Obsession - Anthro Luxray TF

"Nice work, Luke!" Adam praised. A charred Staravia, still sparking every so often from Luke's Thunder Fang attack, was spread on the ground before the lithe, leonine power plant. Normally, Adam was averse to fighting, but the black-haired, sapphire-eyed trainer made an exception whenever someone insulted or underestimated Luke, a Luxray he had raised from a wounded Shinx. The regal beast vanished into his commander's PokéBall - his only PokéBall - after an approving "Lux!" Reluctantly, the novice trainer handed over 500 PokéDollars.

Adam would never admit that he was technically an unlicensed trainer; he had found that Shinx as a kid, and none of the Sinnoh starters caught his fancy. By the time he was ten, he had become well-situated to his Luxio, more so than the new trainers were with their flaming monkeys, grassy turtles, and icy penguins.

But it was when his Luxio grew into a magnificent Luxray that Adam began to get obsessed. The black and blue lion was elegant...fierce...powerful. It was everything any trainer could ask for in a Pokémon. OK, so it couldn't fly, breathe fire, or climb waterfalls- big deal. Luke was proud, strong, and would crush any opponent no matter what cool things they could do.

Adam was very proud of his Luxray. After Luke the Luxray had taken down a few newbie trainers (was there any other kind in Jubilife? Adam wondered) in the TV Station, he managed to save up for a Luxray-themed shirt he had seen in Veilstone Department Store's window. The hairdresser had looked at Adam like he was crazy when he claimed that he wanted his hair done like a Luxray's mane, but the money he had won from battles made the barber cease questioning. The same thing had happened when he asked for a tattoo of a prowling Luxray on his left shoulder; the tattoo artist thought that Adam looked a little young, but again, money solved that problem. The extent of his Luxray fixation seemed to have no limits; Adam had even filed his nails into clawlike points, and gotten dentures that made it look like he had the sharp eyeteeth of his leonine companion.

After the battle, Adam stopped by the Global Trade Station as usual. The place was brimming with screens; all it took was a selective search, and one could find any Pokémon imaginable. Adam quickly situated himself near a PC; he knew what he was looking for.

"Golduck, Lv9" he saw. An impossible find for an ill-trained male specimen. Adam already had a fine male Luxray; he didn't need an inferior one. "Regigigas...Darkrai...Spiritomb at Lv100..."

He was used to these kinds of bogus offers. They were all over the GTS. People would put up a Starly and ask for some extremely rare Pokémon that no one he knew had. He didn't know why he bothered searching, but the most likely reasons were boredom and lonliness.

Today, however, something caught his eye. Up for trade was a female Luxray with a complete absence of blue on her body. Instead, her strong limbs and bold face were as golden as dandelions. The star-shaped tuft on her tail, rather than being the usual yellow, was a brilliant shade of marigold. People thought that Adam was crazy, but he could tell a male from a female Luxray at a glance; this was definitely a female, and a fine one at that. She must have been raised from a cub for regal posture, grace, and attack strength- indisputably, a Luxray's best qualities.

Her price? Jirachi.

"What's a Jirachi?" Adam asked no one in particular. He had a feeling it was something rare, but new nothing beyond that.  

"It's a Pokémon that grants wishes," a female trainer next to him responded. "Or at least...from what I've been told. There's a space center in Hoenn that tracks astrological phenomena; I learned a bit about it when my family and I took a vacation there. Legend has it that Jirachi's star only falls once every 7 years."

Adam felt like his hopes were crushed. He could even sense Luke's sadness from inside his only PokéBall.

"So...I've got to go to Hoenn to even have a chance of seeing it?" a heartbroken Adam asked. The female trainer thought a while.

"Well," she paused, "you never know. Legendary Pokémon seem to go wherever they please."

Adam thought about that for a while. There was almost no reason that a trainer would keep an agenda of all the astronomical goings-on, and even then...once every seven years?! No ordinary trainer could afford such a price. The breeder definitely knew what his oddly-colored Luxray was worth!

