Infinite Stratos: God of Thunder

By: The 483

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to the Infinite StratosFranchise.

Spoiler Alert: Warning: Light to mild spoilers for the Anime may be included herein.

Also, Much Pseudo-science included herein. I have detailed knowledge of none of the stuff I list here. I will try and stick to real science where I can, but if it seems cool, or is necessary to the story, I will veer, and just make stuff up. I will incorporate some real world names, ideas, and concepts, both factually, and non-factually.

Fundamental Forces

One day previous

Ichika Orimura, teenager, the only male IS pilot to date, unwilling social star of the academy, and seemingly dense as a neutron star when it came to affections of his peers, was sprawled out on the floor of his friend, Dan Gotanda, trying to avoid slipping into a stress coma while the latter added a few more hours to the latest instalment of whatever hit title he found a fancy in. Ran Gotanda, the little sister, sat with her legs splayed on the bed, staring down at Ichika, her red hair hanging into her face where it escaped the bandana that held the balance at bay.

This was a normal Sunday afternoon on the rare occasion when Ichika managed to escape the notice of the seven hunter killer class femmes that had taken up his scent.

"I am still having trouble seeing why you're complaining about this. It sounds like it's be awfully nice from where I'm sitting." Dan said, his slow and calm voice alight with the slightest hint of sarcasm.

"That's cause you're an idiot!" His sister chirped happily, her energy as vibrant as her hair color.

"Ouch." He responded, with no additional intonation. Ichika sighed explosively, and twitched a few times.

"I can kind of understand how you could think that, from the outside. But I think they might actually kill me, if it keeps up like this. They weren't exactly subtle about it before, but it's getting to the point where they can't believe even I can be this stupid."

"Right, dumbass." Ran continued to her brother in an arrogant tone. "It might be nice being surrounded by a bunch of buxom, nubile, jiggley, curvy, luscious, bouncy, and slippery when wet… okay, okay, sorry, you guys are just too easy to tease." She waved her hands at the looks the two were now giving her. "It sounds nice, but that's not what Ichika cares about. Think about, stupid brother." He returned to his game.

"I got nothing. I can't see a down side." Ran looked to the sky, as if asking the heavens for help.

"God, you must be as stupid as Ichika pretends to be. Okay, remember when I finally worked up the nerve and confessed to him last summer? Remember how he reacted?" Dan had gone stock still, an aura of death swirling around him a she slowly rotated on the spot. His death stare was interrupted as a house slipper impacted the side of his head, and his demeanor shifted back to easy going.

"No, I had not heard about that one. But, judging by the fact that I did not have to cripple him, I am forced to assume he shot you down." Ichika looked unwell, and Ran made a most unladylike gesture with her left hand.

"No, jackass. Well, yes, actually. But nicer then what you said. He sat me down, calmly explained that he was flattered, and we talked for a while, and then got busy… No, no, sorry, joking. But thanks, brother, I never knew you cared."

"It is my solemn duty as a brother to kill whatever misbegotten cretin that threatens you future status as old maid." Dan answered serious. "It's in the guide book they give you when a little sister is delivered." Ran looked interested.

"Really? Do you really get one of those, Ichika?" He shrugged, still laying on his back, but with a slight red discoloration growing on his collar bone. He'd almost forgotten what it felt like to be assaulted without the aid of a weapon or a partial IS deployment. Nostalgic.

"Dunno. I am a younger brother, I and highly doubt Chifuyu ever got a text detailing that commandment." Ran, dissatisfied, waved her hand again to shut the boys up.

"Whatever, then, quit interrupting? Like I was saying… then got busy, getting me some ice cream. What I am saying, was that he was very careful in rejecting me, so that I wouldn't get my feeling hurt real bad. Honest, I wasn't happy, but we're friends now, and I am not even embarrassed about talking about anymore." A minor fib. The tops of her ears were slightly pink, but her hair covered it. "So you see the problem?" She finally added, completely exasperated.

"You can't figure out which one is the hottest?" Dan asked to Ichika, making a gesture at his own chest that informed on his own selection criteria. He gave Ichika a wink, as Ran made a frustrated scream and fell over backward. "Jeez, Ran, I was kidding. I get it. For you information, we talked about this long before you came into his confidence, too. And, yes, we both knew you liked him for like, years. See, you are still embarrassed, you're whole face is red.

