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The Dark Side of Life ch.1

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"Alright look, at this point you have two options here. You can either leave and get along with your day, or we can just arrest you right now and take you to jail for obstruction, no questions asked. It's your choice, buddy."

Getting out of the unmarked Chevrolet police cruiser, Vera had approached the alley that was cordoned off by yellow police tape, and lifted the tape in order to proceed under it. She noticed a fellow uniformed officer standing on one side of the tape dealing with what appeared to be an irate homeless man on the other side, judging from the unkempt way he was poorly dressed.


"No, nuh, please, sir, y-you cain't--you cain't be doin' this here, this where I lay at, see?" the man slurred in protest, gesturing past the officer towards the alley. "A-all my stuffs' back there, and, and--my bed, an'--er-rything'!"


Vera sympathetically sighed, figuring out the man's predicament. He was probably out panhandling or trying to find food, only to return to his living space to find cops blocking it off for some stupid reason. Poor guy, she thought. Deciding to have a few words, she sauntered over to them in getting further details on the whole apparent crime scene.

"Hey pal, lay off the guy," she called to the officer, displaying her badge to him so he wouldn't mistake her for a trespasser when he saw her. He turned, acknowledging her as a detective from her plain-clothes outfit, but still seemed rather surprised by her presence.


"They sent you out here too?" he asked, furrowing his brow. "Must be something pretty hush-hush going on over there..."


Vera glanced over at the alley entrance, where two other uniform officers conversed, and then took notice of the single chevron stripe insignias they all had on their shoulders. "Yeah, that's what I get sent out for to work, and what they send rookies like you for out to babysit," Vera replied, dismissively shrugging. "What's going on here with this gentleman?"

The patrol officer frowned, and then motioned to the homeless man. "This guy came up and started yapping for ten minutes straight over why we won't let him in a damn crime scene," he irritably explained, matter-of-factly. "Apparently he lives in that dump."

Pursing her lip, Vera sighed and thought for a short moment. Why do all these fresh cops think they can talk smack to just anyone these days? she pondered to herself. How do they even get out of the Academy...

Dismissing her thoughts, Vera looked up and faced the homeless man, who stared at her for answers. She could already pick up the faint trace of alcohol on his breath, but she decided to ignore it. "Alright, sir," she began. "Right now we're just investigating where a criminal might have been hiding for an extended period of time--that person is already in custody at this time, though. We're just searching around the place for evidence that'll help us with the investigation."

The man appeared to comprehend what she was saying, but he opened his mouth to question further--something Vera was quick to subdue. "Now look, I'm sure your stuff won't be touched at all, okay? Hey, just come back in an hour or two--go get yourself something good to eat, yeah?"

The officer looked on in intrigue as Vera proceeded to offer the man twenty actual dollars straight out of her pocket, as if she knew he couldn't possibly have any money. He understandably stared at her in disbelief for a few brief seconds, before seemingly hollering out for joy and taking the money, frantically thanking her. "Oh, dear lord, God bless you, officer, ma'am--I-I haven't had anything in a...in a day, or somethin, praise the Lord, woooooh....!"

Finally, the homeless man then started to hobble away down the street. "But wait!" Vera called after him, to which he shakily turned around. "No drugs or booze, you hear me? Eat."

Hearing her last order, the man then proceeded to happily hobble away until he disappeared out of sight past the street corner, making it unknown if he actually heeded Vera's advice or not. Now left alone, the officer turned and gave Vera a brittle, yet bemused look.

"Well, damn--ten months on the beat and I thought I had seen it all already," he stated smartly, shrugging."Thanks for the assist, I guess..."

Ten months? That explains a lot. Vera simply looked back at him, slowly shaking his head with a disbelieving glare. "You...haven't seen...anything yet..." she muttered, resisting the overwhelming urge to facepalm right then and there. "Anyways...who's in charge here, the Sergeant?"



To her surprise, he briskly shook his head. "Nah, Wolfe's running this whole show, whatever it is. She's in there checking the scene out with a couple others."



