Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope you all had a very good one, and that the rest shall always be just as wonderful. (if they weren't, well then I hope they can get better for you) So I've always wanted to write a Christmas story... Oh well, there's always next year for that. Today, I am writing my version of Liddi. Who is Liddi, you may be asking yourself? Well, she is the small child from one of my favorite episodes from season two, "The Rise of Zane", that Ky and Maya were protecting. I am the one who named her Liddi, therefore I own the name. James S-310 did write a version of this story, but that was of my personal request, and it was quite a bit different from what I had originally intended. However, that means I get to write my version, so I guess that works out great.

Disclaimer: I, hopelessromantic4life, do not own Redakai: Conquer the Kairu or any of it's copyrighted characters. I only own the character traits of Petunia and Simon, and the name of Liddi. All rights go to Spin-Master.

Prologue: A broken little girl

Gather round, dear children, and here the depressing, yet somehow uplifting story of a once broken soul whose name was Liddi. You may laugh, you may cry, you may feel like beating some certain people up; and that's perfectly OK. Let the story begin:

There was once a little girl, whose name was Liddi. In truth, her legal name was Lydia Heveren. At birth, she was a rather beautiful, dark-skinned baby girl, with tufts of light red-orange hair and bright Kairu-blue eyes. Such a happy little one, baby Lydia was very special indeed. You see, she had been born with an inner Kairu stronger then all three members of Team Stax put together. A child like her was typically only born to this planet once in a thousand years, and that's only if the universe somehow managed to catch a lucky break, which it so rarely did. There were those that would kill to have this incredible child fighting for them, for it would be almost impossible for them to lose.

Sadly, kill those very same people did. One dark and stormy night, when neither the stars nor the full moon shined helpful light upon the village of trees where our story begins, a dark and twisted assassin known only as the green-skinned (1) broke into baby Lydia's home and brutally tortured and killed her poor parents. Before he could swipe the crying infant away, however, a neighbor named Aldo arrived, so the culprit, believing that Aldo was incredibly strong thanks to a shadow on the walls, quickly fled the scene and disappeared into the somber-looking night.

Poor Lydia, how she cried! Nothing could sooth her for over a week after that fateful night. She was only a small infant, after all; how was she to know that her parents could never come back? When they finally managed to quiet her anguished cries, Lydia was turned over to her Aunt Petunia and Uncle Simon. Now, Simon and Petunia were related to their niece because Simon was the mother's brother, and they had no children of their own. Everyone thought they would be happy to raise such a lovely little girl.

...

Well, they certainly weren't. Oh, they seemed over the moon to be able to raise their baby niece, but behind those plastered-on smiles were souls as black as the midnight sky of that night. Petunia and Simon truthfully despised Lydia with a fiery passion. Why they couldn't stand her is a question that can never be answered, but Petunia and Simon were malicious in the way they treated this poor, innocent child.

Lydia, now referred to simply as Liddi, was abused and neglected for the first three years of her young life. Most days she had to go without any food or clean water. Her clothes were thin and large, with long sleeves in order to hide the angry welts, scars and bruises running up and down her limbs, and all over her fragile body. The happy little girl that was Lydia disappeared, was hidden away in the corner of Liddi's heart and soul, causing her to become shy and distant from others. No one said anything about it; they all thought it was a part of her growing up without her parents there anymore. For Liddi, it was a dreary existence that she could barely take anymore. She hoped it would just end already.

Sure enough, it eventually did, but in a very unexpected way.

Well, that's all for now guys. I'll have the first real chapter up by this Saturday at the very latest. Merry Christmas!

(1) Green Skinned is Zane and Zair's father.