"Not… embarrassed… so… pissed…" She stuttered, her shoulders shaking with fury.

"So, you pretend to be completely unable grasp what they are getting at, no matter how blunt or completely obvious they are, because it's better to lie to them now, then to hurt their feelings."

"Well, I don't like how you put it, but basically, yeah. I mean, at first, I just didn't want to be conceited enough to think that these girls actually liked me like this. At least Laura was bold enough to send unmistakable signs, but she has some unusually strong attacks of shyness, so she's fairly easy to distract." Ichika groaned. "Argh! Why couldn't Cecilia just have shown up 3 seconds later! Then I wouldn't be having these problems, they all would have seen it then!" He moaned into his hands.

"Wait, then?" Ran craned her neck up to look past her budding mountains at Ichika, her interest overriding her embarrass-rage.

"Last summer, before the festival." He answered in a muffled voice. Ran popped up, bending at the waist in a seemingly impossible flex, her eyes alight.

"Oh! I think I got it! So the one you actually like, I think I know which one it is! It was that one that I met at the summer festival with you. The really pretty one with the giant boobs. What was her name… Ah, yeah! It was…

(…)

Present day

Houki Shinonono slung her bag over her shoulder, closed the locker, checked her zippers, again, assured herself that she was dressed properly again, and exited the Kendo Clubs locker room. Bright, late afternoon sunlight, still a half hour from the red tint of sunset, streamed over the expansive grounds and shining domes and spires of the IS academy. She couldn't say she was unhappy here. She had the club, she had rivals, which also fit the combative notion that she had filed as "friends," she got to showcase her talents, mostly free of the shadow of her sister, she got reunited with Ichika Orimura, here real friend, and unrequited crush, and she ample opportunity to exercise her slightly neurotic tendency to try and solve all her problems by visiting violence upon him. He really did help her focus her anger at a single target, almost like a therapy squeeze toy. She hadn't even lashed out at the arrogant Cecilia lately, and lord knew she liked to generate aggro. So, despite the fact that Ichika remained steadfast in his inability to recognize that she liked him, and more then all those other girls in her way, and her own inability to relate the fact to him herself, she was otherwise contented. After all, none of the other girls seemed to have a leg up on her, and even Chifuyu seemed to have not singled out anyone else as a clear choice, she was contented.

She was jerked from her reverie on the way back to the dorms by a pair of girls looking worried and rushing passed. Another trio rounded a corner, looking excited, and moved on. She called out.

"Hey, what's up?" She cupped her hand to her mouth. There was a tension in the air, something was going on, though it was an excitement rather than a fear, so she didn't think they were under attack.

"Miss Alcott is fighting the new transfer student in the arena!" Houki let out a sigh powerful enough to throw out a lesser woman's back.

"Of course she is." She said miserably, now to herself as the girls had scampered away. Houki lifter herself back to walking, and headed in the direction of the stands at a light jog. She couldn't leave those girl unsupervised for a single moment. Cecilia was the worst, by far, always picking fights, and Rin was next, though she limited it to mostly one of the other RC's or herself. Surprisingly enough, ever since Laura had moved in with Charlotte, there had been no problems, probably Charlottes calming influence.

But picking a fight with a new student on day one; that was just rude. Houki knew a little about this, because she had been in class early with Ichika, after going over early to pry Tatenashi off of him if she had managed to weasel her way into his room again that night. So Houki had been there when Miss Orimura had told Ichika that the new Representative Contender from the United States would be arriving near the end of school, and that he was to take care of her. That was the reason that he had gotten out of his tri-weekly beating…er… training with her, and she practiced alone. So, of course, Cecilia, expecting the worst, would have gone in, halfcocked and completely tactless, and badgered the girl on false allegations until the new girl lashed out, and they fought. Exhausting, and setting a bad example for herself, her country, and the school. Houki arrived through a side gate into a box that was filled with eager girls watching the fight. It being past the normal time club activities ended, many of the students that would otherwise have been occupied were in attendance, and the stands were more than half full. She did a quick visual survey, and found what she was looking for two boxes over. A male nucleus surrounded by five females and a reasonable buffer zone She headed that way, looking over to see Cecilia in mid rant, airborne and directing her ire at another figure below the rim of the stadium that she couldn't yet see. Cecilia must have been fairly angry; her extensionals were deployed, and twitching to a rhythm that seemed to match her own wild gesticulations. As she arrived at her group, she sighed, ask asked aloud the obvious question.

