Previously on Scratch the World...
In the city of Stadweld an underground plot was beginning to unfold. It all began when Hiro Reder, a 17 year old student with aspirations of a famous life, was talked into attending a consultation hosted by the Japanese based chemical company Senba. Feeling that something was wrong, Hiro goes to the bathroom to think over his choice to attend the consultation. In the process he notices a man trying to leave, but he was forcefully prevented by the security placed around the auditorium. Fearing for his life, Hiro attempts to leave through the elevator...uncovering even more of a hidden plot he didn't quite understand. Hearing the sounds of distressed females behind closed doors drives his fear to a new level. He tries to go back up but is finally apprehended by a mysterious sadistic blonde woman, who blackmails him into working for her. She reveals that his parents are being surveyed, and if he doesn't do what she tells him to, they will get harmed. With his new found job, Hiro curses his misfortune, and apologizes for wishing for a bright future.
The story then takes a different turn. Michi Kasahara is about to attend her new school. Because of her parents work, she is forced to move around to many different schools and has a hard time hanging to friends as a result. Michi is different from most people in the regard that she has the ability to pick up any obscure detail no matter how minute it may be. When arriving to class she is greeted cordially by a girl named Norie Gladrin who sits by her. Norie asks Michi over to her house because her sister, Maki Glardin-Aihara is also Japanese. She is Norie's adopted sister. They spend some time at Norie's house after school before Michi returns home. When she arrives she notices something strange in the wall. Upon further investigation it turns out to be some kind of camera. Distressed she waits nervously for her parents to come home...only to realize that her father has gone missing...
The following day Norie is getting ready to school, to find that Maki once again does not want to attend school. Worried about her sister, Norie tries to figure out why, and Maki hints that someone knew about her past...late for school Norie didn't have any time to ask her stubborn sister anything more, but her words made her worry all the more. Norie decides to seek the help of a friend of hers who lives across town and invites the troubled Michi to come with. Along the way Michi explains to Norie what happened last night and the girl can't help but think of how similar Michi is to Maki. They arrive and meet Norie's friend Dare who agrees to look into anyone suspicious at the middle school, presumably a teacher who might have learned of Maki's mysterious past.
The story then swings in a different direction. Kaz, a lazy boy who doesn't have much hope for the future is working at his part job fast food job when a coworker of his explains about the mysterious things happening in the city of Stadweld. Dismissing the 'rumor lord' Trey Kaz goes about his business as usual...in till the drive through he's running is held up at gunpoint, and he is forced to hand over the cash in his register to the driver. After being interrogated by the police Kaz is given the day off and he sullenly walks home. En route, he is stopped by a mysterious blonde woman who admits to taking part in the holdup at his restaurant. She explained to him that it was a test, and that he had passed. She hands him a card that invites him to a special job offer in two suspicious domes on the outside of town. He tells his friend Jack who is the son of the Mayor. His friend claims that his father has been acting weird, and tha there is a school field trip planned for the two dome structures that were mentioned on the back of card. Jack feels uneasy about his father's strange behavior, and the weird field trip the middle schoolers are planning on taking. He asks Kaz to talk to Norie Gladrin, who is the sister of the girl who overheard the idea about the field trip originally...
After all that happens, the story comes back to Hiro. He is being transported from the hot stuffy room on the second floor of the auditorium, and is being taken to a strange place blindfolded. All in all he comes to a new place to carry out his task of inputting codes onto a computer monitor. During his confinement, Hiro begins to lose track of time, and his mind is racked over the possibility of their being a camera inside of his house. In his new cell he can hear a girl through the vents next to his own room. He begins a conversation with her and finds out that her name is Nadia and that she was taken months previously.
A new character enters the scene, or rather, leaves it. Lei, a quiet girl is the infamous school skipper. The number one rival to the school captain. Lei is on a mission, and so, she is in the middle of escaping her classes to complete it. Having skipped class so many times she expertly makes her way over to the middle school when she bumps into Dare by mistake and the two of them end up getting corralled into the planned middle school field trip. Lei was supposed to go on this venture because she had been blackmailed by a teacher known as Mr. Calvin. Dare got caught up in the mess while trying to investigate who was getting on Maki's nerves. The two of them arrive at the domes, but aren't on the same bus as Maki.
Taking a step back, we find ourselves in the company of the strict ruling School Captain, who beats up a bunch of delinquents. She is Rey Pichanto, the daughter of the same Pichanto family that is the ruling mafia family in Stadweld. Upset at her father's lack of action against the faulty Mr. Calvin, Rey decides to take it up herself, and in the process she too is invited to the field trip. On the bus by chance she meets a girl [Maki] who explains to her that's very dangerous. Maki has a flashback in her mind to the time when Mr. Calvin blackmailed her, calling her a demon and threatened to expose her.
As the strings closing come to one thread, we are introduced to the young son of the executive of Senba, Toru. While eating dinner, the young upstart figures out that his father is not who he claims to be, or is being controlled somehow. He threatens his old man with a gun and locks him in the closest. After many trials and hardships, Toru finds his way to the dome structures to take the Senba company out of his incapable father's hands, and secure it for himself. With great care, he infiltrates one of the domes in an attempt to undermine the usurpers of his company.
