04-12-2015, 09:49 AM
Chapter 2: Resurrection
Squirtle screamed out in rage, but his tiny cries were snuffed out when the wave of industrial waste crashed into his diminutive form. The Tiny Turtle was instantly swept up in the torrential deluge, carrying him all the way down to the other end of the warehouse-sized room. Unfortunately, despite his best efforts to fight against the current, the Pokémon was slammed into the side of yet another storage vat.
Even as blood was dripping from his mouth and nose in what heralded the signs of massive internal damage, the amphibious revolutionary managed to raise one small middle finger and put on his best smirk. The last thing the badass saw was another wave of orange fluid pouring down on him, and then Squirtle ceased to think.
The vile contents of the orange fluid triggered the machinery that lined the massive room to instantaneously malfunction. The massive apparatuses that had simply been malfunction now began to explode brilliantly. Cinders and shrapnel exploded out in rings around the dying devices—murdering any of the workers that had survived the initial flood of chemicals into the room. Now only a few, mortally wounded men were crawling around, wailing as their lives slowly drew to a close.
After a few minutes, the chaos subsided, and all that was left was a bleak, dismal scene of destruction and blood. The sea of florescent lights that had once adorned the ceiling of the warehouse-sized room had been shattered in the explosion. The few light fixtures that remained intact were the only thing that separated the room from complete and total darkness, and even their combined luminescence failed help the ailing survivors find their way.
Amidst the sea of flames and spontaneous sparks of electricity, a few columns of light were visible—due in part to holes blown into the side of the factory. From outside the ruined room, the sounds of gunfire and further explosions could be heard, and it soon became evident that the entire structure had fallen under attack following Squirtle’s tampering with its internal systems. Tanks rolled passed the razed castle of industrialism, a series of foot soldiers following in its wake.
As the rest of the factory slowly caved into the river it had been dumping its radioactive waste into, one section managed to remain standing despite the damage to its foundation and structural integrity; however, the building would remain desolate and lifeless for quite some time before anything vaguely resembling life stirred from within its crumbling carcass. In the forgotten, ignorant view of the public eye, something horrible and blasphemous was coming into existence.
Slain workers stirred from their watery grave and pulled themselves from the remnant of the factory. Although their bodies were bloodied and battered, their minds had somehow regenerated to the point where they regained the most basic of needs—the need to feed. For weeks the zombies slowly rose from the sight of the bombing and radioactive spill, and even as their numbers infiltrated the public, attention was diverted elsewhere. New, radical factions were coming into power all across the globe.
Even as “The Truth” spread across the globe like wildfire, more important history was playing out elsewhere. Nearly two months after the disaster at the factory—one of the Truth’s earliest attacks, something brand new stirred within the radioactive, stagnated waters. The corpse had been thrown into the river weeks ago when what was left of the building was torn down for scrap metal, and even as the rest of the bodies rose from the grave, this particular cadaver remained idle.
None questioned why it wasn’t affected by decay or decomposition, and the local children were even ballsy enough to one day fish it out from the bottom of the polluted river. The group of three lads dragged the body from its watery grave and ridiculed the bizarre, unspoiled stiff for quite some time. Even when a storm started to brew, they ignored the shouts of their parents and had their fun. They would throw the corpse, see if they could skip it across the river, and even use it as a puppet for their own breed of twisted humor.
Unfortunately, when the fun finally ran out due to the arrival of a torrential downpour, one of the boys was stupid enough to drive a nearby rod of metal into the heart of the deceased creature. With their laughter rejuvenated, they turned to flee the seen of their defiling of the dead; however, one bolt of lightning would change all of that in a heartbeat. Exploding downward in an awesome flash of white, the bolt of lightening slammed straight into the long, metal pike and sent 1.21 gigawatts of electricity straight into the cadaver.
Almost instantly, the creature’s eyes shot open to reveal two angry, red eyes. His fingers twitched and a low moan escaped his maw as the lightning numbed. Three very scared children let out horrified screams and fled the area when they saw the animated corpse remove the pike from his chest. Sitting upright, the formerly dead beast poked at relatively shallow wound and fathomed how its existence was no ending his. Nevertheless, the resurrected monster released an angry howl as the rain continued to pour from the heavens.
“Squirrrrrrrrtle!” The lizard screamed, recalling what had led to his apparent demise and subsequent return. Had it been the radioactive waste that spared his life somehow? Had fate directed those children and lightning bolt to him? Squirtle brushed aside the questions, because he felt too strong and powerful to let them get to him now. In fact, he felt mentally and physically superior now then he had several months ago. Flexing his developed digits, he let out a deep breath of air.
“Monster!” One of the boys had stayed behind simply to ridicule the Tiny Turtle, but when Squirtle noticed him hiding behind some bushes, he simply began to laugh.
“Compared to me, all other monsters you have seen are little fairies and could double as my personal bitches. Now fuck off before I rid the planet of you, Homo!” The words were enough to cause the cretin to flee, but the reptilian revolutionary was the one who was truly surprised. Not questioning his newfound lingual skills, the Pokémon broke into a sprint—his developed legs carrying him faster and easier than ever before.
***
“What is this feeling of power and drive?” Squirtle screamed melodically as he stampeded up a mountain trail a few hours after his return from the grave—an expression of unadulterated madness and glee plastered across his reptilian features. “I’ve never known! I feel alive!” The Tiny Turtle continued his loud combination of violent screaming and singing as he strolled up to a small group of young kids sitting near a laid out picnic buffet enjoying a feast under the stars. Gallivanting toward on of the unperceiving youths, Squirtle wrapped his dexterous arms around the human’s neck and snapped it like a twig.
“Where does this feeling of power derive? Making me know, why I’m alive!” The turtle sang, shoving his victim’s face into a bowl of potato salad as his friends tried to flee. With a glint in his eye, Squirtle pounced at one of the retreating preteens and tore out throat when he turned to face his amphibious attacker. Turning sharply, the Pokémon blasted a concentrated stream of water at the final hominid. The youthful girl tripped and landed on her back, but by the time she realized what was going on, the frenzied Tiny Turtle had already lunged on her and torn our her heart.
“Like the night, it's a secret... sinister dark and unknown!” The azure reptile hissed into the dark skyline. “I do not know what I seek. Yet, I'll seek it alone!” Casting aside the ruined organ, Squirtle began to tear into the deceased girl’s thoracic cavity like a buzzard tearing into fresh carrion. Once the turtle was satisfied with his defilement of the cadaver, he spied a group of teens nearby sharing an intimate moment in a car—oblivious the massacre just a few dozen feet away. Even as the Pokémon crept toward his victims, he was oblivious to the soldiers stalking him.
“I have a thirst that I cannot deprive!” The reptilian revolutionary bellowed and he exploded through the window and ripped apart the inhabitants before they could even remove their tongues from one another’s mouth. “Never have I…felt so alive!” The bloodshed brought a smile back to Squirtle’s blue countenance; however, the moment of elation was cut short when the hail of gunfire interrupted the glee of the Pokémon.