"Is there any place around here that might know more about Jirachi?" Adam inquired. Surely, the Hoenn space center wasn't the only place that had knowledge, if not sightings, concerning this bizarre, rare Pokémon.

"Hmm, well..." the blond trainer typed a few things into the computer. On the screen appeared some pictures of a town that was so dented with craters that it looked more like the surface of a monotone SpongeBob than a habitable area.

"Veilstone City has had a lot of meteorite landings throughout its history. Maybe they would know something. Can't make any promises, though," the girl explained. She slowly, unhurriedly, got up to leave.

"Wait!" Adam yelled.

"Mm? Yes?" the girl stopped.

"What's your name?" Adam asked.

"Anna."

"Mine's Adam."

With a light giggle, she headed out the door of the GTS. Adam could only stare blankly at the glass door that she had exited through before it clicked closed. She was one of the few individuals who hadn't called Adam a freak after one encounter.  

~

"Luxray, Lux," Luke said, pawing at his master's pant leg. A stone-gray sign with "Veilstone City" embedded in the rock's face arched above their heads. It was night time; the streetlamps of Veilstone coated the sleek, slate grey pavement in an offwhite light. A little bit beyond the entrance was a city of neon and skyscrapers.

"Yeah, this is the place, Luke," Adam confirmed.

It was a long journey to Veilstone, but, to Adam, it was all worth it. Months had passed since he had first seen the golden Luxray on the GTS. He wondered, from time to time, if she was still waiting for a new home. Perhaps someone had found a Jirachi and taken her before he could even get the chance.

No, he thought as his shoes met the concrete roads of Veilstone. I can't give up! If Jirachi really was that rare, then maybe he could get an even better Luxray with it!

"Lux?" Luke questioned. Adam stopped walking; Luke had stopped dead in his tracks.

"Huh? What is it, buddy?" he asked. His Luxray had taken up a defensive, yet still intimidating posture: His yellow eyes were wide; every black hair on his back was standing straight on end; his tail, slender though it was, had puffed up to twice its normal width in a matter of seconds; his blue, cupped ears were folded flat against his head; his pearly, polished eyeteeth were bared at whatever those golden spheres were focused on. A sharp "Lux...Lux..." escaped from the feline creature's mouth. He was pointed, almost literally, at something in the southeast corner of town.

"Just tell me what's-"

What was wrong hit Adam in a flash. There weren't any people out on the streets. Even around what would have been bustling shopping centers, the whole place was drenched in a deadly silence.

Well, it's late... Adam thought. Maybe everyone except the newcomer was sane enough to stay inside and sleep. Maybe Luke had just seen a Pikachu or something.

Adam knew that he was thinking very wishfully. Luke wouldn't react like that to a normal ol' Pikachu! He had seen Luke hunt, and this definitely wasn't Luke's stalking posture; his partner was afraid, and aggressive in his fear.

Tmp. Tmp. Tmp.

Luke let out a sharp hiss as the unearthly sound approached his trainer. His golden eyes were gleaming like a pair of LED flashlights.

Tmp. Tmp. Tmp.

It didn't stop; Luke's fur began to bristle with electricity.

"Luke..." Adam whispered, "Spark attack." He wasn't going to admit it, but as glowing, white eyes made their presence known in the shadows, he was feeling afraid. Whatever it was, its vague silhouette revealed that it was bipedal, and stood only about a foot taller than Adam. That one foot made all the difference; whatever it was, its towering presence made Adam a bit anxious.

With a roar of "Lux-RAAAYY!" the noble, black lion charged at the foreign figure. Luke tried to tackle the being, but to no avail; it swerved out of the way as if Luke had charged in slow motion. The Luxray's golden eyes gleamed in the dark as Adam ordered a Thunder Fang.

