The Teenage Mutant Ninja Squirrels---Rodents in a Nutshell

Rodents in a nutshell. Squirrel Power. --Michelle Liew

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"Quick, the little squirt's catching up!" Pip the bold mind behind the squirrels' operations, darted ahead. Behind the group of four buffoning rodents was a hapless toddler, wailing and stumbling after his stolen PB and J sandwich.

Of course, the said sandwich was already 'mysteriously' disappearing as the toddler sobbed his way through the branches, his hassled mother behind him: "Let it go, Tom."

🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️ It was four tails, one task. Nutty, Hazel, Chipper and Pip were to pull off the snack theft of their lives. Their mission---to steal an unsuspecting human's lunch and vanish. They had trained for this---in alleys, parks, in the shadows of sandwich shops. They simply couldn't fail.

And it seemed that operation PB and J was a go---they had struck before the poor child's lunch even hit the grass.

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I call it, "The Last lunchwich!" Chipper had whispered, just seconds before the drama unfolded.

Just as Chipper, the renaissance squirrel of the group, hung painting from a branch with his prize, the sandwich in his cheek like a bomb about to go off, a blinding ray of light surged from a nearby laboratory.

A sonic BOOM.

A throbbing pulse.

The earth started shaking.

The sky gave a loud hiccup, and the trees bowed inward, as if reminiscing on something old and forgotten.

Their world contorted. Time fractured. Something suspended the rodents midair---then drops them like ripe acorns. A ripple hit them like solidified thoughts. They fell inward---not down.

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The squirrels rose, relieved to be alive.

But they were----different.

In essence, their bodies were the same. But their thoughts were far from the usual.

They spoke. They reasoned. But they recalled things that were strange----not their own. Even the trees in their park seemed---off. Too bent. Too tall.

Hazel calculated wind vectors---but had cut every class in Squirrel School she could. Chipper, of course, became the carver of tree trunks. Pip---well---he whispered coordinates that made sense to himself and noone else.

And the Teenage Mutant Ninja Squirrels were born.

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Nutty, the sensible voice of the group, declared their next mission.

"We must defend the park."

The other squirrels shot thoughtful looks at each other, nodding in agreement.

Defense, however, meant sabotage. Something----or someone---sliced the power lines. Garbage trucks had to reroute, and the air became dense with their suffocating stench. Cell towers sizzled, their signals swallowed in static.

To the squirrels, human tech were trespassers. Parasites. They needed to purge it. Misson parameters shifted: control, contain, cleanse.

The battle cries? Lines of nutshells, ready for a seige.

Hazel disarmed a CCTV with a satisfied smirk.

The rodents' actions seemed like harmless mammalian play to the passersby in the park. But to the squirrels? It was DEAD serious.

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Then, even stranger things happened. The mission shifted---again.

Chipper glitched, sculpting trunks with binary, not pictures. Pip's codes twisted into circuit diagrams. Nutty's sentences fractured like corrupted data.

The squrrels hadn't mutated---they were rogue AI implanted in organic hosts.

They took off, awakened.

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This story is entirely original. AI tags are coincidental. The number of words between the quote and disclaimer is 500.