“There is no battle I couldn't survive!” Squirtle roared as he punched through the roof of the vehicle. Firing off a few rounds of water, the turtle dove forward and attacked with an inhuman strength and speed. “Feeling like this…” The blue-skinned powerhouse screamed into the night as he snapped the neck of his third and final attacker. “Feeling alive!” With his foes dispatched, a bloodied Squirtle climbed his way to the edge of the cliff. Below both him and the rays of the moon, he could see a city wrought by chaos.
“Like the moon, an enigma…lost and alone in the night!” The turtle declared, raising his bloodstained hands toward the white globe in the starry, night sky. “Lost and alone in the night! Damned by some heavenly stigma but blazing with light!” The turtle’s intense singing resonated into the valley beneath him as the city was torn apart by the fighting that was spreading across the planet. Squirtle didn’t really know what had gotten hold of him, but he wasn’t one to stop the energized hatred flowing within his veins. Stepping over to the edge of the mountainside, the Tiny Turtle wiped the blood on his hands across his face.
“It's the feeling of being alive! Filled with evil but truly alive!” Squirtle was foaming at the mouth as he raced down the oddly-angled slope in a haphazard dash at the cityscape before him. “It's the truth that cannot be denied!” By the time he had finished the line, the Pokémon’s augmented speed had carried him to the outskirts of the war-ravaged city. Leaping forward, he landed on the roof of a charred bus.
“It's the feeling of being alive!” The Tiny Turtle roared—his voice peaking as he dragged the note on until it vanished into the night sky. Satisfied with both his homicidal and singing skills, the Pokémon set out to examine the city. He didn’t know what was ravaging his homeworld and future dominion, but he was going to kill and maim everything that stood in his way.
“Nice display,” the sound drew the reptile’s attention and revealed the presence of a grizzly, old creature who was watching him from the shadows.
“State your name and maybe I won’t kill you,” Squirtle chuckled malignantly. The mangy human stepped out from the shadows, and at that moment, the turtle recognized it as just another foolish Homo sapiens.
“I am Joe, and I know who you are, Squirtle. Furthermore, I know that you are special among your species. I come to you as a representative of the Truth—we are trying to establish a dominate body and shape the Earth toward a new future. I implore you to he—” The man never got to finish, because his body was torn apart by the bullet stream from a machinegun that the Tiny Turtle had found nearby. As the man collapsed in a pool of his blood, Squirtle snickered and raised his eyes to the moon.
“This is my planet, and I'll make my own side…bitch.” The Turtle said, making his way into the depths of the city ravaged by war.
***
A few hours later, Squirtle let out a heavy sigh as he scaled the clock tower near the central portion of the city. He didn’t really know exactly where he had wound up, or even where he had been in the past due to his lack of knowledge of geography. Nevertheless, he had garnered that he was in some type of larger city that held some relative importance on a grander scheme. The cityscape was filled with older, gothic-influenced buildings that heralded the rich past from which the city had grown.
The tower that the Tiny Turtle was scaling seemed moderately undamaged despite the destruction of the structure from which it was erected alongside. Squirtle had only gathered that the bombed building bore the name Westminster, and aside from that, the Water Pokémon was completely baffled as the scene playing out around him. All he knew was that he had to escape the gunfire and chaos in the streets if he expected to survive the bloodshed that was spreading through the metropolis like wildfire.
As he neared the summit of the tower, Squirtle glanced out a hole in the wall and saw what remained of the other tower near the other end of the once glorious palace. Didn’t the peasants call it Victoria when it was torn apart by an air-to-ground missile right after the reptilian revolutionary crossed that rickety bridge? Thinking back, Squirtle was starting to deduce that climbing on of the few standing buildings in the block may have no been the brightest of ideas, but who would feel compelled to bomb a simple tower with a bunch of clocks on it?
Shrugging of such melancholy thoughts, the turtle sprinted up the few remaining flights of stairs until he reached the apex of the structure. An opened room dominated by a central bell, Squirtle tilted his head and started toward the massive device. Unfortunately, he was cut off by a rather large, obsidian fist and sent into the far wall of the room.
“What the hell was that?” The amphibious superstar declared in his ironically childish dialect. “Fucking felt I got hit by a truck,” he added, rubbing the side of his head as he climbed off his cloaca and shook his head a little bit to eradicate the dizziness he was feeling. Glancing around the dimly light room, Squirtle squinted in an effort to locate the force that had struck him, but it wasn’t until his attacker made himself present with another assault that the turtle verified his location.
Feeling the creaking of the floorboards long before the punch was thrown; the Tiny Turtle pivoted sideways and grabbed the giant fist about an inch or so in front of his blue-skinned face. Squirtle was taken aback by the monstrous appearance of his attacker—the beast’s flesh seemed to literally be breathing and churning around as if it was its own separate entity.
The two immense, erratic pools of white tissue that comprised the beast’s eyes narrowed as its long tongue shot out of its opened mouth and across the plethora of jagged canines that lined its mouth. Grimacing as a few beads of sweat formed atop his bald head, Squirtle shoved the bizarre beast backwards and fired off a condensed sphere of water into his chiseled chest. The projectile sent the monster staggering, but it quickly became clear to the turtle that he was going to have to fight harder to dispatch the mutant.
Kicking off his feet, the Pokémon launched himself toward the sternum of the creature, but in an act of sheer ability, the creature caught the blue missile and redirected Squirtle into a rendezvous with the massive bell near the center of the chamber. With a resonating thud, the child-sized turtle slammed into the side of the copper bell and let out an angered, pained shriek as he slid off the side of the now mobile object.
Although his vision was blurred from what was possibly an epic concussion, the reptilian warrior retained enough consciousness to watch as the massive, onyx beast began toward him, but in what seemed like an act of pure luck, the creature began to lament. Monstrous, labored screams escaped its maw as it crumbled to the ground and put its gnarled, clawed fingers to the sides of its cranium. Squirtle, regaining his bearing, realized that clanging of the bell seemed to cause the beast pain, and it must have been in the tower seeking to destroy the device.
Flipping off his back and onto his stout legs, the Pokémon watched as the creature suddenly lashed out—violently swinging at the giant bell in an effort to make it stop from clanging. Smiling widely, Squirtle sucked in a deep lungful of air and released it in the form of a piercing, high-decibel screech. The monster, punching the bell completely off its supports, let out another scream and crumbled to the floor.
Unrelenting in his onslaught, the Tiny Turtle watched as the creature began to convulse and twitch, and then its flesh began to slide off to reveal a naked, scrawny man beneath the suit of living tissue. Slipping through cracks in the aged, wooden floor, the ebony fluid quickly vanished in an effort to escape the wrath of Squirtle’s Water Pulse. Exhaling on final time, the reptilian revolutionary watched as the man let out groan and began to regain consciousness.
“So who the hell are you?” Squirtle nonchalantly declared, glaring at the pale hominid as he struggled to his feet. The Homo sapiens had but one possession on his nude body—an ornate, silver ring that seemed melded to his right index finger.
