Dangerous Days of Daniel X
Michael Ledwidge
 Daniel X, who has no other last name, has the best superpower ever: The power to create. He can create real objects, including people, with only his mind. In addition, he has super-speed (he outran a truck travelling at 100 miles per hour) and super-strength (he can flip a car in a somersault). He is also granted an extra long memory. When he was 3 years old, Daniel's parents were brutally murdered by a praying mantis-like alien called the Prayer, who came in search of the List of Alien Outlaws on Earth. When Daniel's parents wouldn't hand it over, the Prayer killed them. Daniel survived only by transforming into a tick and grasping onto the Prayer's dreadlock hair as he fled from the burning house. After he lost his grip on the Prayer and fell off, Daniel vowed to kill the Prayer for the death of his parents, and returned to the site when he was 13 to recover the List. Twelve years after the murder of his parents, fifteen-year-old Daniel X has taken up the task of his parents as Defender of Earth. In the sewers of Portland, Oregon, he faces and defeats number 19 on the List, Orkng Jllfgna, in hopes of working his way up to number 1: The Prayer. Later, Daniel is confronted by the Portland Runaway Juvenile Unit, and he escapes with the help of his "parents" whom he conjured up using his powers. He then leaves to go to Los Angeles in search of number 6 on his List, a shape-shifting alien named Ergent Seth who resides in Malibu. On his way to LA, he confronts an agent of Seth's who has a message for Daniel: Don't go to LA. Daniel ignores his command and continues on toward LA. He spends that night in the woods, camping with the "friends" he created: Joe, a motor-mouth and competitive eater; Willy, a stocky and headstrong fighter; Emma, a compassionate environmentalist; and Dana, the love of Daniel's life.The friends that Daniel creates, are actually a distinct memory of his life on his home planet. They all died in nursery school when their building collapsed. The next day, Daniel arrives in LA. With the help of his parents and "sister" Pork Chop (Brenda), he rents a house. His parents warn him not to go after Seth, because he has never gone after an alien in the Top 10. That night, while he is asleep, Daniel is haunted by one of the many vivid nightmares that he has, in which the Prayer warns him not to go after Seth because the Prayer wants to get him. The next day, Daniel decides to go to school, a first in Daniel's life; because of his power to telepathically access human knowledge, school was never necessary. At the end of the day, he bumps into Phoebe Cook, who is also new to the school. He walks her home and, following ideas from her mind, asks her out on a date. Daniel decides to search the city for clues about the whereabouts of Seth, and stumbles in upon a child-slave and drug-dealing operation. He goes to the one in charge of the operation (who is not Seth, but may be a lackey of his) and wipes his mind and makes him believe he is a Pentecostal preacher. The following day after school, Daniel walks Phoebe to his house, which he finds destroyed by two alien cats. The cats are regents of Seth's, and warn Daniel to leave LA. After attacking him, they flee. Soon after, he is contacted by Seth, who again warns Daniel to leave LA and never come back, or Seth is going to kill him. The next day, Daniel goes back to school and, so as not to seem too smart, purposely flunks a History test. He literally runs into Phoebe after the test. Phoebe has something to tell Daniel. She feels terrible for keeping secret the reason she had changed schools. A few months before, Phoebe's sister, Allison, had been abducted without a trace off of her own driveway. Daniel suspects it to be the work of Seth. On his way out of the school, he is attacked by some of Seth's henchmen. After incapacitating them, Daniel hurries home, where he finds his mom—only he didn't intentionally create her; he speculates he created her from his subconscious. Later that day, Phoebe calls Daniel to a coffee shop and gives him Allison's case file, which has details of other abductions that form a pattern, which Daniel describes as forming "an almost-perfect connect-the-dots circle with Malibu at its center." After his house is compromised (again), Daniel feels it is unsafe to return, so he goes to spend the night with Phoebe. They plot to go to Malibu the following day to investigate Allison's disappearance. Phoebe lets him sleep in the closet to avoid detection from her parents. The next morning, Daniel awakens to find Phoebe missing. He finds Phoebe near the school, but something is wrong. He talks to her, and she transforms, revealing herself to have been Ergent Seth in disguise all along. Seth deactivates Daniel's powers, shoots him in the stomach, and drags him through the desert and into a spaceship. The ship flies away from Earth. Daniel is put into a cell for the duration of the trip. He summons his friends, and they begin reconnaissance. During a poker game with his "family," Daniel figures out that his mother had been pregnant when she was killed, which also killed the unborn Pork Chop. Daniel is taken to the bridge as the ship comes to Alpar Nok, another planet very similar to Earth; it is Daniel's homeworld, only it has been taken over by Seth and his henchmen, killing or impoverishing most of the inhabitants. Daniel escapes from a landing party and flees to under the wreckage, where the few survivors live. He meets his grandmother, Blaleen, who removes the bullet from his stomach and allows him to rest and heal at her house. After regaining his strength, Daniel goes after Seth again and creates a thousand summoned soldiers, but they eventually fight one-on-one. Daniel misquotes Homer's Iliad by comparing this fight to Hector and Achilles rather than Paris and Menelaus. During the fight, Daniel turns into a tick and enters Seth's head via his ear. He transforms into an elephant inside Seth's head, killing him instantly. Daniel leaves Alpar Nok and returns to Earth, as it is his duty to defend it.