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- The Girls
“All right,” Hela muttered as she sat down next to a bandaged and heavily sedated Azula. “Since you’re here for a while, I thought I’d pick you up a book to read.” Despite the IV drip, the princess jerked toward Hela, her eyes narrowed will ill-intent before the younger woman realized she’d been shackled to the hospital bed. “Now, now … we don’t need you yanking a stitch,” Hela looked at the beeping machine and pressed a few buttons until one of them was the morphine drip.
Eyes lolling from side to side, a semi-comatose Azula slumped back down onto her bed as Hela sneered and patted her on the top of the head. “There, there my little would-be warlord, let’s read a story. I hear this one is particular unpleasant, but I’ll censor anything that isn’t appropriate for your ears.”
With a last snicker, Hela picked up the text she’d bought from the Syntech bookstore—apparently it was some best seller in another realm. On the cover of the book, the words ‘Mein Kampf’ were penned in a dramatically eloquent fashion. Turning to the first page, the Asgardian queen began to read the story aloud for her subject audience.
Chapter 1: Egression
Squirtle are born all the time, but every now and then, one of the tiny little hatchlings is born with a dream. No one, not even the self-proclaimed ‘Pokémon Masters,’ have managed to determine how or why this phenomenon occurs—its just does. As the mother Squirtle was tending to the more primitive hatchlings, one of the small, infantile turtles started to waddle away. He was only a few minutes old, and he was already well on his way to mastering the art of bipedal movement.
As the Tiny Turtle moved from the nest, he lifted his head and grinned at the world he saw. In his heart, he knew that he was different from all the others. Never again would the world of man stereotype Pokémon as weak and servile creatures. All those unevolved cretins were soon going to have to contend with the genetic superiority that was Squirtle. With the myriad thoughts of supremacy swirling about in his mind, the azure reptile made his way to the edge of a small stream.
The world was waiting out there, and it was about time that the amphibious animal embraced it head-on. Reaching one of his pudgy arms behind his back, the Pokémon quickly checked to ensure that his shell had hardened. Squirtle usually have their shells harden shortly after emerging from the egg, and this Tiny Turtle was no exception to that rule. After running his stout little digits down the course of his dense, brown carapace, the petite reptile dove into the water headfirst.
Leaving behind his rural, podunk origins, Squirtle pulled his tiny legs and arms into the comfy, guarded recesses of his shell and grinned. For a moment or two, he swore he could see a few of his brothers and sisters gawking at him as he drifted away, but he quickly shook the thoughts from his mind. Those individuals were behind him now, and he was now one turtle against the world or more correctly—the universe.
After what seemed to be an hour or so, Squirtle finally noticed the first signs of an urban metropolis looming on the horizon. The Tiny Turtle pivoted his body, aimed toward the bottom of the creak, and fired a stream of water from his toothless maw. Although he was still in his infancy, the amphibious Pokémon had enough power to propel his diminutive body clear from the water. Squirtle withdrew his cranium into the safety of his shell moments before he crashed painlessly into a pile of raked leaves.
Snickering at how opportune he was, the newborn turtle popped his limbs out from the confines of his shell and surveyed his surroundings. He had landed in someone’s backyard in the suburbs outside of the large city he had seen on the horizon. It would still be another mile or so before he got to the urban zone, but Squirtle figured he should take the time to adapt to moving on land.
It was at that moment that the object caught the Pokémon’s attention. They were sunglasses—shaped like two triangles that had been placed on their sides and fused at their apexes. Undoubtedly misplaced accessories for a doll of some sorts, the ebony glasses were now the property of Squirtle. Waddling over to the discarded object, the cyan reptile picked them up in his fat fingers and placed them over his developing eyes. Despite lacking external ears and having a rather two-dimensional nose, the sunglasses fit perfectly upon the Tiny Turtle’s visage.
“Squirtle!” The small animal uttered, bopping his head in a display of how cool he knew he was. With his immature eyes now properly shielded from the harmful UV rays of the sun, the turtle threw his right hand up, his index and middle fingers extended to form a V. It was a symbol of victory—not just victory for Squirtle, but victory for all oppressed Pokémon everywhere. The times were about to change.
Squirtle fixed the sunglasses one more time and started toward the enormous structure. A day or so had passed since his birth, and already he was beginning to learn of the world around him. Formed from some type of strange, dull material, it stood as a symbol of human expansion and urbanization. The glitterier the structure, the more corrupt and superfluous its inhabitants likely would be. The Tiny Turtle frowned at the building and wished he had the strength to tear it down with his bare hands. Unfortunately, he was barely half a foot tall, and the house stood as a bastion of humanity’s dominance over Earth. Soon Squirtle would be strong enough to plow through such a pitiful structure and make way for the planet to return to its true, primal roots.
The Pokémon spat a tiny squirt of water at the base of the abode and quickly rushed around it to avoid any retaliation from its villainous, human occupants. As the azure reptile clumsily ran away from the structure, he was startled by the sudden presence of a massive, red monster in front of him. Hitting the side of the beast, the turtle was knocked onto his carapace and temporarily dazed. Looking up at the sky, Squirtle saw one of them—a human. Her diminished size indicated that she was possibly an infantile version of her oppressive species.
Before the Tiny Turtle had an opportunity to react, the creature reached down with one of her massive, dirty hands and began to lift the Pokémon off the ground and away from freedom. Squirtle tried to squirm and attempted to scratch and bite at the monstrosity’s oppressive hand. Despite his efforts, his claws and teeth were far too underdeveloped to do damage to her battle-hardened flesh. It only took a matter of seconds for the amphibious superstar to be successfully kidnapped and taken inside the confines of the cretin’s dwelling. Squirtle cried out as the door slammed shut.
The prisoner was thoroughly enraged at losing his new sunglasses, but he soon realized he was in real danger. Squirtle could now hear the human’s conversing with one another—probably reveling in how they had captured him. The blue-skinned reptile fidgeted, but he failed to escape the vice-like grip of the toddler. Even worse, the Tiny Turtle couldn’t understand what they were plotting. That feeling of helplessness truly vexed the amphibious prodigy, who made a promise to himself to learn the language of the human’s if he ever escaped from this demonic citadel alive.
