Saffron City was never dark. That was a lesson learned time and again as I strode down those loveless streets, accosted by bright lights coming from the unrelenting structures surrounding me. How anyone could get sleep in this town was a mystery to me, though the line in the coffee shop every morning implied nobody did. It was a tick past ten at night on a weekday, but still the streets bustled with life and incandescence. Everywhere I looked, shrines to some modern, defaced god or another announced themselves to me forcefully, advertising '24 hour burgers' and 'live sex all nite'. Many of the doors remained nearly permanently open as people came in and out, carrying some kind of curse or secret with them that made their activity a wholly sad experience.
Perhaps it was sad for them, but I'd been numbed to pathos by the ripe old age of twenty, and so all I could see through my world-weary eyes were their lies and misdeeds. It took a second to tear my mind off of a bar I knew for a fact played host in the basement to a cockfight between Pokemon, where it would not end until one of them lay dead. There was no place for those thoughts; I needed to find a drug dealer.
It was the sort of moment that made me deeply regret not having a psychic Pokemon. My Absol could divine wrongdoing with the same ease she could sniff out bad take-out, but in downtown Saffron that was like looking for sand on a beach. I left it up to my own senses, keeping my eyes on the passing junkies and every last alley, until I happened on one with a Mightyena cloaked mostly in shadow, looming with its eyes on the street, soaking in every painstaking detail before it. An awful way to live life, I was certain, but it was certainly a sentinel and not a wild Pokemon. It was typical fare for dealers; a big, strong Pokemon looming in the corner, ready to pounce if the buyer felt like running with the product.
I'd been hoping not to find a Pokemon ready to pounce, personally. Not because I felt like running away with narcotics, but because my job just became infinitely more difficult. I took in a sharp breath to steel myself, but instead of confidence all I sucked in was faint cigarette smoke and urine, freshly extracted from the asphalt by the evening rain. I'd been trying to quit, myself-tobacco, not urine-and the feeling of smoke filling my lungs again n a nervous moment sent me fumbling for the pocket of my trench coat, pulling my lighter and a cigarette out of it. I knew it wasn't wise to keep them on my person when I was trying to quit, but my job for being steeled and cold, and I couldn't do that with the shakes.
I was not a man of will.
The hand placed the lighter back into the pocket, then dug for a Pokeball. Walking down a dark alley at night with a big, strong Pokemon waiting for me to do something fishy wasn't the brightest plan; the dealer could easily try to hold me up for money, and that's assuming I was going in with the intention of making a business deal. The long, satisfying drag I took steadied my hand as it drew the ball from my belt, and i lingered a moment longer to truly enjoy the taste of cancer before I released my Heracross as subtly as possible.
"You know the deal," I muttered to him, then blew a long breath out, letting the smoke roll from my lips and dissipate into the cold air. The next drag was one I could finally enjoy, and I sucked on it like the mouth of a long-estranged lover. Unlike the string of dames I'd known in my life, a smoke wouldn't hurt me, and somehow always tasted as sweet as a foolish teenager's first kiss in some vapid, sunny coming-of-age movie.
The bug Pokemon gave me a weary look after sizing up the Mightyena. He wasn't the most motivated Pokemon I'd known, and that was the disappointed expression of a man who had to put some effort into his job. He was a good fighter, but lazier than a fat cop riding the desk with glee. The only place he ever seemed to want to be was on a big, healthy tree, sucking the sap from it. The phrase 'concrete jungle' was an absolute heartbreaker for him.
"Fine, I'll take you to the park tomorrow," I muttered, locking eyes with the big dog Pokemon. He must have been getting suspicious, watching a man talking lowly to his Pokemon while puffing at a smoke. We must have looked like we were planning an attack, and in a break of the near-endless stream of cars and droning, I could hear him snarling lowly, signalling to his trainer. It was now or never, and without waiting for a response from my Pokemon, I took a few brisk steps forward. The reluctant Pokemon was right at my side, which meant that I'd have to find time for him to suck sap out of a park tree for an hour tomorrow. I'd been hoping for sleep, but that was clearly not going to happen.
I pulled out my flashlight, turning it on and flashing it at the ground a little bit. The damp asphalt shone with more eagerness than anything in this town had any right to, and as it trailed up the alley I could hear the Pokemon growling louder.
"Turn off the light," came a voice from the alley, hardened and deep. It gave me an instant's pause, because it sounded like a thug's voice, and some big slab of hardened muscle would have greatly complicated matters. "You a cop?"