“I’m Greg, and please, I didn’t have any control of myself when the Truth unleashed that thing on me. Don’t kill me and I’ll help you in whatever cause you serve, and I can be of use I promise!” The frail man pleaded as his weary eyes widen with fear as he awaited the reply of the blue-skinned creature.
“I hate your kind,” Squirtle replied heartless. “But what does that ring do?” The man, although originally intimidated by the first statement, let out a sigh of relief as he raised his finger into the turtle’s direct line of sight.
“I stole it from one of the Truth’s labs, but an explosion accidentally melded it permanently to my skin. The ring was part of their more recent experiments pertaining to controlling the dead and the forces of darkness. When they couldn’t kill me for fear of losing the only existing ring, they used me as a test for their symbiote line of testing. The rest is an adrenaline-based blur, but please, I don’t care who you fight for or where you allegiances lie! I just don’t want to die, and I swear I can be off assistance!”
Before Greg had a chance to continue his frantic rambling, a missile slammed into the side of the building and destroyed the Clock Tower in a brilliant display of fire and debris. Squirtle’s eyes bugged out as he desperately tried to fathom what to do, but then he felt a hand on his shoulder. A dark, uplifting sensation overwhelmed the amphibious insurrectionist, but before he could get a hold of the situation, the human and he were back on the ground near the remains of the tower.
A black, churning barrier had engulfed the two and offered them safe transport from the blast, and when the hand left Squirtle’s shoulder, the barrier soon faded from existence. The Pokémon chuckled slightly as he turned his attention back to the hominid and shrugged his shoulders.
“Get some clothes,” the reptile said, pointing to a nearby corpse. “We need to get out of her and to a safer location,” Greg nodded as he started to undress on of the corpses. Squirtle walked over to a more battered corpse and tore a few strands of cloth from the cadaver. Wrapping some cloth around his elbows and knees for protection, the revolutionary stabbed two holes in a final stripe and tied it around his cranium.
After tying the knot, he let the remainder of the cloth fall onto his neck and shoulders and adjusted the mask so he could see through the holes. Turning around, he smirked at his clothed travel companion and then to the corpses that surrounded the horrendously unlikely pairing. Greg extended his hand and closed his eyes as a black aura slowly materialized around his stretched digits. Squirtle watched as the corpses all around him suddenly began to twitch and release eerie groans into the evening sky as they simultaneously crawled off the ground and up to standing positions.
“Bitchin’,” The Tiny Turtle said—it was all that really needed to be said. With his mind made up about his new henchman, Squirtle set out to survey the city for some assholes to murder. Unfortunately for the Pokémon, his peace and silence was once again shattered by the sudden arrival of some fag clad in red. The imbecile swooped in, executed some fancy maneuvers, and immediately established himself as a complete and utter fucktard. Despite his blaring homosexuality, something about the newcomer seemed to scream ‘awesomeness.’
“Neat,” the man spoke—his voice causing the turtle to shudder. It was going to be a long day for Squirtle.
The moment pervaded until it became an awkward silence, and then the mage's potential for further egotism was quickly and rudely interrupted by something that the trio found to be anything close to ‘neat.’ After all, a twenty-foot tsunami most certainly conveys nothing relatively close to even relatively okay. The word that had just formulated in the minds of the three travelers was closer to a definitive ‘fuck.’
Fortunately for the triumvirate, the massive wave of water did not continue its crushing course towards them. Instead of decimating them completely and utterly, the wave came to a sudden halt just before obliterating the small group. A small portion of the huge tidal wave suddenly split apart, and a man wearing a blue military uniform step forward from the churning, translucent depths.
"Major Andrews, Hydro Alchemist, Truthbearer for the Truth organization…You three have been identified as anarchists, and a threat to the stability to this world. If you are not what we have observed you to be, speak now to defend yourself, or else you must be purged." the ex-Hydro Alchemist announced, his face slack and seemingly uncaring, his words almost distant and impersonal. Squirtle didn’t really know how to respond to the appearance of the robed man, but staring at the military fruit in front of him, he knew exactly what to say.
“My name is Squirtle!” The Tiny Turtle roared—kicking off the ground and executing a flawless, backwards flip onto a nearby mailbox. With angry, hateful eyes, he pointed an accusatory finger at the human before him. “You speak of threatening the stability of this planet? Why don’t you go munch on some rod you hypocritical fuck? With the exception of that nerdy, Engurish chap, all of you Homo sapiens are all alike. You gallivant around in your little uniforms with your medals and honors, but you’re no different from the people you murder, rape, and enslave in your pathetic crusade to prove who has the biggest penis.
“You all fucking disgust me and make me want to slit my wrists like those damn little goth kids I see whining about how horrible their lives are sitting at the apex of the food chain. I swear by the harvest moon looming above us that I will not capitulate until I purge the planet of you greedy, destructive, self-centered hominids,” foaming a little bit at the mouth, the reptilian warrior shifted his fingers so that only the central digit was facing the self-proclaimed ‘Truthbearer.’
“That means we’re the anarchists,” Red Mage stated rather nonchalantly, joining the perched turtle and joining Squirtle in saluting the Alchemist in a manner so awesome only they could pull it off without a hitch. The display elicited a chuckle from Major Andrews and his approval in the form of a generous applause.
“I figured I’d be dispatched to deal with a bunch of clowns, but I will nevertheless enjoy slaying all of you with the utmost prejudice,” the alchemist said without so much as a hint of emotion whatsoever as he took a step in their immediate direction.
“Die commie bastard!” The puberty-afflicted voice resonated throughout the night sky as its adolescent origin threw forth his hand—signifying his previously hidden troops to pounce upon the Truthbearer with an animalistic vigor. Major Andrews’ eyes swelled with a mixture of panic and surprise as the horde of slain peasants and civilians descended upon him like an unrestrained flood of death and decay.
As Squirtle, Red Mage, and Greg enjoyably looked on, the ‘Hydro Alchemist’ vanished beneath the horde; however, the victory was never quite that easy. With a valiant scream, the Truth henchman unleashed his powers in the form of a massive explosion of hydrogen dioxide. The sheer force tore apart a large portion of the shambling undead that had amassed upon the warrior.
The fluid shrapnel that resulted from the blast maintained enough power to send Red Mage and Greg to the street, but the Tiny Turtle was unfazed by the watery assault. After all, he himself not only held mastery over water, but Squirtle was naturally resistance against attacks that derived their potency from said liquid and its numerous manifestations.
“I have no idea what the hell you anarchists did to achieve that little trick, but it will take a lot more than some revived corpses in order to defeat one of the four Truthbearers,” the alchemist stated dispassionately as a smug, confident grin spread across his otherwise strangely vacuous visage. The amphibious revolutionary chuckled beneath his breath as he leaped down from the mailbox he had been perched on for the last few minutes.
