Author's Note: Hey guys, I am really happy that you are all still reading these episodes. Upon reading over these early chapters again, I have decided to do a rewrite of sorts that will be fixing up any loose ends or character issues. I found that there were some moments that almost demanded me to rewrite them due to their "Mary-Sue" nature, so try and bear with me. Hopefully these updates will make it all even better. It's amazing what a few years of practice can do to your writing skills.

Ah well, I hope you enjoy the new and improved chapters. Oh, and you will be able to tell if they are new if I have added a date stamp at the beginning of the chapter.

Enjoy guys!

Date Updated [21/06/14]

The Tales of Bella Lumic Prequel: The Day the Earth was Stolen

Chapter One

Bella Lumic yawned and stretched underneath her warm blankets. She opened her eyes and blinked in the soft sunlight that shone through her curtains. Sighing, she rolled onto her left side and looked at her clock that sat beside her lamp on the bedside table. She stared at the clock face for a few moments before the time actually registered in her brain; 08:10am.

"Ahh!" she gasped as she sat bolt upright and glancing down to her wrist watch to double check that the time was right before throwing off her blankets, jumping off her bed and running to her large wardrobe; she'd have to skip the shower this morning, she thought as she quickly undressed. She pulled out a clean pair of jeans, a plain t-shirt and underwear and put them on so fast that even a ninja would be envious.

She quickly put her black Converse All Stars whilst she hopped out of her room and into the hallway before crashing into the opposite wall. Groaning, she moved quickly into the bathroom where she brushed her teeth, washed her face and pulled her strawberry-blonde hair into a loose bun. She gave herself one last look in the mirror, shrugged, and then ran back into her room, glancing again at her watch: 08:15 am. She grabbed her black overcoat and red tartan scarf from the chair in the corner of her room and threw them on before grabbing her car keys and her black Batman bag off her desk.

She ran down stairs and turned left into the kitchen, where she found Mary (who was her guardian after her father had died) reading the newspaper at the kitchen bench.

"That's yesterday's paper," Bella said, walking past her to the fridge.

Mary's small, unintelligent eyes looked to Bella, who was now raiding the fridge. "Why haven't you brought today's in?"

"Over slept," she answered, grabbing an apple and shutting the fridge door. "I'm taking my car," she added, making a point to say that the car was hers.

Mary frowned at her. "I was going to take Mark into Bath today."

Bella's jaw tightened slightly. Seeing as I'm the one who puts petrol in the car, she mumbled angrily to herself, feeling put out as she always did, but didn't say anything.

"What?" asked Mary sharply.

"Look, I'm sorry, but I really need to get to work," Bella said, heading for the door that led outside. "How about I drive you both up to Bath on Tuesday?" she proposed before taking a bite of her apple and walking out the door, not waiting for Mary to give an answer.

As she walked down the steps she shivered slightly. There was a slight breeze making it a cool morning for October and she hurried into the garage to start her red Vauxhall Vectra before opening the garage door. 08:25am; she was supposed to be at the bookshop by eight-thirty to be ready to open at nine. She'd be lucky to get there before open, she thought to herself as she jumped in the driver's seat and reverse quickly out of the garage.

She reached Tunley and entered the back of the shop with five minutes to open. Her boss would kill her if he'd have known she'd been this late. Throwing her bag, coat and scarf into the backroom, she went to the front of the old shop and unlocked the front door, where she found one of her regulars waiting for her.

"Hello, Mr Hastings," Bella smiled warmly, opening the front door to let the old, grey-haired man in.

"Good morning Bella," he said happily as he walked in past her, "Beautiful day out."

"Sure is," Bella said, glancing outside and seeing the cloudless Saturday morning. "Just give me a yell if you need anything."

"A cup of tea would be nice," he told her playfully as he walked towards the old war biographies.

"Oh, I'd love one thanks!" Bella laughed as she walked back towards the counter.

