First I will tell you about before I was born. You probably think I don't need to tell you about before my birth. But then again, I don't even have to tell you this story. So, as I was saying, I will tell you about before I existed. In the year 1,5441,906 humans finally created starships--war starships. We had created them, well, because we had just started colonies on Mars. You are probably thinking, "Whoa, we won't gain technology for that for about 15,439,908 years." Well, you are wrong. We had the technology for a long time, but we didn't start colonizing until now. The reason is that we weren't sure if there were any Martians, and if they were hostile. We decided there weren't, and the colonizing began.

There actually were Martians, though our furious study showed there weren't. They were extremely hostile. They wiped out everyone that was colonizing Mars. That included my parents, my brother, and my two sisters--and all of my other family. I became a mercenary, except I was on a spaceship. We had been traveling to Mars when we were told to go after a fleet of Martian ships. My only crew mate was Rico Mahoney. And this is where I leave off. I write as it happens.

We had gone a long way--halfway between Jupiter and Saturn, before anything happened.

"The Martians are shooting at us, sir!" Mahoney said to me.

"Return fire, " I screamed. Smash, boom, crash!

"We're hit, sir!"

"Switch all stabilizers to right wing."

"That's not possible, sir; they got blown off."

"Retreat!"

"To where? We have no base here and we're half way across the solar system from Earth."

"Don't tell me what I know, tell me what I don't know, Mahoney."

"We hit the Mar--Whoa!" Whoa was for sure. We couldn't see the Martian ships before. The only reason we knew they were there was because they appeared on our radar as little ships. But they weren't little ships. Our laser bullets had been firing out of control after we got hit. We must have destroyed the cloaking device, because now we could see the Martian ship. It was a mega-gigantic ball of moving metal with two semi-gigantic triangles at the sides with little itty bitty tubes at the end which shot laser bullets. A gigantic chain gun emerged from the bottom of the alien ship and shot a red crenellated octagon at us. We didn't know what it was until it hit us. It was a biological bomb. We were sent from In-between Jupiter and Saturn all the way back to Earth in a split second. We had gone past the speed of light and nothing had happened to us.

Well, we thought nothing had happened to us until we saw each other. We were humanoid fish that had tentacles raked forward at our elbows. We were the exact same color of the Martian ship and we discovered that the Martian ship wasn't a ship at all; it was the Martians formed together. Suddenly, I wanted to go home.

"Let's go home," I said to Mahoney. But I didn't need to say it. We had some kind of a psychic link.

O..F.. C..O..U..R..S..E.., Mahoney replied. We landed on Earth, but we were exiled and hunted because we were thought to be Martians. We retreated to the seas, away from everybody and lived there.

I..N.. A.. T..H..O..U..S..A..N..D.. Y..E..A..R..S, I said to Mahoney, W..E.. W..I..L..L.. A..R..I..S..E.. A..N..D.. W..E.. W..I..L..L.. D..E..F..E..A..T.. T..H..E.. E..A..R..T..H..L..I..N..G..S.. W..H..I..C..H.. U..S..E..D.. T..O.. B..E.. U..S..

D..E..F..I..N..I..T..E..L..Y.. Mahoney replied.

Surprisingly, one thousand years went by pretty fast, and we had conquered all water animals, even kinds that hadn't been discovered by humans. We sent one of our kind (for we Martians reproduce A sexually) and he came back in one hour, reporting that our air skills had weakened eternally da shigidiba. This was bad. Really bad. We couldn't conquer the humans if we couldn't breathe air.

I.. H..A..V..E.. A..N.. I..D..E..A.. Mahoney only contacted me. M..A..K..E.. S..O..M..E..T..H..I..N..G.. L..I..K..E.. S..C..U..B..A.. G..E..A..R.., E..X..C..E..P..T.. W..I..T..H.. W..A..T..E..R.. I..N..S..T..E..A..D.. O..F.. A..I..R..

O..F.. C..O..U..R..S..E.. I..T.. I..S.. Mahoney said to me. I forgot, even over a thousand years, that we all could read everyone's minds.

W..E.. H..A..V..E.. T..O.. T..E..A..C..H.. T..H..E..M..

