This is the first story in the Lots of Vowels Series
Leiaou stood breathless, surveying the horror below her. There, stretched out in a long line, was a density of military-grade urinals that she had never seen before, not even in her worst nightmare. She knew of their terrible power, but hadn’t expected them to be here, of all places. They were certainly not intended for human use. They were for beavers.
Beavers.
The mere thought of that word conjured up vivid images of a nation of Quebec separatists, dying polar bears, and the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
Speaking of sporting events, the FIFA World Cup was more rigged than the skeleton of a 3D model file, and Leiaou knew the only winning move was not to play. Unfortunately, the Kazakh government was not so wise.
Kazakhstan is the greatest country on Earth that you’ve never heard of. Founded in 1991 by a horde of anti-communist Pallas’s cats (if you’ve never heard of Pallas’s cats, you don’t know what you’re missing out on, and you should look it up right now), its only claim to fame has been renaming its capital city every other year, most recently to Crypto.com, for which it holds a Guinness World Record.
The bidding process for the 2026 FIFA World Cup had boiled down to only 2 cities: Crypto.com, Kazakhstan and London, Canada. Leiaou was a teenage anime girl-turned secret agent for the nominally infamous KGB (Kazakhstan Gang of Bullies, not to be confused with the Soviet KGB) and tasked with sabotaging their arch-nemesis Canada’s secret army of genetically-enhanced chess grandmaster beavers.
The musky odor of beaver hair mingled with the acerbic fragrance of urine as Leiaou contemplated aborting the mission and defecting to Canada, before remembering that abortion is illegal in Kazakhstan. Suddenly. A strange, deafening sound jolted her senses and there she saw them. A whole stampede.
Beavers. Hundreds of them. All armed with portable nukes and urine with a pH of -5.
Leiaou prepared for the last moments of her life. She screamed and pleaded for mercy. She close her eyes and prayed to the omniscient Pallas’s cats that puppeted the Kazakh government.
She opened her eyes, half-expecting to find herself in a parade of angelic Pallas’s cats, but all she saw was a crowd of quizzical beavers.
Finally, one spoke, “What language are you speaking? We can only speak Canadian.”