Major Andrews extended his right hand and grasped a piece of jewelry with his free hand. Slowly but surely, a cloud of steam manifested itself around the man’s fingers and palm. Soon enough, the Truthbearer finished concocting a dense, large globule of water around his hand. Taking a step toward his adversary, Squirtle took a long, deep breath of air into his reptilian lungs and smiled through clenched lips.
Drawing his palms back toward his body, the Hydro Alchemist’s eyes, as blank and lifeless as the reinvigorated corpses he had dispatch earlier, seemed weary as the hominid threw his hands forward and unleashed the concentration of fluid borne of alchemic origins. With a glint in his red and black eyes, the Water Pokémon threw his head forward and unleashed a massive discharge of water from his entrails.
With a wet, titanic slap, the two projectiles collided with one another and exploded simultaneously. The impact split the concrete beneath the collision site and sent both combatants straight to their derrières. The union and subsequent destruction of the attacks resonated into the night sky, and the fragmented particles quickly made their way back down to the desolate street in the form of diminutive droplets.
“Fuck,” the words escaped the Tiny Turtle’s lips laced with enough sarcasm to strike down an ox, but the realization that the fight was going to be nothing short of awesome would remain far after the last traces of comedic revelry faded from everyone’s mind. Unfortunately for the two warriors, their little tryst was about to be invaded.
“You know… this darkens the color a tad. Makes it a bit redder,” Squirtle cringed at the sound of the man’s voice, and even so, Major Andrews and his reptilian foe turned to face the mage. “It really takes away from this vermillion thing. It might be bad for getaways, but it’s good for style.” he said, sighing. “Hopefully this won’t shrink too much; otherwise I might have to do something about it. Anyway, where was I?” the fag spoke, placing on of his fingers upon his pale chin. “That’s right…I have to kick your ass.”
Just as the group had finished its badgering of their foe, a deluge of water sent Red Mage, Squirtle, and Greg sailing through the air and into the side of a nearby structure. Exploding through a randomly placed window, the robed mage and nerdy, English chap vanished from site as the Tiny Turtle was left to slide down from his initial point of impact on the wall of the building.
Pushing away from the ruptured concrete, Squirtle bounced back up to a standing position and glared distastefully at the alchemist a few yards away. Without a moment’s hesitation, the opponents kicked away from the street and lunged at one another. Coming together with enough force to further splinter the dense concrete beneath their feet, the two warriors locked hands and entered into a contest of brute strength.
Unfortunately for Major Andrews, the Tiny Turtle proved to have a steady advantage when it came to sheer power, and with a final thrust, the Pokémon sent the evolved primate stumbling backwards. Despite failing to assert his physical prowess, the Hydro Alchemist remained resolute in his cold, emotionless state of existence. His blank eyes twitched slightly, but aside from that, the loss was met with no adverse reaction that Squirtle could detect.
Grasping the necklace that seemed to be the nexus of his alchemic powers, the Truthbearer extended his unoccupied hand and once again began to transmute the air into a substance he could further manipulate with his hydrokinetic powers. The amphibious superstar watched with an intrigued eye as Major Andrews attempted to conjure what appeared to be a tornado of water.
“Ice 1!” The words were complemented by a deluge of frozen, snowy wind that erupted from the extended palms of Red Mage as he lunged through the window from whence he had been thrown through. As Squirtle watched on, the cyclone of fluid quickly began to freeze around the Hydro Alchemist. Unfortunately, the awesomeness of the vermilion-cloaked mage was unprepared to have his trademark trait put to the true test.
As the turtle and sorcerer looked on, the solidified tornado suddenly began to buckle and collapse inward onto the man situated at its eye. The kid-sized Pokémon tilted his head in awe of the events unfolding merely a few dozen feet away from him; however, the two-dimensional entity next to him seemed a bit more aggravated and perturbed than his reptilian cohort.
Like the peel of a banana, the frozen cyclone fell away to reveal the fruit that lie within it—Major Andrews, but it seemed that he had done something radical in order to gain what he may potentially view as an advantage. With his alchemic ability to manipulate compounds at a cellular level, the Truthbearer had augmented his physical build by literally deep freezing his entire body.
“Impressive display of power,” Squirtle said, flashing a toothy grin in the hydromancer’s direction. “Unfortunately I’m still going to own you, and then fuck your mother while you watch and cry like the little bitch that you are,” still wholly unaffected by the verbal bantering and slander from the amphibious superstar, the minion of the Truth began to advance towards the rather unlikely duo. The sound of his solidified feet crunching and impacting the fissured concrete streets resonated throughout the dead, empty street as Major Andrew’s advanced toward his intended victims.
Squirtle glared into the glazed eyes of the man with an immense hatred, yet even the rage-fueled reptilian could sense that the foe he was combating seemed empty. Even when his eyes weren’t coated by frost, the Pokémon could see the blank despair that emanated outward. It seemed that Major Andrew’s, like many pumpkins before him come October, had been gutted for the purpose of someone else’s amusement.
Staring at the frozen shell of a man, Squirtle shrugged his little shoulders and giggled at yet another scathing example of how corrupt and fraudulent the Homo sapiens behaved. It would bring the turtle much joy to not only flay Major Andrew’s alive, but also to liberate him from the treachery of his own kind had inflicted upon him.
Extending a hand, the ice-encased alchemist narrowed his lifeless eyes and began to convulse as a massive, frozen barb began to form around the icy gauntlets that was his right hand. The pointed, glacial mass reflected the light of the full moon, but Squirtle wasn’t easily intimidated by neat little tricks. After all, he was the king of neat little tricks—who else gets resurrected by a bolt of lightning?
“It’s time we own this bitch,” the Pokémon stated nonchalantly. “Red Mage, go make sure Greg is still alive and stuff. For now, this Douchebearer is mine!” After issuing the command, the Tiny Turtle narrowed his own eyes and charged the ice-consumed alchemist, releasing a frenzied battle cry into the night sky along the way.
The icy form of the ex-Hydro Alchemist whipped an arm forward, sending out a blast of subzero vapors, causing even the air itself to crystallize. The Pokémon dodged gush of wind by rolling sideways on his shell and quickly returned fire with a jet of compacted water from his mouth.
A blue glow emanated from the necklace that the alchemist wore around his neck, and the condensed stream of water began to slow its advancement, before coming to a stop in midair. Utilizing his alchemic powers, the seemingly lifeless Andrews further warped the condensed liquid, formed it into a spear of water, and then proceeded to launch it back at its creator.
After deflecting yet another shot of water, the frozen-over body of Major Andrews began to rapidly thaw, until he was back to looking like his old, lifeless self once more. The expression upon his face seemed to convey the notion that someone had just contacted him through a medium beyond the turtle’s comprehension. Grasping his necklace firmly with both hands, he opened his mouth to announce what had transpired in his mind to the azure reptile.
"It would seem that time is on your side, little turtle. Fate has decided you shall live a while longer. I bid you farewell." the alchemist stated, with words that ordinarily would have sounded mocking, if not for the lifeless echo behind them. With that adieu, a blast of steam erupted out around Major Andrew's form. The mist veiled his body in a matter of seconds, and when the vapor cleared, the man was gone.
