After Mrs. O’Leary was loaded up in an ambulance to be sent to the nearest hospital, Pat stood in the corner of her living room, breathing heavily.
It wasn’t from the exertion; on the contrary, the fight had given him adrenaline. He probably could have run the route of the Boston Marathon starting right then and there. The only thing stopping him was what he’d just seen. (That, and his job.)
I can’t believe it. That really was a Lycanroc, wasn’t it?
The creature’s eyes had been quite the sight. Its white and red fur, too, were a dead giveaway that the home invasion had been from a fictional wolf-like being.
At some point, Pat picked up his baton and made his way back to the police cruiser. He tried not to touch the part that had been “tainted” by the Lycanroc’s slobber, but he was unsuccessful in this effort.
Oh well, I can wash up when I get back to the station. It’ll be fine.
That’s what he wanted to believe, but halfway to the precinct, a tingling sensation made itself known in both of his hands, to the point where it was almost difficult to keep them fixed to the wheel. It was not the tingling associated with a part of the body falling asleep, but rather an itch.
As Pat drove back to the station, he couldn’t help but notice just how many traffic lights there were. When responding to a 911 call, they might as well not exist to a police officer, but when returning to the precinct, they were just as much a nuisance for cops as for civilians.
By the time he reached the station, Pat’s hands were now prickling with both an itch and sizable amounts of pain. When he glanced down at them, he saw, to his dismay, that a bright red rash had appeared.
Shit. It’s better not to scratch, isn’t it? But it’s so HARD not to!
Pat entered the station, where Sheriff Brody stood in the entrance. “Please come to my office” he commanded Pat. It was not a request, it was a demand.
The younger man bit the bullet and followed the sheriff down the hall. By now the sky was getting lighter, but the artificial lighting of the precinct was still very much needed.
When they reached Sheriff Brody’s office, he glanced at Pat severely.
“Are you angry or something?” Pat asked the sheriff. “I did my job, you know.”
“You should have called us when you finished the job!” Sheriff Brody chastised Pat. “Patrick, I had half a mind to send backup to Mrs. O’Leary’s home!”
Oh yeah, Pat realized. I probably should have done that.
Come to think of it, that would have been such an easy step to take. All he needed to do after calling the ambulance for Mrs. O’Leary would be to call the sheriff (using a number that was not 911) and inform him that he’d be heading back. But he hadn’t even had the presence of mind to do that!
Instead I just stood there, shell-shocked by what I saw. Should I tell Brody the truth now?
Whatever. It’ll come out when he sees the bodycam footage.
“I’m sorry,” Pat muttered.
“Don’t be sorry. Be better in the future. That’s the best way to atone for your actions.”
“Right.”
Sheriff Brody sighed. “All right. Let’s have a look at the bodycam footage.”
Pat handed over his body camera, which included a flash drive that could be plugged into one of the station’s computers. That was where the video of the Lycanroc encounter was stored.
The video showed exactly what Pat had expected it to. It showed a first-person view of the Victorian home in which Edna O’Leary resided, the idyllic suburban palace that had been ruined by a beast virtually nobody believed existed in real life.
Then, Pat entered the house and was informed by Mrs. O’Leary of her plight. The woman was leaning against the closet door, desperately trying to keep it between herself and whatever creature clawed at it from the other side.
“Pause the footage right there” Pat ordered Sheriff Brody.
The sheriff gave Pat a dirty look, but he did as he was told. “Is there something you’re ashamed of here?”
The implication was obvious: Did you shoot Mrs. O’Leary? Of course, Pat would never do such a thing, but if he had done it, that would be more than enough to taint the BPD’s reputation for years down the line. The year was 2024, after all, and 2024 wasn’t far removed from 2020.
“No,” Pat insisted. “Just look at that beast.”
Sheriff Brody frowned. “It’s not visible yet.”
“Then go a few seconds forward.”
“Okay.” The sheriff unpaused the video, and within seconds the Lycanroc was plastered all over the screen as it pounced at Pat.
Sheriff Brody’s jaw dropped. “A wolf? That’s not supposed to happen around here!”
Pat sighed. “Not a wolf. A Lycanroc. At least, that’s what I assume based on its coloring and the fact that I got a rash from touching my baton after the Lycanroc chewed on it.”
“What’s a Lycanroc? Some cockamamie creature that we’ve never heard of, that doesn’t exist?”
“Well, I saw it with my own eyes,” Pat snapped. “And what’s more, you see it too. Why would I lie about something like this? For attention?”
“Maybe” Sheriff Brody muttered.
“But why would I do that when I’d rather have my fifteen minutes of fame for something else? I mean, just look at that Lycanroc!”
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The sheriff grimaced. “You’re saying it’s a Lycanroc. Some creature that the world has never heard of?”
Pat nodded grimly. “But it’s not like the world hasn’t heard of it. Have you ever heard of Pokémon?”
Sheriff Brody glared at Pat for longer than was probably necessary. Then, the man actually laughed, which was quite a rarity.
“Good one, Patrick!” the sheriff bellowed. “That’s a series for kids, isn’t it?”
Pat narrowed his eyes. “Lycanroc is a Rock-type Pokémon that was introduced in Generation VII. There’s the midday form and the night form - the one that broke into Mrs. O’Leary’s home was the latter form.”
“I don’t get why you want to pursue this fantasy so much, honestly” the sheriff muttered. “There’s no evidence, is there?”
Now it was Pat’s turn to laugh. “There’s no evidence? Are you out of your mind, Sheriff?”
Sheriff Brody scoffed. “Well, it could always have been a trick of the light that the wolf had that color scheme. Ever thought of that?”
“I know what I saw. And I know that’s a Lycanroc.”
