Riddle me this, riddle me that, who really hates that yellow electric rat?

A total freak of nature, this story is . . .  "Apokelypse Now!" is a bona-fide Hollywood Vampires / Pokemon crossover that I wrote around the Christmas of 2000 strictly for my own amusement, because I find the whole Pokemon phenomenon to be stupid, mindless, and pointless, and I despise that little Pikachu bastard to no end.  I was sick and bloody tired of seeing that creep around everywhere I went, and just annoyed by the whole fad to no end, and this story came out of that disgust and disdain, and was also inspired by arguments between myself and one of my friends (who's a Pokemaniac) over who would win in a scrap between Stephen and Pikachu.  I actually did some research for this story, as best as I could stomach, so most things should be correct within . . . if I've screwed up any Pokemon details, give me a yell and I'll try to revise it at some point, to make sure it's accurate.  I warn you, though, if you're a big Pokemon fan or think Pikachu's a cuddly, lovable little critter, you might not want to read this story, because it's rather . . . visceral in places.  There are at least two Pokemon fans I've showed this to who wouldn't even finish the story because they were so disgusted by it (one of them said I was demented), not to mention the fact that my sister and my friend Joe, who have two of the darkest, most gruesome senses of humor you'll ever see, laughed their heads off at this . . . it's not pretty, folks.  As a matter of fact, it gets downright ugly.  But if you hate Pokemon, this story is dedicated to YOU!

Oh, and don't consider this story canon, either . . . this is like those cool Batman side-stories that fit in with regular continuity, but don't belong there.  Enjoy!  Thanks go to Australian Hollywood Vampires reader Callie Merritt for sharing the goofy little picture seen above and to the left . . . kinda cute, ain't it?  Speaking of cute, check out the pic on the right, created and contributed by UK fiend Anthony Todd, who isn't very fond of Pokemon, either . . . I thought it was rather clever!  And finally, in the center you have another Nathan Smith original, portraying Donita's little boy in a rather cheerful mood . . . I wonder what's got Stephen so excited?  Heh heh, read on to find out . . .  Squeaka!

As mentioned on the Library page, I consider "Apokelypse Now!" to be public domain, and I waive any exclusive rights to it, period.  So what does that mean?  It means that so long as I get credit for writing this awful little thing and there's a link to this website provided with it, you can do pretty much anything you want with this story and I'm not gonna say a damned thing!  Got an Anti-Pokemon website and think "Apokelypse Now!" would fit in well, so you want to post it?  Go for it!  Going to an anime convention and think that a lot of people there might be keen on it, and want to print out a bunch of copies and hand them out?  Hell yeah, you go!  Got a 'zine or other publication you want to put "Apokelypse Now!" in?  Consider my permission to be already granted!  Like I said, the only thing I want is credit for the story, a link to this website provided with the story, and for you to tell me where it's going to be appearing, purely for my own curiosity and ego-stroking . . . if "Apokelypse Now!" gets around, I wanna see where it goes!

To facilitate the distribution of "Apokelypse Now!" I've included a zip file containing the story in both Microsoft Word '95 and rich-text format, one or the other of which should be readable on just about any computer out there.  If you'd like to put the zip file onto your website, you're more than welcome to, but please download it from here and upload it to your own website, and don't link to it directly from here . . . bandwidth thievery is seriously annoying and a pain in the ass.  If you don't want to actually download the zip file of the story to read it, no problem, because I've also provided "Apokelypse Now!" in the format all of my other stories are in, so you can just handily read it online without any downloading headaches.  Just pick your poison below, read up, and I hope you laugh your ass off!  Squeaka squeaka!