A/N: Well, here it is. It's not as happy as the prologue, but there've gotta be some sad chapters with a title like 'Beginning of the End'...
It had been nearly five years (by a Pemalite calendar) since the Chee had been programmed for humor. Weffy and Jath were sixteen and fifteen, respectively. Weffy and Jath were playing ballfall, the current sports fad. They were waiting for turns at tossing.
"Guess what?" Weffy asked Jath suddenly, her eyes lighting up.
"What?" Jath asked. He ducked a falling ball.
"They just found another alien species!" Weffy, whose favorite school subject was biology, announced excitedly.
Jath grinned. "Good! Maybe we can trade technology!"
Weffy rolled her eyes. "Of course *you'd* be excited about their technology," she complained good-naturedly, thinking of the billions of times her computer had been accidentally destroyed in Jath's quest for technological knowledge. "What about the abnormalities in their genetic structure?"
"What about them?" Jath asked, puzzled.
"The aliens are all the same! It's like they're all twins or however many there are! They might be clones, even--but we'll ask them soon. The distance scanners are so useful," Weffy said.
Suddenly Jath realized everyone was staring at them.
"Our turn!" he pointed out, dragging Weffy onto the field and promptly forgetting all about the latest species.
Weffy's mother, Hezzy, looked up at the alien ship, puzzled.
"Why don't they land?" she asked her husband, Noff.
"I'm not sure," he replied. The others in the group shook their heads, just as confused.
The group was one of four teams that welcomed aliens to the Pemalite world for the first time. There were several biologists, a few technicians (Hezzy among them), a doctor, and two or three politicians. None of them had ever heard of a species such as this--from the images in the only message the aliens had sent, they looked disturbingly like they were dangerous. The expressionless bluish eyes, the lava-like skin, the claws that could be pulled out of the way...all were disturbing.
But looks can be deceiving, of course. After all, the Chee could look like whatever they wished, and yet they were Pemalite at heart.
Hezzy noticed an appendage, a rather weaponlike one, point towards her group.
She started to voice a puzzled question, but was incinerated mid-sentence.
"No!" Weffy shouted suddenly, closing her eyes and covering her ears, trying to block out the images, wishing for the first time in her life that her talents weren't so strong. The two or three other psychics in the game looked horrified and confused.
"Weffy? What's wrong?!" Jath asked, instantly beside his best friend. "Are you all right?"
"They killed them! They killed them!" she said, confused and...feeling bad? She didn't have a name to put to her emotion, because Pemalites didn't feel bad very often.
"Killing?" He was confused. Why would anyone kill another? It was unthinkable. "Who?"
"They killed the welcome group! They incinerated my parents!"
By now, all of the Pemalites were grabbing any communicators they had. Radios (although those were practically obsolete), computers, anything.
"Here! I found something!" one of Jath's friends, a guy named Deh, shouted. Everyone crowded around his computer's h-screen, except for a few of Weffy's best friends (Jath, of course, included), who were trying to comfort her (and failing miserably).
"All Pemalites, Chee, and visiting creatures are to solar evac IMMEDIATELY! This is not a drill. Aggressive aliens are launching attacks NOW. Do not attempt to retrieve belongings from your homes--get out of the solar system IMMEDIATELY." Complete silence prevailed as the message started to repeat itself. Deh shut the computer off automatically.
After a few minutes of shocked silence, Weffy offered, "I've got a trans. We can all fit on it until we can get to the nearest colony."
"I've got one, too," someone volunteered.
The group quietly split up.
A/N: So, whaddaya think? Is it living up to the first chap? And do ya think Weffy's got a consistent character? I'm not quite sure. She keeps doing unexpected things, and I have to keep editing to make sure she's believable. I'm not sure I'm succeeding. Anyways, I'll probably have the next chapter up tomorrow. I've just got to edit it a bit more.