Mario Max Theo
Dedonus-DotCom-Captain Jordan Collab.
The older boy leaned over to his frizzy-haired companion after accusing the freshman boy of eavesdropping, giving Theo a moment to look him over. He stood much taller than Theo, towering at least half a head above the short-statured freshman. To be fair, the Latino boy hadn't had a proper growth spurt since the summer before seventh grade, so he was sure that the difference in height was only a matter of time. The older boy looked tan, as if he had a job as a lifeguard or somewhere with a decent amount of time in the sun, and two blue eyes glowed from beneath a mop of jet-black hair. With his skin color and the toned appearance of his body, Theo pegged the black-haired teen as the typical, high school jock.

Theo didn't really cavort with jocks.

Jocks were pretty much the polar opposite of his type. All that time under the sun tended to bleach out the brain cells, leaving an empty skull filled with the tendency to laugh raucously at the silliest thing. Theo could hear such laughter during lunchtime at Bradbury High, while his comrades at the nerd table were busy with their game of Magic the Gathering. Cards weren’t his pastime, but Theo was hardly welcome anywhere else, even the other kids at his table barely tolerated him.

“Did anyone ever tell you not to look a gift horse in the mouth?” Theo retorted with an exasperated expression. The lunchroom might belong to the jocks and preps, but the mall outside of GameStop? That was nerd territory, and jock boy was standing right in the middle of it. “Besides,” the freshman boy went on, “it was just some free advice. Take it or leave it, I don’t care.” He emphasized the sentiment with the shrug of his shoulders.

"I fear the Danaans, even when they bring gifts. I should know because I'm Italian." Mario replied.

Theo bit his tongue to keep from laughing at the Italian teen's remark. He honestly couldn't decide what was funnier, the fact that the older boy was Italian or that he'd mistaken Theo for being Greek. He had a retort on the tip of his tongue, but a quick glance at Max stifled him. Jock boy had won this round.

Turning to the energetic girl, Theo gave another shrug, a careful eye glancing at the taller boy warily. “Sure, I'll tag along,” he replied casually, “why not?”

It wasn't until Max turned around to glare at Mario that she realized she'd moved between them, much like she ended up doing when her four-year-old twin brothers started fighting over things like who got the see-through Wiimote, or who sat next to her at dinner time. She was kind of beginning to wonder whether she was the one who caused tension everywhere she want.

...

Nah.

Having brushed off the somewhat somber thought, she turned back to Theo and beamed. "Exactly! Theo, Mario, Mario, Theo, now can we go? We've been standing here forever."

"Sure, as long as it's alright with Don Mario here," the freshman boy jerked a thumb in Mario's direction. He couldn't help himself, Italian and his name was Mario? The joke was too good to pass up. He grinned to himself, even if no one else found it particularly funny.

Mario just shrugged off Theo's 'joke' off, knowing that Theo could have said something far worse, especially since he hung out with the 'geek' crowd. In fact, Mario was a bit surprised that Theo did not make a backhanded statement that was a reference to the red-clad plumber. Heck, even Max had already threw in a 'Nintendo-Mario' joke when she mentioned pipes (whether or not she did it on purpose, Mario was not totally sure).

"Fine." Mario replied.

The trio headed out of the mall by way of its south exit, heading towards the residential side of town. It would have been a longer walk had they not decided to cut through the abandoned construction site. Bordered by the town's local hospital on one side and city hall on the other, the desolate construction site stood gloomy in its ruined state. It stood in stark contrast between the pristine condition of the flanking buildings, and the unfinished innards of the failed shopping center was a constant eyesore for the citizens of Bradbury. The question of whose responsibility it was to clean up still remained undecided, leaving the site in perpetual limbo.

Barbed wire leered menacingly from its height atop the site's fence, but Theo paid it no mind as he strode along the chainlink wall. In the darkness, it was much harder to see, but eventually the Latino teen found the entrance, a strip of fence that had been severed from its post, allowing entrance or egress to anyone with the werewithall to use it. Triumphant, Theo pushed in the metal material, leaving a triangular gap big enough for a child to walk through without ducking. "Here you are, ladies and gentlemen. Step lively, now, and watch out for the ax murderers."

"Are we sure this is such a good idea?" Mario asked, "Something bad could happen, although I will admit that 'ax murderers' are probably not one. What would happen if the police catches us? Or we somehow injure ourselves? It already pretty dark out. You don't know what we might step onto or into."

Max hardly even heard Mario, though he stood just behind her as she stared in wide-eyed awe at the tetanus-stricken playground stretched before her.

She was used to walking around town, but she only ever passed the construction site with the twins, and while she was positive the two boys would have loved a not so legal jaunt through cement tubing and rotting pallets, their well-being was one of a very few things Max took very, very seriously. And now? Well, now she had to get home quickly, lest she walk in to find her mother in a panic and her father...anywhere.

Still, every new place was owed a little exploring.

Grinning, she climbed through the gap in the metal fence and took off running without so much as a backward glance.

However, Mario knew that there was a reason why the construction site was fenced off. Specifically, it was probably dangerous for anyone without proper protective equipment to enter. If there was not any danger in this construction site, the city probably would not have walled it off. Therefore, his inner conscience told him that the amount of time that they would "save" by cutting through the construction site would not outweigh the danger.

Nevertheless, Mario could not sleep with himself if he just let Max and Theo prance into the site alone. If they were to be injured in some way, he would not be able to overcome the guilt because he might have been able to do something.

"I think we shouldn't go dashing through this place. I don't want anyone, especially myself, falling into some ditch that has been hidden because of it is nighttime now" Mario said in response to Max's burst of energy that was shown through her running recklessly through the construction site.

The Latino teen had only been joking about the ax murderers, after all, and he held back a giggle while Mario lectured Theo and Max about the dangers inside the construction site. Or at least the empty air where Max had been. The freshman boy watched as she clambered through the hole in the fence and disappeared running into the darkness.

With a wry chuckle, Theo ducked through the opening in the chainlink, letting it fall back to Mario's side. He stood for a moment, watching the older boy stand on the other side, the side of safety and comfort. It'd be easy, his brain rationalized, to just step back through and carry on home the long way, have the snack Mom no-doubt has laid out, and go to bed early. Theo could feel the fatigue behind his eyes, between the day of school, the hours of video gaming and his other evening activities, he certainly wouldn't mind falling into his nice, warm bed right about now.

No, Theo decided, there was nothing to be afraid of. He wasn't in New York City anymore, this wasn't an abandoned building full of hobos, criminals and junkies. It was just deserted, like most of town was at this time of the night. He laughed at his own paranoia, and then started off after Max at a casual pace.

After a moment, the boy glanced over his shoulder to see Mario still standing on the other side of the fence. Theo aimed himself away from any damaging obstacles and then turned around, walking backwards slowly to avoid tripping. He called back, "You coming, or are you scared?" Theo didn't even give Mario a chance to respond, calling again, this time with taunts like, "You know you're getting shown up by a girl, right?" and "Look! It's-a me! Coward-io!"

Mario bit his lip at the slight reference to 'Super Mario'. Nevertheless, he knew that someone who actually had planned such an insult could have come up with something worse, like Wimpio, since it fits the three syllables in Mario. Honestly, this was probably one of the most toned-down 'jokes' Mario had heard for a while.

"There is a difference between bravery and recklessness. A brave man considers the consequences of his actions; a reckless man does not. Anyways, you are being sexist when you insinuate that women are less brave than men. There are plenty of 'brave' women in the world, like Joan of Arc and Rosa Parks. Anyways, I guess it is the responsible thing to do is to follow you guys because I don't want you all to hurt yourselves or something."

Mario pulled back the opening to the fence and entered through it. "Can we please just use this for a short cut and not a playground? Our goal is to get home, not play around in abandoned construction equipment."

