# Chapter 44
Lui walked off the way he came, slow and not looking back, and the second he was through the doors the whole place came back to life and aimed itself at me.
Wonderful. Now everyone wanted in.
I bent and got Drago out of the dish. Still warm, still winding down slow against my palm. 'Good work,' I told him.
*Told you,* he said, which he never did, but I let him have it.
Xander reached me before the crowd could close.
"There he is!" He came down off his box and shouldered through people like they were furniture. "Ryo, do you know what you just did? Again. You took down one of the Supreme Four again, first Shu, now Zac. Now I really want that rematch. No holding back like the training matches, just full power." He kept a hand on my shoulder while he said it.
"You'll get my full power," I said. "I also want the rematch soon, but let's wait until the Nationals start. Our first chance will be the team battles. So let the best team win."
"Good answer." He gave my shoulder a last shove and was already turning, scanning the room for whatever came next.
Up by the far rail, Shu caught my eye for a second, then looked away. He didn't come down. He'd known what was on that Bey since the park and never said a word about it. He still wasn't going to.
Valt and Rantaro came through the space Xander left.
"RYO." Rantaro arrived at full volume. "That was deranged, do you understand that was deranged? Zac the Sunrise. Sitting in his own stadium like a dropped toy. I screamed so hard I think I tore something. Listen. Listen to my voice."
"You're talking fine."
"It is HANGING ON BY A THREAD."
"Then maybe stop using it."
He put a hand on his chest like I'd wounded him. Behind him Valt was quiet.
"You did it," Valt said. His voice caught in the middle and he pushed through it. "I asked you to and you went down there and did it. I knew you would."
He meant it. He also went out on that same floor an hour ago and lost, and got told in front of the whole building that the losing was his own fault, and now he was standing in front of the one who'd won. I wasn't going to pretend that wasn't sitting on him.
"He was half empty by the time I got to him," I said. "You wore him down first. I walked in and cleaned up your mess."
Valt snorted. "You're a terrible liar."
"I'm a fantastic liar. That one happened to also be true."
That got a real one out of him, small but real, and Rantaro jumped on it.
"He's not wrong, you did tenderise the guy," Rantaro said. "Mostly by being annoying to look at."
"Careful."
"I'm only saying the man had a long night before Ryo even launched."
It took us twenty minutes to get off the floor. People kept stepping into my path. Where are you from, who made the Bey. I smiled and gave them nothing worth keeping and kept moving, and Valt and Rantaro ran interference on either side of me like they'd done it for years.
---
We caught the late train back.
Rantaro talked until he didn't, and then he was out cold with his head on the glass and his mouth open. Valt sat across from me with Valtryek in his hands, turning it over and over, not saying much, and I let the quiet stay quiet for a while.
"Ryo, Zac's going to be at the Nationals," Valt said, somewhere past the halfway point. "Aren't you scared he, or a lot of other people, will figure you out now, knowing how you fight?"
"No, not really," I said. "Even if they figure it out, you can't not hit an attack-type Bey. So I can always just use the spin-steal, as long as the other Bey turns right." I watched him work Valtryek in his hands. "Are you going to be ready for him? Or Xander, or Shu? Or are you going to stay like this forever? I know you don't like how it turned out, or how it happened, but you've got to get past that and start training, real hard."
He took longer than I'd have liked to answer. Then his jaw set, and some of the old Valt came back into his face.
"Yes, you're right. I need to get my head out of the gutter and start," he said, slapping his face a couple of times to bring himself back.
"Then we're done with it for tonight." I put my head back against the seat. "He gave you something to push against. Use it. It's the only useful thing he handed out all night."
Valt almost smiled and went back to his Bey, and this time the turning of it looked less like worrying.
---
The others peeled off at the station a stop at a time, until it was me and a short walk in the cold.
My place was how I left it. I got the door shut behind me and the whole loud day stayed out on the landing where it belonged. Drago went on the desk. The fridge was doing its thing. I'd left the sink light on. Again.
My phone went while I was still working one shoe off with the other foot. I picked up and saw it was Dad.
"Hello, Dad. Did you watch my match?"
"Yes, we did. Your mom too." Ren, with the workshop radio still going behind him. "She cried twice. Once when you won, once at the part with the white-haired boy and all the staring. Don't tell her I told you."
"Did the upgrade do its job, and did it hold?"
Of course that was the first thing out of him. The country watched me take Zac the Sunrise apart and Ren wanted a condition report on the piece we cut.
"It held," I said. "Did exactly what we built it for. You'd have liked his face when it started to bite."
"I saw his face. Good face." A pause, the radio, the sound of him deciding on something. "Whole world's had a look at it now. What it does."
"Let them look. Doesn't help them any."
"No." Something in his voice came close to a smile. "No, I don't suppose it does."
He let one of his long quiets run.
"You did the rest of it yourself," he said. "The ring's just rubber on a rim. The rest was you. I'm saying it the once, I won't make a thing of it."
"I know. Thanks, Dad."
"Get some sleep. You've got a whole country wanting to pull that Bey apart now, and they'll start in the morning."
"Let them start."
He hung up first. I dropped the phone on the desk next to Drago and went to find something to eat, because winning makes me hungry and I hadn't had a thing since noon.