By: Annie Yu

“Guard the ship!” the captain howled from across the deck. “We’re under attack!”

I huffed. It was the second time this week that we were under attack –normally we got attacked once a month. What happened to our enemies in trading? Why were they so desperate to take down our ship?

With a click, the cartridge of lasers popped into the rifle, and I propped it on my shoulder, pointing it towards the nearest tentacle thing. Well, their official species name is Plokamia — tentacles in Greek– so I just called them tentacle things.

I clicked the trigger and a laser shot through the tentacle thing, dismembering it slowly. I winced and looked away – yes, it was a disgraceful gray blob of suction cups with a blobfish head, but I still couldn’t bear to look at the sight.

Luckily for me, there was another target six feet away from me. In my panic, I raised my gun and spam clicked the trigger and thousands of tiny little green spears spears siphoned themselves to the tentacle thing, spearheads pointing towards the tentacles. I jumped up onto the roof of the cabin and stared down. It was utter chaos.

Then I realized something.

There was a fire. There was a-

“FIRE!” I screeched at the top of my lungs, pointing towards the fire while running to the opposite side of the roof of the cabin. “THERE’S A FIRE!”

All heads turned to me, both crew and invaders, then the direction my finger was pointing. If I thought there was chaos before this, then I didn’t even know what to use to describe this. All hell broke loose. The plokamia began wrestling to get off the ship, tentacles suctioning to the sides of the ship as they searched for their rescue vehicle (which, apparently, was on the ship?), overturning this and that as they went. The crew members… well, they all collectively rushed to get water and raced to the fire, spilling most of it in the meantime.

Just when I thought the situation couldn’t get any worse, it did. The ship began tilting, and I could feel myself slowly slipping off of the roof, towards the Void. That wasn’t good.

I hung on for dear life, faced with an empty half of the ship and the terrifying black mass that surrounded, well, everything. Things definitely can’t get any worse now, I thought with a grimace.

Guess it was my (un)lucky day, because just then, I slipped.

Oh, did I mention that there was a planet between me and the Void? Oops.

Next thing I knew, I landed in a cloud of purple-silver dust. It wasn’t even dust – just miniature sparkles. For miles and miles, it was all miniature sparkles. All tiny little sparkles… probably out to get me too. Good think I was sitting, because I was three seconds away from screaming.

Where in the plokamia was I?