Unfortunately, the situation was about to take a turn from the horrid to the completely and utterly bleak. The small monster was on the move once more, but this time she stopped for a moment in front of what Squirtle identified as some type of flat surface for placing garments. With her free hand, the small human cleared a region and dropped some type of clear, topless object upon the white surface. Then the turtle was moving once more, and before he could protest, he had already been dropped into the tiny box.
That’s when the horrible realization emerged: This diminutive Homo sapiens intended to imprison Squirtle! The Tiny Turtle understood that he needed to react quickly or else he was never going to see the light of day again. Turning his head down toward the bottom of the prison, the Pokémon unleashed to small torrent of water. The pressure launched him out of the cell and up into the mound of clothes that child had shifted around.
Ignoring the squeak of surprise that escaped the lips of the toddler, Squirtle dove through the loose mounds of clothing and fought his way down until he could no longer hear the whimpers. After another moment or so, the azure turtle emerged from the pile of clothes near an open gateway to the outdoors. Feeling a new wave of glee rush over his miniscule frame, the Pokémon lunged at the exit, but instead of freedom, he was greeted with some type of barely visible barrier.
Falling backwards, Squirtle shot up his pudgy appendages, grasping an extended ledge that overlooked a long drop to the floor. Grunting, the amphibious superstar pulled himself up onto the outlook and glared at the crisscrossed ropes that prevented what could have been a flawless escape. The sounds of footsteps encroaching upon his current position indicated that Squirtle had to do or die. Bending at the knees, he lowered his head and rushed forward. An inch or so before the barrier, he jumped up and withdrew into his shell.
The inflexible wires caved when put up against the dense shell of Squirtle, and a moment later, the Tiny Turtle crashed into a soft bed composed of dirt and sticks. Looking around, the azure reptile quickly realized he had landed in the den of some type of oviparous animal. Evacuating the nest, the blue-skinned Pokémon slowly started his descent down the relatively small tree. When he finally reached the soft, lush grass once again, he fell to his knees and smiled. Before departing the yard of what could have been his jailors, he retrieved his sunglasses. Then he quickly fled to the relative safety of a nearby patch of trees.
Pushing his tiny noggin out through a rather light clump of soft leaves, Squirtle surveyed the path that lie ahead of him. He had only been in the patch of trees for a few minutes, and it seemed he had already reached some type of temporary break or termination in the forest. As far as he could see to the left and right, the ground was black, hot, and solid, with a vibrant sun-colored strip down the center. The trees continued along the other side of the stretch of unnatural, manmade dirt.
The Tiny Turtle suddenly heard the most horrible, loud rumbling noise. Turning his small cranium, he was alarmed by the presence of two huge, glowing eyes rushing toward him. Letting out an infantile squeak, the Pokémon fled back to the relative safety of the brush. He would continue his trek some other way that didn’t intercede with the horrific machinations of Homo sapiens. With his head held low to the ground, Squirtle sprinted north, the same direction from which the shiny-eyed beast had originated from.
A sudden, bright object suddenly caught the attention of the charging reptilian. Stopping in his tracks, the amphibious superstar slowly approached the discarded object. It was a massive, red quadrilateral that was emblazoned with a hemisphere in the center. Squirtle waddled over to the apparatus and ran his tiny digits over the letters on the cover. The first part of the word was rather easy to understand, as it was the first half of the azure reptile’s esteemed species—Poké. The last three words were a little harder for the Pokémon to understand, but after a few minutes, Squirtle managed them.
“Poké…dex. Pokédex.” The tiny reptile said, smiling gleefully at how easily it was to pronounce the human language. It wouldn’t take him much longer to master the rest of it, but the thoughts of such a miniscule victory were shortsighted when Squirtle recalled the usage of the apparatus before him. A Pokédex was what the humans had been using for years to catalog the hatchling’s people as if they were nothing but mere animals. The mere thought of the device made the young revolutionary’s blood boil.
The decorative object embedded on the cover of the machine was a Pokéball. It was what the oppressive Homo sapiens used to trap Pokémon. Pushing his little fingers down into the crevice in the center of the apparatus, Squirtle wrenched the dreaded machine open. Beneath the cover, a screen and a slew of buttons were erected—their actual purpose completely unknown to the device’s current, unfamiliar user. Hopping onto the rows of buttons, Squirtle performed a rather erratic dance until he hit enough buttons to activate the machine.
After flashing for a while and spouting some verbal greetings in the human tongue, the Pokédex popped up the last entry that had been access—Number 007: Squirtle. The mere sight of his race documented like some type of cheap plant in a biology book made the Tiny Turtle want to desperately harm something of the human orientation. Before his malignant thoughts could come to any fruition, the Pokémon was startled by the sound of a branch snapping behind him.
Turning sharply, Squirtle saw the goliath-sized human and reacted swiftly. Releasing as potent a deluge from his maw as he could, the cyan reptile managed to divert the projectile before it managed to strike him. The look of surprise on the human attacker’s face was almost equal to the amount of rage displayed on Squirtle’s countenance. The Water Pokémon watched with a frustration-induced twitch to his eye as the Pokéball rolled away—a few splashes of water still clinging to its metallic surface.
The cap wearing kid retreated a few steps from the rather diminutive turtle. His eyes had fallen to the device that he must have left as a means of bait, but when he went to move forward again to retrieve it, Squirtle retaliated. Bringing a massive amount of his internally-produced water into his mouth, the Tiny Turtle lunged forward like a caged animal—firing the fluid in the form of a translucent sphere. The bubble attack slammed into the lad’s eyes, eliciting a squeal of surprise and a subsequent and rather hasty retreat.
Grinning victoriously, the small reptile walked over to the device that had failed in its intended goal to enslave him. With a widening smile, he proceeded to kick it as far as his tiny legs could. As the Pokéball rolled down an incline, Squirtle walked over to the other apparatus the trainer had left behind, and he then proceeded to saturate it with water. The Tiny Turtle didn’t stop until tiny columns of smoke were drifting up from the Pokédex.
Although the victory would go unseen to the masses, the reptilian radical and fledgling Pokémon activist would never forget his first triumph over man. Leaving behind the ruined technology, Squirtle resumed his trek toward the large city he had seen on the horizon while traveling down river.
