James Freberg was not a very lucky person.

For the last week, he'd been running across the great state of Kentucky while being chased by some monsters. That was the thing – he wasn't even sure what they were. There were only three things about them that he was sure of, however: one, they were extremely durable; two, they were extremely strong; and three, they looked like eleven-year-old girls.

James had learned the hard way about their durability, evidenced during one encounter in a Radioshack. Man, those girls could take some helicopters to the head. No matter how much firepower he tossed their way, they couldn't be stopped, or even slowed down. And that was literal firepower – as sixteen-year-old James had recently learned, he had the power to summon fire whenever he so desired. He assumed that fire was a pretty useful monster-fighting skill, but luckily for him, just not against these monsters.

I just need to figure out how to destroy these things, James said as he raced along the side of the highway, throwing his head back every once in a while to look for them. His hair, pitch-black, kept getting in his eyes. A sick thought hit him. Even if I do destroy them… where do I go from there?

As if the universe wanted him to understand that he wasn't even going to get as far as that, one of the three eleven-year-old girls appeared right in front of him. That was something else they did. They were really fast.

"You thought you could avoid us?" she said.

James grinned wearily. His clothes were in tatters, he was bone-tired, and he was running out of options. "Well… yeah, to be honest. That's what I was going for." James turned around to run but found the other two girls behind him with their arms crossed. It would've been extremely intimidating except… they looked like eleven-year-old girls.

One of the smiling pre-teens shook her head at him. "Silly, silly boy! It's always the boys that think they can take us down. Right, sisters?" Her sisters nodded in agreement.

"He is kind of cute though," the third one chimed in. Her sister punched her, evidently hard. "Ow!"

"Marceline, what do we always tell you!" her sister groaned. "We kill the heroes. We don't flirt with them!"

James flashed Marceline the most charming smile he could muster with yellowing teeth and dirt all over him. "Marceline, don't listen to her! We can run away together. Just you and me. We can ignore the age difference. Things will be magical."

Marceline giggled. "Sorry, but Barbara would have my head!" Pointing towards the sister standing in front of James, she added, "And Ruth-Marie absolutely detests men."

Ruth-Marie nodded in agreement. "It's true. I absolutely detest men. They're good for nothing scumbags!"

It was hard for James to take these preteens complaining about men seriously. He sighed, and raised his hand, a fireball sparking to life in his hand. "Ladies, I really wish it didn't have to come down to this," James said begrudgingly. Still on the side of the highway, the winds from the passing cars made the fireball flicker.

Ruth-Marie laughed. "Puny hero. You think your fire can defeat us? We only have one weakness, and it isn't something as ridiculous as a hero's fire!"

"Well," James argued, "I don't imagine a face full of fireball is going to feel too good." With that, he flung the fire on to Ruth-Marie, who quickly ignited. James nimbly threw himself out of the way, just in time to watch Barbara and Marceline throw themselves at where his body had been moments before.

The flames died down on Ruth-Marie; her clothing was mildly charred, and there was a burn on her left leg, but seemed fine regardless. She hissed at James; Barbara and Marceline stood up, and the three sisters linked arms with each other, Ruth-Marie in the middle.

"We've had enough of these little games," Ruth-Marie hissed, speaking in a voice that was far more demonic than her regular sing-song. "It is time to take you out."

James, not liking the sound of that, threw a panicked fireball at the girls; Marceline waved her hand and the fireball went flying into incoming traffic, where it narrowly avoided several incoming cars.

"Go ahead," Barbara cackled. "Throw more flames, little hero. Let the mortals perish for your foolishness. Or surrender to us."

Without even realizing it, James' arms ignited in flames. He shook his head in resignation; if this was really where his life was going to end, he'd prefer to go down fighting. "No offense to the lovely people of whichever state I'm in right now," James replied, "But there's no chance I'm surrendering. No chance in hell."

At that exact moment, James thought that his bravado had magically caused some chain reaction, because an arrow came whistling through the air, collided into Marceline, and she evaporated into dust. "Sister!" Barbara and Ruth-Marie hissed demonically. And angrily.

As they prepared to lunge at James, a black Ford Focus pulled up next to the awkward trio. James was aware of the dust that was formerly Marceline stirring on the ground. The back door to the car was opened by some girl; some guy was in the driver's seat, and another guy was in the passenger seat, the window rolled down and a bow and arrow notched. He turned to James and said, "Fire boy, get in."

James had seen some pretty weird things in the past week, so without question he dove over the girl and slammed into the other side of the car. The girl closed the door behind him, and the guy swerved his way back into the main lanes, to the honking of several angry drivers; luckily, traffic had really died down at 2:30 a.m. – as the car clock said – so they didn't have to deal with much trouble.

"They can run really fast," James spat out as the car began to pick up speed.

Bow-and-arrow guy, unbuckled, leaned out the car window, ready to let loose an arrow. "Yeah, we caught on to that."

The girl sitting next to James smiled sheepishly. "You probably have no idea what's even going on! Sorry. And sorry that we took so long to find you. Kentucky just has that monster smell, I guess. Our satyr got pretty confused."

The driver bleeted – bleeted? – and added, "It's not my fault! Kentucky, man. It just smells like monsters."

James had a million more questions to ask, foremost among them if anybody had food on them, when someone knocked on his window. James turned to see a hissing Barbara throw her first through the window, and suddenly a strong fist was crushing James' neck.

"MOTHER OF SHIT," the girl exclaimed. Without consciously thinking about it, James' neck set on fire, and Barbara hissed and retreated her hand, and quickly fell behind the car. "MOTHER OF SHIT AGAIN, PUT OUT YOUR NECK," the girl screamed.

"SORRY," James shouted back as his neck suddenly became flame-free.

"Hephaestus?" the archer guy called back to the girl.

