Sorry I haven't updated this! I know, I kinda put other things before it… at least it's up, right?

Kai's right eye was green and she scanned the darkness. Shadow raised an eyebrow as he watched her lead the way. Jayln stayed dangerously close to Vinny, not wanting to get hurt or lost in any way.

"I have an idea… I'll go through this pathway… and I'll find that Chaos Emerald hidden here… why don't I take a group of you to come with me?" Kai asked, her eye back to purple.

Shadow shrugged. "I don't know why I'm doing this… maybe because it's the thought of you actually making it through this… but, I'll go." He said, his red tipped hair swerved.

Jayln's eyes narrowed. "I won't be scared any longer! I wanna go! I'd help my friends no matter what!" she said happily.

"What's to lose? Plus, you may need my treasure hunting skills…" Rouge said, shrugging.

Kai put a smile on. "Great! Let's go!" she said happily, eyes turning green yet again.

"I don't know if it's a good thing… or a bad thing that she's her happy self again…" Vinny said.

"Gee, Vinny, you're such a nice friend…" Knuckles commented sarcastically.

Vinny rolled his eyes. "Well, since we're here for a while… someone entertain us…" he mumbled, leaning against the cracked wall that was broken by Kai.

"Well… I can tell a scary story… since I know all your fears, I think it would be pretty simple." Fear said, pointing it out.

"N-n-no!" they all said, some shaking heads and some saying 'no'. Fear shrugged, sitting down on the floor.

"Hey, Flare… or whatever… why don't you entertain us by telling us how you know Kai and her system so much?" Knuckles asked.

Flare's eyes were pointed down to the ground. He then sighed. "It's kind of a long story…" he said, half-inaudibly.

"Well, judging by the small things, I think we have plenty of time…" Tails said, beginning to sit down. Some sat down while the rest stood, leaning on the walls for support of their newly received injuries.

"Well… a lot happened… and-"

Flare was a young boy at the time he met Kai. It was when she moved from Japan… she was only 1 while Flare was a 3-year-old offspring. Flare was usually happy to have her as company.

"But as I grew older… I noticed that Kai grew paler, weaker, maybe more…" Flare continued, shaking away long lost memories of the past.

Flare usually watched Kai's mother, Kia work in her lab. She kept it secret under the huge mansion that they owned.

(A/N- Kia, Kai… mother/daughter similarities… I didn't think up of the name… my brother did… he wanted me to write that…)

"Her mother, Kia, was a great scientist… she worked on many of the things that was used in the small village we lived in… I often went over, just to spend time with my friend and my idol…"

Flare was usually greeted by Kai's smiling face as a toddler of 5 years old. However, when he turned 6, things changed… most of the time he found Kai, she was often crying and looked beaten up.

"The sad truth of it all is… that I never found out that she was being abused… until she almost died at age 8." Flare said with a sad smile. A small tear formed in his eyes. "At the very same time, I had heard of the Ultimate… up on the ARK. I had told her about him… and she was over-delighted to hear about it… and… she often wondered what it was like to be up all alone up there…"

The day that she was sent to the hospital, Flare arrived there to find Kia crying over the sheet that separated her and her daughter.

"Flare… don't you see? I'm dying too because Kai is the only thing that I love on this earth… my husband, I don't care about… I was forced to marry, like the olden ways of the Japanese…" Kia had said.

"And… like a coincidence, her plans of cyborg-building and my heard of rumors of the Ultimate were somehow formed together… creating a plan on how to get her to live…" Flare said, eyes closed, tears streaming down his cheeks. However, he was not the only one crying. Amy caught herself crying at this point. She wiped her tears away.

"Flare… will I die?" the 8-year-old's eyes showed no fear… but curiosity.

"Don't worry… I… I'll try to help you… no… I will help you… I'll cross hell more than once to help a friend like you, Kai…" he had said.

"What… do they have to do?" Kai's voice had hit him hard.

"Well… the doctors said… there's internal bleeding in the whole right side of your body… and… your heart… half of it is-" Flare had stopped to wipe the tears from the 8-year-old's face. It was too much for her to bear…

"Now that I think back… the only reason that the elders made us guard the town is because Kia forced them to so Kai doesn't spend too much time at home… she's a loving mother… too bad that when Kai was 14… after she had come back-" Flare got cut off by a shriek. It wasn't Kai's but Knuckles knew it clearly.

"Rouge!" he yelled.

Done! Review please!