Just another Day chapter 1:Welcome to the Jungle

The Institute: 11: 45 am

There were six men seated in a mostly empty lunch room. They were all seated at two round tables next to each other. Each of them was slowly eating a sandwich and sipping on their choice of soft drink. All of them were wearing torn and tattered clothing.

At one table was Eddward Devlin, better known as Doctor D by now. He was explaining to his new trainee the finer points of working at the institute. His new apprentice named Todd was munching on a turkey sandwich taking the news of his new employers being mad scientists fairly well, especially being the incident that ended no more than fifteen minutes ago. Todd had scratches and bruises along the majority of his face with his lab coat and button up shirt underneath being shredded in many places. Edd wasn't looking much better as he reloaded his revolver and placed it back in his shoulder holster. Rolf was sitting across from them eating a foot long sub as he regarded the new employee of Genosan Industries. His own attire was badly destroyed and slightly singed.

At the other table were a Russian scientist, and eight year veteran of the company, Nicolai Isaacs. He had a slight grin spread over his face still excited after the adventure he had with the five other men. To his right and left were Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln respectively. Both of them were cyborgs and... I suppose it would be helpful to have context. Hopefully this clears some things up.

thirty minutes earlier...

Edd and his lab assistant Todd were currently hunkered down behind a metal table. Edd was reloading his .38 special revolver as he spoke quickly to Todd.

"Boy you're lucky. Most guys don't get a containment breach until their second or third day. You got to experience your first only a hour and a half in."

"LUCKY! How is this lucky? Here I am with a shotgun you threw at me behind some desk as we are being attacked by chupacabras or something!" Todd screamed at Doc D as he pumped his previously mentioned shotgun.

"Don't be ridiculous. The chupacabras escaped over a week ago and we still haven't found them. Besides I told you these are Rat-men."

"What difference does it make now!" Todd yelled at the older man as he fired at one of the Rat-men clawing his way out of a ventilation shaft.

"Trust me when you are backed up against a desk fighting off monsters there is a big difference. Chupacabras are WAY harder to kill and a whole lot faster too." Edd told the younger man as he closed the cylinder on his revolver and fired from behind cover.

Picking up a cell phone out of his pocket Doctor D pressed the contact for Rolf. He fired twice before the man answered on the third ring. He heard screaming, gunshots, and even laughing on the other line as the foreigner picked up.

"Rolf what's the situation on your side of the level?" Edd asked referring to the floor they were currently defending from a horde of Rat-men waiting for re-enforcements from Eddy's weapon's development level.

"Teddy's doing a pretty good job holding his own with the elephant gun, although he won't get off his moose. Nicolai is disturbingly well at using his scalpel. Abe is using an old English claymore sword and I have fifty rounds left for my MP5. How about you?" Rolf said while Edd heard him let lose a stream of fully automatic fire from the other room.

"Trainee's doing really well for a first time. We're both running low on ammo but I could grab a pipe or something if I had to. Eddy said backup is about four minutes away. Over and out." And with that Edd ended the call and started to place more bullets into his revolver when he heard a familiar buzz.

Edd peeked over his metal barrier and saw what he knew was there. Sliding along the floor was a large six foot tall yellow-green snail with arms. Coming out from his eye stalks were streams of yellow electricity, shocking and incapacitating any Rat-men that came near him. Turning he saw Edd peaking over the table and waved.

"Greg!" Edd addressed the snail getting up from behind his cover with a large smile.

That may have only confused you more. Maybe we should go further, start from the beginning.

The Institute: 8:15am

Edd drove into his parking spot in his futuristic looking sports car. It was a custom built ED-Mark D x series sports vehicle. It had been built by Kevin on level 17. Getting out of his car Mr. Devlin walked to the stairs at the far right of the parking garage. Ascending the concrete steps he made his way onto the platform leading to work. Taking out his wallet he took out his company ID and scanned it through the door at the top of the stairs and walked on the highly polished linoleum floor.

He was standing on an elevated platform where a monorail train would pass through. In his right hand was his suitcase and in his left was a samurai sword. He was going to put the sword on the wall in his office when he got to the main building of Genosan Industries corporate offices in the US, which was nicknamed 'the institute' by many working there. Right on schedule at 8:20 the monorail came and he was whisked away to his workplace

The monorail stopped and the passengers disembarked in front of the elevated entrance of the building. When looking at it, it seemed to be your average office building at only five stories high. What was unseen by outside onlookers was the two-hundred and eighty levels below the first five levels located underground. The building was in total two-hundred and eighty-five stories. Each story had a designated level going from top to bottom.

