Chapter 22

Zach tripped and fell into the nearest set of alley trash cans, shattering the quiet drum of the rain with an ear shattering clatter. Garbage and grime spewed out in all directions. Empty glass bottles spun and clinked across the chunks of broken brick and concrete.

Run. He had to keep running. The checkered hats were chasing him, and if they caught him now, they'd kill him. Zach kicked out of the rotting trash and ripped plastic. Faster. He needed to go faster. If he didn't escape now, he was a dead man.

Zach missed the curb and tumbled sideways into the middle of the alley. He lost his lead and the checkered hat he'd been running from finally caught up to him. Vivid flashes of a cotton sweater, keycard, and silver claws flipped across Zach's eyes. The images assaulted him with feelings and sensations that tore his heart apart. Then, there was the screaming. So much screaming.

Zach closed his eyes and grabbed the sides of his head, but it didn't stop the kaleidoscope of memories that spun through his thoughts. He saw orange flames, blue and white squares, and shadows capable of swallowing a man whole. Then, there was Baby. He could never out run Baby. Zach fell into the rough rubble of the road. The visions dispersed upon impact, but the world was still red. All he saw were spots. Baby died in his arms again and again and again. No matter how far he went or how fast he ran, he couldn't escape the horror.

"Stop," Zach begged, but Baby never listened.

The reel started over again, cutting and splicing his memory of her into only the most gruesome and innocent of pieces. Zach saw bloody smiles, happy poisonings, and shockingly serendipitous introductions. Coins, canines, and a concrete gravestone. Baby was alive. Then, she was dead. He killed her over and over and over again. Zach screwed his eyes shut, but the memories became clearer against the black backdrop of his eyelids.

No detail escaped his attention. He saw every fluctuation of Pantera's muscles as she squeezed her jaws around Annie's neck. He heard every pound of his frantic heart as Annie's melted in his hands. Guilt and regret bit at his soul with each microscopic moment. It was nothing less than a gluttonous frenzy. Zach collapsed into the flooding alleyway. Unable to run any further, he laid there and cried. Heartache bound him so tightly that it squeezed his voice into a high pitched whine. A whistle of the weak and wounded.

Drawn to the call with predatory instinct, Pantera stepped out of the shadows into the middle of the alley. Her body jerked unnaturally as the dislocated joints and broken bones rattled inside of her. She panted heavily, but quietly. The remnants of her torn cheeks had burnt away in the heat of the arcanine's flames which allowed her breath to smoke freely from her throat. Without skin to connect the upper and lower halves, her jaw hung abnormally low. Dry gums and bleeding teeth stretched across the cat's now permanent smile. She drooled excessively trying to compensate for the exposure.

Pantera never fought a fire canine before and the mistakes she made during the battle showed. Fresh scar tissue bubbled out from the corner of her mouth, up her face, and down her back where the canine's flamethrower had taught her a lesson in loyalties. The burns kept the skin hot, elevating the cat's whole body temperature so that the blood weeping from the bullet hole in her ribs steamed lightly. One of her eyes drooped from the misshapen skin on her face. Every breath she took crackled with the phlegm of an internal rupture, but the wounds were miniscule compared to the miserable wretch in front of her.

"Saudade," the great black pantherian sang. Her inner voice remained as sultry as ever which only made her appearance that much more grotesque.

The sweet relieving notes slipped between Zach's sobs, distracting him from the sound of his own misery. He weakly pushed up from the ground onto an elbow and a string of saliva pulled at his lips. Zach wiped it away with the back of his hand. For some reason, it tasted like copper and rain. He looked down at the bright red blood still glistening on his skin. He had smeared some of it on his face while wiping the spit away. The blood belonged to Baby. Flashes of Annie's frightened eyes filled his own. Her thin desperate fingers latched around his wrists to make a set of handcuffs.

Zach thrust his hands into the puddle beneath him with a gasp. He scored his skin trying to wash his hands of the unforgiveable sin, but the blood kept coming. It darkened and deepened the waters. Even when submerged, he still felt the cold turn of Annie's flesh as she went limp in his arms. The pool of tainted water suddenly rose to drown him the same way it drowned Annie.