Squirtle screamed out in rage, but his tiny cries were snuffed out when the wave of industrial waste crashed into his diminutive form. The Tiny Turtle was instantly swept up in the torrential deluge, carrying him all the way down to the other end of the warehouse-sized room. Unfortunately, despite his best efforts to fight against the current, the Pokémon was slammed into the side of yet another storage vat.
Even as blood was dripping from his mouth and nose in what heralded the signs of massive internal damage, the amphibious revolutionary managed to raise one small middle finger and put on his best smirk. The last thing the badass saw was another wave of orange fluid pouring down on him, and then Squirtle ceased to think.
The vile contents of the orange fluid triggered the machinery that lined the massive room to instantaneously malfunction. The massive apparatuses that had simply been malfunction now began to explode brilliantly. Cinders and shrapnel exploded out in rings around the dying devices—murdering any of the workers that had survived the initial flood of chemicals into the room. Now only a few, mortally wounded men were crawling around, wailing as their lives slowly drew to a close.
After a few minutes, the chaos subsided, and all that was left was a bleak, dismal scene of destruction and blood. The sea of florescent lights that had once adorned the ceiling of the warehouse-sized room had been shattered in the explosion. The few light fixtures that remained intact were the only thing that separated the room from complete and total darkness, and even their combined luminescence failed help the ailing survivors find their way.
Amidst the sea of flames and spontaneous sparks of electricity, a few columns of light were visible—due in part to holes blown into the side of the factory. From outside the ruined room, the sounds of gunfire and further explosions could be heard, and it soon became evident that the entire structure had fallen under attack following Squirtle’s tampering with its internal systems. Tanks rolled passed the razed castle of industrialism, a series of foot soldiers following in its wake.
As the rest of the factory slowly caved into the river it had been dumping its radioactive waste into, one section managed to remain standing despite the damage to its foundation and structural integrity; however, the building would remain desolate and lifeless for quite some time before anything vaguely resembling life stirred from within its crumbling carcass. In the forgotten, ignorant view of the public eye, something horrible and blasphemous was coming into existence.
Slain workers stirred from their watery grave and pulled themselves from the remnant of the factory. Although their bodies were bloodied and battered, their minds had somehow regenerated to the point where they regained the most basic of needs—the need to feed. For weeks the zombies slowly rose from the sight of the bombing and radioactive spill, and even as their numbers infiltrated the public, attention was diverted elsewhere. New, radical factions were coming into power all across the globe.
Even as “The Truth” spread across the globe like wildfire, more important history was playing out elsewhere. Nearly two months after the disaster at the factory—one of the Truth’s earliest attacks, something brand new stirred within the radioactive, stagnated waters. The corpse had been thrown into the river weeks ago when what was left of the building was torn down for scrap metal, and even as the rest of the bodies rose from the grave, this particular cadaver remained idle.
None questioned why it wasn’t affected by decay or decomposition, and the local children were even ballsy enough to one day fish it out from the bottom of the polluted river. The group of three lads dragged the body from its watery grave and ridiculed the bizarre, unspoiled stiff for quite some time. Even when a storm started to brew, they ignored the shouts of their parents and had their fun. They would throw the corpse, see if they could skip it across the river, and even use it as a puppet for their own breed of twisted humor.
Unfortunately, when the fun finally ran out due to the arrival of a torrential downpour, one of the boys was stupid enough to drive a nearby rod of metal into the heart of the deceased creature. With their laughter rejuvenated, they turned to flee the seen of their defiling of the dead; however, one bolt of lightning would change all of that in a heartbeat. Exploding downward in an awesome flash of white, the bolt of lightening slammed straight into the long, metal pike and sent 1.21 gigawatts of electricity straight into the cadaver.
Almost instantly, the creature’s eyes shot open to reveal two angry, red eyes. His fingers twitched and a low moan escaped his maw as the lightning numbed. Three very scared children let out horrified screams and fled the area when they saw the animated corpse remove the pike from his chest. Sitting upright, the formerly dead beast poked at relatively shallow wound and fathomed how its existence was no ending his. Nevertheless, the resurrected monster released an angry howl as the rain continued to pour from the heavens.
“Squirrrrrrrrtle!” The lizard screamed, recalling what had led to his apparent demise and subsequent return. Had it been the radioactive waste that spared his life somehow? Had fate directed those children and lightning bolt to him? Squirtle brushed aside the questions, because he felt too strong and powerful to let them get to him now. In fact, he felt mentally and physically superior now then he had several months ago. Flexing his developed digits, he let out a deep breath of air.
“Monster!” One of the boys had stayed behind simply to ridicule the Tiny Turtle, but when Squirtle noticed him hiding behind some bushes, he simply began to laugh.
“Compared to me, all other monsters you have seen are little fairies and could double as my personal bitches. Now fuck off before I rid the planet of you, Homo!” The words were enough to cause the cretin to flee, but the reptilian revolutionary was the one who was truly surprised. Not questioning his newfound lingual skills, the Pokémon broke into a sprint—his developed legs carrying him faster and easier than ever before.
***
“What is this feeling of power and drive?” Squirtle screamed melodically as he stampeded up a mountain trail a few hours after his return from the grave—an expression of unadulterated madness and glee plastered across his reptilian features. “I’ve never known! I feel alive!” The Tiny Turtle continued his loud combination of violent screaming and singing as he strolled up to a small group of young kids sitting near a laid out picnic buffet enjoying a feast under the stars. Gallivanting toward on of the unperceiving youths, Squirtle wrapped his dexterous arms around the human’s neck and snapped it like a twig.
“Where does this feeling of power derive? Making me know, why I’m alive!” The turtle sang, shoving his victim’s face into a bowl of potato salad as his friends tried to flee. With a glint in his eye, Squirtle pounced at one of the retreating preteens and tore out throat when he turned to face his amphibious attacker. Turning sharply, the Pokémon blasted a concentrated stream of water at the final hominid. The youthful girl tripped and landed on her back, but by the time she realized what was going on, the frenzied Tiny Turtle had already lunged on her and torn our her heart.
“Like the night, it's a secret... sinister dark and unknown!” The azure reptile hissed into the dark skyline. “I do not know what I seek. Yet, I'll seek it alone!” Casting aside the ruined organ, Squirtle began to tear into the deceased girl’s thoracic cavity like a buzzard tearing into fresh carrion. Once the turtle was satisfied with his defilement of the cadaver, he spied a group of teens nearby sharing an intimate moment in a car—oblivious the massacre just a few dozen feet away. Even as the Pokémon crept toward his victims, he was oblivious to the soldiers stalking him.
“I have a thirst that I cannot deprive!” The reptilian revolutionary bellowed and he exploded through the window and ripped apart the inhabitants before they could even remove their tongues from one another’s mouth. “Never have I…felt so alive!” The bloodshed brought a smile back to Squirtle’s blue countenance; however, the moment of elation was cut short when the hail of gunfire interrupted the glee of the Pokémon.
