From the bushes, I watched like a predator. My leg muscles were taught and twitching. My blue irises shone. My big hands opened and closed, looking for the perfect moment to strike. I waited patiently, using the dense shrubbery as camouflage, disallowing my strike a moment too soon.

A wide grin broke out across my face as I saw my prey: a turtle; about the size of a slice of bread. It was so small and so helpless. Its shell advertised its hardness, yet offered little protection for the danger aimed at it.

While my sights were set on this creature, the small reptile had both eyes occupied with its goal: the very same shrubbery I was in. The simple creature never thought it could be harmed at its usual eating spot. Consistency numbed its primal senses. But not mine, oh no, my senses were entirely focused on my shelled friend.

The turtle drew closer and closer to my hideout, ready to eat the lush leaves that grew on the tangled branches. It moved at a decent pace for a being as small as it, much faster than people think turtles move. I must accelerate my timetable.

I jumped out of the bush on the side of the road and grabbed the little turtle. I wrapped my warm hands around him. He looked around in confusion, his senses thrown off by the sudden movement.

What the turtle hadn't realized yet was that he had been crossing a busy road. The turtle was on a collision course with a tire; nearly getting run over by the oncoming car, only for him to be saved by the amazing ME!

"You little bugger. Are you aiming for a painful death! How does your species not avoid roads like the plague yet?"

The turtle had retreated into its shell by now. It was the natural reflex for the reptile, an evolutionary defense mechanism.

"Oh well, I guess..."

"Get out the road you fucking moron!"

A red car, with several more behind it, were honking their horns at me and yelling. I had stepped into evening traffic to rescue the little turtle, but who cares! I have saved yet another of these amazing little creatures.

Used to this, I simply stepped out of the road and walked away with my new little friend. His green shell was smooth and glossy, letting off a brilliant shine in the midmorning sunlight.

"Hmmmmm... Your new name is...Turtley the 18th!"

The turtle peered out of its shell to look at me. It must have seen me as a massive and strange primate that had captured it. It looked at me with apprehension, its glossy eyes casting a gaze of doubt. I recoiled.

"What! You don't like it? But what about the 17 before you! How can you throw away such lineage! Such prestige!"

The turtle retreated back into its shell, marking me as A dangerous primate. Do not engage.

I carried the turtle softly in his arms, having plenty of previous turtle experience. Did I care that he wasn't into me yet? Absolutely not! Stockholm syndrome doesn't happen that fast...tee hee.

As I walked along the sidewalk towards the place I called home, a cosmic phenomenon washed over the solar system. A massive wave of vibrating energy, sweeping over the sun and everything orbiting it. This wave shook every molecule in the solar system, continuing for a solid ten seconds before returning to normal.

It was only Earth that continued to vibrate, causing me to lose my footing and fall to the ground. I made sure to protect my new family, holding him tight to my chest and waiting for it to end. The vibrating was utterly disorienting. It hurt to just open my eyes and look around, so I kept them shut as tight as I could.

Life detected.

Subroutine Active.

Planet identified.

Designation: Zero Zero Zero One Omega Four Eight One One

Lifeforms isolated.

Mass teleport loading...

Randomized habitable locations determined.

Processing...

Initiating Mass teleport.

I was now curled in a ball, laying on the only planet in the solar system to get vertigo. I had been in an earthquake before, but this was entirely different. The air vibrated with such vigor! As per usual, I looked for anything or anyone to blame.

"Did you do this? You turtles are agents of chaos! You bring such insanity with you! You chaos agent!"

As I continued my mad ramblings, a fourfold circle of light expanded from the base of my back. Each circle alternated between clockwise then counter-clockwise.

The glowing symbols on the circles went unnoticed by me until in the middle of my tirade, the friction of the circles warped space and sucked me through a tubular gateway.

I was screaming the entire time.

"WHAAAAAAT THEEEE FUUUUUUCK! AHHHHHHHHH!"

Everything turned into a strange multicolored blur. When I had finally suppressed the feeling to vomit, and my vision stabilized, all I could see were grainy purple and white particles. It looked a lot like colored beach sand.

Along with the strange sight, there was a long tube of empty space in front of me that I continued to slide through. The grains were rough, cutting my skin a bit and sending jolts of black electricity through my body.

I could feel this black electricity do something to me, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what. All I could think about what my unbroken screaming session.

"AHHHHHHHHHHH! *cough* AHHHHHHHHHH!"

Well, sorta unbroken.

Ahead of me, the strange sand tube split. One path went left, and the other going right. I felt myself being pulled to the left one, being moved by an invisible force to this outcome.

In my arms, Turtley the 18th began to shift rightward. At first, I thought he was just freaking out with me, but as we got closer to the spilt, I realized that he was being pulled as well. I refused to let this weird-ass tunnel take my new friend, no matter how short a time I had known him. I held on with every muscle in my body.

"I will NOT let you get injured little buddy! Just hang on!"

The spilt in the portal arrived in an instant. With more force than I thought possible, we hit the spilt. Neither tunnel could properly guide us their way and audibly screeched under the strain. The sands around us warped and began to collapse.

The sharp grains cut my skin more as a LOT more black lightning infiltrated my body. I felt incredibly uncomfortable as every spot on my body was being scratched up and filled with the strange electricity.

With a shattering sound, all the sand around me collapsed and scattered. My world turned to nothing but black. Me and my little buddy had been ejected from the tunnel into a void of emptiness. As the final motes of purple and white sand disappeared, the system was informed; just another loss on its infinite spreadsheet.