you said there weren't a lot of Latias in the world!" Josh exclaims while scratching the back of his head, remembering a past conversation between him and Ray.
"Whoever said she was a Latias?" Ray asks, now grinning.
"What is she? And why didn't you bring her?" Bianca asks while leaning towards the two Latios across from her, a mischeivous look on her face.
"You'll see when she comes. I didn't bring her cause she was still tired from last night," Ray dreamily droops his eyes while Bianca's widen and she leans back, her face tinted pink.
"What did she do?" Lucia, clueless and innocent, asks Ray. Josh, Ray, and Bianca quickly flush red.
Ray quickly coughs, wondering how to answer his niece. "Err...romantic things..."
Before Lucia could go futher, Josh interrupts. "So what do those golden shield and cross symbols mean?"
Ray gestures to the end of his wings to make sure he knew what Latios was asking about. "Those?"
Josh nods.
Before Ray answers, he glances around for any suspicious pokemon. People didn't know about this garden save Lorenzo and Bianca, but a pokemon could easily stumble across this place. Luckily, all the ones here seemed to be normal.
"Well," Ray starts while shifting around to get rid of a kink, "It's the insignia of the work I do. We call ourselves the Lance Syndicate; a highly trained group of pokemon and humans that work together to bring down terrorists or a large group of people bent on doing horrible things with living or non-living arms, to even large-scale firefights. We're not known in this region since there hasn't been anything bad going on for a while in Altomare...at least not on a scale large enough to warrant our attention. Lance wants to remain as secretive as possible."
"Cool, you guys are like Cyphrus and Lily!" Latias exclaims. Pikachu's ears perk up to the two names.
"No sis, they're in a war division. It's different." Josh states.
"Who?" Ray asks, with one fully open while the other is only partially open, making him look like he was raising an eyebrow.
"Oh, right..." Latias says, then takes a large breath, "Well..."
"Wow...I didn't think Altomare would be this beautiful," The female Lucario mutters as she walks down a street near the shore, having just arrived. She watches as people row by in gondolas, as kids chase one another down the streets, and even people swimming around in the ocean and lying around on the beach. It's so...nice here!
She starts humming in satisfaction while strolling along, smiling as her tail slowly swishes back and forth. Its a bit of an odd sound...her hums always sound like purrs when she's happy, strange for a dog-like pokemon. What is stranger are the people rudely staring at her like she was a walking epidemic.
Did she really look that intimidating? Guess so, the spikes and lean build are probably enough...maybe it was the vest that was repelling trainers, thinking that she was already 'captured'. The Lucario giggles to herself, in a way that was true.
It might also have been her entrance to the city; that super-fast blazing form that jumped off the ocean and landed gracefully on a pier as the waves she was causing swept a bunch of people onto the beach. It was amusing to see all the shocked faces when a pokemon came barreling in from atop the waves.
Gently pushing the thoughts out of her mind, the Lucario goes back to admiring the city while enjoying her stroll. After a couple of turns, she finds herself looking at two statues, one of which looks exactly like Ray. 'Ray never told me he had a statue of himself,' She giggles again before continuing on.
Eventually the Lucario sighs before ducking down an empty alley. "Alright Ray...where did you go..." she mutters while bowing her head and closing her eyes. Slowly, all of her receptors start lifting up before splaying out to the side and the back, like a powerful wind is blowing them back. In reality, she's just opening her aura-sight, a way of seeing the world by aura fields instead of light.
Her whole view is a blue-tinted black, but that's because she's facing a wall. Once she turns to look out of the alley, an explosion of neon colors flood her view, each one reflecting off of the buildings and streets to make it look like a rainbow had collapsed on the city. Struggling a little to look past so many fields, the Lucario pushes her vision further until finally coming across a faint golden wisp that vaguely resembled a Lati...strange thing was an electric-pink and deep-ocean-blue wisp of similar shape were nearby.
"More Latis huh?" The pokemon mutters while opening her eyes. "Guess he found his folks." Quick as flash the Lucario is on the roof-tops, from up here she could better find Ray's aura signal. She closes her eyes for a brief moment to find him again, then starts jumping from roof to roof.
"Got you..."
Ray's now levitating outside of the tree, pacing back and forth in the air while taking in what happened last week. What he heard made complete sense, but he's still deeply troubled. Why would they come to the pokemon world? Why did they take that Ash kid with them? What exactly is the power of "Biometal"? Thoughts like this kept flooding into his mind, but he manages to suppress them to turn to his nephew.
"Is there anything else of importance that Raphael told you?" Ray asks, serious as even while staring at Josh.
"Just our true names, and he taught me how to do things I couldn't before...like he released a barrier or something." Josh answers.
Ray nods, "And Cyphrus...he brought you back by using his prosthetic arm as a Lati-energy-conductor?"
Josh nods.
Ray rubs the back of his head. "I see...we'll talk more later. One of my main reasons of coming to Altomare is to..." Ray closes his eyes and sighs.
