Put this out earlier than initially planned, but I just couldn't wait any more. Today seemed to go on forever, since allergies have been kicking my ass and I haven't left the house.

First of all, I forgot to do this in the last chapter, but credit for Kieran goes to Insomniac98338. He's also created several characters for Talkingbirdguy's stories, which you must read. Hint, hint. Also, I have to go in for an EKG on Tuesday (the test where they put electrodes on you to check your heart). Despite this, it's not likely to interfere with my writing too much. What is is the large amount of schoolwork I will need to make up.

We've passed the all-important thousand-view mark. To think that we've gotten here after only nine days is truly astonishing. The story has also been added to two C2s, Transformation And Pokémorph Stories and OC Pokémon Fanfiction. For those of you who don't know, if you want to add my story to a community, the answer is always yes. More C2s means more views...I literally just came up with that.

Responses to reviewers:

DabsAllOvar (guest): Yeah, thanks for the review. Glad you appreciated my making sure nobody thought this would be a YAOI. And I'm not a furry in a sexual way.

Fern Lucario (guest): Man, so many guest reviewers! But I'm glad you're enjoying it!

Foxyjosh: I might have done some things differently now, looking back, but I'm doing things differently now. I'm no longer rewarding myself for pushing myself to get a chapter done, since they will only be released every four days at this point. Thanks for adding the story to the community!

Jake Lucario (guest): Thanks for favoriting me! Well, now the next chapter's here.

Rocker on (guest): I did create that forum. I don't know why it hasn't shown up yet, but I did do it. I'm hoping that you heed all of our advice. Just look up "SnowLucario forums" and you'll find it.

Answer: My favorite scene is in this chapter, I think.

Question: What question should I ask next?

KIERAN'S POV

At first, I'd lived a normal life in Concord, New Hampshire. It hadn't been a perfect life, but I had two loving parents and was an only child. Based on that, you could have been forgiven for thinking everything was fine and dandy with me.

It wasn't.

My parents were overprotective at times, including one occasion when I had felt a slight chest pain. I wasn't thinking that there was going to be too much of a problem; after all, when I ate a lot, I sometimes got a slight case of heartburn. I figured that this was just one of those usual cases, but my parents still insisted on taking me to the hospital to get checked out.

Even though I was twenty years old, and didn't see my parents as the bosses of me anymore, I did love them. And so, I went and did what they asked of me. I even allowed both of my parents to sit next to me in the room while they did an EKG test.

Once that was over, I figured that everything was going to be wonderful. There was going to be absolutely nothing wrong with my heart, and then I'd be able to go home and continue on with my life. Eventually, I would enroll in college (although, since I was a fairly late bloomer, I was going to wait another year or two to do that. And I was perfectly okay with this; I just wanted things to work out.

Imagine my surprise when the doctor came back in and said, "I have some bad news for you guys".

"What is it?" my mother asked.

"Kieran has a form of progressive heart failure. It's only going to get worse the longer it goes on, so his life expectancy is roughly about five more years".

I was shocked at that. I had figured that I was going to live to be 75 or 80 years old, just like the average American male. Instead, I'd be lucky to see 25 or 30. A full fifty years was going to be deducted from my lifespan, all because of something I had no control over.

On the way back home, I cursed Arceus for the lot in life he had given me. I didn't see how I deserved something like this. It wasn't like I'd ever done anything wrong!

Once we got back home, I sat down on my bed and seethed for a good hour, wasting one of my precious hours that I had remaining. It was so precious, every single moment was, when you knew approximately how many more you had left. I refused dinner that night, instead meditating on how things were going.

And, suddenly, I felt a heightened awareness of the world around me. For whatever reason, my parents both gave off an aura of some sort.

Wait...aura?

I looked down at my chest. There was no chest spike there, just a heart that would keep on pumping blood through my veins until it just couldn't do it anymore. As it turned out, there had to be some other explanation for what was going on.

Normally, only Lucario could use aura. I wasn't sure exactly why I was able to. I hadn't transformed or anything!

So, now you know at least part of my motive. Part of the reason why I was determined to discover the secret behind what was going on with Lucas London and Samuel Cranmore. However, you still need to know more of my story before you can be fully aware of why I did what I did.

After my diagnosis, I moved out of my home. I didn't want to cause my parents any more pain, and we didn't have any health insurance anyway, so that wasn't really a problem. Besides, I didn't have to take any medications; it was just something I had to take as a given that I had five years left to live, and I couldn't bear to see my parents going through with their lives, or at least trying to, with me at home. It would just be too emotionally painful for them, and for me.