She heard the old man chuckle fondly as two more men walked in, both greeting Bella with a smile. She sat herself down behind the cash register and sighed. Spending her weekends working in bookshop wasn't exactly a bad thing, in fact she felt that she had stumbled onto the job rather brilliantly, but she would have liked to use her time to study for her upcoming A-levels in a few months. To say that she was panicking about them was a slight understatement. Her best friend Sally refused to study with her due to the fact that Bella would try to impose her own intense study ritual onto Sally, which ended up causing the pair of them to freak each other out. Bella smiled slightly at the thought; she was only a few months away from complete freedom. No more school and no more needing to look after Mary and Mark. She would be free to go to university and study what she wanted, and do what she wanted, and be who she wanted. That was why it was so important for her to get the best possible grades.

Still thinking of all the possibilities once she was at university, Bella sorted through a box of new arrivals that her boss hadn't managed to open through the week. At around nine-thirty she could have sworn she felt the ground shake ever so slightly. She frowned and looked around, Mr Hastings catching her eye.

"Did you feel –"she started but she was cut short.

The ground gave an almighty shake and everyone in the shop was knocked off their feet and all the shelving and books fell on and around them. A few moments passed before Bella stirred shifting layers of books off her and sat up, looking around her to try and work out what had happened. She was already bruising and sore from the heavy books falling on top of her (they had been a shelf of hard-copies) and she grabbed her left wrist which was twinging in pain.

The book shop was in disarray. All the old wooden shelving was either leaning against the walls or lying on the floor, all the books and magazines were thrown everywhere and one of the shop windows had been smashed from one of the bookshelves. Everything was a complete mess.

Bella quickly stood up and climbed over the bookshelf closest to her to try and help Mr Hastings out from under all the books.

"Is everyone okay?" she called, helping the old man to his feet. She felt so unsure, hardly grasping what was happening.

There were groans for answers from the five other people in the shop; there were the two older men, a teenage girl and a mother and a son.

"What the hell was that?" the young boy exclaimed as he emerged from the books.

"Language, Brock." The mother said reproachfully.

The teenage girl stood up and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, because hell is a word you need to be worrying about, Elaine."

"Mr Winters," Bella asked quickly so that an argument didn't break out. "Mr Scott, are you okay?"

"Yes lass," Mr Scott said as he sat up.

"Although," Mr Winters' added. "I think we've all been knocked out for a while."

"What makes you say that?" Elaine asked.

"It's night time!" said Brock as he pointed out the window.

Brock was right in a sense; it was dark outside and even the automated street lamps had come on, but Bella knew it wasn't night.

"It isn't night time," Bella said quietly. She had checked her watch the moment she had regained consciousness, when she had first noticed how dark in the shop had become.

"Of course it is Bella," Mr Scott laughed. "I think you've hit your head particularly hard!"

"Look at your watches," Bella told them nervously as everyone glanced down to their wrists. "It's only been five minutes since the earthquake; its twenty-to-ten in the morning!"

Everyone gasped as they realised that Bella was right. She wasted no time and climbed over the bookshelf and the mountain of books beside her to reach the front door, which she opened quickly. Despite the warnings from everyone inside the bookshop, she walked outside to find that the breeze from earlier had disappeared, cars crashed into trees, houses and each other, alarms from shops, houses and cars going off and several people walking around, dazed and confused. She looked up to the sky and found herself gasping in surprise.

As she had expected, there was no bright moon in the sky or even the sun. What there was however, was twenty-six very large and very close new planets. Bella's mouth dropped as she took in the sheer magnificence and beauty of the site above her. Some of them were bright green, others seemed entirely made up of some kind of gas, but they all looked so strange and unreal.

Suddenly the air was filled with terrified screams as the people around Bella looked up to see the planets of different colours, shapes and sizes and Bella didn't blame them as her heart beat increased. This had to be some kind of joke; they all had to be hallucinating. She wondered if that were possible, a mass hallucination that everyone in town was experiencing. Maybe someone had laced the mains water with some kind of drug; she thought with a frown, biting her lip, but then shook her head. That seemed too elaborate, plus it sounded like everyone was seeing the planets as well. But surely, Bella thought incredulously, looking past the new planets and seeing far off stars, we couldn't have travelled to a new part of space?

"Bella!" someone yelled making Bella look behind her.