Wolfe? What the hell is she doing here?


At that point Vera immediately decided she needed to check out what was going on for herself, especially if it warranted a tandem investigation by two different detectives...let alone specifically a property-crime detective like herself and the high-profile organized crimes detective known as Patrice Wolfe. This had to be more than just a simple small-time gang-related scrap or domestic trouble.

Leaving the officer to mull over overwatch himself, Vera eagerly went into the alleyway past the two other officers standing there, noticing some items over to the side of it littered about on the ground--a dirty sleeping bag here, a rusted barrel with some burned out sticks and ash inside made from a makeshift bonfire, and a stray shopping cart filled with bags of varying materials.  Must have been that guy's stuff, she noted, recalling the homeless gentleman from earlier. She then turned the corner and passed two forensic examiners taking photos of the surrounding alleyway and taking samples of all sorts from spaces on the ground and walls that were specifically designated by evidence markers. "What the hell happened here?" she muttered to herself, as she soon walked up to a door with another officer standing guard while forensic experts passed through it. The officer turned to look at her as she approached, to which she showed him her badge to authenticate herself amongst everyone else on the scene.

"You're Claythorne, right?" he asked.

Vera nodded and replied. "Yeah, what's the deal here?"

"Wolfe'll brief you in on the details, but from what I know this is some high value individual we're trying to bag,"  he informed. "I'm curious as all hell as to why it looks like a homicide scene, but that's your business, not mine."

Vera sighed and nodded, stepping inside the building. The hallway was rather dirty, with walls that chipped paint and the floor with all sorts of dirt and pieces of trash, but it was as expected of a back alley in this part of town. Upon rounding a corner, she found herself stepping inside the room.

There was absolutely nothing that struck her as odd, out of place, or even interesting for that matter. The room was rather small, about the size of an apartment room, and consisted of a dirty bed along the far wall, a small alcove of a closet, and a decently-sized desk opposite of the bed. Two forensic experts were studying and marking the bed and desk, while a certain reddish-brown haired, fair-skinned woman in her thirties observed them. Upon her hearing Vera step inside, she turned to her and subsequently sighed, rolling her eyes.

"I would've preferred to have done this alone, but I guess HQ doesn't give a damn about my resumé anymore," she said out loud in an annoyed tone, not even bothering to make eye contact with Vera. It was as if she was talking to some other imaginary person that was in the room.

Vera furrowed her brow at her, but chose to ignore the somewhat rude greeting. "You must be Wolfe, right?" she replied, stepping toward her. "I'm Detective--"

"Claythorne, property and petty crime investigator, Third District; yes, I've heard of you," Wolfe suddenly interjected, giving her a glare--the first time she had looked at Vera directly. "I hope you've had a slow day so far, because this is going to really speed things up."

Vera couldn't help but scowl slightly, having been ticked off already. Nice to meet you too, bitch, she mentally grumbled. She gave the forensic guys a glance, but they just kept on with their work, probably ignoring them for their own sake. Unfortunately, she had to stay professional with her new associate. "What's the deal here, are we looking for some kind of drug dealer or something?"

"Nah, but someone as equally as interesting," she stated matter-of-factly. She showed Vera a portrait photo of a dark-skinned young man with short, neatly cut hair. "One man by the name of Tyrone Wilson, a certain person that the FBI have been investigating, for whatever intents and purposes they have."

Vera stared at her in disbelief. "The freaking FBI? Then why the hell do they have us doing this?" she questioned.

Wolfe simply shrugged. "Perhaps they want this guy bagged off the books, because the higher-ups said it would be too high profile for their agents to be out looking for him. As far as they're concerned he hasn't committed anything that would warrant a SWAT team, but it's "in their best interests" that they catch this guy "with utmost speed and purpose". Gotta love higher-up BS," she replied, making air quotes with her hands.