Edd entered the building and was greeted by a sentient gorilla. No really, he walked in and had a gorilla sitting behind a desk in the front lobby, with an IQ of 125 say in clear English, "How are you today Doc D?"

Completely unfazed, as he was the one who created the gorilla and the brain and vocal implants that allowed speech, The good doctor replied, "Fine. The katana finally came in from E-bay. By the way any updates on why we haven't heard from level 192 or level 65 in a week or so?"

"Good job getting the sword. And yes we have found out what happed to those two levels. They're dead. Level 65 was killed by exploding acid tomatoes and level 192 was overrun by squirrel-odillos. Cleanup will take about five days in both, pretty messy." The gorilla guard answered matter-o-factly.

"That's too bad. Have the boys on level 200 clone them from the DNA samples. Hopefully they remembered to give new samples recently, we don't want clones that are six months younger than they should be." With that request Edd headed over to a transport tube and punched in the number for his floor.

As the green button for level 178 lit up the doors opened and he stepped into a circular shaft about six feet wide. He was standing on a circular floor plate with a large X across the floor. The doors once again closed and he saw a panel light up in front of him. It had two buttons a red and a green. He pressed the green button and heard a female computerized voice say have a nice trip as the floor plate opened into four sections along the X.

Instantly he was falling through the shaft the walls passing by in a blur. His trip didn't last very long as he soon felt the air rush up against him. Soon enough his decent came to a halt as the wind rushing from large fans below him started blowing him upward. Before he was sent flying upward another floor panel closed about three inches below his feet allowing him to land softly as the door reopened.

Level 178 was one of the genetics labs. The level was divided into 2 main area types: labs and offices. Leading straight from the transport tube was a hallway with four doors. the two right doors led to the labs where the living subjects and the lab where the components for the experiments were kept. The door at the end of the hallway lead to another hallway where the offices were. The door on the left was where the experiments were performed.

Edd walked to the door at the end and through it into the hallway beyond. He walked past the doors of the other offices passing Rolf's, Nicolai's, and Eric's. Eric was currently in the process of being cloned after a bad incident with a lama-beetle hybrid. It didn't survive the first five minutes of being let out of the tube but neither did Eric. Finally he reached the last door reading Devlin, and proceeded to walk through. He laid his briefcase on his desk and went over to the rack behind his chair and placed his new sword in the cradle.

The doctor then went over to his coat rack and took off his suit jacket. He put the navy blue garment on a hook and took a white lab coat with his name embroidered on his front pocket and threw it over his chair. He walked back to his desk and opened his black briefcase. He lifted the lid and pulled out a clipboard, some files, and a holstered revolver. Strapping his gun into a shoulder holster and putting a twenty-five round box of ammo in his pocket he put on the lab coat. Closing his briefcase and picking up his paperwork he went out of his office and into the live test subject lab.

He looked over each experiment on his schedule and observed their changes. There wasn't much to say. The new mushroom species they grew had turned out to be carnivorous after all. The bat that they were trying to turn luminescent glowing blue had turned luminescent glowing green. He then shot the bat and made a note to start over. Now before you go judging he shot the bat, not because it glowed the wrong color, but because it had escaped it's cage and was trying to eat the guinea pig-snake hybrids. Other than that he had nothing out of the ordinary to report. Nothing new anyway.

They still hadn't accounted for the chupacabra that escaped not too long ago. The acid spitting tree spider was still very aggressive. For clarification it wasn't a spider that lived on trees but a spider that had been genetically crossed with an oak tree. As he was musing about the various experiments, he remembered that soon enough the new potential employee, and possible apprentice, would be coming into the labs for his introductory tour of where he would be working.

"Oh boy he is in for a wild trip today. I wish I could see the look on his face when he meets Kyle." Edd said referring to the gorilla security guard.