“You don’t know that, Patrick. You think that. And I think you’re wrong.”
“My brothers will back me up,” Pat insisted. “They’ll be here for work pretty soon.”
That was the nature of being a police officer: You never got a day off. Even if Boston was one of the safest major cities in the US crime-wise, there were still emergencies every day that needed to be responded to.
Also, by brothers, many police officers talked about their fellow men in blue, as if having the same occupation made you a figurative family. In Pat’s case, he was speaking of his literal brothers, Shawn and Daniel. If they were here right now, they’d be able to back up his claims.
“Fine,” Sheriff Brody muttered. “They’ll be here at seven o’clock sharp, hopefully - that is when their shifts start.”
The wait was almost interminable. The only thing that made it more bearable was that one of Pat’s colleagues had brought a box of Dunkin Donuts to the job, which were always a hit with the cops. (Yes, cops loving donuts was a stereotype, but many stereotypes were at least somewhat grounded in fact.)
At 7:00 sharp, Pat’s younger brothers, both in their early twenties, walked into the station to start their work day. As soon as 21-year-old Daniel caught a glimpse of his brother, he gasped.
“Where did that rash come from?” Daniel inquired. “Were you dealing with poison ivy or something?”
Pat snorted. “Believe me: I wish I was.”
“Well, you’re not,” Shawn snapped, running a hand through his short brown hair. “At least, I don’t think you are.”
Barely resisting the urge to scratch, Pat said this: “I think the bodycam footage says it all. You should feel lucky that I’m okay, not mad at me for lying about what I faced at the house.”
“Because you’re not lying?” Shawn replied.
“That’s right, Shawn” Pat snarled, a tone he seldom directed at his brother. “I’m not lying. Just look at the video - Mrs. O’Leary’s home was breached by a Lycanroc, and she got bitten.”
Daniel gasped. “A Lycanroc? Like, a species from Pokémon?”
Pat nodded sheepishly. “I’m afraid that’s exactly what it was. And Sheriff Brody will be happy to show you the footage - just come to his office. But first, have a donut - we’ve got plenty.”
Daniel gladly accepted a round pastry, but Shawn turned it down, saying that it was more important to eat healthily so that he could remain in shape for the high-speed chases that came with the job. In any case, the three brothers entered Sheriff Brody’s office.
After reaching the part of the bodycam video where the Lycanroc busted down the closet door, Shawn gasped. “This footage wasn’t…fabricated, was it?”
Pat glared at his 24-year-old brother. “It’s raw footage. Isn’t editing bodycam footage a crime in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts?”
“Beats me.”
Sheriff Brody neither confirmed nor denied that hypothesis. Instead, he muttered this: “Let’s just see the rest of the footage before we cry foul over the process.”
“But that’s a Lycanroc!” Daniel exclaimed. “It seems like Pokémon are real after all!”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Daniel Morris,” the sheriff replied. “Again, we should watch the whole video before we jump to conclusions.”
Together with Sheriff Brody, the three brothers viewed the rest of the video. It featured a high-stakes tug of war between Pat and the Lycanroc over the baton, then the stun gun went off.
“It shot Mrs. O’Leary?” Sheriff Brody bellowed.
“I didn’t mean to!” Pat exclaimed, which, of course, was an admission of guilt. Oh well - not like he could have denied that forever, or even for very long at all.
“Next time,” the sheriff muttered, “make sure to file an incident report. The stun gun shouldn’t have just gone off like that.”
“Right” Pat sighed. “It was knocked from my hands by the Lycanroc.”
Sheriff Brody frowned again. “Well, whatever. So you were able to stun the Lycanroc unconscious. What happened next?”
“Well,” Pat continued, “I saw that Mrs. O’Leary had been bitten on the left hand, so I called an ambulance for her. I assume you’ll be in contact with the hospital where she’s being treated?”
The sheriff nodded. “Yes, but I’m asking what happened to the Lycanroc.”
“Once the ambulance arrived, I assume they tranquilized it and sent it to the lab for a series of tests to be run. Some of them take a few days to come back, I think.”
“You think?” Shawn snarled.
Sheriff Brody was a little less accusatory, but he didn’t seem pleased with Pat either. “Patrick, you’re supposed to report these things. You’re supposed to remain in communication with us throughout the aftermath of an incident like that.”
Pat sighed. “Sorry.”
“Again, sorry doesn’t fix the problem. Just promise to maintain a greater presence of mind in the future.”
There was a long silence in the room. Then, Daniel voiced the question that was on all of their minds.
“So what do we do now?”
Sheriff Brody grumbled a bit. “Now, we wait. Pat’s in contact with the hospital - they’ll give us updates on Mrs. O’Leary’s condition. I imagine they’ll give her a rabies shot or two. Maybe more than that, considering that this is a novel creature.”
“It’s a Pokémon” Daniel corrected the sheriff.
“Whatever” the sheriff replied. “The point is, I expect you three to follow the updates all day. Just because the Lycanroc has been taken into custody doesn’t mean that your work here is done.”
So that’s exactly what they did. For the rest of the day, the Morris brothers sat in their offices following updates on both Xitter (pronounced “shitter”) and local news outlets. Occasionally, they would receive specific updates from the hospital - supposedly Mrs. O’Leary was in stable condition, though her eyes were very bloodshot.
During this time, Pat reflected that life was like a Red Sox game: It was defined by a few dramatic moments in which most of the action was concentrated. That morning’s fight with a formerly fictional creature had certainly fallen into that category.
But most of the time, very little happened, which could be very unnerving as a police officer. Those hours take a different sort of courage, because you knew that at any moment, the tranquility could be broken.
Even then, Pat harbored a sinking feeling that this wasn’t the end of it.