# Chapter 40 — The Long Way
Shu sat alone on the bench in the staging room with Spryzen flat in his open palm, and he was not looking at it. He was looking at the wall, at nothing, holding his breath in a slow count the way he had taught himself years ago.
Out in the hall the noise for Valt had not fully died. Shu could still feel it through the floor, the stamp of the crowd coming down through the concrete into the soles of his shoes. Valt had done it. He had punched his ticket and turned to the stands and pointed at Ryo instead of the cameras, and Shu had watched the whole thing from the mouth of the tunnel without making a sound.
A promise sat between him and Valt, made so long ago it had worn smooth. See you in the finals. Valt had just kept his half. Now it was Shu's turn, and there was a boy with a defensive Bey standing between him and the word yes.
He let the breath out. His fingers drifted up into his hair without asking him, found the ridge of the scar above his right eye, and he took the hand back down before it could mean anything.
The door opened. A staff member leaned in. "Kurenai. Block A final. You're up."
"I know," Shu said, and stood.
---
Wakiya was already on the floor.
He stood in the blue corner with his launcher across his shoulder and his chin up, talking to the whole hall at once the way he always did. When Shu came out of the tunnel his mouth curved.
"There he is." Wakiya's voice carried easily across the bowl. "I was starting to think they'd never give me anyone worth the trouble. You know how long I've been in this bracket grinding through nobodies? All day, Kurenai. All day, and not one of them lasted long enough to make me sweat."
Shu took the red corner and said nothing, and the silence only wound Wakiya tighter.
"This is the only match in this whole block that belongs on the main stage, you and me, and they've got us scrapping over one seat in a side ring." He snapped the launcher off his shoulder and locked it in. "Fine. I'll take the seat off you, and they can put my name up where it should've been from the start."
Up in the stands Ryo sat between Rantaro and Ken, and Shu's eye found him for half a second crossing to the ridge. Ryo lifted two fingers off his knee. Not a wave. Just there. Shu looked back to the bowl.
He knew what Wakiya wanted. He wanted Shu rattled. He wanted the straight line, the angry charge, the attacker doing the one thing a defense type prays an attacker will do.
Shu was not going to give it to him for free.
---
"BLOCK A FINAL!" The announcer's voice tore across the hall, still hoarse from Valt's win. "Last seat to Nationals on the line, winner takes all! In the blue corner, heir to the Murasaki Group and the wall nobody's cleared all day, Wakiya Murasaki and Wild Wyvron! In the red corner, District finalist, cold as they come, Shu Kurenai and Storm Spryzen! Bladers, READY!"
Shu raised his launcher and set his stance, calm and unhurried. Across the bowl Wakiya tilted Wyvron low and flat, the launch that would drop it dead in the middle and dare the world to come dig it out.
"Three. Two. One. LET IT RIP!"
Shu launched clean and hard, and Spryzen came off the string already screaming, low and flat, a streak of red that bit the slope and held it like it was glued there. Wyvron hit the center and squatted, heavy, immovable, claiming the middle exactly the way Shu had known it would.
Spryzen circled the rim. Shu watched the way Wyvron sat, read the lean of it, and did not commit.
"Don't tell me you're going to dance." Wakiya laughed. "You're an attacker, Kurenai. So attack."
Shu sent Spryzen in, but not all the way. A glancing clip off Wyvron's shoulder, testing, and out again before the defense could wake up. Wyvron rocked and settled.
"Pathetic." Wakiya's grin sharpened. "Do it like you mean it."
So Shu went in like he meant it. Hard, straight, the line Wakiya had been begging for, and Wakiya took it with a grin and a shout that filled the hall.
"Too easy. Wyvron, Shield Crash!"
The Bey was already burning before the words finished, violet light pouring up out of the layer, and the wyvern tore out of the air behind Wakiya with its wings half-spread and the same fire running down its spine. The glow leapt off the Bey and climbed him until he stood lit like a torch, and Wyvron tipped into the slope and caught Spryzen's full charge on its shoulder, folding all that speed into its own weight on the way down.
It came back head-on and the hit was enormous.
Spryzen took it square and went skidding clear across the bowl, screeching, its spin staggering, the red of it guttering low.
"OH, HE CAUGHT HIM CLEAN!" The announcer was on his feet. "That's the Shield Crash that's been ending bladers all day, and Spryzen is reeling, Spryzen is barely holding its spin, this could be over already!"
In the stands Rantaro was halfway out of his seat. "He's done, that nearly burst him, you don't come back from a hit like"
"Watch his hand, not the Bey," Ryo said. He had not blinked. "He didn't flinch when that landed. A blader who's about to lose flinches, and Shu just stood there reading it."
He hadn't. Down on the floor Spryzen wobbled at the rim, one bad rotation from the wall, and Shu's face had not moved at all. His eyes tracked the Bey, steady, cold, and somewhere under the cold he was doing arithmetic. He had felt the Shield Crash now. He had felt the exact instant in the climb where Wyvron threw its weight into the counter and could not take it back. He had needed Wakiya to show him once. Wakiya had been only too happy.
Spryzen caught itself a hair off the wall and steadied.
"That's all you've got?" Wakiya called, the violet still rolling off him. "Come on. Again."
"Again," Shu agreed, soft, and the word was not for Wakiya.
He sent Spryzen back in on the same line. Same speed, same angle, the bait laid out exactly the way it had been the first time, and Wyvron tipped into the slope to take it and turn it again, the wyvern already rearing up for the second crash.