Zach reeled back with a raspy gulp of air and broke the surface of the maddening memories. He scuttled away as the nightmare followed him into consciousness. Pantera stood before him. Her bottomless obsidian eyes never blinked as she watched him resurface.

"You," Zach whispered, words shaking with betrayal. "How could you?"

The cat's thick heavy skin cut a low line across her eyes. She stared at Zach a little longer, measuring the weight of his words before she glanced down at his hands. They were still red. Still bleeding.

"Here," she said, limping forward between Zach's legs. He reflexively sat up to meet her. "I'll make it stop." She licked the nearest bloodied finger, cleaning his skin with the burs on her tongue.

In an instant, Annie was in her maw again. Flailing. Kicking. Screaming with his voice instead of hers. Zach slapped the cat's face away. Pantera snarled and bit the arm that struck her, dragging Zach forward. She tossed her head, throwing him to the ground to splash the street anew. Zach lifted his head out of the swill. He was drowning in Annie's eyes and he didn't know how to swim.

"Baby's dead," Zach cried as the tears ran hot again. "You killed her."

Unamused, Pantera watched the quivering mass with unbreakable focus.

"I only did what you told me to do," she said, gums bleeding anew from the rough fabric of his coat. There was not point trying to lick away the thickening red lines. More would take their place soon enough.

"You were the one who told her to stop and she didn't," Pantera reminded. "She ran away, so I caught her."

Zach remembered the command. He wanted Baby to stop because he couldn't stand the sight of her walking away from him. No one on that corrupt checkerboard cared about her as much as he did. He wanted her by his side, but he never said how.

"Not like this," Zach wept, unable to raise his head. "I didn't want this."

Pantera crouched down beside him. Her gaze was relentless. Her voice, merciless.

"She was going to leave you," Pantera consoled, "but not me. I stayed. I listened."

And what good did it do?

Sensing his doubt, the pantherian inched closer. Her chin skimmed the black waters below them.

"You can trust me," she purred, "because I'm the one that gave you everything."

Zach dropped a little lower into the street and ducked his head into his jacket away from her. "Take it back," he pleaded while hiding in the warm threads that smelled like poochyena and steel. "Take it back and give me back my Baby."

Sweet innocent Baby who showed him how to dance and sing in the rain. Pantera gently reached out a paw. Flaking cracked skin rimmed her claws and paw pads where the hair had burnt away. "She was going to betray you," the pantherian softly explained. "She was going to turn you in."

Zach opened his eyes and saw the shattered reflection of Annie's rain soaked smile. The smile that had given him a second chance three times over. Zach curled his fingers into a fist away from the cat's offer.

"You're wrong," he whispered.

Baby would never turn him in. She had so many chances and not once did she take them. Pantera knew that because she was there to see them, yet she lied to him anyway. Again and again, she tickled his ears with half-truths, playing with his fear and paranoia. Out of all the voices in his head, he listened to hers instead of the one that didn't know how to lie. The one that sounded like rain playing with the top of a cardboard box. Zach bore his gaze into the ground below him.

"You," he said, voice as low as the bloodied streets he swam in. "You betrayed me." Zach cut his gaze up to the cat and she lifted her head with his. "You killed Annie, not me!"

The pantherian lashed her tail from side to side and squeezed her claws into the concrete. "She was going to bleed one way or another, you said so yourself," she snapped with just as much condemnation.

Zach sliced through the stages of grief and lunged at the cat. With an abrupt twinge of his bad knee, he fell short several inches. Pantera jumped back to avoid the subsequent splash.

"Dead is dead," she quoted. Always black and never white. "So what does it matter?"

It didn't, not until the one who mattered most was murdered right before his eyes. Zach clambered to his feet and stumbled into balance. A fresh new rush of loathing and adrenaline kept him standing. Vengeance was the strongest painkiller of all. He glowered at the pantherian as she stalked into the forefront of his vision. Her skin twitched with raw agitated flesh. The burns oozed in desperate relief.

"I only did what you told me too!" Pantera reminded.

"You were jealous!" Zach shouted back. The rage burnt away the rest of his tears. "That's why you killed her!"

A throaty roar whipped the alley walls. "I'm the one that brought you two together!" Pantera screamed.

"You hated her!"

"I loved her!"

