After making it past the preliminary matches, the trio and their families were on the road in three separate vehicles on their way to Wisconsin. Danny's family were in the front using the Fenton Ghost Assault Vehicle, or GAV for short, with Tucker's family following behind in their more practical minivan and bring up the rear was Sam's family in a limousine. The trio were with their respective families trying to find ways to past the time as they endured the long drive.
Danny was sitting on the left side of the back seat with Dani in the middle and Jazz at the right side. Jazz was reading a psychology book much to Danny's amazement while wondering how she wasn't getting car sick, and Dani was watching an anime series called Fairy Tail on the family iPad, which all three Fenton siblings had to share as Jack and Maddie believed that it would help their kids learn about the importance of sharing. Danny on the other hand was busy sketching out designs for ways to improve his GM Phantom Striker as well as a design for a new Gunpla that he wanted to make.
Over in the Foley family van, Tucker was in the backseat fiddling with his PDA while sneaking glances at his DOM Trooper sitting on the seat to his right. It wasn't lying on the seat, the Gunpla was actually sitting on the seat of the van like it was a small child and even had the seatbelt on. It was quite a strange sight to be seen.
In the Manson family's limousine, Sam was sitting close to one of the windows to look out to see what was outside of the vehicle. All she saw were trees, grass, a couple of small animals, and a large hairy bipedal beast looking at the side of the road. Sam looked at it for a moment before rolling her eyes at the sight of this thing.
'The Ohio Grassman,' thought Sam. 'How predictable,' she mentally added as she saw a sign that said "Now leaving Ohio" as the limousine continued on its way to Wisconsin.
After a day or two being on the road with periodic stops, the three families had finally made it to Wisconsin and were driving up a pathway to a very impression mansion that looked more like a castle than anything else. Strangely, Jack seemed to be very eager to get to the front of the mansion as he sped up a bit to reach it. Once the three families got out of their vehicles, Jack started knocking on the door very loudly, much to the surprise of the Fenton siblings and the shock of Jeremy and Pamela.
"Jack, you shouldn't be knocking on someone door so rudely," said Jeremy as he walked up to Jack.
"There's a way to knock on a door rudely?" Danny asked Sam.
"I have no idea," answered Sam.
Before anyone could say anything else, the door opened to reveal a man in his forties with gray hair pulled back into a ponytail and wearing a black suit. Jeremy and Pamela looked at the man with open mouths as they recognized the man as Vlad Masters, the richest man in Wisconsin, if not all of America. Before Sam's parents could say anything, Jack beat them to the punch.
"Vladdie!" yelled out Jack as he was about to hug Vlad.
"Jack!" Vlad yelled as he hugged Jack back. "It's been so long since I've seen you, my old buddy," he added as the two men separated. "Maddie, it's great to see you too," he said to Maddie when he spotted her.
"It's great to see you too Vlad," said Maddie as she hugged Vlad as well.
The Fenton siblings, the Manson family, and the Foley family blinked their eyes as they had just witnessed the richest man in Wisconsin hug Jack and Maddie Fenton. Vlad finally noticed Jazz, Danny, and Dani standing behind their parents.
"And these must be the kids," Vlad said to Jack and Maddie.
"That's right Vladdie," said Jack as he pointed to his kids. "This here is our oldest daughter Jazz, our only son Danny, and our youngest daughter Dani," he introduced his kids to Vlad.
"You named your youngest daughter after your son?" asked Vlad in confusion.
"Jack had a moment where he couldn't think of a name for Dani when she was born and somehow Danny's name came up," answered Maddie.
Vlad let out a little chuckle after hearing the origin of Dani's name.
"That sounds like Jack," said Vlad. "I remember how when he sent me a letter about how he named your oldest after his old pet cat, Jasmine," he added.
"Wait a minute," interrupted Jazz, which drew the attention of everyone. "I was named after a cat!?" she yelled in shock. "Stop laughing Danny!" she yelled at her brother in annoyance.
"It was the tiny one who was laughing," Danny defended himself while pointing at Dani.
Dani glared at her older brother for pinning the blame on her.
Jack, Maddie, and Vlad shared a laugh at the expense of the Fenton children while the Foley and Manson families looked at this exchange in slight confusion.
