Chapter Two: Lost in the Slums

Twins Kata and Keiji were twelve years old. Kata was very pretty – she had waist-length, jet black hair and bright green eyes. Her skin was perfectly tanned with olive undertones. Kata also got teased the most in school. She had a long scar running down the left side of her face. It was horrible, ugly. Kata had had it for so long she didn't even remember how she had gotten it. All she knew about her scar was that the other kids thought it was ugly, too, and they thought that that was reason enough to taunt her endlessly about it.

Her brother, Keiji, looked very much the same as Kata except he didn't have his sister's green eyes or her scar. He had dull, dusty brown eyes instead. Keiji had always felt protective of his sister. Kata was too afraid to say anything when she was teased, so Keiji would tell them off for her. For this reason, Kata spent a lot of time around her brother.

Not only were the twins the same age, but they were also both very frightened. Today was their birthday – and they were lost in the city on their way to get their first Pokemon. Kata clung to her brother's arm as they walked down the dirty street, the young girl's eyes wide in alarm.

"Why did mom let us go on our own?" Kata asked her brother bitterly, frowning. She knew that her mother meant well; she of course hadn't meant for them to become hopelessly lost. But she had to rest the blame on someone, and parents were the easiest to blame. Kata stared at a man walking down the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street who was wearing tattered clothes and had mangled, greasy hair. He didn't look trustworthy, Kata decided.

"She said if we were going travel with Pokemon, we had better at least learn our way to the lab," Keiji replied absently, still staring straight ahead. He bit his lip. He didn't want to show that he was just as terrified as his sister. Normally he would have quickly thought of something to humor Kata, but he was having a hard enough time just processing all of the sights, sounds and smells around him. Keiji inhaled a large, nervous breath and then cringed. It smelled as if they were wading through a sewer.

Keiji heard a loud screech and quickly turned, seeing that the scream was Kata's.

"What's wrong?" Keiji asked, confused. He spun about, looking over buildings to see if someone was creeping over one to attack them. He didn't see anything worth screaming about – unless, Keiji thought, it had finally sunk in that they were in such a dreadful neighborhood. The thought amused him, but only for a moment.

"T-t-here's a d-d-dead p-p-person," Kata stuttered, pointing to the sidewalk in front of them. Keiji followed her finger and quickly stepped back. She was right – lying there was a huge man, apparently stabbed to death. Keiji wondered who could be able to murder such a man.

"We need to get out of here," Keiji concluded and took his sister's tiny hand and began to run. Kata didn't argue, and followed her brother wherever he was headed. As Keiji dragged her along, Kata couldn't help but think she was in some kind of cruel fanfiction where the author wanted to scare them out of their wits.

"Stop Keiji, I can't see!" Kata yelled, letting go of her brother's hand. Her long black hair had whipped into her face. She quickly pulled it away, tucking it neatly behind her ears. Keiji turned his head to see how far back his sister was, but didn't stop running. Kata thought it looked kind of silly, his head turned one way and his legs going the other. Then she looked to where her brother's feet were headed and gasped suddenly.

"Keiji, you're going to…" Kata began, but stopped when Keiji ran right into someone who was walking down the street and knocked himself and the other person over. Kata flinched as they fell onto each other and then rushed to help her brother up. She was worried that this person might have been the one who killed the dead man they had seen, and wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. Kata looked over the stranger her brother had toppled. His (or her) face was completely hidden by a large black hat. She thought it looked very shady – she was probably up to no good.

"S-s-sorry, sir," Keiji mumbled as his sister helped him to his feet.

"I'm not a man!" cried the stranger, who could be clearly distinguished as female now. She quickly gathered herself and stood up while flinging the hat that had hidden her face off. Kata and Keiji observed that she was indeed female, with auburn pixie-cut hair. She had soft, feminine features, which wasn't what either of the twins had expected. She had unmistakable yellow eyes with golden flecks. She gave Keiji such a piercing look that he swore had she stared at him a moment longer a hole would have been burnt right through him.

"Sorry," Keiji said quickly, his face reddening with embarrassment. He looked the girl over again and saw why he had made his mistake. She was wearing a very heavy leather jacket and baggy jeans. With her face hidden she could have easily been either gender.

"Were you in a fight?" he questioned, forgetting his manners. He studied the scratches that covered the teenaged girl's face. As soon as Keiji said it he regretted it – he would have been angry if someone had asked the same thing about Kata's scar.

"No," the girl replied, "I tripped over Du—the dead man lying on the sidewalk." She glanced back at the corpse lying on the sidewalk across the street that had given Kata quite a fright. Keiji knew what dead man she was referring to and didn't follow her glance. His five second study of him earlier was all the more he needed to see. Kata was looking the girl over again, wondering why she had said 'Du' before she corrected herself and said 'the dead man'. Keiji, however, had clearly overlooked that.

"Oh," Keiji said, relieved that there wasn't an embarrassing reason behind it, "what's your name?"

"Leigh Paradise," Leigh told the children thoughtlessly. She then clasped her hands over her mouth. This earned her another skeptical look from Kata. Leigh had just told these children her last name. They were only children – but what if they were spies? Leigh hoped that they thought she had said her last name was 'Paradise' to show off, or that they didn't know about the Paradise Team at all. If they didn't believe it, it wouldn't have been the first time someone thought she was lying about her surname.

"What are your names? And what are children your age doing here?" she snapped, suspicious.

"My name is Keiji Maple and my sister here is Kata Maple," Keiji told Leigh, clearly not as suspicious of Leigh as Leigh was of them or as Kata was of Leigh. "We got lost on the way to the Pokemon lab. Today is our twelfth birthday – and you don't look very old, either."

Kata was becoming annoyed that Keiji was telling this stranger information about them freely. What if she kidnapped them – or worse, killed them? Kata hoped she and her brother wouldn't be accompanying the dead man across the road.

"I'm sixteen," Leigh said matter-of-factly.

"So you got lost on the way to the Pokemon lab, did you? It's definitely nowhere around here! Look, how about I take you there? It's on the way to where I'm going," she offered. When Keiji looked into her face he thought she looked sincere, but when Kata did she could have sworn there was an evil twinkle in her eye.

"No," Kata replied plainly. She had had enough of this suspicious character. Leigh wondered if the girl had only now realized who the Paradise family was. She was ready to run for it if the girl suddenly spat out accusations that she had stolen her parents' Pokemon or the like.

"What! Why?" Keiji asked his sister, shocked that she would refuse help. Keiji seriously doubted that a sixteen-year-old girl was going to be a serial killer.

"Keiji, this girl that we meet right next to a dead body is supposedly offering to help us. I can put two and two together even if you can't. She's going to sell us as slaves or something, not get us to the Pokemon lab!" Kata said exasperatedly, waving her arms around in the air madly as if this was going to prove her point. Leigh smothered a small laugh in her arm as Kata finished her wild hand motions.

"I promise you I'm not going to sell you," Leigh said, serious now. "Of course, you only have my word to go by."

"Come on, Kata, if we don't go then we'll just be wandering around forever!" Keiji pointed out. After seeing a dead man sprawled out across the sidewalk, he didn't care how he got out of this awful place – he just knew he wanted to leave as soon as possible.

"…Fine," his sister replied after some hesitation. It was only her fright of the neighborhood that persuaded her to agree.

"This way, then," Leigh said and began to walk down a different street than the one that they were on, passing a cruddy looking park with browning grass and cracked wooden benches with graffiti sprayed all over them. Litter was strewn all through the park and the trash bins were bursting with banana peels, old newspaper and candy wrappers. Kata examined it as they walked by, cringing.