This time, Pantera launched herself at Zach with a hissing shriek. He jumped into her attack with an upwards spring, knowing precisely where to place his head and arms between hers to avoid being instantly mauled. They clipped one another's center of balance and spun in opposite directions. Zach shifted his collision into a grapple to throw the cat in a seismic toss during the swing. Pantera felt the centrifugal pull and latched a paw onto his shoulder.

Half of her body flew outwards upon release and the other dragged the human down to the ground on his stomach with her. She pulled herself onto Zach's back when they landed and flattened him with a series of fury swipes that were identical to a dig. Zach grunted as shreds of fabric fluttered like confetti in the air around them. The military grade textile did everything it could to thwart the devil's assault. Even in death, Annie was still trying to protect him.

Strengthening himself with her resolve, Zach pushed up off of his chest and rolled over, flipping the cat sideways. Pantera toppled over onto her side and Zach rolled with her. He powered his arm with the momentum and pounded a fist into the cat's ribs. Something cracked and Pantera jerked violently, kicking Zach back to the ground. Her legs sprinted in a ghostly marathon that brought her nowhere while laying horizontal. She convulsed trying to escape whatever pain suddenly electrified her system.

Zach didn't understand. The great black devil was capable of snuffing out aces in their prime. There was no way a single strike from a human fist would have felled her. He lifted his hand for an explanation. Fresh blood glossed his knuckles, but the wounds underneath were the same. The extra blood wasn't his. It was Pantera's. She was injured during their escape from Badges and his arcanine more than he realized.

Pantera suddenly slung a jaw full of blood across the cracked concrete. Whatever the injury was, it was internal. A piece of bone from a broken rib must have punctured her lung. If that was the case, one solid strike, even from a human, would have been enough to snap the bone to splinters. One more hit and he could end it forever. Drive the shard into her heart.

Zach drew back his elbow and coiled his fingers in tight enough to turn his knuckles into spikes. This was his chance. Pantera would never see it coming. She was too busy writhing on the ground trying to combat the pain overloading her system. Pain was the only thing capable of incapacitating the pantherian. Zach had never seen her so vulnerable. The great black devil dominated every battle. No foe had ever defeated her, but the way she cried now inspired pity, not fear. Zach understood her suffering. If he gave into exhaustion now, the pain would overtake him. It would hit him like a rockslide with the cataclysmic reality that the human body was not match against a pokemon. And that was just on the outside.

Zach lowered his arm. Did she truly deserve such punishment? Despite what Pantera did to Baby, there was still all that she had done for him. She cared for him when no one else would. She taught him how to want something more than rot and filth underneath his fingernails. To live instead of survive. But at what cost?

Pantera, the devil of Midtown. His angel of light. Was it really her fault that she was driven to kill? The world taught her no other way. She was a pokemon designed to rule the primordial shadows of dark dense rainforests and jungles. Destruction sustained life out in the wild. Were the streets of Midtown any different? Pantera was no guiltier of living than he was.

Zach released his fist.

Momentarily exhausted, Pantera relaxed in a similar manner. Her body finally came to terms with the new state of pain it would have to endure from this moment on. She laid there beside him with heavy wet breaths, eventually sneaking a glance at his face from the corner of her sagging eye. Pantera laid her head down and a slow calculated chuckle rumbled into Zach's mind like faraway thunder. He counted the seconds until lightning struck again.

"You can't do it, can you?" Pantera mused. "Because you finally realized the truth." She sat up with a stiff shift of her front legs, taking extra care to avoid the more sensitive joints. There was no need to rush. The storm was here to stay. Pantera was at Zach's level now and she stared into the same wounds that cut open her own soul.

"We're the same."

The pantherian's voice no longer came from without, but within. Her words touched something inside of Zach that had been buried so deep for so long under so much pressure that a single nick of her claws caused it to burst. It flooded his system, revolutionizing his entire being without changing anything about him. Zach realized he wasn't entirely human. He was something more and that something was the reason he trusted Pantera. Why he melded so perfectly to her every though a desire. Why they became his own.

He couldn't explain it, but Zach saw himself when he looked into the cat's soul. They were the same in every way. The destruction they caused, the terror they unleased, the power they wielded together, it all came from the same madness of oppression, obsession, and violence that had driven them both insane. Zach scrambled to his feet with the haste of a haunting, but there was nowhere to run. Pantera would find him no matter where he went because she was a part of him. She was always there.