The crimson came up Spryzen's body in a rush and Spriggan was there behind Shu before he had said anything at all, a tall warrior cut out of dark red light, the aura running up off the Bey and over Shu's arms until it caught in the scar above his eye and lit it like a coal.
"Counter Break." He barely breathed it, half to himself under Wakiya's noise, and his wrist rolled a fraction on the word.
Spryzen's tip bit the floor and tore sideways off its own line, out of the path of the crash entirely. Wyvron came down the slope into the space where Spryzen should have been and hit nothing. All that gathered weight, all that violet, spent itself on bare floor.
And Spryzen came around behind it.
"HE SLIPPED IT!" The announcer's voice cracked. "Wakiya committed everything to that crash and Spryzen wasn't there, Wyvron's wide open, and now Kurenai's behind him!"
Spryzen hammered into Wyvron's unguarded back, once, and Wyvron lurched up the far slope. Shu did not let it breathe. He drove it again, herding it higher, and as it climbed he tipped the whole memory of a thousand launches into his arm and brought Spryzen up underneath from below. The crimson flared off Spriggan as it lifted, and for one long beat the Bey that had owned the center of this stadium all day hung in the open air over the ridge with the wyvern flickering out behind it and nothing at all beneath its tip.
It came down outside the bowl.
"RING-OUT! First point to Shu Kurenai!"
The violet around Wakiya snapped out. His grin went with it. He scooped Wyvron off the floor and reset without a word, and for the first time since Shu walked out of that tunnel he was quiet.
He had seen the slip now too.
Round two launched. Spryzen came off the string the same as before, low and fast, and Shu sent it circling for the same opening. Wyvron dropped to the center the same as before. Everything looked the same.
It wasn't.
Shu read the bait window and took it, drove Spryzen in on the line that had worked. Wakiya was already moving.
"Not twice." Wyvron tipped early, violet roaring up, the wyvern back over his shoulder. "Shield Crash!"
He had thrown the crash half a beat sooner this time, before Spryzen could roll off its line, and Spryzen ran straight into the climb instead of sliding past it. The two Beys hit and the whole bowl rang.
"He read it!" The announcer was up again. "Wakiya saw the counter coming and beat Kurenai to the punch!"
Spryzen took the full weight of the crash head-on and lost the exchange. It skipped off the slope, caught wrong, and went up over the ridge before Shu could do anything about it.
It came down outside the bowl, beside his own foot, still spinning.
"RING-OUT! Wakiya answers, and we are even, one to one!"
Shu looked down at Spryzen on the floor a moment. Then he picked it up.
"Not so cold now." Wakiya's grin was back, wider than before, the violet curling up off him. "I told you. This is my seat."
In the stands Rantaro had both hands buried in his hair. "He lost one, Ryo, he actually dropped a round"
"He needed to drop that one." Ryo had not moved. "Wakiya just showed him the timing on the early crash, and Shu doesn't get shown the same thing twice. Watch what he does with it now."
---
One more round. Whoever took it took the seat.
Across the bowl Wakiya set Wyvron back on the launcher, still lit, and dropped low for the charge. Shu set Spryzen on the string and breathed out, slow, the way he had in the staging room.
He needed this. Not the seat, the seat was only a door. Behind it was the stage where Lui was waiting at the top of the bracket, the one who had cut the mark above his eye and walked off like it was a gift. The road there had already run longer than he meant it to. Losing the District final had bent the whole route out of true, and he had spent every day since turning that loss into something he could throw instead of something that ached.
Not here. Not to a grudge with nowhere left to go.
"Spryzen." Barely over the hall. "End it."
He brought the launcher up vertical behind his shoulder, the way he almost never did, and held it there.
"Three. Two. One. LET IT RIP!"
Shu whipped the launcher down level as the string tore loose, the Crux Boost, and the crimson roared up off the layer with Spriggan rising to its full height behind him, red streaming up his arms and burning in the scar. Both Beys hit the floor at once.
Wyvron came off Wakiya's launch already charging, straight and furious. Spryzen came off Shu's faster than it had moved all match.
This time it did not slip and it did not bend. It met Wyvron head-on and bored straight through the heart of the violet, and the crack of the two Beys went up into the rafters and came back down. The wyvern blew apart into light. Wyvron's layer clicked open and the pieces spun free across the bowl, the Bey itself whole, just broken apart at the seams the way a burst leaves it.
"BURST FINISH! That's the match! Shu Kurenai takes Block A, Shu Kurenai is going to NATIONALS!"
The hall came up in one wall of sound. Ken had Beus and Keru both over his head, Rantaro was shouting himself raw, and Ryo stood with them, clapping, his eyes still down on the floor.
Shu bent and lifted Spryzen out of the bowl and held it a moment in his closed hand. Then he straightened, and with two fingers he pushed his hair back off his forehead, the old habit, baring the scar to the lights for exactly as long as it took to let one breath out. The route was longer than it should have been. It was still his.
He let the hair fall. His eyes went up to the stands and found his friends, Rantaro and Ken on their feet, Valt down at the rail grinning like an idiot, and Ryo standing quiet among them. He held there a second. The corner of his mouth moved, barely, and he turned and walked off the floor toward them.
In the blue corner Wakiya stayed where he was a long while, looking at the empty bowl where his wall used to be, until someone finally came to walk him out.