Things start to come together. Prior to the field trip, Maki received a note from a mysterious silver robbed person named C#1. Kaz, while searching for Norie, ends up running into Michi and the two collaborate with the information they've gathered. It's revealed that Michi's parents work for Senba and that there has been a divide within the company as of late. After spending the night at Michi's place, Kaz and the Japanese girl go to Norie's to try and find the girl...only to realize that she's been taken by the same organization. Desperate, they go on their way to the domes...where they run into Trey, whom Michi thought looked like a person she knew to be dead. The 'rumor lord' of Stadweld seemed intrigued by her reaction and then he leaves...the domes stand on the horizon...what will happen within?!
The story comes back to Hiro who is still putting in the codes. This time around he given an image feed to what he is doing. He can open up doors and close them as the prompt appears on screen. He witnesses a variety of strange acts. Such as a girl [Norie] being put to sleep through some kind of machine...all at his hand. If he doesn't follow the codes, or purposefully presses the wrong buttons, Nadia next door will pay the price. After noticing a man, who had clearly come into the domes to take them down, Hiro decides to help him by opening the doors to lead him down a different path. As a result, Nadia is heard screaming painfully next door...out of rage he smashes the computer and rolls up into a ball... poor Hiro...
The story then turns back to Lei and Dare, who make a quick dash over to the second Dome, known as Dome A. They enter just as the dome spirals downward into the ground. After disarming a guard, they proceed forward, only to find that the middle school children are already inside an amphitheater. When the hall they are in starts to get gassed they quickly rush into the first door they find...they bump into the lazy head of security. Dare has fallen unconscious, and holding the man at gunpoint, Lei orders him to hide Dare in the closest...she gets word that Rey is in the building and rushes off to find the school captain. In a nearby room, minutes prior, Rey is shot with a tranquilizer by Mr. Calvin. Maki is then escorted out of the room by a mysterious man who claims to be her ally.
The next chapter explains Norie's past, or Norina's past. The girl was picked on at school for being from a well off family... she is rescued by Dare and the two of them begin to bond. Dare's delinquent ways seem to rub off on Norie as she begins to rebel against her parent's who's attention begins to center around Maki entirely. Maki, who is worried about Norie tries to get her sister to calm down...in her anger, Norie upsets Maki to the point where the girl turns down a dark road...Maki presumably attacks Norina to the point where she is hospitalized. She then wakes up unsure of where she is...as she had been forced to relive a moment of her past.
Toru continues to be lead through the dome structures as Hiro is messing with the system. He eventually happens upon Norie's room and a gunfight follows. He manages to get Norie to a relatively safe place...as the fighting is stopped by a girl named Amy, who is the head programmer in the dome structure [this would be Dome B]. Norie is still sedated greatly, and Toru himself had become slightly gassed so he phases in and out of consciousness. Despite working for the organization that's running the domes, Amy doesn't seem to be hostile.
We swing back to Kaz and Michi who have become separated in their venture through the domes. Kaz was gassed and taken away, while Michi, who was immune to it, was taken to a special interview with Trey, who seems to be working for the dome structure. Trey explains that Michi's father is okay, but the two don't really get along...Trey cuts their meeting short to go off and 'visit a prisoner'. When Kaz wakes up, he finds himself in a very apartment like room, only to find his best friend Jack casually cooking as if nothing was wrong...
The story then returns to Rey and Lei, who have become trapped in an alternate world composed of their memories. As the school captain and school skipper exchange pleasantries...they come to a dark and mysterious revelation that they are in fact half sisters. They sit in despair with no way of escape in their own memories...
But then Dare arrives to rescue them from eternal defeat. He had been helped by a man named Sen who apparently was on their side. They escape the memory machine and are taken to Maki. Dare's past in the process is explained, and he retells of the moment when he and Norie were on dating terms...it was a dark night when he witnessed Maki's frightening power...with that same fear in mind they rush into the room she is being kept.
To go back to the moment when Maki was taken from the care of Mr. Calvin chapters previously...Sen was the one who liberated her. He also explained that he wanted to study the demon inside of her, and he told her that it was a separate entity than the girl herself. The scientist then cleverly gave Maki over to Mr. Calvin, whom Maki tortured to death shortly after. Continuing on, Michi thinks about Troy-- a student who had committed suicide at her previous school. Aside from mannerisms, Trey looked just like him. Meanwhile, Kaz and Jack quickly fall into an argument. It becomes apparent that Jack is not himself saying ridiculously things and after trying to get him to take a drug, Kaz began to fight with his best friend all throughout the kitchen/living room. As a result, Kaz kills jack and nearly passes out himself in the bathroom. To top things off...the Self destruct mechanism was tripped...