D..U..H.., O..R.. W..E.. C..A..N..'T.. H..A..V..E.. O..U..R.. R..E..V..E..N..G..E.. A..G..A..I..N..S..T.. U..S.., I.. M..E..A..N.. T..H..E..M.. We were starting to remember something; what was it? We hadn't heard of the Humans since one thousand years ago. Or did we know them before? Were we one of them? No! I shouldn't be thinking such foul things. I was born flesh and blood as a Martian. Then, if that is true, what is my revenge for? What is it against? The Humans obviously, but why?

I.. W..A..S.. T..H..I..N..K..I..N..G.. T..H..E.. S..A..M..E.. T..H..I..N..G.. Mahoney said. Then I tapped into his thoughts. N..O.., P..L..E..A..S..E.. D..O..N..'T... He was referring to tapping his thoughts, but I ignored him........"I'm remembering now, I think--what was it, oh, gosh darn it! It was right on the tip of my brain line. I'm getting flashes: one of us, shooting a.... Oh, I, I, I can't remember anymore....."

Meanwhile, all the other Martians had gotten used to having gravity pulling down, and walking. But the Aqua Gears were starting to run out of water. The Aqua Gears were our greatest advantage, but also our worst disadvantage. No one knew that the Aqua gears were failing until they were. Martians started dropping like guppies. We started calling a retreat, but most were left to die on the land. I was one of them. So was Mahoney. All the Martians that were on land died. Mahoney and I were left for last. We had seen everyone else die. Die, die, die! I was saying to myself. I was suffocating. So was Mahoney.

Suddenly, I wasn't suffocating anymore. I wasn't a Martian either. I was a Human. I saw Mahoney, suffocating, as a Martian; I blinked, and saw Mahoney, as the Human he is, or, was. Or, actually, is. We didn't have a psychic link anymore, but we knew what each of us was thinking. It's good to be Human.

We had a good way to aid the Humans--I mean us. We took some Martian bodies to an Army base. Surprisingly, the war between Human and Martian was still going on, and some one was winning, that was the Martians the team that was losing, was of course us. They asked who we were, and all we said was that we had a special contact with the Martians, and that we would spy for them.

They studied the Martian bodies, and did different experiments on each one. On one they did an autopsy , on another they did nuclear testing, on another they did biological testing, one they gram tested on, and one they tried to bring back to life with that old Frankenstein idea. Surprisingly, it worked, and they studied it alive.

As they brought the Martian to life, its eyes fluttered open. It tried to move its arms, but they were strapped down to the table so it couldn't get out. Its arms started shimmering.

"Point all weapons at the live Martian!" I screamed, because I knew what was going to happen next. The Martian's arms sucked into his body, and his legs did so too. His head shrunk as well. Then his body turned into a blob, and he squirmed. I pulled out my Plasma Pistol, and shot in the general direction of the Martian. It blew up a lot of test tubes and shelves, and disrupted one scientist's skin, so it creeped off of him, but nothing happened to the Martian. I looked at the corpse of the dead man. Around his bones, I saw a little bit of silver..... I blew the scientist's skeleton to Quarks. (Sub-atomic particles). There was a roar and trumpet of pain. I saw the Martian blob shrink to a pinpoint and roll away. I knew it was supposed to be a trick to make me think that it was dead, but I knew better. I shot it on the spot, right in the middle, and it exploded into little itty bitty pieces.

"Grab the pieces before they can reform!" I yelled. They gathered them all and put them into separate glass boxes. We put them all together in one place. Here were our mistakes: we put them in glass, and we put them together. The next thing we all heard was: Scklashhhhh! One of the pieces had made itself a stone, and had broken the glass! It joined with all the other pieces, and made the Martian again! It grew a machine gun out of its chest. I knew what it was. As I opened my mouth in awe, my cigarette dropped out.

"Get out! We're going to be Martians if ya' don't get out right NOW!!"

Then I had an idea. I took my lighter out, and lit it. I took a shard of glass and shoved it in the gears. I took the lighter by the bottom, and ran towards the Martian, being careful not to put out the flame. But there was a disaster. The light went out, and I couldn't light it again, because the glass had broken it. Instead of doing what I planned to do, which was to light the Martian, I wet him, with the gas from the lighter. Then I grabbed a Bunsen burner that was on high, and threw it at the Martian. The Bunsen burner burned my hands, and I was wounded for life; the fire caught the gas on the Martian, and it burned up.

