A/N: Hi everyone! I know the story's been kinda slow so far. It'll start picking up soon I promise. Please read, review, and enjoy! Love, Kawaii Stella

Disclaimer: I don't own Cyberchase.

Picking Up the Broken Glass

Kawaii Stella

Chapter Two

Beginning to Break

~Almost Two Weeks Later~

It had been twelve days since Echo had arrived at the orphanage. From the time of her arrival, Echo had learned that she wasn't simply in an old west town. When she had first arrived, Echo had thought that a cybersite was like a county in her world. But she quickly found out it was more like a state by itself in this futuristic computer world. And apparently there were a lot more Cybersites out there; all ruled by one lady, someone called "Motherboard". Echo had learned all this by quietly listening in on people. Echo didn't talk much at all, not since that first night at the orphanage. She sighed as she remembered the morning after her first night at the orphanage.

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

Echo was the last girl in her room to get up. From the sound of things, everybody was already downstairs eating breakfast. The clock on the wall showed it was about ten minutes to eight. Since Echo rarely ate a big breakfast, she went into the bathroom to get dressed and to see just how bad her back and sides looked.

With the bathroom door closed and locked tight, Echo tentatively lifted up her shirt in front of the mirror. What she saw was not pretty. Her sides had a few black and blue bruises. Her back was the worst. It seemed as if every square inch was covered in bruises, ranging in color from a sickly yellow to a dark purple. Echo carefully ran her hand over her back and winced from the considerable pain.

Echo heeded the advice not to squeal. She had a feeling that she would be beaten again if she told- only a lot harder this time. Echo never told a soul that Samantha and her girlfriends had all but beaten her to a pulp. They hadn't come near her again, probably because Echo hadn't said a word to them since. That didn't mean that there hadn't been other attacks, though.

Yes, the beatings had continued, from boys and girls alike. Chivalry was apparently dead with the boys at the orphanage, because they were the ones who treated Echo the worst out of everyone. At first it was just teasing. They made fun of her accent, clothes, personality, and her art. Anytime they caught her doing anything artistic, the boys would grab her sketch book and keep it from her reach. (Echo was rather short at five feet tall.) After a few days of teasing, things got more serious. The boys began to hit her. Like the girls, they never hit where it would be suspicious. The bruises which did show were simply called "accidents". Things had certainly not improved in the least.

/V\/V\/V\/V\/V\

Echo sighed again. Despite her attempt at staying away from everyone else, Echo just couldn't stay alone. They still beat her. In two days, on Tuesday, Echo would mark her second week at the orphanage. Today Echo looked out of the bedroom window to see that this would be a very dismal Sunday. The sky was a pale blue-grey and from the cloud formations and Echo knew that there would be a large summer thunderstorm before the day was out.

Sundays were "beauty sleep" days for Samantha and her clique. So, at 7:30 a.m. Echo saw that they were all still sound asleep. Echo was at least a little bit happy knowing that they wouldn't be bothering her today. Sunday was just about the only day she ate breakfast, because back home Echo's family had a tradition of having large, filling meals on Sundays when everyone could get together and be happy.

Just thinking of her family made Echo unbelievably homesick and depressed.

"Momma… Why?" Echo sadly asked as she went downstairs for breakfast.

In the dining hall Echo tried to keep her family's tradition alive, but this was dreadfully hard to do all by herself. The lame breakfast didn't help either. Back home Echo's Sunday breakfast would consist of eggs, bacon, biscuits, gravy, and cheese covered hash browns. At the orphanage the food looked like pig slop at breakfast. They served a very nasty oatmeal, burnt toast, and orange juice.

"This is disgusting," Echo muttered to her food. She kept her head down as to not look anyone in the eyes. Usually they left Echo alone in the dining hall, but not today. As she tried to stomach the food, three boys, all about Echo's age, walked up to Echo's table with maniacal grins on their faces.

"Well look at this, boys." A tall, dark haired teen with pale blue eyes said to his friends. "Miss Echo has decided to grace us with her presence this morning. Oops, I meant to say disgraced!" The three laughed, and as they walked away, one of the other two told the leader, "Nice one, Ledge!"

Ledge, so that's his name, Echo thought to herself. I don't like the vibe I'm getting off of him. He seems almost… evil.

After the boys' visit, Echo no longer felt like trying to eat her meal. She put her things away and crept upstairs to get her notebook and pencils. She didn't want the others to see her with her art supplies, so through an old, rotted wooden door, Echo snuck outside.

The backyard of the orphanage was fairly normal. It reminded Echo of a park. The lawn was green and at the farthest perimeter, there were concrete walls keeping everyone in. Since no one usually went as far out as the perimeter wall, that's where she went. Near the far south-west corner, Echo sat down on a small patch of grass surrounded by crumbling concrete. As Echo looked around she saw no one in sight. With a bit of relief, Echo tried to draw a new picture.

Echo's old, tattered sketchbook had been just about everywhere with her. The metal spiral binding was now dull and bent out of shape. The covers were bent, torn, and frayed. Inside the covers were three hundred pages, with nearly two hundred already filled with everything from doodles to random sketches to fully drawn and shaded pictures. In between some pages were other sketches and drawings Echo had done. Some were folded so much that they looked abstract.