“There is no battle I couldn't survive!” Squirtle roared as he punched through the roof of the vehicle. Firing off a few rounds of water, the turtle dove forward and attacked with an inhuman strength and speed. “Feeling like this…” The blue-skinned powerhouse screamed into the night as he snapped the neck of his third and final attacker. “Feeling alive!” With his foes dispatched, a bloodied Squirtle climbed his way to the edge of the cliff. Below both him and the rays of the moon, he could see a city wrought by chaos.
“Like the moon, an enigma…lost and alone in the night!” The turtle declared, raising his bloodstained hands toward the white globe in the starry, night sky. “Lost and alone in the night! Damned by some heavenly stigma but blazing with light!” The turtle’s intense singing resonated into the valley beneath him as the city was torn apart by the fighting that was spreading across the planet. Squirtle didn’t really know what had gotten hold of him, but he wasn’t one to stop the energized hatred flowing within his veins. Stepping over to the edge of the mountainside, the Tiny Turtle wiped the blood on his hands across his face.
“It's the feeling of being alive! Filled with evil but truly alive!” Squirtle was foaming at the mouth as he raced down the oddly-angled slope in a haphazard dash at the cityscape before him. “It's the truth that cannot be denied!” By the time he had finished the line, the Pokémon’s augmented speed had carried him to the outskirts of the war-ravaged city. Leaping forward, he landed on the roof of a charred bus.
“It's the feeling of being alive!” The Tiny Turtle roared—his voice peaking as he dragged the note on until it vanished into the night sky. Satisfied with both his homicidal and singing skills, the Pokémon set out to examine the city. He didn’t know what was ravaging his homeworld and future dominion, but he was going to kill and maim everything that stood in his way.
“Nice display,” the sound drew the reptile’s attention and revealed the presence of a grizzly, old creature who was watching him from the shadows.
“State your name and maybe I won’t kill you,” Squirtle chuckled malignantly. The mangy human stepped out from the shadows, and at that moment, the turtle recognized it as just another foolish Homo sapiens.
“I am Joe, and I know who you are, Squirtle. Furthermore, I know that you are special among your species. I come to you as a representative of the Truth—we are trying to establish a dominate body and shape the Earth toward a new future. I implore you to he—” The man never got to finish, because his body was torn apart by the bullet stream from a machinegun that the Tiny Turtle had found nearby. As the man collapsed in a pool of his blood, Squirtle snickered and raised his eyes to the moon.
“This is my planet, and I'll make my own side…bitch.” The Turtle said, making his way into the depths of the city ravaged by war.
***
A few hours later, Squirtle let out a heavy sigh as he scaled the clock tower near the central portion of the city. He didn’t really know exactly where he had wound up, or even where he had been in the past due to his lack of knowledge of geography. Nevertheless, he had garnered that he was in some type of larger city that held some relative importance on a grander scheme. The cityscape was filled with older, gothic-influenced buildings that heralded the rich past from which the city had grown.
The tower that the Tiny Turtle was scaling seemed moderately undamaged despite the destruction of the structure from which it was erected alongside. Squirtle had only gathered that the bombed building bore the name Westminster, and aside from that, the Water Pokémon was completely baffled as the scene playing out around him. All he knew was that he had to escape the gunfire and chaos in the streets if he expected to survive the bloodshed that was spreading through the metropolis like wildfire.
As he neared the summit of the tower, Squirtle glanced out a hole in the wall and saw what remained of the other tower near the other end of the once glorious palace. Didn’t the peasants call it Victoria when it was torn apart by an air-to-ground missile right after the reptilian revolutionary crossed that rickety bridge? Thinking back, Squirtle was starting to deduce that climbing on of the few standing buildings in the block may have no been the brightest of ideas, but who would feel compelled to bomb a simple tower with a bunch of clocks on it?
Shrugging of such melancholy thoughts, the turtle sprinted up the few remaining flights of stairs until he reached the apex of the structure. An opened room dominated by a central bell, Squirtle tilted his head and started toward the massive device. Unfortunately, he was cut off by a rather large, obsidian fist and sent into the far wall of the room.
“What the hell was that?” The amphibious superstar declared in his ironically childish dialect. “Fucking felt I got hit by a truck,” he added, rubbing the side of his head as he climbed off his cloaca and shook his head a little bit to eradicate the dizziness he was feeling. Glancing around the dimly light room, Squirtle squinted in an effort to locate the force that had struck him, but it wasn’t until his attacker made himself present with another assault that the turtle verified his location.
Feeling the creaking of the floorboards long before the punch was thrown; the Tiny Turtle pivoted sideways and grabbed the giant fist about an inch or so in front of his blue-skinned face. Squirtle was taken aback by the monstrous appearance of his attacker—the beast’s flesh seemed to literally be breathing and churning around as if it was its own separate entity.
The two immense, erratic pools of white tissue that comprised the beast’s eyes narrowed as its long tongue shot out of its opened mouth and across the plethora of jagged canines that lined its mouth. Grimacing as a few beads of sweat formed atop his bald head, Squirtle shoved the bizarre beast backwards and fired off a condensed sphere of water into his chiseled chest. The projectile sent the monster staggering, but it quickly became clear to the turtle that he was going to have to fight harder to dispatch the mutant.
Kicking off his feet, the Pokémon launched himself toward the sternum of the creature, but in an act of sheer ability, the creature caught the blue missile and redirected Squirtle into a rendezvous with the massive bell near the center of the chamber. With a resonating thud, the child-sized turtle slammed into the side of the copper bell and let out an angered, pained shriek as he slid off the side of the now mobile object.
Although his vision was blurred from what was possibly an epic concussion, the reptilian warrior retained enough consciousness to watch as the massive, onyx beast began toward him, but in what seemed like an act of pure luck, the creature began to lament. Monstrous, labored screams escaped its maw as it crumbled to the ground and put its gnarled, clawed fingers to the sides of its cranium. Squirtle, regaining his bearing, realized that clanging of the bell seemed to cause the beast pain, and it must have been in the tower seeking to destroy the device.
Flipping off his back and onto his stout legs, the Pokémon watched as the creature suddenly lashed out—violently swinging at the giant bell in an effort to make it stop from clanging. Smiling widely, Squirtle sucked in a deep lungful of air and released it in the form of a piercing, high-decibel screech. The monster, punching the bell completely off its supports, let out another scream and crumbled to the floor.
Unrelenting in his onslaught, the Tiny Turtle watched as the creature began to convulse and twitch, and then its flesh began to slide off to reveal a naked, scrawny man beneath the suit of living tissue. Slipping through cracks in the aged, wooden floor, the ebony fluid quickly vanished in an effort to escape the wrath of Squirtle’s Water Pulse. Exhaling on final time, the reptilian revolutionary watched as the man let out groan and began to regain consciousness.
“So who the hell are you?” Squirtle nonchalantly declared, glaring at the pale hominid as he struggled to his feet. The Homo sapiens had but one possession on his nude body—an ornate, silver ring that seemed melded to his right index finger.
