Chapter 43 — Sunshine
Valt sat beside me with Valtryek dead in his hands and nothing left to throw at anyone, and I let him have the quiet.
"Valt, I know you're upset and mad at yourself, but think of this as a good lesson you can learn from. Learn to block off emotions in a battle. That will not help you. I'm not saying you can't feel any at all, but it's good to stay level-headed when fighting stronger people."
I said this with a hand on his shoulder. He still did not say anything at all, but he looked a bit more focused now, so I let him be and focused back on Zac.
Down on the floor Zac had already moved on, another name, another launch, the crowd swinging back to him like he had never let them go.
I turned my own grip over in my hand and watched him work the floor.
'Drago, I think it is time to use you to the limit, or close to it, if I get called up. I know I told the rest a couple days ago I would train hard and alone for the Nationals, but we also have a team tournament before the solo Nationals. So why do I still try to keep you hidden? Even if someone sees what you can do, does that mean they can always beat you?'
'So I'm gonna go full beans and not hold myself back, or you, and not let Zac down. He deserves this fight. I feel it.'
*You are sure,* Drago said, low in the back of my skull.
'Yes, I'm sure. It is time you spread your wings and take flight on this big stage, right here and now. If we win or lose, we at least gave it all.'
On the floor Zac let the last match settle, then turned and found me in the seats like he had known where I was the whole time.
"I saved the best for last," he called, and the lights swung around with his voice. "A name none of you came here for, because none of you know it yet. You will." The spotlight climbed the seats and stopped on me, and the noise came up to meet it. "Come down here and give them a reason."
I got up. Beside me Valt finally looked up from the Bey in his hands.
"Ryo... I know I'm asking for a lot, maybe the impossible, but beat this guy at his home turf. And for me. YOU CAN DO THIS." He said it with so much emotion I was a bit shocked, but I looked at him and said, "You can count on me, buddy. I will have your back as much as you need me to. I will give it my all."
The walk down was longer than the distance.
I set Drago on the launcher where the floor cameras could find him, and the big screens over the stadium caught him in close, and that was when the rim of the floor went quiet in the places that mattered.
Up at the rail of his box Xander uncrossed his arms, his eyes on the screen, on the thin dark band of rubber riding the edge of my Bey that was in no footage of me anyone in this building had ever watched.
"Look at that, he upgraded his Bey. But why? He did not need it at all, it was strong enough already, maybe too strong." He said it low, more to himself than to anyone, the floor far too far below to catch a word of it. "Well, now I really want that rematch with him already. Zac, I'm so jealous. But there's a good chance you'll lose, because I see that rubber, and Drago is left-spin. Yeah, you're in trouble, Zac. Good luck. You've dug your own grave here if you don't take this seriously."
Alone near the top, Shu did not move and did not speak. He had seen it already, in a park, on a morning I had not known he was there. He let me keep it.
And wherever Lui had put himself after he was done with Valt, the rubber meant nothing to him that he let show.
All these people looking at me, at us, for this to be a good match. Most of them up till now were over pretty fast, and he said he saved the best for last, so he has high expectations of me. That is good. Don't let him down, and enjoy this. Come on, Ryo.
I slapped myself on the face a couple of times to calm down, and my focus was back on Zac.
Zac was beside the dish now, loose and bright, Zeutron already in his hand.
"Well, we finally meet at last, Ryo. I watched your match against Shu, and I have to say, I look forward to this. So don't hold back for me. Let me see your sunshine, so bright it'll blind us all." He said it to me, and everyone around the stadium made noise and was excited for this match to start.
"You won't have to ask me twice to go all out. So put on your whole show, Zac, every last piece of it. I'd hate to take you down with anything still in the tank."
Zac laughed at that, and meant it. He slotted Zeutron home and held it up so the gold caught the light.
"Three!" the ref called. "Two! One!"
"Let it rip!"
---
Drago came off my launcher in a straight line, no reading, no circling.
"Dragon Crash." Gold and crimson wrapped him, and he drove into Zeutron's flank with everything the launch had put in him.
"And we're away, and the new boy goes straight in!" the announcer called, and the crowd surged up under his voice. "No feeling each other out tonight, folks!"
It should have knocked Zeutron loose. It did not. Zeutron took the strike, dipped, and rose back through it like water closing over a dropped stone, and the shock travelled up the floor and into my teeth.
Drago came around and hit again, a third time, a new angle each pass, and Zeutron did not so much as lean off its center.
Zac threw both arms wide to the seats and turned a slow circle in the middle of it, grinning, drinking the noise in. "Is that all the sunshine you brought me?" The crowd roared for him.
"And the Sunrise holds his ground!" the announcer boomed. "Zillion Zeutron, ladies and gentlemen, the wall that does not fall. How long can the new boy keep swinging?"
"Solstice Boost." Zac said it almost gently, mid-spin, and the gold around Zeutron stood up into a shape with a staff and a crown of light, a sun rising over the dish. All that hoarded stamina rolled over into speed at once. Zeutron broke off its center and began to circle the dish, faster every lap, an attacker now in a stamina type's body.
It came around and drove Drago out toward the rim. Drago fought his way back toward the center, and it came again and put his nose over the edge, and there was nothing for either of us to do for a few seconds but ride it out.
"He's on the ropes, the Sunrise is all over him!" the announcer cried, and the crowd climbed with it.