Vera found herself shaking her head as she stepped closer and took a better look at the wooden desk that was gently brushed with a special type of powdery substance that was used to distinguish fingerprints on surfaces. No prints were immediately visible to her, though she was sure the high-definition photos that the forensic specialists would take later would turn up something. But as she stepped back and crossed her arms, she just ultimately felt conflicted and totally lost. "But I don't get it--this place looks absolutely clean, there aren't any blood stains or bullet casings, or anything else that would indicate something legitimately bad happened here that would warrant a response like this," she protested. "I mean, who is this guy to them, a damn terrorist or cult leader or something?"

Wolfe simply raised a lazy brow at her, and shrugged as if to say 'don't ask me'. "Hey, as far as I'm concerned, we tag him, bag him, turn him over, and get paid. You can ask HQ all you want, but they'll probably tell you the same..."

Well, not getting anything useful out of her...

Sighing, Vera cursed under her breath as she resolved herself to this seemingly pointless investigation. "So what, did you find anything useful here? If not, what the hell do we do now?"

Wolfe's attention had now drifted onto her smartphone, texting and swiping away at it. "Tell you what," she started to say. "You can get started on running him through the database and finding associates to talk to, because I'm sure I can do this on my own here, and I'll just stay--"

She suddenly trailed off, her eyes slightly widening and her expression turning into disbelief while looking at the screen. Vera had concernedly noticed this, and quickly spoke up. "What is it?"

It took Wolfe a moment or two before appearing to come back to her senses, and producing an explanation. "Oh, nothing, it's just something an acquaintance of mine sent me," she said, waving her hand away as if it were no big deal.

Vera gave Wolfe one last glare of suspicion before deciding to ignore it altogether. Quite frankly, she sure didn't feel like staying with this woman a second longer than she needed to. "Oooookay...I'm gonna go ahead and get started on that, then," she said, soon turning towards the door. "I'll let you know if I come up with anything..."

"Sure--but one more thing, eh?"

Vera had taken a few steps out, before Wolfe called out to her, causing her to stop and look back. "What?" she halfheartedly responded, raising her brow at her.

Wolfe had what seemed to be a bit of a knowing expression on her face, flashing a quick grin before continuing. "I'd be careful out there if I were you, Detective," she advised in an unexpectedly nonchalant voice, with a curt nod. "Some people can be pretty unpredictable out there--you should keep your eyes open."

Now officially lost, Vera gave Wolfe one last estranged look before replying. "Sure...you do the same, I guess," she tentatively said, before finally turning around and exiting the so-called 'crime scene'. As she left the area and started on her way back to her office at the Third District Headquarters, her head was filled with questions surrounding this whole scenario--about this Tyrone Wilson, why the FBI wanted him and why they sent the Metropolitan Police to find him for them--and especially Wolfe and her odd, rash behavior. After a while, she decided to put it off for the moment and try to clear her mind for the rest of the day ahead...




"Copy, dispatch; code 3..."

The radio chatter rattled away from Lexi's police scanner, and we watched from the parking lot of the mini shopping center as a D.C. Metropolitan Police cruiser parked nearby turned on its lights and sirens and sped off, its siren's wail being heard for a few blocks before it faded away into the normalcy of city ambience.

After I watched it drive away, I noticed Vera softly whispering to herself in between the crackles and chatter over the police scanner. Her whispers was barely audible, and I looked at her with a bit of concern. I was about to speak up and ask if she was alright, but I heard her whisper to herself again, and I realized what she was saying--she was responding to the radio calls from the scanner to herself. "You miss your days working as a detective?" I asked, grinning a bit.

She laughed a bit, and shrugged. "Sometimes, I guess--when I find myself working in certain areas, it does come back to mind from time to time," she replied, gazing out toward the rest of the semi-active city block. "It does bring me back, all right."

I simply smiled as I continued to watch the city live about its daily life before me, my thoughts soon drifting to imagine what it would be like to be a detective, as well as being a police officer in the city in general.


Which brought me back to a bittersweet memory of my life, at least of my human one...my father.