After the pleasantries were taken care of, Vlad ushered everyone into his home where the teens and one pre-teen noticed that Vlad had a lot of football related stuff that was in green and yellow. There was even a large banner for the Green Bay Packers on one of his walls. It was clear to the kids that Vlad was a major Packers fan.
"I see you still support the old college team, huh Vladdie," commented Jack.
"Of course I do Jack," replied Vlad as he walked up towards a signed football. "I can still remember how you and I dragged Maddie into every game during our college days," he added as he picked up the football. "Think fast Jack!" he yelled before throwing the football to Jack.
Jack moved to catch the ball but unfortunately the ball veered away from Jack and was heading towards Maurice. The end result was Jack catching the ball, accidently knocking over Maurice, and landing on the poor man.
One 911 emergency call later and Maurice was back to normal, well about as normal as a man being nearly crushed to death by Jack Fenton can be. Regardless, after that accident was resolved, Vlad continued the tour of his house by bringing everyone to a newly renovated room that housed a surprising collection.
"Now, this room is where a new hobby of mine is placed," Vlad told everyone as he opened the door.
When the door opened to reveal the room, everyone's eyes widened at what was presented before them.
"Whoa…" said Dani as she looked at what was in the room.
Inside this room was a massive collection of completed Gunplas from the various Gundam anime shows and side stories. They ranged from the high grades, the master grades, the perfect grades, and even a few mega sized ones as well. They were all built perfectly and were in various action poses. There was even a large table used as a diorama depicting the battle of Odessa from the original Gundam anime with many Zakus, Goufs, and Doms guarding the mountain designed Odessa mining base while several normal GMs, Ground Combat GMs from the 08th MS Team series alongside a couple of Ground Combat Gundams.
Danny, Sam, and Tucker walked up to it to examine the detailing that Vlad put into making this diorama.
"Did you build this whole thing by yourself Mr. Masters?" asked Danny as he looked at the detailing on one GM that had holes drilled onto it that looked like bullet holes.
"Yes, I did Daniel," answered Vlad. "I discovered Gundam and Gunpla during the mid-nineties during a business trip to Tokyo and became interested in it ever since," he explained. "Building Gunpla was very relaxing," he added.
"And costly," commented Tucker's mom.
"True, but with the amount of money I make, it's not that much of an obstacle," replied Vlad.
"Uh…Vlad…" started Maddie. "Not to be rude, but why are you hosting a tournament involving these toys?" she asked.
"Well Maddie, I recently formed a partnership with Bandai, the company that manufactures the model kits and wanted to help them get a more stable foothold in their American customers by promoting their models through a more marketable tournament," answered Vlad.
"Wait, you mean your tournament is just an excuse for money grubbing corporate drones to promote their products?" Sam questioned Vlad.
"Sammy-kins…" started Pamela.
"Now, now, I can understand how you would think all corporations are only interested in making money, but I honestly want to get Gundam back in the American market," said Vlad. "Most Gundam model kits can only be found in comic book stores, a few hobby shops, and online stores these days. Back when Gundam was first introduced to American thanks to Gundam Wing, you could find a large amount of Gundam model kits in K-mart, Walmart, and Toy-R-Us stores for everyone to get a hold of them. I simply want those model kits back in those stores where they are much cheaper to buy than from comic book stores and online stores that sell them at much higher prices than they are actually worth," he explained as he picked up an old high grade Gundam Heavyarms Custom Gunpla. "This Gunpla in my hand in today's market is worth about five dollars and sixty cents due to its age in comparison to some of the more modern ones. However in some anime convention, a man will raise the price to close to forty dollars on this same model that is roughly twenty years old, give or take a couple of years," he told everyone.
"What a rip off," commented Dani as she crossed her arms.
"Indeed little one," agreed Vlad as he put the model back where he grabbed it. "That's why I'm willing to use my tournament as an excuse to promote Gunplas in America," he added.
Sam thought about what Vlad said for a moment before nodding her head.
"I guess there's nothing wrong with working with corporate drones if it's for making profits fair for everyone," Sam conceded towards Vlad's point of view.
Danny and Tucker looked at Sam in shock when they heard her say those words. Sam looked at her friends in confusion as discomfort.
"What?" Sam asked as Danny and Tucker got closer to her.
"Who are you and what have you done to our Sam?" asked Danny.
"Yeah, the Sam we know would never listen to anyone else's point of view," added Tucker.