Urgh, this isn't working. I needed to let him come to us instead of going at him. Right now he had too much stamina, and his weights were keeping him centered and hard to beat.
So I said to Drago, 'Let it come to us.'
Drago settled low and patient, control over power, the way we had drilled it alone in that park with nobody watching except the one person I had not noticed. When Zeutron committed to its next lap and bore in, Drago did not slip aside.
He met it.
The rubber caught.
For half a turn they ground against each other, then broke apart, and Zeutron came off that contact slower than it went in, and Drago came off it faster. He went straight back for more. Every pass the rubber bit, and every bite peeled a little more speed off Zeutron and poured it into him, so the two of them threw further apart with each clash, Zeutron heavier and slower around the floor, Drago a harder, brighter blur with every lap.
"Hold on. Hold on, what is this?" The announcer's voice climbed and cracked. "Zeutron is slowing, and the new boy is speeding up. Where is he getting it from?"
The noise in the stadium changed. It went up at the front, where people did not understand what they were seeing, and it dropped out in one specific place above the floor, where someone did.
Zac stopped playing to the crowd.
"That's new," he said, the brightness in his voice gone for the first time. "You let me wear myself out on you, and now you take it back off me." A slow, real smile. "Clever boy. All right. No more show."
He had seen the rubber now, and so had everyone with the eyes to read a Bey. It changed nothing. There was nothing here worth keeping back, so I kept nothing back.
Zeutron tore free before Drago could finish it.
"Solar Boost." One hard turn, and Zeutron came off the contact with the speed packed into it like a struck match, ripping out of the grab and back up the middle. The sun stood up gold again with its staff swinging, and Zeutron caught Drago full on the shoulder and threw him up off the floor.
"And Zeutron breaks loose, the Sunrise is not done yet!" the announcer roared.
Drago dropped back into the dish and caught his spin again. Zac was already on him, a second strike, a third, never staying against him long enough for the rubber to find its grip, herding him out toward the rim.
Drago skated the edge, one bad angle from gone, and I did not let the breath out of me. Not here. Not to a hit-and-run. 'Stay with me. One more pass, that's all I need.'
And then the half-beat that used to sit between my thinking and Drago's doing was just gone.
That was the real upgrade, the one Shu had seen in the park and kept to himself. Not the rubber. This. I stopped trying to time the catch for him and trusted him to feel where Zeutron had to commit, and Drago was already turning into it before I finished the thought.
The rubber caught, and this time we did not let it grind slow.
"Eclipse Destruction."
Drago went gold and crimson, then darker, black bleeding off the edges of the light, and the dragon rose up out of the dish, huge, and this time it spread its wings wide over the whole floor, the gold gone dark at the rims, the same color climbing my arms and wrapping me to the shoulders. Take flight, I had told him. He did. Every turn he had stolen off Zeutron, every scrap dragged out of it across the whole battle, he folded into one long dive and drove it down through the contact point.
The announcer had no word for it. Nobody did.
Zeutron held for half a second.
Then its layer clicked open and the gold went out of it, and the pieces sat dead in the dish while Drago kept turning over them, slow now, settled, dark.
Burst.
"IT'S A BURST! Zeutron is down, Zillion Zeutron is DOWN, and nobody saw it coming!" The stadium did not so much cheer as break.
Zac knelt and lifted Zeutron out of the dish and looked at it a moment before he looked at me, and whatever he found in my face he smiled at, the showman gone soft for a second underneath.
"Okay," he said. Then, louder, turning it out to the seats because that was who he was, "Okay! You all came for a show. There is your show. Remember the name, because the rest of us will." He looked back, just at me this time. "Well played, little blaze."
I had come in unknown to everyone out front. I was not unknown anymore.
---
The noise was still going when it stopped meaning anything to me, because Lui had started to come down and was looking at me.
He had come down once already tonight, for Valt, and gone back up without a glance at me. This time he came for me.
Lui Shirosagi stopped at the edge of the dish and looked at the dead Zeutron, then at Drago, then at me.
"So. You changed your Bey." His eyes went over Drago slowly, weighing it, and came back to me. "It suits you. And the bond is deeper than it was. I can see that much from up there." Nothing in his face moved. "But understand what you just showed the whole room, boy. You and I spin the same way. That little theft of yours, the spin you peel off everyone else, does nothing to me. Nothing at all. The move was strong. I will not insult either of us by pretending it wasn't. Strong is still a long way beneath me. There has never been better than me, and there never will be."
"You think I did any of this for you?" I said. "The upgrade was never about you, Lui. I did it for myself, and for Drago, to prove the two of us can stand at the very top. You are just what's in the way right now. That is all you are to me yet. So yes. I am looking forward to our battle, whenever it finally comes."
It came up between us without either of us touching a launcher.
Drago first, because I did not stop it. Gold and black climbing off the dead dish, the dragon lifting its head over my shoulder, the dark light running down my arms again. And across from it Lui's hair lifted off his neck and moved like it was caught in a heat I could not feel, and the white dragon came up behind him, antlers crowned, azure burning in lines down its body, a mane of pale blue fire running its whole length and a spear where its tail should end.
Two dragons over a stadium floor, and not one Bey spinning between them.
Nobody in the building made a sound.
Then Lui turned to go, and he laughed, short and low and oddly genuine, the first real thing I had seen out of him all night. "We will see what happens, and when. But I am looking forward to it. The match of dragons." He looked back over his shoulder. "Let's hope you live up to what you did here."