In September of 2977, a category 5 hurricane slammed into the southern portion of Mason Island near Dolphin City, Every single television station in Dolphin City was severly damaged or destroyed, except for the one that Todd owned down there.  Why wasn't his TV station destroyed you're asking...well, about a year earlier, Todd had come upon a recent discovery made by one of Vulpes' best minds that offered unimaginable damage protection at an affordable price.  He had all the stations he owned on Vulpes retrofitted with the experiemental barriers and they worked like a charm.  Why is this important, well the genius who came up with the idea was his own 2 1/2 year old son, whose intelligence level at that age was extremely high.  Now, you may be asking, how the hell could a 2 1/2 year old fox pup (even an extremely intelligent one) created an experimental protection barrier that can resist violent weather conditions, earthquakes, and bomb blasts?  Well, when Mike turned 2, he had the intelligence level of a 20-year old human (usually by age 2, foxes have the intelligence level of about a 10-year old human).  Mike had always been into science, and his parents got him a chemistry set for his 2nd birthday.  One day, Mike found a vulpine quarter outside (all vulpine coins are made from steel, with a slight amount of anti-magnetic powder).  The next day, on a trip to the park, he found the remains of what appeared to be a squirrel.  He immediately thought back to the coin he found and thought what would happen if he mixed the steel from the coin with the bone from the skeleton.  When he got home, he turned the skeleton into powder and used a blowtorch to melt the coin.  The result was liquid steel combined with bone fragments.  As the bone melted in the molten steel, it had created a new solid compound that became hard instantly.  After removing it from the melting pan, being the inquisitive young fox that he was, he took his father's sledgehammer and hit the metallic object with it.  The material that he had created was so strong that the head of the sledgehammer cracked in multiple places and then crumbled onto the floor.  His father, hearing metal on metal, immediately ran to the garage and saw the crumbled up remains of the head of his steel sledgehammer.  He quickly asked his son how this happened.  Mike told him that he combined the steel from a coin with bone fragments he found in the park and hit the resulting substance with the hammer.  Todd immediately thought that the compound his son had just created must be strong if it were powerful enough to break a large steel sledgehammer.  After that, the rest became history.  The new metallic material would eventually be called Indesturctium (as in indestructible).  Anyway, back to the original story, after the hurricane, the other major networks on Mason Island learned about what had happened and found out about the Indestructium fitted building and immediately wanted to rebuild their buildings with the new compound.  Being a smart fox himself, Todd helped Mike patent his new creation and then offered to provide them with the compound for a fee.  One month after the hurricane had struck, Todd had thousands of orders for Indestructium building materials (hammers, nails, beams, etc).  This new discovery caused Todd's network to receive a serious infusion of cash (even after commissions to advanced chemistry and medical science companies to produce materials and expertise to produce large quantities of Indestructium).  It also had an (indirect) part in the creation of Mike and Michelle's younger siblings, as you will read about below.

 

Now with the family in a much better financial situation (and I use that term mildly), Todd and Melissa were able to afford having more pups, they immediately started working on a second litter.  It wouldn't take long for that to happen, although they didn't get a litter (they only got one pup)*.  By the end of January 2978, Todd and Melissa's 3rd pup entered the world (this time on Vulpes).  Jennie's original name was Jennifer Allison Mason, however when she started pre-school at age 3, her teacher called her "Jenny" and she stuck with that name ever since.  But after she realized that her initials spelled the word "JAM" (at age 6), she had the "y" ending to an "ie" ending (later on, some of her friends and first boyfriends called her "Jamie", which was "JAM+ie"**).  Although Mike welcomed his new baby sister into the world, his other sister became jealous of her baby sister, and that began a sibling rivalry that would last until Mike and Michelle were in High School.  But you'll have to wait 'til Act 3 to find out more! ^w^

 

End of Act 2