As the turtle began on his walk, his mind began to wander to more easily pass the time. Squirtle really didn’t know why he was born with so much knowledge. After all, most Pokémon tend to spend most of their lives attempting to rival cattle when it comes to intelligence, but for some reason, Squirtle had been born a cut above the rest. In fact, he was concrete in his opinion that he was probably already one of the smartest of his people to exist. Why else would he already have so much knowledge crammed into his diminutive, infantile body?
Setting aside the philosophical debate with himself for later, the azure reptile blasted a rather dense stream of water into the slow-moving creek. The liquid projectile slammed into a minnow and sent the tiny fish flying out of the water and onto the other side of the shore. With a primitive gleam in his eye, the Tiny Turtle lunged across the minute creek and pounced upon his flailing prey. Before the minnow had a chance to react, Squirtle stepped on its head and its brain ceased to function correctly.
Baring his rapidly developing teeth, the amphibious superstar tore into the distended body of the fish—easily tearing apart the frail gills and diving into the tender, underlying meat. In a matter of seconds, the famished Pokémon managed to reduce his snack from nothing but bones, a tail, and one horrendously smashed cranium. Smiling contently, the satisfied turtle ran on of his pudgy hands over his plastron and turned his attention to the direction he had been traveling.
Figuring that the small creek would probably lead toward the large city, Squirtle dove in without another moment of hesitation. The sensation that followed brought a smile to the young turtle’s face as he simply bobbed up and down in the cool, slow-moving waters. After the peaceful little moment of daydreaming, the reptilian insurgent kicked his tiny legs and darted forward. Although he was barely over a day old, Squirtle had swimming down pat—after all, it was his genetic forte.
Tucking in his arms, the newborn tried to work on his finesse, and soon enough, he was gliding through the water in a rather crocodilian fashion. With his nostrils sealed off to prevent the flow of liquids into them, Squirtle swam with only his big eyes poking above the surface of the water. The relative peace reigned over the tiny creek for about half a mile before humanity once again reared its hideous countenance. The Tiny Turtle first noticed the pudgy human, perched over the small river holding some type of weapon in his hands.
The brown piece of wood extended upwards, and from its tip, some type of almost invisible chord suspended down into the tranquil waters. The section that had been dipped into the stream terminated in some type of sick, hooked blade, and it was upon that blade, that Squirtle could see some type of annelid squirming in vain to escape. The worm’s efforts were of no use, because the Pokémon could easily see that the Homo sapiens had driven his small, hooked blade through the tiny, defenseless creature’s midsection.
Grimacing slightly at the sight of the dying animal, Squirtle realized that he had to avenge the comrade dying in front of him. Even if it wasn’t one of his people, the amphibious superstar knew that he had to stop the tyranny of man. Lunging up from the stream, the turtle unleashed a small deluge into the eyes of the lazy hominid. Gasping in shock, the overweight monstrosity toppled backwards, his weapon falling to the wayside as Squirtle pressed the attack.
As the man tried to make sense of the situation, the Tiny Turtle caught sight of a box of some sorts. Opened by its owner, the large container was filled to the brim with tools of torture. Frowning, the azure reptilian hopped up to the rim of the chest of horrors and tenderly picked up a rather gruesome too that was adorned with four barbed hooks. Before the man had even managed to sit up, the enraged Pokémon attacked—swinging the lethal ornament down as he leaped at the cretin’s face. The hooks drove into his eyes, eliciting a series of horrified screams.
Squirtle, however, was not the type to capitulate. Even as the primate started to bat at him, the amphibious revolutionary struck back vehemently. The stunned, agonized man’s attacks weren’t anywhere fast or strong enough to deter the Tiny Turtle from his bloodlust. With a rapid succession of blows, the Pokémon managed to rip away the thin layer of tissue that concealed the monster’s eyes. Although the tyrant’s strikes in Squirtle’s direction were losing some of their desperate ferocity, the azure reptile didn’t stop until he hooked the back of an eye and ripped it out.
The instant that the man’s right ocular nerve was severed, he instantly slumped back—his massive form colliding with the earth. Squirtle, standing on the man’s chest and still holding the torture instrument in his hands, looked at the bulging eye and frowned. Shooting a stream of water from his mouth, he sent the severed organ off the weapon and to the bare dirt. Just as he was about to get a move on, the Tiny Turtle felt the man’s chest rise faintly. The incredulous thought drove the reptilian insurgent to new levels of aggravation.
Walking up the man’s collapsed form; Squirtle drove the four-pronged device into the right side of the monstrosity’s neck, right below his ear. Grunting as he moved, the Tiny Turtle drug the stolen weapon across the length of the man’s neck and over to his left ear. Taking a step back, the amphibious revolutionary watched as small spouts and tiny rivulets of blood escaped the deep, fatal laceration.
The tyrant’s screams, which had come to an end following Squirtle’s ocular surgery, returned as frantic gurgles. The gurgling made the turtle laugh, because each one was accompanied by more and more blood, which spewed down onto the man’s chin. After another few seconds of fighting and straining, the vanquished beast fell still. Discarding the bloodied, manmade torture instrument, Squirtle glared hatefully at the fallen Homo sapiens. In all his spasms, his blood had managed to get onto the turtle’s body.
Spitting upon the primate for good measure, the Pokémon spun around and quickly dove back into the stream. His little recess was over, and it was due time that he continued his venture toward the city. It was there that he would hit humanity where it would hurt them the most—the centers of their overpopulated, pollution producing, shrines to commercialization and the destruction of Mother Nature.
Squirtle popped his head above the water and eyed the scene downriver: Some type of massive, smog-emitting structure was dumping gallon upon gallon of liquid into the stream. It had been a mile or so since Squirtle's last interaction with life, and the amphibious superstar was already infuriated by what he saw. The Tiny Turtle, unaware of the exact origin of the orange, partially chunky fluid, quickly escaped to the shore before he got any closer. Shaking his tiny frame a few times to decrease the amount of water still clinging to his azure-colored flesh, the amphibious creature glared at the ominous structure.
A fortress of black steel and stone, the building was decorated with a multitude of skyward-facing pipes that spouted the foulest of thick, obsidian smoke. Squirtle immediately realized that he was gazing straight at one of humanity’s monuments to industrialism. The Pokémon quickly drew the correlation between the factory and the vast excess of orange liquid gushing from its bowels into the stream. Squirtle realized the humans were poisoning the ecosystem, and the dead, deformed fish were a dead giveaway.
