Trash Panda Translator

After everything with Pete, Ella had been told in no uncertain terms by the acting lieutenant that she had to go home and spend thirty days on rest. She was apparently in no shape to work any case and it would be negligent for the lieutenant to let her back, no matter how short staffed they were. Besides, some bizarre earthquake no one quite seemed to remember had left her lab trashed, and it would be two weeks at the least before it would be functional again. She was ordered to stay home, rest, and seek out treatment.

Ella had no interest in the latter. She'd had enough with shrinks by the time she was sixteen and the antipsychotics one had put her on to stop seeing Rae Rae (like it had actually worked) had made her gain thirty pounds in a year.

Nope. Ella learned long ago that as far as help went, she was on her own. Well, not quite, it was her and the Big Guy, and while she hadn't lost faith in Him like she had after Charlotte's death…Ella ached. She felt like maybe it was her fault. All of it. For fuck's sake, she was a forensic scientist. She always knew when something didn't quite add up, and this time around, she hadn't been able to notice that Pete was a serial killer. Or possibly it was so much worse, and she had known somewhere deep down in her soul. The words around the table in the interrogation room haunted her, even now. Maybe she was like Pete somehow, had been drawn to him because she was dark too.

She'd heard stuff since she was a kid, imagined a whole fucking person after all. No, a ghost with special rules who even now only she could see, though she hadn't been visited by Rae Rae in months. But she also thought so often and so easily about how someone would die, about how she'd do it herself.

No, maybe it wasn't her who had lost faith in the Big Guy. But she wasn't sure how, considering how awful she was, the Big Guy could have any faith in her.

So, she was into day twenty of her thirty days off and she was bored. Rewatching Trek had been a no for obvious reasons. That reminded her of Pete the most, since that had been the angle he'd tried to use to get in with her and, you know, even if they'd missed the convention, his overtures had worked, right? She'd already played so many hours of Skyrim and Warcraft lately that her eyelids felt permanently gummy and she just hadn't felt much like going to her favorite comic book shop to read up on the newest issues.

She just felt empty and like almost everything super nerdy she'd shared with Pete, so then it reminded her by proxy. It was how she'd found herself with a new hobby: raccoon watching.

There was a pack? Herd? She'd have to google the name later…but there were about six of them that lived in the dumpster outside her apartment. Or, well, if they didn't live there, they hung out there. L.A. was, of course, mad expensive, but she'd gotten as good a deal as she could from a friend who'd let her claim to be a grad student at UCLA when she wasn't and get discounted apartment housing. That also meant tons of college grad students and just regular co-eds lived here too, and that let to parties and tons of pizza every weekend. These fat little nuggets were living in raccoon carb heaven.

So, when she got bored or couldn't game any longer, Ella upgraded from jammies to sweats and watched the inner workings of the raccoon tribe. They seemed more complicated and more dramatic than a lot of telenovelas she could pick up honestly. Like for instance, there was one raccoon who seemed like none of the others liked very much. He was a big one, though very thin, and she figured it was because as far as she'd seen, the others ganged up on him and wouldn't let him have anything but scraps. Which was so mean because, seriously, this dumpster was overflowing with Chinese take out and half eaten chicken wings and every college kid two a.m. delicacy all the time. But besides that, this little guy seemed to have hurt right side. He tried where he could to put all his weight on his right back leg and his left paws, and the other raccoons definitely used that to their advantage to starve him out.

She was a little worried for Izzy, as she'd come to call him in her head since he listed to the left.

Today, Ella had even brought a few, day-old donuts with her. If Izzy looked even more ragged than usual, she was gonna toss a few over into the dumpster herself.

