Disclaimer: No, I don’t own it.

A/N: I put the compilation of votes underneath. Please read everything to understand why they’re compiled like that and how to add more votes. Thanks.

I will always love you.

Those words hung in the air. Tyson forced his smile back on his face. His teammates needed to see him smile. There could be no other way. He glanced at Kai. The guy behaved as he always did.

He wondered why the others didn’t see everything for the nightmare it was.

He would get through this.

He had to.

The other ‘bladers gazed at each other furtively, as if thinking that everyone else was a suspect in this. Perhaps it wasn’t the same, Hilary reflected, but the two problems the team had at hand were intimately related. She would do anything to make sure that the ‘bladers were all happy.

It was something that she missed dearly- the true happiness of her team.

All of them hid something from her, even Tyson. She thought that he was the only one who didn’t have a secret. She was a fool, she supposed. Worse still, they were hiding it from each other as well. She wondered when all this secrecy started. Now, she badly wanted to let the author and his love be together. Was that so much to ask? She just wanted someone to be happy. It hurt her. She was their friend. They were friends. So why couldn’t they tell her what had happened to each of them?

She smiled as she and Ray returned. They needed someone to be happy, as Tyson undoubtedly realised, so she and Tyson would pretend to be happy.

Until they couldn’t bottle it in and exploded, anyway.

Hilary smiled again as she recalled the times that they had shared together.

Life might never be the same again, but one thing would never change. Their friendship would stay alive forever, and she hoped that they would sort everything out soon. They had to.

If not, there was a high possibility that every single thing they worked for would crumble right before their very eyes.

That would only be the start.

She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream for the world to help them. She wanted to hug them and tell them that everything would be fine, but that would smash their carefully constructed façade.

For some reason she wanted to protect Bryan and Kai the most carefully.

Perhaps it was because they were always sad.

MingMing knew better than to approach everyone and ask about the paper. She wanted to ask if they had read it yet, but the finger of suspicion would only point to her and she would not be able to do anything without many people staring at her every move. Such would be the fate of the author until his or her love was returned to them.

Her eyes wandered to her own team, who were asking questions. She was supposed to be making notes in secret, so she was doing that.

Yet…

Even though she hadn’t known them for long, she couldn’t miss the shiny eyes of the Bladebreakers. Why, they looked like they were about to cry.

She didn’t say anything because she couldn’t.

She could only smile that childish smile and sing happy songs, hoping that the mood of the song would life their spirits a little. No, the Bladebreakers weren’t the only ones. One would think that all these people had lost loved ones.

Perhaps they had.

She sighed. They were bringing her mood down. She couldn’t help staring at on person in particular, hoping that he would realise how much she loved him.

She let her mind drift off to happier things.

Did Hilary like Bryan?

She smiled. Such silly things, but as long as it made her smile, she didn’t mind letting herself think of such things. It distracted her from the other thoughts… she sang loudly and tried to let happiness flow through her.

She didn’t like pretending.

Miguel stared warily at everyone. Such powerful feelings that were not reciprocated... who could survive with such pain? He knew what it felt like. After all, there was someone that he loved, too.

Miguel saw that most of his team were having a good time but still were looking around. He laughed as he noted how Hilary, Ray and Bryan were in a corner discussing something or other again. What were they discussing? It was obvious that they were talking about something, but every single time someone came remotely close to them, Bryan would stare a hole into that person’s head while the other two would keep quiet. Of course, there was suspicion on their heads, but since there were three of them, he supposed that all of them were merely interviewing each other as everyone else was doing. It wasn’t that surprising.

Suddenly, Hilary stood up, followed by Ray, while Bryan remained seated. It seemed that their meeting was adjourned. Hilary and Ray instantly indulged in chatter with the other beybladers.

Perhaps they, too, were only gathering information. However, why was Bryan glaring like that?

Max smiled at Ray tiredly. Honestly, they had so many secrets. For one thing, he knew that Mariah loved Ray and vice versa, but neither had acted on it yet. Now, Mariah seemed to like someone else and Ray was pretty much heartbroken.

Max liked Emily too, but the same problem applied.

They truly were teammates. They even shared the same fate, more or less. Loving someone hurt so much…

He knew that everything would be fine soon.

He and Ray would confess. Then, they would either live happily ever after or get over it.

He knew that it would occur soon.

Perhaps he should go over now…

A/N: Thanks for supporting this story!

I count my votes this way: if you submitted a review to each of my chapters and suggested pairings for each of them reviews, you have four votes. If you submitted a review to each of my chapters but only put your suggested pairing in one of the chapters, I only count it as one vote. (If you didn’t read the author notes before and want to add more votes for the chapters you didn’t suggest a pairing for, you can pm me)

Let’s compile the votes so far –smiles-

KaiHil-2 KaiMimi-6 TalaKai-1 TyKa-3 KaiMatthi-2

Again, if you’ve reviewed the other chapters but forgot to suggest a pairing in each chapter and want to do that, pm me. Thank you!

By the way, you can vote for more than one pairing per review. One more thing. I’m only going to count the votes for a couple more chapters.