The site of humanity’s poison corrupting the earth made the turtle’s blood seethe, and he knew immediately what had to be done. Even though the city was but a mere mile or so away, he knew he had to delay his visit in order to deal with the threat at hand. Sneaking across the dying grass near the shore of the defiled river, Squirtle made his way toward the towering, ebony fortress. Noticing that there were no guards on duty, the azure reptilian, capitalizing on his minute figure, slid through a tiny grate erected near the back door of the facility.
Once inside the horizontal shaft, the amphibious superstar sprinted at a rapid pace. He continued to run until he could hear the voices of human filth. Coming to a screeching halt, Squirtle noticed another vent to his immediate right. Through the tiny exit of the shaft, he could see the ankles of about two human beings. Knowing that attacking now would be suicide, the Tiny Turtle waited what seemed like an eternity. He couldn’t understand what exactly the men were saying, but he knew it had to be something malicious and insidious, because after all, they were Homo sapiens.
After an eon or two, one of the humans departed the chamber, and his ally returned to his post near an array of screens. Squirtle sneered as he slipped out through the grate and scaled a nearby desk. Eying what seemed to be a writing tool haphazardly placed within his reach, the Tiny Turtle swiftly moved over and scooped up the heavy tool. Firmly clenching the sleek, cool pen, the Pokémon leaped from the desk. His landing was silent, even though the pen made a muffled noise upon striking the ground.
Grinning maliciously, Squirtle unleashed a torrent of water from his entrails. He didn’t capitulate until a considerable pool had been conjured from his depths and splashed across the ground behind the man. Taking several steps back, the cyan amphibian uttered a high-pitched squeak. The diminutive scream was enough to elicit a yelp of surprise from the human, who abruptly spun around to try and locate the source of the sound. Taking a step forward, he slid in the puddle of water and took a dive forward.
Squirtle snarled as he raised the tip of the writing tool upward. The man’s eyes widened until plunging directly onto the elevated pen. The worker’s forehead stopped about a centimeter above the Tiny Turtle’s head, but the flow of blood from his gruesome wound splattered the revolutionary. Although the hominid fidgeted and squirmed, his life would end soon enough, but before he had the chance to alert the others, Squirtle brutally clawed into his throat and tore out his larynx. The factory worker, weakened but not dead, rolled onto his back and tried in vain to muster the strength to remove the utensil from his eye.
Capitalizing, the Tiny Turtle lunged onto the man’s neck and started to shoot off streams of water down the gaping hole in his trachea. After a few minutes of silent struggling, the solider of industrialism fell limp beneath the wrath of the diminutive, reptilian insurrectionist. Watching the last signs of life slip away from the primate, Squirtle turned his attention back to the control panel and screens that he had been watching. Another malignant thought manifested itself within the tiny warrior’s mind.
Squirtle, leaving behind the bloodied, damp corpse of the fallen factory worker, marched toward the chair beneath the control panels he had seen the man tinkering with early. The turtle figured that if he could cause the device to malfunction, he just might be able to halt the building’s operations. An even greater victory would come if he could cause some permanent damage to the building in the form of a machine failure or worse—an explosion.
With thoughts of carnage and mayhem on his mind, the Tiny Turtle scaled the large sitting apparatus. Once he reached its apex, he dove from its heights and managed to land smoothly near the bottom edge of the wide, expansive panel of switches, buttons, and lights. Although he didn’t know any of their actual purposes, Squirtle was confident he could over both that and his inability to understand the human speech in order to thwart their plans.
Turning his attention from the sea of plastic and glass implements, the amphibious revolutionary glanced up at all of the monitors built into the walls about the multiple control panels. He could see several small, monochromatic video feeds of other areas of the factory on the screens. Most of the images were of workers incessantly toiling away their lives in the mission of keeping the factory’s machinery running flawlessly. Despite an inborn loathing of the primates, Squirtle had to feel some pity for the drones of that species.
Unfortunately, that wouldn’t save them from being purged once the azure lizard solidified power; however, their deaths would undoubtedly be short and painless. After all, they had spent their lives slowly dying on the inside—that was their torture. Unlike the pompous, self-absorbed bureaucracy that dominated the planet and reveled in slowly raping it of its beauty, they were just pathetic minions following orders.
Shaking the philosophical tangent from his mind before he got too into it, Squirtle turned his attention back to the task at hand. With a fury never before seen, the amphibious radical set out to completely dismantle the device to the best of his abilities. After about a moment or so, the apparatus started to spew sparks and smog as buttons began to break and meters began to go into the danger zone across the many panels.
Leaping from the smoke and spark-laden surface, Squirtle pivoted a few times and landed on the chair positioned near the apparatus. In the background, the Tiny Turtle could hear a rather strange voice relaying some type of repetitive message, but because the voice was in the human tongue, the Pokémon could not comprehend it. Ignoring the unnecessarily loud tone, the cyan reptile made his way out through the slightly ajar door.
He was en route to the room where he had seen all the work go down, and once he got there, he was going to watch the entire factory malfunction and possibly breakdown entirely. With a smile growing across his infantile visage, the turtle made his way down a metal hallway bathed in the red glow of emergency lights. The reptilian insurrectionist was able to evade the slew of workers who were scampering from room to room in a desperate attempt to locate the source of the calamity.
With a malicious glint in his eye, Squirtle entered through the open doorway of the only chamber marked with a large, caution placard. Steam was gushing down from a ceiling that was choked with copper pipes and random wires. Labored machines were clanking away in a desperate effort to hold themselves in one piece, and much to the chagrin of the turtle, a large assortment of workers was still diligently slaving away to keep the apparatuses from going critical.
Greatly annoyed by the display of valor by the human drone population, the Tiny Turtle moved forward to smite the disheartened, disheveled opposition. Unfortunately, the moment that Squirtle landed next to the largest of the machines, a cataclysm of the epic sort began to unfold. Screws began to pop from the metal frame of the storage device like bullets from a high-powered gun, and the same orange fluid the reptile had seen earlier began to spew from the diminutive holes.
