Chapter 46
I clicked Drago onto my launcher and took my side of the stadium, and across from me Wakiya was already crouched into his stance like the battle had started ten minutes ago.
"You're going to regret giving me this for free," he said, winding his launcher cord tight. "I've watched your District matches so many times I could draw Drago's flight path from memory. Every lazy habit you have, I know it."
"Then this should be quick," I said. "For one of us."
Rantaro planted himself at the edge of the stadium with the last of his melon bun and appointed himself referee by simply shouting the countdown before anyone asked him to.
"Three! Two! One! LET IT RIP!"
Wakiya's launch was nothing like his mouth. No flash, no anger. Wyvron dropped in low and heavy, killed its own momentum in two tight circles, and parked itself dead center like a boulder settling into a riverbed.
Shield Launch. The wall was up before Drago finished its first lap.
Fine. Walls were made for knocking on.
I sent Drago in on a shallow angle and clipped Wyvron's layer. The impact rang through the plastic stadium and Drago skipped away, barely leaving a mark. Wakiya didn't even flinch.
"That's it?" he called across the stadium. "That's the attack that took down Zac? Hit me a hundred more times, I'll still be standing when you're wobbling."
I didn't answer him. I sent Drago back in. Another hit. Another. Each contact looked like it was doing nothing, and to anyone watching from the outside, that was exactly true.
But I could feel it through the launcher grip, through whatever thread ran between Drago and me now. Every time our layers touched, the rubber on Drago's rim bit into Wyvron's right spin and pulled. A sip at a time. Wyvron was a reservoir and I had quietly put a straw in it.
Wakiya read my repeated hits as frustration, which was the point.
"You're panicking," he said, a grin creeping into his voice. "You're used to bursting people in three moves and now the wall won't fall over for you. Let me show you what a real counter looks like."
Wyvron shifted. The heavy center stance broke and it surged outward on the attack line, riding its own weight into a body-check.
"Shield Crash!"
The hit caught Drago full in the side. Drago went spinning up the slope of the stadium, kissed the edge, and clawed its way back down with a wobble I didn't have to fake. Valt made a strangled noise somewhere behind me.
"There it is!" Wakiya was fully upright now, feeding off it. "One more of those and you're out. Some genius. You're walking into a trap like an idiot, and you won the District? Shu, you let this man beat you?"
Wakiya was looking at Shu now, but Shu just kept watching the match and not him, which annoyed Wakiya even more.
"Well, I'll get you next time. Let's get this party started."
He raised his hand, and the air in the club room changed.
"I wanted the cameras to see this at Nationals first, but you insisted on a private show. HYPER SHIELD CRASH!"
Wyvron ignited. Violet light poured out of the layer and climbed the walls of the stadium, and out of that light the Wyvern rose, wings snapped wide, filling the club room from floor to ceiling. The same purple fire wrapped around Wakiya himself, his hair lifting in a wind that had no business existing indoors, and for a second he didn't look like a prickly kid from the locker hallway. He looked like a fortress that had decided to march.
Wyvron came down the attack line with all of it behind him.
I had one job, and it was not to dodge.
"Drago. Take it."
They collided in the center and the sound was flat and enormous, like a door slamming in a church. Drago was thrown back, scraping a long arc across the stadium floor. The violet light was still crawling over everything.
And Wyvron wobbled.
Not Drago. Wyvron.
The Wyvern avatar flickered above the stadium like a screen losing signal. Wakiya's grin died on his face one muscle at a time.
"What...." He leaned over the stadium, staring at his own Bey like it had betrayed him. "That was my full counter. Why are YOU still spinning? Why am I slowing down?"
"Because you've been paying my toll the whole match," I said. "Every hit you tanked, every contact you shrugged off. Drago's been drinking your spin since the first exchange. Your wall works by letting people touch it, Wakiya. That's the one thing you should never let me do."
His eyes went from Wyvron to Drago's rim, and I watched him find the rubber ring, and I watched him understand it. He had studied my District matches. This hadn't been in any of them.
"Then I'll end it before you can use it!" He threw his whole body behind the command. "WYVRON, CRUSH HIM!"
Too late. It had been too late for two minutes.
He still didn't understand the power difference between us. Well, I wasn't going to burst him today. I didn't want to break him. I needed him. We needed him.
"Eclipse Destruction."
I didn't shout it. I didn't need to. Drago answered with a detonation of gold and crimson, light with black edges bleeding through it like ink in fire, and the dragon unfolded above the club room. Huge. Wings spread wall to wall, gold scales rimmed in black, and its heat rolled over my own shoulders and wrapped me in it, the way it always did now, like the aura couldn't tell anymore where Drago ended and I began.
Drago hit Wyvron under the layer at full stolen speed.
Wyvron left the stadium in a clean, high arc, sailed over the rim, and landed on the club room floor. It rolled twice and came to rest against the leg of the table Shu had told us not to break. Intact. Still in one piece. Layer, disk, driver, all of it whole.
Ring-out.
Inside the stadium, Drago was still spinning at the center. Steady. Barely slower than at launch.
Nobody said anything for a moment. Then Rantaro breathed out a long "duuuude" that did the talking for everyone.
Wakiya walked around the stadium, crouched, and picked Wyvron up off the floor. He turned it over in his hands, checking the layer for damage that wasn't there, and I saw the exact second he registered that I had gone for the ring-out on purpose.
"Your wall is real," I said, before he could get a word out. "I want to be clear about that. If I didn't have the rubber, I'd have a higher chance of losing that match. But that's a what-if scenario, so not relevant. It also makes you strong. You're tough to get through and beat. But you have one big flaw. Do you want me to say it, or do you know it yourself already?"
"Fine, just say it. What is my so-called flaw you have found? I think I'm perfect, and you just got lucky with a cheap trick. But let's hear it, wonder boy."
I just shook my head and looked at him.
"That is your flaw. You are way too cocky. You think too highly of yourself, you don't see your own mistakes, and you think everyone will bend to your will. Well, news flash, that is not how I work and not how this team works. So you want to be on that stage? Then you accept Valt as the captain, and you listen to the draw."
Now he was looking at me with his mouth open.
"Wel.. I thin.... I think that is not the case at all."
"Keep thinking that. See how far that will get you in this tournament, or the next one," I said, a bit annoyed now.
Wakiya stood up slowly, Wyvron closed in his fist.
"You could have burst me," he said. It wasn't a thank-you. It was an accusation looking for somewhere to land.
"I could have tried. Bursting you through that defense would've cost me everything Drago had left, and it would've proved nothing we didn't already know. The point was never to break you. The point was to show you what you asked to see."
He held my eyes for a long moment. Then he shoved Wyvron into his pocket and turned to Valt.
"Give me the letter."
Valt scrambled for the confirmation form so fast he nearly knocked the chair over, smoothing it out on the table and holding out a pen like he was afraid the offer would expire. Wakiya snatched the pen and bent over the paper.
"I still don't like you," he said while he signed, without looking up, and it was aimed at me as much as at the room. "Any of you. This is a business arrangement. I want to stand on that stage, and you people happen to be the vehicle."
"Welcome to the team," Shu said
Valt lifted the letter and looked at the five names on it, and his whole face did the thing it does, the sun coming out from behind a building.
I picked Drago out of the stadium and rubbed my thumb over the rubber ring, which was warm.
A team. An actual team, with my name registered on official paper next to four other people, one of whom had just promised to dislike me professionally.