I was fully intended to spend an hour writing on Monday night no matter what. And then I discovered a "what" to my "no matter". Jirulius, one of my favorite authors, has a Discord now, for his story. I went on there, and unfortunately they couldn't hear me. I'll need to have my dad help with that.

This chapter does go into some dark themes, so reader discretion is advised.

Also, I have continued beta reading. I won't do anything too long, but if you have something you want to send me, by all means do it.

Answer: Thank you, HoppsHungerfan, for ideas for questions. Will I do anything so personal as that, though?

Question: I guess...are you in school right now? If so, what is your favorite subject? And are you very athletic in gym class?

Responses to reviewers:

Cosmicsafe74: He already did turn into a Pokémon.

DabsAllOvar (guest): Let's try to get this train into the station! Really, I found that analogy really cool. Hope you continue to stick around, because I love all the reviews I can get.

HoppsHungerfan: I'm interested that you enjoy the domestic scenes. To a certain degree, I do as well, but I know that a large majority probably prefers action.

Insomniac98338: Sorry if that was a bad idea for Kieran.

SAMUEL'S POV

I was shocked to find that Lucas had turned into a Zoroark. Maybe shocked was the wrong word; after all, I was expecting it, since I knew what the necklace could do. Even so, you could say I was shocked, but not surprised, at what the necklace had done.

You would have figured that Lucas would have turned into a Lucario rather than a Zoroark, but apparently the necklace had a mind of its own. If so, that made it that much more dangerous.

After eating dinner next to the newly-transformed Zoroark, in what felt like the seats of shame (since we were the two Pokémon in the group), Lucas and I headed up to his room. Looking at the floor, I was very grateful that the sleeping bag had finally arrived from Amazon, because if it had not we would have a Lucario and a Zoroark sleeping in the same bed, a bed only designed for one human being.

"That's nice" I said, noting that we finally had the sleeping bag. Lucas also smiled, which revealed his new, pointy teeth. Somehow, he had still been able to eat steak for dinner, even though his teeth looked like they might have a hard time chewing it.

"Yeah" he replied. "I think that I should do some homework- or would they have sent it to the hospital? I don't know".

"What did they ask you to do?" I asked him.

Lucas gritted his teeth. "I have a three-page essay, double spaced, on the DNA of a Zoroark. It's due on Friday, assuming that I can even come to school after this".

"You've got to" I said. "You don't want to attract too much attention by skipping school. During my first few days as a Lucario, I made the same mistake".

"Wait...first few days?" he asked me. "I thought you were always a Lucario".

"I wasn't" I replied. "In fact, I only became one about a month ago. I was a human before, same as you".

Lucas looked as though he was about to pass out. "But...how...?"

"I think it might have something to do with this necklace, Lucas. I discovered it on the road, and I had soon turned into a Lucario. If this was what initiated your transformation into a Zoroark...".

The Zoroark boy looked like he was still having a hard time believing me. After all, it was a pretty extraordinary claim, and I had nothing to back it up. It was like trying to claim that God did or didn't exist; you couldn't prove it either way, so if you claimed absolute knowledge, you would be left with a burden of proof you couldn't possibly meet.

"I guess it's possible" Lucas said. "Still, though...it sucks that I won't be able to wear pajamas tonight".

"Why did you still wear PJs?" I asked him. "Surely you'd have stopped by...how old are you, exactly?"

"Seventeen" he replied. "And, to answer your question, I've always liked to. I find it more modest, you know? What if someone comes in the middle of the night?"

"Fair enough" I said. "Although, by ten, I was just wearing underwear to sleep. Maybe you should, too. You'd be a lot less hot at night".

"Well, now I'm sleeping in the nude, whether I like it or not. Pretty much nothing's going to fit me anymore" Lucas said with a sigh. "So...want to play some chess?"

We ended up pulling out Lucas's game of Super Mario Chess, which has coins and shells for pawns, Yoshis and Birdos for knights, Peach, Daisy, and Magikoopas for bishops, Toads and Goombas for rooks, Luigi and Bowser Jr. for queens, and Mario and Bowser for kings. Since my host was more familiar with this version of the game than me, he had a natural advantage. Even so, I was having a very good time with him.

Our friendship had certainly evolved, now that we both had something in common besides living under the same roof. Both of us had been normal human teenagers, only to come across a necklace with a Zoroark head on it and turn into a Pokémon. That wasn't something that happened to most people, and so we shared that bond almost instantly.