Everyone had run. That is, everyone except me. The Martian had fired several bio. bombs at me, but they didn't affect me, because I already was a Martian. Sort of. Everyone was out of the lab, and when they came back in, it was a mess in here. I was panting like a dog, and everyone stared at me, then, they....... CHEERED! I had saved them all! We had a big party, and that's when I found out why we Humans never defeated the Martians. It was because they came back to life--twelve hours after they died.

We were hooting and drinking, and spitting beer out like fountains. We all got really drunk. The next thing I remembered was, in fact, just waking up. But I woke up with a biologically changed Martian right in my face. It actually had a mouth. It was a swelled-up circle, but still a mouth. It drooled. It pulled its lips back, and I saw little teeth all around. It lunged for my head. I moved to my left, and all the Martian got was the hard air shaped as a chair I was sitting in. I saw Mahoney. His face had been gnawed on, and you could see into his skull, because the front of the skull had been crushed. But there was nothing much to see in the skull, for there was no brain. I wept inside. He was the only friend I had. The only anything. Remember, the Martians had wiped out all of my family, because they colonized on Mars. I had no one. That Martian had been dead! But it killed everyone in the lab, and tried to kill me! I heard a growl.

W..E..L..L.., S..O.. C..A..L..L..E..D.. "L..E..A..D..E..R..". I.. W..I..L..L.. K..I..L..L.. Y..O..U.. N..O..W.. I was shocked! It knew! But how? I..T..'S.. S..O.. O..B..V..I..O..U..S.. Of course! I forgot that Martians had mind reading powers.

M..M..M..H..H..H..M...M.. W..E..L..L.., C..H..A..K..K..K..A..G.., I.. T..H..I..N..K.. I.. C..O..U..L..D.. G..E..T.. H..I..M.. F..O..R.. Y..O..U.. I.. C..A..N..'T.. B..E..L..I..V..E.. H..E.. F..O..R..G..O..T..

L..E..T..'S.. G..E..T.. H..I..M..

Y..E..A..H.., H..E.. D..E..S..E..R..V..E..S.. I..T.. From out of the darkness came a giant Martian. Now, Martians are actually double the size of humans, but this Martian was triple the size of a regular Martian! It lunged for me, and it grabbed my arms. Bio started running towards me, because it was a far way away from me. Then it dematerialized, and rematerialized right in front of me. The giant Martian, I guessed was the nuked one.

Y..U..P.., T..H..A..T..'S.. R..I..G..H..T.. P..A..L.., I..'M.. N..U..K..E.. I hate when they do that! W..E..L..L.., Y..O..U..'L..L.. H..A..T..E.. U..S.. M..O..R..E.. W..H..E..N.. W..E.. K..I..L..L.. Y..O..U..

"Shut-up!" I screamed. There was a snarl, but nothing else. Bio pulled his lips back, and I kicked him below the belt. I did the same with Nuke. Nuke let go of me, and I ran. I got out of that horrid place, and sat down on a huge rock.

Nuke and Bio had killed everyone else, but they figured that they could get me later. They consumed themselves with the job of destroying the lab. I knew where Nuke and Bio were, in the lab, but I didn't know where Frankenstein, Gram, and Autopsy were. Autopsy and Frankenstein were probably regular Martians, but Gram could probably change his color now. I suddenly saw a movement by the entrance of the lab. I thought it was a Martian, but the body was white with black for skin, instead of the array of colors that makes a Martian. It was Doctor Alex Sterling! The man that did the experiments on Gram!

"Alex! Come on over here!" I saw Alex move suddenly, not sure if he should come or not. Then he saw it was me, and ran towards me.

"Thank God you're alive, Grant," (sorry I never told you my name.) "I figured out how to keep the Martians dead when they die. As you have seen, the Martians come back to life twelve hours after they die. This is because they never really die."

"Huh?"

"The Martians have two hearts. One stops, and the other still keeps going. It keeps beating for twelve hours, while the other heart regenerates."

"If that's true, then how does the Martian's skin get normal again, like how I burned Frankenstein."

"What?"

"I've named them: Nuke, Bio, Gram, Autopsy, and Frankenstein."

"Oh. Well, it wouldn't matter; the skin would heal like regular human skin."

"But, I fried him to a crisp! He certainly can't come back. Can he?"

"Yes, I'm afraid he can. He probably would heal very fast, until it would be if you stuck your hand in a camp fire for twenty seconds. Then it would halve its speed, until it was normal again. He would probably be fine by now."

"O.K., I get that; but you are saying that we have to destroy both hearts?"

