Chapter 1

The punch was clumsy but it was faster than the last one, hammering a dapple tattoo into the side of Zach's face. He could have tried to avoid it, but it wouldn't have mattered. He had neither the training nor the reflexes to do more than see it coming. His assailant probably wasn't any better but youth had its advantages in a fight.

It also had its fair share of assholes.

Today, there were three of them. A real dodrio of the neighborhood's finest heads come together. They were healthy educated, well-learned young men, studying the fine arts of recklessness, beer pong, and short-shorts. Just old enough to slur the line between community nuisance and criminal without catching any of the responsibility. Zach only hoped his cheek bone was sharp enough to cut the boy's knuckles as they raced by. He fell into a collection of tin trash cans lining the side of the alley, denting one and knocking over another. The cheap supposedly lemon scented bags ripped against the rusted edges of the cans, spilling their contents across him.

Curdled cream belched a historic expiration date into the alley and the three boys leading the assault reeled back as if hit with a poison gas. They waved shiny poke-watches in front of their noses, gaining more steps to their workout with each swing.

"Ugh," the boy in the center groaned, careful not to accidentally stick himself on the manicured red spikes in his hair. "Is that from the garbage or the old man?"

Zach propped up on an elbow. Old man? Since when was 55 the cusp of geriatric retirement? Sure, salt and pepper dashed his hair, but the lines running his face were scars, not wrinkles. Then again, age didn't matter. Not to the young and stupid. They saw one thing and one thing only when they looked at people like Zach:

Homeless trash.

And they would be right.

Born without a diploma or pleasant disposition, Zach didn't have a coin or credit to his name. He slept on the streets more than he walked them and dug in dumpsters for the latest discarded fashions. The streets were rough and they were mean, but once in a while, they took care of him. Like today. Zach couldn't have fallen into a better spot:

A pile of overloaded trash cans the day before weekly pickup when the odor was most offensive. Smell was his best defense when hiding or running wasn't an option. The more putrid the pesto from last night's take out, the better. Nothing like the fear of contamination to keep the overly groomed at bay. Too bad noxious vapors didn't have any effect on the sandshrew scratching the gritty asphalt with its foot. Back alley toxins weren't exactly effective against a tournament trained tank. Sandshrew jumped on Zach's back, flattening him into the slick black puddles of yesterday's refuse and rainfall. His venomoth eaten overcoat buckled under the tackle. The oversized rat felt extra heavy.

What were they feeding it, lead? Souls of the innocent? At least Zach didn't have to worry about that last one.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Spike yelled though his sleeve. He dared a step closer, pokeball in hand. Zach lifted his cheek from the asphalt.

That didn't sound like the Spike he had come to love to hate.

"You'll catch its stink. Get off!"

Now, that was more like it.

Sandshrew swiftly dematerialized and surged back into its pokeball. Spike rubbed the plastic coated metal against his shiny leather pants to remove any defilement before he released his pokemon again.

"Now, I have to give you a bath, you little shit," he grumbled.

Zach lingered on the ground and picked a knot of yesterday's spaghetti from the tongue of his worn out baseball cap. If he didn't get up, they might think he was unconscious.

"Think he's dead?" the boy on the right with the overly sized sunglasses asked.

That was even better.

"Naw," the wannabe rock star on the left corrected. The navy blue dye job in his hair had bled down his scalp to paint his eyebrows a lighter shade of douchebag. "He's just playing diglett in the sand."

"I say we dig him up then," Spike proposed. "Whadaya think Shrew? Want to play in the sand a little more?"

Caught in the bluff, Zach rolled over and sank into the nearest black trash bag, hoping to camouflage himself from their displaced daddy issues. He touched the blood pooling in the far corner of his eye and watched it run down his finger. Red seemed to be the color of the day.

He didn't like this trainer. Not one bit.

Thunder suddenly cracked overhead, darkening the already shady business in the alley below. A storm was about to break. The latest news broadcast warned of a long and powerful string of storms coming in from the west. Spike dabbed the tender points of his hair and glanced at his cohorts. They all shared the same unspeakable taboo concerning the dampness of their cones and curls. Even Sandshrew was anxious about getting his bald and beautiful head wet.

The first droplets began.

"Let's get out of here," Spike urged before the sky broke loose, but it was two punches too late for the sucker. A downpour started within seconds and the three were soaked before they reached the end of the alley. A white watery haze blurred both ends of the slum, shortening the world to one pile of trash and the garbage beside it.

Zach pushed himself to his feet, catching his balance in the middle of the alley. Raindrops shattered against his head, back, and shoulders, framing him in a stormy halo. He turned and looked down the alley where the three boys dashed across the street through the rain. They wouldn't find refuge from the storm anywhere around here. They were on the wrong side of the tracks for that. They were on the wrong side of everything as far as Zach was concerned.