Later, when I got into my sleeping bag, I was desperately hoping that my telling Lucas about my past would not result in another flashback. Flashbacks...how much I hated them, and yet they had also been increasing in frequency. What a frustration.

Sure enough, as soon as I fell asleep, I began having a vision of my past.

I walk along the avenue...this is after I'm a Lucario. Once I'm on a street near where the London family lives, I see a knife on the ground.

Is this worth it? Yeah, my life has really been sucking lately, but surely ending my life would cause there to be a lot of stories on the news...the boy turned into a Lucario, set to end his life. Yeah, that's what it would be of.

It wasn't as though I had nothing to live for. Quite the opposite...I had nothing to die for. And yet, this made all the difference. Much like Veronika in Veronika Decides To Die by Paulo Coelho, my life seemed to be without purpose. I was just running away, trying to live on what I could find out of trash cans. It was tough, being a human turned into a Lucario and living alone.

No, I wasn't really living. I was just going through the motions, trying to stay one step ahead of the cameras. Looking back on it, I'm surprised that Lucas London hadn't heard about me before. Probably he didn't follow the news too closely, or else he would have been far more aware of what was going on.

I pick up the knife. A nice, three-inch blade, not serrated. Perfect for chopping vegetables...but would it be as good at chopping through flesh?

Let's find out.

I bolted awake, right after reliving what had been my suicide attempt. That was how I had been stabbed. I'd stabbed myself, wanting to make my life over. It was just too complicated, too painful to go on living.

And yet I still had. Trying not to cry, I looked around, noticing that it was morning. Wednesday morning.

I knew that Lucas was probably still going to be attending school today, even if he was a Pokémon now. Even if it made things more difficult, he did seem like a diligent student. As much as I felt like I wanted to tell him about my flashback, I knew that I wasn't going to be able to. Not with him going to school.

Evidently, Lucas had already gotten up. I supposed that I had slept pretty late, which wasn't like me. Normally, I was up with the roosters, but not today.

I decided to head straight downstairs. I wanted to know exactly what was going on with Lucas and his family. In a flashback, I seemed to remember something that had run through my mind...what was it...?

Yes.

I remembered that there was a place Lucas could go, a place where the young man might find answers. It was a preposterous suggestion, to be sure, but I really thought that it would be appreciated. Yes, this was what I figured would be a good idea.

Once I got downstairs, the Londons were all eating their scrambled eggs and toast. Three of them were all staring at the fourth, and I'm sure you can guess who the fourth person was.

"Excuse me" I said.

"Oh, hello, Samuel, you're up" Mr. London said. "Thanks for joining us for breakfast".

I tried to read on Mr. London's aura. He seemed to care about me more than he did Lucas...why did they favor their daughter over their son so much? This made no sense. And they favored Michelle over me, that much I could tell.

The truth was, however, none of this mattered. I knew that I was just thinking about this in order to steel myself, no pun intended, for what I was about to say.

"I have an idea" I said daringly.

"What is that?" Mrs. London asked me.

"Yeah" Lucas said. "I'm all for ideas".

I chose to jump right in, not caring about the possible consequences at the moment. "I think that there is a place you guys should take Lucas" I said.

"Where is that?" Mr. London asked, taking a bite out of his toast.

"There is a Zoroark colony in Quebec" I replied. I knew it was true as I was saying this. It was as if the necklace had imparted this knowledge into my brain, for me to take out and peruse at my leisure, much like a book. "It's about a six-hour drive north of here. Lucas could go there for a weekend, learn how to use his illusions. I have a feeling that he'll need them".

"Probably true" Lucas the Zoroark said. "Really, you guys should let me go. Can anyone here drive me up to Canada?"

"I can" I replied. It was true; I had gotten my license before I had transformed, and I knew the precise location, the exact coordinates. I could make this work.

"Samuel, are you sure you're up to it?" Lucas's father asked me. "It's a long drive for someone who's just recovering from a stab wound".

I knew that I could do it. We were going to go up to Canada, and there Lucas would learn how to use his illusions properly. I figured that this was a good idea. And Lucas clearly did as well, because, as he was leaving the house to go to school, I saw him wink happily at me.

LUCAS'S POV

It was going to be tough adjusting to life as a Zoroark.

For one, my wardrobe. Normally, my outfit was a T-shirt, long gym pants, boxers, and socks that might or might not match. However, once you had turned into a Zoroark, all sense of normalcy was out the window. Lucario like Samuel could wear clothes if they really wanted to, but I couldn't, simply because they wouldn't fit on me.