"Won't Cecilia attacking a new student on her first day cause some negative opinion?" The question was aimed at Tatenashi, Student Council President, who was still bearing a slight hostility toward Houki for her interruption in the morning. She gave a warm and false-ditzy smile, and answered in a lyrical glee.

"Not at all, Miss Shinonono. As Student Council President, I fully condone of this exchange. As an Academy, it is vital that we gather all the runtime data we can of any IS system. And the new Representative Contender from the United States here has not used her IS in any real combat scenarios yet. As such, I found it to be appropriate to allow Miss Cecilia's spontaneous challenge to provide a demonstration of our esteemed neighbor's prowess."

"Yeah, and a chance to pay for her crime." Rin added, self satisfactorily. Ichika, the center of the now hexagonal phalanx, was inwardly sighing in exasperated frustration. Crime equaling "monopolizing Ichika." Never mind that Chifuyu had personally conscripted him for the task. But, he could not afford to give away that he knew what they were talking about. He simply looked befuddled, and refrained from speaking.

"Pretty words, sneaky motive." Houki said, crossing her arms, and moving forward with Tatenashi, so she could see the newcomer. She shot a sly smile sideways.

"Really, now, Houki. I assumed you would approve, as it was on your time that this interloper absconded." She remained quiet as she observed the new machine.

The legs were solid, multi jointed, and seemed to touch the ground in two place per leg. The skeleton beneath the armor was reminiscent of a scissor lift. There were the usual armored sleeves and clawed gauntlet hands but slung under each arm was a boxy device with a sharpened metal pole sticking out to some small extent. At the hip, two small pentagonal plates jutted out diagonally at the ground, gold bordered, and flared. The English letters spelling T-E-S-L-A were penned in a large, neat script along the bottom line. The free floating flight wings were smaller than most IS systems, and covered in odd, 4 pointed stars that slopped upward from arm tip to center maybe 15 centimeters. But they were spread out in a seemingly random pattern like decals on a trapper keeper. Two long, metal rods stuck straight up on either side of her back, about a half meter apart, and rose fully a meter over the top if the pilot's head The final oddity was that, the entire torso of the pilot was covered in segmented armoring, leaving only a small portion of her neck and her whole face bare. Two hook shaped spars slipped down from behind her ears and came forward toward the eyes under the ear. The whole machine was a purple so dark as to almost be black, but shining with a brilliant iridescent flair when the light caught just the right angle. More golden highlights and geometric lines were scattered sparsely about the machine.

Of the pilot, all that Houki could make out were large, deep green eyes, a small nose dusted with freckles, red, slightly thin lips, a light tan, and black hair knotted in a simple loop behind her head, pinned with what looked like silver chopsticks.

"Hmm," Houki mused, mostly to herself, "American… I was expecting more or their flag to be plastered over the IS." Tatenashi giggled mischievously.

"Right? Not very American, no? But you notice what is, right?"

"Yes. She had several weapons. Too many, I would think."

"More than you can see." Tatenashi said, poking at a data tablet she had held folded to her chest, and then held it for Houki to see. "These are the delivered specs, but I dount they are accurate, as this is a fully custom job. Look at the designer credits." Houki scanned until she found two names listed. She made a disgusted face. Tatenashi smiled triumphantly.

"Designer: Everret Chambers. Consulting and accent: Tabane Shinonono."

"Does big sis often provide personal attention to backyard tinkerers for foreign powers?" She said with sarcastic cheer. Houki sighed sadly.

"If she finds a project interesting, no doubt she would." This seemed to take some of the wind out of Tatenashi's sails, but she recovered quickly.

"Ah, well, if you read into these plans what I do… that IS is about 75 percent pure offensive ordinance." Houki took a deeper look at the plans, but it was like trying to read Arabic for her. Tatenashi continued, for her benefit. "You can see by eye the basic weapons systems. Twin knives, loaded for slashing upon unsheathing at either hip. Those poles under the arms, they look like what Charlotte had for her armor penetration, but they are meant to be fired out of a magazine of 5 each. Then, you can see the two poles on the back. I don't know what they are for, but you can bet they are weapons. And finally, clipped over her left back, is some sort of heavy rifle that don't have specs included. And finally, a mortar tube over the right shoulder."