Two punches to the faces later and Danny and Tucker were on the ground with matching black eyes while Sam stood over them with steam, somehow, coming out of her right fist.
Dani hid behind Jazz in fear of Sam directing her fist as her next.
"Dani, sweetie, what are you doing?" Maddie asked her youngest.
"Using Jazz as my human shield," answered Dani from behind her sister's legs.
"What!?" yelled Jazz in terror.
Later in the evening, Vlad's mansion became much livelier as the richest man in Wisconsin threw a massive meet and greet for all of the competitors of his tournament as well as sponsors that were involved with this tournament. Nearly everyone were in suits or dresses, depending on the gender of the person, and were mingling. Normally such an event would be right up Jeremy and Pamela's alley as they were big time socialites, however this time they were suffering from a case of being fish out of water as most of the competitors were either teenagers or young adults who were either talking about their Gunplas or anything involving the Gundam meta-series. Since neither of them know anything about the Gundam franchise, any conversation involving the anime was confusing to them because all they knew was that it was a cartoon involving giant robots.
Sam on the other hand, was having no trouble mingling with the other competitors…so long as she was around Danny and Tucker or else she wouldn't be talking to anyone at all. At the moment, Sam was with Danny talking to an African American young man with crew-cut hair who was called Johan "OneShot" Tannis. This guy was wearing a black suit much like the many other guys in this meet and greet.
"So you managed to place the GN Drive of you Dynames onto the back of the waist instead on leaving it on its back," said Danny after hearing Johan describing his Gunpla.
"Yeah, I didn't want it to interfere with my Gunpla's movement during a match and the back of the waist made more sense," replied Johan. "It's kind of like how Cherudim Gundam's GN Drive is set up, to correct its topological defect," he explained.
"I never noticed that when I was watching Gundam 00," commented Sam. "I just thought Cherudim's GN Drive was set up like that because of the backpack unit it had on its back got in the way of the GN Drive," she added.
After hearing Sam's comment, Johan went on to explain the topological defect that Dynames had and why he decided to correct it with his Gunpla to both Danny and Sam.
'Honestly, I would have just gone with picking Cherudim over Dynames since Cherudim is the successor to Dynames,' thought Danny as he and Sam continued to listen to Johan.
Over at one of the drink tables, Tucker was checking out the many girls near the balcony that were in the tournament and he was happy to see that quite a few of them were not the nerdy looking kind of girls. Granted the techno-geek would flirt with any girl that was cute, but he's got his eyes set on two particular girls that were talking to each other.
One of the girls was a shoulder length haired blonde with blue eyes wearing a pink dress that complimented her slender figure. The other girl was a short haired girl, which was dyed in a red-violet color, with indigo colored eyes and wearing a black dress.
"Man, that girl with the red hair could pass for Lunamaria from Destiny and the other one looks like a blonde Allenby from G Gundam," Tucker whispered to himself before making his way to the girls. "Time to lay on the charm," he added.
Unfortunately for Tucker, his attempts at wooing would be put on hold as someone decided to interfere.
"Tucker!" yelled Dani from behind the techno-geek.
Tucker let out a high pitched scream, completely surprised by Dani's voice. He turned around to look at the twelve year old tomboy, who was, unwillingly, in a light blue dress.
"Have you seen my Dad?" Dani asked while turning her head left and right trying to find him. "Mom and I haven't seen him in the last five minutes," she told Tucker.
"You yelled out my name and scaring me out of my mind just so you could ask me if I have seen your dad," Tucker summed up.
"Pretty much," replied Dani. "Why, were you doing something important?" she asked.
"Yes," answered Tucker. "I was going to score myself a date with one of those two hotties over there," he told Dani as he pointed at where the two girls were.
"What two hotties?" asked Dani in confusion as she looked at where Tucker was pointing.
Tucker turned around to see that the two girls he had his eyes on were not where he last saw them.
"What the…?" started Tucker as he looked around to find the girls. "Where did they go?" he asked as he frantically searched for them.
"Don't know," commented Dani. "But you probably would have blown it anyway with your bad jokes," she added as she left Tucker alone to search for her dad. "Dad, where are you?" she called out as she vanished within the jungle of human legs.
She really is very short for a twelve year old.
