Rita comes from a parallel earth where in 1997 magical portals opened up without warning, dumping a steady stream of monsters into the world. These critters are just dangerous enough that people need to deal with them, but for the most part not so dangerous that dealing with them requires any particular special training. Furthermore, monster parts sometimes have special ("magical") properties that make them valuable. Particularly in suburban areas, teenagers often go monster hunting in order to earn extra spending money.

Rita comes from a medium-sized city in SoCal. She's one of the town's most avid monster hunters, and also runs a popular video blog where she talks about monster hunting and philosophizes about life in general. As much as she loves monster hunting, and the people she's met through it and her video blog, soon she's going to have to go off to college. She just got accepted to UCLA, and around there the police take care of most of the monster hunting. Knowing that it's going to come to an end, she's determined to make the most of this summer.