The fatigued workers started to back away, but before either they or Squirtle could get to a safe distance, the apparatus exploded—unleashing a deluge of the orange fluid upon the group of Homo sapiens and the infant Pokémon. The tiny, amphibious superstar raised his small hands, violently shaking them toward the wave in the moments before it engulfed him…
Eyes lolling from side to side, a semi-comatose Azula slumped back down onto her bed as Hela sneered and patted her on the top of the head. “There, there my little would-be warlord, let’s read a story. I hear this one is particular unpleasant, but I’ll censor anything that isn’t appropriate for your ears.”
With a last snicker, Hela picked up the text she’d bought from the Syntech bookstore—apparently it was some best seller in another realm. On the cover of the book, the words ‘Mein Kampf’ were penned in a dramatically eloquent fashion. Turning to the first page, the Asgardian queen began to read the story aloud for her subject audience.
***
Chapter 1: Egression
Squirtle are born all the time, but every now and then, one of the tiny little hatchlings is born with a dream. No one, not even the self-proclaimed ‘Pokémon Masters,’ have managed to determine how or why this phenomenon occurs—its just does. As the mother Squirtle was tending to the more primitive hatchlings, one of the small, infantile turtles started to waddle away. He was only a few minutes old, and he was already well on his way to mastering the art of bipedal movement.
As the Tiny Turtle moved from the nest, he lifted his head and grinned at the world he saw. In his heart, he knew that he was different from all the others. Never again would the world of man stereotype Pokémon as weak and servile creatures. All those unevolved cretins were soon going to have to contend with the genetic superiority that was Squirtle. With the myriad thoughts of supremacy swirling about in his mind, the azure reptile made his way to the edge of a small stream.
The world was waiting out there, and it was about time that the amphibious animal embraced it head-on. Reaching one of his pudgy arms behind his back, the Pokémon quickly checked to ensure that his shell had hardened. Squirtle usually have their shells harden shortly after emerging from the egg, and this Tiny Turtle was no exception to that rule. After running his stout little digits down the course of his dense, brown carapace, the petite reptile dove into the water headfirst.
Leaving behind his rural, podunk origins, Squirtle pulled his tiny legs and arms into the comfy, guarded recesses of his shell and grinned. For a moment or two, he swore he could see a few of his brothers and sisters gawking at him as he drifted away, but he quickly shook the thoughts from his mind. Those individuals were behind him now, and he was now one turtle against the world or more correctly—the universe.
After what seemed to be an hour or so, Squirtle finally noticed the first signs of an urban metropolis looming on the horizon. The Tiny Turtle pivoted his body, aimed toward the bottom of the creak, and fired a stream of water from his toothless maw. Although he was still in his infancy, the amphibious Pokémon had enough power to propel his diminutive body clear from the water. Squirtle withdrew his cranium into the safety of his shell moments before he crashed painlessly into a pile of raked leaves.
Snickering at how opportune he was, the newborn turtle popped his limbs out from the confines of his shell and surveyed his surroundings. He had landed in someone’s backyard in the suburbs outside of the large city he had seen on the horizon. It would still be another mile or so before he got to the urban zone, but Squirtle figured he should take the time to adapt to moving on land.
It was at that moment that the object caught the Pokémon’s attention. They were sunglasses—shaped like two triangles that had been placed on their sides and fused at their apexes. Undoubtedly misplaced accessories for a doll of some sorts, the ebony glasses were now the property of Squirtle. Waddling over to the discarded object, the cyan reptile picked them up in his fat fingers and placed them over his developing eyes. Despite lacking external ears and having a rather two-dimensional nose, the sunglasses fit perfectly upon the Tiny Turtle’s visage.
“Squirtle!” The small animal uttered, bopping his head in a display of how cool he knew he was. With his immature eyes now properly shielded from the harmful UV rays of the sun, the turtle threw his right hand up, his index and middle fingers extended to form a V. It was a symbol of victory—not just victory for Squirtle, but victory for all oppressed Pokémon everywhere. The times were about to change.
***
Squirtle fixed the sunglasses one more time and started toward the enormous structure. A day or so had passed since his birth, and already he was beginning to learn of the world around him. Formed from some type of strange, dull material, it stood as a symbol of human expansion and urbanization. The glitterier the structure, the more corrupt and superfluous its inhabitants likely would be. The Tiny Turtle frowned at the building and wished he had the strength to tear it down with his bare hands. Unfortunately, he was barely half a foot tall, and the house stood as a bastion of humanity’s dominance over Earth. Soon Squirtle would be strong enough to plow through such a pitiful structure and make way for the planet to return to its true, primal roots.
The Pokémon spat a tiny squirt of water at the base of the abode and quickly rushed around it to avoid any retaliation from its villainous, human occupants. As the azure reptile clumsily ran away from the structure, he was startled by the sudden presence of a massive, red monster in front of him. Hitting the side of the beast, the turtle was knocked onto his carapace and temporarily dazed. Looking up at the sky, Squirtle saw one of them—a human. Her diminished size indicated that she was possibly an infantile version of her oppressive species.
Before the Tiny Turtle had an opportunity to react, the creature reached down with one of her massive, dirty hands and began to lift the Pokémon off the ground and away from freedom. Squirtle tried to squirm and attempted to scratch and bite at the monstrosity’s oppressive hand. Despite his efforts, his claws and teeth were far too underdeveloped to do damage to her battle-hardened flesh. It only took a matter of seconds for the amphibious superstar to be successfully kidnapped and taken inside the confines of the cretin’s dwelling. Squirtle cried out as the door slammed shut.
The prisoner was thoroughly enraged at losing his new sunglasses, but he soon realized he was in real danger. Squirtle could now hear the human’s conversing with one another—probably reveling in how they had captured him. The blue-skinned reptile fidgeted, but he failed to escape the vice-like grip of the toddler. Even worse, the Tiny Turtle couldn’t understand what they were plotting. That feeling of helplessness truly vexed the amphibious prodigy, who made a promise to himself to learn the language of the human’s if he ever escaped from this demonic citadel alive.
Unfortunately, the situation was about to take a turn from the horrid to the completely and utterly bleak. The small monster was on the move once more, but this time she stopped for a moment in front of what Squirtle identified as some type of flat surface for placing garments. With her free hand, the small human cleared a region and dropped some type of clear, topless object upon the white surface. Then the turtle was moving once more, and before he could protest, he had already been dropped into the tiny box.
