Pokeumans: AB's tale, Part 1

"Ohhh" I said while yawning "that was a weird dream indeed…" I said as I woke up… "Maybe I exaggerated while preparing for this Smash Bros tournament… Heh heh" OK, before I continue, I'll introduce myself… I'm Gonzalo, a great fan of Super Smash Bros Brawl, a Lucario main; and a Lucario fan too… But in the world of this game, I am the Aura Bearer … Bear or Bearer for short...

Whatever, back with what I was saying, the exaggeration part was for last night: I stayed practicing for today's Brawl tournament until almost 5:00 AM… But well, it was worth it, my spacing/defensive game was at its finest and my friends first and the CPUs later had no chance against my Aura… You have to feel the power of Aura to play as Lucario, feel as he gets stronger or weaker while the match flows and he gets damaged… Yeah, maybe I am crazy, so?

As I was finally going to get some sleep, full of excitement and eagerness, I looked myself on the mirror… My eyes hurt a little, probably because of all that time in front of the screen… So before going to bed I couldn't help and said to myself "If I continue playing like this, my eyes will get as red as Lucario's, heh heh…" After that I laid on my bed and fell asleep almost immediately.

The next thing I remember… I was a purple and red Lucario, on what I thought it was the Final Destination stage, facing a Jigglypuff with a red flower, a Pikachu wearing blue googles and another Lucario (a normal one, no accessories or different color)… I just knew what to do… All that Brawl left a mark on my mind apparently…  So I prepared to fight… "3; 2; 1… GO!"

I had almost no trouble defeating the Jigglypuff, he just couldn't get past my wall of Aura powered attacks when trying to get closer, or using rollout; and then punishing him at long distance with my Aura Sphere … The Pikachu was harder (damn electricity!), but she (I think I saw the heart shaped tail… Not sure, though…) finally went down after countering her last Skull Bash with my Double Team ("It's over…")… I was really hurt when I finally got to face the other Lucario one on one… But that only meant more power for me and I couldn't help but taunt him… I rose into the air and yelled, while letting Aura burst from all my body… Ahhh… The sensation of all that Aura flowing through my body… He smiled as we prepared to fight…

Clashing attacks on the ground and on the air, me recovering using double jumps, Extreme speed and wall clinging, dodging and rolling while trying to hit and run… Weird enough, he didn't use a single Aura Sphere, Lucario's signature move… And unlike Brawl's Lucario he used his tail and spikes to attack, too… Even so it was so exciting; we were so evenly matched, both of us refused to give up… "But this has to end somehow…!" I thought…
Suddenly, I don't know how, but I felt a lot of power flowing through my body… My Aura glowed brightly, not only blue and purple, but red, yellow, green… I knew what to do… "WATCH THE POWER OF AURA!!!" I yelled as I jumped high into the air. "I can't believe this…!" I thought as I reached a really high altitude, stopped and began hovering in the middle of the air, I put my paws over my head and directed all that energy to them…  I screamed at the top of my lungs as I put my paws down and fired an Aura Storm at the other Lucario…

Weird enough, he didn't dodge the attack… He received a direct hit; but he didn't fly out of the battlefield as I expected… He just fainted there… As I finished the attack and began falling slowly, I couldn't wait; I wanted to know what was going to happen as the match was apparently over, so I used Extreme Speed to reach the other Lucario faster… Big mistake… He got up like it was nothing and grabbed me… "How…?!?" I yelled, surprised; as he was preparing to deliver a devastating Force Palm...

And the next thing I knew…  I just woke up… And here we are at the beginning again… "Awesome dream I should say, heh heh"… Anyway, I had to get prepared for the tournament, so I yawned loudly again and got up… As I was going to the bathroom to have a shower, I saw myself on the mirror… At first I didn't see anything wrong… But then I noticed it…

MY EYES WERE RED!

"What the…?" I said surprised as I got closer to the mirror… There was no doubt; my irises were now red… "OK, I didn't buy colored contact lenses recently and I don't have any now… This… Can't be…!" I said, full of disbelief… Anyway I checked if I was wearing them, of course with no result… I kept looking myself on the mirror for about 10 minutes; I just couldn't believe it… "OK… Now, what should I do…? Well… My parents are sleeping now; I have to leave first anyway… Or shouldn't I…? No, I've been waiting for his tournament like forever; it would be suspicious if I don't go…" I just… Denied the change… I didn't know what to do!

So I tried to act normally… I just took a shower, put on my clothes, grabbed my backpack and left my house… But obviously, while doing all that, I couldn't help and start thinking "Will this end here? Or there will be other changes…? Well… If after all the night only my eyes changed, and I'm not changing anymore for now… I think I have at least a day or two before it gets too noticeable if there are other changes… But in that case, what I will do then?!?"…

Anyway, I was really excited about the tournament, so I went anyway… I met with some friends along the way, luckily being a great Lucario fan and the fact it wasn't the first time my eyes were red made me eyes go pretty much unnoticed… People watched me a bit weird along the way, but I didn't care; besides, the pins on my backpack did the rest of the job telling something like "Yeah, I'm a game freak or something; face it"… Lucario, Riolu and Pikachu covered some of them, along other videogame characters and things…

While traveling I noticed that the change on my eyes wasn't only aesthetic… No, my eyesight improved a lot… I could look at things at great distances, even read words  that were really far away or very small… Not to mention I started to see people's Auras, but only subtlety… "I guess that ability is not a thing only involving my eyes… Wait… Aura… That means…." I mumbled "Lucario…?!?" That would be awesome … At least if I was transforming into… Well… Something else… It was something I really like and not something like, I don't know, something like Igglybuff (red eyes too)...

