Chicago, September 2000-

She hated being left on her own.

Mya Lilian Peters straightened her spine after she dumped the contents of her hand into the nearest trash can and then took a good look around the garage that she and her Aunt Charlie ran during the day before she had to go to sleep and rest up for her night job in between going to school. To help her Aunt out a while back she had decided to work to both pay rent and save up so that she could get her own place.

Because she knew that living with her Aunt put a strain on her.

She sighed tiredly and closely examined the room.

The brick walls needed to be repainted, the concrete floor was devoid of any oil or grease stains. Her Aunt's new set of tools were all put up. And she was done with the weekly maintenance of the lift, the soldering tools. She had checked to make sure that her Aunt had over a months supply of radiators, motors, muffles, bolts, screws, radios, gyros exct.

She had even made sure that her Aunt had enough metal, wire, and gear to make her own little army of military issue tanks!

And now that she was finally done for the day...she was already bored. Maybe she should have left some grime on the floor so that she could scrub it up later. There was a sudden loud bang from outside causing her to jump and turn to look at the garage door that she had left wide open and could only gape in horror at the five thugs standing in the garage door.

What the hell?

Three figures sat on a roof top over looking the city's twinkling lights.

So this was the planet that they were supposed to make their new home on. It was polluted. They could smell the toxic, poisonous chemicals in the air that they were now breathing. Could taste the poison on their tongues. It was nothing life threatening to them.

They could easily adapt their bodies to filter out the poisons.

But the earthlings couldn't. And unless they learned to dispose of their toxic waste more efficiently then they were condemning their planet and themselves to death.

"So this is going to be our new home..." The eldest said, sounding none too thrilled about having to live on this strange new world for any length of time.

"It's nothing at all what I imagined it would be." The second oldest said as he leaned against the handle bars of his bike and looked thoughtfully at the scenery around them.

The youngest made a humming sound as he brought his K'oneskic root cigarette to his lips and inhaled deep, holding the smoke in his lungs for a moment before exhaling and handing it off to the elder of their little pack.

The elder took the cigarette and put it to his lips and breathed deep then handed it back before saying. "There are so many lights-"

"One for every one hundred people or so." The youngest of the three said in an almost awed tone.

"I did research on the people before we came here. Humans have an over abundance of water, plant life, and most of all females. They also have the ability to birth up to five- In some cases seven young at one time." The elder said.

The other two whistled. Knowing that that ability could be useful to the males of their race. Especially since they only had five or six females among their kind that had escaped being killed off and sold as slaves and were still capable of child bearing.

"Ouch."

"No shit. Those poor females." The second oldest said sympathetically. The elder nodded his head in agreement before saying.

"I also did research on how human males treat their females and offspring and found that while a majority of them treat their life mates and children well while another majority of them tend to beat, abuse, rape, and sell their mates and children. For money and drugs."

The other two turned their heads and looked at the elder with horrified expressions on their faces.

Good god. Was he serious? Some humans treated their mates and offspring in such a way? The very idea of doing anything so violent to a female- no matter her race- with the intention of causing pain or suffering of any kind was totally abhorrent to them.

"That's...horrible..." The youngest said finally after a minute or so.

"That's beyond horrible." The youngest said softly as he dropped his cigarette onto the concrete ground and crushed it beneath his boot.

"Time to go, my brothers." The second oldest said as he turned on his bike and revved it up a few times as the other two turned up their bikes and waited for him to make the first move, watching as he drove his bike off of the top of the building before following him down to the streets below.

"What do we do first?" The youngest asked curiously. Ignoring the question for now as they rode down the deserted street. The three checked out their new surroundings a bit more thoroughly, their pinkish colored eyes sweeping the ruins of various buildings on either side of the street. The area that they had crashed their ship in looked like it was a condemned zone.

There were a few street lights, ruined and crumbling half demolished buildings-

It was after about thirty minutes or so that the second oldest's bike began making a funny grinding sound. His brother's looked at him funny behind their visors as he snarled, "Snagging gyro! Escaping the ship before the crash must have loosened it or something."

"Chill out sweetheart, as soon as we find a place to stay I'll fix it for you." The youngest said in amusement as his bro pulled his bike over and twisted around one way then another to look for the source of the busted gyro. Unfortunately he had parked under a terribly dim light and wasn't able to see very well. But the source of the sound sounded like it was on the right side.

Growling in annoyance he had to resist the urge to get up off of his bike and kick it when their older brother hollered. "Hey! There's a garage! Maybe someone there can fix your bike."

"Is the place even operating? It seems like it's pretty late here. And I heard that humans keep different schedules than us." The second one said tentatively as they looked over at the building. They could see shadows moving around in the bright light, but what was causing those shadows was a mite vague to them due to the distance.

"I'll go check it out!" The youngest volunteered happily as he popped a wheelie and rode off. Leaving his two older brothers sitting there shaking their heads with irritated and aggrieved looks on their faces.

"God he's annoying."

"No shit. All guts. No brains." The eldest sighed and nodded his head in agreement before asking.

"How is he even still alive?"

His younger brother turned his head and looked at him then growled. "I think the better question is why haven't we abandoned him to be raised by Wal-dra Bats by now?"

"Because we agreed that doing that to him, while funny, would be cruel to the Wal-dra Bats. And we decided to save it for our worst enemy's because they would provide more entertainment. Besides, he's the runt of the litter and we gave our word to mom-"

"That we would keep him in one piece and not use him for target practice."

"Or feed him to anything he couldn't get out of."

"Or beat him with in an inch of his life." The eldest said with a roll of his eye.

"Or let him get into trouble."

The two fell silent for a second and the eldest leaned over into his brother's personal space and asked in a hushed tone. "What does that leave us with?"

His younger brother flipped up his visor and thought for a second before giving him a wicked smile. "Very creative and viscous practical jokes."

"Thank you momma for giving us an out. He's taking his sweet time isn't he?"

The second oldest sighed wearily before suggesting, "Let's go see what the hold up is."