That’s when the horrible realization emerged: This diminutive Homo sapiens intended to imprison Squirtle! The Tiny Turtle understood that he needed to react quickly or else he was never going to see the light of day again. Turning his head down toward the bottom of the prison, the Pokémon unleashed to small torrent of water. The pressure launched him out of the cell and up into the mound of clothes that child had shifted around.
Ignoring the squeak of surprise that escaped the lips of the toddler, Squirtle dove through the loose mounds of clothing and fought his way down until he could no longer hear the whimpers. After another moment or so, the azure turtle emerged from the pile of clothes near an open gateway to the outdoors. Feeling a new wave of glee rush over his miniscule frame, the Pokémon lunged at the exit, but instead of freedom, he was greeted with some type of barely visible barrier.
Falling backwards, Squirtle shot up his pudgy appendages, grasping an extended ledge that overlooked a long drop to the floor. Grunting, the amphibious superstar pulled himself up onto the outlook and glared at the crisscrossed ropes that prevented what could have been a flawless escape. The sounds of footsteps encroaching upon his current position indicated that Squirtle had to do or die. Bending at the knees, he lowered his head and rushed forward. An inch or so before the barrier, he jumped up and withdrew into his shell.
The inflexible wires caved when put up against the dense shell of Squirtle, and a moment later, the Tiny Turtle crashed into a soft bed composed of dirt and sticks. Looking around, the azure reptile quickly realized he had landed in the den of some type of oviparous animal. Evacuating the nest, the blue-skinned Pokémon slowly started his descent down the relatively small tree. When he finally reached the soft, lush grass once again, he fell to his knees and smiled. Before departing the yard of what could have been his jailors, he retrieved his sunglasses. Then he quickly fled to the relative safety of a nearby patch of trees.
Pushing his tiny noggin out through a rather light clump of soft leaves, Squirtle surveyed the path that lie ahead of him. He had only been in the patch of trees for a few minutes, and it seemed he had already reached some type of temporary break or termination in the forest. As far as he could see to the left and right, the ground was black, hot, and solid, with a vibrant sun-colored strip down the center. The trees continued along the other side of the stretch of unnatural, manmade dirt.
The Tiny Turtle suddenly heard the most horrible, loud rumbling noise. Turning his small cranium, he was alarmed by the presence of two huge, glowing eyes rushing toward him. Letting out an infantile squeak, the Pokémon fled back to the relative safety of the brush. He would continue his trek some other way that didn’t intercede with the horrific machinations of Homo sapiens. With his head held low to the ground, Squirtle sprinted north, the same direction from which the shiny-eyed beast had originated from.
A sudden, bright object suddenly caught the attention of the charging reptilian. Stopping in his tracks, the amphibious superstar slowly approached the discarded object. It was a massive, red quadrilateral that was emblazoned with a hemisphere in the center. Squirtle waddled over to the apparatus and ran his tiny digits over the letters on the cover. The first part of the word was rather easy to understand, as it was the first half of the azure reptile’s esteemed species—Poké. The last three words were a little harder for the Pokémon to understand, but after a few minutes, Squirtle managed them.
“Poké…dex. Pokédex.” The tiny reptile said, smiling gleefully at how easily it was to pronounce the human language. It wouldn’t take him much longer to master the rest of it, but the thoughts of such a miniscule victory were shortsighted when Squirtle recalled the usage of the apparatus before him. A Pokédex was what the humans had been using for years to catalog the hatchling’s people as if they were nothing but mere animals. The mere thought of the device made the young revolutionary’s blood boil.
The decorative object embedded on the cover of the machine was a Pokéball. It was what the oppressive Homo sapiens used to trap Pokémon. Pushing his little fingers down into the crevice in the center of the apparatus, Squirtle wrenched the dreaded machine open. Beneath the cover, a screen and a slew of buttons were erected—their actual purpose completely unknown to the device’s current, unfamiliar user. Hopping onto the rows of buttons, Squirtle performed a rather erratic dance until he hit enough buttons to activate the machine.
After flashing for a while and spouting some verbal greetings in the human tongue, the Pokédex popped up the last entry that had been access—Number 007: Squirtle. The mere sight of his race documented like some type of cheap plant in a biology book made the Tiny Turtle want to desperately harm something of the human orientation. Before his malignant thoughts could come to any fruition, the Pokémon was startled by the sound of a branch snapping behind him.
Turning sharply, Squirtle saw the goliath-sized human and reacted swiftly. Releasing as potent a deluge from his maw as he could, the cyan reptile managed to divert the projectile before it managed to strike him. The look of surprise on the human attacker’s face was almost equal to the amount of rage displayed on Squirtle’s countenance. The Water Pokémon watched with a frustration-induced twitch to his eye as the Pokéball rolled away—a few splashes of water still clinging to its metallic surface.
The cap wearing kid retreated a few steps from the rather diminutive turtle. His eyes had fallen to the device that he must have left as a means of bait, but when he went to move forward again to retrieve it, Squirtle retaliated. Bringing a massive amount of his internally-produced water into his mouth, the Tiny Turtle lunged forward like a caged animal—firing the fluid in the form of a translucent sphere. The bubble attack slammed into the lad’s eyes, eliciting a squeal of surprise and a subsequent and rather hasty retreat.
Grinning victoriously, the small reptile walked over to the device that had failed in its intended goal to enslave him. With a widening smile, he proceeded to kick it as far as his tiny legs could. As the Pokéball rolled down an incline, Squirtle walked over to the other apparatus the trainer had left behind, and he then proceeded to saturate it with water. The Tiny Turtle didn’t stop until tiny columns of smoke were drifting up from the Pokédex.
Although the victory would go unseen to the masses, the reptilian radical and fledgling Pokémon activist would never forget his first triumph over man. Leaving behind the ruined technology, Squirtle resumed his trek toward the large city he had seen on the horizon while traveling down river.
As the turtle began on his walk, his mind began to wander to more easily pass the time. Squirtle really didn’t know why he was born with so much knowledge. After all, most Pokémon tend to spend most of their lives attempting to rival cattle when it comes to intelligence, but for some reason, Squirtle had been born a cut above the rest. In fact, he was concrete in his opinion that he was probably already one of the smartest of his people to exist. Why else would he already have so much knowledge crammed into his diminutive, infantile body?