Over at another area of the party, Amon Tang was conversing with Gemini, one of the competitors from Michigan, and a boy with red dyed hair with reddish brown eyes. The boy with the dyed hair was Alexander "Axel" Yuri, and he was also a representative of Pennsylvania. All three boys were wearing black suit and were drinking punch by the punch bowl.
"So, you guys use close quarters type Gunplas huh?" Amon questioned as he took a sip of his drink.
"Yeah, I use a customized Extreme Gundam with a scratch built Xenon phase," said Gemini.
"Scratch built…" repeated Axel clearly impressed. "Not bad man," he added. "I use one of the old 1/144th scale Epyon models, but I upgraded it with a few parts from the Gundam Legilis and the Twin Buster Rifle from Wing Zero," he told the others.
"Nice," replied both Amon and Gemini.
"Thanks," said Axel. "What about you Amon?" he asked. "Is there anything you added to your Altron Mk. II?" he continued to question.
"No, so far my Altron is fine the way it is," answered Amon.
Conversations like this continued as the party continued. Everyone was getting along quite well such as Maddie Horton from New York was talking with Valerie and the two girls Tucker was trying to find. It turned out that the blonde girl went by the name of Char Redd, chances were good that the name Char was both short for Charlotte and referenced to Char Aznable, while the girl with the dyed hair was Revy Hendrikse, one of the competitors from Illinois.
Near the front of the room, Victor Soulman was standing next to a wall alongside the man known as the Black Knight. The two of them were generally silent as they observed the other competitors with no visible expression on their faces. Granted with Victor, it wouldn't be surprising with the mask he was wearing while the Black Knight was still wearing his sunglasses.
"If you two are trying to blend in, you're not doing a good job of it," said a male voice.
The two men turned to look at a man in his twenties standing towards their right. The man had brown hair with a high and tight haircut and wearing an Air Force service uniform which suggested he was active military. He also had brown eyes that seemed to have this bright expression that reminded to two men of a teenager.
"You're military?" questioned Victor.
"Yep," replied the man. "Staff Sergeant Evan Cole of the US Air Force," he introduced himself.
"I didn't know active duty members could participate in a Gunpla tournament," commented the Black Knight.
"They can if they're on leave," replied Evan.
"So how did you become interested in Gunpla?" asked Victor.
"I used to watch Gundam when I was a teen and fell in love with it," answered Evan. "And in a way, that's what led me to joining the Air Force," he added.
The three men continued to converse as the party continued until Vlad presented himself to everyone.
"May I have everyone's attention please," Vlad called out which got everyone to stop talking. "I would like to thank all of you for participating in this little tournament of mine and I hope that the accommodations I have set up for all of you are to your liking," he told them. "Now, I would also like to invite all of those who are interested to join me in my private theater room for I have prepared a special screening of the Gundam classic movie Char's Counterattack in five minutes," he continued. "If you are not interested, then you are free to remain here to continue getting to know each other, go into the game room, or if you wish to go back to your hotel rooms to rest up and prepare for the tournament tomorrow," he added. "That is all and I would like to thank all of you once again for participating in this tournament," he finished.
After hearing Vlad, several of the guests headed towards his private theater room, among them was Jack who dragged Maddie along completely against her will, to watch the Gundam movie that ended the rivalry between Amuro Ray and Char Aznable, the two legendary aces of the Gundam meta-series, while some of the younger competitors decided to see Vlad's game room, some of the adults decided to stay to finish their drinks and food, and a few decided to head to the hotel to turn in for the night.
Danny, Dani, Sam, and Tucker were among those who decided to look into the game room while Jazz headed for one of the rooms that Vlad had given the Fentons, Mansons, and Foleys to spend the remainder of their stay in Wisconsin. Once in the game room, the three teens and one pre-teen were amazed by the large amount of game system Vlad had in the room. It looked like an arcade with several actual arcade games as well as home consoles connect to large flat screen TVs. What surprised them and the other guests was that Vlad also had four actual arcade game version of Gundam Extreme vs Maxi Boost. Several of the guests wasted no time as they began to play the games.
"Dude, Mr. Masters has really hooked us up!" cheered Tucker as he made a dash for one of the Xbox one consoles to play Titanfall.
"No kidding," agreed Sam. "Come on Dani, let's find a game to play," she added as she and Dani ran off to find any available game to play.