I found a nice, small house in Coös county, a great place to live if you wanted to be alone. It wasn't too expensive, and my parents, after I had been able to persuade them that it was worth it, were willing to lend me some money in order to make the purchase. It wasn't the greatest house, but I learned to live with the sound of the leaks. It told me that this new life, even if it was to be a short one, would end up being worth it.

I never did tell my parents that I had the ability to see aura. It had never come up over the few occasions a year that I did call them on the phone, just so they could have confirmation that I was still alive. And, with my heart beating at a normal speed, you wouldn't have thought that there would be a problem with me; indeed, neither would I had the doctors not told me what was going on.

Once I was settled in my new home, I decided to do as many things as possible, in order to spread as much fear as possible. That was my new purpose in my life, just to spite Arceus for what had been done to me that I had no control over.

SAMUEL'S POV

I had lost. Badly.

The Vulpix's Ember, when charged up, would completely decimate a Steel type like myself. I hadn't been quick enough in dodging, and so I had gotten hit with the full blast of the flames. It wasn't a pleasant feeling, to say the least.

I could feel the knife wound getting reopened by the heat. I knew that this was going to be painful, and that it could cause serious problems for a Pokémon of my type. Fighting to stay conscious, I fell to my knees.

However, it was a losing battle. I blacked out after less than a minute.

I woke up lying on something soft and comfortable. Looking around, I could see that the room around me was white and relatively sterile. Much cleaner than the gym. And I could sense a kindly aura coming from the woman in the corner...was this...?

It seemed that I was in the infirmary. I could tell, because there were all sorts of bandages around the place, as well as other medical supplies. The nurse at the desk, a Chansey wearing the typical nurse's hat, noticing that I was awake, came over to greet me.

"I see you're up. How are you feeling?"

"Like I just got burned" I said, via aura since I was still in some serious pain.

"That's only to be expecting, considering that you were burned" the nurse said. "And, as a Steel type, I recommend that you not take part in any battles for at least three more days. After that, you'll be as good as new, considering that you are also a Fighting type. But, right now, I'm afraid that you must take this medicine".

Nurse Pinky (yes, according to her tag, that was her actual name), held out a spoonful of an orange liquid. It smelled absolutely vile, and I was sure that it didn't taste too different. I was really dreading taking it, but it did seem like I was going to have to.

"Open wide" Nurse Pinky said in her coyingly sweet voice. Man, that voice was annoying as hell.

She poured the liquid into my mouth, and I nearly spat it out. It was so disgusting! It tasted like glue, and was probably made out of the stuff now that I think about it. Even after it had passed my mouth, I was still fighting not to vomit it up. I was sure that she was going to give me a shot if I didn't manage to keep it down, and I was sick of shots. Even as a human, I hadn't liked needles, not that anyone really does. But now, so soon after being released from hospital, I liked them far less still.

"You really should head home and get some sleep" Nurse Pinky advised me. "You weren't even supposed to come here today, and rest assured that Lucas London is going to get a full reprimand for his actions. Really, bringing in a recovering Lucario without permission of the doctors...".

I just sat up and got out of there after that. Knowing that it wasn't too far back home, I decided to just walk it. It wasn't like I had any other choice; after all, that was the way I had come, so why would I do anything different now?

LUCAS'S POV

The rest of the day was all right. Even though I knew Samuel was okay, I couldn't stop being concerned about him. We had developed such a close friendship over the last few days that I was starting to miss him once he had left the gym to go to the nurse's office.

It wasn't just that he was a Steel type against a Fire type; he was only just recovering from being stabbed, so it would not be surprising if he had injured himself further and prevented himself from recovering as a result. I could have made him go home right after seeing him in the gym, but no. I had to agree to battle.

I got a few weird looks for the Lucario that had come to school with me, but nothing too bad. Really, I was just worried about getting through the day without having someone else throw an egg at me. As for what was going to be waiting for me at home, I could only guess. It might not be good, but I was going to have to be able to deal with whatever it turned out to be.

Once I had arrived back at home, I heard what sounded like a fairly heated argument taking place. I didn't know what it was about at first, but then I recognized the voices of Samuel and my mother. They seemed to be talking about...something involving me.

"Really, you shouldn't have joined Lucas at school!" my mother was saying. "For heaven's sake, Samuel, you're still recovering! You shouldn't have done battle against a Fire type!"

"I wanted to help my new master" the Lucario said. "Is that so wrong?"

"Yes, it is", my mother replied, "if you are doing that at the expense of your own well-being, Samuel Cranmore. You have to look after yourself, you know. We can't be the only ones doing that for you!"