"I talk too much?" Iikka said is a flat tone. "What should I have been doing? Setting the clothes on fire, shoving that girl up against you like she was paint and you were plaster? That would have taken forever to clean up." He waved his hand dismissively. Jason rolled his eyes a little at that. Iikka was always over the top, but the way he acted towards Max and company was sticking in Jason's craw tonight.

"And sure, the construction site can be a thing tonight I suppose."

"Ok, let's jet." Jason said, and the two made their way towards the parking lot. The drive to the lot was short, being that Bradbury was such a small town. He parked alongside the street, looking out at the fenced off area.

Jason thought for a moment then shut off the car and went out to join Iikka outside with curiousity getting the better of his law-abiding nature. He was glad he was still wearing ripped jeans, since there'd be no loss if they were damaged further. He climbed the chain link fence, swung a leg over, and jumped down.

Anyone who'd happened to be facing south at the time would have noticed an odd glimmer of light in the distance. At first, it may have just seemed like a large star, or perhaps a satellite in orbit. As it grew closer, and those possibilities became more and more unlikely, the glimmer could have, perhaps, been taken as a plane or helicopter. It soon became clear, though, that whatever was hurling through the sky towards them was none of those things. What it was couldn't be ascertained for sure because it was moving so quickly that it was only in clear sight for a moment before it disappeared behind the abandoned carcass of what was once going to be a main building.

Just as Jason's feet hit the ground, the Earth seemed to shake beneath them and the sound of a crash could be heard for the distance. For the three already much further into the site, the crash was almost deafening, the tremor nearly enough to throw them from their feet. Neither the noise nor the impact itself were noticeable enough to draw the attention of anyone not in the immediate vicinity, but they'd been more excitement than most of the teenagers had seen in their entire lives. Certainly cause for investigation, even for the normally more cautious members of the group.

Whoever reached it first would see that it landed, thankfully, in a small clearing that might have been something like a courtyard, had the construction not been halted. No structures had been damaged into any further disrepair. Even the object hadn't been completely destroyed, as it logically should have, by the crash. However, it definitely had seen better days. It was about as long as a school bus, and a few feet taller. The front of the spacecraft -for that was certainly what it seemed to be- was an egg shaped dome that was about a fourth of its length. Protruding from one side, sticking up into the air, was one crooked, stubby wing with a cylinder that seemed to be a thruster on the end. From what it seemed there was a once a similar wing on the other side, but bits and pieces of it were scattered across the ground behind the craft, and whatever had held on through the crash had been plunged into he ground. Near the end of the craft, on the top, was a large, arched protrusion. It had what almost resembled a blade on the front, made of a metal much shinier than the rest of the craft, which was mostly a much duller metallic color.

Most of the craft had burn marks or holes where wires now spilled through. The entire thing was smoking, partially from the crash, and partially from damage sustained before it. Lights were on some points; some shone brightly, while other blinked with a desperate urgency before fading out. It seemed like no creature could have survived the crash. And yet, it occasionally rocked, as if something within were trying to get out.

Max had been halfway across the empty lot -- half because she was anxious to get home, but also because she'd scared an old tomcat with her entry and was now chasing after it to make sure it wasn't hungry or lonely or angry or hurt -- when the crash did throw her off her feet. Almost fifteen years spent in gymnastics accounted for next to nothing when Max was distracted, and between the dark, the cat, and the growing feeling of something about to go horribly wrong, distracted she had been.

She hadn't seen what or where whatever it was had been when it made the noise, but whirling around, she was quick to spot a stout, thick pillar of smoke and dust rising from the gutted carcass of a half-finished building.

For a moment, all she could do was stare. It was clear, even to Max, something had crash-landed in the yard. It couldn't have been all that large, because the building was still standing, aside from some smoldering rubble knocked from crumbled walls. But it must have been going fast to shake the earth like it had, and anyway, all that smoke certainly couldn't be good, and anything coming from the sky, must have come from somewhere else first, which probably meant someone was inside the thing -- a helicopter? a private place? a motorized paraglider? -- and oh, no what if they were hurt?!

Max was running almost before she realized it. In her mind, there was no possibility of danger outside the possibility of someone being hurt. There was no room for anything else. Thoughts of fire, weaponry, UFOs, and War-Of-The-Worlds aliens -- all things that would have warranted consideration and a ten-minute daydreaming kick in any other situation -- were now null and void. There was only the potential of someone hurt and scared and by themselves, and Max couldn't just stand by and watch.

She'd forgotten all about Mario and Theo, didn't know or care whether they were behind her. She had a cellphone and two hands, and she was going to help.

She reached the gutted building and hauled herself through what had been a window before stopping again, eyes wide.

It wasn't a paraglider.

But it wasn't unharmed, either.

Undaunted, Max stepped forward.

"Um...hello? Is someone...in there? Do you need help?"

Jason slid in the gravel upon the crash, and landed hard on his rear end. "Shit!" he yelped, watching the world around him shake for a moment. Then it stopped.

He stood up and dusted himself off, noticing a light showering of sandy dirt falling around him. He stepped under a T shaped beam in a vain attempt to shield himself from debris before seeing the shimmering light coming from the middle of the construction zone. "Oh shit, it's a plane dude, someone crashed a little plane!" he said to Iikka, not sure where his nutty friend had gone. He got up and ran in the direction of the plane crash.

To his surprise, Maxine was already there gaping at it. He stared at her for a split second wondering what on earth she was doing here, but turned his attention to the... what? That certainly wasn't a plane. Whatever glorious craft it had been it was quite ruined now, but surely it had a pilot.

There was a banging on the wall of the craft.

"I think... someone's in there..." he said to Maxine somewhat stupidly, "HEY! ARE YOU OK!?" he shouted at the plane. The damn thing rocked a bit, but he couldn't see a door. The alarm in him rose, "I don't know how to get them out!" he said to Maxine.

"Call 911??"

Unfortunately for Iikka, he had still been in the air when the object had crashed - jumping over the lip of a cement halfway. It didn't help when there was an abrupt, thundering noise directly to his left, his head snapping towards the noise in a reflexive tracking motion while he was still in the air, robbing him of his focus.

So when he landed, the normally unshakable Iikka Guiomar was rocked right off his feat backwards, where his head gently slammed into the upper lip of the halfway before his body fell just under it.

This wasn't the first rough tumble Iikka had taken in his career as a professional monkey, and so after losing consciousness for all of three seconds he woke back up with a throbbing headache and feeling as light as a cloud.

"Oh fuck it. Concussion." He groaned as he flailed with his right arm, looking for something to grab onto and haul himself up. 'It must be a bad one. He thought wearily to himself as his head turned and was greeted by pinpricks of light that were twinkling and glaring in every direction from the center of the yard - he was literally seeing stars. Definitely not good. Even as he managed to grip the side of the cement halfway, his arm felt as though it were made of marshmallows, and he had to settle for pulling himself over towards the edge of the barrier so he could half-sit up against it before attempting the exciting adventure of sitting all the way up by his own self without the help of inert objects.

Thirty seconds later, he was on his feet but shaky, and shivering - even though it wasn't all that cold. There was smoke everywhere, and when someone shouted nearby the sound was accompanied by a rocking sound like metal grinding across rocks.

'Ok, that does it. Need to get to a hospital. Too many visual and auditory hallucinations. Knowing my luck, my skull cavity is probably filling with blood from a popped blood vessel.' He thought with surprising clarity.

He stumbled closer to the sounds of other people speaking, and finally they said something coherent:

"Ok, yes please, 911, make that a thing. I'm seeing stars and smoke and there's these loud banging noises, so I'm 1000% sure I have a concussion." Iikka said, clutching at his head with one hand as he guided himself towards the sound of Jason's voice. "Jason, think I'm going to need a little help here. Hallucinating pretty bad, there's this big mound right over there that looks like a space ship. Am I bleeding anywhere? Round the temple or top of my head?" His hands started combing and patting through his messy hair.