Everything private, however, was covered by the mass of black fur I was covered in, so I was unlikely to be arrested for indecent exposure. In addition, I could run pretty fast in this form. And, if I did go up to Quebec this weekend and learn how to wield the powers of illusion, I might even be able to turn into my old form. Then, I'd be able to wear clothes.

My backpack was also slightly difficult to carry. Had I lived in a more densely populated area, I would have been weaving in and out of traffic like crazy, and my backpack would bonk a lot of people, on account of the fact that I had to tie it to the back of my giant red ponytail.

So I was walking down the sidewalk, with an orange backpack at the end of the ponytail. If I saw Zach, would that be enough for him to recognize me? Or would he have a hard time making the connection that I was the Zoroark?

Zach was in the schoolyard, right next to the American flag. He was helping to raise it, which was one thing that students took it in turns to do.

"What's going on?" I asked him.

He turned around, looking shocked. "Is that you? Lucas?"

I held out one of my claws and pointed it upward like a thumbs-up sign. "That's me. I don't know why I turned into a Zoroark, but how much work did I miss out on?"

Zach smiled. "Not that much. All of us were worried when we heard that you were going to the hospital".

"It was pretty funny when they tried to do an EKG, actually" I said. "Really, I would have laughed if not for what was going on with my body. I didn't know what it was, and I still don't".

I could tell that there were people laughing at me, while some others were giving me a wide berth. I wasn't too surprised about this, because it was pretty rare for humans to turn into Pokémon. No doubt some of these pictures were already on Facebook accounts, of a Zoroark carrying a school backpack on its ponytail. That was quite laughable.

As it turned out, there were going to be more problems for me besides how I was perceived by the other students.

For one, a lot of us, as humans, tend to take for granted that we live in a world built for humans, not Pokémon. The world is Pokémon-friendly, but not the usual high schools that you have, that humans go to.

The first class, Writing, was pretty hard. The QWERTY keyboard is designed for someone with five fingers on each hand, and I can type upwards of 60 words per minute. That is, when I'm not limited to three claws per hand.

When you're a Zoroark, it's a lot harder to write essays, or whatever else you might be working on. It's just not very easy to do. And, while I tried to hunch myself over my MacBook Air as low as possible, in order to hide my poor work from everyone else, I was sure that there were plenty of people staring and laughing at my struggles. Really, why wouldn't they be?

In Science class, my saving grace was the fact that we weren't doing any labs. All I had to do was awkwardly thumb through the textbook, while awkwardly jotting down notes for the test we were going to have on Friday, which was a half day due to parent-teacher conferences. It was pretty much the same with Math and History, both of which were very much verbal classes, except when they involved jotting down notes and answers to questions.

When it was time for lunch, I sat apart from the others. It wasn't like it wasn't cool to be a Zoroark, it was just that nobody else was likely to want to sit with me. If you were sitting next to the freak who had managed to turn into a Zoroark in broad daylight, in front of a bunch of paramedics, that was probably social suicide. I wouldn't be the one to ask about this, but it's probably safe to assume that this is the case.

It was a relief when the next period began, even if fifth period was gym class, something I wasn't looking forward to. Since I was wearing what amounted to a gigantic, actual fursuit, I hoped I wouldn't get overheated. It was getting to be a pretty hot day out, in the seventies or eighties, and my fur was going to make me burn alive. Hopefully, this wasn't going to be too hard.

When Mr. Falco announced what we were going to do, which was playing basketball, I became fairly excited, as well as anxious. How was I going to fare in this new form?

In my human form, I was tall, but I wasn't particularly muscular. I was also not very fast, and I wasn't great at scoring. It was time to see, however, what it would be like as a Zoroark.

I was instructed to put on a red pinnie, along with everyone else on the red team. Of course, I couldn't wear it like a shirt, so I just hung it from my ponytail so that people could see which team I was a member of. Let's see how this goes, I thought. Let's see how this goes.

I was pretty much terrible at basketball as a Zoroark. I was normally decent at dribbling the ball, but my three claws per hand didn't cut it. Really, it was embarrassing, but there was nothing I could really do about it. As much as people might have screamed, "Lucas, get in shape!", the fact was that this wouldn't cut it, either. The fact of the matter was, I had had no control over my transformation.

And it pissed me off.

