-Start off with a little narrative for the uninitiated viewer, regarding the endless water, diggers, ruins, etc. while doing an ocean sweep similar to that in the preview. It will finish up with some comment about the dangers, as the scene shifts to...
-Inside the ruins we see the lead character, Yohmi, battling it out with a Hanmuru Doll. It's an intense fight, lots of shooting, dodging, slamming, and smoke spewing from the reaverbot as it finally goes down.
-Resume narrative as Yohmi, quite exhausted, heads for the refractor room. He removes it and the lighting changes as ruins enter lock-down mode and he runs for it. Narrative mentions the importance of refractors, including the powering of vehicles...
-Scene changes back to the ocean. A boat glides across the waves as the camera zooms in. We see several people inside and then the view heads beneath the surface where a lower deck of the boat hangs down with large windows for observation. There are more people down here, and the camera continues zooming in on the face of a young girl named Miki. Camera moves behind her and she's watching fish swim by. Suddenly she backs away with a gasp as some aquatic reaverbots go past. We hear an order from someone else in the ship, telling the crew to prepare to rise.
-The boat's fins under the water rotate until level, becoming wings. The propellers on the wings retract and become rockets. The boat becomes an airship and rises into the sky. We see it approach and dock at the ruin tower.
-The airship and crew belong to a company that designs and field-tests communication technology used by diggers and their spotters. As their dig team gets prepared and things are unloaded, the doors to the ruins open and Yohmi steps out with his prize. He speaks briefly with the man in charge of the ship (while Miki listens from a distance). Yohmi gets an understanding of what they're here to do and suggests they steer clear of the ruin branch he's just come from. Then they go their separate ways.
-Yohmi starts up his boat and returns to his home, a nearby island called Trinban. The island has a bunch of lightning rods reaching into the sky. As Yohmi pulls his boat into its garage we also see that the ruin tower is still visible in the distance. It's late afternoon and he goes about the task of checking his equipment and whatnot.
-Having grown up on an impoverished island, Yohmi has a strong distaste for mankind's dependance on refractors, and hopes to find a more natural form of power for the people. As such, Trinban is not only his home but his lab, where he conducts experiments in the hopes of effectively harnessing the awesome power of lightning. He has had some small success so far.
-Even though the lightning rods are perfect for Yohmi's work, they were actually here long ago, along with remnants of an ancient village. The former inhabitants constructed the rods due to the abnormally high storm activity in this area. Even as Yohmi works, threatening clouds are building on the horizon. He looks up from time to time, watching them grow and wondering how the crew is doing...
-Back at the ruins, Miki complains about what a boring job it is to be a spotter, and how she longs to venture into the ruins. Her shipmates, busy with their own tasks and monitoring, largely ignore her. When one of them finally speaks in response, it's a scolding. They tell her she's lucky to even have such a job, a comment which establishes for the viewer that she's the runt and hints at her low social status. Miki has been an orphan from a young age and lived a rough life, shuffled here and there.
-Between the oncoming night and gathering storm the sky quickly becomes dark. Rain begins to pour and thunder rumbles. Yohmi finishes up and heads into his house, taking one last look around Trinban and at the ruins, which would be totally obscured by the weather if not for the lights within the airship.
-The crew loses all contact with their team underground and prepares to send in a second team. This leaves only Miki and one other on the airship as the storm intensifies. Lightning flashes wildly and suddenly the equipment gives off a strange, high-pitched noise. The ship's lights flash on and off as lightning begins striking the ruins repeatedly.
-Yohmi watches the strange occurrence from within his home, and looks on in horror as the top half of the ruins suddenly explodes outward. Columns of fire rise into the sky and large chunks of the ruins rocket out in every direction. The airship is sent flying as well. Yohmi hurries out of his house and runs to an elevated piece of the island to see if the ship survived, but there's no sign of it.
-Fade to a peaceful morning the following day, complete with MML1 bird chirping sound effects. Yohmi walks around, assessing the damage to his island and inspecting his equipment. During his rounds he finds his boat has mysteriously vanished. He assumes it must have gotten carried off in the crazy storm.
-A while later Yohmi receives a visitor, a friendly acquaintance who happened to be nearby and decided to check up on him after such a vicious night. Yohmi tells him about the loss of his boat and asks for a lift to another island. Naturally he obliges and they head to ???? island (I'm keeping the name secret for now). It's a fairly bustling place.
-Yohmi heads to the docks to see about renting a boat or buying one, if he can find a suitable deal. He runs into a man named Wily, incidentally the same man who sold Yohmi his original boat. Wily asks him how the boat's holding up, teasingly, because as Yohmi soon learns his boat has already been spotted docked on this very island.
-He sets about finding the boat and the person who took it. This brings him in contact with Miki, the sole survivor of the communication ship's crew.
