By 4th Grade Students at Bubb Elementary
March 2022
The alien stood by his spaceship. Ella watched.
The spaceship was shaped like a triangle and burgundy. The alien was pure white and ten feet long and ten feet wide. He had fifty tentacles, and he was currently waving twelve of them. Ella thought those tentacles would be very slimy.
The ship reminded her of orbeez, like if you put hundreds or even thousands of the little water jellies together and turned them into a ship. Because of that, the ship seemed soft and a little watery.
Ella thought the alien smelled like her socks—super stinky. She also caught the odor of rotten eggs that seemed to be coming from the ship. The rotten-egg ship was making tons of beeping noises. Also, every ten seconds, it boomed. The alien was silent. Ella was quite sure he hadn’t seen her yet.
The alien was eating something. It looked like ice cream to Ella—watermelon ice cream. So sweet. Ella loved watermelon ice cream. It made her hungry to see it, and it kind of made her like the alien, since they both shared a passion for the same flavor of ice cream.
But Ella couldn’t be swayed by their shared appreciation of watermelon ice cream. She already knew some interesting things about this alien. As a member of a group in the CIA that had been tracking this race of aliens, Ella had already discovered that the aliens had recently landed in multiple spots around Earth. She had been assigned to surveil this alien for the last couple of weeks. She and her team believed he was the leader.
Ella felt that the aliens were a threat to Earth. She was determined to kill this one, their leader, to save her planet.
Her first step would be to capture him. She knew just what to do. She rushed off and found a wheelbarrow, which she filled with watermelon ice cream. Then she brought it and herself out in the open and showed it to the alien.
“Look at this!” she called. “Watermelon ice cream. Come and get it.”
She ran off. She headed toward one of their fake CIA headquarters where she would be able to capture the alien in a trap. As she ran, she looked over her shoulder to see if the alien followed. It did, but it was super awkward and slow. Those tentacles didn’t seem well-suited to running along Earth’s ground. She thought the alien might not love Earth’s atmosphere either. She slowed down just a little bit to keep him from getting lost.
When she arrived at the fake headquarters, Ella dived inside with her wheelbarrow. Soon, the alien crawled in after her.
Yay, thought Ella. Her plan was working. But, instead of falling into her trap, the alien turned right and went straight into one of their secret rooms.
Uh-oh. That was not what Ella wanted at all. She followed the alien into the room. But it was empty! She saw a great hole in the middle of the space.
She approached cautiously and peered into the dark. A tentacle whipped around below her. Clearly, the alien had either fallen into the hole or had crawled in.
Suddenly, the alien grabbed Ella’s arm with one of his tentacles. Ella dragged herself backward, but the alien was very strong. She fought and fought, but in the struggle, she hit a button on her waist.
Oh no! That was the self-destruct button for the entire base! The whole place would blow to smithereens if she didn’t manage to stop the self-destruct before its ten-minute countdown.
This was a huge problem. The mechanism for turning off the self-destruct was in a room, deep within the tunnels below. Ella had only one choice now. She jumped into the pit…with the huge, tentacled alien.
“We need to work together,” Ella said to the alien. “This place is about to blow! I promise not to kill you if you help me stop it.”
“Very well,” he said. “For now, we will work together.”
“Follow me!” she cried.
They raced to the secret room. It was a windy, long way. The alien was very slow, but Ella didn’t lose him in the process. By the time they got to the room, there was only thirty seconds left. She slammed her hand down on the mechanism that stopped the self-destruct.
They were both out of breath. They collapsed on the ground, grateful to still be alive.
“You know what,” the alien said. “This was such great teamwork. I don’t want to conquer your world anymore. I want to be friends.”
Ella nodded her head. “I don’t want to kill you anymore either. I want to be friends too!”
“You can call me anon for anonymous,” the alien said.
“I’m Ella for Ella,” Ella said.
“But my team is about to conquer your world. May I use your communicator to reach out to them and call them off?”
Ella said, “Yes, please.” She handed over the communicator.
Anon started messing with it, but nothing seemed to work. He handed it back to Ella.
“Oh no!” she said. “It’s broken.”
“Oh no!” said Anon. “My team is going to invade in fifteen minutes.”
“This is bad,” said Ella.
“Yes, it is,” said Anon.
What were they going to do now?
Ella thought there might be a communicator elsewhere in the building. They started to run. Ella fast, Anon slow.
Saving themselves and the building might come down to the very last second.
Dun. Dun. Dun…To be continued!
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