Ulysses could hear his children and their friends screaming all around him, helpless to do anything about it because he was trapped himself. Ulysses had tried to hold back his own screams, if only to offer the kids some hope. But Ulysses had never felt pain like this before. In fact, to him, his voice seemed to be the loudest of all of them.
Just as Ulysses was sure that the agony would drive him insane, the pod that had closed around him suddenly burst open. As he fell to the ground, Ulysses wondered what would happen to him. He found that he knew about these creatures, they were called the Radam Empire.
They were aliens, but there seemed to be only one currently on the planet. It was strange to Ulysses when he thought about how much this day had changed from how it had started out. He could still hear his children screaming, and hated himself for not being able to do anything about it.
Noticing that his clothes were completely gone, Ulysses started looking around the perimeter of the area for something else to wear. The place was so strange, so alien. The plants were like something out of Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, and Ulysses now knew that the Radam Empire used specifically engineered plants for almost everything.
Ulysses supposed that it wouldn't be too far off to call the Radam body snatchers too, since that was pretty much what they did. Of course, the Radam didn't replace you with a pod-person that acted exactly like you did, but with an evil armored warrior that only shared some of your personality traits. Mostly the bad ones.
I wish there was something I could do to help them, Ulysses thought.