Finally, I arrived to the place where the convention took place… With all those cosplayers around, who would notice my eyes? There were a lot of things rarer than them; I could assure you that…  Anyway, again no one asked too much about it, as long as no one asked me to remove my "contact lenses" for some reason I should be safe, and why someone ask me to do that, anyway…?  So I just acted normally: I visited the different shops, bought a few pins and other stuff, watched the other activities for a while, and of course, talked with my fellow smashers and played a few practice matches…

Once again I noticed a change: not only my eyesight; but my reflexes were better as well, reducing noticeably my time of reaction, thus giving me an advantage against my opponents… I manage to win almost all the practice matches… I began to feel really confident… "Bearing these eyes… I can win this one…!" I thought.

Finally the tournament began… With the added help of my new ability, I had almost no trouble in the preliminary fights… I only lost a really disputed fight against the top player of our ranking, but I got to the second round no problem… Now the fights were harder, and they were matches at the best of three fights; but I managed to get to the semifinals…

That was really hard…  I lost the first match closely… I took revenge on my best stage… And the third one on Final Destination was epic, so evenly matched… But finally, after suffering for almost the whole match, I nailed that full powered hit, blowing my opponent away; Lucario's Aura almost looked red with all that damage he got… "Yeah! I'm going to the final…!" I yelled… I was so happy I couldn't help and I imitated the hit that gave me the win, Lucario's side smash, where he hits the space in front of him with both paws, with Aura busting from them…

You just can´t imagine (well… Maybe some of you can)… My surprise when… Actual Aura burst from my hands!

I looked astonished at my palms… "That was really… Aura…?" and then I saw the back of my hands… The little hair I had on them slowly began turning blue… And my hands fell really weird, like itchy and warm… I was so concentrated on myself I almost forgot about all the people who were watching … But… They didn't forget about me…

"You are one of them!" "You are one of them!" "You are one of them!" "You are one of them!"

I turned back when I heard them… And I saw… A lot of people I considered friends, changing… I just can't describe the change on their faces… That empty look they had… Like they were puppets… It was awful…And even worse… They started trying to reach and catch me…

Luckily, there were too much people watching the match, therefor, in their way; they couldn't reach me quick enough, and so I took the opportunity to try escaping… People were in my way too, but I had some distance advantage to work with… Suddenly I heard screaming and sounds that I thought indicated some kind of struggle was going on, but I didn't turn back for much time… Apparently the "puppets" were fighting against… Something? I couldn't really distinguish... "I have to use the opportunity to escape!" I thought.

I kept running, and pushing people aside; I was so close to the exit… But a security guard tried to stand on my way… He didn't look like a puppet, but he tried to stop me anyway "Well, I guess all that running, pushing, and yelling…" I thought "Now what…? Maybe…" I kept running towards him, and when I was close enough, I hit him with both of my palms… Aura appeared once again, and this time, knocked the guard down… Well… I pushed him with my hands too… Maybe the Aura just surprised him… I didn't pay that much attention to that anyway…

"WOW! It actually worked!" I mumbled as I kept running… And then I watched my hands once again… It seemed that using Aura accelerated the change once again, now it was obvious that blue fur was growing around them… And apparently my fingers slowly began to merge into just three… "OK, Aura, three fingers, red eyes… That makes it pretty obvious now, right…? This is getting… Just TOO weird…! Why is this happening to me?!? What happened to them…? Why did they react like that…?!?" I thought as I exited the building.

At that point, I was so confused; I just didn't know where I was going… I couldn't think clearly, mi head began to hurt, maybe overwhelmed for all what happened… Not too much… But then I realized… I wasn't only my brain that hurt… My whole head felt weird, like warm and itchy… "Uh oh" I thought "This won't stop anytime soon… I have to think something…!"

Suddenly I noticed I was running towards my house… As I said, I wasn't thinking clearly… So I resigned to it, and thought maybe it wasn't such a bad idea… "Either way, I'll maybe need some things from my house if I'm going to run away… Or maybe I should tell mom and dad… Crap! What should I do…?!?" I mumbled while holding my head with my… Hands?

Finally, I reached my house… I was tired, but luckily, no one followed me as far as I could tell… I opened the door and entered…  "Oh…! Mom… Dad…!" I said as I entered… They were sitting, close to the entrance… I tried to hide my hands , but it was too late; they noticed the bluish hair/fur on them, and then my red eyes… "Well… Errr…" I began to say, trying to explain… But then…

"You are one of them!"

"No…"

"YOU ARE ONE OF THEM!"