“I’m Greg, and please, I didn’t have any control of myself when the Truth unleashed that thing on me. Don’t kill me and I’ll help you in whatever cause you serve, and I can be of use I promise!” The frail man pleaded as his weary eyes widen with fear as he awaited the reply of the blue-skinned creature.
“I hate your kind,” Squirtle replied heartless. “But what does that ring do?” The man, although originally intimidated by the first statement, let out a sigh of relief as he raised his finger into the turtle’s direct line of sight.
“I stole it from one of the Truth’s labs, but an explosion accidentally melded it permanently to my skin. The ring was part of their more recent experiments pertaining to controlling the dead and the forces of darkness. When they couldn’t kill me for fear of losing the only existing ring, they used me as a test for their symbiote line of testing. The rest is an adrenaline-based blur, but please, I don’t care who you fight for or where you allegiances lie! I just don’t want to die, and I swear I can be off assistance!”
Before Greg had a chance to continue his frantic rambling, a missile slammed into the side of the building and destroyed the Clock Tower in a brilliant display of fire and debris. Squirtle’s eyes bugged out as he desperately tried to fathom what to do, but then he felt a hand on his shoulder. A dark, uplifting sensation overwhelmed the amphibious insurrectionist, but before he could get a hold of the situation, the human and he were back on the ground near the remains of the tower.
A black, churning barrier had engulfed the two and offered them safe transport from the blast, and when the hand left Squirtle’s shoulder, the barrier soon faded from existence. The Pokémon chuckled slightly as he turned his attention back to the hominid and shrugged his shoulders.
“Get some clothes,” the reptile said, pointing to a nearby corpse. “We need to get out of her and to a safer location,” Greg nodded as he started to undress on of the corpses. Squirtle walked over to a more battered corpse and tore a few strands of cloth from the cadaver. Wrapping some cloth around his elbows and knees for protection, the revolutionary stabbed two holes in a final stripe and tied it around his cranium.
After tying the knot, he let the remainder of the cloth fall onto his neck and shoulders and adjusted the mask so he could see through the holes. Turning around, he smirked at his clothed travel companion and then to the corpses that surrounded the horrendously unlikely pairing. Greg extended his hand and closed his eyes as a black aura slowly materialized around his stretched digits. Squirtle watched as the corpses all around him suddenly began to twitch and release eerie groans into the evening sky as they simultaneously crawled off the ground and up to standing positions.
“Bitchin’,” The Tiny Turtle said—it was all that really needed to be said. With his mind made up about his new henchman, Squirtle set out to survey the city for some assholes to murder. Unfortunately for the Pokémon, his peace and silence was once again shattered by the sudden arrival of some fag clad in red. The imbecile swooped in, executed some fancy maneuvers, and immediately established himself as a complete and utter fucktard. Despite his blaring homosexuality, something about the newcomer seemed to scream ‘awesomeness.’
“Neat,” the man spoke—his voice causing the turtle to shudder. It was going to be a long day for Squirtle.
The moment pervaded until it became an awkward silence, and then the mage's potential for further egotism was quickly and rudely interrupted by something that the trio found to be anything close to ‘neat.’ After all, a twenty-foot tsunami most certainly conveys nothing relatively close to even relatively okay. The word that had just formulated in the minds of the three travelers was closer to a definitive ‘fuck.’
Fortunately for the triumvirate, the massive wave of water did not continue its crushing course towards them. Instead of decimating them completely and utterly, the wave came to a sudden halt just before obliterating the small group. A small portion of the huge tidal wave suddenly split apart, and a man wearing a blue military uniform step forward from the churning, translucent depths.
"Major Andrews, Hydro Alchemist, Truthbearer for the Truth organization…You three have been identified as anarchists, and a threat to the stability to this world. If you are not what we have observed you to be, speak now to defend yourself, or else you must be purged." the ex-Hydro Alchemist announced, his face slack and seemingly uncaring, his words almost distant and impersonal. Squirtle didn’t really know how to respond to the appearance of the robed man, but staring at the military fruit in front of him, he knew exactly what to say.
“My name is Squirtle!” The Tiny Turtle roared—kicking off the ground and executing a flawless, backwards flip onto a nearby mailbox. With angry, hateful eyes, he pointed an accusatory finger at the human before him. “You speak of threatening the stability of this planet? Why don’t you go munch on some rod you hypocritical fuck? With the exception of that nerdy, Engurish chap, all of you Homo sapiens are all alike. You gallivant around in your little uniforms with your medals and honors, but you’re no different from the people you murder, rape, and enslave in your pathetic crusade to prove who has the biggest penis.
“You all fucking disgust me and make me want to slit my wrists like those damn little goth kids I see whining about how horrible their lives are sitting at the apex of the food chain. I swear by the harvest moon looming above us that I will not capitulate until I purge the planet of you greedy, destructive, self-centered hominids,” foaming a little bit at the mouth, the reptilian warrior shifted his fingers so that only the central digit was facing the self-proclaimed ‘Truthbearer.’
“That means we’re the anarchists,” Red Mage stated rather nonchalantly, joining the perched turtle and joining Squirtle in saluting the Alchemist in a manner so awesome only they could pull it off without a hitch. The display elicited a chuckle from Major Andrews and his approval in the form of a generous applause.
“I figured I’d be dispatched to deal with a bunch of clowns, but I will nevertheless enjoy slaying all of you with the utmost prejudice,” the alchemist said without so much as a hint of emotion whatsoever as he took a step in their immediate direction.
“Die commie bastard!” The puberty-afflicted voice resonated throughout the night sky as its adolescent origin threw forth his hand—signifying his previously hidden troops to pounce upon the Truthbearer with an animalistic vigor. Major Andrews’ eyes swelled with a mixture of panic and surprise as the horde of slain peasants and civilians descended upon him like an unrestrained flood of death and decay.
As Squirtle, Red Mage, and Greg enjoyably looked on, the ‘Hydro Alchemist’ vanished beneath the horde; however, the victory was never quite that easy. With a valiant scream, the Truth henchman unleashed his powers in the form of a massive explosion of hydrogen dioxide. The sheer force tore apart a large portion of the shambling undead that had amassed upon the warrior.
The fluid shrapnel that resulted from the blast maintained enough power to send Red Mage and Greg to the street, but the Tiny Turtle was unfazed by the watery assault. After all, he himself not only held mastery over water, but Squirtle was naturally resistance against attacks that derived their potency from said liquid and its numerous manifestations.
“I have no idea what the hell you anarchists did to achieve that little trick, but it will take a lot more than some revived corpses in order to defeat one of the four Truthbearers,” the alchemist stated dispassionately as a smug, confident grin spread across his otherwise strangely vacuous visage. The amphibious revolutionary chuckled beneath his breath as he leaped down from the mailbox he had been perched on for the last few minutes.
Major Andrews extended his right hand and grasped a piece of jewelry with his free hand. Slowly but surely, a cloud of steam manifested itself around the man’s fingers and palm. Soon enough, the Truthbearer finished concocting a dense, large globule of water around his hand. Taking a step toward his adversary, Squirtle took a long, deep breath of air into his reptilian lungs and smiled through clenched lips.
