Two Halpile crabs, Dram and Draam, walk through what was recently a forest. While a few smaller plants remain, there are no trees. Great holes remain where they were rooted. “What could do this much damage?” Dram asks.

“Probably the same thing that left these trails,” Draam says. They follow wide paths where the soil has been smoothed and compressed. Soon, they come across a pile of ash.

“Were the trees burned?” Dram asks.

“I don’t know,” Draam says.

They keep walking and eventually see something strange in the distance. Getting closer, they recognize the planet guardian of Halpile, the aracial adult that manages the planet. It is a crablike creature the size of a house, covered on top and sides by curved, telescoping spines. It is not moving. Wanting to keep a safe distance from any adult, the boys send over a drone to get a better look. The guardian is dead. It appears to be rotting apart. Several of its spines have fallen out. It is covered with black, burrowing worms the boys do not recognize. “Do you suppose what burned the trees killed the planet guardian?” Dram asks.

“We need to tell someone about this,” Draam says.

“We’re The Newest Heroes. We’re responding to your distress call.” Nathaniel says upon entering the radio station on planet Yogo.

The giant centipedes who live there explain the situation. They are being terrorized by a monster. It destroys everything they build and beats up anyone who tries to stop it. It seems to hate technology. The only reason it hasn’t taken down the radio tower is because of the electric fence around it. “You mean the broken fence we stepped over to get here?” Haticat asks.

The Dwokdeer was used to the rain. In fact, it preferred it. Rain kept away insects, hid its smell from predators, and rain clouds blocked out the hot sun. Seeing some Dwokweed, the animal bends its neck down for a bite, gobbling up the sweet, crunchy plant.

The deer’s ears perk up. There is a subtle change in the sound of the rain as it hits the leaves in the trees. The surface tension of the droplets is different. The rain is green. Suddenly, the deer feels very sick. Strange pains fill its body. Cells begin to divide rapidly. Hooves erupt from its skin. A third antler grows from its nose. Its brown fur falls out and is replaced by yellow and white. All this activity uses up its fat stores and it becomes ravenously hungry. It runs around eating all the vegetation in sight, no matter the taste or caloric value. Still in pain, it lets out a wild hiss toward the sky.

A metal cube speeds straight for planet Dopla. The living spacecraft in orbit see it coming, but do not know what to make of it. Just as it seems about to pass by, it rapidly decelerates and enters orbit. A few of the more adventurous individuals speed ahead to meet it. The cube then unfolds into a rectangle of blinking lights from the corners of which four long cables uncoil.

“Hello. This is the Dopla system. May we assist?” the foremost Doplan radios.

The response is immediate. An arc of electrons travels between two of the cables through the Doplan. The voltage is so great that even the perfect insulator of empty space is not enough to protect. He is killed instantly.

Later, across the galaxy, Darryl hangs up the phone. “We’re going to Dopla.”

“Where’s that?” Nathaniel asks.

“You can read all about it on the way there. We need to hurry. The Doplans are being exterminated by some sort of electrified robot,” Darryl responds.

“Like an electrobot,” Haticat comments.

The lizard skitters across the rock over to the sunlit side. It stops. The sun feels good today. All is right with the world. The lizard fills with energy and confidence, ready to take on the day.

Suddenly, it disappears in a flurry of feathers and claws. “I got it!” Nathaniel shouts.

His newest friend, Darryl, runs up behind him. “Oh good, that’s one of the tasty ones.”

The two of them sit down to share a meal while their psychosymbiotic Stuffians gather around them. Nathaniel peels off the meat and hands Darryl the bones as he had done with every kill. They always ate different parts of the animal. This was why their hunting partnership worked so well. Darryl tips his head all the way back and drops the bones into his open throat. He was from a little-known planet on the edge of the galaxy where all creatures had two mouths – one for talking and one for eating. Several years ago, he had driven the girls from his planet and earned three medals. He then did some traveling and eventually met Nathaniel on Ninosa. “I think it is the ratio of potassium salts that makes the bones so good,” he says while his gizzard crunches away.

“I like hunting with you and Mojo,” Nathaniel says.

“I like hunting with you,” Mojo, Darryl’s tiger-like Stuffian, says.

“We make a good team. I eat meat. You eat bones. You are tall enough to reach high shelves. I’m small enough to hide in small crevices,” Nathaniel says.

“We should do other things together,” Darryl suggests.

“Like what?” Nathaniel asks.

“I don’t know. Maybe we can be mercenaries or start a detective agency,” Darryl suggests.

Not long after starting their business and naming it The Newest Heroes, they are contacted by a Fkoojite named Captain Moke. “I don’t know what’s going on. People keep going missing, sometimes whole towns at once. I was working with a team of detectives until they went missing too.”

“Yikes,” Nathaniel says.

“Just before this happened, there were sightings of a large, lizard-like creature with a crystal head near the town where the first disappearances occurred. We have no such native species,” the Captain continues.

“So, you want us to find out what’s happening and put a stop to it,” Nathaniel states.

“Yes,” Captain Moke replies.

“Good, now let’s talk about payment,” Darryl says.

The Chijug system is surrounded by the Anti-Primate League on all sides. The Footpip colonists are cut off from their homeworld and the other colonies. Nate and his friends arrive just as the APL closes in. Footpips are tall humanoids with green fur and large, black lips. They often carry laser pistols and swords. They are fearless fighters, but are no match technologically for the Airpuses, slimy, air-breathing octopi from a low-gravity world. Unable to land without being flattened by Chijug’s gravity, the Airpuses build shooting platforms in orbit. They destroy the spaceports first so that the Footpips cannot take off and fight them. Nathaniel’s ship is blasted to dust. Over the next week, they destroy the large cities, then the small cities, and then the villages, dispersing the Footpips into the forests.

