About 6 hours after arriving (and a couple of brushes with tornadic weather), their first litter began to come into the world.  Melissa was the first one to be born, followed by another sister (mousette), and 2 brothers* (fox & mouse).  After spending their first day alive in the hospital, Melissa and her siblings came home with their parents for the first time.  Melissa's family was very well off, her father was the new marketing supervisor for what is now the Mason City Foxes in the IFL**.  This allowed her mother to quit her job at the strip club and spend all of her time with the ones she truly loved, her mate and children.  As for Nathan, as soon as they were old enough, he would take them to nearly every home game.  As expected, the males took to the game pretty quickly, as for Melissa and her sister; they didn't care for football as much as their brothers did.

 

For the next 6 years, The Johannsen family got along well as a unit of 6 individuals.  But now that their first litter was in school, Melissa's parents decided that 4 kids wasn't enough and started working on another litter, and by the start of summer vacation, another litter was about to make its way into the world.  Back at the hospital again in June of 2985, Linda started to deliver another litter of 4, the first 3 (all vixen pups) came into the world without incident.  However, the last of the four (Abigail), was having a bit of trouble coming out of her mother.  Although she was the smallest of the four, Abigail had become tangled in her umbilical cord** and couldn't get free.  So to save her life, the doctor's had to perform an emergency C-section to free Abigail before she suffocated.  Finally after nearly an hour of worrying, Abigail had entered the world, a bit exhausted but otherwise fine.  However, vixens (and other non-human Vulpine females) rarely have C-sections unless their children are at risk.  If a Vulpine female were to have a C-section, they ran the risk of not being able to have any more children for the rest of their reproductive lives.  And this is exactly what happened to Linda after Abigail had to be delivered this way.  The couple tried to have one more litter when Melissa and the rest of the first litter started high school in 2993.  Unfortunately, the C-section had caused so much damage that even if any eggs had been fertilized, they would not be able to implant into Linda's womb.  After 3 unsuccessful tries, the couple finally gave up and had to settle for the 8 children that they had already.  But this made the parents even more determined to raise the children well.  Nathan would take her and the rest of her siblings to every game that he could.  By now, the two males were very deep into football, being on the 9th grade Wakita East football team.  While their sisters just stared at the field mostly, waiting for the game to end...except Melissa.  Since starting high school, she started to become interested in football, but not for the reason you'd think.  At that time, a certain golden fox was in his rookie season with the team.  And in his very first game with the team after leaping nearly 40 feet into the air to make the touchdown grab, he crash landed in the stands in front of Melissa, signed the football and gave it to her.  Ever since then, Melissa had been (and still sorta is) infatuated with a certain golden fox named Michael A. Mason (thought I was gonna make you guess who it was...didn't ya???)

 

Anyway, aside from the problems when Abigail was born, Melissa's family always functioned well together, but all of that would soon change as soon as Melissa got her driver's license.

 

End of Act 1