WARNING: Here There Be Spoilers.

This is Jennifer Elaine Johnson. She is a nineteen year-old college student at Acer State University in the city of Centropolis. She is foul-tempered, sarcastic, and cynical beyond her years — which is really saying something in this day and age. She enjoys scowling, rolling her eyes, folding her arms, and sticking her tongue out at people she considers complete idiots.

The thing is, with the exception of her few close friends, Jennifer’s life is a pretty empty place. She barely goes to class, she rarely leaves her apartment, and she’s completely out of touch with popular culture. This is because Jennifer’s life is a lie. In reality, Jennifer Johnson is …

… Scwonkey Elliot Dog, nearly thirty-year-old dog-faced alien soldier from the planet Gardios, member of the elite interplanetary peacekeeping force SC Force, hero of the Darkoan War, and all-around big-time jerk. His current mission is to seek out and destroy the remnants of the Army of the Red Force, the psuedo-religious military organization that ruled over his home world two generations ago. Intelligence reports indicated that the Red Force command structure was hiding out on Earth, so Scwonkey had his friends and operatives construct for him a completely unlikely cover identity so as not to arouse their suspicion. However, two things went hideously wrong: his arrival on Earth left him an amnesiac, causing him to believe he was really Jennifer Johnson, and then when his allies went looking for him word got to the Red Force that, at the very least, Jennifer Johnson had some connection to Scwonkey E. Dog.

Scwonkey’s cover identity on Earth is a closely guarded secret, known by a select few, including …

… Zappilious Rand Starr, the SC Force Earth team’s mad scientist in residence, a condescending raging egomaniac who can’t decide whether to be angry that his talents are being wasted on this miserable little planet, or to be glad to be away from prying eyes so that he can work on his own personal projects in peace. Scwonkey and Zappy were best friends in high school and classmates in the SC Force Academy. Despite a nasty falling-out towards the end of their academy days, Starr hitched his wagon to his old friend’s rising star in the SC Force, only to get burned when Scwonkey had a very public fall from grace. It was that incident that landed him on Earth, where he finds himself ably assisted by one …

… Vanessa Lang, a brilliant young woman equally at home aiding Starr with his endless research and experiments — both biological and technological — deep within the bowels of the SC Force’s Earth offices, and fighting Army of the Red Force androids with Starr’s state-of-the-art alien weaponry. Aside from the occasional alcoholic indulgence to steady her nerves, Vanessa is a consummate professional, exceptionally polite on the job and unflinchingly private with her private life. In fact, she is such a professional while on the clock that she’s one of the few women Scwonkey has witnessed in recent memory to completely shoot down an invitation from his and Zappy’s long-time mutual friend …

… Leonard Quincy Rakyl, half-breed son of the late industrialist Terel Rakyl and sole owner of Rakyl Technological Industries, a manufacturer of consumer electronics with offices in New York, Centropolis, Tokyo, and the city of Crux Pointe back on Gardios. An outcast on both his father and mother’s home worlds — it was his “freakish” appearance that landed him in Scwonkey and Zappy’s circle of outcasts back in high school — he takes solace in drink and the company of the fairer sex, many of whom find his half-breed “elf ears” of even greater interest than his bank account. That’s basically what lured in one …

… Danielle Therese Ryan, a sophomore at Acer State majoring in Elementary Education and Jennifer Johnson’s best friend. The two are as different as night and day; where Jennifer is morose and unfriendly, Danielle has a smile for every occasion and projects an unflinchingly positive outlook on life. Beneath the surface, however, cracks are starting to show. While she’s been maintaining her grades and obligations to local community service organizations and the Campus Christians group, she’s spent a lot of recent evenings out late partying and drinking with complete strangers — exactly the behavior that led her and Jennifer to Leonard Rakyl’s penthouse one fateful evening. Some say this behavior is the result of hanging out with Jennifer, that she’s been a bad influence, but their mutual friend Tiffany Chandler thinks it has to be something that happened over the last summer, because she was showing signs of this behavior before she and Jennifer met during the first week of school in the philosophy class taught by one …

… Nathan Rey Bostworth, himself no stranger to extraterrestrial encounters. While skiing in Europe with friends, Nathan became injured and lost in the French Alps. There, he met a shape-shifter in the guise of a green tiger who healed his wounds and gifted him with alien power and knowledge — the ability to tap into and harness the power flowing from all living things and channel it into a variety of forms. When he taps into this power, his usually close-cropped black hair takes on a wild, electric blue appearance and his eyes become hidden behind a field of the same energy, allowing him to observe the flow of this life force. Naturally, he has kept this all a secret from his friends and family, including his wife of nine years, Regina. Along with his naturally photographic memory and knack for stumbling across fringe history, his unique talents have made Nathan a popular target for unusual visitors, and have made him more acutely aware of them as well; he was the first human to discover that somewhere beneath Centropolis lurked …

… Erikrel Zambaghini, better known as War-Lord Red Dog II, ruler of the scattered forces of the Army of the Red Force. Defeated in combat by Scwonkey Elliot Dog’s grandfather three quarters of a century ago, he and his forces fled the planet Gardios and dispersed throughout the cosmos. Zambaghini himself spent years trying to build a power base on Earth under a variety of aliases while his forces unsuccessfully fought the elder Dog’s SC Force on a number of fronts before completely going underground. Zambaghini has one half-breed son, Antoine Rigel, who loathes him. The feeling is nearly mutual; while Rigel believes his father is a doddering old man who will see his organization finally crumble to dust very shortly unless drastic measures are taken, Zambaghini sees his son as a reckless fool who will, if he’s not careful, finish the job on his own. This power struggle between father and son almost totally defines the Red Dog’s life at this point as he finds himself at so low a point, with far fewer days ahead than behind.