"Is to prepare you, as in Lucia and Josh, to be able defend yourselves and the ones you love. I'm also here to teach you how to adapt to human life and customs as well as how to speak human in your pokemon form and human form...well, you both seem to have learned it in human form already. I'm also going to teach you the basic concept of combat with the blades that Lorenzo passed to you from your parents. I couldn't come earlier because Raphael wanted me to come only when you two were at your full potential...he never explained why though."
Everybody stayed silent, looking at Ray. Lucia looked a little hurt, but Josh completely understood.
"Some uncle I am huh?" Ray scoffs while looking away; ashamed at himself for coming like this on short notice.
"You're still family to me," Lucia immediately changes her expression from offended to compassionate. Ray stares at her for a second before smiling and hugging his niece, knowing she meant it from the bottom of her heart after hearing her sniffle. It felt so good to be back. Josh smiles at the sight of his sister getting hugged by someone from their family besides him.
Suddenly, a loud laugh rings out over the garden. "How sweet," a voice says, getting everyone but Ray to look around. "You'd better not be cheating on me Ray." the voice adds a second later.
Ray releases his niece while starting to chuckle. He glances upward to see a smiling, female Lucario standing on the very top of the tree Latios and Bianca are in; balancing perfectly on the tiny area. It is like looking up at royality or a renowned hero the way her hair is getting blown back a breeze.
"Come on down and meet the family!" The Lucario leaps from branch to branch with such speed, finese, and accuracy that it blows the other four away. Suddenly the Lucario disappears into the tree before shooting out the bottom of the branches, landing in a crouched position. Josh also flew out of the tree, but he darted out of the side to avoid getting hit by her.
The Lucario stands and looks at the rest of the crowd, before giving them a happy smile and exclaiming, "Hey everbody!"
The others are dumbstruck, they never expected Ray's girlfriend to be a Lucario; and not just any Lucario but a talking Lucario with hair!
'She looks a lot like a human too...' Lucia thought to herself, blinking. 'Ash...'
"What took you? Oversleep again?" Ray smirks.
"Strangest thing, my alarm clock seemed to go flying out the window on its own." The Lucario turns to Ray, laughing. Everbody else chuckles, snapping themselves out of the weird trances.
"So you're..." Bianca asks, now balanced on a lower branch, "Ray's girlfriend?"
"Fiance." The Lucario corrects, "Ray proposed to me last night," She softly smiles while shooting Ray a loving glance. "It took me awhile to get here because we couldn't sleep last night, we got a bit too excited."
Ray's face has a blush creeping over as well as a sheepish smirk glued in place.
Pikachu climbs up to Lucia's head for a better view and starts clapping.
"Pika! Pika pi pikachu!"
"Aww, how cute," the Lucario says, raising her left paw to run the other on a pure golden bracelet with a diamond in it. "And yes, you're invited to the wedding," she says in reply of Pikachu's words.
"You're just like big brother, you never tell us anything!" Lucia pouts at Ray. The Lucario lets out a loud laugh.
"Guess it runs in the family."
"I'm sorry, we never got your name," Josh says, a bit timid by the powerful looking pokemon.
"Oh! Sorry!" The Lucario shows her canines in an apologetic grin, "My name is Kara, nice to meet you. You must be Jabir."
"They sort of switched names," Bianca states. Kara looks up at the girl.
"Really? So what are they?"
"I'm Bianca," the human girl says, gesturing to herself, then over at Latios while adding, "Ray's nephew prefers Josh, and-"
"I'm Lucia! Ray's neice!" Latias chirps, flying next to Kara to get a bit better view.
"A pleasure to meet all of you, did I miss anything?"
The crowd glances at each other again, readying for another explanation of what happened while Ray was gone.
"This is Ephesus. We've found nothing harmful in this area. Our scouts have also found nothing that should be a big delay to our plans." grumbles a deep voice into a wrist-radio.
"Excellent, proceed to Phase 2. We have to ensure that we face no resistance from the locals and the minorities. Begin elimination of Altomare's gangs and start gaining the trust of the community. Meanwhile Nihex will begin the corruption of police and law enforcement to make them work for us."
"Sir, how long do you predict it will take according to the present data?"
"It will take no more than three weeks with our agents. Altomare is the last step from activation of our large plans."
"Understood sir. We'll start getting rid of the street rats as soon as possible. None can stand against FUZE. Ephesus out." The figure presses a button on the side of its wrist-radio, and hears a beep confirming that its off. "Nihex better do his job this time, I'm tired of bailing his ass out." it mutters to itself.
With that the large hooded figure slips out of the alley and disappers into Altomare's crowds.
"Oh my god," Kara mutters while processing the story. She as well as Ray and Josh moved back into the tree, Kara sitting on a branch beside her husband-to-be while Josh hung out on a branch just above them.
"Yeah, I had the same reaction."
"This should probably go into the Lance files." Kara says, turning to Ray.
"She works for Lance too?" Josh asks.
"You told them?"
"Yeah. They're trustworthy enough," Ray gives the others a look that said 'if you tell anyone, your head is mine, family or not'.