She approached the steps by the dumpster and climbed up to get a good view at the assorted bandits, then she dropped the donut box and hurried back to her apartment long enough to grab mittens she hadn't used since Detroit and a broom. Rushing back, Ella slipped on the gloves because rabies was no one's friend and then beat on the side of the dumpster with the broom. Climbing up the steps, she looked down at the melee and found five little assholes looking back up at her. In the far corner of the dumpster, Izzy was still being scratched up by the biggest raccoon. Ella thought of that one as King Kong because between his size and the scar over his eye, he was intimidating.

She hit the broom hard against the side again and the five raccoons scattered, scurrying through a hole in the back of the rusted bottom.

But King Kong didn't so much as flinch, just kept biting at Izzy.

"Hey! Dejale en paz! Leave him alone you big bully!"

Ella climbed back up on the stairs and leaned over far enough to bash the bristled side of broom swiftly against King Kong's head. The giant raccoon chittered loudly and then turned to bare it's okay madly impressive teeth back at her. Ella wished she'd brought her baseball bat too. Or possibly just thrown Margaret in the mix. No no, that would have gotten her in so much trouble already for having a secret bath tub chicken. The broom was good. She could do the broom.

"Get off!"

King King finally climbed off Izzy, who was bleeding pretty badly from a torn right ear. He scurried over to the corner closest to Ella and hopped at her, trying to grab the broom from her.

That little fucker…

Ella pulled the broom up at the last minute and high over her shoulder, then brought it down as hard as she could on King Kong's snout. The force of her blow made the fat raccoon fall face forward onto his snout and she thwapped him a few more times for good measure. Finally, he got back to all fours, shrieked at her, but lumbered off to the same escape hole at the back where all the raccoons entered and exited.

That just left poor Izzy with blood matting his face and his little ear dangling.

Ella sighed. She'd have to call animal control and see if they could take him to the vet and maybe find a different place to release him. Before she'd decided on forensic sciences, she'd been pre-vet a year at college and even volunteered in a clinic. She knew a few things, but number one was that wild animals like raccoons and foxes were great ways to get rabies, and her life was hard enough for her already without literally foaming at the mouth.

Sighing, she set the broom down and called down to the little raccoon:

"You won't get this, but I'll be right back. Gotta grab my phone and call people to help you."

Ella turned and then stilled, her blood running cold, when a tiny, squeaky voice called back:

"Don't leave me."

No, no, no.

She heard one person who wasn't really there, and that was Rae Rae, and at least Rae Rae was a human ghost. Ella was not going so loca between everything and freaking Pete that she was hearing a raccoon talking to her. Nope.

"You heard me!" the little voice accused, and she was really going bonkers cause it was like having a squeaky voiced New Yorker accusing her of trying to lie.

The hell?

Ella wanted to leave, to pretend she'd heard nothing, but the voice…the raccoon…freaking Izzy was so damn persistent.

"You can help me."

She closed her eyes and told herself that considering how much bad stuff had happened to her lately, imagining a little raccoon that talked probably wasn't the worst psychotic break she could have. Sighing, she turned around and nodded to him.

Izzy, for his part, had managed to limp to the corner of the dumpster closest to her and was sitting before her, blood on his snout and large, brown eyes wide. "You really can understand, right?"

She nodded. "I…yeah, holy crap."

"You can help me? None of the other little beasts understood me. None of the humans in the bright orange clothes did either."

She blinked at him before realizing that he had to mean the garbage men who had day glow vests to wear while riding the trucks at ass o'clock in the morning. "I don't know if I can. Dumb question because I have to be hallucinating dude, but you don't have rabies, right?"

The little raccoon blinked at her. "What is rabies?"

She groaned. "Will you bite me?"

He quirked his head at her, his whiskers twitching. "Why would I do that, M'Lady. You saved me."

She blinked at him. Hard. The little raccoon was talking and somehow had an accent from New York or something but he also was so weirdly courtly and polite and her crazy side was working overtime now. Perfect. Her complete break from reality was three weeks late.

"I don't think beating a raccoon with a broom is exactly a quest of note," she said. "If you promise you won't bite me, I'll try and come get you out. Then, I have a lot of stuff to clean you off at my place."