"Lux-RAY!" Luke cried before sinking his teeth into what would have been the arm of a human (but who knew what it was on this thing?). The reaction was instantaneous: No sooner had Luke's teeth hit its flesh when, suddenly, the whole form of whatever-the-heck-it-was became covered entirely in bulky, chitinous armor. Luke quickly let go; biting the creature's forelimb with electrified fangs had given him a dental shock not unlike a filling meeting tinfoil.

The shock had, however, given Adam a very good view of the unidentified creature. About the size of an adult human, its stocky, armored body was primarily orange in hue. Some parts, such as its second set of flattened arms, were a sea green instead. Where a man's heart would be pulsed a dark violet sphere, likely the only chink in the being's hard armor. Its face was cleanly bisected by a slender purple ellipse; nothing else shone on the surface besides two gleaming, alien, white-yellow eyes.

"What...is that?" Adam wondered aloud. Luke went back to his master's side, eying the strange creature warily. Once again, the creature began to shift; like a semisolid, its entire body, limbs, and face went from bulky and sturdy to pointed and streamlined in a matter of seconds.

The creature tilted its star-shaped head. Despite its spiked appearance, Adam couldn't see any anger behind the alien's white spheres. It was calculating...curious. Adam was vaguely reminded of a Starly eying a Wurmple before-

SHWAP!

"RAAAAYYYY!"

Adam could only stare dumbly at the events that had, in a span of only one or two seconds, turned the battle bloody. Whatever that thing was, it had just driven a tentacle cleanly through Luke's left forelimb and into Adam's left arm. The member retracted as quickly as it had lashed; symmetrical, angry red cuts seared the bodies of both human and Pokémon.

The trainer easily understood what had happened. Whatever it was, it was smart; it observed that Luke wasn't the real threat. No, it was the trainer commanding the Pokémon that was truly dangerous. It had seen the human, not the Luxray, as the offender. Though the Pokémon had been intimidating, it was the human who had made the order to attack.

And, as Adam would learn, it hadn't been the first time that whatever this odd thing was had made these same observations and struck.

"Luke, use Discharge!" Adam commanded, clutching his shoulder with his free hand in agony. The Luxray's black fur bristled with static electricity that, ever so slowly, accumulated into a blue thunderbolt aimed at the alien being. The creature was too fast, however; again, it changed its form into a sleeker, speedier version, and fled into the dark streets. Luke, still charged with his attack, briefly pursued the being, but it had vanished entirely.

"Lux..." a disappointed Luke muttered.

"Here, have a Super Potion," he told Luke. Though the leonine Pokémon was limping, it struck Adam as being a very noble limp; despite the obvious cut, Luke retained his regal posture, his courage, his elegant poise. He even winced like an ill king when Adam sprayed his wound with the medicine inside an orange, translucent spray bottle. Although the bottle's contents healed most of the tissue damage, a few patches of blue and yellow fur remained missing from the wounded appendage.

"Ray?" Luke asked. His fierce eyes were focused on Adam's similar gash. The teen laughed.

"I'll be fine with a little rest," Adam assured. "C'mon. Let's get a good night's sleep at the Pokémon Center."

With a worried look and a "Lux?", Luke followed his trainer to the Veilstone Pokémon Center. His golden, gleaming eyes didn't leave his trainer's three-inch-long, bleeding wound all the way there.

~

Adam didn't know what time it was when he woke up. All he knew was that he was feeling feverish, especially around the wounded area.

Nurse Joy (or was it one of her clone-like relatives?) had been awfully generous to take himself and Luke in at around 11:30 that night, not to mention bandage up his cut. She couldn't tell him what had done it, even after he had given the most detailed description he could.

Then he mentioned the area that he had seen the bizarre life form in. Nurse Joy had turned away at the mention of that place, only saying "oh...there." It had evidently been seen before.

"Umm, just give it time to heal," she had dismissed nervously. Adam had given her a skeptical look before he went up the stairs to his rental room for the night.

"Ah- OWWW!" Adam howled. He tried to keep it down, but his fever had just been compounded with an odd, wrenching pain at the base of his spine. He felt something long, slender, and, eventually, furry, twisting like a serpent down the right leg of his pajamas. When a starlike tuft of yellow fur peeked out of the opening near his ankle, his eyes widened.