Setting aside the philosophical debate with himself for later, the azure reptile blasted a rather dense stream of water into the slow-moving creek. The liquid projectile slammed into a minnow and sent the tiny fish flying out of the water and onto the other side of the shore. With a primitive gleam in his eye, the Tiny Turtle lunged across the minute creek and pounced upon his flailing prey. Before the minnow had a chance to react, Squirtle stepped on its head and its brain ceased to function correctly.
Baring his rapidly developing teeth, the amphibious superstar tore into the distended body of the fish—easily tearing apart the frail gills and diving into the tender, underlying meat. In a matter of seconds, the famished Pokémon managed to reduce his snack from nothing but bones, a tail, and one horrendously smashed cranium. Smiling contently, the satisfied turtle ran on of his pudgy hands over his plastron and turned his attention to the direction he had been traveling.
Figuring that the small creek would probably lead toward the large city, Squirtle dove in without another moment of hesitation. The sensation that followed brought a smile to the young turtle’s face as he simply bobbed up and down in the cool, slow-moving waters. After the peaceful little moment of daydreaming, the reptilian insurgent kicked his tiny legs and darted forward. Although he was barely over a day old, Squirtle had swimming down pat—after all, it was his genetic forte.
Tucking in his arms, the newborn tried to work on his finesse, and soon enough, he was gliding through the water in a rather crocodilian fashion. With his nostrils sealed off to prevent the flow of liquids into them, Squirtle swam with only his big eyes poking above the surface of the water. The relative peace reigned over the tiny creek for about half a mile before humanity once again reared its hideous countenance. The Tiny Turtle first noticed the pudgy human, perched over the small river holding some type of weapon in his hands.
The brown piece of wood extended upwards, and from its tip, some type of almost invisible chord suspended down into the tranquil waters. The section that had been dipped into the stream terminated in some type of sick, hooked blade, and it was upon that blade, that Squirtle could see some type of annelid squirming in vain to escape. The worm’s efforts were of no use, because the Pokémon could easily see that the Homo sapiens had driven his small, hooked blade through the tiny, defenseless creature’s midsection.
Grimacing slightly at the sight of the dying animal, Squirtle realized that he had to avenge the comrade dying in front of him. Even if it wasn’t one of his people, the amphibious superstar knew that he had to stop the tyranny of man. Lunging up from the stream, the turtle unleashed a small deluge into the eyes of the lazy hominid. Gasping in shock, the overweight monstrosity toppled backwards, his weapon falling to the wayside as Squirtle pressed the attack.
As the man tried to make sense of the situation, the Tiny Turtle caught sight of a box of some sorts. Opened by its owner, the large container was filled to the brim with tools of torture. Frowning, the azure reptilian hopped up to the rim of the chest of horrors and tenderly picked up a rather gruesome too that was adorned with four barbed hooks. Before the man had even managed to sit up, the enraged Pokémon attacked—swinging the lethal ornament down as he leaped at the cretin’s face. The hooks drove into his eyes, eliciting a series of horrified screams.
Squirtle, however, was not the type to capitulate. Even as the primate started to bat at him, the amphibious revolutionary struck back vehemently. The stunned, agonized man’s attacks weren’t anywhere fast or strong enough to deter the Tiny Turtle from his bloodlust. With a rapid succession of blows, the Pokémon managed to rip away the thin layer of tissue that concealed the monster’s eyes. Although the tyrant’s strikes in Squirtle’s direction were losing some of their desperate ferocity, the azure reptile didn’t stop until he hooked the back of an eye and ripped it out.
The instant that the man’s right ocular nerve was severed, he instantly slumped back—his massive form colliding with the earth. Squirtle, standing on the man’s chest and still holding the torture instrument in his hands, looked at the bulging eye and frowned. Shooting a stream of water from his mouth, he sent the severed organ off the weapon and to the bare dirt. Just as he was about to get a move on, the Tiny Turtle felt the man’s chest rise faintly. The incredulous thought drove the reptilian insurgent to new levels of aggravation.
Walking up the man’s collapsed form; Squirtle drove the four-pronged device into the right side of the monstrosity’s neck, right below his ear. Grunting as he moved, the Tiny Turtle drug the stolen weapon across the length of the man’s neck and over to his left ear. Taking a step back, the amphibious revolutionary watched as small spouts and tiny rivulets of blood escaped the deep, fatal laceration.
The tyrant’s screams, which had come to an end following Squirtle’s ocular surgery, returned as frantic gurgles. The gurgling made the turtle laugh, because each one was accompanied by more and more blood, which spewed down onto the man’s chin. After another few seconds of fighting and straining, the vanquished beast fell still. Discarding the bloodied, manmade torture instrument, Squirtle glared hatefully at the fallen Homo sapiens. In all his spasms, his blood had managed to get onto the turtle’s body.
Spitting upon the primate for good measure, the Pokémon spun around and quickly dove back into the stream. His little recess was over, and it was due time that he continued his venture toward the city. It was there that he would hit humanity where it would hurt them the most—the centers of their overpopulated, pollution producing, shrines to commercialization and the destruction of Mother Nature.
***
Squirtle popped his head above the water and eyed the scene downriver: Some type of massive, smog-emitting structure was dumping gallon upon gallon of liquid into the stream. It had been a mile or so since Squirtle's last interaction with life, and the amphibious superstar was already infuriated by what he saw. The Tiny Turtle, unaware of the exact origin of the orange, partially chunky fluid, quickly escaped to the shore before he got any closer. Shaking his tiny frame a few times to decrease the amount of water still clinging to his azure-colored flesh, the amphibious creature glared at the ominous structure.
A fortress of black steel and stone, the building was decorated with a multitude of skyward-facing pipes that spouted the foulest of thick, obsidian smoke. Squirtle immediately realized that he was gazing straight at one of humanity’s monuments to industrialism. The Pokémon quickly drew the correlation between the factory and the vast excess of orange liquid gushing from its bowels into the stream. Squirtle realized the humans were poisoning the ecosystem, and the dead, deformed fish were a dead giveaway.
