Twas the era before the era before Christmas. Polen was all the rage and the newest plant innovation. Allergic arthropods died off by the thousands, but given their reproduction rate that was just Tuesday for them. The slightly younger Sun of the Devonian washed over a land dominated by arachnids, vegetables, myriapods, more vegetables, and a single spherical cow that had travelled back in time and spent her last days complaining about the lack of grass.
But now we are looking at a quiet section of a river —a body of moving water that generally goes from elevated to low terrain, for those of you that never get out of the house— where a couple of fish have met. A male, a female. Both Cis. None Sus. They are of one mind, sharing an interest in becoming transitional fossils. Or, at least, in reproducing. This is the distant past narrated in present tense, because love deserves it.
The male shuffles his strong lobulated pectoral fins nervously as he approaches the girl, looking at her with eyes wide open and kinda… raised. His eyes have no brows or lashes, and neither do hers, which makes her makeup routine simpler, as she just smudges the mascara randomly on her face. In the shallow waters he waggles to her encounter. A nearby freshwater eurypterid rubbed his claws as he stalked behind a pile of rubbish. He doesn’t want to eat the lovers: he’s just here to seize any opportunity for blackmail, as he follows the Road of the Dark Ones, and black males have not been invented yet. He soon departs as he notices the couple of Tiktaalik aren’t engaging in an affair, but rather in a very awkward first date.
“So… do you want to watch a film?” The male proposes, underwater, unsweating due to the lack of sweating glands.
“I’d love to,” she says, and raises her snout out of the water to take a breath of fresh air. “Lungs are all the rage once more, eh?”
“Eh, old osteichthian evolutionary advantage. Nothing new under the sun.”
“Seeds. Seeds are new,” she counters.
“I’ll grant you that, Rosa, cutie. Let’s watch that film.”
With determination they crawl up the mud and along the bank, until they reach a place only deep enough for their bodies to be submerged. In front of them a tiny puddle lies, tranquil, almost ethereal due to how thin the layer of water that conforms it is.
“Pretty good film. You are good at spotting them, Ross.”
They see the surface of the puddle tremble, and need not to raise their gaze to see Chalazarian gliding past above them, obscuring the sun with his huge figure as he goes around his Paleozoic days doing primal deity stuff, which means… nothing.
“What a cloaca! He never considers he may interrupt a thin film of water between two...” And here Ross doubts, because he doesn’t know what his next word should be. “Tetrapodomorphs.” And once more, taxonomy saves the day.
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“Yes, that’s curious, friend,” she goes for the absolute obliteration of the poor boy. “We are ‘shaped like tetrapods’ but tetrapods aren’t… a thing.”
Tears don’t well in his eyes because their species has no need for ocular lubrication. HE averts his gaze, and sees a friend of his lugging some stone tablets from dry land and into the river. He is a madfish, venturing out of water when their bodies aren’t adapted for it, but Ross has a soft spot for him. “Yo, G, wassup.”
G turns his head slowly to look at him, flexing his neck because they had necks unlike other fish, and answered, pointing at the inscriptions of chromosomes upon the rock. “Genotype.” He says, helpfully, commalessly.
“I love him, he’s like a Pokémon.” Rosa says, and Ross cannot help but agree with a nod.
This depresses our heroic Tiktaalik even more, and he turns back into deep water, even before the film evaporates. He rows through the mud and fails to notice Rosa is following. Inadvertently, he bumps into Oseae, the biggest and meanest and most chin-sculptured of his people in a round kilometer. “Hello, Ross. Thanks for entertaining my little Rosa.”
“Your… Rosa?”
“Yes, we are dating. Rosa reveals, waddling up to Oseae to give him a peck on the non-lips. “now, if you excuse us, Ross, I need time alone with my….” She tops and begins hyperventilating water. “Oh god, the pain! the pain!” She says and opens her mouth wide.
“Ugh! It hurts, like a big stone had crushed all my bones!” claims Oseae, doing the same gesture, only closing his mouth when Rosa randomly explodes in a crimson cloud of gore and eggs ready to be fertilized. He loses no time, turning around to release his sperm, not minding the traumatized stare of Ross.
“She died…”
“Yes, but the eggs are still viable. Take care of my children, cuck. I love you... yes homo.” And so Oseae explodes too, rid of the all-encompassing pain that suddenly befell upon him and his lover.
“I will care for the eggs. I am better than you two, I will teach them well,” he swears, putting his heart into every word. “But… they also look yummy. A few ones missing won’t be a problem…” But he’s also a fish.
Hundreds of millions of years later, a boy (tetrapod) wielding a dog (Should-be-tetrapod) charged against a cultivating bodice (ex-tetrapod, ex-arthropod, ex-angiosperms, ex-rocks).
“Kalon, stop right there or I will slap you so hard your ancestors will feel it,” The Bodiceattva warned, preparing to deflect Kalon’s swing and counterattack.
And thanks to the Tiktaalik’s tragic love story, you know how that ended for Kalon.
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Across the world, looming over a sea of water, plastic and choked sea life —sometimes kinky— the alien flew inside a bubble of vital energy. His search for pimpable life in this planet had been fruitless: either the signal was misinterpreted or the message a lure to scam travelers. He soared higher, higher, penetrating the clouds without their explicit consent, but not being bothered by possible rape allegations because the clouds “wanted it regardless” and the local police station wouldn’t listen to such big whores of nature. Not because they discriminated clouds, but because there are few policemen in international waters and their job is to party while snorting copious amounts of cocaine, not enforcing the law. Cabaret had been a positive experience for the alien cultivator, and he had inadvertently murdered more prostitutes than I can count (I am not great at counting, though) but it was time to go and tell the council of his findings. He wouldn’t try to avoid a one-sided war. Maybe, if there was any sign of intelligent life in that place, it deserved to be wiped out for not having proper prostitutes. But that would take time. Some years. Enough for a chosen-one human child to grow into teenhood and save the world and shit.
And so, Cabaret survived their first monoalien invasion, that left a death toll in the dozens and a heartbroken goth Capybara in its wake.