-Yohmi's upset about the theft, but listens to her story. She managed to save the recordings of the communication activity at the ruins, vital info to the company she's with. She needs to take it back to the company's HQ, on Nino Island. It's a good distance but he finally agrees to take her there.
-Along the way they talk some and become a little friendlier with one another. Each of them finds the other's work to be rather fascinating.
-Miki had headed for the closest city to escape the storm, but Nino is actually the opposite direction. They plan to stop and stay the night at Trinban since it's along the way. As they approach it at dusk they find that the remains of the exploded ruins are surrounded by a number of ships equipped with searchlights. Yohmi realizes too late that they're air pirates. As they pass by and dock on Trinban as planned, some of the ships follow them.
-There's nothing of any real value on Trinban, but it seems the pirates caught wind of what went down here last night and what Miki's carrying. They want the equipment records and Miki, for her knowledge of the events and technical expertise on the subject. Yohmi and Miki attempt to escape through ruin tunnels beneath Trinban, but Miki is not as fast and gets captured. Yohmi can do nothing to help her.
-With pirates still swarming over his home, Yohmi decides to take the tunnels under the ocean, where they eventually connect up with the ruin tower. Miki had mentioned that some of the equipment carried into the ruins by the com team would contain the same information as what she had salvaged. If Yohmi can find some of the dig team's remains, it might be there. He does.
-While fighting reaverbots on his way back to Trinban with the goods, he gets into trouble and is saved by a mysterious man clad in a combination of digger's armor and reaverbot parts. His name is Mett. When his family was killed by reaverbots, he became an obsessive reaverbot researcher and finally went mad from spending too long in the dangerous underground. His knowledge of the reaverbots is extensive, and over the years he has learned a great deal about the ruins themselves, and found secrets in places that diggers never even realize exist.
-Yohmi asks Mett his opinion about the lightning strikes. They were definitely a strange reaction to what the com crew was doing with their equipment. Yohmi learns that there are many places in Terra besides Trinban that have particularly severe or abnormal weather patterns. Such patterns are unnatural, and relate to the ruins and ancients. Among them is the famous Forbidden Island, and also, Mett informs him, Maelstrom Island where the air pirates have their base.
-Now Yohmi knows where the pirates are going, and likely what they're after. Apparently the communications crew stumbled upon something that made the unusual weather pattern react. If the pirates could figure out how it worked, using their own base's unique weather as a testing ground, they might gain mastery over the weather at certain locations all over Terra. It could be a means to ceasing Forbidden Island's storms so that they can find the Mother Lode rumored to be there, or they may intend to use such knowledge as a weapon. Whatever their intentions, Yohmi decides then and there he has to find a way to stop them and hopefully rescue Miki while he's at it.
-By the time Yohmi makes it back to Trinban the pirates have left. He takes off right away in his boat and speeds toward Nino Island with the communication equipment. The man Yohmi speaks to at the com office on Nino is most disturbed by the news and appreciates Yohmi's efforts. They will use the info from the equipment to attempt to find a way to counter any use the pirates might make of it, but after losing a whole crew they cannot afford to lend any manpower to Yohmi's plan.
-Yohmi will not give up. He hangs around the Digger's Guild a while, hoping to find some brave diggers who are willing to help him out. He meets one named Russel, who sympathizes with his plight, but can offer no direct support himself. He points out that even if someone were willing to take Yohmi to Maelstrom Island in their airship, they'd be torn apart by the wild weather if the pirates didn't get them first. He mentions though, that he'd met a young couple a few days ago who were heading to Forbidden Island. They thought they'd found a way to make it safely through the storms, and it might be worth talking to them.
-The young couple, Banner and Matilda, have created a Drop Ship, specially designed to survive the violent winds surrounding Forbidden Island. Yohmi manages to find them and attains a copy of the plans from them. A Drop Ship might be small enough to go undetected as it descends into the air pirate domain. It's perfect, but now Yohmi needs the time and materials to build it, plus an airship to carry it to the drop point.
-Enter Sholock, an elderly man who looks like he's been through a lot but is still kicking. He's very cunning, and his sources keep him constantly informed of big happenings around the Guild. As a collector of artifacts, he has long desired to find a way into the pirate's stronghold. Yohmi's story did not take long to reach his ears and in admiration of the young man's adventurous spirit, he makes a proposition. He will provide the airship and have his people create the Drop Ship in exchange for Yohmi taking the risks to find the way and returning with reconnaissance info about Maelstrom Island. It's a deal.
-Off we go to the climax. Yohmi makes the drop, sneaks his way in, causes lots of trouble and damage while he's there, rescues Miki, and together they manage to escape after putting a stop to the pirates' plans for using the communication records. In short, there's lots of action.
-Happy ending.