The site of humanity’s poison corrupting the earth made the turtle’s blood seethe, and he knew immediately what had to be done. Even though the city was but a mere mile or so away, he knew he had to delay his visit in order to deal with the threat at hand. Sneaking across the dying grass near the shore of the defiled river, Squirtle made his way toward the towering, ebony fortress. Noticing that there were no guards on duty, the azure reptilian, capitalizing on his minute figure, slid through a tiny grate erected near the back door of the facility.
Once inside the horizontal shaft, the amphibious superstar sprinted at a rapid pace. He continued to run until he could hear the voices of human filth. Coming to a screeching halt, Squirtle noticed another vent to his immediate right. Through the tiny exit of the shaft, he could see the ankles of about two human beings. Knowing that attacking now would be suicide, the Tiny Turtle waited what seemed like an eternity. He couldn’t understand what exactly the men were saying, but he knew it had to be something malicious and insidious, because after all, they were Homo sapiens.
After an eon or two, one of the humans departed the chamber, and his ally returned to his post near an array of screens. Squirtle sneered as he slipped out through the grate and scaled a nearby desk. Eying what seemed to be a writing tool haphazardly placed within his reach, the Tiny Turtle swiftly moved over and scooped up the heavy tool. Firmly clenching the sleek, cool pen, the Pokémon leaped from the desk. His landing was silent, even though the pen made a muffled noise upon striking the ground.
Grinning maliciously, Squirtle unleashed a torrent of water from his entrails. He didn’t capitulate until a considerable pool had been conjured from his depths and splashed across the ground behind the man. Taking several steps back, the cyan amphibian uttered a high-pitched squeak. The diminutive scream was enough to elicit a yelp of surprise from the human, who abruptly spun around to try and locate the source of the sound. Taking a step forward, he slid in the puddle of water and took a dive forward.
Squirtle snarled as he raised the tip of the writing tool upward. The man’s eyes widened until plunging directly onto the elevated pen. The worker’s forehead stopped about a centimeter above the Tiny Turtle’s head, but the flow of blood from his gruesome wound splattered the revolutionary. Although the hominid fidgeted and squirmed, his life would end soon enough, but before he had the chance to alert the others, Squirtle brutally clawed into his throat and tore out his larynx. The factory worker, weakened but not dead, rolled onto his back and tried in vain to muster the strength to remove the utensil from his eye.
Capitalizing, the Tiny Turtle lunged onto the man’s neck and started to shoot off streams of water down the gaping hole in his trachea. After a few minutes of silent struggling, the solider of industrialism fell limp beneath the wrath of the diminutive, reptilian insurrectionist. Watching the last signs of life slip away from the primate, Squirtle turned his attention back to the control panel and screens that he had been watching. Another malignant thought manifested itself within the tiny warrior’s mind.
Squirtle, leaving behind the bloodied, damp corpse of the fallen factory worker, marched toward the chair beneath the control panels he had seen the man tinkering with early. The turtle figured that if he could cause the device to malfunction, he just might be able to halt the building’s operations. An even greater victory would come if he could cause some permanent damage to the building in the form of a machine failure or worse—an explosion.
With thoughts of carnage and mayhem on his mind, the Tiny Turtle scaled the large sitting apparatus. Once he reached its apex, he dove from its heights and managed to land smoothly near the bottom edge of the wide, expansive panel of switches, buttons, and lights. Although he didn’t know any of their actual purposes, Squirtle was confident he could over both that and his inability to understand the human speech in order to thwart their plans.
Turning his attention from the sea of plastic and glass implements, the amphibious revolutionary glanced up at all of the monitors built into the walls about the multiple control panels. He could see several small, monochromatic video feeds of other areas of the factory on the screens. Most of the images were of workers incessantly toiling away their lives in the mission of keeping the factory’s machinery running flawlessly. Despite an inborn loathing of the primates, Squirtle had to feel some pity for the drones of that species.
Unfortunately, that wouldn’t save them from being purged once the azure lizard solidified power; however, their deaths would undoubtedly be short and painless. After all, they had spent their lives slowly dying on the inside—that was their torture. Unlike the pompous, self-absorbed bureaucracy that dominated the planet and reveled in slowly raping it of its beauty, they were just pathetic minions following orders.
Shaking the philosophical tangent from his mind before he got too into it, Squirtle turned his attention back to the task at hand. With a fury never before seen, the amphibious radical set out to completely dismantle the device to the best of his abilities. After about a moment or so, the apparatus started to spew sparks and smog as buttons began to break and meters began to go into the danger zone across the many panels.
Leaping from the smoke and spark-laden surface, Squirtle pivoted a few times and landed on the chair positioned near the apparatus. In the background, the Tiny Turtle could hear a rather strange voice relaying some type of repetitive message, but because the voice was in the human tongue, the Pokémon could not comprehend it. Ignoring the unnecessarily loud tone, the cyan reptile made his way out through the slightly ajar door.
He was en route to the room where he had seen all the work go down, and once he got there, he was going to watch the entire factory malfunction and possibly breakdown entirely. With a smile growing across his infantile visage, the turtle made his way down a metal hallway bathed in the red glow of emergency lights. The reptilian insurrectionist was able to evade the slew of workers who were scampering from room to room in a desperate attempt to locate the source of the calamity.
With a malicious glint in his eye, Squirtle entered through the open doorway of the only chamber marked with a large, caution placard. Steam was gushing down from a ceiling that was choked with copper pipes and random wires. Labored machines were clanking away in a desperate effort to hold themselves in one piece, and much to the chagrin of the turtle, a large assortment of workers was still diligently slaving away to keep the apparatuses from going critical.
Greatly annoyed by the display of valor by the human drone population, the Tiny Turtle moved forward to smite the disheartened, disheveled opposition. Unfortunately, the moment that Squirtle landed next to the largest of the machines, a cataclysm of the epic sort began to unfold. Screws began to pop from the metal frame of the storage device like bullets from a high-powered gun, and the same orange fluid the reptile had seen earlier began to spew from the diminutive holes.
The fatigued workers started to back away, but before either they or Squirtle could get to a safe distance, the apparatus exploded—unleashing a deluge of the orange fluid upon the group of Homo sapiens and the infant Pokémon. The tiny, amphibious superstar raised his small hands, violently shaking them toward the wave in the moments before it engulfed him…
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