• Tara had been running for what seemed like hours. She was running, pathetic as it might have seemed, from a clove of garlic. Her gray skin blushed close to black as she ran through the village greens, terrified out of her wits by the strange monsters seemingly impenetrable skin and noxious breath. She was beginning to feel lightheaded, her thoughts curving and coiling around on themselves like snakes. The Zurg had been bad. The Rejected Olympics had been bad. The Gambino thing had been bad. The zombies had been bad. The prosecution had been bad (though quite short). Her cousin had died. But nothing, as far as she knew, had been as terrible and humiliating as being chased by a vegetable.
    She had originally tried to smash it with a crowbar. The crowbar had dented. It had then proceeded to belch at her, terrifying, poisonous fumes.
    She was, at this stage, seeing light. She knew, somewhere in her addled brain, that this was a warning sign of exhaustion, and that she should stop and hide before she even thought of doing anything else. But then the light faded. A voice yelled "Get out of the way!" there was another flash of light. The Garlic was, miraculously it seemed, dead.
    "Oh. My. God." a girl reached out her hand, "Are you okay?" It was nighttime and most humans wouldn't have been able to see a thing, but this girl had spotted her right away. They looked somewhat alike, both skinny as waifs with black hair and greyish eyes, but that was where the similarities ended. The girl was bone pale, as opposed to Tara's medium-purplish grey, with angular, slitted eyes that bored into Tara's wide ones, seemingly unintentionally, and as a matter of course, hair much longer than Tara's bob.
    "I'm Jean," said Jean, "and you really shouldn't be out here without a ring"
    "A ring? What would I do with a ring? And besides, do I look like I could afford one?"
    "No, a ring like I'm wearing. They draw from the same power source as the Animated. G-Corp has been handing them out like free pens.They're the only thing that works against the Animated."
    "The what?"
    "Oh, dear, I had better explain. Come with me."....