The Friendly Battle & Other Pokemon One-Shots

Disfigured

Some girls Vicky's age kept a whole team of pokemon, but Vicky had never wanted another pokemon but her Mary.

Mary - Roseburn's Mary Mary, to be precise - came from the very last egg laid by her family's star granbull, Roseburn's Quite Contrary. Quite Contrary was magnificent and had swept contest after contest, but her eggs kept failing to develop properly and of the dozen that did hatch, none had her charm and half had such poor coloring they had to be bucketed. By the last egg, nobody but Vicky held out any hope. But when she'd helped crack the rocking, whining egg and free Mary, Vicky could see they'd won the genetic lottery at last with gorgeous lavender-blue fur shining from the eggshell.

Mary was perfect in every way. Quite Contrary was lovely but had a bit of a weak jawline and Mary got the properly hefty underbite from her sire Cockle Shell that Quite Contrary had failed to inherit. She was a bit floppy and blind to start with but Vicky knew that was exactly what the perfect snubbull was like as a new puppy. Even the trouble of having to tack back the soft rolls of skin with sutures to keep her eyelids from rolling under and marring her lovely blue eyes only meant the surety she'd have utterly stunning folds once she matured and evolved, even better than either of her already gorgeous parents.

Really, Vicky could talk for hours about how wonderful every inch of Mary was, from her adorably scalloped nostrils to the tip of her extra-long skirt of skin, how unspeakably lucky her breeding was, how much Vicky loved everything about her, which was why it was so insulting when some reedy girl in a scuffed leather jacket like she was trying to be edgy offered to buy Mary for pocket change.

"She sounds like there's a noose around her neck," the girl said, like she thought making up insults would convince Vicky. "Her tongue's turned blue. Her eyes are about to roll out of her head. And I'm betting she couldn't close her mouth if she wanted to with a jaw like that. You should be glad I'm offering to pay you anything. She is the worst looking snubbull I've seen in my life."

"Mary is the best snubbull you'll ever see," Vicky snapped. "She is literally priceless. The waiting list for her eggs is taller than you."

Which, it turned out, was a mistake, because the thug punched her in the nose, yanked Mary from her arms, and stomped on her stomach as she hit the ground. Vicky could only have been winded for a few minutes, but the time she spent gasping and choking felt like hours. By the time she could breathe again - by the time she could shout again - the girl was long gone.

The only reassurance Vicky had was that there was no way the girl would be able to sell Mary. There was only one Mary, and anyone who saw her would know who she really belonged to. She was on the international registry! But who knew how long her poor Mary would be in the hands of a criminal while the girl worked out that this wasn't some ordinary pokemon she could sell? What if Mary was locked up in some stuffy room, or a car - the stupid girl probably didn't even know a high quality snubbull like Mary needed air conditioning. Mary could die!

The police mobilized immediately. Vicky sat at the station for a few hours with an ice pack against her face, fretting, before she was told someone had brought a snubbull to the pokecenter that fit Mary's description.

If it wasn't for the lavender fur, she would never have recognized the pokemon lying on the chair as Mary after what'd been done to her.

Mary looked as if she'd been shoved through a garbage disposal. Her once-flawless coat was patchworked and Vicky was so shocked by the horrid red slicing across her pokemon's body that it took her a moment to realize Mary's entire silhouette was ruined. The magnificent skirt of skin had been cut short, the gentle droop of her eyes was now pulled tight as a drum by cruel stitches, and there were two gaping holes punched through her once-adorable nose. There was a thick bandage around her neck and Vicky couldn't even imagine what could be underneath if the rest of this nightmare was in plain sight.