So here we go again...I must love not getting any sleep, cause once again it's getting passed my bedtime, but I just got so caught up.

I know no one really reads this...so I just use it as my space to ramble on about what I'm feeling. I did my very best in this chapter, but I don't know if it turned out that great...

Anyway here you go my sweet readers...yet another chapter (enjoy it, since I probably won't update until next weekend, or maybe even next week...damn school and homework...'glares hard at her physics book')

Running out of days

Chapter three- Sneaking out

Michael had been sitting at his computer for nearly most of the afternoon trying to concentrate on his homework, but was being greatly distracted by the thought of Kai and what he had told them at lunch. As he once again tried to focus on his homework, his door opened quietly and Lee and Rei snuck in before closing it just as quietly again. They sat down on his bed, after Rei had straightened out the messed up red, white and blue blanket, and Michael turned around in his office chair. The differences between all the boys' rooms were big, but they all held the same teenage boyish thing to them. Michael and Lee being the oldest, kept their room a bit more mature, as supposed to Max and Tyson's, which were still filled with cartoon posters, toy cars and, in Max's case, teddy bears. Rei was somewhere in between, wanting to be more like his cousin, but still liking his posters.

"So..." Lee started after a few minutes of silence between them, "what do you think of our newest member?"

"I don't really know. He seems to be an okay guy, but I cant figure him out since he wont let us near him. I don't blame him though. If I'd been abused and beaten, I would have trouble trusting people and letting them get close." Michael's eyes were narrowed in anger at the thought of Kai's grandfather.

"Hell yeah, me too. Maybe we should just give him some time to get used to the situation."

"Do you think he meant what he said about getting himself thrown out?" Rei joined the conversation.

"Oh, I totally forgot about that. Well to me, he seems to do what ever he want and not caring about it. The way he talked about his abuse, as if happened to someone else and not himself. I wouldn't put it by him to try and get kicked out, just to prove he was wrong about us wanting to take him in, and that he was worth it."

"Wow Michael. Who made you world specialist in analysing troubled teens?" Lee laughed and Rei was soon to follow.

"Why thank you, that would be on the account of...uhm that fact that I'm used to be one myself." Michael was trying to kept his mask up and not break out laughing like the two of them.

"Arw man, get real. You were never a troubled teen. You couldn't have been more then ten the time you rebelled for no more than a week or so, threatening to steal Tyson and Max's teddy bears if you didn't get a baseball bat, and you did steal them by the way, need I remind you?" This time it was Rei who was teasing Michael.

A that particular memory Michael's mask cracked and he almost fell of his chair laughing louder than Lee and Rei together. When ever they were upset or the tensions became too much to handle, they would always retort to humour. And besides the fact that they were making fun of Michael, he thought it was nice to think of something else than the broody teen in the next room. After wiping the tears of joy from the eyes, they calmed down enough to focus on the originally subject, Kai.

"Back to mister trouble. What about we went and talked to him, wouldn't that be the best way to get to know him?" Lee and Michael couldn't seem to think of a better idea, so they just nodded in agreement and got up.

They stopped outside Kai's room and after looking at each other, in order to see if they all agreed to enter, Michael slowly opened the door and they slipped in.

At first Kai didn't notice that someone had entered the room, as he lay with his eyes closed and the music was so loud that he couldn't even hear his own thinking, which had been his intention. But his instinct quickly told him that he was no longer alone and so he slid one eye open to see who it was that had entered and broken his solitude. When he saw Michael, Lee and Rei standing by the door, he sat up on the bed and packed his discman away.

"What do you want?"

"Ehh...we just wanted to talk, you know, get to know one another." Michael went over to the chair at the desk and sat down, leaving the others to just stand by the door.

"Well I don't want to talk, and I don't want to get to know you."

"Why?" Rei was obviously not understanding where Kai was getting at. Lee and Michael's eyes meet for a few seconds silently communicating. They guessed that he didn't believe that he was going to stay long enough for it to matter.

"Because I'm not staying here, so it would just be a waste of time." Kais said, proving Lee and Michael correct.

"But..." Lee was cut off by Judy's calling from down the hall about dinner being ready. So he didn't get a chance to ask Kai why he was so intent on leaving, as the teen left the room at the call, probably seeing it as a nice excuse to get away from the questions.