As Edd placed the lab reports on a table in the corner of the room he heard an electronic ringing. It signaled he was being paged on the Video phones along the wall of each room. He walked over to the screen along the right side of the wall and pressed accept. The screen flickered to life showing a large gray room about the size of a gymnasium. In the background he could see robots styled after monkeys firing guns at targets. They were obviously in the development process as they started to get bored with shooting the red bull's eyes and started shooting each other instead. Several humans dressed in combat armor were in the process of disabling the robots with EMP guns before they completely destroyed each other. In the immediate foreground Edd could see his old childhood friend Eddy although he was far from a child now.

All of the cul-de-sac kids had grown up over the years. At first they had graduated high school and went on to go to college or start working. Ed had become an author and animator of a very popular comic series. Edd had gone to a very prestigious college for medicine. Eddy went on to wall street to try and play the stock market ending up thousands in debt. Sarah, Nazz, and Jimmy had gone over to working at a cafe. Rolf and Jonny had gone on to work at Rolf's family farm. Kevin had gone on to become an automotive mechanic in Chicago. The three Kanker sisters had become designers at a hardware company. None of them were very satisfied with life and were becoming depressed at the idea that their life would be the same monotonous thing until they died. Then something changed.

It started with Edd, he had received a phone call offering him a job at a pharmaceutical company. Just to be courteous he had gone over to see what they were about. He was then greeted by Peter, the founder of Genosan Industries. The founder was nothing more than an android with a human brain and a face resembling a gas mask. After accepting that he had lost his mind and gone crazy he decided to go on the tour with the robot. He was then informed that the founder was from the future and had come back in time to start up the company and enroll the employees. Edd was supposed to be one of the three original employees. Upon hearing that he got Ed and Eddy to come join him and started out working in the lab.

Eventually they convinced Kevin, Rolf, and Jonny to come work at the institute. May and Nazz worked at the zoo. The zoo was an underground enclosure for the various experiments deemed successful that was reached by monorail. Marie worked in the sea lab, a branch of the company located in the middle of the ocean. Specifically it was located a mile below the ocean and was where the more aquatic experiments took place. Lastly Lee, Sarah, and Jimmy worked at the Ice cube. It was a base of operations and containment in Antarctica that held the most dangerous of the experiments. With a simple interview they had become the prestigious elite of classified. Now nine years later they were the most senior members of the company.

Eddy was looking pretty good. He was unfazed by the commotion going on behind him. Honestly after almost a decade of insanity you get pretty used to it.

Without a second glance behind him he said, "Peter told me to inform you that your study just got on the monorail and will be reaching you soon. Abe and Teddy had wanted to greet him so Rolf and Nicolai are going fetch them from the gladiator ring and will bring them to you. FYI Teddy just cloned a moose and gave it the ability to shoot silk web from its nostrils so he will probably bring it to show off to the new guy."

"Great, not only will the newbie have to see the animals in my lab he will see two dead presidents and a spider moose," Edd snorted sarcastically.

"I hope he doesn't go crazy like the last two trainees, " Eddy noted before turning off the video phone and getting back to gaining control of the malfunctioning monkey-bots.

Edd just chuckled and went over to the elevator on the opposite side of the floor to meet the group of mixed personalities coming to meet the new guy. He heard a slight scuffling above his head but thought nothing of it. It wasn't uncommon for a cockroach to ingest an experimental formula and grow to seven or eight inches and shoot fire. In fact he thought of calling the exterminators to come get it when he thought better. He figured they were pretty busy as is with the giant flea infestation on level 57. They were the size of a Labrador and very carnivorous.

He was brought out of his thoughts as he heard a ding and saw the doors slide open. Inside were four people and a moose with a spider web on its nose. Rolf had a scraggly beard and Edd guessed that he hadn't left his ecology lab in over a week. It wasn't because he had insane hours, in fact technically they didn't even have to go to work. They just did it because it was fun. Standing next to him was Nicolai Isaacs a brilliant Russian scientist who was well versed in almost every subject. Behind them were two of the most famous US presidents.

The one closest to the entrance of the elevator was Abraham Lincoln. He had a cybernetic lower torso below his ribcage, although you couldn't tell because he was wearing pants. His left eye was replaced with an artificial green robot eye that was connected to an arm from a pair of glasses that ran behind his left ear with a wire trailing into a small battery pack located in his robotic torso. Strapped on his side was a claymore sword from the gladiator arena.