My father was (or still could've been, for all I knew) a senior police officer of the Metropolitan Police of D.C. for a solid 25 years. He was a professional, humble, morally-sound role model of a man that was also a caring father to me and my two siblings on his side of the family (I lived with my mother, so I didn't see them very often), as well as an all-around dependable person in general. While he mostly kept to himself, he always had a pretty nice sense of humor around his associates, family and friends. He would always help one when working with him, and have meaningful conversation as well, whether it be humorous, serious or just something light-hearted. He was a person I was very grateful to have in my life along with my mother, the two of which were never married, but both put me at the center of their lives, something I obviously valued in the course of my growing up.

Of course, we were always as close as we could ever be. All the way up until...well, life changed for me as I knew it...


I had sighed, not wanting to reflect on the painful day of my rescue by the PRT two years ago. Instead, I strived to cherish the positive memories of him. "Y'know, my dad's a cop here..." I mentioned to Vera. "Well, he might not be anymore, I dunno--he was planning to retire soon when I last saw him."

Vera turned to me, her eyes lit up in surprise. "Oh, wow, really? What district did he work in, if you know? Is he a street cop, or something else?" she asked, smiling pleasantly to knowing there was a colleague of hers amongst my family.

"Senior officer, if I remember right, so yeah, a street cop," I replied, chuckling. "The funny thing is, he's been one for 25 years, and he's gotten a bunch of recommendations from his higher-ups--he's even passed the FBI Agent entry exams, but he's never wanted to promote. Says he just loves to help people, so that's why he stayed there."

A warm, appreciative smile grew on Vera's face. "Wow...personally, I just love people like that," she replied pleasantly. "People who actually care about their community and their job, you know? I don't think I remember anybody that honestly took their job to heart, at least from who I remember working with..."

Lexi smirked in amusement. "Sounds like the whole cop job isn't too appealing, is it?" she replied from the back seat.

"Nah, at least not from the paycheck and long hours!"

The three of us shared a good laugh at Vera's quip. She sure seemed to have quite a history with the force, which came as no surprise, given her former profession. However, a solemn sigh escaped her lips. "...It's a tough job, though, especially if you're on the street," she pointed out. "You always have to make judgement calls that can mean someone getting hurt or attacked, and between someone living or dying. At the same time, you've got these single cops on the news who simply make terrible use-of-force calls and end up wrongly shooting people, and thanks to the media have everyone looking negatively at you just for wearing a badge, like you're a racist or xenophobic or something...and some crazies out there are always looking to kill you for little to no reason at all, besides the fact that you're a cop."

Both Lexi and I knowingly remained quiet as we took in her words. Being a police officer was a difficult and controversial job in this country, but as my father told me a while back, it was a necessary job of society. "...It's good to know not all of them are bad, though," Lexi softly mentioned, as if to bring the topic on a lighter note. Without any further words, all three of us seemed to pick up on the lingering feeling that we should probably change or drop the darkening subject.


With that, we continued to sit in the car still parked in the lot for about half an hour more, the three of us making idle and pointless conversation from time to time while alternating with our menial tasks; Vera keeping an eye on our surroundings, Lexi tapping away at her computer, and myself alternating between checking the radar on the dashboard-mounted tablet and checking out random news articles on my smartphone. We had been sitting in our present location for about an hour; we'd been trained to move to a different location in our patrol route if our scanners didn't pick up any suspicious signals or radio activity from police communications within 60 minutes. Vera seemed to pick up on this fact, and turned the Audi's systems back on, but not starting the engine just yet, in preparation for leaving. However, as if on cue, we heard three successive beeps coming from both Lexi's computer and our radar, bringing all of us to attention.

"We got a ping!" the disguised Espeon announced. "Got a vehicle with both an encrypted GPS signal and an abnormal load of output data coming from it--you see it up there?"

The two of us up front quickly looked at our radar screens, which designated a pulsating dot that was traveling along a street about three blocks away from our location. "Moving south on 18th Street, got it!" Vera acknowledged, starting the engine to the car, and pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road in order to catch up to the moving vehicle.