The great black cat clutched paw-fulls of the broken alley rubble and pulled herself off of the ground to stand. She wobbled only once.

"You can't kill me," Pantera exclaimed, "because killing me would mean killing yourself and we both know you would never do that. Not you, the survivor. You would do anything to stay alive."

Zach retreated deeper into the alley, shaking his head with every step. Strange mutterings dribbled from his lips. Pantera grinned. Her teeth stuck out above the stream of blood dripping from her lower jaw.

"Darkness is where we belong," she explained, "and darkness is where we'll stay."

Pantera used power gem. Bright purple light strobed from the center of her forehead. Zach winced and raised his arms. The burst vanished without so much as an afterglow and a black ethereal cloud descended into the alley. It suffocated whatever dim light the last of the night had to offer and the material world vanished under the weight of its shadow. It left nothing but a void so empty that even gravity faltered within it. It reminded Zach of the place where he first heard Pantera's voice. His head.

Was this what it felt like to be inside of it? It couldn't be because everything was quiet, like the pressing weight of an eternal sleep. Like death. If this was his head, where were the voices? Did Pantera kill them too? It was lonely here without them. Dark. And people were supposed to be afraid of the dark.

Disoriented, Zach groped the nothingness around him. He tottered on his feet with panic. There had to be something to validate his existence here. Anything. Even the shadows themselves. Pantera! She could save him from the nothingness. She could make him something again. He had no other choice but to turn to her, but wasn't there always a choice?

The sound of the rain reminded him that there was always a choice. It dribbled from the rooftops and tapped against the trash cans. Every drop pinged against the surface like sonar. Zach tilted up his head and listened. The familiar symphony called to him. Soft gentle notes filled his open arms. They pooled in his palms, patted his shoulders, and pecked playfully at his face.

The rain ran under, down, and around his body to shape him out of the unnatural emptiness. A streak of lightning broke through the black bubble. The flash was too strong and too quick to be captured by the power gem. It warned Zach of the treachery within. Pantera struck Zach's bad knee under the window rattling boom. She pierced old wounds with new ferocity and knocked them both to the ground again.

Zach thrashed against her bite, but the cat clutched his leg so that he couldn't break free. Her teeth pinched around his knee, unable to puncture the thick folded fabric protecting it. Zach flailed, but couldn't land a solid hit from this angle. All the while, Pantera focused her efforts on incapacitating him. She meant to cripple him completely. Make it impossible for him to live without her. Zach twisted away, but the cat was too slippery to displace. Again and again, she pawed and bit at his leg, trying to break through his blue hide. Zach wrestled against her, but the oily black coat wouldn't fold under his fists again. She learned from her mistakes. The cat's teeth pinched a nerve and part of Zach's leg went numb.

Anymore and she might gnaw it off completely.

Zach thrust a pointed elbow out across him. It was an unpredictable spasm of self-defense that caught the cat in the face, caving in an eye with a spurt of blood. The pantherian threw back her head in a wild pitch, summoning the frenzied fingers of Reynold's across the sky. The electricity vanquished the last of the power gem. Zach landed on his back beneath her, arms cast out beside him. An empty brown glass bottle displaced by the landing rolled against his hand.

Pantera recovered quickly and secured her dangling maw for the bite to end it all. She drove her fangs for her favorite. The throat. Zach snatched the bottle by the neck and swung it upward into the pantherian's descent. The glass shattered against the side of her head. Brittle broken bits exploded into the night like a hundred glittering stars. Zach kept swinging and the serrated broken edge of the bottle neck still clutched in his hand sliced underneath the cat's head. Pantera reared back. Zach felt the glass graze the skin of her throat. He thrust the lance forward and pushed the cat's head upward as far as his arm would extend. She paused at the pinnacle of his reach and carefully turned her eyes down at the broken bottle lodged in her neck. Zach's arm began to shake so he braced it with the other. Pantera too placed a heavy paw on his arm with a gurgle.

So this was what it felt like.

Zach ripped the bottle out of the cat's throat and fell back to the ground. A faucet of hot blood splashed down across him with the ferocity of a popped balloon. Pantera dropped several inches with the sudden release and continued to lower as her veins and arteries deflated within her. A tremor rocked her body. She lifted her head and vomited the overflow of blood rising in her throat. The river weakened to a trickle, and with one last glance, Pantera collapsed on top of Zach.

