In The Back Of Your Mind

What Happened Next

Koulder woke up lying down on a bad of grass and broken twigs. Where am I? He felt no pain, just a sense of being watched. Then he remembered. Ebony, the forest, the boy who had tapped on his shoulder...

It was music to his ears when he heard Everest groggily saying:
"Koulder? Ebony?"
Two voices said "Here."
"Oh thank god! What the hell happened?"
"Dunno to be honest."
"Some pale dude tapped me on the shoulder then put a finger on my lips and then I woke up. That's as much as I remember." A warm, calm voice spoke in Koulder's head.
"Accurate."
"Who said that?"
"Who said what?"
"They can't hear me. But they have one of their own."
"Why did my head just speak to me?" came a very confused Everest
"Told you. Hi, by the way, I'm Blood. You're gonna be my puppet. Hope you don't mind."
"What's a puppet?"
"It's a thing with my species. We can usually only survive on other planets with a puppet that we inhabit. You guys were the first people we saw on this planet and we were nearly dead, so we chose you. The girl over there-" Koulder looked over at Ebony. "My good friend Ink is inside over her, and Glob is inside that other person. We won't hurt you, we just need your bodies to survive. Oh, and I'm sure that we will find a way to talk out loud, it'll make this whole thing a lot easier. We share thoughts, by the way, so don't start... you know... just keep it PG"
"You can stop now." said a disgruntled Koulder, "Ev, Ebony, apparently there is some species inside of us. We are their puppets and they need us to survive."
"Yeah, we know," called Ebony, "this Ink lass told me."
"And me. Dude called Glob," came Everest's voice.
"Can't wait for when they can speak through us"
Koulder's throat suddenly went cold. Then, Blood spoke.
"Testing, testing. Can all humans here me?"
"Koulder, what the hell?"
"It's Blood, he's found how to speak."
"That's his name?"
"Of course he has." came another sarcastic response from Everest.
"Xerourians, you just have to control the box thing in the neck. That should allow you to speak." instructed Blood. After a few seconds, and to Blood's delight, two more voices could be heard. One was loud and jolly, the other was nervous and feminine.
"Ayyy, Blood! Nice one!"
"Yeah, well done Blood."
"Koulder, would you be so kind as to take us to your place of residence?"
"Um, sure?"

As the now doubled in size group trekked back to Koulder's house, the Xerourians explained what had happened, the bombing, the escape and Gigavolt's death.
"We don't really have an action plan," Glob was saying, "We can't go back to Xerour, and we can't fly anywhere else cause that's not what escape pods are for, they only do one journey. We could be getting tracked down by Xero for all we know."
Who's Xero?" questioned Ebony nervously.
"He created Xerour, he's basically a god. We don't know if he escaped or if he's dead. We don't know if anyone came here other than us, either." explained Ink.
"Not a lot to go off," pointed out Everest.
"I know, and I apologise on all of our behalves. But I'm sure Glob can cobble together a device that lets us know if any other Xerourians landed here."
"There's been nothing on the news about any more landings, though," pointed out Koulder, perplexed.
"I can see why, I doubt the humans in charge round here would want people to know your planet was under what probably looks like an extra-terrestrial attack. Glob will sort that out." soothed Blood in his ever-calm voice, "our first port of call should be tracking down other Xerourians."