My heart picked up its pace as we started out onto the streets of the city once more, densely packed with other traffic and pedestrians; lots of other people that were all dubiously unaware of the tense chase that was bound to unfold. Vera hustled our S4 past other vehicles at a quick pace, turning and overtaking at a balanced pace with both urgency and restraint in mind--showing off driving skill that a former police detective like herself would be more than capable of producing.

This is it, I thought to myself, trying to prepare for whatever was bound to happen in the near future. This was the job I had trained many long hours for, physically and mentally--yet even still, very little could completely prepare anyone for the real deal, and I was no exception. In the back of my mind, nervous thoughts and fears lingered: screwing something up, seeing or doing something I wasn't prepared to, or most worryingly, something bad happening to any of us...


Focus, man. You've got this. We've got this. 


Shaking my head lightly, I banished the usual worries and regained my composure, preparing for action. It was only a few moments more before we caught up to the suspected vehicle in question--a black Chevrolet utility van, another nondescript vehicle that was known to be frequently used in Pokéxtinction's vehicular fleet. As we pulled up behind the van currently stopped at a red light, we quickly got to work--Vera started to read off the Virginia license plate, while I wrote the letters and numbers down on a notepad that I kept in the glove compartment, and Lexi entering the license plate string into the Motor Vehicle Administration's database, of which Lexi's rig had hacked into. "Plates are coming back as a van registered to a 'Joshua Lee' and a 'Lee & Sons Plumbing' company, out of Leesburg," she reported. 

"That's a plumbing van if I ever saw one," Vera scoffed, her eyes scanning the vehicle carefully. With no visible signage or other company labeling anywhere to be seen, it was certainly debatable that this was a legitimate company van, but there were always other possibilities as to whom it could belong to, like a privately-owned small business, or actually being the real deal. There was no definitive way to tell with the way Pokéxtinction was concealing themselves in plain sight these days, but with skills like Lexi's in scoping out and analyzing data of countless networks across the region, they made all the difference in coming up empty and snagging an accurate hit.

I remained silent as I also scanned the van with vigilance. The subtle tension in the air continued to build as we were now directly behind the vehicle we were looking for. Part of me, not being fully subjected to this new life of espionage, half-expected the occupants of the vehicle to just get out at any moment and start shooting at us, or take off in a haze of burnt rubber and start some dangerous high-speed chase across the city. Regardless, as we started moving again and followed the van at a safe distance, I tried to maintain my highest level of focus as I thought ahead on what to do next. 


It was a few minutes of driving into a partly residential area before the van stopped and parked into a side alleyway. Vera went ahead and parallel parked the car on the adjacent side of the road, so we could keep visual of the van from a respectable distance. Our eyes remained glued to it for what felt like forever, but in reality was only a few minutes.


Suddenly, the van's doors opened, two men exiting it. They wore gray work shirts, black pants, and boots. They appeared to have utility belts on with numerous pouches and straps attached—and most alarmingly, as they briskly and purposefully walked toward a back door of one of the buildings, they appeared to be putting on what looked like rubber gloves. 


That's when I realized this could possibly be an actual kidnapping...

"Shit," Vera muttered, a look of urgency crossing her face. "This might be it. Lexi, call it."


The tension only seemed to build as the two men entered the building, closing the door behind them. Lexi was contacting Command back at home of the possible capture operation in progress via radio, and I was left to let my mind run wild with the horrible possibilities of what was probably happening inside the building now. Also swimming in my mind was the question of what we were actually going to do, should this really be an actual kidnapping. Today we were only geared to scout for Pokéxtinction vehicles and locations of possible operation. With Lexi and her computer rig taking up all the space in the back seat, we weren't really in the position to rescue anyone in the process of transformation...


A tense mood held over the air as we sat and watched to see what would come out of the door the men went in through. As the minutes slowly passed without anything happening, I was still wondering what kind of horrors were unfolding inside the building that seemed to be residential in origin, but appeared too abandoned or vacant to really tell. It wasn't until Vera spoke again that I noticed how long we had really been sitting there for.

