CALLING ALL- LESBIANS?!?!

The kids needed dinner. Should she stop somewhere? God no, forget that- she didn’t have the money for that, especially not with the very overdue electric bill hanging over her head. If she didn’t pay that tonight, there’d be hell to pay if Katie, Zack and Cory couldn’t play their Minecrafts—oh, SHIT, and there was that parent-teacher conference next week! She’d just started this job, she couldn’t already be requesting time off!

Down and down she went into herself, lengthy to-do lists uncoiling before her. Like the heads of the Hydra, she’d lop off one item, and five more appeared in its stead in the neverending nightmare of day-to-day MUNDANITY-

KLUNK.

The van hit a pothole, and dipped. The ensuing pitchy swells of radio static finally brought her back to reality. With a grunt, Karen slammed her fist on the dash. The sound cleared harshly, vehicle shuddering from the force. Her attention left the road for only a second.

When she looked up, headlights. Oncoming. No—not headlights.

Eyes. Yellow. And the glimmer off of a very unmistakable gauntlet, with large segmented fingers ending in barrels, crowned with a spiked knuckle duster.

Him.

Karen’s heart clenched.

And she punched the gas.

The van accordioned against the shape in the road, which gave more than she expected, flung further down the road with weighty clanging. Karen was jerked into the steering column, the little air left in her lungs forced out on impact. She about fell out of the vehicle, circling the devastation. The van was certainly nothing to look at, with its stripping paint, and tires that tilted this way and that with each rotation. It was on its last legs on a good day, but it was reliable.

As if to confirm her worst fear in this precise moment, the engine sputtered, and belched out a curtain of smoke.

Karen dragged her nails down her cheeks.

Here lie The Van, reduced to scrap metal.

Karen suddenly became all too aware how alone she was, despite present company.

He’d put himself back together. He’d come to take her out, and then he’d go after the kids—

Her muscles stiffened, strung tight as a bow in anticipation of his thundering approach, her inevitable dance around a hail of bullets, and for his steel fists to beat the life out of her. This time, for good. Here also lie Karen Katphish. So eager was she to run her ex over, she’d trashed her only means of a quick escape on some backwater-woodsy road in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.

Karen swallowed her fear. It didn’t go down easy, but neither did she. If she was dying tonight, it sure as hell wasn’t going to be without a fight.

She grit her teeth, and whirled around.

No gunfire greeted her. Only the last croaks of static from the van’s radio. Or...no. Not quite. Her ears swiveled. No, the van wasn’t the source. It was ahead, coming from whatever—whoever—she’d hit. Karen’s claws extended with each step she took toward the sprawled heap, only getting close enough to get a better look. What she’d seen hadn’t been a figment of her overparanoid imagination. It was hisgauntlet, hell, his legs, too. Who they were attached to, rather, weren’t attached to, wasn’t quite what she expected. Crumpled before her was a tall, lanky figure with an oddly-shaped head, limbs twisted in and over themselves like a fleshy pretzel.

...Wait. She knew this guy.

Karen squat next to him as bafflement replaced caution, though her claws remained unsheathed. There wasn’t exactly a wealthof citizens with old-fashioned television sets for heads in the Mushroom Kingdom, so there was no mistaking it: it was that kooky shop-liftin’ Rookie from Walmart!

How’d he end up with his limbs, though?

And what the hell was he doing here, runnin’ around in the streets at night?!

Karen straightened herself out, and gave him a nudge with her shoe.

“Hey! Hey, Rookie!” she called.

No response. She took the opportunity to look him over. The screen that’d previously displayed his face was badly cracked—whether that’d happened before or after she’d hit him, she couldn’t be sure—and displaying the distinct audiovisual flurry of white noise, apparently not tuned into any particular station. His antenna were broken too, drooping quite sadly this way and that. His clothes had seen better days, and that said a lot considering the last thing she even recalled him in was some kinda tacky orange jumpsuit. Her breath inadvertently quickened as her eyes landed once more on the parts that didn’t quite fit: his parts, undeniably attached, but worn almost decoratively. Like a-

Like a trophy.

Karen took a step back.