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  Over the teeth, over the gums, look out stomach, here I come.

  I slid into his esophagus and cannonballed down the quivering chute into his gut.

  They say the way to an alien’s heart is through his stomach, and that was my plan: get digested, clog his arteries, and attack his heart!

  Of course, when they say that thing about the stomach and heart, they leave out the bit about how, in between, you have to spend a little quality time down in the bowels. Remember to hold your nose when we get there.

  I splashed into a pool of burbling acid and bobbed around with milky chunks of half-digested french fries, the gooey remains of a Snickers bar, and what might’ve once been creamed corn. Attila’s stomach looked exactly like that Rubbermaid barrel full of pig slop the high school cafeteria guy scrapes all the dirty dishes into.

  I sloshed forward, trying to avoid a McNugget oil slick. I needed to act like a bran muffin and move things along his digestive tract—fast. So I swam downstream as quickly as yak stew can.

  Now, in order for me to get into Number 33’s bloodstream and give him some serious heartburn, I needed to be a nutrient by the time I reached his small intestine. If not, my whole plan (and me with it) would go straight down the toilet. Literally.

  As I was funneled into the stomach’s exit ramp, I transformed myself into a glob of yak fat and, after a quick bile bath, moved into the small intestine. I thought I might hurl. The narrow, undulating tube smelled worse than any sewer I’ve ever had the pleasure of crawling through.

  Fortunately, I didn’t have to deal with the bowel stench for long, because I was instantly sucked through the intestinal lining. Just like that, I was cruising through Number 33’s circulatory system.

  If I could make it into his arteries—which had to be unbelievably clogged with sixteen hundred years’ worth of Mongolian barbecue, mutton dumplings, and fried goat cheese—maybe I could completely block a blood vessel and shut his heart down.

  Upstream, I could hear his heart muscle pounding out a four-four beat like a quartet of thundering kettledrums.

  Because he had four hearts!

  If I blocked the blood flow to one, the other three might be able to compensate.

  Okay. I needed a plan B, as in “Blow up” or “ka-Boom.”

  The vein I was log-flume riding through splashed me down inside one of Attila’s throbbing hearts. As I shot through one of its valves, I made myself morph again.

  I hung on to the flapping valve with both hands as I began to change back into me—the full-sized, five-foot-ten Daniel X. I started to expand inside his cramped heart chamber like one of those Grow Your Own Girlfriend sponge toys that’s guaranteed to grow 600 percent when you soak it in a bowl of water overnight.

  Only I grew much bigger and much faster. Call it a teenage growth spurt.

  I shattered his heart and burst through that alien’s ribcage like the alien in Alien.

  Blood spurting all around me (picture ketchup squeeze bottles gone wild), I watched Number 33—gasping and gurgling and clutching what was left of his chest—topple to the ground.

  Attila the Hun was now Attila the Done.

  Meanwhile, I was a little wet, somewhat sticky, and totally grossed out.

  But I would live to fight another day. And another alien.

  Number 2.

  Clearly the most formidable and fearsome foe I have ever faced.

  Chapter 4

  SO WHAT WOULD you say is humankind’s greatest creation?

  Language? Music? Maybe art?

  All excellent choices. But if you ask me, the greatest thing any creature anywhere ever created is a concept called “friendship.”

  I guess my four friends are my greatest creation, too. Without your friends, well, what are you?

  “You guys,” said Joe, “this funnel cake is awesome.”

  “It’s cold,” said Dana.

  “And your point is?” Joe took another chomp out of the web of chewy fried dough dusted with powdered sugar and drenched with squiggles of chocolate sauce.

  “You’re basically eating knotted flour and lard, Joe,” Emma said. “It’s not very good for your heart.”

  Having just examined the insides of the late Number 33’s cardiovascular plumbing up close and personal, I realized Emma, my earth-mother health-nut friend, had a point.

  “Well, it may not be good for my heart, but it is excellent for my mouth,” said Joe, who had an iron stomach to rival Attila’s. My friend has been known to order “one of everything” at Pizza Hut. But no matter how much chow he wolfs down on a regular basis, he stays super skinny. Talk about an excellent metabolism.