"Sally?" said Bella as her pixie-ish looking best friend collided and wrapped her arms around her.

"Did you feel it too?" Sally asked Bella, who managed to escape from her best friend's tight hold.

"Of course she felt it, Sally," said a young man two years older than them as he walked over to them. "I reckon everyone in Britain felt that one!"

"I wasn't talking to you, Dylan." Sally snapped at her older brother. "What do you think caused it?"

Bella stared at the two of them in disbelief before looking up. Sally and Dylan glanced upwards too and Sally gripped onto Bella's arm and gave a shrill, panicked cry while Dylan gasped and took a few steps backward.

"How –"Dylan managed to say. "How did they get here? How did all those planets appear in our solar system?"

"I don't think it is our solar system," Bella said quietly, having dabbled a bit in astrology in her spare time as she looked back up at the amazing sight above her while he looked down to her sharply. "If you look past the planets you can see that we're in a new part of space. A new solar system, a new galaxy."

"Try not and look so happy, eh?" he said darkly, making her look to him; she hadn't realised that she had been smiling.

Bella's eyes focused on a bright, white light that appeared on the street behind Dylan, which only she seemed to notice. A young blonde woman suddenly appeared holding what looked like a massive, black water pistol. Bella looked at her in amazement (How many more impossible things could happen today, Bella thought unbelievingly) and took in her appearance.

The woman looked like she was only a few years older than Bella and she was only a foot or so taller. She wore black pants, a pink top and a purple leather jacket and her hair was down. Her hazel eyes met with Bella's for a moment before, in another flash of white light, she disappeared.

Bella blinked a few times in disbelief before she realised Sally and Dylan were having a conversation. "What?" she stammered.

"I said," Sally said stiffly, not liking being ignored on the best of days. "If the sun is gone how are we still alive?"

Bella and Dylan exchanged an unsure glance before the phone in Bella's shop rang. She frowned as she ran back into the destroyed bookshop, climbed over all the books and shelving to reach the desk and picked up the old fashioned phone breathlessly.

"Hello?" she managed to say.

"Bella, oh good you're okay!" said the familiar voice of her boss. "Did you just get that earthquake?"

"Yeah," she said. "Bruce, where are you?"

"I'm over in Cardiff at a book event," Bruce said airily. "How did the shop hold up with that earthquake?"

Bella hesitated, frowning. "I honestly think that the shop is the least of your problems right now."

"What do you mean?" he asked and Bella could hear confusion in his voice.

"Take a look outside," she told him.

There was a silence for a few seconds before he responded.

"Oh my God!" he exclaimed before the phone line went all static-y and a new, unfamiliar mechanical voice said "All communications will cease! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!"

She quickly hung up the phone before she heard the same voice yelling the words exterminate over and over again on the radio beside her. Everyone in the shop looked to her.

"I think," she said slowly, attempting to keep her voice steady. "We should all head home…"

"Its them aliens again, I bet!" Mr Winters whispered darkly. "Martians,"

"Well, Mr Winters, I'm certainly not going to disagree with you," Bella said before making sure each of her customers got out of the shop safely.

"Bella, what are you doing?" Sally yelled as Bella ran back into the shop, disappearing from hers and Dylan's site.

"Getting my bag, coat and scarf," she yelled back.

Sally rolled her eyes. "It's not even that cold!"

"Spoken by someone who's wearing a warm coat," Bella said, emerging from the bookshop in her knee-length black overcoat and her black tartan scarf. "Where'd you guys park?"

"We didn't," Dylan told her. "Our neighbours dropped us in."

Bella rolled her eyes before there was suddenly more terrified screams further down the road. Bella spun round and saw, in the sky, several flying-saucer looking space ships before three bronze, extra-large (they were taller than Bella) salt and pepper shakers appeared out of nowhere.

"What the –" Bella exclaimed before they each yelled "EXTERMINATE!" and shot a dark green laser beam at the building closest to them, blowing the gas supply up. Bella gave an alarmed cry as Dylan pulled her and Sally backwards, a shock wave blowing over them.

"Fancy coming to my house?" asked Bella faintly, Sally and Dylan nodded fiercely.