Trey visits Nadia, even though she refers to him as Troy. She has been terribly tortured and can't move on her own. She asks Troy/Trey to release Hiro. The man does so and then quickly races off to another part of the dome. On his way, Trey runs into a recovered Toru who has set out to look for Norie's sister. The self destruct system has been tripped, and Trey tells him how to stop it. Meanwhile, Kylie comes out of her room having been kidnapped with her brother Jack--however she has not been sedated yet. She sees her dead brother on the floor and Kaz in the bathroom, she quickly becomes confused as to what's happening. Michi finds Kaz and they start to head out. Hiro and Toru meet and attempt to cut the power to stop the self destruction.
Trey goes to tell Meredith [the blonde sadistic woman] that they need to leave and that the higher ups are cutting the plan for Senba. Meredith insists that they grab Amy before they go. Amy, who is watching Norie, insists that they take the girl with them, in till they run into Kaz Michi and Kylie who were still looking for her. They give up the girl and then Trey, Meredith and Amy escape through a tunnel. Toru and Hiro manage to stop the self destruct system from Dome B. The two of them then carry Nadia out of the dome and they meet up with Norie, Michi, Kaz and Kylie. A bunch of helicopters come in and they are all prepared to take off to safety...Meanwhile, in dome A, the self destruct system does not have a turn off switch. The dome itself is underground so there are only two ways out: a tunnel near the end of the spiraling dome structure, or an emergency ladder that would be hard to climb out in time. Rey decides to go against the group's wishes of using the tunnel and races off to use the ladder. After the group leaves, Sen claims he is going to try and stop it...but instead he retrieves Tama [the Lazy head of security and they escape via elevator]. Sen thinks to himself that it'll be the ultimate test of Maki's abilities...Sen also tipped off a man named Johannes Einburg, that the domes were being destroyed. Irritated the doctor seals up his private lab and he and his assistant Sader, escape through the emergency tunnel and lock it behind them so that nobody can use it. Thus, Dare, Lei and Maki are trapped with time ticking down...Dome A explodes just as Rey climbs out of the top and gets to safety with all of her strength sapped from her body. Norie, who has become sober, realizes that her precious sister was inside of that dome and she screams and cries horribly in till she passes out from fatigue.
Following the incident, by a few weeks, the members who took part in the domes return to Stadweld to collect their possessions and move out with other family members. It's a very sad moment as many people in the city had become victims of a 'chemical leak' as the news explained it. Kaz ends up going home with his Mother and Sister {and brother} saying farewell to his now deceased father who suffered a heart-attack from the chemical outbreak. Rey visits her father who explains that she needs to contact the underground. He too is on his death bed. She is told to find Theodore Lavantes. Toru, who is extremely upset that his company had been infiltrated at the roots, leaves for Japan with Michi as well [consider that they are both apart of the same company technically]. Michi's father had escaped the country by the aid of a mysterious organization... Norie has become hospitalized along with Nadia. Hiro goes home and finds a message left by his dad, which explains that his dad had worked on the program which Hive [the evil organization] was using to control people. He tells his son to come back to Stadweld in three months to find someone who can help him make things right. Filled with bitter resentment Hiro resolves to do just that.
Now, three months later, the majority of the characters have gone to the Twin cities area in neighboring Minnesota. Kaz is on track to graduating early, and goes to the same school as Rey, Norie and Hiro. The story follows Kaz for a while, as he is planning on letting Stadweld fall behind him and move towards a bright future...that is in till Trey shows up unexpectedly to inform him that the members of Hive aren't going to let someone like him...who might know so much go so easily. Trey convinces Kaz to join his organization, the Arrows, which works at destroying Hive and reconstructing the world anew...[Scratch the World, and remake it]. However, Trey doesn't want Kaz alone...he makes him decide on a family member who must join him...Kaz is given a strange pill which is the antidote to the serum that controls people. And another to which he is supposed to give to a member of his family, or someone he trusts. Kaz has no doubt that he will give it to his sister Jessica to whom he is close with. When Kaz returns home, he starts having flashbacks to his fight with Jack and can't help but feel that something is not right. His family is acting strange...and his sister helps him down the stairs... in a sudden motion he forces her to take the antidote. It is revealed then that the rest of his family has been mind controlled. Meanwhile it is revealed that Amy and Meredith are both working for Trey...
The gears shift once more. Norie and Hiro have left for Stadweld, and already months have passed. We visit the lonely Reyna, who for the first time in her life is a nobody...finally she is free from the shackles of her family name. All the while she is plagued by vivid dreams of a glass tower looming in the distance...her strange, lonely peace is interrupted by the son of Theodore Lavantes, Klyde. The two of them try to enter the underground but are stopped because Rey is too dangerous of a target...being hunted, and having nowhere else to go, Rey appears at the front door of someone's home...
[[Whew! This took longer than expected. Well it's a lot easier to read this than 167 pages right? That is a general summery of what has happened thus far. I haven't written anything since March or April so believe me, it might be worth reading...even I might become inconsistent with my own story for god's sake! Well...even if you don't read it, the next chapter will be really interesting I assure you...]]
