Fanfiction Zoroark's Pendant, Chapter 3: Pokémon Revival

Here we go! Thanks to everyone who reviewed. Here are my responses to you guys. By the way, the title of this chapter comes from a Pokémon fanfiction that has gotten popular.

Cosmicsafe74: Glad you're enjoying it! Here's another chapter for you.

DisastrousDwarf: You'll have to see!

Hoppshungerfan: You'll have to wait and see

Rocker on (guest): I don't know where to begin, since you don't have a profile. I'm not the only person who has asked you to get one over the last few years. Suffice it to say that I'm glad you reviewed and, should you PM me as a user (there's a waiting period after you create an account), I'll be more than willing to address each point individually.

Answer: I live in the United States, in the region known as New England. The weather here is pretty nice most of the time, and I do carry a slight accent. Not that major, but it's there.

Question: If you could be any Pokémon for a day, which would it be?

If you have any character ideas, or Pokémon you want to see in the story, just PM me with your suggestion (including age, gender, name, and Pokémon team) and I will incorporate it in any way I can. With that in mind, let's get this thing going!

SAMUEL'S POV

The first thing I registered was pain. Pain in a way that would have you on your knees, praying for Arceus to just strike you down already so that you would be able to no longer feel such pain. Pain that brought to mind images from torture scenes in a Harry Potter book or movie.

Then, I was able to open my eyes. There was still quite a bit of pain, but my aura had been able to sense where I was. This is thanks to the fact that I am a Lucario, meaning that I can see a short distance around myself through using the aura that is in all living things, even with my eyes closed.

I was able to register that I was in a hospital bed, lying on top of the blankets. There was a slight itch on my chest due to the heart monitor that was connected to me, as well as several IVs. I wasn't comfortable by any means, but everything did have somewhat of a dreamy quality due to the sheer amount of pain medication coursing through my veins. This made my eyes, as well as my aura sensing organs, feel extremely heavy.

My waking triggered the heart monitor to increase, even though I had been able to conclude that there was no imminent danger to me. I was just in a hospital, hoping for the doctors there to use their technology to help mend me.

"Good evening, Samuel. I see that you are awake".

I couldn't talk. For one, it hurt to open my mouth. Also, there was the fact that my stomach hurt everywhere. Not the type that came from eating too much, or from being sick. No, this was something else entirely...yes, I remembered now.

I'd been stabbed. Yes, that was what had happened.

"I am awake" I said using aura. "What is it you want to tell me?"

"It is that you were seriously injured. You were stabbed, with a knife, in the stomach, which we had to suture back up. We barely managed to keep you from going into cardiac arrest".

"Well, it's good that you were able to avoid that. I rather like this thing that we call life".

The doctor chuckled slightly. "In any case, the surgery was successful, although you did require three blood transfusions. You are expected to survive, although the medical costs are quite high. Do you have insurance? Does your trainer?"

That's the thing...I don't have a trainer. As far as I can remember, I've never been a Pokémon who was owned by a human being. It just wasn't working that way, and I never wanted it to.

Of course, if I lied and said that I did have health insurance, they'd have a way of knowing that I was not telling the truth. And then there were going to be consequences, ones that would be extremely far-reaching. The only answer that would not create a huge mess would be to tell the truth, admit that I was uninsured, and deal with the costs.

"I do not" I said.

"Very well" the doctor said. "We're obligated to treat you, but the bill is going to be $62,442. You'd have to be adopted by someone else. Do you have a trainer at all?"

"No" I admitted.

"Very well. I think that you could join the family who brought you in here, then. They are the Londons, correct?"

"I don't know. I was unconscious, you know that".

"Well, we're going to have the Londons adopt you. The paperwork will no doubt be done quite quickly, because Caleb and Denise have always wanted to have a pet Lucario. I think that you will find a good home there".

The doctor nodded as he said that last sentence, and he left to go over to his desk, which was located within the ICU. I didn't know precisely how sanitary that was, but I was willing to deal with it. After all, part of being a Fighting type is that your body can get over injuries and infections faster. It's because of the aura in your system. And I was no normal Lucario, after all.

As soon as the doctor had left, I began to feel very sleepy. Perhaps they had upped the dosage of my pain medication, or maybe I was just tired from everything I had been through today.