Max didn't stop to think about how oddly coincidental it was was Jason and Iikka show up at the same place at the same time, at the site of some already bizarre event. It was unlikely she'd have ever stopped to consider it, even on a good day. To Max, nothing was impossible. Coincidences were small miracles. Miracles were her imagination brought to life. That the two schoolmates -- two other schoolmates -- she'd just left behind now appear at the crest of this strange occurrence was nothing less than standard.

But Max wasn't paying attention to miracles or coincidence now. Jason had showed up, his question pulling her out of a stupor, and after 911, she'd stopped listening to anything he'd had to say.

He was right. The thing that had crashed -- whatever it was -- had been some sort of...flying...thing. Like a car. With wings. But without wings. Whatever. It was a car with a driver (or a pilot?) and now it was rocking back and forth like the pilot was trying to get out.

Max never even considered there could be danger. She saw a person, probably panicking, hurt, afraid, maybe even dying and knew she couldn't just wait until the police found them. She shoved one hand deep in her pocket, found her old flip phone, and threw it to Jason as she dove forward. She only had a few more minutes for the month, but she was pretty sure emergency calls didn't count. If they did, she'd work the extra hours. It didn't matter. She wasn't about to just stand around while someone died in front of her she could have helped.

"Call 911!" she blurted, throwing him the phone as she ran to the smoldering wreckage. She never even noticed Iikka. "I'm gonna see if I can get them out!"

She dropped to her knees beside the weird thing and started looking for someway to open it. The heat coming off it blistered her fingers immediately. She didn't feel a thing.

"It's okay!" she cried, her eyes watering from the smoke. "We're gonna help, okay? Just...just stay alive!"

Mario
After the unidentified flying object (or rather the unidentified falling object) struck the ground, the aftershock drove Mario to the ground. Once he had regained his senses and focus, Mario realized that his head was only inches away several construction quality nails. If Mario had fallen any farther, his face would have been planted into the sharp edges of these nails.

“What the hell did I tell you all? We should not have gone into this abandoned construction site. There is a reason why it is closed off. I just almost got a face full of nails!”

Mario cut himself off once he realized that everyone’s attention was toward the strange UFO*. This vessel seemed to have been in pretty bad shape, with wires flowing out from the interior of the ship and smoke billowing out from any crevasses that had been created during the crash. However, despite all this damage, this grounded vessel somehow had not exploded yet, completely tearing the whole ship apart.

Then Mario saw Max attempting to find a fractured opening in the hull of the ship in order to pry whatever or whoever was trapped inside the ship. However, Mario saw several scenarios in which calamity would strike. What if the hull was still overheated, causing anyone who touched it to received severe 3rd degree burns, if not worse? What if whatever or whoever was inside of the crashed vessel was actually hostile towards them? What if there was a reason that this ship had a crash landing?

“Max!” Mario shouted, “Don’t touch it! You don’t know how hot it is! You could fry off your hands if it’s hot enough.”

---

*UFO = Unidentified Flying Object / Unidentified Falling Object. My usage here does not hold the connotation that the craft has to be extraterrestrial.

Theo had left Mario long behind him, still complaining about the safety of the abandoned site. The Latino gamer ignored the voice of caution, from both Mario and the small voice that whispered softly from the back corner of his mind. That voice kept saying he should just follow his mother's instructions and get out of there. Get home safe, it said, and Mom would have some kind of snack waiting for him. She probably wouldn't even mind if he went back online and rejoined Jeremy, who was probably still wondering what happened to him.

Pushing those thoughts further towards the back of his mind, the freshman boy ventured deeper into skeleton of the unfinished building. Huge, naked frames of steel rose from the ground, giving Theo a rough idea of the square footage of the almost-mall. It was huge, and after a few minutes, he found he could no longer see where Max or Mario had gone. He shrugged to himself, it was no big deal, he could find his own way home. He wasn't a child who needed babysitting. Besides, despite having made the joke about ax murderers to Max earlier, Theo was sure there was nothing here that could hurt him.

At once, the sound was punctuated by the sharp sound, making the boy jump in surprise. As he panted quickly, he laughed at himself as he found the source of the sound. It was just his phone. Pulling it out, he stared at the screen in disgust, another message from his mother, probably wondering why he wasn't home yet with language strong enough to convey her mortal concern for his wellbeing. He swiftly shut the phone off completely, deciding it would be easier to come up with a lie once he got home rather than fake it now. Phone batteries could lose charge, surely anyone would believe that. More to the point, his shadow, by the name of Gregor, almost never left him when he was out of the house, making this an opportunity he couldn't bear to pass up. And look what an adventure he was having so far!

That is, until the world started to shake beneath him.

Grabbing hold of a nearby, exposed pipe, Theo held his ground. He turned towards the sound that had accompanied the earthshaking moment, a loud boom that drowned out even his own thoughts. Wrapping his arm around the pole, the Latino boy used both his hands to block his ears, clamping his hands tightly against his skull, but it didn't help them from ringing as the noise dissipated.

"What the hell was that?" Theo couldn't help but ask aloud when silence returned. He didn't wait for anyone to answer his question. No one was there to answer him, anyway. Instead, the Latino boy made his way towards the —well, what could he call it but 'crash site'? He stopped the moment the crashed object came into view.

It looked like something straight out of science fiction. A little rounder and thinner than most ships, but it wasn't unlike a Klingon ship. Maybe something a bit more Romulan. Not that he really watched Star Trek, that was more of his father's gig. Stargate was a much better show, at least for when Theo was in a science fiction mood. Regardless, whatever the downed object was, it didn't belong on Earth, and certainly not crashed in a construction site in Nowhereville, New York. Aliens were supposed to land in New York, or L.A., or even at the White House. It didn't make any sense.

Was he going crazy? Was this a dream?

No, Theo ascertained as he pinched himself, feeling a bit foolish afterwards. This was no dream. That didn't rule out having gone straight-up insane, but if he had to hallucinate spaceships crash landing, there was some small part of him that was okay with that fate. The freshman was almost ready to accept his new reality as he stepped into the small clearing that now housed the looming form of the crashed ship, until he spied Max rushing forward towards the smoking hull of the ship. Behind her, an unfamiliar teenager followed, blond hair reflecting the flickering lights of the vessel. Another one stood further off, and Theo saw Mario standing away from him, shouting at Max to stay away.

Well, if Theo was going crazy, at least he was going to have company in the asylum.

Max had been clawing at the crashed spacecraft for just a few moments when the rocking stopped. However, before it could be assumed that the worst had happened to the pilot, they each heard an unfamiliar voice.

<Please... Do not panic. I intend you no harm.> Perhaps 'heard' was not the correct word, for no actual sound had been made. Rather, it was as if the words were coming from inside their own heads, like thoughts, though clearly in a voice that was not their own. The speaker, if he could be called such, sounded authoritative but benevolent; it was a voice that one had the natural impulse to trust. However, he also sounded restrained, as if he had to put effort into keeping his voice calm and steady. It soon became clear why.

Not far from Max, approximately two feet off the ground, a section of the craft's wall slid open. Light, mostly red and flashing, poured out. Then, in this light appeared a silhouette that seemed for all the world like a centaur. A six-and-a-half-foot tall, broad shouldered centaur. For a moment it stood there, before attempting to jump down. Having seemingly lost the ability to support its own weight, the creature crumpled to the ground upon landing.

In the light of the full moon it was clear that the alien was far more bizarre than a centaur from some high fantasy book. He was almost completely covered in blue fur, for one; it grew sparse only near the odd slit in his face that seemed to function as a nose and on his relatively small, seven-fingered hands. His chest was almost human, broad and well muscled, though with two arms that seemed oddly weak compared to the rest of him. His body was about the size of a small horse, and nearly identical save for the odd fur and whip-like tail -at least half as long again as its body- that ended in a long, incredibly sharp, blade reminiscent to that of a scorpion's. One of the more distinctive features of his face was the complete lack of mouth. His ears were pointed and set high upon his skull. his most human feature was his pair of bright blue, almond shaped eyes. Though pained, they moved carefully between the faces around him.