Dinner was over in a blur or so it seemed. Bruce and Judy tried their best to get Kai to open up and talk, but he kept silent and only spoke about two or three words total. Tyson and Max were busy stuffing themselves and competing in who could eat the most, of course Tyson won as he always did. Lee, Rei and Michael were discussing something about their next lesson with Mr. Granger in material arts. After the meal and the cleaning up, they all went to the living room to watch a movie, even Kai, though he sat far away from the rest, and didn't socialize one bit with them. The movie ended a bit after their normal bedtime, but they were allowed to see the ending, before being ordered to bed by a stern, yet smiling at the same time, looking Judy. After she made sure that all the boys indeed were in bed, she went back into the living room, where another hour or so was spend planning the shopping trip the next day.

At 11.30 the house was finally quiet and Kai got out of his bed, got dressed and grabbed his skateboard and blade, all in a few minutes without making even the smallest sound. Then carefully he opened the window and climbed out of it and snuck across the lawn, keeping his head down just in case. The wall, even being twice his height was no problem at all, was quickly jumped.

Skating down the empty streets that got more crowded as he entered the more dirty part of the town, Kai took in the feeling of freedom. He loved it at night time, everything was completely different in the dark, and to him it was a change for the better. Winding up at an apparently abandoned warehouse, he got of his skateboard and went around to the back.

"Hey Jack. Is there something going down tonight?" Kai asked the big beefy guy who was guarding the door.

The man didn't't reply, but then again he never did, he just stepped aside and let Kai enter the building shutting the door firmly behind him. Entering the brightly lit and extremely huge room, Kai scanned it for familiar faces. Quickly recognizing a group standing close by, he walked over to them

"Hey Kai. It's been a few days since I last saw you. What've you been up to? Feeling ready for a fight? There's some big money on it tonight, the place is crowded." Matt raised his fist to meat Kai's head on.

The 23-year-old was a good friend of Kai, having known the teen from he was 8 and had just gotten in from Russia and started roaming the streets aimlessly in order to get away from his foster parent and so on. The 2 years Kai had spend living in the streets, from when he was 12 to14, had been under the protection of Matt. Thanks to him Kai knew how to take care of himself, so in order to pay something back, and just because he liked it, he spend a lot of nights fighting and using his talent to kick ass.

"Got into a new foster home."

"That's gotta suck. How many more are there?" as they talked, Matt and Kai walked a bit away from everyone.

"Five, all boys. Two at 14, one at 15 and the last two are 16."

"Man, I really feel for you, but it beats the last home with the little perfect we-are-only-taking-you-in-to-look-good-family."

"Yeah, I guess it's acceptable."

"But are you up for the fight? This guy hasn't lost that many of his fights and he's a lot bigger than you, But if you win this it's five large to each of us."

"Well, his luck's about to run out. I'm in."

Following Matt as they walked over to the registrations to get Kai signed up for the fight, Kai was greeted by several other people, who knew the little teen. Most of the crowd were men, only very few were girls, and they were mainly just the guys' girlfriends, not actual fighters. About a third of the crowd in there were fighters, the rest were just watching and gambling big on who was to win the fights.

"Name and age of the competitor?" the man asked ready to write the answer down on the signup list.

"Kai, 15."

At this the man looked up from his paper and at Kai. Surely enough everyone there seemed to be at least somewhere in their twenties, a few in their thirties, and Kai stood out as the only one being under 18. He was also smaller then most of the others, but he was all muscle and had a very fit body. The man looked like he noticed this, or maybe the fire burning in those crimson orbs, made him ignore what ever comment he had about Kai's age.

"Okay, you're up in about 10 minutes against Damien. Bets can be made over there." he said and pointed towards a group of men in black with black sunglasses. Matt left Kai for a few moments to go and place the bets, then they went back to Matt's group of friends.

The ten minutes passed by and Kai was called to the ring with Matt close behind him. He slipped his sweater of and made sure his shoes and gloves were tight enough, then he stepped into the ring. It was somewhat like a boxing ring, but it was made by metal only, so if you were to be thrown into the side, it wouldn't be a nice experience.

Kai looked at his opponent. Sure the guy was big and he had a lot of muscle, but it didn't look like he was fast and he had a way to overconfident smile on his face that Kai was looking forward to wiping off.

