Chapter 5

Zach stared at his feet, utterly perplexed that he had two when he should have had only one. To his surprise, gray cotton socks poked through the holes in his shoes instead of mangled shreds of flesh. The black devil cat had him in its grasp. It could have bitten off his foot at the ankle, leaving a stub of sinew and bone to hobble upon instead of a bum knee.

But it didn't.

And Zach couldn't figure out why. He looked to his right for an answer, but that only proposed an even greater enigma. Baby sat on the back of the ambulance beside him and played with the bandage on her chin. She looked absolutely ridiculous with it on, especially when she swung her legs back and forth and they didn't even touch the ground.

"Stop picking at it," Zach demanded.

Not that he cared if the wound left a scar or not. The paramedics wouldn't let him leave until they finished tending to Baby, and if she kept messing with the bandage like she had done the past twenty minutes, they'd be on the curb the rest of the night. If he was going to spend the night in the gutter, he preferred sleeping in one he was familiar with. Baby promptly shoved her hands in her lap, but they too were bandaged and it wasn't long before she started playing with them instead. Zach snatched up her wrists, tightened the bandages so she couldn't get at them again, and threw her hands down with a grumble.

He should have left her in that alley. He should have never stopped to look back, but he did, and the sight of her pathetic little frame drenched in the rain twisted his gut in ways expired dairy never could. The next thing Zach knew, he was jumping out in front of a police cruiser, screaming and hollering about the "skinny little idiot" they left behind. And apparently, they knew exactly who he was talking about and had been looking for her for quite some time. Zach had thought that would be the end of it but with his obviously violent injuries, the boys in blue weren't willing to let him walk away so easily. And of course, that's when Baby finally found her bearings and hobbled into view looking like a damned ghoul with a pint of blood running down her neck and hands.

The boys really made a hood ornament out of him then. Zach still felt the sting of the cold wet metal where the boys slammed him against the cruiser and slapped a set of handcuffs around his wrists. The bastards ripped his collar when they yanked him up again. Baby pleaded his innocence and her brothers weren't convinced, but her persistence ended in a comprise that left Zach in her custody.

He would have preferred jail.

Zach turned up his wrists to look at the tightened silver bracelets, compliments of the City's finest. He wouldn't be in this mess if he would've just done what he was supposed to do and spit in Baby's face when she first approached him like her and her kind deserved. It was all her fault. He wouldn't have crossed Persian's path otherwise. Out of all the neighborhoods Baby could have wandered into, why did it have to be his?

"How's your leg?" Baby asked as she leaned over the side of his lap for a better look.

Zach turned his back to her and she craned her neck over his shoulder, the god damn menace. Just because they shared a near death experience didn't mean that they were friends. It only meant that it was Tuesday.

"Cofield!"

Baby flinched as a man with a shiny badge and stripes on his shoulders marched up to the ambulance where they sat. She quickly returned to her seat and shoved her hands in her lap again. "You better have a damn good excuse for all of this!"

And she did, but it was unbelievable. What she spouted was the cut rate plot of a B rate horror movie that never made it out to theaters. Devil cats didn't exist, especially not in Midtown. The tightwad with the shiny badge wasn't impressed by the tall tale and lit into Baby hot enough to make her sizzle in the rain. She winced with every word, clenching deeper and deeper into her guilt until her head sunk below her shoulders. Zach found the whole exchange amusing until Baby called on him as a witness. Officer Shiny Badges was still red in the face from shouting when he turned to him.

"Well?" Shiny Badges demanded. "Anything you'd like to add?"

Zach had a few colorful phrases of his own to share, but he kept them to himself. Picking a fight with a prickled policeman was a bad idea on a good day and Badges was already miffed. Zach wasn't about to catch that sharpedo with his bare hands, especially when it broke the waters with such a pompous attitude. It wasn't Zach's fault that policemen were so incompetent. He was the real victim here which meant he didn't have to put up with this shit.

Badges could shove it.

Zach stood up and relished in the fact that several hands went to several belts because of it. Being a whole head shorter than Badges, Zach thrust himself underneath the policeman's chin.

"I didn't see a god damn thing," he spat with words as thick as molasses. "Especially after your officer nearly electrocuted me while chasing an alley cat." Badges didn't like that last part. He threw Baby a mean look so strong that she flinched again. Zach thrust up his wrists like a shank to the throat. "So am I free to go or will my one phone call from the station be to Channel 6 News?"