Pokemon trainers.

The bastards.

Those patronizing self-absorbed spoiled brats were always looking for a fight, even when there wasn't one to be had. Another pale of thunder rolled across the city, cracking sharply at the end where lightning kissed the earth. Zach looked up at the grey swirl blending sea and sky together. He took off his hat, closed his eyes, and smiled. If there was one thing in this world that always did him right, it was a good storm. It cleared the people from the streets faster than a bomb box, washed him and his clothes without charging a coin, and best of all;

It drowned out the voices in his head.

No more giggling, whispering, laughing, crying, bickering, screaming, yakking voices beating his ear drums every minute of every day. No more snickers and scoffs to add insult to injury when the beatings began. The rain washed it all away. Pelting, beating, drilling, and hammering those relentless complaints and squabbles to nothing more than a background hum. And the thunder, oh the precious cracking growling booms that deafened him to silence.

Sweet, sweet silence.

Zach removed his hat and rubbed a hand over his face, scratching his fingers through the short whiskers around his chin and mouth. One sweep of his hand slicked back the majority of his hair away from his face. Long at the top and buzzed short on the sides, the zig-zag across his temple could almost pass as intentional. The drifter dreaming of sheering his way into fame and fortune was particularly drunk the day he offered his services to the "hatless gentlemen of the world", free of charge of course. Zach fitted the baseball cap back on his head.

Never again would he leave home without it.

The rain showed no signs of slowing, so Zach shoved his hands through the holes in his pockets and trudged through the pelting white sheets toward the main road. To say he walked was a generous accommodation to the lump in his left knee. The bones never healed quite right after a particularly nasty ace trainer smashed in his kneecaps. Apparently, the big shot didn't like being called a "no good warmongering titty trainer" by a good-for-nothing louse.

"Don't lump me with those pussy footed playground school boys," Ace had shouted upon hearing the insult. Evil lustful warmongering being the least of his concerns. "I'm an Ace and don't you ever forget it!"

Ace's pokemon used up all of its PP driving the lesson home, but it was Ace's talent with discarded construction lumber that really struck the homerun. Zach paused and rubbed the leg above his bad knee.

He would never forget good old Ace. The rain wouldn't let him.

And if the news channels were right, the system would last for days, drenching the city from satellite dish to sewer drain. Flash floods would ransack the streets, create mayhem on the roadways, and offer Zach a little peace from the hustle and bustle of city life. But despite the storm's best intentions, it couldn't smoother out everything. Sometimes, the voices still trickled in, and today, one voice in particular cut through the rain as sharply as the lightning above.

It spoke loud and clear, obsessing over one thing and one thing only:

Murder.

The petty outcries and distracted mumblings that normally milled about Zach's brain couldn't hold a candle against the power of those whispers. Nor was the voice familiar. They usually came and went, always chiming in on the most random and inappropriate of subjects when their opinions were most inconvenient. Some agreed with him. Others despised him. Even more couldn't care less about him, babbling on about random idiosyncrasies that never made any sense.

But this voice was different. It was serious. Dead serious. Personal.

Murder. The word itself tickled a primordial nerve in Zach's brain, causing his heart to reflexively kick out since his knee wasn't good for it. He paused, wide eyed, in the middle of the sidewalk just outside of the alley.

He had been down before; kicked, and spit, and pissed on. Outright cold and angry and desperate to the world, doing things he couldn't. Thinking things he shouldn't. Vengeance filled many a pleasant night's dream, but killing in real life?

Zach listened, waiting to see if the voice would speak again. He held himself breathless at the thought of what it might propose next. Had his psychosis finally turned him into a psychopath? Did Spike and his merry band of men deal enough experience for him to level up and evolve to the third and final stage of insanity?

None of the other voices offered any clues and that scared Zach even more than the word itself.

Something suddenly crashed to the ground nearby. It clanged sharply against the ground, wobbling like sheet metal in a poor imitation of the thunder above. Zach lifted his head and looked up through the smoking rain into the alley across the street from him. Something stood next to the trash cans. A pokemon by the looks of it. With four long lean legs and a body to match. No horns, appendages, or embellishments to easily identify it with. It was black, or at least, the gloom made it black by darkening its silhouette with evening shadow.

Zach pulled up the collar of his jacket.

Why was he so jumpy? It was just another lost cause like himself. A feral pokemon abandoned on a whim. Emboldened by the rain, the pokemon didn't run upon being sighted. It stared at him. It challenged him to come a little closer, but Zach had enough fighting for one day. He scoffed and turned down the street away from the alley.

Pokemon.

They were even worse than the trainers.