The Orange Tomato

The Orange Tomato
Book	Comics not yet in books
Chapter	Safehouse
Previous Story	The Unbearable Rabbit
Next Story	*Holiday Wars Pawnz-week*

The Orange Tomato is the continuation of The Unbearable Rabbit story.

Plot

Zoë continues her narration to Min explaining that, after Torg's unsuccessful attempt to defend his garden, he became more obssessed than ever with getting his revenge on the woodland animals and announced during breakfast that he would get rid of them with the "operation" Orange Tomato, much to Kiki's horror. Fed up with this obsession, Zoë presented to Torg the internet game Hamsternom, in which the player feeds a digital hamster without overfeeding it, but the more friends the player manages to help feed the hamster, the more points and applications he gets. From this point in her narration, Zoë claimed to have made a grave mistake. Once again, the group became distracted by the internet and, to Kiki's chagrin, forgot to feed her. Also, as in Shallow Beds, Torg had little success in getting friends on the net while Riff and Zoë achieved several points in Hamsternom. Torg decided to get more friends and points for the game by sneaking to the market with the help of Bun-bun and Jessup, but Zoë and Riff notice that and, suspicious, follow them.

Needless to say, Torg made a fool of himself in the market, but he did have some moderate success in get friends (for example, when a woman wrongly assumed that Torg was wooing her, she slapped him, but soon forgave him, even giving him her number, after Torg explained the true situation). There Torg met his internet friend the park ranger Shika Nogeyama, also known by the alias Noogy, and Torg promptly introduced her to his gang. After hearing his problem, Noogy decided to take them to her friend, Harold Aitch, a nerdy, but friendly expert on computation and social networks. Before formally introducing him, Noogy showed him some animals rescued in human territory, including the bear from the previous story, who Noogy correctly suspected to have been beaten up by a mother bear and a small rabbit. This led to Torg mentioning Bun-bun, making the bear swear revenge against the mini lop. After formal introdution, Harold Aicth claimed that he have created an internet game that would make them dropped the one they are currently playing, but when Torg ask how this game could be better than Hamsternom, Harold run away crying and revels, in anger, that Hamsternom is the game that he was talking about, and that the coorporation that he showed the game, Xployt-U-shoft, must have realeased the game without his consent.

Rushing to home, Harold vows to sue them, but when he reachs his computer, he learns that Xployt-U-shoft is suing him for "defamation" for accusing them in the internet of stealing the game (the topic become a hit in Bleater due to Zoë having wrote about it). During an argument with the CEO, Harold scolded him for stealing his life project and for faselly accusing him of lying, but the CEO simply mocked him, citting that he has no proof that the game was his original idea, and that the idea that it took his wholly life to create a game that consist in feeding a pet is too silly to be taken serious in any courty. Meanwhile, the Cub from the previous story encounters the bear and taunted him for being so easily beaten by his mother, but when he reveals that he knowns where Torg and Bun-bun live (due to his friendship with the squirrels), the bear quickly rip his cage apart and follows the cub to home. When it becomes clear that the bear isn't a good strategist (trying to openly challenge Bun-bun, despite the latter being far stronger than he is) the Cub suggests to the bear to wait for Bun-bun outside and attack him in the back to prevent a counter attack.

When the group get back to home (thanks to Jessup), they resume the game and Zoë allows the chimpmunks and the cub to stay inside the house on condition that they help feeding her digital Hamster to gain more points. Meanwhile, as Harold mourns how his attempt to sue Xployt-U-shoft failed, he explain to his cat that Hamsternom isn't just a game. Rather, its a complex graphic subliminar menssage program that subtly lets its users addicts. Quickly realising that Xployt-U-shoft used his code to realease the game in their name, Harold easily invaded the company's system and changed some patterns that forces those who look at it to behave like zombies, in order to infect some user from the company server, believing that the future damages would make Xployt-U-shoft to be sued by several persons. Unfortunately, the menssage spreads from his computer, rather than from the company's server, and another problem arised when the program affected animals, rather than persons. This proved to be dangerous to the main cast, since the program affects any animal into consume flesh, regardless of being carnivorous or not, and to make matters worse, they are next to several animals that saw the game. The story ends with the protagonists being cornered by zombie-like animals.