"Okay, that's a lot, but hardly accounts for the number you quoted." She smiled more broadly.

"Okay, so it is an inference. I am going to guess that this IS uses Electricity as its main weapon."

"Okay, but the thing is named "Tesla." Not exactly subtle."

"Ah, but that is not why I guessed that. Would you like to know why?" Houki shrugged, impatient with her senior's games. "Because, roughly 67 percent of the total mass of the IS unit consist of high yield capacitors. That girl is sitting on the equivalent of a power plant that could power a small city." Houki's eyes widened slightly, but she gave no other reaction.

"Okay. That is a lot of power. Does that bolster the shields or something?" Now Tatenashi shrugged.

"Not that I can see. Her shields are sitting at 800. Not shabby, but not terribly strong compared to the new cyclotron modulation variants coming out now. All the out flow is directed into small, unlabeled hard points threaded through the arm and wing surfaces, and one oversize bar buried at the base of those two rods."

"Interesting, I am sure, but I am not an IS mechanic." She didn't know what to make of the data, just that, if Tatenashi was harping on it, it must be odd. She looked down, Cecilia was still ranting, but seemed to be winding down. "When is Cecilia going to attack?"

"What do you mean? She already has. She blitzed her for a full 45 seconds, before letting the smoke clear to see the damage. The new girl…" She looked at the data tablet again, and found the girls name, "Catherine, Catherine Elizabeth Chambers, never moved." Houki then noticed that the ground around the immobile girl showed signs of abuse, save a ring about a meter out from the outmost tip of one of the wing spars of her IS. The ground inside was pristine and undisturbed.

Cecilia, voice grown hoarse, sent the signal and her extensional guns opened up with a withering barrage of ruby colored beams, saturating the area and kicking up a storm of dust and smoke. She pause, let the smoke clear, and was irritated by the staunch refusal of this interloper to just kindly die already. The girl had not so much as blinked, as far are the audience could tell. Cecilia loaded her rifle with the heaver, armor piercing partial round, and fired with a frustrated roar. It was fast, but Houki saw the round appear to splash around a spherical surface surrounding the girl before the energies collided with the ground and exploded violently. Cecilia's haughty smile faltered into twitching when she was the girl, still playing statue.

"Argh! You stupid girl! Will you just do something already?" Cecilia screamed hoarsely, her face red with rage. The girl on the ground looked up at her, her head tilted as if she was curious, and nodded once. No one but her could see the display that said "Charge: 56%", and she needed at least 60% for the maneuver she wanted to pull. She disengaged the static field generators, and toggled the trickle feed generators to grater production. There was a small, inaudible pop as the static charge around her equalized with the outside air, and a small gust of wind blew away from her.

"Deploy." She said, her voice surprisingly deep for the skinny frame she clearly had. Her wing spars quivered, flattened themselves so they were paralleled with the ground, and began to rotate around the girl. Cecilia, finally going to get to see something, braced to dodge. With the wings rotating, there was a loud clunk and vibration that shook the air as something detached from the wing and flew out straight. Cecilia checked the dodge she had planned, and looked confused. The spinning star headed out behind the American, and hit the wall, flattening to it and staying attached. This happened 7 more times, at the four points of the compass, and four minor points. 8 more flew out, and did the same at random places within the arenas floor space.

"What… was that it?" Cecilia asked, flabbergasted. The girl shook her head, and the mortar tube over her shoulder spoke. A canister trailing white vapor arced out and directly toward the blue armored gild, who flailed as she tried to bring her automated guns to bare on the slow moving projectile. Before she got of the first shot, the canister exploded, propelling hundreds od small black things at her in a cone. "Ack!" She swiped out as the black things enveloped her and passed, scattering and bouncing on the ground below. Where they touched metal on Cecilia's IS, they stuck.

"What's this?" Tatenashi asked herself pensively.

""I don't know… Houki had been studying Catherine's face. "But the American seems almost bored, so it should be interesting.

"What are these?" Cecilia asked, when she surmised that the black, jack shaped things were not causing any harm while attached. "Did… did you just spray me with caltrops?" She sputtered indignantly, as the shapes seemed to suggest. Catherine shook her head. He wings had stopped and returned, and were now just two floating triangles. The tilted and bobbed, like a foxes ears searching for a faint sound. "Then… what?" The girl spoke to Cecilia for the first time since the start of battle, her deep soprano flat, but not patronizing.

