The Abstract

The six-toed ancient race of giants known as The Gibborim made a pact with a collection of six couples, 12 people who they later called The Pride.  The Pride would provide a sacrificial human soul to The Gibborim, who in return granted The Pride power over Los Angeles for 25 years.  As well as augmenting the powers, intellect and weaponry of The pride, each of the couples received a copy of The Abstract.  A tome which provided various black magic spells, information on the Gibborim, and revealed both the past and future of The Pride.  However, it's pages were all written in an ancient language, which took even the most intellectual minds many hours to decode each page with the use of a decoder ring.

There were six copes of The Abstract, one given to each married couple within The Pride.  

The copy which the Runaways obtained had previously belonged to Dale and Stacey Yorkes, the time travelling parents of Gertrude Yorkes.  On the night that the group of teenagers observed their parents ritually murder a young prostitute they all returned to the Yorkes' house in order to find the girl's body to provide evidence to the police.  Instead they found Old Lace, a holographic projection of Gert's parents and their copy of The Abstract.  The hologram of the Yorkes acted as their Last Will and Testament, which provided the Runaways with information on The Abstract and how to use it with the decoder ring.  The young team could not decipher the text in the book until they later obtained a decoder ring from Leslie Dean after Molly Hayes had knocked her unconscious.

While they lived in The Hostel, Chase Stein's underground hideaway, Alex Wilder slowly deciphered the information within The Abstract.  He recounted the origins of The Pride to the others, but failed to omit the fact that he had been in possession of his parent's copy for nearly a year previously.  

When Alex had secretly observed The pride's Ritual of Blood the year before the others had, he used the Wilder's copy of The Abstract to read about their history.  Late one night, while decoding The Abstract, he observed Leslie and Frank Dean with Alice and Gene Hayes enter the house.  They had schemed a plot to murder the other members of The Pride, but needed to remove pages from The Abstract belonging to those other members.  As The Abstract revealed the past and future of The Pride, then they could not risk their plan being discovered.  Upon discovering their murderous plan, Alex began to scheme his own plot to remove the other members of The Pride by using their children as a distraction.  When Alex's plan ultimately failed, the Yorke's copy of The Abstract was lost underwater when The Vivarium was destroyed in an explosion.

Alex Wilder had four other friends, who had had met through playing an online M.M.M.O.R.P.  Alex disappeared from their game, and as Hunter, Lotus, Oscar and Stretch began to meet in person they wondered about Alex's sudden and unannounced disappearance.  Hunter revealed that he hacked into Alex's account and discovered files about The pride and Alex's plans.  However, as everything was written in Alex's own warped perspective, they believed that Alex and his parents died as heroes.  They began to plan how to bring Alex back to life, by bringing him forwards in time from just moments before he died.  To do this, they needed the magic spells within The Abstract.

The copy of The Abstract that the new Pride used had previously belonged to Tina and Robert Minoru.

After the spell to resurrect Alex misfired it instantly killed Oscar who had cast the spell.  Instead of bringing Alex forward in time from the moment just before he died, they had summoned a younger version of his father, Geoffrey Wilder, from the year 1985.  Wilder then used the magic within The Abstract to help disguise himself as Chamber and infiltrate Excelsior, the support group of young former super heroes who would later be known as the Loners.  Afterwards The Abstract did not feature in Wilder's plans.  He and his new Pride were eventually defeated, but not before he murdered Gertrude Yorke.

Chase Stein grieved heavily over the death of his girlfriend.  He stole the Nimoru's copy of The Abstract and ran away form the other Runaways.  He investigated the whereabouts of the new Pride members and kidnapped Lotus.  She asked him if he intended to reform The Pride, but he rejected the idea.  When he asked her what comes after "Pride", Lotus answered "The Fall".  He forced her to reveal the where Geoffrey Wilder had been and therefore located a weak spot between dimensions where he could meet The Giborrim.  The ancient giants agreed to snatch Gert from the moment in time just before she died, just as the second Pride had planned to do with Alex.  In exchange they demanded a sacrificial soul, but gave him a deadline of 24 hours.  When Chase left, he gave the Nimoru's copy of The Abstract to Lotus.

Chase returned to the other Runaways, and revealed his plan to Nico Minoru.  He intended to offer his own soul in exchange for Gert's life.  However, as the life of that sacrificed being would be completely forgotten, he wanted to give them something that they would not forgot.  He provided Nico with a means to shut down the cybernetic being Victor Mancha.  They were pages from the Nimoru Abstract which, when decoded, posed a variety of questions that would cause Victor to shut down.  Chase's plan of self-sacrifice was subsequently rejected by The Gibborim who demanded an unwilling soul.  They were ultimately defeated once more by the Runaways.

There are currently four remaining copies of The Abstract that are unaccounted for.