The alien had another set of eyes, on two short stalks on the top of his head. One looked every which way, alert. The other seemed to have been nearly crushed in the crash, now hanging limply to the side. That was not, by a long shot, the extent of his injuries. Large patches of his fur were matted with blue-black blood, and one of his hind legs seemed twisted at a rather unnatural angle. Despite his injuries, he still stubbornly attempted to pull himself back to his feet.

<I... I am... War-Prince Nierefiem-Istriff-Shaylik... And I have come to warn you... That your planet... Your people... are in danger...> He failed the struggle to stand back up, collapsing rather pitiably back to the ground.

It was funny.

Later, Max would reflect, albeit briefly, on how even she had been shaken when the blue creature had emerged from its spaceship thing. Voices in her head, burns on her fingers -- it was enough, more than enough to unsettle her, push her close to something she vaguely recognized as panic not related to the wellbeing of her mother or the twins. She had flinched somewhat as the voice reverberated through her head, hardly even aware of her schoolmates behind her. The strange metal orb had gone still beneath her fingers, and she was just starting to think she'd been too late, when -- BAM -- blue thing.

Definitely alien.

Definitely hurt.

It was stupid, she knew, even Max knew, to rush toward some giant, maybe dangerous thing. It had at least a foot and a half on her, probably a hundred pounds, and its weird tail-cutty-thingy was playing no games. But he collapsed, and then she forgot all the danger. Again. Suddenly, the smell of smoke and hot metal in the air was replaced with an unfamiliar tang she instantly knew was blood.

The thought that this thing might be dying filled her mind with the intensity of a tsunami, and she darted forward as cautiously as she could manage.

There was no thought in her head about whether or not the creature was dangerous, where it had come from, or how, or whether such a thing had ever been classified on earth before. Her normally over-active imagination was nearly dormant as warning lights flared in her mind along with the creature's fading voice.

"He's dying," she whispered to herself, without really knowing how she knew -- and she did know -- the blue thing was a he. Then louder, "He's dying!" She gestured vaguely to Mario, the only one she really knew was still behind her. "Call the police," she demanded, her voice high and tight with fear. "No...and ambulance. 911, tell him he's..."

She shook her head, unable to finish the thought, and wriggled out of her sweatshirt. She'd seen this on TV once. Blood, she was almost certain, was important to everyone.

She scooted closer, and in the instant before pressing the balled up hoodie against the largest patch of dark blood, whispered, "Um...please don't kill me, okay? But don't die, either."

Mario
Did that telepathic alien think that they were going to remain calm after he revealed himself as being a blue centaurlike being? You would more likely see this in science fiction, not real life. How could this even be happening? Wouldn’t extraterrestrial life be so foreign to humans that we could not even use our own planet’s fauna as a comparison? Or at least that what Mario thought.

However, when the centaur stumbled out of his spacecraft, his blunder almost humanized him to Mario. This alien was obviously not a threat to any of them. His efforts to stand up were almost pitiable, as he kept striving to stand even though he was physically unable to do so.

“He's dying!", Mario heard Max say, who was gesturing vaguely towards Mario. "Call the police," she demanded, her voice high and tight with fear. "No...and ambulance. 9-1-1, tell him he's..."

Mario whipped out his cell phone. Unlike some of his other schoolmates, Mario still had a “dumb” phone, as Mario called it. It was not a flip phone, but it was not a smart phone either. However, Mario did not care that he had a “dumb” phone. In fact, he preferred it: simple yet functional.

Mario started to call 9-1-1; however, after he dialed those three digits, all Mario heard was background static. He could not hear the phone dialing, only static. He tried again, but with the same result. Therefore, so that he does not become an exemplum of insanity (trying the same thing over and over again while expecting different results), Mario placed the phone back into his pocket.

“Something must be interfering with my cell phone reception,” Mario informed the desperate girl before him, “but what good would it do anyway? If anyone saw him, federal agents from Area 51 would probably show up, take this Prince Nifal-Ishal-Shay guy, or whatever he said, and then erase all of our memories of any of this “alien” stuff.”

Then the creature came forth from the ship, and Theo's mind went wild.

This guy looks like he stepped right out of Middle Earth. Totally Tolkien-esque. I do like that word, Tolkien-esque, that's a word right?

It's totally a word.

What is this thing? He's like a centaur, kinda?

But centaurs don't have knives on their tails.

And they don't have four eyes. What are those, ugh, on stalks?

Okay, whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! He's got no mouth! How can he not have a mouth? Everything has a mouth of some sort.

He looks like the Silent Hill girl. Fuck, that game was awful, I had nightmares for a week.

So, is that what this is? A nightmare? Nah, nightmares are for little kids, I stopped having nightmares when I was nine.

Okay, so not a nightmare. And I know I'm not crazy.

Then it has to be...

Oh, maybe its...

Yes, I think it is...

IT'S THE MOST AWESOME VIDEO GAME TRAILER EVER!

No, really, think about it. The technology's there, it could certainly be done. Holograms, makeup, animatronics, special effects. I'll bet that centaur-thing's not even real, it's probably a robot.

The ship? Well, we didn't exactly see it crash did we? It could have been here all this time.

So what about the voice in my head? Duh, omnidirectional speakers, probably using ultrasound or something to vibrate the bones in our ears instead of using sound in our hearing range. Boom, instant-telepathy.

That's it, that's gotta be it.

But why would they do it out here? Wouldn't it be cooler to do in New York or Boston?

No, I suppose there'd be too many people there. They'd go crazy. Better out here where you can control the media better.

So are there cameras around here? Mics in the bushes?

Hmm, I don't see anything, but that doesn't mean they're not there. There's no telling how small they could be. Wireless mics and cameras can be hidden easily.

This is so cool, I'm going to be on TV. I'm going to be on the Internet! Maybe I'll even get a free copy of the game. Jeremy's going to be so jealous.

I'll bet people will actually know my name in school again.

Hey, maybe I could use this to convince my parents to move back to New York. I mean, this place is sure to get flooded with crazy tourists now. New York would be no different.

Oh, that centaur-thing's speaking again. Oh, now he's issuing a warning. Ooooooh, we're in danger, oh boy, how terrifying.

I'll bet it's aliens. It's always aliens, right. No doubt about it.

How cliche.

Next he's going to ask us to take him to our leader.

Maybe he should have landed in front of the city center, he could have asked the mayor. If he wasn't hurt, I'd say he should gallop on over there.

Does anyone have the White House on speed dial? Or maybe as a Twitter follower?

I'll betcha half the army shows up before they figure out it's a fake.

I mean, it's gotta be fake. It's cool, but it's fake.

It's so fake.

I can even see the wires!

From his place at the edge of the group, the freshman boy could be heard chuckling softly. The chuckling grew louder, and eventually he was full-out laughing. Theo stared at the centaur-thing, the War Prince Nierefiem-Istriff-Shaylik, ignoring everything else, and laughed. He glanced around, turning to each of the others in turn, and asked, "Don't you see? Don't you get it?"

"It's all fake!"

Theo's exclamation was shortly followed by a weight falling against his side as Iikka staggered into him, clutching at his shoulder for support with one hand with the other began groping about in the general region of Theo's face.

"Oh my god I know it's fake, what part of 'I'm concussed and violently hallucinating, call 911 before I die of cranial hemorrhaging' do you not understand?" Iikka's eyes were darting about the construction yard wildly, filled with immense confusion, until he finally settled for just glaring at Theo. "I'm seeing smoke and stars, there's this big damn piece of modern bullshit art that looks like a spaceship crowding up the starboard side, and the absolute worst fake alien ever is trying to give me a quest to save the Tasen from Zentraidon. While I get my suffering is amusing to you, this is pretty much the shittiest thing in the world and I know that if I don't get to a hospital stat, I am going to fucking die."

