"What's your name?" the lady standing behind a reception-type desk said, the golden badge on her pressed dark blue uniform crookedly reflecting the florescent lights hanging above them.
"Ash," he replied dully.
"Ah. Ketchum. Good to see you so chipper this morning." She shuffled through some papers that lay down in front of her and clicked her teeth absent-mindedly.
"Yeah." Ash was keeping it short. His head was pounding from the night before and a pressure had been building up behind his eyes that teetered his levels of irritability. He wiped some of the sleep from his eyes and rubbed the inside of his wrist against his temple, trying to dull the painful persistent thud.
Officer Jenny exhaled with a subtle hint of exasperation. "Please don't do this again, Mr. Ketchum. We've really got better things to do."
"Better things to do than your job?" Ash knew he shouldn't have said it. Sometimes he just couldn't help it. It was too late now, though. Ash lowered his head ever slightly and raised an eyebrow; indignant. Defiant.
"Better things to do than babysit drunk assholes," Officer Jenny spat back, almost, almost losing her cool. She was typically very professional, but she had a short temper for people she felt were wasting her time. "Here's your stuff. Here's your paperwork. Don't miss court."
Ash collected his things from her desk (a backpack, a phone, a wallet, keys, a pack of cigarettes with a grey lighter tucked into its cellophane wrapping, all of it except the backpack sealed in a clear plastic bag) and grabbed the jumble of paperwork that was meant for him. His head was too mushy to muster up any kind of comeback, so he just avoided eye contact with Officer Jenny while he put his belongings into his backpack before strapping it tightly to his shoulders.
As the tinted windows of the automatic doors at the front of the police station separated, the sunlight attacked Ash's eyes, causing the pressure to build up again. He adjusted his cap to shade his eyes, providing a small, albeit helpful, amount of relief to the pain of a hangover and the shame of a night in the drunk tank.
He had had worse nights plenty before, as far being a drunk asshole goes. He at least remembered where his car was this time. And he pretty much had an idea of what had occurred the night previous, as brief glimpses of hazy memory slowly surfaced to his conscious thought, some for long enough for him to grasp and piece together, but most just barely eluding his hold on them.
He had the general idea of it, though. A few too many beers chasing a few too many shots of whiskey. A drunken debate with Gary Oak at the patio of a bar that turned into a pissing match over reasons Ash couldn't quite recall. It escalated, though one could hardly call it a fight. Ash and Gary exchanged a few shoves and got in each other's faces, both refusing to back down on whatever side of whatever debate they were stubbornly defending. The whole event would probably have gone legally unnoticed had a couple of cops not already been very near the area for an unrelated reason, some pokemon acting up on the street or something. They were already short tempered for having to deal with such a nuisance.
"Know-it-all prick," Ash muttered to himself, referring of course to Gary. Gary come out of the whole situation scott-free for knowing somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody. Ash and Gary never really liked each other.
Ashed stopped to pull out a pack of cigarettes from his backpack and bang them against his palm before taking one of them out and lighting it, hunching over and using his free hand to shield it from the wind. He took a long drag and removed his cap to scratch his head.
He continued walking through town, now only a couple of blocks away from his car. Ash tried to ignore the faces along the way, faces he knew were judging him for his sloppy appearance and lazy stagger. He smelled of stale cigarettes and alcohol, disheveled and untucked. He looked like shit and his body felt even worse.
He arrived at his car, a grey (or silver, when he ever got around to washing it) mid-sized sedan, a few years old, but in decent enough shape. Ash noticed a growlithe standing near his car. The pokemon was filthy. Dry mud matted its thick paws, paws and legs and a body that were thick like a puppy's. But this 'puppy' was the size of a medium-sized adult dog, even malnourished. The body was covered with a dirty orange fur with some black stripes running across its back. The growlithe's tail was a large tuft of cream-colored fur, a color which traced upward along the belly and to his chest, where the cream colored fur thickened into a mane of sorts.
The growlithe began pissing on his left rear tire.
"Goddammit!" Ash said to himself before directing his frustration toward the dog. "Get! Get!" The growlithe retreated to a safe distance and growled at Ash for his curtness. Small tendrils of smoke curled out of its nose. "Fucking strays," Ash said under his breath as he fumbled with his keys. Most growlithe owners opted to have a surgery performed on the dog that removes the combustion-glands it uses to produce fire deep within its throat. This is for safety reasons, of course, and some regions have even passed laws to make such type of surgeries mandatory. This stray would do no harm, though. Without rigorous training, the fire from a growlithe's throat is hardly enough to burn anything other than dry tinder. Flames are mostly just for show, a way for growlithes to determine amongst themselves the identity of the alpha.
The growlithe flinched and let out another small growl at the sound of the car engine starting before scampering off in search of something else to piss on.
Ash got in his car and reached at some sunglasses that were on his passenger seat when he noticed a piece of paper folded and tucked under his windshield wiper. He had a feeling that it wasn't a promo flyer for a dance club or a notice for a shitty local band playing at some dive-bar in town. He pressed the button to roll down the window and flipped his wiper on. The wiper squealed across the dry window and dragged the folded paper with it so that Ash could just reach out of his car window and grab it. He opened it up and cursed. A parking ticket. A fucking parking ticket. Ash crumpled up the citation and threw it on the floorboard of the passenger side of the car, where it found its new home nestled between empty packs of cigarettes and paper bags full of fast-food trash.
"Shit," he said, eyes closed and head leaning back against the seat. He took a deep breath and let out a heavy sigh before taking off towards his apartment.