"They would have been done by now..." she muttered, taking a glance at her watch. I myself took a look at my own humanizing watch; it had been almost five whole minutes since we had stopped here. Thanks to the tension, it did seem like time had dragged on for longer than it should have, but when it came to capturing transforming subjects, Pokéxtinction would be much quicker than this: a quick routine of going into the area where their target was, knocking them out, and bringing them back to their vehicle in a fell swoop of two minutes tops. It was becoming more and more obvious that there was something amiss here...

And as if aware of the same thing, Vera soon looked to me with a serious expression. "...We need to see what's going on in there," she announced. 


I was silent for a few moments, but I understandingly nodded, reaching into the glovebox and pulled out the stashed handgun that was inside. I checked the weapon's safety and pulled the slide back, chambering a round and stuck it in the waistband of my jeans, being sure to conceal it with my shirt and jacket. 

I guess this is really it.

Before leaving the vehicle, Vera and I placed earpieces in our ears--these were modified to allow quick communication between the two of us and Lexi. When we were ready, we opened our doors and stepped out of the vehicle, closing them behind us and leaving Lexi behind in the vehicle to continue monitoring communications and signals on her computer rig. "Be careful," she quietly warned us before leaving, to which we acknowledged and left her to continue working.

This street in particular was somewhat quieter than the other ones, even if we were on the outskirts of a residential area. A couple of other cars were parked on the sides of the narrow road and only a few people were walking down the sidewalks, but nothing too populated at all. We watched for cars in the road, quickly crossing it and headed into the empty alleyway, Vera walking with a particularly brisk pace reminiscent of my father's; they were both former police, after all. As we approached the door which the two men had entered, we were sure to take a close surveying look inside their parked van, peering in the windows to see a rather clean cabin free of trash or tidbits lying around, the sole item of worthwhile mention being an empty bottle of soda in the cup holder. The back of the van didn't have any windows, but from what we could see from the front windows, it was just about empty. Deciding that there was nothing here worth paying attention to yet, we passed the van and carefully approached the steel door to the building. Vera was on point as she laid one of her hands on the door handle, the other resting on the handle of her own pistol that was concealed in the inside of her jacket. A quick tug revealed that the door was actually unlocked, and after quickly nodding to me, she slowly opened it to look inside.

We were greeted with a dimly lit hallway that only appeared to have one door at the very end of it, from which a bit of artificial light was peeking through a crack in it from the room beyond. Seeing this, Vera withdrew her handgun and cautiously walked towards the source of the light, with me following closely. As we approached the door, we could only hear the faint hum of what was probably a lightbulb from inside, but besides that, there was nothing but unnerving silence from the room ahead. When we were right outside the door, we both listened very carefully for any hints of anything going on inside. But there wasn't a single sound, not even subtle footsteps or anything that was reminiscent of footsteps, movement, or anything for that matter--simply silence...

I simply looked to Vera, who glanced over her shoulder at me and gestured her head towards the door, which I quickly picked up on. We were going in.


So I nodded, taking out my own handgun and gripping it tightly, ready for anything that was awaiting us inside. I stacked up right behind my partner, and when I patted her shoulder to let her know I was ready, she took the lead as we charged inside, our guns drawn...



And the inside of the small, dusty and barren room greeted the two of us with a sight that neither of us were prepared for, causing us to slowly lower our weapons and curse under our breaths. The two men we had earlier sighted entering this building were now sprawled out on the floor before us, motionless, with small but slowly growing puddles of blood underneath them...
What's a last ninja upload before the new year, huh? :lol:

But nope, this story's not dead, as much as everything might suggest it is...I've always had ideas and thoughts about this story ever since I last worked on it nearly a year ago. It honestly means too much for me just to let it die without proper merits or any sort of end product. Maybe when I start work on something original (not a spinoff like this) I might be more productive with writing work, but for now, I'm just not sure...

Anyways, I hope you all enjoy this, and hopefully the next one comes before New Year's next year.

:iconpokeumans: belongs to pokemonmanic3595

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Trackwolf's avatar
That was a fun read. A lot of things going on in this one but enjoyable seeing a more different perceptive on the world.