Iikka was surprising himself with how remarkably lucid he appeared to be. From past experience, usually concussions made him extremely drowsy and fatigued, and thinking difficult - he had to really strain himself to piece together a proper sentence. Which made him only all the more certain that something was horribly, horribly wrong - as though this were a final moment of clarity before complete oblivion. When he saw that he had somehow careened into Theo, instead of Jason - who was nowhere to be found - his confusion only intensified, accompanied shortly by fear and a profound sense of agitation.

"Where is Jason?" He asked Theo, his eyes widening in panic as his head whipped around. "Where the hell is Jason? Only friend I have in the world and he's gone. I'm going to die here alone and I can't believe you pissants are the only ones here." His voice was assuming a hysterical tone, and his entire body was tensing up.

Clay's night time walks weren't eventful, for the most part. He lived in the trailer park on the edge of town, and so most of his walks were through the forests that bordered the trailer park, silently trodding through the thick underbrush or resting on old rotting logs. As much of a youthful maverick as he was, he enjoyed the quiet of the wilderness. It was just him and his thoughts. No parents, no teachers, no classmates. Just crickets.

Tonight, on the other hand, was different. His walk brought him near the hospital, rather than his usual forest. He sat at a bench outside of Carmine's Soft-Serve, a 24/7 ice cream parlor that Clay would occasionally visit with his mom after work. After all, it was only up the street from the hospital where she worked, and offered fairly cheap prices.

Sipping on a can of Mr. Pibb, Clay idly scanned the street. Even with his town's low population, outside of the road to the trailer park, there wasn't ever a street that was totally empty. Even in the dead of night, there would always be someone walking home from a bar, or going to a friend's house, or walking home from a late shift. In this case, there wasn't just one or two people shuffling through the night -- There were five. With a burp, Clay crushed his empty can and tossed it to the ground. He squinted for a moment, almost as if he had recognized a voice. And not just any voice.

He stood up, and began lumbering towards the group. He could make out Max, for certain. There were a few other figures with her, some tall, some short. He decided to pay his friend a visit. All things considered, he hadn't seen Max in two days, and to Clay and Max, that was almost unheard of. He stayed a safe distance from them, about twenty yards, not yet sure of who she was hanging out with. Best case scenario, she had tagged along with some of her friends who didn't know him. Worst case scenario, she had tagged along with some of her friends who did. By the time he reached about twenty yards, they made a sharp turn right. This made him pause for a second. It was the abandoned construction sight.

"Nothin' goes on there but bad news." Clay thought to himself. He hurried his pace. Quickly, his thoughts turned sour. "What if that one crackhead's there?" He muttered. "What if Maxie tries hoppin' that barbed wire?" He muttered a bit louder. He gulped, nearing the turn into the abandoned construction yard. They were out of sight in the dusk, but he could still hear them. At first, there was only the sound of their chatting and footsteps. And then, a bang.

It was loud, almost like a gunshot, but prolonged. The ground underneath his feet rumbled, and he grabbed on to the nearest wall to steady himself. It took him a moment to reassess the situation, as if he had been shaken awake. It was too loud to have been something fallen, and the air smelled like smoke. Something terrible had happened. Before he could react, Jason came sprinting out of the entrance, and ran face-first into Clay. Although he already seemed terrified, Clay noticed far too late, grabbing him by the neck of his shirt.

"Where?" Clay barked through his teeth.

"Where what?!" Jason stammered, frantically looking back and forth. He looked like he had just seen something too dire to comprehend, and was as white as a sheet.

"Max. You were walking with Max, and you came in here." He growled. Clay was panicking, underneath his grim exterior. He needed to know where his friend was, above all else. The only way he knew how to find out was the way he did everything else -- Threats and violence.

"P-Past the barbed wire fence, there was a plane crash, an-"

Before Jason could finish his sentence, Clay was off. He had come this way before, and didn't need any ways around the various obstacles. He threw his denim jacket on top of the fence, covering the barbed wire, and scaled it as quickly as he could. He tumbled in his landing, rolling on the dirt for a moment, only to spring right back up to continue his sprint. There were very few things Clay wouldn't joke about, but the safety of Max was one of them.

It didn't take long to find her. Out of breath, Clay's charge through barrels and crates led him to the scene of the crash in no time at all. With adrenaline still coursing through his system, he took note of his surroundings in an instant. Max was there. There were kids from school with her as well, although he wasn't completely familiar with them. Smoke filled the air, and there was some sort of wrecked aircraft in front of them. And in front of all of that was... A centaur?

Catching his breath, the dumbfounded teen took a few steps forward, making his presence known to the group. He couldn't match any of the faces to names, but he was sure he had seen them in school before. The centaur, unsurprisingly, he had not.

"Hell's going on here?"

It took Nierefiem a moment longer to compose himself. Though he could not stand, he managed to pull himself into a somewhat comfortable kneeling position as Max tried to stop his bleeding wound. He regarded her first with surprise. Then, though he had no mouth, the corners of his eyes of his eyes crinkled as if he were smiling. In a thought-speak that was directed towards her alone, he said, <Thank you. You are kind.>

The others ran the full gamut of reactions; One attempted calling for help, while another burst into laughter as he declared the entire thing fake, and the last went into hysterics. Finally, a fifth arrived and demanded to know what was happening. The alien prince understood their shock and confusion, but knew that there was too precious little time to allow these emotions to run their course. <I assure you that none of this is fake, nor any hallucination,> his firm voice cut through their minds. Pain edged his words, but he pressed on.

<You must listen to me. I...> The alien winced at an intense surge of pain. The others could sense it from him, in the same way that they 'heard' his voice. His pain, urgency, and sincerity poured through their link and, in some inexplicable way, they could feel it. <I am dying. Before I do, I must give you this message: your planet is under attack.>

Nierefiem took a deep breath. <The invaders are not like my people. They are not like yours. They are parasites. They are Yeerks.> This was the first time Nierefiem's general benevolence slipped. He seemed to loath even saying the word; his hatred rolled off in waves. For a moment he closed his eyes and concentrated, and in their minds they saw an image of a slimy, greenish slug about the size of a rat.

<Yeerks generally enter through the ear canal, and wrap themselves around a creature's brain, taking over their bodies and turning them into Controllers. The host's every thought and emotion are laid bare, and they are made prisoners inside their own minds. While a host can never truly rebel, it can occasionally break control long enough to cause hindrance for the Yeerks, which is why they try to coerce beings into accepting occupation willing, if possible.>

<They ambushed our dome ship as we came out of Z-Space. We were unprepared for their blade ship, and we... We were defeated. Before I crashed I sent word back to my people. We are Andalites, and fight across the empire to prevent the spread of the Yeerk empire. I explained that they are here in greater numbers than we anticipated, but it will take at least one of your Earth years for our army to arrive. By that point, however, your planet will have been taken over! That is why you must go, now, and spread word to your people, before it is too late.>

He winced again. It was clear that his time was very nearly up. <It won't be long now until the Yeerks track me here. Their dracon beams will destroy any traces of my ship. And of myself.> His voice was a little bit shaky, now. Sorrow at his own impending death flowed through their link as well. If his ship was gone, no one would believe their story. Nierefiem's expression turned grim at this realization, but his eyes lit as an idea occurred. <I believe there is time... I think that I may be able to grant you some small way to fight back. In my ship, there is a small blue box. Bring it to me quickly!>

As one of their group went to fetch the box, he continued. <A technology of my people, one that we have shared with no other race. It grants the ability to transform into any creature whose DNA has been acquired through touch. A great deal of concentration and determination are required, but it becomes easier with time. There are limits. Dangers. But there is little time to explain them now. I know that you are young, but this gift is all I have to offer. Do you wish to receive it?>

For maybe the first time ever (with the exception of the time Cody had broken his nose falling off the porch back in the trailer park; she hadn't been paying attention to anything else then, either), Max's focus wasn't on the myriad of people she more or less considered friends behind her. She hardly even noticed when Clay showed up, which was a big deal, because they hadn't seen each other in days, and she missed him.