MICHELLE'S POV

Once school was over, I was very glad to just be able to go to Olivia's house the way I usually did. There were so many crazy things going on lately that it felt great to be doing something ordinary, to have a sense of normalcy in my life.

Over the course of the school day, I had gotten quite a few stares thrown my way. This wasn't really a surprise, considering the fact that my brother's transformation had been all over the news. In the paper, it had been on the very headline. That's one thing that should tell you when something is big news.

I sat down next to my best friend, and we continued watching Friendship Is Magic. Sometimes, it was easy for me to think that friendship could be magic. Olivia didn't seem to be judging me for having a shape-shifting brother...that had to count for something, right?

In any case, we'd set up the beanbag chairs just the way we liked it, and we were sipping on root beer and eating popcorn as we saw Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack sing a parody of "We Built This City". It was pretty much the same as the song by Jefferson Starship, except that instead of "Marconi", every use of the inventor of the radio was sung as "My pony".

My pony plays the mamba, let's look at the rodeo! Something like that.

Eventually, Olivia had to use the bathroom. Probably because she was drinking so much root beer. I swear, that girl must have drunk a full two-liter bottle of it. It wouldn't have surprised me, but, being the good friend I was, I paused the show until she came back. I wasn't the die-hard fan that she was, but I appreciated it just the same. There was just something about watching colorful equestrians running around, just hanging out. Really, I would have tried to introduce Lucas to it, but I knew he wouldn't have appreciated that.

Once Olivia came back, she asked me a question. "What did happen to your brother?"

I couldn't really answer that question. The truth was, I didn't know. I supposed that he had just turned into a Zoroark out of the blue, because that was what all of the evidence pointed towards. And I really didn't want to lose any friends over this.

"I guess he just...transformed. It happened about a week after the first day of school. He saw a Lucario that had gotten stabbed on the road, and he went with it to the hospital. Once he was there, it seems that he passed out for whatever reason".

"Your brother fainted?" she asked me.

"Yes. Fainted. Passed out. Swooned. You get the point. He's not a wuss, though. It was just because of...something".

Even though I liked Olivia a lot, that didn't mean I was willing to trust her with something like this. It could be argued that this would make me not really her friend, but I digress.

"I feel bad for you" she said. "After all, you have to work with all of that social stigma, with a brother who turned into a Zoroark. How do you deal with that?"

I smiled sadly. "Sometimes, that's just what you have to do".

LUCAS'S POV

The week felt interminable. For the most part, it was fairly easy to participate in my classes. Once I had gotten used to them, that was all that was necessary. I was still not great at basketball, or anything else in gym class, though. I'd need to work on that.

It was also kind of awkward walking around without any clothes on. Of course, all of my important partswere covered, but it was still weird. If you've ever had a dream where you were at school only in your underwear, imagine it being like that for me, only in real life. And I wasn't even wearing any boxers. It was just me. Of course, it wasn't my nudity that was the thing most people paid attention to.

For all of the bad things, however, I also had a positive reason to be looking forward to the weekend. Samuel and I were going to be driving up to the Zoroark sanctuary in Quebec, a distance that was not inconsiderable, and I was glad that school got out early.

After running home as fast as my furry legs could carry me, I found Samuel in the kitchen, eating from a bag of Cape Cod Potato Chips.

"You like those, don't you?" I asked him.

He nodded. "We should probably leave right after lunch" he said. "We've got a long way to drive. We'll need to make sure that we have our passports".

"It won't be a problem" I said. "Mom put them in my backpack. She really can be caring, when she wants to be".

Samuel didn't have a reply to that. Eventually, he put the potato chips away. "I'm going to have to stop eating these. I'm just glad they're not chocolate".

I'd seen Lucario And The Mystery Of Mew, and I knew what Samuel was talking about. According to that movie, Lucario were absolute chocolate addicts. Personally, I'd never really been a fan of chocolate, myself, but I could see why other people liked the rich flavor.

After my parents ate lunch with us, my mother made sure that we knew all of the typical rules of the road, so that we'd be as safe as possible. She also gave us each fifty dollars, just in case we needed it.

"Be safe, guys" my mother said. "I don't have too good of a feeling about this, so be careful as hell. You got that?"

Both of us nodded.

"Have a nice time north of the border".

I felt like making this a little longer at first, but I realized that this was a good line to end the chapter with. I'm putting this out before I go in for the EKG. I'll tell you guys the results at the top of the next chapter!

Sincerely,

SnowLucario.