In any case, I soon fell asleep.

~~~Flashback (3 weeks ago)~~~

Samuel walked along the avenue. He was still an ordinary guy back then, an ordinary teenager who was going into his junior year of high school. The pine trees...the smell of the mountain air...yes, he loved this part of the country.

One day, he was on the bus ride home from school when it happened. He went to a private school, so Lucas London had never heard of him. He didn't go to school with the Londons, not at all.

He'd been walking along the street when he noticed the necklace. It looked, on paper, like it was nothing extraordinary. Really, it could have been anything someone had left on the road. If anything, it looked like an enormous retainer; not something too crazy. Granted, that would have been crazy, but the point was that it looked like something that one might encounter on a daily basis.

However, it was clearly a necklace. The front of the necklace contained the head of a Zoroark on it, and its eyes looked extremely intensely at Samuel...

I woke up in the middle of the night. I had been told not to move too much when I woke up, so as not to disturb my IVs. They were, I was told, necessary for me to recover. I wasn't going to protest them if that was the case, so the doctors didn't really have to worry about that. In fact, I was willing to be a model patient, if only those nightmares would leave me alone.

The thing was, however, that they weren't just dreams. These were far more vivid than those, and I knew why. I knew what my dreams were of; that was the scary part.

I was having flashbacks to my past.

LUCAS'S POV

The next morning, my family was gathered around the breakfast table. Yes, my family is one of the rare ones that actually eats every meal together. It's not something that one would typically expect, but this was just the way things worked. Personally, I normally didn't mind this.

Michelle was putting some bacon on her toast as I stuck to the fruit salad. Even though I'm not religious, I don't eat bacon. I don't know why this is, I've just never really liked pork. It wasn't my thing.

Suddenly, I felt a severe pain in my legs. I'd had growing pains before, but this was something else. It felt like my leg was shaking, and my very bones were on fire. (If you stretch out your leg and keep on pushing, you can simulate this feeling to a certain degree, something I would not recommend). It felt as though my legs were trying to grow more, and I visibly grimaced.

"Uh...Lucas...are you okay?" Michelle asked me.

I nodded, trying not to betray my anguish. Even my parents seemed worried about me. It was a similar look to what the doctors had given me when I'd passed out in front of them.

"Yeah...just...might have pulled a muscle".

"That kind of sucks" my younger sister said.

I also felt hungrier than usual, which was ironic. Usually severe pain could cause nausea, but this wasn't going to be like that, I could tell that much. This was something very, very different.

My stomach rumbled. However, I didn't want to pig out in front of everyone else. I ate a lot, but not that much. My parents would definitely think that something was up if I did.

"Well, I think we should be heading to school in just a few minutes" Michelle said.

"Just one thing" my father replied.

We both sat back down at the table. "What is it?" I asked.

"You know the Lucario you rode with to the hospital yesterday, Lucas?" my mother asked me.

"Yeah? What about him?" I said.

"He doesn't have health insurance, so the doctors were wondering if you wanted to adopt him...".

"Mom, it's all I can do to take care of myself, now you want me to take care of a-".

"-and I already said yes and signed the paperwork. As soon as Samuel Cranmore is released from the hospital, we are going to take him in, and he is going to sleep in your room, on an air mattress. Like I said, it has all already been figured out".

I was going to argue more with my mom, but it was pointless. When Denise London is dead set on something, you'd better believe that she's dead set on it. There's no changing her mind.

However, I was still thinking about the implications of having a Lucario in the home. Would he eat the same things we ate, or would it have to eat Pokémon food? Would it be aggressive, or more passive? There was no way to tell, except that I was about to find out, whether I liked it or not.

It was a relief to be heading to school, even though I didn't really like school. I was a social outcast, if the incident with the egg has demonstrated anything. You could call me the class nerd, but that wouldn't really be accurate. I wasn't the one person people always came to for help on a math problem, for instance.

By the time my sister and I had gotten to school, I was already thinking about what was going to go on. I was going to have to explain to somebody why I kept having these pains in my legs, because they wouldn't go away. Twice on the way there I had had to stop due to the agony. I thought about seeing the school nurse, but she'd just refer me to go see a doctor. I didn't want to have to be anywhere near Samuel Cranmore until we actually got to the point where we would be keeping him as a family pet.

"Hey, Zach! How's it going?" I called to my friend.

Zach's forest green eyes looked back at me. If anything, he was even more of an outcast than I was. He still had braces, which made him look far more nerdy than me. In addition, he wore glasses, which only added to the target on his back.

"Great, Lucas. I've been reading Curse Of The Lucario lately. It's a great story, isn't it?"

"Yeah. I'm glad that it's been bound. I won't tell you how it ends, but the author's definitely a millionaire by now".

Curse Of A Lucario, a novel about a high school student transforming into a Lucario in the middle of science class, was written in 201V. It was published by Disney-Hyperion, and it instantly sold millions of copies. Well, not instantly, but you get the drift. The author, an anonymous young man from the South, was no doubt filthy rich by now, three years after it had been published. He'd even written a sequel, which was making just as much money. Both of us were very big fans of his work.

"How else is it going, Lucas? I saw you on the street earlier yesterday, you looked pretty shocked".

I didn't know what he was talking about at first, until I remembered that there had been the Lucario who had been lying on the road, bleeding. "What about it?"

"What happened, Lucas London? I know that there was clearly something bothering you".

I saw no reason to lie to my best friend. "I saw a Lucario on the road. It had been stabbed and was bleeding badly. I rode with it in the ambulance to the hospital. Is that enough?"

"Yes, it is" Zach said. "It's quite a tale, but I'll believe it. I trust you".