"Oh, okay." Kara replies, trusting Ray on this one; but she still looks a little concerned.
"Hey, how long have we been sitting here?" Bianca asks, swinging her legs again.
"Awhile...I'm getting hungry..." Lucia also looked like she was getting tired of floating higher than normal.
"Let's grab something to eat," Kara says, looking at Ray while her tail starts wagging.
"Alright. Can you guys find a good restaurant? Kara and I have to do some business before we do anything else here in Altomare." Ray asks.
"What kind of-"
"Okay!! We'll be on our way!" Josh interrupts before flying over to and catching Bianca as she jumps off the branch, then turns invisible while pulling Lucia away with him. Kara and Ray laugh at their niece's naiveity and curiousity before Kara jumps on her fiance's back while he floats down.
"So Josh knows abouts the Pidgeots and Beedrills I'm guessing?" Kara jokes.
"So does Bianca from the looks of it," Ray adds, "Hey, we need to find a place to stay since we'll be here awhile...an apartment or something."
"Why not Lorenzo's?"
"I don't want to give the poor man any trouble. Besides...we want some privacy, right?" Ray asks before inverting himself, causing Kara to yelp and lose her grip. Ray snickers while hugging her from behind, the Lucario now below the Latios.
"Don't do that!" Kara laughs as they land on the ground, still in the same position. The Lucario sighs as Ray lets go and rolls over to face her. "I'm so happy. I guess we can get married and have our honeymoon here," she adds while closing her eyes, admiring that regal gold glow Ray's aura is.
"That would be the best." Ray comments as she carresses the side of his head with a paw. "I love this place..." He trails off while resting his clawed hands to Kara's waist while their lips touch.
"Alright, I can give you a place for 9,000 poke a month. It's a very good deal since I'm feeling generous today." Grumbles a man with crossed arms and a smoldering cigarette in his mouth, speaking to an 18-year-old boy with a golden case and a Lucario. "That Lucario's not gonna cause any trouble is it?" He asks, watching the pokemon out of the corner of his eye.
"The deal sounds good to me. And don't worry; my Lucario won't do anything harmful." Ray says. The man nods before walking away down four flights of stairs.
"I happen to be a she, thank you very much." Kara comments, staying calm but still glaring daggars after the landlord. "Isn't that obvious?"
Ray chuckles while putting the key in the lock. "At least we've got an apratment now and..." Ray opens the door to find the apartment stark empty, "...its got no furniture."
That was understatement...apart from the carpet, and the tiles, stove, and fridge in the kitchen this place is empty. No furniture, no decorations, nothing...just basic white walls and either dark-brown carpet or white tiles.
"Oh boy..." Ray mutters while scratching the back of his head. Kara shuts the door behind as she walks in.
"It's not that bad...pretty roomy at least."
That it was. The apartment is a five-room deluxe suite with a large space (most likely the living room to-be) that has a large, open, buffet-like window to the kitchen on the right. The kitchen is relatively small and accessable from a doorway into a hallway which connects to the living room about midway down its length. Looking down the hall, a bathroom could be seen at the end as well as two doors on the side opposite the kitchen's, which most likely opened to bedrooms. Last but not least are the pair of sliding-glass-doors across from them that open onto a balcony with a breathtaking view of the ocean; part of the apartment's cost.
"We need to get a lot of stuff..." Ray remarks while sweatdropping.
"Don't worry about it," Kara says in a supportive voice. Being a stealthy pokemon, she's able to slip behind Ray and snake her arms through his to hug him around the waist. Her grip tightens to pull Ray as close as possible.
"Tell me there's at least a bed..." Kara giggles while doing her purr-hum in Ray's ear. Smiling to himself, Ray shifts into his pokemon form and floats up into the air, Kara now lying on his back; her cheek nestled into his soft feathery down. They float down the hall and check both rooms, but find them empty like the rest of the place. Both sigh in defeat.
"We'll deal with it after dinner. Can you find them?" Kara slips off Ray's back (to avoid blinding herself with his intense gold glow), moves back to the living room and opens her aura-sight while looking out the glass doors.
After just a few seconds she opens her eyes while turning to Ray. "They're pretty close, at what looks like an Italian restaurant. Decent enough place," she answers, smiling.
"I do love Italian food..." Ray dreamily mutters, "Lets go! I'm getting hungry!"
Kara only sighs while opening the large glass doors before leaping off the balcony as Ray flies out of the apartment, doing a barrel roll in the process. He quickly executes a spilt-S and catches Kara on his back before activating his camouflage. The both free fall before Ray takes off again, avoiding a crash into some trees at the entrance to five-star apartment building.
"To the restaurant!"
DB: Well, not a bad way to introduce everybody to each other.
CJ: Yup, of course, there are still questions like "Who are Ephesus and Nihex?" that our readers are probably asking.
DB: Yea, but if they want to find out, they'll have to wait for more chapters!
CJ: And as always, don't forget to review!
Both: 'Till next time!