She shrugged. "I don't know, Hephaestus hasn't had fire kids in ages."

"There's that Leo guy," the archer replied.

She thought about this before smacking herself on the forehead. "That's right! Of course, we haven't even introduced ourselves yet!" James became vaguely aware that their car was traveling very fast. Looking at the speed gauge, he was surprised to see their speed reaching 200 MPH. "I'm Corinne Lowe," the girl explained with a grin, extending her hand. James shook it nervously, expecting something weird to happen. Thankfully, nothing did.

"I'm Luis Cornell," came the guy – satyr? – who was driving the car. "And this is Todd Kimmel."

Todd nodded. "Sup?" he asked. Before he got a response, he was leaning out of the car window and quickly shot three arrows. "Hit one," he called to the people in the car, "But the other two are coming quick."

"Other two?" James asked, puzzled. "Listen, I still have absolutely no clue what's going on, but those creepy twerps have been on my dick for a week. There's only three. And you killed Marceline, so…"

"You're on a first-name basis with them?" Corinne questioned in exasperation, and James offered her a sheepish grin.

Todd turned his attention to James. "Sucks for us, but monsters aren't staying dead the way they're supposed to. For some reason, these monsters want you pretty bad. Every time we kill them, well, they don't stay dead for long. Monsters always come back eventually, but usually it's weeks, months, maybe even years before they can get their shit together."

"Great time to learn you're a monster hunter," James commented, inwardly cursing his luck.

Corinne chuckled. "Monster hunter? Nah man, we're not monster hunters. I mean not technically. Monster hunter does fall in to the job description, don't you think, Todd?"

"Busy!" Todd called back at her. He was leaning out of the window again and shooting arrows; they were now going at 350 MPH, James observed.

"This guy must have some marksmanship," James commented as if they were having a nice conversation on a nice Sunday ride through a nice ordinary town in a nice ordinary state that wasn't Kentucky and didn't smell like monsters.

"It's an Apollo thing," Corinne replied with a roll of her eyes. "Ugh, he's so full of himself sometimes, I swear! 'I can hit a bulls-eye from 500 feet away, I can kill moving preteens while going at 400 miles per hour', blah, blah, blah."

Luis called back, "Todd does like to toot his own horn. Another Apollo thing, I guess."

Still with a million questions, and no answers about a hamburger, James asked what he felt was his next obvious question. "Apollo thing?"

"Incoming," Todd called back calmly from the passenger seat. The entire car shook, and suddenly Marceline's head popped out of the floor, centimeters from where Corinne's feet were.

She grinned deviously and licked her lips. "Three demigods, what a nice feast. And a satyr thrown in for an appetizer! Delicious!"

"Hey!" Luis called to her, maneuvering the steering wheel, as Corinne began kicking Marceline's head.

Corinne raised her foot high and then slammed it down on the top of Marceline's head; what was intended to be a final hit resulted in Corinne cradling her foot and yelling, "OW!"

James laughed at Corinne's mishap. "Feels a bit redundant to mention now, but uh," James explained, still laughing, "but these bitches are really durable. They only have one weakness. I think it might be arrows."

Todd sighed, rummaged around at his feet, and then tossed something back to James. The knife stuck in his thigh. "Sorry about that!" Todd called back with a laugh as James yelped in pain. The car shook again. "But their weakness is Celestial Bronze, idiot. Not arrows. That's a fucking lame weakness, arrows." James whimpered in pain from the knife wound. "Oh, don't be a pussy, fucking stab her," James ordered as he leaned out the window again. They were getting dangerously close to 500 MPH.

James pulled the knife out of his leg with a yelp of pain and eyed Marceline. "You wouldn't hurt a little girl, would you?" Marceline whimpered with puppy dog eyes. In response, James brought the knife down on her, and she evaporated into dust.

As James whimpered again, with his wound beginning to leak blood over the seat, Luis called back, "Todd's right, you're being a pussy."

Corinne playfully punched James on the shoulder. "Who's laughing now, bucko?" James glared at her and smacked the foot she'd used to kick Marceline. She yelped. "Yeah, that shit's broken. Fuck you, fire boy."

"Yeah, you got a name?" Luis called back. 490 MPH. "Ten more to hyperdrive, Todd!"

James put pressure on his knife wound, a trick he'd learned that would stop the blood from pouring out. He was feeling a bit woozy; the knife had stuck deep. "James. Uh, James Freberg."

Corinne nodded. "Nice name."

"Yeah, sure, now about this huge loss of blood I'm having…" James called.

Todd pulled in and turned to face them. "Alright, the other two are too far back to catch up now. The third one is coming in quick." He passed a cracker each to Corinne and James. "These are gifts from dad. Eat them, and you'll be healed. Something about him and medicine and shit. And a bad haiku."

James shrugged and put the cracker in his mouth; instantly, he started to feel better, and he could watch the wound closing before his eyes. Judging from Corinne's reaction, her foot had healed too. James looked out the broken window and saw landscapes moving at incredible, impossible speeds, for a car; he wondered why there wasn't any suction of anything coming from it.

"She's coming!" Todd called out warningly. He poked his head out of the window, but all four of them screamed in surprise when Ruth-Marie appeared on the windshield. It was all Luis could do to keep control of the car.

They could hear her hissing as clearly as if she was whispering in their ears. "Foolish demigods. We will have our revenge. Your foolish camp will be destroyed. You heroes will be slain as if you were nothing. And best of all, our patron will rise from the long sleep she has been in."

James sighed. "I really hate preteens." Luis pushed a button, and the windshield wipers sent Ruth-Marie hurtling with an amazing force. At that moment, the car hit 500 MPH, and James felt as if he was being sent into space. His face began peeling back, and in a split second and a flash of light, the highway was gone, and with it the preteens of terror.