After school, Ish revisits the Chargers' stadium where he learns about the history of the Shards, the Rusherz and a powerful object called the Core: The Rusherz' home planet which held the Core was peaceful, until an evil overlord named Sudden Death attacked the planet to take the Core for himself. The Rusherz stopped Sudden Death by drilling to the Core at the center of the planet and freeing it, which destroyed the planet in the process and cast both the Core and the Rusherz into space. The Rusherz followed the Core to Earth, where it crashed upon landing and broke into 32 Shards (which are recognized as the symbols of the 32 NFL teams). Knowing Sudden Death would not stop until he had the Core, the Rusherz each took a Shard, built the 32 NFL stadiums to hide each one in and assigned the 32 teams to guard their respective Shard in those stadiums. It is explained that Sudden Death's goal is to retrieve all the Shards to rebuild the core, then to use the Core's power to turn everything