"No way..." Adam mouthed. "Just...no freakin' way..." His night clothes were quickly becoming tighter as black, blue, and yellow fur began to leak between the threads in the exact same pattern as Luke's. His fake, gel-formed Luxray mane fell to the tiled floor in great, gel-bound clumps as the real McCoy began to take its place. His ankles snapped with a loud crack when he tried to get out of bed; his slipper-socks burst shortly after to reveal furred, three-toed, clawed paws.  His hands, though they too were developing curved, vicious weapons in the place of nails, retained all five digits, even when blue fur crept across them like a wave of dull needles.

"This CANNOT be happening!" Adam exclaimed, more out of disbelief than disappointment. This was cool, but there was just no way it was possible! Even though he loved Luxray as a species, it was still stunning to see his dentures clatter onto the tiles as real, pointed teeth took their place. With widened, now-golden eyes, he watched whatever was causing this do its work.

As the changes progressed, Adam could feel a Luxray's electricity flowing through his body. He could feel each and every one of his muscles thickening, causing his nightclothes to finally give way. His ears were poking through his quite conspicuous, growing mane as blue, round versions that could hear the quietest Bidoof chewing on a stick. Slowly but surely, his night vision was also improving. The tongue in his bulging, protruding jaw was quickly becoming flat and bristled. He felt powerful, strong, and alive! What was there to hate?

Even with the refreshed, vivid sensations racing through his system, some part of him was nagging at him. He had come here for a reason, but...why? Who cared? It was night, and night was fun!

Silent as a Hoothoot's flight, he crept downstairs to the main floor of the Pokémon Center. With a touch, the automatic glass doors slid open. Adam the humanoid Luxray proceeded to prowl the night streets of Veilstone City, awake and alive.

~

The next day, when he instinctively headed to the upstairs rooms in the Pokémon Center, Nurse Joy stopped him in the stairwell. They discussed the odd Pokémon - researchers called it "Deoxys"- that periodically appeared in Veilstone, supposedly drawn to the meteorites in the East of town.

Nobody knew how or when that Pokémon first appeared. All they knew from the occasional tissue sample was that it was a space virus that had colonized itself into a mobile, sentient being. Deoxys itself was able to mutate at an alarming rate, practically at a whim.

That alien Pokémon seemed to have a dislike of trainers with released Pokémon. Nurse Joy suspected that a trained Pokémon attack had been among the life form's very first memories. Trainers who had such deep bonds with their partners that they refused to keep their Pokémon in balls often received the space Pokémon's punishment: If they wandered the streets of Veilstone at night, they were prone to being attacked exactly like Adam had been. Deoxys would recognize that humans were, somehow, more dangerous than the bizarre animals they encapsulated, attempt to strike them, and, if the bond was deep enough, the partner Pokémon would block the attack. The wounds always showed a shocking level of symmetry, almost as if Deoxys found both parties equally guilty.

Whatever the reason, the results were undeniable: The effects of the gashes caused a rapid mutation akin to fusion in whatever organism got hit last.

The first victim, Adam was told, had been a young girl with a Marill for a partner. She hadn't been one of the lucky ones after the viral Deoxys had inflicted its telltale, symmetrical wounds; after a month or so of being infected, her body had changed completely into that of a spherical, blue and white aqua-mouse, tail bulb and all. She was at Elm's lab in Johto, the nurse said; whatever had caused this change in species was no doubt relevant to Pokémon evolution.

"Is she sure just walking around like this is OK?" Luke asked. Adam had no problem understanding his partner, now. Becoming part Luxray had opened up a whole new world to him. Even though Nurse Joy had said that the viral effects of the attack would either consume him entirely or revert him back to his human body after it was taken care of by his immune system, he didn't care.

"Yeah, she's sure," Adam nodded. "The people here see it as a mark of the bond between trainers and their Pokémon."