When the Truth Comes Out

Chaud P.O.V.

'Ms. Yuri did something to her. No matter what it takes, I have to find out what happened to her.' Her voice echoed in my head. 'I can't go back! I won't go back! It'll just happen all over again!' That one particular sentence kept playing in my head over and over and over again. 'It'll just happen all over again! It'll just happen all over again! It'll just happen all over again!' But what? What would happen all over again?

"ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME?!" Lan's voice literally screamed at me in the van on the way back to SciLab. I looked over at him as he began yelling at me again. "Why did you protect, Maylu? She's with Wily, now! We could have taken care of them and still gotten to the warehouse that was broken into across town before the thieves left! What on earth were you thinking?!"

"I'm thinking you weren't thinking in the slightest bit."

"And just what is that suppose to mean?!" At this point, the van was stopping right in front of SciLab and I was jumping out of the back of the van.

"Protoman."

"Yes, Chaud."

"Look up everything that you can on, Maylu Sakurai. Everything."

"Consider it done, Chaud."

"What do you want to know about, Maylu?" Lan gave me a look that told me he thought that I was crazy.

"Everything."

"Why?" Sometimes his questions can get really annoying.

"I have my reasons."

"Chaud." Protoman caught my attention as I was riding home from SciLab.

"Yes, Protoman?"

"I couldn't find anything on Maylu."

"Nothing?"

"Absolutely nothing. Not even a birth certificate or an address." This didn't make any sense. There was nothing on her? Why? "It's weird. It's like she's been erased from everything that could be linked to her. Everything. I couldn't even find anything about her in the school records."

"The school records!" I was such an idiot! Why didn't I think about it before? "Her school records will have an address, phone numbers, everything we need to find out where she lives and how to get a hold of her."

"But with her school records gone, how are we going to find that out?"

"From someone she went to school with."

"Chaud. You're not thinking what I think you're thinking are you?" Protoman was always good at ready my mind.

"I need you to get into Lan's computer. As forgetful as he is I'm sure that he has to have an address book in his computer."

"Alright, but I have a bad feeling about this, Chaud."

"I know. I do too, but this is the only way that we can learn about what happened to Maylu, without anyone finding out what we're doing."

"Chaud, you should know that I didn't find out anything about Maylu, but I did find something."

"Well what was it?"

"A birth certificate, but it's not Maylu's."

"What do you mean, Protoman?"

"I think you need to see this for yourself just to believe it." He pulled the birth certificate up on my screen and I felt a knife stab right through my heart and my stomach at the same time. The child's name was Kara Sakurai, the father was Collin Sakurai, but the mother was Maylu Sakurai.

"Collin Sakurai. Who is this man? A husband, maybe? But I never knew she was married."

"I don't know, but I don't think he'll tell us anything even if we said pretty please." Protoman's voice was a bit agitated.

"We'll have to find that out later I suppose."

"Right. I'll see what I can find out on Lan's computer." It wasn't long before Protoman was back with the information we needed. We were just lucky that Lan hadn't made it home yet.

Once we pulled up to Maylu's house, I soon began to see why she never spoke about her family or her home. The house itself was nice and small, but the man answering the door was the complete opposite. Let's just say that if you saw him on the side of the road, you would think that he was a homeless person, and what's worse is the liquor bottles laying all over the floor, I assumed or more or less hoped that was the disgusting smell coming from his breath.

"Hello, is Maylu, home? I was hoping to talk to her for a moment."

"Who are you? And what do you want with her? She's belongs to me and no one else got it? She's mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!" The man nearly fell over while he was talking, his eyes giving me a blank stare.

"I only asked if she was home. I just wanted to talk to her."

"You ain't gettin your mitts on my kid understand? She's my girl and I'm the only one that can touch her! Now scram!" The man screeched at me before slamming the front door in my face.

"Protoman. I need you to find out who the registered owner of this house is." I told him as soon as I began walking towards my car.

"Consider it done." Again it wasn't long before Protoman came back with news of his findings. He always was good at being quick. "Hey, Chaud. You're not going to believe this."

"What is it, Protoman?" The urgency in his tone gave me a cause for concern.

"The registered owner of the house. His name is Collin Sakurai."

"No." I felt as if I would vomit. "Her own father was the father of the child she gave birth too!"

"It looks that way."

"Can you find out where that child is now?"

"Records show the city cemetery. Her daughter died before it was born. Doctors said it was because of some physical trauma she had experienced. They believe the father killed the child, while it was still in her stomach, but she wouldn't admit to anything and no charges have ever been filed against Mr. Sakurai."

"That's it. That's what she can't go back to. That's why she left. But why join the bad guys? It doesn't make any sense." I left the car and went up to my bedroom once we stopped at my father's house, but I never stopped thinking about Maylu, and why she would possibly want to betray us. Though what I had learned about her and her father, I understood why she didn't trust us, but I couldn't begin to understand why she went to who she did. And then it hit me. How quickly she was able to run, heal, and jump, all without the use of Battlechips. She had the abilities that the properties of DUO gave Ms. Yuri. Dr. Wily's daughter.