A/n A bit of a style change in witing for me. Nevertheless hopes you enojoy.

You always hear kids asking questions, like, Why is the sky blue? Where do babies come from? Why do dogs chase cats? When is the best time to put up Christmas decorations? How many blueberries are in one muffin? Why is the ground necessary?

But those questions are dumb questions, because people already know the answers to them. Conspiracies, storks, animal hierarchies, September, eleven, and Jesus.

There are more important questions to be asked.

Now, try to think back to the last time a kid looked you in the eye and posited the question, "Mommy, how did the earth become invaded?"

And you probably didn't answer that kid, because you did not know them, nor are you old enough to be a mother.

And I bet you didn't have an answer, either.

But there is an answer, an answer untold, that will explain everything.

It began with a boy named Dave.

Dave was not the normalest of boys in the least bit. In all those elementary and middle school exercises in PE where the teacher lined up kids from most normalest to least normalest, Dave was always at the least normalestest part of the line.

He had always known he was not normal from the day he was born. Instead of hatching from an egg, as his mother perceived would happen, he was born live and breathing. There was something terribly wrong about him which the whole neighborhood was aware of from the start.

As he grew, Dave became extremely dissatisfied as a result of this. Everything he did was looked upon by all his friends and schoolmates as normal for him, precisely because he was so un-normal. It shamed him. He knew he had the potential to do great things. It was just that no one could see that.

This was only one of the things he was dissatisfied about. He was dissatisfied about his town. The sky was always cloudy, it was always raining, and it was always hot. And any one of us can tell you that if there's anything worse than rain, it's hot, sticky rain. And Dave's town had a lot of it. Always rain, always clouds, never sun. Sometimes he would read in books about what the sun was and what it looked like. Dave wished to see the sun, just once.

He was dissatisfied about his home. It was dreary and dull. He never had anything to do; he was always bored.

He was dissatisfied about his school. It was filled with the same tiresome people he'd known for years and years, the same tiresome people who'd come to know him, as well.

Nothing exciting ever happened around his town, not ever. He wanted to be the one to change that. The only problem was that Dave was known, to the people who knew him too well, to make horrible decisions. One time he decided to wear all his clothes in grayscale, just to spruce things up a bit. If anything, it made the town even more boring, because it caught on. But that is another story.

And this is where our story begins.

It had been raining that day.

It was also very hot.

Like usual.

The sun was nowhere to be seen. If such a sun existed at all. Like usual.

Dave was doing his homework in his home. Like usual. He was not one to do his homework in other people's homes. Some people might do that, but not he. He was afraid they might get angry at him. And while Dave was known to make bad decisions, that was one decision he swore off making, and he was very proud of that.

While he did his homework, he became distracted and slid his papers away. They, like much else, were too boring for his attention. He would have rather daydreamed. He hated this town. Hated these people. Hated this weather. He would have rather been going to a different school, one with more exciting people, people who dressed in colorful clothing and spoke to him like he was someone who dressed in colorful clothing, too. In a new school in a new place, he would have liked to stay quiet for weeks on end, letting people pass their first-impression judgments on him, only to spring up one week and start singing show tunes, revealing his true nature.

But none of that would happen. Not in this boring town.

With another sigh, Dave pushed his schoolwork away from his face. It was no use trying to focus. He would have rather taken a walk. I think I will do that, he thought; and promptly he took up his raincoat and boots, then headed outside.

For the small town that it was, it was much tinier in population than it was in forestage. Dave could count on all nine of his fingers the times that he had gotten lost in the forests of his town. It was always so quiet, so isolated, that if a tree were to fall, nobody would hear it, and so it would stand back upright, becoming disinterested in falling, due to the lack of attention.

So Dave noticed that, whenever he went on walks, he became easily distracted by taking many different winding paths branching off from the main road.

Easily – and like usual – he became lost.

Normally, he just retraced his steps to get back home, but when Dave turned around this time, he saw that the path behind him disappeared into the forestage. He couldn't find where he had come from.

Frustrated, he paced in circles for a minute or two, until he heard voices.

"I hear voices," he said to himself. If there were other people here, that meant one of two things. Either he was nearing an entrance back to the town, or the other people that were here were lost, too. Dave and they could be lost… together.

Hastily, he began running. A pain stung at his chest after a second or so. He was not very good at running. But he ran anyway.

Finally, he spotted the owners of the voices, and halted in his tracks just before they spotted him. The owners of the voices appeared very peculiar. They looked like frogs. He had never seen any frogs in his town who could walk on two legs and speak. This was very odd.

Curious but not vastly hindered by quandary, Dave took slow, quiet steps toward them, then began to follow the five creatures as they proceeded ahead.

"Um… I think the exit is this way?" the green one spoke, who Dave presumed to be the leader of the group, as he led the way.

"No, no, Keroro, you're doing it all wrong," spoke the red one in a gruff, much deeper voice. Keroro was not a common name in the town. Dave was confused. "We have to turn right."

"No, make a right turn at the following avenue," spoke the youngest one.

"Um, excuse me," Dave finally spoke up from behind them. "Are you lost?"