"There are four fundamental forces at work in the universe. Do you know them?" Cecilia blinked.

"What ARE you talking about? This is a bleeding battle, you twit!" Catherine seemed oblivious to the outburst.

"I will tell you. There is gravity, the weakest. Then there are the Strong and weak nuclear forces, operating on the atomic level."

"Oh ho!" Tatenashi cooed, looking interested. "I think I know what is coming."

"What?" Houki asked.

"I think I know what those capacitors charge now. Watch."

"And finally, the one that shapes the universe as we perceive it. Electromagnetism." Cecilia sighed.

"Whatever, you waif. I tire of you. I will simply blast you until whatever you are shielded with is crushed by the weight of my volley!" She raised her rifle and squeezed off a shot right as she received a strong jerk downward at the left shoulder. The blot went wide, and sizzled past Catherine's head close enough that her hair ruffled in the aftershock. Cecilia plunged down and an angle, and suddenly halted dead, her wing spare stretched wide. She hung, suspended invisibly in midair, indignant, her legs and arms pressed tight together, only able to move her neck.

"What is this? Why can't I move?" She shouted, but her voice was not carried far. The amplification of her voice through Blue Tears Radio was not working.

"Ahha! I thought so. Those black stars she spread, they are powerful electromagnets. Those little black things are probably superconductive magnets, which adhere to the other IS. That's why she is hung there. She how she's oriented perfectly North-South, and her wings are East-West? Not bad."

Instead of answering, Catherine reached up, and the butt of the rifle on her back extended into her grip. She pulled it up, and it continued to grow, triangular plates shifting down and linking to cover the two matte black square metal rods slung over and under each other, with a gap about the size of a soda can's circumference between. Thick copper tubing wound around and through holes in the bar metal like the skeleton of a tunnel. With the last plates sliding in place, the finished gun was more than 8 meters long, but of bullpup design, so the actual barrel was close to 7 meters, as the receiver sat being the trigger. This allowed for a longer barrel in a shorter overall weapon, and a more balanced distribution. The design just screamed "space gun" with is sharp angles and expanding properties, but at the same time, it had a flavor of being rough, or unfinished. Like a prototype or concept model. There was a hissing sound as gasses vented from small outlets along the base of the barrel.

"Oh, no!" To everyone's surprise, it was Kanzashi who had exclaimed. "Big Sister, you have to stop them. I recognize that weapon!" Tatenashi's eyebrow arched.

"It's flashy, yes, but doesn't seem to foreboding. Her sister looked imploringly up at her.

"You don't understand! It's a MAC system! I don't know how she got a man portable one, but those are way too powerful to use on another human, even in an IS!"

"MAC?" Tatenashi, perturbed by her little sisters uncharacteristic … excitement, that wa sit. She was worried, but clearly excited too.

"Jeez, Sister! There in anime and Sci-fi all the time! It's a Railgun!" Now Tatenashi understood the anxiety. She wasn't clear on what a railgun really was, but knew it was on the list of proscribed weapons dictated in the Alaska Treaty. She was in the air and flashing into her IS in an instant.

On the field, the overbuilt legs on the Tesla had contracted, scrunching downward and laying down brace plates, anticipating resisting significant force.

"What's a railgun, Kanzashi?" Ichika asked, causing her to blush a little at the attention. She was better at handling that now, but the aggro she received from the other girls when she received too much attention still rattled her. "I've heard the term, but I never really saw anything I understood about it."

"Well, a Railgun is a MAC, or Magnetic Acceleration Cannon weapon system. There are two main types, the Railgun uses a magnetic field generated by passing a current through a metal rail into an projectile, expelling the projectile at hypersonic speeds. The cost and scale needed to do this normally is quite prohibitive, but the American military are supposed to have a unit capable of launching a 3 kilogram projectile at 2.4 kilometers a second." There was quite for a second, until someone remembered that ordinary guns were measured in meters per second, whereas the number Kanzashi stated was slightly less than a fifth of the escape speed of the planet.

"Holy crap, that's fast!"

"Yes, it is. The kinetic energy at impact would cause a significant flash of heat and light, basically an explosion, but generated just from friction, rather than chemical explosives. But the heat and stresses involved mean that they need a massive instillation, and a reactor if they want to have enough electricity to use it."