She leaned over the dumpster but didn't see any ladders to get back out.

Izzy nodded and there was the weirdest little rustling noise and as Ella watched the tiny raccoon flapped until he was able to land on the top step by her feet. Snuffling up at her, Izzy gave a bow, giving her a full display of his fluffy grey wings.

Fucking wings.

"No bother. I can just get up that way, M'Lady. Again, thank you for helping me. I'm—"

"A flying raccoon, holy shit all over again!"

He frowned at her but then went back to bowing. "Well, I wasn't always a raccoon. Michael Demiurgos at your service, archangel of the Lord."

She blinked at him.

Hard.

Maybe Pete had brain damaged her when he'd strangled her. That had to be the only explanation. Right? Because there was no way that St. Michael was now a fuzzy, winged raccoon who seemed a little…well confused.

She was just cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs now.

He sat up and his tail twitched in time with his wings. "Are you all right?"

"Michael? The angel Michael?"

"Oh yes! You have heard of me. I threw Satan out of Heaven and I helped a lot in the Crusades." He crinkled his whiskers thoughtfully. "I…honestly that's the last thing I remember at all. Battles and pubs on the way out and the wenches…"

She arched an eyebrow at him. "Dude? What?"

He fluttered his tiny wings. "And then it's blank, and I woke up in that horrible trap and those filthy beasts wouldn't let me eat. I…this is still earth, right? You look like a human."

"I am and wait…do you go to other planets?"

"When Father needs me to."

A talking angel raccoon who sometimes runs errands on Mars because God said so. Lopez, your brain is so broken.

"Uh…so the last thing you remember at all?"

"On the road back to Britain with that lion-hearted king of theirs. I…Sir Richard, I think?"

"Oh man…I…you don't remember anything after that?"

He narrowed his eyes at her, even if the fur around them was crusted with blood. "I told you about the evil beasts that have tormented me for weeks, didn't I?"

"Uh yeah but oh man. You lost like a thousand years there."

"What?" And his tail was about three times its size, poofed up in his distress.

"It's 2020, my guy, and you're in the United States, and I'm gonna have to patch you up first and get out the map and wikipedia and whoa." She sighed and opened up her arms. "Do you want to come with me? Also if you bite me—"

He shook his head and bowed once more. Even as he bent low, he shunted his tiny wings away. They were just there one minute and poof! Gone the next. "You have it on my honor that I won't hurt you. It wouldn't be chivalrous."

"Yeah, right, sure whatever works."

She bent low and picked him up, wincing at the snarls in his fur and how light he was. "Oh, wow, Izzy, you're a mess."

"Izzy?"

She blushed, which was dumb because at best she was chatting with a raccoon and at worst an hallucination. "I…well, you favor your left side so I just thought of you as 'Izzy.' You know? Like izquierda."

"Bless you!"

"I didn't sneeze. I…so should I call you Michael?"

He nodded. "Yes, I am Sir Michael, the best of Father's Host, the Sword of God, the Defender of His Church, the Prince of Heaven, the Angel of Fear and currently the Scaler of Mountains."

"It's a dumpster."

He nodded thoughtfully at that. "Yes, well, I'm Sir Michael and you are?"

"Insane."

"Hello, Lady Insane."

She groaned and cuddled him to her hip and hoped this late at night no one would notice her trying to smuggle a bloodied raccoon into her apartment. They hadn't notice her move Margaret in and Kappa Sig was having a very loud kegger about two buildings over, so luck be with her. Hopefully.

"I'm Ella. Sorry, that was a joke. Kind of. Just a broma. I'm Ella Lopez."

His whiskers twitched and her yawned, tiny pink tongue peeking out before curling up again on her arm. "Well, Lady Ella, thank you for your assistance. It will be remembered."

Ella sighed as she went in the backway to her apartment. "Dude, I'm not even sure this is happening."