Billy peeped out of the window at the armies that were storming their houses. Mum and Dad had left him alone, giving him very specific instructions about what to do while they were gone. While they mostly told him to ‘wait at home and stay out till we come back’, they’d told him that if they weren’t back, he’d have to wait till the next morning and call Gramma.

It had been three hours since then, and his parents weren’t back yet. He swiftly crouched behind the couch when one of the creatures looked his way. All they needed was one sign of life, and they’d attack. They called themselves ‘humans’, and they called his family and friends ‘aliens’, with a tone of contempt which made it seem as though the Grokans were the one terrorising the humans on their planet, and not the other way around.

“Burn the freaks down!” One of the humans said, as it pulled out his neighbour by her long straggling hair. Poor Mrs Lorag. She was so old, her once luscious green locks had turned completely yellow. But the vile humans seemed indifferent. Her pointed ears were twitching, and her wonderful golden eyes were swimming with tears. And in front of his eyes, the foul creatures put a weird, black object with a tube and a handle against her knee, and pressed something. There was a loud bang, and Mrs Lorag fell to the ground, crying and howling with pain, tears running down her cheeks, while the humans laughed. Billy was furious. He couldn’t do anything about it, unfortunately. Unless he wanted to get hurt too.

Billy thought he knew what this was about. They’d been covering alternate life in astronomy at school, which included a very interesting section on invasions. According to the book, exactly a thousand years ago, the inhabitants of a planet by the name of ‘Kornix’ had journeyed to the planet Earth (the home of the humans) and invaded it, destroying the lives of millions of humans. The invasion lasted nine years, nine months and nine days, until Intergalactic Peacekeeping Forces from the UU (United Universes) decided to intervene, forcing a retreat of Kornix troops overnight. The damage had been done, and their invasion left behind a broken, dying planet, inhabited by people battling disease, poverty and suffering. People who were dropping dead like flies. People who wanted vengeance.

The humans apparently were still investigating the possibility of life outside their planet at that time, while the inhabitants of all the planets in their galaxy, Inktvisinkt, knew everything there was to know about all the life across all the universes. But when the humans’ belief about extraterrestrial life was finally confirmed, they immediately set to developing a plan to destroy the species that had brought such tremendous ruin to their once wonderful planet. And while it had taken a thousand years of research to do it, the humans had finally come to take their revenge.

These ones were from Mars, Billy could tell, from their dark complexions and tall statures. He supposed the ones from Venus and Saturn would arrive soon fro backup, since the population of his home planet, Orixalia, was clearly more than the humans had anticipated.

It seemed him that they didn’t care that they were massacring the wrong species. So blinded were they by their hate and pain, that they didn’t care who they killed, as long as they eventually got to the ones they were searching for. And if that was what they wanted, so be it. Billy knew his fellow Orixalians would fight back.

As though on cue, he heard rhythmic bouncing down the street. A sea of Orixalians were bobbing towards the mass of humans, clad in their army colours of black and violet. Leading the army were his parents, looking ready to spill blood. They had their sabres out and poised for an attack.

The humans seemed to be prepping their weapons too. The two armies stood facing one another, bloodlust and hatred swimming in their eyes.

“Fellow Orixalians, gather arms!” Billy’s father’s booming voice sounded. “Our planet has been invaded, and now, we must drive these heartless humans out! It’s time we fight back! It’s time for war.”