Startled, all five of them jumped, then slowly turned around.

"It's a Pekoponian!" the red one whispered.

"How did he spot us?" said the young one.

"How did I not sense him?" said the blue.

"Ku, ku, ku," spoke the yellow one.

"Fear not, comrades, for I shall take care of this," said the green one. "Gero, gero, gero. We'll just erase the boy's memories and he'll be good to go."

"Are you lost?" Dave asked again.

"No." He quickly hid a device behind his back, and the red one hid what appeared to be a large road map behind his back, as well.

"Well, I'm lost, too. Maybe I can help you find you're way out of here." Dave stuck out his hand. "I'm Dave."

"Keroro." Keroro, the green one, took his hand.

"KERORO!" the red one yelled.

"Yes, you are right. I just said that."

"Why are you – This Pekoponian – What?"

"Clearly this Pekoponian poses no threat," Keroro stated. Dave stood proudly. "Just look at him. He's practically as harmless as a mango… what with those dreary gray clothes and that funny-looking face."

Dave stopped standing so proudly.

"Aw, see what you did Sarge, now you made him look all sad," said the young blue one.

"He's just a Pekoponian. Let's erase his memories and get on with this thing," said the red one.

"Uh, sorry, but what is a Pekoponian?" Dave asked.

"It's you," Keroro explained simply, without any show tunes. Dave did not know how. He was sure that was going to be a show tune. But it was not.

"It is the word for human," he clarified.

"Oh," said Dave. That seemed accurate. That was what he was.

"Anyway, thank you for your offer, but we can find our way back out."

"Are you sure?" said Dave. "These forests are very hard to get out of. What you think is a path out might just really be a trail of leaves, leading to a bigger trail of leaves. You can never know. I will help you out."

"No, thank you," said the frogs.

Not listening, Dave picked up their map for them. Then he picked up what they were using as a GPS. "Oh, see, here was your problem," he realized. He turned the map the other way around, then handed the flight map and the video game back to them. "You had the map upside-down."

"Oh. Okay." Keroro scratched his head. The others did, too. He thanked them.

"Are you from around here?" asked Dave.

The five frogs turned to each other, each resonating like a barbershop quartet as they drew out the syllable, "Uh…" until the light blue one whispered, "This boy seems okay. I think he can help us. I think we should tell him the truth."

Keroro nodded. "All right, Zobobo."

"It's Zeroro."

"Dave, we are not from around here at all. In fact, you might even say we are foreigners."

"I see," said Dave.

"Actually, I would even say we are practically out of this world."

"I se – "

"Literally."

"Oh. That's – "

"We're aliens."

"Aliens?" Dave blinked his eyes. He had never met aliens before. There was a first time for everything, he supposed. "Well, what are you doing here on Earth?"

"We have come to invade your planet in the name of Keron," explained Keroro, with his hands on his hips. "You happen to be the first real Pekoponian we have come into contact with thus far. Your town being extremely favorable to our amphibian conditions, we decided to land here. However…" He slumped a bit. "…we seem to have… er… misplaced… our space craft."

"Well, I can help you find where it last was," Dave suggested.

"That is very kind of you," said Keroro.

"You're welcome."

Dave helped them use the flight map and the GPS videogame to find their way out of the forest and to where the space craft was located. First they broke apart the videogame console and used it to make sparks, then they set fire to the map and let it loose. Soon, the entire forest was gone, and they could find their way out.

"Oh, here's the space craft!" the tadpole of the group yipped. "It was behind us all along!"

"Well, I suppose I'll be going now," said Dave with a wave to them.

"Wait, Pekoponian Dave!" Keroro beckoned him back. "Before you leave, there is something we must implore of you."

"Yes?" Dave stooped down to his eye-level.

"Will you grant us permission to invade your planet? Will you endorse our global conquest? Will you not interfere with whatever we do to it in the process?"

Dave thought for a moment. He didn't particularly like his town. In fact, he was getting very tired of it. It might as well have been time for things to change a bit. Dave knew that people had always told him that he was not very good at making decisions, but he perceived that just this once, maybe it was okay to make a big one.

"I think it should be all right," he told them.

"Thank you, Dave," said Keroro. "You shall always be remembered as The One who Let Keron Take Over."

"Okay," said Dave. "Good luck. I have to go now, because I've still got some homework to finish up." He waved to them, then left.

The next day, when Dave awoke, he couldn't shake the feeling that something in his town had changed.

All the buildings were on fire. They were slowly sinking into the road, because the road was now lava. UFOs flew about in the air, zapping more buildings, obliterating anything and everything. The air reeked of smoke, acid, and dried tomato. People were screaming and grabbing their babies, even grabbing other people's babies if they didn't have any of their own to grab.

The world was in total chaos. The sky was stained a sickening orange. And, because of the thick, heavy smog that swept away the gray clouds that had for the longest time concealed the sky from sight, a small beacon of light shone through.

It was the sun.

Dave had never seen the sun before. This was the first time that it was out. He peered upward into the sky and looked at it.

It burnt his eyes.

And that was how the earth became invaded.