After that, she seemed to notice me walking into the room. "Good afternoon, Lucas. We were just talking about the consequences of your actions".

"Wait, consequences?" I asked. Normally, that meant punishment. My mother was never abusive towards me, but she could dole out some strict punishments when she wanted to. Evidently, this was one of those times. Not surprising, considering that she was pretty angry with me for allowing Samuel to go to school with me.

It wasn't like it was my fault, either. I hadn't been the one who had snuck out of the house in order to participate in a battle, when I was still recovering from a stab wound. Really, that was a foolish thing to do.

"Yes, Lucas. I'm thinking that you and the Lucario here are going to be going to bed without supper. I believe that this is a just consequence for your actions".

I sighed. This wouldn't be the first time that I'd been sent to bed without dinner. I'd always been able to cope with this, even if I did feel pretty hungry the next morning.

Now, however, things might be different with my newfound massive appetite. We still didn't know exactly why I had such an appetite, but it was going to make it more difficult to endure this evening. I guessed that we would have to wait and see what happened.

Samuel and myself were sent up to my room, where we sat for a time, neither of us knowing what to say.

Eventually, the Lucario said, "I'm sorry I got you into so much trouble".

"Really, it's no problem" I said. "You couldn't have known. What is a problem is the physical trouble you might have gotten yourself into. Did that fire affect you too much?"

Samuel blushed visibly. "I'd rather not talk about it. Really, it hurts like a bitch".

My stomach was already growling. It was only about four in the afternoon. My family often didn't eat dinner until seven. That was three more hours, and even then we would not be able to eat anything.

"Want to play some chess?" Samuel asked.

I looked at him ruefully. "I really would, but I've got homework. Seriously, though, I would if I could, but I promise you I can't".

The Lucario smiled sadly. "Nah, it's cool. You do what you have to do, you know? That's how the world runs".

I supposed it was, as I got started on my math. Being an Aura Pokémon, Samuel could sense when I was having trouble on a problem, and so he was able to help me on a few things. I was going to ask where he had learned all of this math from, but I got the feeling that aura might have helped with this as well.

Even with this bonding experience, we were pretty miserable that night. There's just no way around saying it. Particularly when my family ordered pizza, and we could smell it from up here. Pizza was one of my favorite foods, so that was tough to deal with.

However, even with all of this, the most important event in my life, it could be argued, did not occur until the next day.

I woke up, feeling even hungrier than usual, not surprising since I'd missed dinner. It wasn't just hunger that I had to contend with, however.

Even as I ate breakfast, my stomach was still growling. My mother had made us pancakes, which is one of my favorite breakfast foods. They're very filling, too, so you would expect this to have at least somewhat made up for my punishment. But no.

Once it was time to head to school, I was feeling light-headed. I had my backpack on, but it felt like it weighed nothing. For whatever reason, I felt...untethered to the human world.

Wait...WHAT? What did that even mean? How could I be untethered to the human world if I was still alive?

I really wasn't sure what was going on. I just continued on my walk, but I soon felt another sensation. It wasn't a pleasant one.

My legs began to hurt much more than they had before. It was some of the most excruciating pain I've been in, and this is speaking as someone who has survived a broken arm, a broken leg, and a burst appendix. This was definitely up there, and yet the pain was somehow not so bad that it was impossible for me to walk.

By the time I managed to reach the school, a couple of minutes late for my first class, I was feeling even more light-headed than I had been before breakfast. It wasn't from lack of food, it was from the pain. I had to fight not to pass out with every step, and I could tell that some eyes were looking my way. It wasn't like I could help it, though. With no idea what had caused this, I could only try to act as normally as possible.

After that, there was such a pain in my chest area that I fell to my knees, my painful legs unable to support me anymore. I knelt on the ground, fighting not to throw up. It felt like my chest was trying to expand in two directions, but was still constrained in one. That was what the pain was like.

As luck would have it, I found myself right next to the nurse's office. Was that good luck or bad luck? I guessed I was about to find out.

Nurse Pinky, who was the Pokémon nurse, was not the one in this office. The nurse here was Nurse Valentina, and she was a sweet enough woman, I supposed. The fact remained, however, that I wasn't keen to see the nurse at this point in the day.

"What's going on, Lucas?" she asked me.

I could barely get out, "Chest...hurts".

"In what way?" the nurse said.

"It feels like it's trying to branch out in two different directions. Is that a sign of a heart attack or something?" I'm kind of a hypochondriac, so you can see why I would be worried about this.

"It could be. I'm not saying what it might or might not be".

I tried to stand up, but couldn't. The pain was far too great; it was like there was an elephant sitting on me, squeezing my chest in two different directions.