  This was what I needed; nothing renews my creative juices like hanging out and goofing around with my buds. And we weren’t just in the middle of a pig-out session at the local county fair. No, my four best friends and I were in the middle of Six Flags Over Georgia.

  After my Thrilla with Attila, I decided to call up Joe, Emma, Willy, and Dana and head south to do a little recon on Marietta, Georgia—one of the smaller towns on Number 2’s Places to Destroy/Humans to Enslave list. Aliens are much easier to smell outside your major metropolitan areas—fewer competing odors.

  Okay, I could’ve gone to Ames, Iowa. But the nearest amusement park to Ames is Adventureland, home to lots of incredible waterslides, and after slipping and sliding through Number 33’s wet and wild circulatory system I was more in the mood for roller coasters. Six Flags Over Georgia has eleven of ’em.

  Oh, something else you should probably know, in case you haven’t already figured it out: When I say I “called up” my friends, I don’t mean I hit speed dial on my iPhone. I mean my four best friends since forever are 100-percent pure products of my imagination. It’s not like I walk around talking to invisible, make-believe buddies. When Joe, Emma, Willy, and Dana are around, everybody can see them, hear them, and, in Joe’s case, smell them. But not one of my friends would exist if I didn’t imagine him or her first.

  I realize my special talent may seem alien to you but, then again, you weren’t born on my home planet, Alpar Nok. For me, the power to create (the most awesome superpower of them all, btw) is just part of my genetic code.

  Without this amazing gift, I’d be totally alone in your world.

  And alone is never a good place to be when dealing with the likes of Number 2.

  “Hey, you guys,” said Willy, coming around the base of the Dare Devil Dive coaster to join us. “I scouted it out. We’re the only ones here! The place is totally ours!”

  “Well, duh,” said Dana. “It’s after three AM. The park’s closed.”

  “Hmm,” said Joe, licking sugar and chocolate sauce off his fingers, “must be why the funnel cakes are stone cold. Hey, you guys ever eat cold pizza for breakfast?”

  “Yeah, right,” said Dana with an eye roll. “Whenever possible, Joe.”

  “You should try it, Dana,” said Willy. “When pizza’s cold, the cheese stays locked in place.”

  “No sauce drippage, either,” added Joe.

  “By the way,” said Willy, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder, “the new coaster looks absolutely amazing.”

  “I believe the Dare Devil Dive coaster is the Southeast’s tallest beyond-vertical roller coaster,” said Emma, who had picked up a bunch of brochures and maps when we first entered the amusement park.

  “Hey, Daniel,” teased Dana, who, full disclosure, I have a mad crush on. “Part of the park is called ‘Gotham City.’ You wanna head over there and check out this cool coaster called Batman: The Ride?”

  “More bats?” I said. “No thanks.”

  “Let’s do the Dare Devil Dive!” said Willy. “Get this: you climb ten stories up a vertical lift, then plummet down a ninety-five-degree first drop!”

  “Um,” said Dana, “not to barf all over your idea, Willy, but I detect one slight problem.”

  “What?”

  Dana gestured at the dark rides towering all around us. “Like I said, it’s after th
ree AM.”

  “So?” said Willy, who can be as stubborn as he is brave.

  “The park is closed, Willy,” said Emma, who was Willy’s little sister and knew him better than anybody. “You can’t ride the rides, because, well, Six Flags very wisely shuts off all its electricity after hours in an attempt to conserve energy.”

  I smiled. “Well, you know what they say: it’s a whole ’nother park after dark. Start ’em up!”

  And, by the power of sheer imagination, I made every single ride in Six Flags whir back to life!

  Chapter 5

  YOU KNOW HOW when you go to an amusement park in the middle of the summer and you want to ride the really cool rides, but you have to wait like two hours in a line that keeps switching back on itself, so all you can do is keep staring at the hundreds of people ahead of you?

  Well, this was absolutely nothing like that.

  When we came to the end of any ride, we didn’t have to unload and run around to the entrance to ride it again. I just imagined the thing starting up and—ZAP!—it did.

