This was written for the Thousand Roads' Friends and Partners One-Shot Contest.
Some girls Vicky's age kept a whole team of pokemon, but Vicky had never wanted another pokemon but her Mary.
Mary - Roseburn's Mary Mary, to be precise - came from the very last egg laid by her family's star granbull, Roseburn's Quite Contrary. Quite Contrary was magnificent and had swept contest after contest, but her eggs kept failing to develop properly and of the dozen that did hatch, none had her charm and half had such poor coloring they had to be bucketed. By the last egg, nobody but Vicky held out any hope. But when she'd helped crack the rocking, whining egg and free Mary, Vicky could see they'd won the genetic lottery at last with gorgeous lavender-blue fur shining from the eggshell.
Mary was perfect in every way. Quite Contrary was lovely but had a bit of a weak jawline and Mary got the properly hefty underbite from her sire Cockle Shell that Quite Contrary had failed to inherit. She was a bit floppy and blind to start with but Vicky knew that was exactly what the perfect snubbull was like as a new puppy. Even the trouble of having to tack back the soft rolls of skin with sutures to keep her eyelids from rolling under and marring her lovely blue eyes only meant the surety she'd have utterly stunning folds once she matured and evolved, even better than either of her already gorgeous parents.
Really, Vicky could talk for hours about how wonderful every inch of Mary was, from her adorably scalloped nostrils to the tip of her extra-long skirt of skin, how unspeakably lucky her breeding was, how much Vicky loved everything about her, which was why it was so insulting when some reedy girl in a scuffed leather jacket like she was trying to be edgy offered to buy Mary for pocket change.
"She sounds like there's a noose around her neck," the girl said, like she thought making up insults would convince Vicky. "Her tongue's turned blue. Her eyes are about to roll out of her head. And I'm betting she couldn't close her mouth if she wanted to with a jaw like that. You should be glad I'm offering to pay you anything. She is the worst looking snubbull I've seen in my life."
"Mary is the best snubbull you'll ever see," Vicky snapped. "She is literally priceless. The waiting list for her eggs is taller than you."
Which, it turned out, was a mistake, because the thug punched her in the nose, yanked Mary from her arms, and stomped on her stomach as she hit the ground. Vicky could only have been winded for a few minutes, but the time she spent gasping and choking felt like hours. By the time she could breathe again - by the time she could shout again - the girl was long gone.
The only reassurance Vicky had was that there was no way the girl would be able to sell Mary. There was only one Mary, and anyone who saw her would know who she really belonged to. She was on the international registry! But who knew how long her poor Mary would be in the hands of a criminal while the girl worked out that this wasn't some ordinary pokemon she could sell? What if Mary was locked up in some stuffy room, or a car - the stupid girl probably didn't even know a high quality snubbull like Mary needed air conditioning. Mary could die!
The police mobilized immediately. Vicky sat at the station for a few hours with an ice pack against her face, fretting, before she was told someone had brought a snubbull to the pokecenter that fit Mary's description.
If it wasn't for the lavender fur, she would never have recognized the pokemon lying on the chair as Mary after what'd been done to her.
Mary looked as if she'd been shoved through a garbage disposal. Her once-flawless coat was patchworked and Vicky was so shocked by the horrid red slicing across her pokemon's body that it took her a moment to realize Mary's entire silhouette was ruined. The magnificent skirt of skin had been cut short, the gentle droop of her eyes was now pulled tight as a drum by cruel stitches, and there were two gaping holes punched through her once-adorable nose. There was a thick bandage around her neck and Vicky couldn't even imagine what could be underneath if the rest of this nightmare was in plain sight.
"I didn't have a pokeball on hand to transport her so I thought I'd deal with the worst of it myself first," the woman sitting next to her mutilated Mary said placidly, like she was too stupid to notice anything wrong. She was ugly herself, with sallow skin, a missing front tooth, and lank hair that could've been brown or just dirty. "I put her under to deal with the excess throat and nose tissue so there wouldn't be a risk of heatstroke during the trip to the pokecenter, and figured it was best to get rid of those skin problems at the same time."
It hits with far more force than the punch had. "You...you did this to her?"