But right now, there was a dying alien in front of them, having crashed after the apparent attack of some hostile species, saying their planet was about to be invaded. For a moment, Max couldn't move. Her bloody sweatshirt rested on her knees, and her hazel eyes were wide with fear and confusion. She kept hearing words and phrases -- invaders, Z-Space, blade ship, Yeerks -- but none of it was coming together with any sort of clarity in her head. She could only think, over and over and over again, he's dying. And there was nothing she could do about it.

"We...we can help you," Max said, completely ignoring the centaur-alien's final request, because it wasn't going to be his final request if she had anything to do about it. There were five of them here, and they weren't stupid. Whether what the alien said was true or not -- whether he was even an alien at all -- none of that mattered. What mattered was that he was really, actually hurt, and it was 2014! People didn't just bleed to death anymore, not this close to a hospital, where fully three of their parents worked.

Desperate, she whirled to look at Clay, smiling briefly for having seen him for the first time in a few days.

"Clay, you have to call someone, okay?" She dug in her pocket and pulled out her cellphone, either ignoring or else completely oblivious to their earlier attempts to dial out. "My mom. She'll know what to do."

Some part of Max's mind, the tiny rational part that was more often overwhelmed by excitement or just hyperactivity, knew she was being stupid. Nierefiem was dying. There was nothing she could do for him. But Max had always been the type to think first with her heart, and then, much later, with her head. She could remember watching her grandmother dying, that feeling of helplessness seizing through her like ice spreading through her veins.

She refused to let it happen again.

"You don't have to give us a gift," she insisted gently, trying to sound less afraid than she felt. "You...you can help us, okay? You just have to hang on a little bit longer. Help is coming. You'll be okay."

Mario
There was a dying alien lying in front of Mario and the others. The weird centaur was going to die, whether through losing too much blood from his wounds or by some futuristic technology that Mario could not even begin to comprehend. All that Mario knew was that the War Prince was going to die. Something was jamming their cellular reception, so there would be no help from anyone in town. Furthermore, Mario doubted that they could even carry the blue alien to the hospital, and even if they could, they would never see him again. Whatever government agency was responsible for extraterrestrial encounters would be on the War Prince faster than insects on sugar.

Max was still emotional about the War Prince’s decaying condition. She could not see the bigger picture, or rather what had just happened. They had no phone reception and no means to transport the alien. They had to accept the fact that he was going to die.

While Max was still trying to ‘save’ the War Prince in vain, Mario headed toward the alien ship in order to retrieve the cube that the blue centaur had just mentioned. After scanning the cockpit of the Prince’s ship, Mario discovered the blue box. It eerily reminded Mario of the Tesseract (or the Cosmic Cube) from Marvel’s The Avengers. Despite his conscience telling him not to touch it, Mario reached down in order to retrieve the cube. Mario was pleasantly surprised that the cube did not vaporize him as he picked it up.

Mario returned to the dying centaur, holding the Tesseract-like object in his hand. The Italian extended his hand out to the War Prince, offering the item to him. “Is this what you wanted?”

"Callin'."
Clay began to frantically mash the buttons of Max's phone. He didn't have one, and wasn't entirely familiar with the interface enough to find contacts, so he simply went to the dialpad. He froze for a second, and squinted. With a gulp, he pressed his grimy thumb onto the keypad, mouthing out his actions as he went. "Nine, one, one." He placed the phone to his ear, hoping that he had pressed the right keys on the unfamiliar device. All he heard was static. Dissatisfied, he jammed the phone into his pocket, cursing his lack of reception.

When he looked back up, things had changed. Mario was holding a strange glowing cube, Max was talking to the alien, and the alien was offering them... A gift? Without a moment to think, Clay instinctively walked up to the three, taking the cube from Mario. It had surprising weight to it, and he stopped himself from inspecting it, fearing it would fire some extraterrestrial larvae into his chest.

"What's it do?" He asked, handing it over to the alien, just as Mario had. "Is it lasers 'n shit? You giving us like, space-age thinking like from that Lucy movie? Superpowers?" He tilted his head slightly, still too stunned to respond as the others were, more realistically.

"Get your hands off me, asshole!" The muffled, angry tones of Theo's voice emanated from behind the clenched, sweaty palm of another hand gripping his face.

Wrapping his olive-toned fingers around the thick fist of Iikka's arm, the Latino teenager wrenched with all his might to free his face from the older boy's fierce grip. Gritting his teeth in both anger and pain, Theo managed to free himself, backing away panting as he spat out a spiteful retort to the confused teen's misguided plea, "Go home and cry to your mommy if you want, but I'm not doing jack for you!"

Iikka stumbled away, barely keeping his balance as he threw his arms out to the side wildly to keep himself on his feet while cursing in a vicious streak. As he steadied himself, his gaze zeroed in on Theo, filled with rage and rancor. Setting aside the otherwise entirely all-consuming belief that he was about to die, Iikka decided that Theo had to die. He was about to make a leap, when Nierefiem’s thought-speech flew through his mind, filled with pain yet filled with a clarity of intent. Iikka paused, momentarily teetering between taking the war prince’s words at face-value and succumbing to unadulterated panic due to the disturbing auditory hallucinations.

He wasn’t able to reach any sort of stable conclusion, the brink Iikka stood upon expanding into a wide Mesa of ‘perhaps.’ It wasn’t much of an improvement, but finally Iikka began to absorb the situation properly as he simply stood hunched over to the side, listening.

Moving far enough from the deranged Iikka, Theo turned his attention to the rest of the group as he rubbed his nose and stretched his jaw. Mario had returned with something in his hand, a small, blue cube. It was hard to make out from this distance, but it seemed to the freshman boy that the cube was glowing.

Glowing.

It was more than Theo could take. He turned to face the blue-furred horse-thing. Centaur. Whatever. "Wait," he started, "you're telling us that little box is going to let us turn into animals? By what, dosing us with radiation? Infecting us with a retrovirus?"

"And then what, we become our own petting zoo? I can see this making us all reeeeeaaally popular at school. There goes my excuse for getting out of gym. I'll just get told to become a cheetah or something."

"Well? Please tell me nobody is taking this seriously."

“I’m taking it seriously!” Max cut in, oblivious to more recent revelations of cubes and animals. “He’s dying. Why doesn’t anyone care?”

“Or you could think about this in a different light.” Mario responded to Theo’s latest comment. To Mario, this situation seemed too elaborate to be some weird trick that would for sure land them in first place at America’s Funniest Home Videos for sure. Does any technology that allows individuals to communicate telepathically actually exists?

“Consider this. Instead of being ‘our own petting zoo’, we would be like the Transformers, except we’re not robots and we’re turning into animals, not cars. Wasn’t there a 90’s cartoon that was about Transformers who disguised themselves as animals?”

“I am not taking this seriously.” Iikka said with a complete deadpan, raising his hand off to the side. “Any second now some asswipe with a shiteating face and a camera crew is going to roll out from behind some rocks and start expositing about method acting.” He rolled his eyes emphatically, but stopped halfway through the motion as he stared up into the sky.

“Ok, scratch that, I am now taking this 144% seriously. There’s more ships up there guys.”

Though they were high up in the atmosphere and nearly impossible to see against the black night sky, the fast-moving and large lights of two strangely insectile, cockroach-like vessels had appeared and were very rapidly closing in on the crash site.