  We defied gravity, flew through loop-the-loops, felt g-forces similar to those encountered during the reentry phase of interplanetary space travel, and, basically, got to retaste what we had for lunch that day when it flew back up into our mouths.

  “C’mon, you guys,” said Willy. “Time to take the ultimate plunge: the Dare Devil Dive coaster.”

  Yes, nausea fans, we’d been saving Six Flags’ most incredible thrill ride for last.

  We hurried over to the base of the bright yellow-and-red roller coaster. The logo emblazoned on its glowing two-story marquee sort of reminded me of Number 2 and his minions: a helmeted, goggled head with wings sprouting out on both sides and flames blazing up in the background.

  “You okay, Daniel?” Emma asked when she caught me staring up at the wicked imagery.

  “Yeah. Come on. Let’s give this devil his due.”

  Our six-seater roller-coaster car was shaped like a fighter jet.

  “Buckle up,” said Emma. “Keep your feet and hands inside the car at all times.”

  “Your funnel cakes, too,” Dana added, elbowing Joe.

  “Blast us off, Daniel!” said Willy.

  Of course roller coasters don’t actually blast off. They kind of creep to a start and haul you up a hill. Coaster cars don’t have engines, so the ride is totally powered by the energy stored up when the car climbs the track’s first hill. After that, gravity and some other principles of physics are all you need.

  A hidden chain hauled us straight up toward the starlit sky. When we were perched at the peak of the ten-story tower with our fighter plane’s nose hanging over the edge, the ride seemed to stall.

  “Is it busted?” asked Willy.

  “Nope,” said Joe, our technical wizard. “Teetering on the edge like this is just part of the coaster engineer’s grand desiii…”

  Joe didn’t get to finish that thought.

  We plummeted downward into a ninety-five-degree drop, which, check your protractors, is beyond straight down. We were actually angling inward as we dove straight for the ground.

  With all sorts of kinetic energy rocketing us along, we careened up through three inversions, caught air on a zero-gravity hill, and swooped through an Immelmann U-turn—a half loop, half twist with a curving exit in the opposite direction from which we entered. (Quick fact: the whole move is based on a maneuver first employed by a German fighter pilot named Immelmann in World War I.) We raced into another nose-down dive, then shot up into a heartline roll (a total 360 where the pivot point is your heart, not your feet) before the car was slowed by magnetic brakes.

  “Whahoobi!” shouted Willy.

  “Un-be-lievable,” added Joe, with a burp.

  “I’m glad it’s over,” said Emma.

  “Me, too,” said Dana.

  “I need liquid refreshment,” said Joe.

  Which gave me a wild idea. “Coming right up!”

  Hey, if this ride was powered by my imagination, there were no limits, no magnetic brakes to slow me down. Defying gravity and tapping into my personal reserves of energy, I made the fighter jet car fly off the rails and soar across the amusement park.

  “Daniel?” said Emma. “This wasn’t in the brochure.”

  “It should be!” Willy shouted as we zipped underneath the Sky Bucket gondola ride and landed on the tracks of the giant steel coaster called Goliath, a ride so humongous it wouldn’t completely fit on the park grounds, so Six Flags had to run the track outside and back again. We rode up its two-hundred-foot ascent, zoomed through a couple of zero-gravity drops, slid into a giant spiral, and, since this was Daniel X’s version of Goliath, flew off the tracks again so we could soar up into the sky.

  “Hey, I can see Atlanta!” Joe said as I made the car climb higher than Goliath’s highest hill. Much higher.

  “I can see Miami,” said Dana.

  We did a couple of barrel rolls over the Mind Bender, buzzed the Dodge City Bumper Cars, and, for my big finish, made a smooth water landing in a turquoise blue river at Splash Water Falls just as the rapids sluiced around a bend to slide us down a five-story waterfall.

  “You want liquid refreshment?” I joked to Joe. “Here it comes!”

  “Woo-hoo!” shouted Willy. “Hang on!”

  Our roller-coaster car plunged over the falls, hit the waiting water below, and sent up a ten-foot wall of foam and spray that drenched us all.

