"Um...no," Brand said. "Not because you're Chinese. Especially since it's a Japanese spice. Ah, well. Looks like it's your lucky day, my little friend. No beat-down today."<br/><br/>He found a chair to sit down in that could accomidate his tail and leaned back.<br/><br/>"Well...tales from the West, hm?" he said. "Well...there was a young man who had been from Vietnam but had taken up a new life in America. His troubles began one night when he found a small, crudely knitted cloth doll on his doorstep..."<br/><br/>He launched into the tale featuring a very modern Vietnamese-born youth who had embraced American citizenship only to find himself being attacked and chased by some sort of strange summoned demon from his native homeland. The wretched thing wrecked is car, tried to strangle him while still afire from the crash, and chased him halfway down the freeway on foot before being rescued by a rather loopy American blond and her equally odd dog.<br/><br/>Brand was a master storyteller, taking the voices of the characters in the story and bringing them to life. Tommy Tran, in addition to being terrorized by a Terminator-level monstrosity, was constantly kept off balance by his American companion. Del was not at all typical, possessing the drving skills of a bodyguard, the weapons skills of a soldier, and seemed completely unruffled by the notion of a demon chasing the man she'd rescued. In fact she seemed downright loopy, talking about 'evil extraterresrial influences' and claiming psychic powers...and remaining surprisingly effective in keeping ahead of the monster desite it. Or perhaps because of it.