“It’s just a bunch of lights,” Theo scoffed as he leaned back to take in the night’s blackened sky.Yet as he continued to stare, the lights grew larger and moved in impossible ways. No human aircraft moved like that, not even helicopters were so agile. As their form grew more distinct, the freshman boy’s eyes widened as he made out the shapes of the crafts. If the centaur’s ship was Klingon, these ships were more like Ferengi, but not quite. They looked more deadly, cruel. Before he knew he was opening his mouth, Theo found himself uttering an incredulous, “Whoa.”

Suffice it to say, Theo had changed his mind.

Max was only half paying attention to what her classmates were saying behind her, but for Max, even half paying attention was a good step up from the average. She was vaguely aware they were arguing, fighting, some physically...though she more or less trusted Clay to step in before things got too messy. She trusted him slightly less to keep them from getting messier.

Right now, she was just subduing the urge to turn around and yell at them all to shut up because how could they be fighting about something so stupid when someone was in pain, dying, right in front of them. And it was stupid, whatever it was. None of them had been there long enough, even knew each other well enough to fight about anything worthwhile. Certainly nothing more important than a life.

Somewhere, in the back of her mind, it occurred to her she ought to have been worried. This was either an elaborate prank keeping her from getting home on time, or else this creature was dying...heralding very bad news, and very strange gifts. Max was about to tell him to put his glowing rock away, let her help -- and then Iikka spoke. And for once, she heard what he said.

Hazel eyes flicked back up toward previously empty space, then down to the blue creature again. He returned her gaze with kind, understanding eyes.

“We can’t fight them,” she blurted quickly. She didn’t know or care whether it was true. She wanted to leave now. She wanted help. She didn’t want to watch the alien person die. She couldn’t.

“We have to go,” she told the others, and herself. Mostly herself. “We have to find some way to get him out of here, and we have to leave.” Clay had been almost completely silent, content to listen to the others bicker. Not that he had turned over a new leaf and suddenly became a more introspective person, but rather, his panicking manifested itself in his calmness. He was loud and aggressive on a daily basis. Faced with dying aliens bestowing him powers? His panicking was just as present, but in lightning-fast strands of fear and anxiety in his head.Still, his panicking helped him in one way. While the others fought and argued, Clay thought to himself silently, trying desperately to assess the situation. He knew this wasn’t a prank. It was too elaborate, and not funny enough to be one. It wasn’t a hallucination either, none of them could be seeing the same thing. All things considered, Clay hoped in the back of his mind that it was a dream.All of this was somehow, someway, real. Nierefiem, his ship, the cube, they were all real. And so was all of the damage. Clay hadn’t ever seen a person die before, but he saw it in Nierefiem. He wasn’t long for this world, and if the looming ships that Iikka pointed out landed, Clay got the sense that he and his friends weren’t either. But they were panicking, and even if Clay appeared stoic in his silence, he was panicking the most.“Don’t think we can, Maxie.” He said with a grunt. “And for certain, I know he can’t.” Blunt or not, he had a point. He walked toward the dying war-prince, close enough to touch. Close enough that he could smell his charred skin and fur, and close enough that he could see the alien quietly shiver.

“The displaced construction worker posing as a student is right.” Iikka said nonchalantly. Max glared but said nothing, and Iikka went on. “That is 800 plus pounds of soon actually dead centuar weight that we cannot drag out of here. Not like we could hide it anyway even if we could take it with us.”

“I hate to admit that we cannot save our blue centaur friend, but Clay is right. We need to get ourselves out of here so that we can live for another day. Bringing him,” Mario said as he pointed at War Prince Nierefiem, “along would only give us dead weight to carry. And no offense meant by it either. I can’t imagine us carrying a wounded horse out of here. Why would we think that we could carry him out?”

Clay was perhaps saved the brunt of Max’s utter look of betrayal only by Mario cutting in. She tried not to notice how the heavily-muscled body under her hands, under layers of bloodsoaked hoodie, was going stiller. Colder.

“That’s no excuse not to try!” she nearly yelled. But she knew she was losing. Even Nierefiem had already given up on himself. And without Clay on her side, her chances were slight at best. She felt her jaw set in a stubborn almost-pout, felt angry tears threatening for the first time in a long while.

Crossing his arms in front of his chest, Theo shrugged, casually remarking that, “It’d be a waste to try, we’d expend all our effort just getting him three feet. If these Yeerk things are real, like this guy says, I’m not sticking around.”

“And besides, that is every excuse not to try. Last I checked none of us could revive the dead, and this guy is so done he has a fork in him.” Iikka said, a mixed expression of dismay and annoyance crossing his face as he shuffled forward a few steps closer to the fallen prince. As he spoke, he made a crude stabbing motion with his right hand, punctuating his point. “Can we please make with the running now, argue later?” Even as he spoke, Iikka eyed the cube thoughtfully, weighing the odds. The only reason he hadn’t already split the scene was because of the cube. He had no way of knowing whether it could actually do what the alien said it did, but if there was even a chance any of it was true...All he needed to do was get close enough. Grab it, hop up a pile of debris and girders to the right, go up the wooden pylons to the second incomplete floor, and hop out the nearest window. The others wouldn’t be able to catch him...but he wasn’t sure he entirely trusted his coordination right now, after the fall, and he was pretty sure he couldn’t avoid them around town either.

Clay hesitated for a second, clutching the cube tightly.“We ain’t got nothin’ to lose right now.” Once again, blunt or not, he had a point. They were running out of options, and the ships were drawing closer. They couldn’t save Nierefiem, that was certain. But if they took his “gift”, they may be able to save themselves. With a gulp, he turned back to face the group for a moment, with a face that was almost apologetic. Iikka gave him a nonplussed expression, mouth half-open to utter the obvious retort that they all had their lives to lose, but apparently thought better of it. He instead settled for extending a hand and gesturing to wrap it up. Clay turned back, looking the war-prince in the eye.
Max found she couldn’t look at her friend, which was maybe okay, because she was still staring at the blue alien centaur, her own expression mirroring Clay’s in a strange and dark sort of irony.

From the expression on Clay’s face, Mario knew that the late arrival had decided what the group should do next. When Clay turned back to the dying alien that laid before them, Mario’s assumption was further strengthened. Therefore, Mario stepped forward, standing abreast to Clay. After Mario snatched the cube back from Clay, he crouched down so that he might be closer to the War-Prince. With an outstretched hand, Mario placed the small, glowing cube in the hands of the blue alien.

“So now we’re sticking around to sing Kumbaya with the guy?” Theo asked as he glared at Mario’s gesture, his expression nonplussed. When he had decided to stick around for some more adventure, waiting for their impending doom to drop from the sky with a dying alien was not exactly the Latino boy’s preferred definition. Part of him wished he was back at home already, playing video games with Jeremy again. “What happened to leaving?”

“What happened is the area was saturated with enough energy by those ships to evenly redistribute all of our particulate matter throughout the surrounding environs.” Iikka stated calmly, the very picture of serenity. “We’re all ghosts haunting the site of our last shitty decision to loiter where we shouldn’t be and oh fuck it we are going.” Iikka took two long steps forward, and deftly swiped the cube from Nierefiem’s hand where Mario had placed it. “He wants us to have it and we, or at least I, want to live. Morphing cube acquired, duhn bum bum duhn duhn. I’m going now, those of you who have any vestige of a survival instinct can come with.”

“We don’t even know how to operate the ‘cube’?” Mario said in response to Iikka’s desire for a swift retreat, “What use would it be to us if we just take off without knowing how to use it? I’m pretty sure that thing doesn’t come with an instruction manual. We need the War-Prince to at least explain to us how to use it. So just chill for a second, please!”

The dying alien, slipping farther and farther away by the second, finally spoke up. <I must touch the cube at the same time as the rest of you for it to work,> he explained, weakly holding out a hand. <Give it here and, those who wish to gain the ability to morph, lay your hand upon it. Hurry!>

Max was...conflicted, to say the very least. She knew she’d lost the argument – stay or go, there was no saving their new friend, if he could be called as much, and the others seemed to have come down pretty hard on that front, too. She knew she’d fight like hell to stay there with him, even if it was stupid and life threatening – Max did a lot of those things, though usually without realizing it. But she also knew Clay wouldn’t let her stay. He would drag her, kicking and screaming, and if he asked, she might even acquiesce.