"Okay you two. I want a fight with the fist, get it. No knives." The judge snapped his fingers after the statement indicating that the fight was on.

Kai plan was to use his speed and agility to wear his opponent down as he blocked and avoided the hits and sometimes kicks that was delivered by his raging enemy. After a good 10 minutes or so, the speed of the hits had slowed down a bit and Kai took it as a sign that Damien was getting tired. Kai waited for an opening as he in a nice roundhouse sent his foot into Damien's face making him step back slightly. Kai followed the kick with a series of rapid punches to the guy's stomach and another kick was delivered to the head. He was about to take a nice swing at his stomach, when Kai suddenly felt a blade making it's way across his abs.

"I told you there would be no knives in this fight. You are disqualified." the judge tried to interfere, but Damien still had the knife in his hand, so he backed away and Damien returned his attention to Kai.

In the meantime Kai had checked the cut out. It was bleeding a lot, but didn't seem that bad. It started at his left hip and went slightly upwards across his stomach for about 2 or 3 inches. If Kai had been determent to win before it was nothing compared to what he felt know. Damien was going to suffer deeply. Kai took a few steps backwards before he charged against the man and in a perfect spinning kick he hit the guy's temple and sent him flying into the metal side of the ring, where he fell unconscious.

After Kai was declared the winner and had gotten the payment, Matt took him aside to clean up the cut. It wasn't as big or deep as it had first looked, so there was no need for going to the hospital to get stitches, it just needed to be rinsed and bandage. No matter how many times Matt had cleaned one of Kai's wounds, and there had been quite a few over the years, he never sized to be somewhat amazed by how the kid never showed any pain. He knew it was hell using antiseptic on a open wound, but it was they had. They pain of using it was sometimes used to wake up an almost beaten fighter, if he needed to carry on. Not many did that, Matt included, but there were some of the big goons that would do just about anything to keep their guy fighting. Pouring some of the antiseptic onto the wound, Kai flinched a little, but no sound escaped his lips, no even the slightest hiss of the pain he was clearly feeling. Matt knew that Kai would never admit the pain even if he asked him, so he would usually talk to the boy to keep his mind of the pain.

"Nice work, Kai. But try not to get sliced up the next time. " Matt chuckled at the fierce glare Kai was giving him.

"I was not getting sliced up. It was supposed to be a fight with no blades, he just caught me be surprise, that's all. And I did beat him, didn't I?"

"You sure did, I doubt he'll be able to fight for a long time. Remind me never to pull a blade against you." Matt finished the bandage and pulled down the shirt.

"You wanna borrow one, so they won't get suspicious at the home? I have one just like it, though it might be a bit bigger."

Kai looked down a the fairly large cut in his shirt before nodding.

They left for Matt's apartment to get the t-shirt and Kai pulled put a cigarette and lit it. Taking a deep inhaling, he held the smoke in for a while before letting it out. Matt who had been walking in his own thoughts, was brought back to reality by the smell of the smoke.

"I totally forgot you smoked. You got one for me?"

Kai pulled one out from the pack and handed it over. The rest of the walk was spend in silence, just enjoying the night and the relaxation from the nicotine. After getting the shirt, he left with the promise made to be back the next day if the wound wasn't healing properly, so Matt could take him to the hospital and no one would find out.

When he got back Kai crawled over the wall to the dojo with slightly bigger problems then when he had snuck out, the cut throbbing painfully at the movements. Getting safely over it, he hurried across the ground to his window and slipped through it. He kicked of his boots and clothes except his boxers, throwing into a pile on the floor and crawled to bed. Then he got up again walked over to the pile on the floor, grabbed the money in the pocket and put them into a secret room in his duffle bag, before snuggling up in the blankets without putting to much pressure on the cut.

Yeah, I know I didn't't describe the dinner that well, but it really wasn't that important...they'll get plenty of time to talk on their shopping trip (heh he he...Kai shopping o)

Not wanting to describe their rooms right now....mail me if you want the detail....just think of the normal teenage boy's room. More colourful and brighter than Kai's will ever be...and filled with lots of stuff...just rambling now, so I'll stop.

And of course PLEASE do me the honour of reviewing...cause it really does make my day...and you'll get a cookie...(and thanks to all who have been so super nice to do it so far)