"No and no," I said sternly, tipping down the brim of my hat a little bit before returning my fingers to the cig between my lips. Sucking the end of it made the tip flare up a little bit, casting a faint red glow at the very bottom of my vision. "Just in case your little insurance policy there isn't the only thing you can threaten me, I think I'll keep this on. Got to make sure you're giving me the real stuff. I followed the source of his voice and got the light on him. To keep him from worrying I was a cop, I kept the light away from his face, instead focusing on his hands and build. It didn't paint a good picture for me. He was a mound of hardened, blocky muscle. Not the carefully sculpted physique you get from a gym, but the sort you get from raw, intense physical activity, hidden between a thin layer of fat. That was the dangerous kind of physique. He wore a small, fairly tight-fitting jacket that bulged out from all the product in his pockets. He wore it with pride like an idiot, assuming that flaunting his bulk was enough to ensure his safety. "You're holding right?"
"Yeah, I'm holding. What you want?" It always disheartened me when they gave such a bland response. So much potential for a good joke in there, and he couldn't be bothered to wrack his idiot, caveman brain for half a second. On the bright side, it made me feel far less bad for what I was about to do.
"Coke. You've got some coke, right?"
"Yeah, I've got some coke. But you're not coming near me with that light on." His voice had an aggressive edge, but I doubted it was anything personal. He probably always sounded like he was fresh off a blow to the head, since he only knew how to properly convey or feel one emotion. He was the sort of idiot they always put downtown to deal, since he could intimidate most people into a straight transaction, assuming straight was what his boss wanted. He'd also be the sort you would want to put a knife to someone's back and demand a wallet.
"No light, no deal," I said, pushing back with my own aggression. "And I'm buying a lot, so you'll want my business."
A short, idiotic grunt came from the shadows in the affirmative, and it made me grip the flashlight even harder. There might even be something cathartic about this after all. I resumed my walk, Heracross keeping himself between me and the Mightyena. Usually, the only thing keeping such deals from ending in a robbery is the noise of battle, but if I hit him quick and ran I'd be okay. Heracross could put that dog down in a couple punches, and despite how the situation looked, my Pokemon had the advantage of preparedness.
"How much do you want?" he grunted, digging into his pocket for some tiny zipper-locked bags. At least, I hoped it was bags, and not a gun. There were no guarantees in this town that anyone doing business, no matter how straight it seemed, was going to walk the line. Negotiations took place at the end of a barrel and the mob called every last shot with impunity. Saffron was a hollow, empty husk compared to what it used to be; I held no sentimentality about my youth or believed it wasn't seen through the filters of years and childish innocence, but none of my schoolmates ended up casualties while they played in the street.
There was a darkness coming. I could feel it in every last intuitive bone in my body, and it was nothing like the shadows that two-bit dealers hid in out of formality. All the on-the-take cops and mafia millionaires were pushing us so far down that one day they would look up and realize the hole they dug is so deep into the ground that even they can't climb out anymore. As a bitter old man of thirty five, I was already welcoming the end.
"An ounce," I said, the hard word mingling with the sweet smoke out of my mouth. I gripped the flashlight so tight that my hands would have its diamond-patterned leather handle imprinted for the next day or two. I'd have let go of it if it wasn't my only equalizer. "Those are eight-balls, right?" I asked as he showed the bags.
Another affirmative grunt, and he started to count them out, moving them from one palm to another clumsily and muttering the number lowly to himself each time. It seemed to be more for his benefit than mine. Watching him try to mentally tally up how much eight one-eighth bags of cocaine would come up to was certain to be a fascinating experience, but I didn't have time for it.
I flicked the flashlight up to the maximum brightness, a blinding white light that cast his entire midsection in the sort of luminescence even a Pokemon's evolution couldn't muster. "The fuck?" he asked in his typical empty voice as I interrupted his very careful procedure of counting to eight. He turned up to look at me, which was when I directed the light right onto his face. It was quite literally blinding, and the drug dealer stumbled back, throwing his hands up in front of his face and yelling in surprise and anger.
Everything next happened in short order. There was the sound of crashing and clattering as the Mightyena leaped out of its position, in the process knocking a garbage can over. Its powerful legs helped it close the few feet between us rather swiftly, but it was caught in mid-leap by my Heracross, who had thankfully decided to be of assistance. A brutal slam followed as the dog was driven into the wall, but by that point I was already set on my own offensive.
The startled thug putting his hands up to block his eyes meant his entire midsection was left vulnerable, and stumbling back meant he had no balance. My fist found his gut, and with the force I drove it into him I could hear the air escaping his lungs like a balloon. Another swift strike as his hands predictably went to clutch his pained stomach brought the butt of the flashlight into the side of his head. That one sent him to the ground in short order, and I was very quickly on top of him, with my knee driven into the small of his back and my hands pinning his wrists back.