Drawing his palms back toward his body, the Hydro Alchemist’s eyes, as blank and lifeless as the reinvigorated corpses he had dispatch earlier, seemed weary as the hominid threw his hands forward and unleashed the concentration of fluid borne of alchemic origins. With a glint in his red and black eyes, the Water Pokémon threw his head forward and unleashed a massive discharge of water from his entrails.
With a wet, titanic slap, the two projectiles collided with one another and exploded simultaneously. The impact split the concrete beneath the collision site and sent both combatants straight to their derrières. The union and subsequent destruction of the attacks resonated into the night sky, and the fragmented particles quickly made their way back down to the desolate street in the form of diminutive droplets.
“Fuck,” the words escaped the Tiny Turtle’s lips laced with enough sarcasm to strike down an ox, but the realization that the fight was going to be nothing short of awesome would remain far after the last traces of comedic revelry faded from everyone’s mind. Unfortunately for the two warriors, their little tryst was about to be invaded.
“You know… this darkens the color a tad. Makes it a bit redder,” Squirtle cringed at the sound of the man’s voice, and even so, Major Andrews and his reptilian foe turned to face the mage. “It really takes away from this vermillion thing. It might be bad for getaways, but it’s good for style.” he said, sighing. “Hopefully this won’t shrink too much; otherwise I might have to do something about it. Anyway, where was I?” the fag spoke, placing on of his fingers upon his pale chin. “That’s right…I have to kick your ass.”
Just as the group had finished its badgering of their foe, a deluge of water sent Red Mage, Squirtle, and Greg sailing through the air and into the side of a nearby structure. Exploding through a randomly placed window, the robed mage and nerdy, English chap vanished from site as the Tiny Turtle was left to slide down from his initial point of impact on the wall of the building.
Pushing away from the ruptured concrete, Squirtle bounced back up to a standing position and glared distastefully at the alchemist a few yards away. Without a moment’s hesitation, the opponents kicked away from the street and lunged at one another. Coming together with enough force to further splinter the dense concrete beneath their feet, the two warriors locked hands and entered into a contest of brute strength.
Unfortunately for Major Andrews, the Tiny Turtle proved to have a steady advantage when it came to sheer power, and with a final thrust, the Pokémon sent the evolved primate stumbling backwards. Despite failing to assert his physical prowess, the Hydro Alchemist remained resolute in his cold, emotionless state of existence. His blank eyes twitched slightly, but aside from that, the loss was met with no adverse reaction that Squirtle could detect.
Grasping the necklace that seemed to be the nexus of his alchemic powers, the Truthbearer extended his unoccupied hand and once again began to transmute the air into a substance he could further manipulate with his hydrokinetic powers. The amphibious superstar watched with an intrigued eye as Major Andrews attempted to conjure what appeared to be a tornado of water.
“Ice 1!” The words were complemented by a deluge of frozen, snowy wind that erupted from the extended palms of Red Mage as he lunged through the window from whence he had been thrown through. As Squirtle watched on, the cyclone of fluid quickly began to freeze around the Hydro Alchemist. Unfortunately, the awesomeness of the vermilion-cloaked mage was unprepared to have his trademark trait put to the true test.
As the turtle and sorcerer looked on, the solidified tornado suddenly began to buckle and collapse inward onto the man situated at its eye. The kid-sized Pokémon tilted his head in awe of the events unfolding merely a few dozen feet away from him; however, the two-dimensional entity next to him seemed a bit more aggravated and perturbed than his reptilian cohort.
Like the peel of a banana, the frozen cyclone fell away to reveal the fruit that lie within it—Major Andrews, but it seemed that he had done something radical in order to gain what he may potentially view as an advantage. With his alchemic ability to manipulate compounds at a cellular level, the Truthbearer had augmented his physical build by literally deep freezing his entire body.
“Impressive display of power,” Squirtle said, flashing a toothy grin in the hydromancer’s direction. “Unfortunately I’m still going to own you, and then fuck your mother while you watch and cry like the little bitch that you are,” still wholly unaffected by the verbal bantering and slander from the amphibious superstar, the minion of the Truth began to advance towards the rather unlikely duo. The sound of his solidified feet crunching and impacting the fissured concrete streets resonated throughout the dead, empty street as Major Andrew’s advanced toward his intended victims.
Squirtle glared into the glazed eyes of the man with an immense hatred, yet even the rage-fueled reptilian could sense that the foe he was combating seemed empty. Even when his eyes weren’t coated by frost, the Pokémon could see the blank despair that emanated outward. It seemed that Major Andrew’s, like many pumpkins before him come October, had been gutted for the purpose of someone else’s amusement.
Staring at the frozen shell of a man, Squirtle shrugged his little shoulders and giggled at yet another scathing example of how corrupt and fraudulent the Homo sapiens behaved. It would bring the turtle much joy to not only flay Major Andrew’s alive, but also to liberate him from the treachery of his own kind had inflicted upon him.
Extending a hand, the ice-encased alchemist narrowed his lifeless eyes and began to convulse as a massive, frozen barb began to form around the icy gauntlets that was his right hand. The pointed, glacial mass reflected the light of the full moon, but Squirtle wasn’t easily intimidated by neat little tricks. After all, he was the king of neat little tricks—who else gets resurrected by a bolt of lightning?
“It’s time we own this bitch,” the Pokémon stated nonchalantly. “Red Mage, go make sure Greg is still alive and stuff. For now, this Douchebearer is mine!” After issuing the command, the Tiny Turtle narrowed his own eyes and charged the ice-consumed alchemist, releasing a frenzied battle cry into the night sky along the way.
The icy form of the ex-Hydro Alchemist whipped an arm forward, sending out a blast of subzero vapors, causing even the air itself to crystallize. The Pokémon dodged gush of wind by rolling sideways on his shell and quickly returned fire with a jet of compacted water from his mouth.
A blue glow emanated from the necklace that the alchemist wore around his neck, and the condensed stream of water began to slow its advancement, before coming to a stop in midair. Utilizing his alchemic powers, the seemingly lifeless Andrews further warped the condensed liquid, formed it into a spear of water, and then proceeded to launch it back at its creator.
After deflecting yet another shot of water, the frozen-over body of Major Andrews began to rapidly thaw, until he was back to looking like his old, lifeless self once more. The expression upon his face seemed to convey the notion that someone had just contacted him through a medium beyond the turtle’s comprehension. Grasping his necklace firmly with both hands, he opened his mouth to announce what had transpired in his mind to the azure reptile.
"It would seem that time is on your side, little turtle. Fate has decided you shall live a while longer. I bid you farewell." the alchemist stated, with words that ordinarily would have sounded mocking, if not for the lifeless echo behind them. With that adieu, a blast of steam erupted out around Major Andrew's form. The mist veiled his body in a matter of seconds, and when the vapor cleared, the man was gone.