There was a pond with a few fruit trees around one side and a rocky cliff with gray rocks and a small waterfall at the other side. The water wasn't very loud and it was in fact very peaceful when it hit the pond. The water in the pond was crystal clear and wasn't too deep so one can see the gray ground under it.

The trees fruits were filled with many kinds of fruits and were nearly ripe for picking. The ground below were covered in green grass except by the pond with the gray rocks on the side, keeping the water in. There were no wind and it was like paradise.

There were also little creatures called Chao playing around. They were barely a foot tall with blue skin with yellow on the tip of their pointy head and their hands and feet. Their bellies were oval in shape and tannish in color and there were yellow spheres floating above their heads and small pink wings on their backs that barely makes them able to fly.

The Chao there were kicking a beach ball around to the other Chao in a child-like matter. They were all having fun. Once the ball nearly hit a wall that was painted to look like the sky. The Chao picked it up and continued to play with the others, ignoring the wall.

On the wall was an one way mirror that was designed to look like a wall to the Chao. On the other side were several people with their guide, a woman with a rather revealing suit and brunette hair. Her brown eyes gazed at the tourists as they looked at the Chao. She then began to speak with her well-rehearsed lines.

"As you can see," she told them, "the Chao are a very playful species. They enjoy playing with toys which we designed to make sure they won't hurt them unintentionally. We take great care of them and make sure they got food. The water we monitored 24 hours a day to make sure they don't get contaminated and hurt the Chao.

"Are there any questions before we continue?"

Several hands were raised and she pointed at the little girl with a cute pink dress and blond hair. "You little child?"

"What are those yellow balls flying above their heads?" she asked.

The guide hesitated and answered, "We don't really know what they are. Some believe it's their second brain or their brain itself. Some believe it's their heart. And some believe it's their soul. But we do know it shows the Chao's emotions about a person or a thing. Like for example, it shows that it loves a person for bringing it a gift by it turning its shape into a heart."

The then points to a teenage woman with brown hair who asked, "My friend told me that Chao could look into our souls and see if we are good people or bad people. Is that true?"

"Well," the guide responded, "we don't know why they would react by becoming Hero Chao or Dark Chao when they mature to people. It's true that good people tend have Hero Chao and bad people tend to have Dark Chao. But we had also found evidence of good people had their Chao mature to Dark Chao and vice versa. We also saw no response when we raise them with machines and the Chao mature to Neutral Chao. We don't really know the reason, but I hope I was able to answer your question."

She then choose a balding man who asked, "Is it true that the people here are having illegal testing on the Chao?"

"I'm sorry?"

"My work," he explained as the rest of the people were making a ruckus, "asked me to inspect this research facility and make sure that these cute creatures are but being treated inhumanely."

"Oh," the guide said. "We can assure you that what tests we do here were done legally and humanely. The closest thing that we had done that could be considered cruel was taking a blood sample and that's it."

"How about dissecting? Did you cut up those poor Chao when they're dead?"

"That would be impossible," she explained. "When their life has ended, their bodies were covered in their special cocoon, like the way they do when they mature, and they were either brought back to life as a Baby Chao again or they fade away. So, no body to dissect."

"I see," the balding man said, but still not satisfied at the place.

"Well, if there are no more questions," the guide said, looking around the group, "let's continue on to our second Chao garden, where they're mature to their hero state."

She then led the group to their next destination, but she hadn't counted that one of them would be so focus to the Chao there that he didn't listen to her nor the whole questioning and answering at all. He was a teenager with dark hair that wasn't very short. His brown eyes gazed at the Chao there with wonder. His red shirt was rather dull with the armpits of it stiffed and his blue jeans had holes on the knees. His shoes were white and new.

By the time he realized they had left him behind, it was too late. There was no trace of the group nor its guide around. He decided to try to find then, figuring that being an expert in mazes he could find them. What he had not thought about was the mazes he was good at was paper and could see everything instead of a piece of it nor that he thought that his target was moving making it harder to find them.

He wandered around the place, easily getting lost and getting more worried every room he went through and not finding them. One of the rooms he founded was rather empty somewhere in the middle of the labs. There was only one table and it looked old. It held several test tubes with some sort of fluid in them in a rack and a bottle of water with ice cubes in it.

He was feeling rather thirsty at the time and decided that no one would missed a water bottle. He went inside and picked it up. He leaned on the table as he opened the water bottle and drank it. Unfortunately, the table wasn't able to hold much weight anymore and collapsed.

He fell onto the floor with the tubes spilling its contents onto his back. He fell with a thud and sighed, knowing that no one would ignore a broken table and had to pay for the damages. He quickly got up, but what happened next would be beyond his wildest dreams.