It was a familiar position, one that brought back memories of being on the force. It was a simpler time, when scum like this would actually find themselves in cuffs. A better time, I'd say, because it meant an honest man could hold the badge, back when the badge meant something. Now it didn't mean anything, because this scum's boss could buy off any patrols around the area, leaving him free to ruin lives and never feel the weight of a man pressing him into wet asphalt. I hoped for his sake he'd learn something from it, if only because he was probably face-down in something tasting oddly like piss.
"Okay fine, take the drugs!" he howled as I twisted my knee into his back a little harder. It was clear that he hadn't a lick of fight in him once the tables were turned. Built like a brick shit house kept together by spit and scotch tape, it seemed. He'd spent so long becoming a hulking mass of brute force that he lacked any proper training in a fight or willpower.
"Team Rocket should find some better men," I growled, flashing the light for a moment over to the Mightyena, who lay slumped beneath my Heracross. The beetle Pokemon had all of his weight applied in what was actually a really lazy position, but no less effective. "I'm not here for your drugs, I want information."
"A-anything!" he shouted. Really, this was far too easy. It made me long for the badge again, so I could toss this shit into the holding cell and watching him squirm for a bit as he desperately tried to find something he knew that could buy him a plea bargain. He certainly seemed daft enough to have no idea what the price of ratting was, but I decided to omit that part; I had no sympathy left for the likes of him.
"Give me what you know about something above you, and if I like what you have to say I won't put a bullet through your skull." I dug my fingernails into his wrists, just to add a bit more pain. It was embarrassing to watch this thug writhe in pain like a high school lab experiment given to the most sadistic, knife-crazy kid in class. The grade of criminal in this town had sunk to a low, which might have been good if I didn't see for myself how totally unprincipled he was; this was precisely the kind of idiot you didn't hand a knife and thousands of dollars in drugs to.
"There's a new drug coming in soon," he spat, his voice twisting up in agony as I twisted his arm just a little bit. "My boss is trying to convince me to split off from Rocket, says there's a new racket coming and that the pay's a lot better. Something about Gideon. I think that's the drug. Please, dude, I'm telling the truth, don't hurt me." After groveling, he started to whimper, and the entire scene was so pathetic that I let up the pressure just so he'd be able to speak. Where did they even find a genius like this?
I eased my knee out of his back but kept his hands behind him until I was finished. "And your boss's name."
"They call him Dusty," he said, and the anger finally left his voice. He just couldn't muster it any longer, I supposed. He sounded defeated instead, and I gave him use of his arms back, taking two rapid steps back and placing a hand to my belt, gripping the handle of my handgun in case he felt like doing anything. The light sat upon him with the sort of fierce judgement of an interrogation room lamp. It was where he belonged, frankly.
"Get out of here," I said, and Heracross tossed the limp, knocked-out dark-type Pokemon to his trainer. "Go fast, and make damn sure you don't come back around this corner, or I'll make good on that bullet promise."
There was some blubbering, not much in the way of words, but I got the gist of his compliance. He called the Mightyena back to his Pokeball, then set on a limping, rapid gait down the alley. He moved pretty quickly for someone with a knee-shaped mark in his lower back. It left me rather certain he wasn't coming back with a cheap shot, but if he was going to run home crying to his capo I needed to get off the street. I straightened myself out and put Heracross back into his balol, then headed back to the sidewalk and hailed a nearby cab. I took one last desperate puff before bidding my nicotine lover farewell and tossing it into a puddle.
The cab was cramped, uncomfortable; an old model. It smelled so much that it made me long for the alley again, as the smell here was far worse than urine could have been. I gave the cab driver my address, then settled lazy into the backseat. It had been a long night trying to sniff that dealer out, and I hadn't gotten the information I was after. He wasn't the sort of to know much though, so I left it. Maybe this 'Gideon' lead would bring up something I could appreciate.
I was sleepy enough not to care about the rank smell of the cap as I pulled down a window and leaned my head out into the sweet, polluted air of downtown Saffron. It really narrowed down for me how awful this city was, that even the stock criminal thugs were cut from was rapidly decreasing in quality. The rot was starting to show, no linger simply gnawing around the edges. It was bound for the core, and it seemed far too late to stop it. It was better to throw it in the trash and move on, but I couldn't leave yet. There were questions I needed answers to, even if I was digging through the rubble and ash with my own bare hands after the end to find them.
But as the foul-smelled taxi pulled away and I slumped into my apartment, my assistant sleeping soundly on the couch, I knew those questions would have to wait. I needed another case again to keep the money going, and spying on cheating husbands was rarely conducive to bringing down a mob.