"I thought it'd have to be done before there was much chance of anyone being willing to adopt her," the woman said without an ounce of guilt. "But I suppose there was no need to be concerned about it when she has an owner after all."
"You cut up my pokemon! You - you'll go to jail for this!"
The woman just looked blankly at her. "The person who showed her to me said she had been found in with the trash just outside. It's common for people to dump pokemon like her."
"Dump -!" Vicky sputtered.
"Release if you like."
"A snubbull like this - no one would ever do that! Do you realize how much she's worth?!"
"I don't keep up with pokemon breeding," the woman said almost dismissively. "She had several deformities, especially in her throat and jaw. Most of them are surgically correctable. I had the supplies on hand to deal with the tissue issues."
"She was perfect! She didn't need to be fixed! She wasn't deformed!" Vicky could barely breathe. She took a faltering step toward her pokemon. "Oh, Mary... What did she do to you...?"
Mary made a sound and what came out of her mangled throat wasn't the adorable snuffle-snore she made breathing normally, the one that charmed everyone who met her, but a hideous rough sound like a growl. The woman reached out to rub the side of Mary's head in the patch between the stitches that criss-crossed Mary's once beautiful face, touching Vicky's pokemon with the same fingers that had carved her apart just an hour before.
A mangy vulpix with two limp tails wandered over. It hopped onto the chair as well, touching Mary's side with its gross snuffly nose. It probably mistook Mary for the same class of mongrel as it was.
"Can you describe the person who said they found this pokemon?" the officer asked.
"Of course," the woman said. "An older man. Blond hair."
"But it was a girl who stole Mary! She had dark hair and she couldn't have been older than me! Maybe twenty at the very most!"
"I haven't seen anyone like that. Older man. Blond hair. Didn't leave a name."
"Will he come back?" the officer persisted.
"Didn't say," the woman told them. "Probably not. I'd never seen him before."
"But it was a girl!" Vicky wailed.
"I haven't seen anyone like that," the woman repeated with the same unconcerned idiot placidity.
Even if Mary would never win another contest like this, even if she was hideous now...at least there was always the next generation, Vicky thought, still reeling. Mary was still Mary underneath the scars and too-tight skin, and she'd still have the same puppies she always would've. The damage was only skin-deep.
Vicky reached out for her pokemon and lifted her up, exposing for the first time the y-shaped cut across the snubbull's belly. She screamed.
The woman caught Mary as the pokemon dropped back onto the chair.
"You sterilized her!"
There was still no reaction from the woman, who said only, "There was evidence of cysts. As she appeared abandoned and in ill-health, there was no reason to think preserving her ovaries was worth the medical risk."
Vicky's voice shook. "I'll sue you. I'll sue you for everything you have."
"I have done nothing illegal. You should have kept better track of your pokemon if that was so important."
"I was assaulted and robbed!" Vicky howled, loud enough to drown out the rough sounds of Mary's ruined breathing for a moment.
The woman stared at her stupidly. "A pokemon was found in the trash. It is unreasonable to expect people will avoid giving a sick pokemon medical care on the off-chance they have an owner who would object."
"This wasn't medicine, it was butchery," Vicky said. She looked desperately to the officer, who only gave her a dismayed shrug.
"As I said. There was no sign of any owner," the woman said without the slightest hint of remorse, absently stroking Mary's once-beautiful head around the bloody marks. "Or theft. There was no way to know you would feel this way about it."
As desperately as Vicky wanted to pretend there was any way to undo what had happened, rush in before this mutilation could begin, to scream at the unfairness of the universe until something was done to fix it... It was too late. Everything special about Mary had been destroyed and there was no taking it back.
It was as if the thief had killed Mary herself. Vicky began to sob.
In the end Vicky had to give up and accept it. She couldn't stand to look at the thing Mary had been turned into an instant longer and the police officer made it clear the only person she had any legal case against was the one who'd stolen Mary in the first place.
"Just a string of awful luck," the officer told her as Vicky sniffled.
The hideous sounds Mary made now finally tapered off as she turned away to leave. Like growls, Vicky thought again, from some common mutt. Like Mary had been growling. That awful woman must've damaged her throat so terribly if that was how her breathing sounded now. But there was nothing Vicky could do about it.