The last person in the elevator was Theodore Roosevelt sitting atop his trusty steed with an elephant gun slung across his back. He looked normal from a look over but if you worked at the institute you knew that wasn't the case. Everything besides his right leg, right arm below the elbow, kidneys, liver, and brain was cybernetic. Both he and Lincoln had been cloned several years ago. Throughout that time they had sustained severe damage and had to be continually rebuilt. They were just lucky they had the best android technician in the world in level 285. In fact, the German was mostly artificial himself.

"I trust you had an easy time getting here," Edd told the men pleasantly.

"Not so much Doctor D. Gingerbread was scared of the elevator." Lincoln replied tiredly.

"Gingerbread?" Edd questioned.

"That's the name of my moose good boy," Theodore said giving the moose a pat.

Edd glanced at gingerbread. He had to say that due to the coloration of the moose's fur gingerbread did seem to fit. The moose then sneezed making a web bubble stick to the wall of the elevator. It appeared to have a runny nose. Teddy then cut the web with a boot knife and made the moose follow the other inhabitants of the elevator into the hall. Once there they made their way over to the door to the transport tube and waited to greet the young man. In no time at all they heard a low screech that turned into a full blown scream and stopped in front of them.

The transport tube's door opened showing quite a scene. Still falling were papers that the young man had been carrying before the floor of the tube opened up. Sitting on the floor leaning against the wall was Todd. His legs were splayed open and his arms were limp at his sides. He was breathing heavily and looked as though he thought he was going to die. Then his head turned and he saw the men standing before him.

Getting up he walked over to Rolf and said, "Which one of you is taking me to my grandpa?"

"Rolf begs your pardon?" Rolf asked the man confused.

"I obviously just fell to my death and am in heaven. Look there is Lincoln and Roosevelt. Why is ghost Lincoln part robot?" Todd told the men thinking himself obviously correct.

"Oh no they are clones and you were supposed to fall. That rush of air saved you from death. By the way you're not hallucinating and yes the gorilla was real. You are in for quite a ride," Edd pleasantly told Todd as he lead him over to the labs.

Later...

"So let me get this straight. You are all mad scientist performing unethical experiments for no reason. And you get paid millions per year?" Todd scrutinized.

"That is the basic gist of it," Nicolai replied plainly.

"I know it is a lot to take in but it doesn't take long to get used to it. After about two months you are adjusted to the system. For some it is a little longer, a little less. It took me a month, For Rolf it was three, Nicolai was Russian so he was rearing to go with no adjustment period." Edd explained plainly.

With that the six of them went over to the offices. They passed each office and Rolf explained who each one belonged to and what they did.

"This is my office, although you won't see me in it often. I am usually located one level above in my ecology lab. That is Eric's office. He died and is currently being cloned. You see he wasn't sure if he wanted the job or not and gave instructions that if he were to die he would be cloned and would then quit. If you can handle it you will then take his office and his position. You will be the lab assistant to Doctor Devlin, the man who greeted you. And here we are The Doc's office," Rolf said as they reached the door.

The six men then went inside the office, sans the moose. Todd took a seat as he was offered, then declined a drink. Edd then sat down at his desk and opened the briefcase. From inside he pulled out a file on the man in front of him. It was quite hefty. He had graduated from MIT with honors and had worked with a large pharmaceutical company for three years before he was offered this position. He had little experience in the type of experiments performed at the institute but Edd saw potential.

"Well you seem to be very experienced in conventional science... But can you handle working here where we do anything but conventional science?"

"I don't know... Possibly... If given time I think I could adjust," answered the young man sitting nervously in front of Edd.

"That is what I like honesty. I is very good you didn't blindly answer yes. Something is wrong with you if you can just immediately adjust to this environment without being crazy, or Russian. Let's start you with us for now and we can see where you go," Edd said admirably to his new lab assistant.

"Do you have any questions you need answe..."Edd started but was cut off by a high pitched screech coming from the hallway.

"Oh great another escaped experiment. Honestly every time I try to have a serious conversation," Edd spat angrily.

Edd then walked over to a cabinet on the back wall of his office. Taking a key from his pocket Edd unlocked the cabinet and opened the door. He then pulled out a 12 gauge shotgun and a box of shells putting the shells in the pocket of his lab coat. Edd threw an MP5 submachine gun at Rolf who caught it in the air. Edd took out three extra mags for the MP5 and handed them to Rolf on his way out of the door. Edd then pumped a round into the chamber of his shotgun and walked over to the lab where he performed experiments where the sound had come from.

