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.