The implications of the threat boiled the blood in Badges' veins and it steamed out of his ears. News crews were already buzzing around the outskirts of the patrol cars. One shout from a disgruntled citizen and they'd swarm faster than a beedrill's nest. With great loathing and resentment, Badges produced the handcuff key. He had no evidence, no probable cause, and no more patience.

Zach didn't blink, not even after the cuffs were off and he stormed away from the ambulance. He outlasted every single stare and gawk as he wobbled by. The only thing in his sight was the gap in the police line behind the second ambulance. It was just big enough for a man to squeeze through and the darkness beyond was so thick that even this nightmare of red and blue lights couldn't break through it. The shadows enveloped him almost instantly as he passed through. Nobody could find him now.

"Wait!"

It was Baby. She was like a bad penny that kept showing up at the most inopportune times, offering handfuls of bad luck for whoever picked her up. Zach stopped only because he knew she would keep following him otherwise. She was like a dog. A mutt. Zach ground his molars down another millimeter and spun around to cut her off before she zapped him again this night.

"Keep the hell away from me," he roared.

Baby splashed to a stop a few feet away, winded from the one hundred yard dash she used to catch up to him. One day she might just do the world some good and collapse, never to get up again. Baby winked up from beneath the lip of her checkered hat. "Why didn't you say anything?" she asked, completely ignoring his earlier outburst.

Zach wanted to throttle her but he couldn't move, not when he still had two legs to stand on and it was all her fault.

"Nobody believes you," Zach growled. "Why would they believe me?"

Hell, Zach wasn't sure he believed it himself. The voices in his head had grown so riotous when it all happened that he couldn't remember what was actually said and done. Great big black spots in his memory forced his mind to jumble what he did remember into a cesspool of confusing sensations. It made him sick just thinking about it. Not that the police would do anything about a superstitious devil cat anyway. Feral pokemon thrived throughout all the slums in the city, killing, steal, and attacking people, pokemon, and property for a living. Trainers abandoned their pokemon every day with little too no reason and nothing was ever done about it.

This one's too big. This one's too weak. This one can't attack with this TM. It doesn't listen to me. Its fur doesn't match my carpets. The excuses were endless but the end result was the same: another pokemon set free to starve in the sewers of Midtown. Unable to return to their wild instincts and too desperate to follow the rules of proper domestication, most of these pokemon had no choice but to turn savage.

Those that were trained to fight usually became the most aggressive. They knew how to battle and it made them bold. Most pokemon related attacks were because of ferals and usually ended in severe injury, mutilation, or death. They knew to attack the hands and waists of trainers before they could use an item or release a pokemon, effectively debilitating them before they even had a chance to defend themselves. Eventually, trainers and average people became indistinguishable and the attacks escalated. Some released pokemon survived and found a civilian compassionate enough to take them in or a trainer weak enough to add them to their party.

More often than not, these pokemon died where they were dumped, unable to make decisions or find resources, climates, or parties to support them. The weak ones were killed off early by more seasoned orphans or by trainers looking to hone their skills with an easy match. Zach stepped over many a fly ridden carcass in his day. Devil cats like Persian merely quickened the natural selection process. It wasn't unheard of for a feral pokemon to become strong enough to evolve on its own. They gained more experience fighting for their lives every day in the street than tournament trained battles, but malnourishment and starvation usually stunted any real growth.

If Persian really was a Persian birthed by the cruel upbringing of the city's underworld, then Zach almost didn't want it to be caught. Deadly as the devil was, it was still the product of the streets, much like himself, only more refined and efficient in the art of survival. Perfect in every malignant way. A force capable and willing to take on those who thought themselves above the limits of natural law. People like Baby who lived in a fantasy world overflowing with sunshine and sugar candies.

"Why would you lie like that?" she asked, honestly confused as to his behavior.

"Because," he explained as simply as her little pinhead could understand. "You're the police."

And that was that. Disappointment flashed in Baby's eyes. Maybe now she'd stop following him around like a damn poochyena. Zach turned away and waited for her to call out to him again but she didn't. He walked on into the night and she didn't follow. Finally, he could be alone. Zach wiggled a finger in his ear.

As much as he could be anyway.