I woke up at seven, probably. I didn't have my watch and there was no alarm clock in sight. Well, when it's summer vacation, kids hide their alarm clocks. I got up slowly. Lilia had drafted to the other side of her bed.

Man! Her floor sure was hard! I had a crick in my back! It felt like I'd slept on wood. Oh, yeah. I had. She'd changed the carpet to wood. I'd forgotten. I rolled up my sleeping back and stepped in her bathroom to wash up and change.

When I came out, I was going to wake her, but I got a text from Larry. "Come down to office. Quick!"

I automatically gathered my things and opened the window. I was about to leave, when I turned around to Lilia. I went back to her and kissed her. I didn't want to wake her. She looked so blissful and beautiful and innocent. I grabbed a piece of paper from her notebook and a pencil. I explained to her that Larry had called me down to the office. Then I climbed out of her window and down the tree.

Good thing for me, no one had seen me. I raced over to the Palace and got into TIV. I only hoped that the engine starting up wouldn't wake up my family. I quickly got out of there and drove down to the office.

When I finally got there, Larry was waiting for me. "It's about time! Have I got news for you! I ordered some breakfast. I guess you need it."

"Yeah, I do."

"Sorry for calling you like this, but it's urgent."

"It's all right. Has it got to do with the cure?"

"Yep."

He went over to our coffee machine and made us two iced cappuccinos. "You do have to admit, though."

"Admit what?" I said, sitting at my desk.

"That this whole thing is the most historic breakthrough in all history."

"Ha. That's an understatement."

"Yeah. We have a lot more plants and more that are being planted. We should've a whole lot more by the end of the week. What do you think we should do with the medicine while we wait to announce it?"

He handed me my cup of coffee. "Well…store it in a safe place."

"Oh, yes! Gee, that's a great idea! Store it in a safe place at a secret location and pretend nothing ever happened!"

I glared at him. "Are you being sarcastic with me?"

"Yes!"

"Well, don't blame me! We've done everything we could! We have all the security measures in place. You can't expect miracles!"

"True, true."

Our breakfast arrived at that moment. I paid the guy and after he left I asked the one question that had been troubling me. "So…when should we announce it?"

Larry shook his head. "I don't know. That's going to be your decision. The clock is ticking. We just need a little bit more time so we can have more of the stuff. Just a little more time."

I stood up and started pacing. "Yeah, but how long?"

"How about two weeks?"

I suddenly remembered Lilia's family. The way her mom was crying. The look on Lilia's face and the way it changed when I told her and how happy she was when she'd gone to bed with me next to her bed on the floor. "How about one week?"

He sighed. "One week, it is. Sir, yes, sir!"

"How do you think people will react when we announce it?"

He exhaled deeply and sat at his chair. "Initial shock and skepticism."

"Huh. I'd never thought of the latter. How do you think companies like CVS and Walgreen's will react?"

"Ah, they might get angry. And they're probably going to send in snipers and do to you what they did to Martin Luther King Jr. or Mahatma Gandhi or another one of those. But too many have died for us to worry about that. Too many and too young."

I nodded. "True. How do you think other countries will react?"

"Well, I don't see why they should feel threatened. But they will get jealous."

"Ha! That's for sure," I said, munching into my scrambled eggs. "I hope they don't send a massive coalition invasion."

"Well, that's another reasons that for the past few months or so, we've been running some serious military exercises. And we especially don't want Dr. Ork to find out."

I should mention a little bit about him. He's a member of an evil group known as the Intergalactic Evil Organization. Or the IEO. He makes living weapons. Yeah, that's right. Living weapons. The last time we saw him it was in Antarctica about thirty years ago. He'd made plans to make living tanks and planes. Good thing for us, we stopped him and destroyed the plans.

"Want to try and kill him?"

"No way!" I said. "That's like killing Hopper Popper." Oh, that's another villain. He's not that evil. He's more of a nuisance. He always wears a black tuxedo and black top hat. He's about 6 feet 6 inches tall and very, very skinny. He has sharp, piercing gray eyes and a long, ugly witch-like nose. He's a master at reverse psychology, riddles, and getting us into sticky situations. I mean, on one occasion, he actually managed to kill him, but at his tombstone, we forgot to get rid of his hat, and that's where he escaped.

"Oh, hey, remember what happened with Hopper Popper back in…when was it? It was in 1977."

I shook my head. "No, what happened?"

"We had him surrounded in his bunker, even underground. And well, he asked if he could let him write his will. And we thought it over and we thought it would be cruel if we didn't let him. So we gave him paper and pencil. And you know what he said?"

"What did he say?"

"He said, 'Watch out! Heads up!' Don't you remember what you did?" Larry said, almost laughing.

"No, I don't." I actually do remember but let's just say it's not something I'm proud of.

"We all expected attacks and when you and everyone else were covering their heads, we dropped our guns and he got away."

"How could I forget? It was on The New York Times. Why These Things Nearly Went Extinct. I had that newspaper banned here for about ten years."

Larry laughed. "That's Hopper Popper for you. He attacks when you most expect it, he doesn't attack when you least expect, so what can you expect?"

I stared at him. "What?"

"See? Even when we talk about him he gets up all mixed up."

I laughed. "Yeah, amazing." At that moment, I got a text on my phone. It was from Lilia. She said, "I saw your note. Thank you SO much for staying with me. I loved it! It felt so great! I was kinda sad you weren't here. I wanted to pillow fight with you. But I understand. Go and get them! Save the world! I love you forever and ever! Bye. XOXO."