He grunted under the immense weight of the pantherian as a wet warmth soaked into his skin. Zach dragged himself out from beneath the cat's legs. The rough pads of her paws gripped his coat tails. Zach ripped them away and crawled to his feet. His boots nudged the broken glass bottle he had dropped. It rolled to the side, spilling the last of the demonic vintage across the street.

Drunk on the blood drenching him from head to foot, Zach whirled around in a series of dizzying steps. When he finally found his balance, the whole alley stopped moving with him. Pantera remained a black heap on the street. She didn't get up and she didn't try to chase him. Zach waited for her laughter to return, but the cat never raised her head. She never would. Because she was dead.

Zach placed a hand over his face and chuckled. A worthless piece of street trash had just killed the most dangerous creature to ever prowl the streets of Midtown. Zach's chuckle bubbled into laughter. Did that make him a hero? He wrapped an arm around his aching ribs to contain the hysteria that suddenly overwhelmed him. Zach buried his face in his hands and ground the laugher into tears.

Dead. Pantera, Annie, the checkered hats, and no good aces, they were all dead because of him. The battle was over. The pain was supposed to end, but it didn't. His wounds, the scars, the memories, remained. Every fiber of his being screamed in unprecedented agony. He was alive, but it felt like he was dying.

Zach clutched the sides of his head and screamed. His voice rose with escalating ferocity. It caused the air to shudder around him. His shrieks transformed into an unholy roar and the barrier between people and pokemon suddenly shattered with the same force as the broken glass bottle. Energy surged into the alley. Up above, jagged fingers of white hot electricity raced across the power lines strung across the rooftops. They flooded into nearby transformers and overloaded the equipment with a crackling buzz. Arc flashes worthy of Reynold's spires jumped down to the metal fire escapes and conduit lining the brick walls. A rush of heat and light brightened the alley, but none of it, no matter how terrifyingly magnificent, could raise the dead.

The two things Zach cherished most in this world were gone. His voice would never reach them no matter how hard he screamed. It was all for nothing.

Every fabrication suddenly exploded. Sparks flew across the sky. Afterwards, the surge ended. The alley quieted in a mechanical sigh and darkened back to natural levels. When all was silent, the monochrome hues of a stormy dawn cautiously crept over the brick parapets of the surrounding buildings. Zach fell to his knees and slowly pulled his hands from his head. Every nerve in his skin crackled with the power that had channeled through him. It felt like his whole body had awakened from a long immobile sleep. The storm was now truly at his fingertips. His torn, dirty, bleeding hands that wouldn't stop shaking. Zach clutched them into fists and drove his chin down into his chest. He'd give it all back if he could.

Every volt.

Zach limply dropped his hands into his lap and sagged to sit on his legs. The checkered hats were right about him. He was a criminal. A murder and killing Pantera only proved it. Zach looked down at the red creases in his hands again. Trying to be good only made things twice as worse. Baby died because he loved her. Pantera killed because she loved him. Love had destroyed them all. If the greatest good caused the greatest evil, then what was the point in trying to do what was right?

He was a villain. Nothing would change that fact. It was time he accepted it. No more hiding or denying the truth. He was Midtown's perfect monster. If he never cared. If he never tried to do better, Baby and Pantera might still be alive. Wanting, desiring, and hoping for something more had doomed him. He should have never wished for the blood to stop running, because when it did, Pantera and Baby where limp in his arms again and those memories caused him so much pain that he wished he were dead.

The only way to survive the torment was to stop the pain and keep the blood running. Keep the memory, the myth, the monster, alive. Zach leaned forward and clawed his fingers into the street. The rain filtered through his bloody clothes and the waters below him darkened. A pool of shadow spread out from beneath him. Its inky tendrils snaked down the street, devouring the dawn light wherever it spread.

It ran down the gutters and into the sewers to fill the heart of the city. Zach raised his head and let the rain take the place of the tears running down his face. A hard unwavering resolve cut his pupils into a narrow feline slit.

If Midtown wanted a monster, he would give it one. And this time, there weren't any heroes left to stop him.