Pin Man and Marethrow had tagged along with them for a good half an hour before Lee lost his temper.
"LOOK, GO AWAY!" Lee screamed at them. "YOU'RE CHEAP COPIES!"
Pin Man burst into tears and rusted which really wasn't pretty.
"I can write them away if you'd like…" Hannah started.
"Excuse me?"
"Nothing."
"GO AWAY!" Lee shouted.
Pin Man and Marethrow turned around and walked away.
"Thank God!" said Otto, changing back into human form.
Clouds rushed across the sky and it started to rain.
"Oh B*LL*CKS!" screamed Xander who consequently got struck by lightening.
"I really don't get it – how possibly could a weather system be contained down a sofa?!" Jess exclaimed.
"Oh, and I suppose you think that just because we live in a sofa we have an inferior society," Lee said, angrily.
"Oh…no…not at all," Jess said, apologetically, deciding to keep quiet.
In the distance, through the rain, they could see the cow fields.
"We won't make it in this weather," Lee declared. "We'll shelter under that Oak tree." They all ran to the side of the road and dived underneath the tree.
"OOOOW!" yelled Ben.
"What?!" Xander exclaimed.
"I sat on an acorn."
"Idiot."
Lee looked out over the slate road, winding into the distance.
"I hate being a sofa gremlin," he said.
"What!" Hannah exclaimed.
"I don't want to do it anymore. It's a crap job."
"Oh, you picked a fine time to have a change of career, Lee, thanks a lot," Otto muttered.
"I don't know…the ears…the sofas…it just isn't me."
"This is all we need – a gremlin with a mid life crisis," Hannah mumbled.
"Oi! I'm only three in Gremlin years."
"How old do Gremlins live for?"
"Four years."
Everyone fell silent.
"That bramble bush looks like it's moving!" Hannah said, pointing at the large bramble trees that had prevented them from walking on the purple slate road for a while on their way to the Sapphire City. It was sure enough growing tentacles and waving about.
"Yeah, we have to wait 'till it stops raining otherwise it'll eat us," Lee said glumly.
"We killed that pig when we landed on this side so we've got to find another pig or cow, to get back," Ben said.
"Look! There's one!" Hannah picked a daisy and ran off after a random pink and white cow. "Here you go! Eat the daisy! There you go!" Hannah shoved the daisy under its nose.
"Do you MIND?" the cow muttered. "I do have SOME standards, you know, even if I DO live in a field and use my tail for toilet paper."
"Oh…sorry," Hannah said. "It's just…we need to get to the other side of those brambles." She pointed.
"Can't you wait until it stops raining?" the cow asked, impatiently.
As if someone turned off a tap, the rain stopped.
"There we go." Hannah beamed.
"Well, I can't guarantee this will work," the cow muttered. Hannah pressed her hand against the cow's flank and called for the others to come over.

"I WANT MY DINNER!" A familiar kid's voice was the first thing that everyone heard. Followed shortly by the banging of fists on the table. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE!?" The Wizard of SofaLand burst into tears at his high chair (literally).
"Oh crap. Quick! Get back down the sofa!!" Lee cried, pushing everyone back through the material.

Everybody fell on the cow and with a loud 'MOO!' it gave way and got squashed.
"Oh! Poor cow!" Hannah said sympathetically, getting up and patting the cow's head then walked off.
"Where's another one?" Otto said, pulling out a rib from the cow's torso.
"Aha!" Lee ran over to a hedgehog innocently wandering over the purple slate road. He put his hand on it.
"OW!"

"Ok…" Lee climbed out of the futon and looked around. "We want another chair…"
"You didn't tell me about futons!" Hannah exclaimed. "WHAT ELSE HAVEN'T YOU TOLD ME, LEE?!"
"Shut up and get in," Lee said, indicating to another futon.

Lee came falling out of the sky and landed firmly on another hedgehog. "OW! Sweet Jesus!"
Hannah fell on top of him, forcing the spines further up his rectum.
"AGH!"
"Sorry." Hannah got off. Jess fell out of the sky, followed by Otto, Xander and Ben.
"ARRRRRGH!!!"
"Jesus, keep your pants on!"
"ARRGH!"
Everyone scrambled off of the hedgehog as quickly as possible and started removing spikes from places on their bodies that we wouldn't like to mention. The hedgehog, now bald, was still alive however, and wandered off like nothing had happened muttering something in hedgehog language about gremlins falling from the sky.
"Where are we, Lee?" Hannah asked the gremlin who was chasing his ass round in circles like a dog and his tail.
"Look! There's the road!" Jess said, as happy to see the purple slate monstrosity as ever before. She ran up to it and almost kissed it, refraining herself from further loosing any more of her dignity.
Lee looked up. "Yes, but where's the bramble line?"
"There."
"Oh."
"So we haven't got through it?"
"No."
"Oh...b*gger."
"I take back that kiss, you nasty road, you," Jess said to the road.
"So, how are we going to get through?!" asked Hannah in exasperation.
"Erm...I have an idea," said Xander.
"Go on...it has to be better than what we've tried so far," said Otto, scowling.
"Well...we could do this..." Xander crouched down low to the ground, then, suddenly, sprung 20 feet into the air and over the brambles.
"Oh...my...god." Ben ejaculated [HA HA!].
"Well...yes, we could do that," said Lee. He grudgingly fell to the ground on all fours like a frog and leapt the brambles.
"That looks easy," said Hannah. She got down onto the floor, leapt and fell into the brambles with a squeak. There was a sullen silence.
"Do you think she's dead?" Jess asked after a while of no noise.
"Who knows..." Ben said.
Otto meanwhile ran into the brambles and took a penknife out to chop them out of the way. Ben and Jess looked at each other and leapt for freedom to the other side of the brambles. When they arrived there, Xander and Lee looked at them with curious faces.
"Where are Hannah and Otto?" Lee asked.
"I think Hannah's impaled on a bramble, likely to be dead with a high probability of 2 to 1 and Otto is personally taking on the entirety of the brambles," Jess stated.
"Right then," said Xander.
Lee looked at them all in horror. "Oh dear God," he said in a nervous tone.
"Nope..." Otto's voice came from inside the brambles. "She's fine...just got her top caught." He emerged with a sobbing Hannah.
"I thought you said you weren't impaled!" Jess said to Hannah. "Are you hurt?"
"MY TOP WAS NEW!" she wailed.
"Oh."
"It was NEW and now it's RIPPED!"
"Yes. Right. Well, if I was you I'd be grateful to escape with my life, but..."
"What is LIFE without TOPS, JESS?!"
Jess decided to just shut up and shut up fast. Hannah pulled the two sections of her top together from where it was ripped straight down the middle.
"Would you like me to sew that up for you?" Otto said.
Hannah somehow managed to slap him without letting her top fly open.
"Wow, that was impressive," commented Xander.
Hannah moodily pushed past him and they all turned to continue their walk on the purple slate road back towards the cow and pig field. All the cows and pigs (and random dispersed hedgehogs) could sense that trouble was looming towards them...and certain death for some.

"Pick a cow," Hannah muttered to Lee.
"Excuse me?"
"Pick...a...cow."
Lee looked at Jess.
"Select a bovine," Jess translated.
"Oh." Lee pointed at the nearest cow and everyone huddled around it, Hannah still clutching her top together.
"Ready?" asked Lee.
"Ready," everyone said.
"Oh, Christ," said Jess. "Here we go again..."

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� Jess and Hannah 2002