Danny smiled as he watched his little sister went with Sam to play something. Danny took a look around to see if there was a game worth playing since quite a number of people were all over the Gundam Extreme vs Maxi Boost games. Danny spotted a PS3 that someone was playing and decided to join in. The person who was playing the game Gemini and he was playing Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate.
"Hey, mind if I join in?" Danny asked Gemini.
Gemini paused the game and looked up to see Danny.
"Sure man," replied Gemini. "Grab a controller and pick your fighter," he told Danny.
Danny did just that and noticed that Gemini was using Mila, the MMA girl. Danny looked at the roster of fighters and picked Rig, the self-taught Taekwondo fighter, which caused Gemini to raise an eyebrow at Danny's choice.
"A kicker huh?" commented Gemini.
"Well, you picked a girl whose main strength is her punches and grapples," Danny retorted in a friendly manner.
"Well let's see what you got," said Gemini.
"Okay, but just so you know, I don't know every trick Rig can pull off," Danny told Gemini. "So don't be surprised if you see me spamming," he added.
"Hey, I could care less if a guy spams his moves or not," started Gemini. "So long as he tries his best and has fun that's all that matters," he added.
Danny smiled for a moment before he and Gemini began their match.
Meanwhile inside Vlad's personal theater room, Vlad was sitting in the front with Jack and Maddie. Vlad was sitting to the right of Jack while Maddie was sitting to the left of her husband. Jack and Vlad were enjoying the movie while Maddie had a hard time understanding why Jack and Vlad are enjoying this cartoon since as far as she could tell, it was just a movie involving people fighting a war with giant robots. However, as the movie continued Maddie was shocked to see how the teenage girl, Quess Paraya, sided with Char and joined Neo Zeon. It was at that moment that Maddie became interested in seeing what would happen next in this movie.
Author's note: Well the meet and greet chapter is now finished. It wasn't exactly an easy chapter to write, not because it was actually difficult but because I have a hard time going through all the OC submissions on both fanfiction net and deviantart to make sure that I included all the characters that were submitted. Chances are I have forgotten a few and I apologize for that.
I really need to make a list of the characters that have been submitted, and not lose that list.
Now I'm sure many of you are surprised by Vlad's much cheerful reaction to seeing Jack. Well, I decided that since there is no actual villain in this story and since Danny, Dani and Vlad don't have ghost powers, I figured that why not do something that very few people would dare to do and make it where Vlad got over Maddie and instead cared more for his friendship with both Jack and Maddie. Hell in this story, in this story Vlad was Jack's Best man at the wedding. I also decided that Vlad's reasoning for coming up with this tournament would be related to how the Gundam franchise pretty much died here in America. Though in the Gundam Build Fighters anime, Gundam is going strong in America to the point where Gunpla tournaments were treated like wrestling matches, in real life Gundam wasn't doing so well. There are many speculations as to why Gundam dropped in popularity in the west but my best guess is that Bandai, the company responsible for bringing Gundam to America, screwed up when they tried to introduce the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime after showing Gundam Wing first.
The reason I think that was the problem is because when you look at the animation of both Mobile Suit Gundam (MSG) and Gundam Wing, you can see that showing viewers the old school anime designs of the late 70's and early 80's was going to put off several viewers when compared to the more modern look Gundam Wing had at the time. Even though MSG had a great storyline with great character development and the heavy message that War is Hell, the casual viewers of anime care more for the animation style instead of the substance that really drove a series. Another factor that screwed Gundam over in America was 9/11. Mobile Suit Gundam had to be taken off the air for a while due to the terrorist attack of 9/11, which was reasonable because showing any show that had high levels of violence and destruction wasn't a good idea.
There may be other reasons as to why Gundam was pulled out of America, but another thing that I brought up is also true with why Vlad wanted to use his tournament to promote Gundam in America. The only way for American fans of Gundam, as well as fans from other parts of the world is by online shopping or if you're lucky in hobby shops, but the problem with those is that the prices are much higher than from a retail store. You can find a high grade Gundam model kit on eBay and it will be priced at one average 24.99 while in Japan the same model kit could be about 1200 to 1500 yen which may be about 12 to 15 dollars. Some of the older model kits also get jacked up prices such as the high grade Endless Waltz model kits that in reality are worth about $6.71 on this one website that sells Gundam model kits at retail prices. So in the end, I used that as Vlad's main motivation for running this tournament.