Nathaniel had made a serious error. He had arrived prepared to repel an invasion, not to survive an extermination attempt from a race that would never land. Even his military experience was no use when he was this hopelessly outgunned. Still, he keeps running a decentralized radio network among the Footpips to stay informed.

“Seventy Blentite warships just appeared in orbit!” reports the lookout for the Fleggish colony security. Talks over weather control on the nearby moon had gone badly. The Blentites demanded more snow. The Fleggish demanded more rain. The Blentites offered to buy the Fleggish half of the moon. The Fleggish responded that it was their moon and the Blentites would have to buy the whole thing or go back to Beerbele. They had been allies against the girls, but dividing the spoils of war was messier than winning them. “They are opening fire!”

“Ground-based defenses are online. Stand by,” replies the head of security. Nathaniel had ruled a peaceful galaxy for only a few months. Every girl and sports fan had been subdued. Girl play was outlawed. Sports was heavily regulated. The Cheeraliens had all been rounded up and executed. Now, without a common enemy to unify them, the boys were reverting to their competitive ways. Old jealousies were returning. New leaders were emerging. Friendships and tribal distinctions were being redefined.

Several missiles accelerate upwards and explode, radiation blinding Blentite sensors and scrambling their computers. More missiles follow. The Blentites simply drop bombs indiscriminately, guided by gravity alone to the surface. The large cities are missed, but the toxins kicked up into the air will wreak ecological havoc for years to come.

Five thousand light years away, Nathaniel reads reports. About 25,000 planets had officially seceded and joined the Anti-Primate League. Made up of an alliance of Zleesnits and Nops, spinning Top Crabs, Bears, Raccoons, Tyrannosaurs, Dromaeosaurs, Pelycosaurs, Stegosaurs, and others, they allege that during the Boy-Girl War and after, primate races were unfairly given better missions so that they would ultimately control more resources when the girls were defeated. Nathaniel had attempted to hold peace talks, but no agreements were reached. In the meantime, many thousands more planets were at war with each other, both sides claiming to be friends of Nathaniel and begging him for help. The entire hierarchy was unraveling. He sighs.

It has been years since Katie invented sports and sparked the three-way war raging across the galaxy. Allison has been losing badly and her forces are confined to just four pockets along the edge of the galaxy. Katie is losing too, but just barely. Katie has two opposite quadrants of the galaxy, joined in the middle by the central galactic bulge. Nathaniel has the other two quadrants. He invades and takes the center, dividing Katie’s forces and detonating all his superbombs along the perimeter to keep her from easily retaking it. Then, all of Nathaniel’s bomb factories explode at once. Allison had long been collecting information on their locations and had waited until she had found them all before destroying them. With her new advantage in firepower, Allison starts to make a comeback. Soon, Allison has twenty percent of the galaxy, Katie has thirty percent, and Nathaniel has fifty percent. The war drags on.

Nathaniel steps off his ship into the tunnel locked around the ship’s door. He is on T’n’fer’prey to meet Boss Zack about something important he could not say through normal channels. “So what is it?”

Zack takes off his sunglasses and rubs his eyes. He has clearly been under a lot of stress. “Yo, Nate. I got to tell you about the mindwhip.”

“What is it about the mindwhip that I had to come here to hear about it?” Nathaniel asks.

“Right. I’ve been using them – millions of mindwhip machines. I lock onto random brainwaves to cause pain without telling who the minds are or how far away they are, dig?” Zack summarizes.

“I know. I’ve read the reports. You say you can tell apart the minds of boys, girls, adults, and animals and are careful to only target girls,” Nathaniel recaps.

“Right bud. That’s right. That’s how I roll,” Zack says.

“So what’s the problem?” Nathaniel asks.

“There’s a fifth psychomorph, bud,” Zack says.

“A fifth psychomorph? Is it new?” Nathaniel asks.

“We first saw them seven days ago – a bit like a boy-girl mix,” Zack says.

“Well, that’s interesting. They might make good allies if we could figure out where they are. Are there a lot?” Nathaniel asks.

“That’s the bad news. Their numbers are growing fast. They used to be boys and girls. Individual girl minds we locked onto began to change, so we started scanning boys too. The new way is taking over, Nate. I don’t know how many boys around you might have been affected already or how many will soon transform. That’s why I couldn’t send you a message. It might have been intercepted,” Zack says.

Nathaniel scratches the feathers on his head. “Show me the data.”

The boys are winning. They now control sixty-five percent of the galaxy, including Candy and Gruezhe. Girls are dying by the trillions. Nathaniel has been promoted to vice president, second only to President Bobot. His duties include overseeing invasions while Bobot sleeps.

One night, Nathaniel is skimming through reports from the latest invasions when he is interrupted by an urgent message from the other end of the galaxy. “Everything is pink! I’m pink! The controls are pink! The stars are pink!”

Within forty-eight hours it becomes apparent that the girls have made a new weapon. This new energy wave spreads not only through matter, but travels through empty space at 100,000 times light speed. It will cover the galaxy in one year.

Boys inside the pink zone are unable to fight. Some kill themselves. Some blindfold themselves or tear out their eyes. Those who can take it continue to resist the girls, but with no supplies coming in it is only a matter of time before the girls will win.

The energy field only allows pink light, making both lasers and trazers impossible. Hammer-Face ships equipped with machine guns are sent in, but the girls of the area are better prepared, already having projectile weapons.

Peter, the new head of the Girlbusters, brings his report to Bobot and Nathaniel. “There has been a restructuring of power in the girl government. With the other leaders dead or isolated by boy forces, a girl scientist named Miss Bossy has assumed power.”