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"Good riddance," Arens Prometheus said as he took out the last of the crowd he was fighting off. It was four in the morning; almost two hours before he normally was up.

He leaned up against a tree. The sun was just starting to come up; it seemed like it would have been a normal day in California.

Except that it wasn't.

The normal life the small town he lived in wasn't so 'normal' anymore. Ever since the Animated showed up recently, normal life was a thing of the past. Now every Gaian in the area--and possibly the entire country--were fighting them.

He looked down at his hand. He had five rings on it; Iron Will, Fire Rain, Hot Foot, Keen Aye, and Ghost. His avatar looked like a demon: Sentinel's skin, stone titan arms, spikey blonde hair that looked a lot like Goku's, flaming wings, and fire armor. He gripped the bowstaff with his non-ringed hand, ready for another attack. So far, none; as of right now, the people with mostly healing rings were handling the casualties.

"...in there? Hey! Powercrazed! Are you in there?" A girl said, waving her hand in front of his face. "Your HP is low. Need help?"

He looked up. Of course; he didn't have any healing rings he could use right now. "Yeah, very." He said. The girl's username was Chaos_Sorceress, and most of her rings were healing- and defense-oriented. However, her Dervish ring was super strong--mostly to make up for the lost offense. She was a known Yu-Gi-Oh fan and MCJROTC cadet from a neighboring school.

She activated her Diagnose ring. As she worked her magic, Arens got a better look at her outfit; black stockings, short black skirt, blood red heels, a red coat with a red brooch, blue rose tattoo, golden wings, Defiant rose hairpins, violet hair, and she was a vampire. And he swore he knew her.

"There's that," She said. "Looks like you'll be pretty well set--" Chaos was cut off by screaming; normal people were getting attacked by the Animated. "Damn!" They both said in unison.

Diving right into the fight, Arens activated his Fire Rain ring. Naturally, the creatures went down. Mostly. Some of them were still standing...unfortunately.

"Great! What do we call these?!" Arens' friend, Dresden asked as he shot out the Animated.

"No idea," Arens said. The new attackers looked like tangles of Christmas lights, all slithering along the ground like snakes. And it looked like they weren't going to be easy to beat.

"Nothing I've ever seen before," Chaos said, activating Dervish. It didn't take all of them out. To make matters worse, it would take her ring a bit to recharge. "I've really got to get another attack ring!" She activated Pot Lid.

Dresden took a hit. He was sent sprawling to the ground, and the snake-thing went after him. "Dresden!" Arens shouted, but Dresden didn't respond. He took aim at the snake, and let off with Hot Foot. The only thing that did was get it even madder.

At least it's away from Dresden, Arens thought as he combated several of the 'snakes' at once.

"GET OUT OF HERE!" A male voice shouted. It was followed by a flood of flames. A very high-powered Hot Foot it appeared; and it made very quick work of the snake-things.

He walked up to them, sighing. "Looks like the last of them," He muttered. He was vampire with spikey blue hair, and was wearing a checkered shirt, red and black striped tie, black jacket, blue jeans, brown casual-dress shoes, and had two revolvers in holsters on his waist. "So, you're Powercrazed and Chaos_Sorceress. A couple of newbies directed me to you guys."

"Sorry, but who are you?" Chaos asked. "You know who we are, but we've got no idea who you are or where you came from."

The vamp looked at them. Then blushed. "Ah, yeah. Amria always gets be on that..." He held out his hand. "Tobias Ueki. I'm what's called a Shard."

Chaos shook his hand, as did Arens. "What's a Shard?" He asked.

Tobias lifted his hand. He had five rings on it; one for each finger. The same was on his other hand. "A Shard is basically a compressed bit of Gaia formed into a humanoid shape. We're kind of a go-between for you world and ours. We're natural born Gaians, but we can swap between worlds because of some wierd power we got when the Animated started getting really violent.

"In other words, I guess you could attribute us to the NPCs on the actual site, as we don't play the game but are actual guardians of Gaia and its residents--and in turn, you guys." He took a breath. "There's a bunch of us all over the place in all different forms. There's vampires like me, humans, the Zurg, dark elves, orcs, centaurs, and all other races from Gaia."

"So you're like the advisors?" Arens asked.

"Uh, pretty much." Tobias said. Once he got a good look at him, Arens thought the guy was not much older than him. But with vampires, a person can never tell their exact age.

Chaos beat him to the punch before Arens asked something stupid. "How do we get these off?" She asked, holding up her hand. "I know in the zOMG game the rings get bonded to our avatars and the same thing happens here, but how to we deactivate them? I don't think it'll go over too well if everyone's running around as their Gaia avatar."

Tobias took a close look at Chaos's rings. "Huh. I've never had that problem." He said. Chaos glared at him. "Um, yeah...that's another thing. Shards don't have their Rings bind to them like you guys do apparently. I found that out the hard way; one of my rings got knocked off by one of those OMFG things, and it ate it. So, I'm now missing a defensive ring. And my best one to boot..." He yanked on the rings, getting nothing but a yelp of protest out of the girl.

"Yep, those are pretty well stuck..." Tobias said, letting go of Chaos's hand. "I wasn't in Gaia long enough to get the full briefing before we had to be sent out. All I know is that there's some kind of program on your PDAs that is supposed to get them deactivated, I just missed that part..." He unclipped his PDA from his waist and typed in a code.

The face that appeared was that of a red-headed, grumpy dark elf. "What is it?" She asked grumpily. "What do you need this time, Tobias?"

He grinned. "Nice to see you too, Amria." He said. "Hey, what's that program on the PDA that's supposed to deactivate the Rings on regular Gaia members?"

The girl on the other end--Amria, Arens assumed--rolled her eyes. "Idiot. You should have showed up to the briefing..." she growled. "Okay, it's tricky. You've got to go into the main menu and bring up the Rings bar. Once you do that, you've got to go to the Capabilities section. There you'll find a little touch-screen that lets you type in a code--usually the person's password--to deactivate the Rings. They can't be taken off, but it'll halt the energy flow and take the Rings offline. You've gotta go through the same procedure to activate them, so it's a royal pain in the a**. Got it?"

"Yep, thanks girl." Tobias said.

Amria grunted. "I'm finishing getting thing's wrapped up here in Freeport right now--if you're gonna call in the middle of a crisis, you'd better make damned sure it's pre-recorded!" And she cut the connection on her end, making the screen go blank.

Tobias slipped the PDA back onto his belt. "Get all that?" He asked. Arens and Chaos_Sorceress nodded. "Good. Let's hope it works..."

Arens took out his PDA, and went straight to main menu. He followed the instructions and deactivated his rings. Chaos did the same.

As they morphed back into their regular forms, Arens looked back to Chaos, expecting to see an unfamiliar face. The thing was, it was even more familiar than he could have imagined.

"Dahlia?!" He asked in disbelief.