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.”

“Got it,” Lassie says, her three-meter-long hair flowing around her in zero gravity.

“Setting course to the nearest black hole,” Kissy responds.

The object gripped by the robotic arm is hot and dances with strange energies. This is a boy superbomb of the latest design – capable of taking out up to one hundred star systems at once.

“Wait. Something’s different about this one. The readings are all off. It’s losing energy,” Lassie says.

“Why would it do that?” Kissy asks.

“Maybe it’s a dud. I can’t even establish a countdown prediction based on the buildup curve. There is no buildup,” Lassie says.

The ship arrives in orbit around the black hole. “We’re here. You can drop it,” Kissy announces.

“Hold on. If this is a dud, we can study it and reverse-engineer it,” Lassie suggests.

“Or it could be a trick. Do you want to risk the fate of every star system within twenty light years on a hunch?” Kissy asks.

“It just cracked into four pieces,” Lassie says.

“What?” Kissy asks.

“The bomb just spontaneously broke apart. It can’t reach critical mass now. Power levels have dropped to almost nothing. It’s no threat,” Lassie says.

“So, what do we do?” Kissy asks.

“Set a course for Tarrat,” Lassie says.

It has been nine months since the cease-fire was called. When planet Paffy exploded, faster-than-light radiation spread across the galaxy, making lab equipment go haywire. Most of it is still spreading across the galaxy and will for centuries to come. The boys now have a clear advantage in firepower, while the girls still have the advantage of numbers. Neither side dares to fire on the other or invade any new planets. By this time, the boys and girls on mixed planets have fully segregated themselves anyways. The question remains about what to do with uninhabited planets.

Some boys have recently discovered a Mars-sized planet, covered in trees bearing explosive fruit. They return in harvesting ships that can convert the fruit into cherry bombs, peach bombs, pear bombs, apple bombs, lemon bombs, lime bombs, and orange bombs. The boxed bombs are stacked on shelves in large warehouses. These warehouse ships are roughly rectangular boxes covered in hinged scales that are solar panels on one side. Long tethers tie the ships to the ground and are used to transport the goods to orbit. There exists evidence that long-dead beings once bioengineered these trees to grow bombs for them and it ended up destroying their civilization.

This is when the girls arrive, claiming to have returned to harvest the bombs they previously discovered. It is not clear who discovered the planet first or who fired the first shots, but in the skirmish a boy ship crashes onto the planet, igniting a chain-reaction that destroys the biosphere.

What follows is a series of tit-for-tat raids in the region that gradually start to become bigger, threatening to drag the galaxy back into war. Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill are sent to the area to observe and advise.

The moment they arrive, they find themselves in the middle of a full-blown space battle. The ship is damaged and leaking air, unable to engage its engines or return fire. Another ship arrives to teleport them out. Nathaniel feels the familiar brief loss of consciousness as the teleporter beam catches his substance.

Nathaniel blinks himself awake, still very groggy. He is lying on his back. He cannot remember who he is, where he is, or how he got here, but he knows he has been asleep a long time. As it gradually comes back to him, he realizes the pattern on the domed ceiling looks familiar. He is inside The Mama-And-Daddy!

They don’t even make it to the surface of the planet before being attacked. Dozens of girls in flying Tarrati dresses swarm the ship and attempt to blast their way inside. Nathaniel is standing by a window when a girl breaks through. All the boys around him open fire, which scatters harmlessly off her dress. She then begins to spin. Realizing what is about to happen, Nathaniel runs from the room just as every sequin lights up and emits beams of burning radiation that cut everything in the room to slices.

The planet Watertoo is completely covered by water. It has no true islands, but there are sometimes temporary “islands” of foam that persist for many days after a storm whips up the sea surface. Under one of these islands swims a Mermaid, her long seaweed hair trailing behind. Reaching the other side, she slips out from the shadow and slithers up onto the surface of the foam, joining a dozen of her comrades sunning themselves in the cold air. “Sally! I thought you were visiting your sister in the reefs,” she says, turning over and exposing her pale green body to the sky.

“I am, but she wanted to go sunning, and here she is,” Sally the Mermaid responds, placing her hand on the shoulder of another with especially bright green hair.

Sitting up, the first Mermaid says, “Oh, pleasant to meet you. Daphne, is it?”

“Yes,” Daphne responds, twisting the fine strands of her hair around her fingers.

“I’m Gloria, and I love your hair. How do you keep it growing so fine? Mine always fills up with floatation bladders if I don’t brush every day.”

“Well, have you ever heard of anemone extract?” Daphne says, but she is cut off by a loud booming noise from high in the sky. Every head turns upwards.

“What is that?” Sally asks.

A ship has appeared several miles above. The noise was the sound of it entering the lower atmosphere at high speed. Now missiles are headed straight for the foam island. Having barely enough time to understand this, every Mermaid drags herself toward the water. Only Gloria makes it. She dives as the island above her ignites, the explosion shining like the sun. The invasion has begun.