The skin on his back, where the fluids that landed on him, were changing from a light tan to pure white. He didn't noticed until it spreads to his arms, where he saw the skin changing color. He was in complete shock as it spread down to his hands where he was it wasn't changing to white but blue instead.

He was in denial at the changes done to his body, but no matter what explanation he could think of on why he wasn't changing, he had to admit that it was happening. It spreads to his head with it skin turning white and most of his hair was falling off. He then had a headache that his brain was changing. He clutched his head as his thoughts were becoming more . . . childlike?

The hair that was left on his head fused together into two round appendages that were white with blue tips and a dark blue halo that then floated above his head. His eyes were also changing into a black sclera with white pupil. But he wasn't scared by it but instead looked at what's also changing with a child-like curiosity, as indicated by his halo changing into a question mark.

The skin on his stomach and chest were also changed into white with his center of his belly having a light yellow oval there. It continued downward where his gender was removed, becoming an it, as his legs were becoming white with his feet having blue instead. From a distance, it looked like a Hero Chao in human form.

But that changed when he began to shrink, slowly but surely. Its clothes become loose with its pants falling off as it began to grew a tail that was blue with a white tip and wings that were white with yellow tip. It also, to its surprise, began to grow another pair of arms.

Finally it shrunk to normal Chao size, covered in the oversized clothing. Thanks

to its extra pair of arms, it was able to get out of the clothes. It looked around with wonder at the now large room.

"Chao," it cried.

Two scientists, a young blond girl and her senior, a white hair man, were walking by when they heard the Hero Chao cries. They stopped and looked inside the room.

"Great Scott!" the man said when he saw the four-armed Hero Chao and the broken table with the water bottle and empty test tubes. They went in and while the female scientist picked up the Chao and rubbed its head (which caused the halo to changed into a heart), the male scientist was examining the clothes and the table.

"What's a Hero Chao doing here and why does it have four arms?" the female scientist asked, mostly to herself.

"I have a feeling that something happened here," the male scientist remarked.

The female carried the Hero Chao and walked to her senior, asking, "Can you guess what happened in here?"

"Hmm," he said, picking up the shirt and noticing a wet spot on it. "There is the Hero Chao blood on this shirt along with the chemicals we were going to test it on."

"It's clear that someone had a accident here," she said. "But why leave the clothes behind?"

The two then stared at each other and it dawned on them.

"No. . . ." she shook her head as she put down the Hero Chao and stared at it.

"It must be," he said. "There's no other explanation."

"Are you thinking," she demanded as the Hero Chao walked toward the water bottle, "that one of the tourist snuck in here, accidentally spilled those stuff on them, and changed into-"

"That's exactly what I'm thinking."

"Well, who was he?"

They examined the clothes thoroughly for any sort of ID and while they found some changes, there wasn't a ID in them.

"Someone is going to notice that he's missing," she noted. "A parent, a guardian, anyone! What will we tell them?"

The man thought about this for a moment and said, "We have to keep it a secret. No one but us and a few others should know what happened here."

"But they'll notice! Who can't notice a four-armed Hero Chao?"

"Then we'll lie."

"I don't want to tell them that someone's relative is dead when it's a lie. Feels wrong."

"I know the feeling. But," he pointed out, "if word comes out that this Hero Chao was once a human, there will be protests everywhere, even though it's an accident. They may shut this place down. But where will the Chao go? That's what I'm worried about."

The female thought about it and, envisioning people torturing the Chao, she shivered. "Alright. We'll- Wait. Wasn't that bottle empty of water a minute ago?"

He turned around and saw that four-armed Hero Chao was holding that water bottle and it was filled with water again.

"Yes it was, but how?"

The Hero Char lifted one of its arms and hovered it above the bottle opening. Suddenly water poured out of it and re-entered the bottle. It giggled as it continued to do it.

Both scientists were dumbstruck at what they just saw. "You . . . haven't encounter a Chao like that, have you?" she asked.

"No," he replied.

The Hero Chao spilled some of the water and another of its arms hovered above it. The water then freezes into ice.

"Great Scott!" he remarked.

The Hero Chao giggled and pour out all of the water onto the floor. It then freezes it and, from the look of it, it looks like a snowflake.

"Snowflake," she said slowly. "Let's call this Hero Chao Snowflake."

"Sure."

---

So they took Snowflake and they explained to their colleagues that the reason why it had four arms was because of a mysterious mutation that happened as it was maturing. They told their superiors the truth and they agreed to keep it a secret. The fake story spreads and soon everyone believed it.

They took Snowflake to the Hero Garden where it lived in peace with the other Hero Chao for a long time. It doesn't seem to be able to die by age and thus frozen at its mature state, but it still remained a child at heart. They then invented a machine that was a translator collar of sorts--it could allow people to communicate with Chao and Snowflake was the first be chosen to use it. Snowflake just cheered in glee as usual.