Today Echo started to draw something she drew quite frequently now: a quaint angel with blood splattered wings holding some sort of weapon.

Used to, most of her drawings were happy and uplifting. Now, everything was dark and disturbing. That probably had to do with the fact that since her arrival, Echo felt more and more fragile. Her soul had become like glass. Every time she was teased or attacked it cracked a little more.

Echo sighed in depression, not noticing that a few boys her age had approached her.

"Well what do we have here?" One boy said, trying to take the sketchbook from Echo's arms.

"Leave me alone!" Echo begged, holding onto her sketchbook for dear life.

"Give it here; we just want to see what you're drawing." Another boy said, trying to get her to let go. Echo did not budge, keeping the book pressed into her chest.

"No!" Echo protested and held on tight until one of the boys tried a more forceful tactic.

The first boy pulled the notebook to where Echo's arms were fully extended out. Then, two other boys slammed their forearms into Echo's, causing extensive pain. The pain seared through her arms, forcing her to let go of the sketchbook. However, the ringleader wasn't holding the book tight enough and it flew from his hands, the loose sketches flying everywhere.

Echo, her eyes full of tears from the pain, couldn't take it anymore. Since she was short, Echo quickly spun and kicked one of the boys straight in the balls. He fell to the ground with a yelp, clutching his boys in pain. Echo's act of retaliation crossed the line with the other two boys. To them the gloves were off. They went after Echo with no hesitation. They threw punches and all landed at their expected destination, except for one. One punch landed right in Echo's face, right in the eye.

Once the boys had realized where that last punch had landed, they began to panic. Their panic did not last long, because they realized that they still had the upper hand here.

"Don't you even dare try to pin this on us." One said.

"Yeah!" another added. "Nobody will believe you anyway."

The three ran off, leaving Echo all alone. Wiping the tears from her eyes Echo picked up her sketchbook and set out to retrieve all fifty-two of her loose sketches. It was like trying to play fifty-two pick-up with a deck of cards, Echo thought. Get all the cards together again before time runs out. A slight breeze had taken the sketches against the wall down from Echo. It didn't take her very long to gather almost all of her sketches again. One had somehow flown over the concrete wall and gotten stuck in a tree on the other side. This wall was crumbling too, making it easy to climb. A small orange floppy disc looking thing was tossed over to Echo's side before she had even begun to climb. She picked it up, studied it a moment, and then began to make her way up the wall.

At the top of the wall, Echo began to reach for her drawing, which was lodged in a scrawny branch. Just as she was close enough for her fingertips to brush it, her drawing fluttered to the ground below.

"Well crap," Echo grumbled to herself. Then, a purple bird robot thing flew up to her.

"Uh, excuse me, miss?" the bird thing asked Echo.

"Yes?"

"By any chance have you come across a small orange chip?" It asked.

"This thing?" Echo asked, pulling the chip from her back pocket.

"Yes! Thank you so much!"

"No problem. Hey, could you grab that drawing for me?"

"Sure!"

"Thanks," Echo said.

Then three kids ran up yelling, "Dige, come on! Let's get outta here!" The bird flew off after the kids and Echo descended the wall.

Tentatively she touched her face to find it had already begun to swell. Great. Just how was she going to hide this? The answer was that she couldn't. She was just going to have to deal with it. Echo would simply have to endure Truehart's prodding questions.

There was a rainstorm blowing in so Echo went back in the building through the same way she had come out. However, to her misfortune, none other than Miss Abigail Truehart was in the hallway. Some not too lady like words flitted through Echo's head.

"My stars, Echo! Just what did you do to your face?" She asked.

"I did nothing to my face," Echo said truthfully.

"Then what happened?" Truehart inquired, her voice already steeled against Echo's argument.

Echo was displeased by that.

"They," Echo said in a spiteful tone, "Beat the tar out of me not ten minutes ago." She nodded her head towards the three boys who sat in the lobby.

"Them? They would never do such a thing! You must have provoked them."

"I did not provoke them! They attacked me!"

"Echo! How dare you say such absurd things! You really need to work on getting along with people. I think you can just stay in solitary for the rest of your time here, young lady."

"Fine by me," Echo spat, angered that Truehart had taken the boys' side.

Echo's trunk was swiftly transferred to the sole solitary confinement cell. In Echo's opinion, the cell wasn't all that bad. It was actually it was better than her old room. The walls were a grayish white and the small windows were barred like a prison cell but she had a lot more space. She also had her own small bathroom, which was clean and tidy, even with Echo's toiletries on the small shelf. The wall with the door had a large Plexiglas window, which Echo could turn dark with the press of a button. Her meals would now be brought to her, so the lunch room drama would be a thing of the past.

The only thing that sucked was that now she had even more time to think about how much she missed home. From a young age, Echo's grandmother had taught her that singing was the best way to get through hard times. So, for the rest of the day and night she sung to herself. She continued singing the next morning.