Chapter 45
I was standing in the club room with Shu, Rantaro, and Valt when the principal stepped in, holding a crisp white envelope in his hands.
"Okay, Beigoma club members, please gather around," he said, waving them over. "I have a very special delivery for you today. I know some of you already anticipated this, but this letter is an official invitation for the club to participate in the National Team Tournament."
Well, I already knew it was coming, but that didn't make the spike of adrenaline any less exciting.
"YES! We got the invite!" Valt screamed, immediately jumping into the air and pumping his fists.
"Valt, calm down, we have a problem." Shu, as always the pragmatist, immediately pulled us back to reality. "We need five people to register a full team, but there are only four of us in this room. How are we going to fix that?"
Valt half-heard him, his head already in the clouds as he spun around.
"Calm down, Shu, I haven't finished reading yet," the principal chuckled, tapping the paper. "All of your names are explicitly on here, but yes, you need one more member. That choice is entirely up to you as a team. You have two weeks to complete your roster and send back the confirmation letter. Two weeks to find someone, make this team whole, and make a name for yourselves on the biggest stage in the country."
He looked at each of us, and Valt finally stopped bouncing, listening intently. The principal flashed a small, sly grin. "And try to recruit some more students for the school while you're at it, eh? This is free advertising, heheh."
That broke the tension. We all started laughing, the serious atmosphere evaporating as we faced our first real hurdle: finding that fifth teammate.
The moment the principal left, Shu voiced the question we were all thinking.
"So, who's running it? Because if we're being honest about this room, the strongest blader here just took Zac the Sunrise apart three nights ago in front of the entire country."
Okay, Shu, nice of you to think of me, I thought, but I don't want this job.
"Shu, I'm not a leader and I never will be," I said, putting my hands up. "I think because we all get along with Valt, it should be him. Why don't we just vote on it?"
Valt's eyes went wide with pure panic. I knew he hated the idea as much as I did, but sorry, Valt you're going to become a great leader someday, so this is for your own good.
"WAIT, WAIT! Ryo, please don't throw me under the bus!" Valt pleaded, throwing his hands in the air. "I don't want to do this either! I know we all get along, but I am not captain material!"
I looked around the room. Nobody was listening to his protests. Valt just looked more and more desperate, and I was so close to bursting out laughing.
"Okay, let's put it to a vote to settle it," I said. I pulled a chair out and sat down, because standing would have made it look like a debate, and this wasn't going to be one. "Here's mine. I vote for Valt."
"Same," Shu said, cutting in before Valt could launch another protest.
Rantaro raised his melon bun like he was taking a sacred oath on it. "Valt. Obviously Valt. Who else?"
Valt made a sound like a tire going flat and buried his face in his hands. He held it there for a long beat, then dragged them down to look at the three of us. The frantic panic drained out of his shoulders, replaced by something a bit steadier.
"Fine," he said, his voice dropping into a rare, firm tone. "Fine. I'm captain. But you're all launching when I say launch, and nobody argues with me about the draw."
"Wouldn't dream of it," I said with a grin.
That still left the glaring issue. Four of us in the room, and we needed five.
"Two weeks to find a fifth." Valt pulled the letter across the table, handling it like it belonged to him now which I suppose it did. "But I'd rather not wait two weeks. Who do we actually want?"
Nobody jumped in, so I took the lead.
"Wakiya."
Rantaro choked, inhaling half of his melon bun. "Wakiya?!" he gasped, coughing to clear his throat. "Are you out of your mind? He hates you and Valt! That is not going to end well, I'm telling you."
"Rantaro, you and worry are a terrible combination," I said calmly. "Think about it. It's his chance to go to the biggest tournament there is. Plus, we need the balance. Right now we have two attack types, one balance type, and a stamina type. We desperately need a defense type so we have a solid counter. I can't think of a better Bey and blader combination for defense in this district right now."
Shu uncrossed his arms, nodding slowly. "I'd take him. He's fast when he needs to be, but he can be a brick wall when we're cornered. His ego gets in the way sometimes, so we'll have to manage that, but the skill is there."
Valt looked at me for a second, then blew out a long breath and stood up. "He's still in the building. I saw him by the lockers on the way in. Rantaro, go grab him before he leaves."
Wakiya strode into the room ahead of Rantaro, his hands shoved deep into his pockets and his face already set to a firm 'no'. Someone had clearly tipped him off on the stairs.
He stopped a few feet past the threshold, his eyes scanning the four of us before locking onto me a beat longer than anyone else.
"Let me save you the pitch," he said, his voice dripping with ice. "You're a group of four, you need a fifth, and someone in here remembered I've got the best defense in the district. So now I'm the charity pick. The warm body you grab just because I happened to be close enough to catch."
Valt started to lean forward. "Wakiya, that's not...."
"We want you as our fifth," I said, cutting over him. Valt was about to be gentle about it, and gentle was only going to make Wakiya's walls go up higher. "Not to fill a chair. You're the specific piece that keeps this team alive through a tough bracket, and that's the whole reason. There's no softer version of the truth, and I'm not going to invent one to make it go down easier."
Wakiya's jaw clenched so hard a muscle twitched in his cheek. "I didn't qualify for the individual Nationals. You did." He flicked his chin toward me, his eyes narrowing. "So spare me the speech about my defense. If I'm getting stuck on a team with you, I want one clean look at what you're actually doing out there. Up close. Where there's no crowd, no cameras, and nowhere for you to hide it."
He reached into his bag, pulling out his launcher with a sharp, metallic snap. "You. Right now. You beat me two to nothing at the District tournament, and I've had your face stuck in my head every single day since."
I stared back at him for a moment. He had walked up those stairs already knowing he was going to demand this, and making him wait would only make him meaner.
"Fine," I said, reaching into my pocket. "One battle. But you're not getting it because it's going to change whether your name goes on that letter it's going on there either way. You're getting it because I'd rather you take your shot at me now than sit next to me for a whole tournament wishing you had."
Rantaro was already on his knees, dragging the plastic stadium out into the middle of the floor with a massive grin. "We're doing this in the club room? On a Tuesday afternoon? I have never loved anything more."
"Don't break the table," Shu warned quietly.