In 1999, there lived two aliens – Hydro and Strikers. They were best friends and both loved hopball. They also liked to invent things and their latest device was the tracer which could trace anyone, anytime. They kept all their inventions in a laboratory. They also started working on a new invention – a spaceship which they named MP390. Both of them worked hard on the spaceship and were delighted when it was ready.

One day, Hydro told Strikers that even though the spaceship was ready, he wanted to ensure that it was working fine.

“I think I should take the spaceship for a test drive”, said Hydro.

“Oh yes! I think you are right.”, replied Strikers.

So the next day, at the crack of dawn, Hydro set off for testing MP390. His route was from Mercury to Earth, and then back. But alas! When he was between Earth and Mercury, the spaceship started slowing down and even before five minutes had passed, it crashed into a house on Earth.

It was night time. Hydro disguised himself as the person there using his supersonic copy device and hid his spaceship in an old field. Clueless about what to do, he started living on Earth as a beggar. After four days, a worried Strikers asked Hydro’s mother about him but she was not aware of his whereabouts and was worried herself. Finally, Strikers went inside the laboratory and tried to locate Hydro using their tracer device. When he got to know that Hydro is on Earth, he chucked the tracer in a bag and took CDC2010 (another spaceship) to set out to look for his best friend.

Soon, Strikers reached Earth successfully and he too disguised himself as a person. The next day, Strikers took out his tracer and searched everywhere for Hydro but somehow could not find him. This continued till the third day when he arrived at a place where he would find his friend. He searched the various communities but could not trace Hydro. Strikers almost gave up when his eyes fell on a person who seemed to be a bit different from others. Strikers curiously went up to the person and noticed few letters on his hand.

“HYDRO” – he read.

“Are you Hydro?”, asked Strikers in alien language.

“Yes!”, exclaimed Hydro.

Both the friends were delighted to meet each other. Then they went inside CDC2010 which they tied to MP390 with a rope. They reached Mercury safely. They made further improvements in MP390 and  soon it was ready for travel. Just after few days, MP390 was launched formally and it became the best spaceship Mercury had ever known.

//This story has been submitted by 8 year old Shreyas who resides in Hyderabad. He had written this tale as a part of  BTB Creative Writing Classes which I conduct in my society. The kids were asked to write a story related to friendship.//