"That's it" the nurse said. "I'm calling 911. Let me just get my phone".

As I heard her describe my symptoms to the emergency responders, I knelt there on the floor with pain rivaling a heart attack, for sure. It seemed that the nurse was saying that I might be having one of those.

Oh, Arceus! I'm too young to die! I still have so much left to live for!

I felt a weird tingling in my toes. It wasn't the kind you get when your foot falls asleep; no, this was something entirely different. It felt as if my toes were turning into spikes, and it was very painful. I now had the pain in my chest as well as the pain in my feet.

I could tell that something had changed. I could no longer really feel my toes, and I was worried that I was going to pitch forward. That would be pretty embarrassing, but luckily there were not very many people in the hallways, since class had started six minutes ago (class started at 7:30, it was 7:36 now).

And then I felt more light-headed than ever before. It was just like last week, what things had been like right before I'd passed out. That necklace had really caused a lot of trouble; was this caused by the necklace? I had no way of knowing, but my vision was darkening, even as I could feel the same sensation that had happened to my toes happen to my fingers. It seemed that they were becoming spiky as well.

I heard the nurse scream, "No, Lucas! Stay with me!".

Then, nothing at all.

I woke up, and immediately I noticed where I was.

I seemed to be in an ambulance of some sort, not surprising considering that the nurse had called 911. I was lying on a stretcher, and there were paramedics all around me. One of them was holding a series of electrodes.

"Okay, he's awake!" one of them yelled. "Let's do an EKG! We need to know what's going on!"

As they were trying to put the heart monitor on me, my entire body felt itchy. Instinctively, I started scratching it, but scratching myself revealed that my fingernails were a lot...sharper than normal. Had they changed fundamentally?

"Don't scratch it. We'll have to shave it off for the exam!" another paramedic, this one a woman, yelled. "We must know if there are any problems with his heart!"

Wait...shave it off?

I looked around at my body.

My shirt had been cut from me, so I was able to see my bare chest. I'm not that hairy, but what few chest hairs I did have had been replaced by...

Black fur.

MICHELLE'S POV

After school, I learned that my brother had been taken to the hospital at the beginning of the day. They hadn't said why, just that it was important that we knew what it was. They didn't want to tell us over the phone for whatever reason.

My mother drove me to the hospital, as our father was still at work. The whole way, I was wondering what was going on with my brother. He had to have gotten pretty sick in order to be hospitalized, right? That wouldn't just happen at random, and yet it seemingly had.

These were the questions that plagued me as we arrived at the waiting room, a place that I was becoming somewhat familiar with. We signed in and waited for my brother to come out.

"Here's Lucas London" the nurse said. And then a being walked into the room.

But instead of my brother, there stood a Zoroark, with black fur and red hair that went all the way down his back in a ponytail. His blue eyes looked wild, like a lion that had just discovered some easy prey and was about to go in for the kill.

"Lucas?" I asked.

"Yes, it is me. Lucas Leonard London" said the Zoroark, who still had human vocal cords. It was a good thing, too, because neither of us knew the Pokémon language, which would have made things highly inconvenient in terms of communication.

"Well", said my mother, "we still need to pay some bills. I'll do that, and then we'll go home".

Lucas the Zoroark and I stood there for another few minutes while my mother got the tab settled for the hospital visit her son had been subjected to. Then, we went back to the car and drove home. Lucas got the passenger seat, since his hair took up so much space. The whole time, he looked pretty embarrassed at what had just happened to him, although he hadn't really done anything that we could see. It just looked like he'd just so happened to turn into a Zoroark, right in the middle of nowhere. None of us knew why.

Once we got home, it was quite an awkward dinner. Samuel sat right next to Lucas on one side of the table, while the three humans in the room sat on the other side. We all figured that it would only be a matter of time until this story ended up on the news. Surely the reporters were going to go absolutely insane over this, since it wasn't something that happened every day.

All I could think about was what it was going to be like for me now: I'd be the girl at school with the freak brother, the brother who had turned into a Zoroark with no explanation whatsoever.

All right! Longest chapter yet! I keep saying that.

In any case, if you'd like to PM me any OCs or Pokémon suggestions, I will field that request. Even if something goes wrong and I have to be admitted to the hospital (almost positive it won't happen), I will get it out.

I'll post the next chapter Wednesday afternoon. I always find that the evening, and overnight, is prime time on this site. I like waking up and checking my inbox. And, if you're enjoying it enough that you want to keep reading it, and you have an account, just follow the story and you will get an e-mail notification whenever I post a new chapter.

With that, SnowLucario out.