I blushed just looking at it. I felt warm and happy. Then Larry went on talking about another one of our enemies. "You remember Hexxus?" He's the Master of Pollution and he feeds on oil, smoke, and fire.

"What about The Infestors?" I said. Those are a group who tried to begin illegal oil drilling in Amarkia and sell it while also stealing gold and diamonds.

"And all the terrorists in the world?"

"How about Ogthar?" He's an evil guy who's currently locked in his stone prison about five miles beneath one of our volcanoes. It's in a rock cave and the key to unlocking him is buried in place so secret that it is said that the people who hid it don't remember where it is.

"And then there's The Outsiders," Larry said. I immediately had a flush of terrible memories. Those were the ones who were linked to the death of my parents. I sent them into exile when I returned to the throne in 70 CE. I was only eleven. They're currently on two islands in the Eastern Pacific. Nobody knows it exists and they've been so long there that they've degenerated so that they've become wild dinosaurs again.

"We've actually seen Flames recently," said Larry.

"Really?" I said with interest.

As the name suggests, Flames is sort of a monster in the form of fire. It has a face and can extend arms and legs and is very destructive. "Where did you see him?" I asked.

"We saw him out in Pluto."

"Really? I bet he's only a small fire out there."

"Almost nothing, actually. Ironically, he's purple, the strongest type of fire."

"The strongest?! How do you explain that if he's in Pluto where it's freezing and dark?"

He shrugged. "I don't know."

I finished my breakfast and stood up. "Well, enough of this. Back to our original problem. Announcing the cancer cure."

"Yes, well. When we do announce it, the whole IEO is going to find out. Every one of them."

"I know. That's not comforting."

"But I don't think they'll want to destroy the recipe. I mean, they have people with cancer, too."

"That's true. And not all of their civilizations which they own are evil."

"Yeah," he said. "Take for example the Red Criminal. He had originally planned to make a system so that his King would have empathy for him in the Royal Court. And sadly, it turned out to be an army that shot him and made him evil."

"So he used it to his own advantage and now he's evil."

"Yep. He's currently in Alaska somewhere. Not that he's a threat, but he's there somewhere."

The Red Criminal is a human. He's about seven feet tall. He wears a detective-style raincoat. Like Sherlock Homes. Except he doesn't work against crime. He works for it.

"And then," said Larry. "There's The Sub." He's sort of the IEO's left hand at warfare, especially at seawater warfare.

"And the right hand would be…" I said.

"That would be Hexxus."

"And who's the Head of the IEO?"

"Uh, that would be Rexy." Rexy, is not a T. rex, as you might think. He's a Giganotosaurus. He's olive green in color with creepy, evil-looking gray eyes that make you have nightmares, especially when that's the only thing that comes up on the screen. Gray eyes, just staring at you, with the reflection of his innocent victim from far away.

He's actually my personal archenemy. Need I say more?

You may be wondering, how about evil female characters? Or mistresses of evil, as they call them? Well, they have plenty of those. Larry was just starting to talk about them, too.

"There's the Dragon-Girl," said Larry.

"Oh, yeah! I remember her. She has her good twin, right?" I, uh, actually used to have a crush on her good twin.

"Well, she had."

"She had? You mean she killed her?"

"Yes, and besides, she's not really Dragon-girl anymore. Now she's Dragon-woman. And then there's The Poison." Now, The Poison is this shape-shifting object that can turn itself into a woman. It works by bribing and seducing. And…I will not go into any details about the seducing. I have enough trouble having nightmares about sirens that lure me and then rip me to shreds. Just watch Ice Age 4.

Anyways…

"Those are the bribers and stealing masters of the IEO," Larry explained.

"And who would be the financial or economic masters?" I said.

"That would be Rocky. He's the finger-bender. He's got the money to bribe." Rocky was more or less my alternate personal archenemy. He's a terrorist and…well, rapist. A cruel, heartless, sadist, monstrous, inhuman rapist. On repeated occasions he's tried to rape my sister Kathy. Thank goodness he never has, but…well, you know how it makes me feel. I love my sister so much and…well, you know. I'd rip Rocky to shreds or die before letting him get near any girl. Even Kylie.

I sighed. "Well, we sure do have a lot of enemies besides all the terrorists on Earth and our enemy countries and the rebel groups here in Amarkia."

"Yeah, but our most dreaded enemies, and by that I mean those who fight with armies…are the Night Terrors."

That struck me. I'd never heard of them. "Night Terrors? Who are they? I've never heard of them. I don't remember seeing them on The List."

"Well, they're the newest ones."

"Newest ones?! When did they join? I mean, uh…"

"Well, they aren't really new. They're more like unknown. We don't know too much about them."

This was getting very interesting to me. "Well…what do we know about them?"

"Well, they wear knight's armor. But they have no physical bodies. They're just like floating knight's armor."

I shivered at the thought of that. That's sort of upsets me. The thought of clothes walking around. Empty. "F-floating?"

"And the only thing physical about them is their red eyes. And with black pupils. They also resurrect a certain time after being killed. And they clone themselves and teleport."

"Stop it! Stop, Larry! You're going to make me have nightmares!"

"But it's true!"

"I don't care. I don't want to hear it!"

"But, I…"

"SHUT UP!"