He opened the door and saw two large creatures coming from the torn open air vent in the ceiling. They were large hairy humanoid creatures. They had the head and tail of a rat. Their bodies were a disproportionate cross between Rat and men. All of them had beady black eyes and sharp claw-like teeth and, of course, sharp claw-like claws. Their fur was a pure dark gray.

Edd simply pointed his shotgun and created large, gory wounds in each rat-man. They both flew onto the floor dead oozing a dark red blood. Going over to inspect the monsters he checked to make sure that they were dead.

"Get ready kid these things never come alone. They are always in big groups, a dozen or more," Edd told Todd.

Edd noticed that Teddy had the elephant gun at the ready and had somehow gotten on his moose without his noticing. Lincoln had drawn his broadsword and was standing ready for battle. Nicolai walked over the operation table and grabbed a scalpel, prepared to kill. Todd looked very uneasy as they stood waiting for the attack. It was quiet. They were getting smarter over time. They had learned from their elder, Charlie. He was the second thing Edd had ever created. He was different from the other rat-men as he had black fur with pure silver stripes down each side of his back. He had escaped early on and was hiding somewhere in the building.

Suddenly Edd was brought out of his thoughts as a crash was heard in the other lab. Without a word the six men started running out of the doorway with Gingerbread and Roosevelt in the lead. Before Edd could run out of the door he hear a plop and a scurrying. Edd turned just in time to see a large rat like creature jump at him, tackling him to the ground.

The shotgun was knocked to the side and the rat attacked him. His face was clawed and his coat torn to shreds in less than a second. Reaching in his coat he brought out his handgun and fired two quick shots into the beast's chest. rolling it off him he looked up to see Todd standing over him with an outstretched hand. Grabbing it, Edd got up and heard screaming and gunshots. He saw through the open door that The other four men were across the floor in the other lab battling the creatures.

Edd ran over to his shotgun that had skidded across the floor and picked it up aiming at the air vent that was where the attack started. He saw a rat-man jump down and was in the process of getting ready to charge when Edd blasted away half of its head. Suddenly he heard a crash to his right and saw another air vent being broken open by a rat-man. He was half way out of the vent when Edd shot him dead.

Edd opened the box of shells in his pocket and replaced the ammunition he used in his shotgun making sure it was fully loaded with eight rounds. Once he had the gun fully loaded Edd threw the shotgun at Todd who caught it surprised.

"You take that shotgun and cover those vents for me," the experienced man told his new protégé.

"What are you going to do?" Todd yelled incredulously at the bloody man in front of him.

"Make a call," Edd told him as he went over to the video phone on the wall as he dialed the number for Eddy's weapons lab.

Eddy picked up soon and Edd saw that he was holding the head of a robo-monkey in the crook of his elbow. It was sparking and had several wires trailing from where the head would be attacked to the shoulders. Eddy was about to open his mouth when he was cut off.

"Eddy no time for small talk. We have an attack force of rat-men. We don't know the details but I think that it will be a big horde. We need your help. I don't have the fire power to hold them off for long."

"Got it. I will be there in seven or eight minutes. Stay safe." and with that Eddy signed off and Edd went over to Todd who was firing at several rat-men coming out of the ceiling and wall vents.

Edd took out his pistol and fired a round into the head of a rat-man killing him before speaking to Todd, "Help me get to the other side of the room. We can flip over a table and use it as a barrier."

Nodding his head Todd killed another rat-man and sprinted to the other side of the room with Edd. Gingerly placing his gun on the floor Todd flipped a metal exam table on its side in front of a corner allowing them to see the entire room. He then picked up his shotgun and started firing again as Edd reached the spot he was at. Edd ducked behind the desk and Todd pointed his shotgun one last time before he was going to duck behind the table. As he pulled the trigger Todd hear a resounding click and that was all the rat-man needed.

Before he knew what was happening Todd was on the floor with a monstrosity clawing at his clothes and face. His shotgun had landed somewhere behind the table. He saw the beast open its mouth and saw the twisted and crooked yellow teeth. It was about to sink its teeth into the boy's face when it let out a death growl as Edd fired two rounds into its chest. Edd then grabbed onto Todd's shirt and practically threw him over the table as he scrambled behind it himself.