Nierefiem was dying. Objectively, she knew that, even if she wasn’t quite there yet emotionally. He was dying, and there was nothing she could do about it, no matter how hard she fought, or how much she wanted it. He was going to die, right there in front of her, with his blood on her hands.

She didn’t want to take the cube. She didn’t want to touch the cube. If she ever saw anything remotely block-shaped again, from one of her brother’s Legos, to those ugly box cars, it would be too soon.

But the blue prince was dying, and Max had already failed him once.

She stood slowly, feeling tears burn in her eyes, though she refused to let them fall. She took the block from Iikka, and for once in her life, she was prepared to fight back if he argued. She didn’t say a word to him, or any of them. She didn’t even look at Clay. She just knelt again beside the dying creature, trying to ignore how warm his blood felt through the knees of her jeans. She held out the cube in shaking fingers. She still wasn’t sure she believed any of what was happening, but that didn’t seem to matter now.

Then, very, very quietly, she said, “I’m sorry.”

Glancing between Iikka and Mario, Theo considered the two adversaries. The two were at opposite ends of the spectrum in school, one a popular jock and the other an outcast and a bully. It was no different to see them at odds here, either, each staring down the other as the alien, the blue centaur thing, tried to urge action without really picking a side. The freshman boy watched the two juniors, waiting to see who would back down first.

He didn’t expect Max. No one expected Max.

Theo watched as she handed the blue cube to the dying alien like a bloody heart. He was astonished, here was this girl, tears in her eyes, doing what none of the boys had the courage to do. Were they all that selfish? Was he? On the one hand, Iikka had a point, getting far, far away was an ideal choice. By tomorrow, either the National Guard would be here to take on the alien invaders firsthand, or it would be a hoax that would all blow over in a few days. If it was a hoax, Theo had no intention of making himself the laughingstock of the school by getting duped.

On the other hand, Theo considered, being a laughingstock would be a step up from being ignored. And if this was all real, if aliens were really invading, and this dying alien had the key to fighting them, then this was a bigger thrill than any video game could ever be. The Latino boy considered the dilemma for a moment. Blissful ignorance or a fighting chance. Blue pill or red pill…

All at once, Theo found himself on the ground next to Max. He glanced at her, the one person who had paid any attention to him at school, who was actually kind to him, and gave her a reassuring grin. The boy lifted his outstretched arm and placed his fingers on the blue cube in Max’s hand. It was the red pill after all. Theo turned to the alien and, nodding, declared, “I’m in.”“Me three.” Clay spoke up, placing a hand on the cube. He patted the smaller boy on the back. He would’ve liked to have said it was for admitting the alien was real and agreeing with Clay, but really, it was for not abandoning Max. He had been silently watching the situation escalate, waiting for Iikka to so much as take a bad tone with her. After all, he had been compared to being her mangy guard dog in the past, and not for no reason. But in the end, he didn’t have to step up, because Theo did. Even without knowing his name, the freshman won some respect from Clay. For a split second, the small act of camaraderie lifted the tension. Clay used the opportunity to turn back to the other students he barely knew, nodding his head towards Nierefiem. “Last chance.” Truth be told, he was content with the group he had now. There was Max, the scrawny kid who came to her side, and himself. The spaz, the nerd, and the delinquent. Not exactly The Avengers, but he wasn’t in any rush to extend his invitation to Iikka. He barely knew a thing about Mario, but he seemed alright enough. “Ya’ll takin’ it or what?”

“Wasn’t this my idea in the first place?” Mario asked, recalling that it was Mario who had first brought forth the cube and handed it over to the War Prince. It was Iikka who had started all the drama by snatching the cube and attempting to flee with it. Mario left behind Iikka and walked up to where the other three “misfits” were crouching down beside the blue centauresque alien. He placed his hand on the cube, which the other three had already grasped.

Mario had to set an example. He was the eldest of the group (grade school wise and he was not far behind in age from Clay). Mario could not be shown up by the younger members of this group. If he could not set an example for the group, then who would? Mario had started this whole ‘cube mess’ by finding the object in the spaceship in the first place and carrying it back to the rest of them. Now he had to show his support. No matter the consequences.

Iikka was the last to lay his hand on the cube. Nierefiem looked gravely between them with his main eyes, and then centered his focus on the cube. An oddly pleasant tingling, almost electrifying sensation passed through their bodies in a process that felt far longer than the few seconds that it actually took.<There. It is done.> The alien pushed the cube towards Mario.<Take the cube and hide it. If yeerks obtain this technology, then all is lost.> Lights flashed in the sky, approaching dangerously close.<Now go! Hurry! And remember, do not remain in morph for longer than two of your Earth hours.>

The youths fled and hid, some more hesitant than others. For his part, Nierefiem pulled himself a little higher, ready to face death with what honor he could. If any of the humans looked back and caught his eye, he'd even manage, with his eyes alone, something like an encouraging smile.

Finally, the new ship appeared above the site. It was twice the size of the andalite ship and similiar in shape to a cockroach. It landed, and from it emerged several large, worm-like aliens, with round mouths filled with teeth and and legs ending in vicious claws. <Taxxons,> Nierefiem explained, <Disgusting creatures who willing sacrificed themselves to the yeerks for the promise of flesh to feed on.>

After them came twice as many aliens that were roughly humanoid, the smallest among them not shorter than seven feet, with appendages covered in sharp blades. Each toted what looked like some sort of gun. <Hork-Bajir,> Nierefiem continued his explaination, desperate to give them as much information as he could before expiring, <A naturally peaceful race completely conquered by the yeerks.>

The aliens lined themselves up as they exited, forming two lines on either side of their ship. The last creature to emerge was perhaps the most surprising of all; an andalite. <Visser Three.> Nierefiem's loathing rolled off of him. <The only yeerk to posess an andalite body and, with it, morphing->

<Well, well, well.> The Visser's booming thought voice projected to all those in the area, drowning out Nierefiem's. <War Prince Nierefiem. What a funny coincidence, running into you here on this backwood planet.> He barked cruel laugh, approaching the fallen War Prince with the ease of one who wanted to draw out their victory as long as possible. <Oh, but where is your cute little dome ship? The loyal soldiers whose lives you were trusted with?>

It was unclear whether Nierefiem ignored him out of pride, or pain. No matter. The Visser continued, circling his foe's fallen form. <Ah, yes, I remember now. They're dead. All dead, except for you. May I ask how it feels, to know that you failed them.> Silence. <What? No response? You've been so chatty in our previous meetings.> More silence. Annoyance broke through the Visser's faux pleasant demeanor. He poked at the War Prince's wound with his tailblade.<Speak!> Nierefiem clenched his eyes shut, but still made no noise.

<No matter,> The Visser said, stepping back. His body began to shift. <I'm sure I can get something out of you.>

Over the course of about a minute, The Visser's andalite form shifted into a huge, monsterous creature, with dozens of tentacles and large, gaping mouth. <If you grovel well enough, I might consider granting you a... well, less painful death then what I have planned now.> The offer was met only with a glare. <Very well. Goodbye, Nierefiem.>

One of the Visser's tentacles slithered towards the War-Prince, and lifted him up slowly into the air. He brought him closer and closer to his huge mouth, a sadistic happiness rolling off of him. FInally, the Visser dropped Nierefiem into his mouth, who lost the struggle to keep his silence in his last moments.

His dying screams would echo in their nightmares for years to come.

After he was done, the Visser started to morph back. <Search the site, and kill anyone who might have been witness to what happened here,> He ordered. The ghastly aliens scattered.