"Well, her IS basically is a reactor, according to the schematics Tatenashi was showing me." Houki said.

By this time, Tatenashi had landed in front of the American, and waved her down, her spear brandished not at her, but ready.

"Hey, you cannot use that weapon here. Railguns are proscribed by the Alaska Treaty." Catherine shifted her glance to the new target, but did not lower the weapon.

"Gauss Rifle." Was her curt, toneless reply. The word sounded harsh and foreign, but Tatenashi waved it away.

"The list bars all Magnetic Acceleration Weaponry from deployment with an IS system." Catherine lowered her weapon slightly, and stared at the woman, whom she did not identify as an authority.

"Who are you to disbar me? The teacher who approved the duel did not object." True, but Tatenashi smiled, because it was irrelevant.

"I am the Student Council President. And that is true, but that was because that piece of equipment was not properly identified and detailed in the blueprints you're government provided." Catherine's voice did not shift.

"It was approved by all 7 veto powers before I was nominated as Represented."

"There was no provided documentation showing that."

Meanwhile, Cecilia, who was irritated by being trussed up like a mummy, had a vague sense of her predicament, though she could not tell or hear what the exchange between the haughty new girl and that insufferable Sarashiki woman. She had one extensional turret that had not been hit with magnets, and she directed it to begin blasting one of the magnet stars from close range. The rest of the stadium, focused on the debate between the other two, failed to notice as Cecilia began working toward freedom from her inviable prison.

"So, let me see if I understand this correctly." Catherine said, managing not to sound sarcastic, just tired, her gun now resting at her side, batteries bleeding out their charge and vacuum pumps allowing air to flow back into the barrel. She knew she was not going to use it. This woman was with the 5 other girls that had hunted down and begun to accost her before the blonde one managed to convince herself that they were going to duel. Blatant favoritism for friends, but you can't fight an entrenched bureaucracy. She knew she had lost this fight the moment the student council president had let onto the field.

"I am accosted out of nowhere by someone I have never met before, insulted, and challenged to a duel I had no desire to participate, and was officiated under protest. Then while participating, the fight is interrupted, and I am told that I will not be allowed to use my equipment in my defense." Tatenashi frowned.

"That seems like a pretty biased response. But you are not allowed to use that weapon until approval from the board of directors arrives, or it is inspected and certified as safe." Catherine continued to meet her eyes for another five seconds, then let her shoulders relax slightly.

"Very well." She replied, and slung the rapidly contracting gun back into its slot on her back. "I forfeit the fight, no contest." And she turned, and walked toward the entrance she had first entered from. She knew she was being stupidly stubborn, but the other options were untenable. If verification was not already here, there was naught she could do. And as for allowing the gun to be analyzed, that was a flat impossibility. Her brother had built it for her. All the pieces and devices in its construction were privately patented, and he had developed it himself, without any government money or time spent. Catherine was sole owner, and she would not let his last creation go to…

Her thought stream and preoccupation was interrupted by a sudden roar and flash of light.

Babbling and screams filled the stadium as Cecilia looked puzzled at the commotion as she lowered her rifle after the shot. She was even more dismayed when she saw the crumpled form and shades of metal. She felt a stab of panic. What the hell? The American had still had full shields, she should not have been able to breach them that easily. There were cries for medics, and Tatenashi, making a quick survey, decided the damage was light enough she could afford to move the injured girl. She scooped her up, and left in the direction of the infirmary. The others all were now down on the field, looking shocked or slightly ill.

"Hey, what the hell happened?" She yelled, as they came within earshot.

"Cecilia, why did you shoot her? The match was over!" It was Rin that spoke, almost quietly.

"What? What are you talking about?" Horror crept into her voice as she realized what she had just done. If the fight was over… the other woman must have killed her combat shields in preparation of collapsing her IS, which meant that her shot was taken solely by the IS systems "Absolute Defense." This theoretically should have minimized the damage she took… but depended on how much energy she had left… "Oh… oh my god!" she said, bringing her hand up. "I didn't know that the match was over! What happened?"

End 1.

Ending it here, hope it was a suitable intro. I am not going to post a lot of the base details on the story page yet, because I want a few things to come out as I update, but I will mod the description as I go, to keep up to date with posts. Thanks, all.