  Totally soaked and laughing hysterically, we drifted along until our fighter plane bumped into some rubber dock guards and sloshed to a full stop.

  “Let’s do it again,” said Willy. “Let’s do it again.” He sounded exactly like everybody’s annoying little brother and/or sister.

  Only we couldn’t ride any more rides.

  We weren’t the only ones in the park anymore.

  A squad of goons in bright white space suits leaped out of the surrounding pines and came charging up the exit ramp at us.

  They were all carrying weapons.

  Alien weapons.

  Chapter 6

  I COUNTED AT least a dozen storm troopers decked out in full-encapsulation bunny suits.

  Their bodies were wrapped in loose-fitting, crinkly white fabric; their hands and feet were sealed inside black rubber gloves and boots; and their faces were hidden behind hoods and respirator masks.

  They were carrying some pretty heavy artillery, too, none of it forged on planet Earth. We’re talking RJ-57 over-the-shoulder, tritium-charge bazookas; high-intensity microwave guns; shock-wave cannons; blasters; and a pair of Opus 24/24s, which contain an illegal molecular resonator that fires a pulse vibrating at the precise frequency of its victim’s neurotransmissions, causing the target to expire from sheer, unadulterated pain.

  It’s no wonder the Opus 24/24 is banned across most of the civilized universe.

  “We can take these marshmallow people,” Willy said, crouching into an arms-raised attack stance.

  “No weapons, Daniel,” urged Emma.

  “We’ve got your back, bro,” said Joe, moving to my right.

  I eased into a neutral Aikido position, a nonaggressive martial arts style my father once taught me, and sized up the intruders. Aikido is all about redirecting the attackers’ force into throws, locks, and restraints. I wasn’t really sure how good it would be going up against an Opus 24/24, but I’d give it a whirl.

  “Down on your knees, all of you,” said the alien team leader, his reedy voice blaring out of a speaker embedded in his helmet. “Hands behind your heads. Do it! Now!”

  “You guys?” I said to my friends. “You need to go.”

  “Let’s lay down some hurt on these dudes,” said Willy, wound up and ready to swing into full Kung Fu Panda mode. “And fast. I want to ride that X coaster again!”

  “Not gonna happen,” I said. “Not today.”

  “Wait one minute,” protested Dana. “These… things have weapons.”

  Which was exactly why I needed to
send my four friends away. Yes, I created them from memories stored in my mind, but they were extremely real. Therefore, an Opus 24/24 blast to any one of them would be extremely painful. I couldn’t stand to see my friends get hurt like that.

  “Later, you guys,” I said.

  “No,” Dana said, actually stomping her feet. “You’re in trouble. You need us. You can’t just snap your fingers and send us away.”

  Well, yes, I could.

  And I didn’t need to snap my fingers, although I guess I could’ve. It might’ve looked more magical, might’ve fooled the heavy-breathing, space-suited cretins into thinking they were dealing with a witch or a wizard.

  Instead, I just imagined my friends gone. To someplace safe. Someplace fun. I picked Six Flags Magic Mountain, outside of Los Angeles.

  Maybe Willy would get to ride that ride again.

  Chapter 7

  THE SHRINK-WRAPPED SQUADRON leaped back a half step when Joe, Willy, Dana, and Emma vanished.

  “Take a hint, guys,” I said to the small army circled around me. “Do like my friends just did. Disappear.”

  “I said on your knees, son,” grunted the lead goon through his helmet radio.

  Interesting. He called me “son,” but I knew he wasn’t my dad, because when my father pops in for a surprise training seminar, he seldom travels with a posse of weapon-toting thugs.

  And just to get you up to speed: my father, my mother, and my little sister, Pork Chop, have something in common with my four best friends—they exist only as living, breathing creations of my very vivid imagination.

  “Son, let’s not make this any more difficult than it has to be,” said the robot-voiced squad commander.

  Okay, he did that “son” thing again. I knew that none of Number 2’s battling barbarians would bother politely addressing me like family.

  Who are these guys? I wondered.

  Fortunately, a storm trooper to my left made a seriously stupid move with his weapon that sent my personal danger alert plummeting to DEFCON Zero.