"Kind of. If we kill one heart, then the other becomes invincible; and if the other is killed, then one does not become invincible. The problem is, each Martian is different, and there is no way to know which heart will trigger invincibility until it happens."

"So I guess we're clueless."

"Yes." Then, suddenly I saw a movement in the grass, but it just looked like a picture of grass was moving along it. And the picture was in the shape of.... A Martian! I took my plasma pistol out "You don't know where both the hearts are," Alex told me.

"Where are they, Alex?" I whispered back.

"In the left hand and right foot."

"Strange aliens," I said. Then I shot the Martian's foot. But it was the wrong foot! I had shot the foot that was to my right! There was a gurgle, and Gram appeared as a regular Martian. Not that they were regular at all. It whipped its tentacles at me, and I dodged all the attempts to kill me. There was a split second when the Martian decided to take a breather, and I aimed my pistol with care. I saw exactly where the heart beat. I shot, and Gram fell, dead.

"Now to see if it worked," Alex said under his breath.

I walked over to Gram and disrupted all of its skin. The Martian skin is barely affected by plasma. I got all the skin off as Alex looked away. I picked up a stone and threw it at Gram's other heart. The heart squished, and Gram was totally dead.

"He's gone, Alex."

"You mean, I was right?"

"Yup, and I shot the right one first."

"This is excellent."

"But what about Autopsy, Frankenstein, Bio, and Nuke?"

"The lab is in smithereens, I think Bio and Nuke are 'dead'."

"Well, let's go find out if they destroyed the right heart."

"God forbid they didn't." And, they hadn't. So now, Gram, Bio, and Nuke were totally dead.

"Well, that leaves only Frankenstein and Autopsy were left.

Three days passed, and we hadn't found Frankenstein or Autopsy. We were trying to get closer to civilization. We were in a forest. I heard a rustling of leaves.

"Did you do that, Alex?" I said.

"No, I was about to ask the same thing. Did you do that, Grant?"

"Uh-uh."

"Shoot! Alright; get ready, Grant." I knew what he was going to say next "It might be a Martian." A bright array of colors flashed in the brown of tree trunks

"Um, I think it is, Alex," I said.

"Yup, definitely," Alex replied. After a gory, long, furious battle, I finally defeated both Martians. It turned out both Frankenstein and Autopsy were there.

"Now to find out if I killed the right part," I said. There was no reply from Alex; but he was fine, he just nodded in agreement. I took out my lucky stone and threw it at Frankenstein's other heart. It burst. I threw it at Autopsy's other heart. The stone burst.

"Ugh," I said.

"More than ugh, Grant; it's a catastrophe!" Alex screamed.

"Calm down, Alex; it's just one Martian. There are millions out there!"

"I don't care! We have to kill as many as possible!"

"Calm down, Alex. There is nothing we can do except wait for it to come back to life."

"You're right. I'm sorry."

"It's okay." We waited for twelve hours, and the eyes of Autopsy fluttered open. I had my plasma pistol aimed at the other heart--the left hand one. I disrupted his skin. Then I picked up another stone, and squashed Autopsy's other heart.

We reached a city. We went to the army base. We reported how to kill the Martians. The problem was that we had to get the Martians to attack Earth without ships--an actual pitched fight with the Martians. That would be hard. I knew we could do it, though. It would be close. Maybe only two people would survive--a man and a woman, like that ancient story no one really knows. What was it? Ah, yes: Adam and Eve.

Eighty years. Eighty years. Eighty years. That's how long it took for the war to finally end. I didn't think it was possible. I am one hundred and thirty five years old now. Humans finally won. Finally. Finally. Finally. I was almost right. But it wasn't two people; it was three hundred sixty-four people. The story of Jon, Alex, Elizabeth, Hannah, etc. etc.. Oh boy. I almost wish I hadn't survived the war. I now have a strange feeling in my chest. What is it called again? Oh, yeah, pain. I think it's an ancient problem called a heart attack. I am now dead.

I escaped the war between Martian and human. I did so in my spaceship form. Mars was a lovely home planet, but the humans found out how to keep us dead. Well, I guess in a thousand years, when we are a larger troop, we will join the secret Martian group in the oceans, and they will have grown as well. Then, we will fight back, and we will defeat the humans, because they die early, and will not reproduce as fast. We will outnumber the whole human race. We will win next time!