"It's not just that, though. My legs are really hurting, and I don't know what's going on with that".

"Probably nothing. At our age, we get growing pains. I wouldn't be worried".

As I said before, I knew what growing pains felt like, having experienced them before. This was clearly nothing like that. Of course, I didn't have the guts to tell him that. This was just part of me. I was a relatively shy person, not least because of having three names that all started with the same letter.

This was how it went for the rest of the week, in fact. School had started on a Tuesday, and Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday mainly passed without incident. I continued to experience the phantom pains in my legs, as well as the increase in appetite. I wasn't sure what either of those meant, but it might have had something to do with that necklace...

No. That was conspiracy-theory talk. I couldn't chalk it all up to the necklace. That most likely had had nothing to do to it, it wasn't anything I should be concerned about. I had just been hungry or dehydrated. Maybe it was my teen hormones. In any case, it wasn't that Zoroark necklace. Samuel Cranmore had just happened to have it on him, and it had surprised me or something.

And maybe the red highlights in my hair, which I had noticed on two different occasions besides the initial one...maybe those were just tricks of the light, too. There was no way that there was any supernatural power involved with the necklace...there was just no way. Over the next week, I tried to convince myself that this was true.

SAMUEL'S POV

From the moment I woke up in that hospital bed, hearing "Brony Style" by Rucka Rucka Ali playing on the hospital's radio, I knew that my recovery wasn't going to be fun, but it was something I would need to go through.

As I began with my physical therapy, at first with several IVs in at once, then with less and less of them, I was able to put my flashbacks out of my mind. Every night, I was feeling exhausted, but it was less and less so. I was starting to feel better for sure.

"You're going to get discharged tomorrow" the doctor in charge told me as he took the last intravenous line out of my arm. I was pretty glad that things were ending. It wasn't just the physical therapy I was doing in order to get back in shape, however. It was also the fact that I was sick of feeling like a human pincushion. At first, I'd had quite a few, but they had needed to add one more, I was told, because a pine cone had to be used to help block some of the blood from flowing. A fever had apparently set in, making this necessary.

I could now open my mouth more easily, so I said, "Okay. And I am going to be living with the Londons?"

"That is correct" the doctor said. "You are going to be staying in the bedroom of Lucas London, who is a seventeen-year-old high school student. You're going to have to figure out how to get along with him, because I'm afraid that this is a very different type of therapy than what I am trained to do".

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I mean", he said, "that this Lucas London person is not the most friendly towards the Lucario species. The way things are going, he's going to be a hard person to live with at times. You do understand that, don't you?"

"I am prepared to deal with this".

"Very well, then. In the morning, Denise London, Lucas's mother, is going to pick you up from the hospital and drive you home. Are you ready for this?"

I looked him directly in the eye. "I am".

The next morning, finally free of tubes but with more bandages than I could count, I walked into the waiting room. I was looking around for who looked like she might be a mother. Using my aura to try to sense these things, I was able to pick up on people's ages, and who was related to whom. Surely it wouldn't be difficult to find Denise London.

Eventually, a woman of average height, with slightly long hair, came over to where I was sitting. "Are you the Lucario that my son came with here? Samuel Cranmore?"

I nodded.

"You're coming with me. I'm Denise London".

She held out her hand, and I took it. Normally, I didn't like to hold the hand of a woman I didn't even know, but I could tell that this woman was going to do what she said she was.

Although, with my aura, I could detect a slight ulterior motive. I didn't think it was that big of a deal, but this was just something I was noticing. Hopefully, it didn't mean anything too important. If it did, then that would be a problem. Even though I had been released from the hospital, I was still pretty weak.

"So, what's Lucas like?" I asked Mrs. London.

"Well, he's my son, so you know I'm a little biased. I think that you'll get along greatly with him".

I could tell that there was at least part of the woman that didn't really believe what she was saying. I wasn't going to ask her about that, just because I would be risking so much, but I didn't think that this was going to end well.

"Anything else I need to know about him?" I decided to say.

"Well, he's been eating a lot lately. Like, more than usual. I don't know if he's having another insane growth spurt or what, but he's already tall enough, I should think. In any case, we're about to be at home. You'll get to meet my son soon enough".

I could tell that there was some kind of resentment towards me. Denise London might have looked like a sweet lady on the outside, but I could tell that she wasn't too genuine. I could only hope that she wouldn't be the person I would spend most of my time interacting with.

Finally, we got to a fairly large home. I got out of the car and walked in.

The front hall was gorgeous. There was even a fireplace there. If this was a rich family, that would be pretty great. Maybe my lot in life wasn't so terrible after all.

"It's Saturday, so Lucas is probably upstairs, playing video games" said Mrs. London. "He's in his bedroom".

I took note of that as I made my way upstairs. Even though I tired easily, it didn't really hurt to get into the room at the end of the hallway.

Sitting in a swivel chair was a teenaged boy. He was wearing slippers, black gym pants, a green fleece, and a fierce expression on his face as he fought to get ahead of online players on Mario Kart 8. He was very tall and had longish, fluffy brown hair with small bits of red. It wasn't red in terms of ginger, though; it was red red. It wasn't normal.

"What's up?" he asked.

There we go! The chapters are getting longer, this one was more respectable than the last two in terms of length. In addition, I am now at nearly 400 views!

I hope to see some reviews by the time I wake up in the morning. I'd like to know what I'm doing right, what I'm doing wrong, what I could have added, what I could have taken out.

SnowLucario is out of here.