Joe, Emma, and I managed to take out another two, but the other aliens had remembered their guns by this point and were laying down some heavy fire that kept us playing far more defense than offense.

That is, until it occurred to me that I could turn their high-powered plasma guns into Super Soakers.

Willy was quick to notice the change, and he jumped forward, taking a shot right in the chest.

“Oh no!” he screamed, “I’m me-eh-eh-elting!!!” And then he collapsed to the ground.

“Or… not!” he said, leaping back up and adopting an intimidating martial arts stance.

Alien henchbeasts tend not to be as deep or as sensitive as human beings, but they do have faces, so it’s pretty easy to tell what emotions they’re feeling. In this case, the look on their ugly mugs is what you could safely call terror.

For a few seconds, they continued to halfheartedly squirt lame streams of water at Willy and my friends… and then dropped their plastic toys and scattered into the woods.

“You okay, Emma?” asked Dana, as our friend got back to her feet.

“It was a cat,” she said, pointing to a pile of torn flea collars on the pavement.

We nodded sympathetically. I spotted a satchel one of the aliens had been carrying and began to rummage through it.

“Promise me, Daniel,” said Emma. “We’re going to get every last one of these monsters.”

“That’s job one,” I reassured her. But I was preoccupied with something I’d found in the satchel. Something very strange, and distressing.

Chapter 19

IT WAS A small piece of jewelry from my home planet.

My people are incredible and distinctive craftsmen, and I instantly identified the small silver pendant of an elephant as genuine Alparian handiwork, not some dime-store knockoff.