Both Edd and Todd reloaded their weapons as they heard more creatures break into their room. When Edd had finished putting the bullets into his revolver he stood up from behind cover and saw that there were at least a dozen rat-men in the room with them scurrying towards their hiding place. Edd carefully took aim and fired round after round into the creatures and as he was about to run dry with only one bullet left in his gun Todd stood up next to him. Edd fired his last round as Todd continued his barrage of lead.

Edd ducked back down and reloaded while Todd fired until the creatures started coming in smaller numbers. At one point both he and Todd were reloading when Edd decided to make a statement to lighten the mood.

"Boy you're lucky. Most guys don't get a containment breach until their second or third day. You got to experience your first only a hour and a half in."

"Greg!" Edd addressed the snail getting up from behind his cover with a large smile.

"Oh hello there Edd. I noticed the gunfire coming from the floor below me and I figured you might need my help," the sentient snail told the battered scientist and his confused trainee.

"Thanks for the thought. I was almost out of ammo just now. You're such a life saver." Edd told the snail gratefully.

Greg was about to reply when he was cut off by the other humans on the level.

"Greg you big snail. I thought you would still be in my lab," Rolf said to his snail assistant whom he created.

"You sure did scare off those rat-men my good slimy chap. I bet that's the last we'll see of them. For a week at least." Theodore Roosevelt congratulated the snail as he slung his rifle over his back and un-mounted his moose.

"Wait a second! A week! This kind of thing happens often?" Todd asked the men amazed.

"Well not exactly. You see the rat-men go into hiding and come out once every three to five weeks to attack the building. On the other hand there are many other experiments that run amuck and cause containment breaches daily. On a good day we will only have two experiments escape." Edd explained to Todd.

"But where do they all go?"

"Well we are not sure but I suspect they go and hide in the junkyard."

"Okay then...What is the Junkyard?"
"It is an eight mile by fifteen mile waste disposal area below this building. It is where all of the trash and chemicals that we throw away goes. It has, over the years, become a thriving ecosystem of predatory animals and plants of the most deadly species."

"Well if it is so dangerous then why don't you just destroy the place. Send some napalm or something."

"We thought of that but all of the chemicals are so highly volatile that if we tried to destroy it in any conventional manner the resulting explosion would reduce this building to a smoking crater."

"But couldn't you send some special forces to clear out he place?"

"Technically yes, but we just haven't felt like putting in the effort. Hey anyone else hungry? I'm going to the lunchroom to get a sandwich, you can come if you want."Edd spoke to the men gathered around him as he made his way over to the elevator.

Todd, not knowing what to say just followed the strange cast of men that he had just met into the elevator heading to lunch.

Back at lunch Edd's introductory speech to Todd was cut short as his phone vibrated. He looked at his phone and saw that it was Eddy He pressed the button and had a brief conversation with his friend. He then placed the phone back into his pocket as he addressed the five men sitting around him.

"Well Eddy's team cleared out the rat-men and flushed them back to wherever they were hiding. They are going to take the rat-men that Greg incapacitated and ship them over to the zoo. They are going to need us there in a week when the enclosure is ready. Until then we will just keep them in titanium cages in the lab."

"So Todd, how are you liking the institute so far?" Nicolai asked in his thick Russian bur once Edd had finished speaking.

Everyone quieted down waiting for the answer. This was the deciding point of the day. At this point they were going to see if the man sitting in front of them had the right stuff. They had gotten very bad responses to this question over the years. They ranged from are you insane to you all need to be institutionalized. Chewing the food in his mouth he swallowed and took a sip a root beer thinking about the question.

Finally after some time he answered, "This place is insane! All of you are crazy! You have no ethics!...but...this place has potential. I think I will stay for a little while."

This is a little brainchild of mine that I thought was an interesting idea. It is basically what would happen if the cast of Ed Edd and Eddy were mad scientists. The first few chapters will be kind of like a guide to the world. The story is divided into story lines and story arcs. The story lines are the long haul stories that are told throughout the series. They are like the first twenty or thirty chapters. The first story line with we are in now it the training story line. Story arcs are the chapters that focus on the same thing. They can sometimes be out of order but will always be labeled as to what arc each chapter belongs to. This is the Introduction arc. Story arcs are much smaller than story lines. There is no MAIN character but several characters that the story focuses on. The story changes perspective from chapter to chapter. This may seem very confusing at first but the story will explain all of this on its own. I hoped you enjoyed this and hope that you read on