Angel: Hi, ppl! Yay, new story! Don't worry, though. I'll update Sweet Angel and How To Get You Back My True Love, too. Sekhmet, Yami, and Yugi: ~Glaring to death ~ Angel: …What? Sekhmet: So, you finally show up and update, huh? Angel: Sorry! A lot has happened…mostly my depression got the best of me for two freaking months… Yugi: What? Are you okay, Angel? Angel: Yes, don't worry, I won't do that again (hopefully). Yami: Well, let's get to the story! Yugi: Angel doesn't own anything except the plot!

Summary: Joey's cousin has had a harsh life in north side Chicago. With all the gangs, drugs, murders, and abuse in the area, it's hard to believe she's still strong-willed and stubborn. Luckily, Atem and the gang are offering her a chance to escape her life and start anew in Domino City. Could she possibly find a new romance, too? Some Vivian bashing, along with puzzle, tender, puppy, bronze, and support-shipping! Plus Atemu&Heba


~Prologue~

Chicago is a very beautiful place to be. There are a variety of cultures on every corner and parties for every holiday. It's like the whole world has come to one city and exploded so all the cultures combine into one. But even a place that has so much beauty has a path that can be nasty and dangerous for a person to explore.

And do you know how I know this? Because for the last nine years, I've lived in the darkest corners of Chicago without my family. My oldest and youngest cousins, and even my aunt, have no idea where I am. Right now, I can't do any of the normal, small selfish things other teenagers can like going to the movies or hanging out with my friends. I'm supporting someone, someone very young. And no, I was not pregnant, if that's what you're thinking. It's as bit of a long story, though.

In the past I had a father, an older brother, and a sister-in-law. But they all perished five years ago, leaving my niece and I alone in this world. The only person that I've been able to trust with my niece is a teacher from my school. She's the only one helping me get ready for when I turn eighteen. I'm going to have all the right to have my niece with me again.

But as for now, I live with my mother. No, not my step mother! She is my biological mother mother. But my parents are divorced, and right now she will never be financially secure. She doesn't have a job. The only so called 'job' that she has right now is prostituting herself on the streets. And even the money she makes from that, she only spends on herself. Some nights when she's out with 'company', I'm left alone with nothing to eat or drink. Sometimes I wonder if all my suffering is for nothing, and I'll just end up dead anyway. Sometimes I wonder if when my mother can no longer afford her drugs, her addiction, she'll make me prostitute myself, too. Her illegal cravings more important to her than her daughters' body.

I wish I could escape, I wish I could live with my teacher or even a friend. But wishes don't always come true. No matter how much I'm suffering, I can't leave my niece alone with my mother. She's so young, and she'd suffer twice as much as I am if I left. I can't let that happen. She has a chance at life, she's so innocent and free. She has so many days, when I'm counting the few I have left pass by in a daze. I'm not sick, and I'm not ill, but here in the projects, or the ghetto as we call it around here, it's uncertain how long someone can live. Unlicensed driver drunk behind the wheel kill so many people, and so many girls are raped every day. And killed. Even if I beat the odds and survive the dangerous strangers lurking around every corner, there's always my mother to worry about it. It's rarely a coincidence that someone like my mother has survived so long around these parts. One wrong move in front of her and I could find myself flat on my back six feet beneath the ground.

I am Heba Yasmin Abbas Cruz. Long name, I know, but right now I'm just Yasmin Cruz. I've changed my appearance, my name, and my life so my mother doesn't find me. This is my story. The story about a girl who grew up in a good family, only to have it stripped away to form a tragic past, to live in the ghetto. And then, just when she had resigned herself to her fate, her oldest cousin discovers where she lives and snatches her away to Domino, Japan. And how she accepts this for one reason. To save her niece from the same suffering she went through.

Comments or Reviews, please! :)

And preferably no flames~