Edit: Alright, this is the real end, i messed up somewhere. Chapter 8 doesn't exist!
I don't own, there's my disclaimer!
"Dranzer, attack! Show no mercy!" Kai yelled to his Bitbeast. Dranzer charged at Kuro, clearly intent on following the issued command.
"Um, ah… Kuro, get out of the way!" I cried, momentarily panicking. What felt like a fleece blanket flowed through my mind, making all of my thoughts slow and my mind hazy.
'No, I will take the attack. Then you will command me to attack my lighter counterpart.' Kuro's voice cut through the fog like a knife. I just nodded slowly.
"Hold your ground, Kuro!" I said. A very small part of my brain said 'No, tell him to jump out of the way… why are you listening to him? He's trying to control you…'
'But…' I thought numbly, 'Kuro would know best… Besides, it's warm and comfy…'
'No… take control back…'
'Why…? I like this feeling…'
I watched dumbly as my Beyblade was shot into the air.
'Command me to attack.' Kuro's voice told me.
"Kuro, attack now! Black Flame Arrow!" I yelled, obeying his command.
"Danzer, get out of the way!" Kai yelled. Without hesitation, Dranzer lunged out from under Kuro a split second before impact. Kuro hit the dish with a huge crash, and smoke billowed up everywhere.
"I can't see!" I cried, my mind still dimmed by Kuro's influence.
'That does not matter. Command me to attack again!' the warmth in my mind intensified, and my mind went even blanker.
"Kuro, attack again." I said in monotone. He happily obliged, slamming into Dranzer with no mercy. The little voice in the back of my head spoke up again, no more than a distant whisper.
'Fight him. You don't want to do this. You don't want to destroy Kai.'
'No, you will listen to me.' Kuro's voice cut in. The whisper got a bit louder and more persistent and the fog thinned a little.
'Fight him, you can do it. Free yourself from his influence. Save Kai from him.'
'You will obey me! I have the power to destroy your enemies! Together, we can conquer anyone! No one will oppose us as long as you obey!'
'He is supposed to obey you, not the other way around. You must not obey him.'
'YOU WILL OBEY!'
'NO!'
'YES!'
'NO!'
"Stop it!" I fell to my knees, covering my ears in an attempt to block out the sound. The little voice faded away, and the fog in my mind suddenly vanished.
I watched in horror as my lack of 'focus' caused the Beyblade to falter. Kai didn't hesitate as he ordered Dranzer to move in for the kill. I watched numbly as Kuro flew through the air to land at my feet with a series of faint clicks as the blade bounced on the floor. Mechanically, I picked up my Beyblade and looked at the Bitchip. The chip glowed angrily, as if mad at my resistance and lapse of attention.
Boris was yelling something at me, but I wasn't listening. My eyes had somehow shifted their angle from Kuro to Kai. I watched his teammates congratulate him on his victory, assuring him that he could snag another one for them. I felt a flash of fiery orange stab through my heart and then fade to the more familiar troubled green of confusion. What was that unknown feeling?
'It was jealousy, and anger. You want it to be YOU being congratulated and cheered for, not him.' Kuro's voice snaked through my head again. 'You are jealous of him, but do not worry. It will be you being congratulated soon enough. With my power, you will win the respect you so RIGHTLY deserve.'
I clenched one of my fists.
"I will win the respect I deserve…" I repeated softly. "Yes…" My hand tightened around the Beyblade. Another unknown feeling crept into my heart, this one darker than the last two. "I will win, and then everyone will see me as someone worth respecting."
'Yes…'
I put the Beyblade back on my launcher and waited for Kai to do the same.
"Three…" I whispered.
"Two…" I saw Kai's mouth form the word.
"One…" I literally growled.
"LET IT RIP!" We yelled it at the same time. Kuro and Dranzer hit each other in midair and landed in the dish with sparks flying.
"Why are you doing this?!" Kai's voice cut through my thoughts of gaining respect. "Why are you letting yourself be their pawn?"
I looked up at him.
"I'm not in it for them. I'm in this for myself." The gray of, for lack of a better word, desperation spread in my heart until it formed a cage. "I beat you, and I'll get the respect I deserve."
"BioVolt is trying to take over the world!"
"I know that. I knew that from the beginning."
"Then why--?"
"I want respect. I will get respect by showing my power by taking Dranzer from you." I stopped myself there. What was I saying? I pressed my eyes shut and tried to clear my head, but the gray cage over my heart refused to break. "Black Dranzer, emerge!" I called. Kuro eagerly rose from the Bitchip, in all of his black and red glory.
"Dranzer!" Kai yelled. Dranzer emerged from its own Bitchip in the same manner as Kuro: a dazzling display of light, wings flared and tail fluttering.
'Showoff.' Kuro muttered.
"You look just the same." I replied. The gray cage around my heart tightened until it was almost painful. "Kuro! Smash Dranzer out of the dish!" Kuro shot at Dranzer, clearly intent on carrying out my order. Dranzer shifted out of the way just in time.
"Stop this!" Kai yelled to me.
"No! I need respect, I need people to actually care that I exist!" I cried back. At this, Kai seemed to hesitate, but that didn't surprise me nearly as much as what he said next.
"I care that you exist."
That was all it took. Yellow shock broke through the desperation and my concentration.
'But it's Kai,' I thought, 'he's supposed to be all 'everyone else can rot' and stuff. What's going on?'
'He likes you,' said the little voice in my mind, weaker and softer than before but still there. 'He's probably just as confused as you are.'
'But he showed emotion. That's not right. Nobody is supposed to care about me. And this is Kai. Kai doesn't LIKE people. He tolerates them.'
I shook my head. "No," I told myself, "I have to do this." I looked to the dish, where Kuro was sitting steadily in the center, taking every one of Dranzer's hits. "Kuro, tie this up! Knock Dranzer out of there!"
Everything happened fast. One moment, both blades were charging each other, and the next, Dranzer was lying at Kai's feet.
'You have come to your senses,' Kuro commented as he sprung back into my hand.
"You," I said, "shut up. I have a plan." Which I did. A rough one, anyway. Taking a deep breath, I tuned out everything but the battle. Pushing stray strands of black hair behind my ears, I got ready for the final launch.
"Three…" I said.
"Two…" Kai's mouth formed.
"One…"
"LET IT RIP!" We both yelled. Kuro and Dranzer met head-on in the center of the dish. I could hear the sharp edges grinding against each other as both tried to tear the other to shreds.
"Take it out, Dranzer!" Kai called.
"You heard him, Kuro," I commented. I felt the warm fuzzy try to blanket my mind again, and struggled to focus.
'You are mine, kitten, and you do as I command,' Kuro ordered. Then, with no warning, he slammed into his lighter counterpart, breaking the blade apart. The only whole piece was the attack ring with the bitchip in it.
"The winner is Tigress!" I vaguely registered.
'Go and claim his bitbeast as your own,' Kuro said. Mechanically, I walked over to where Kai knelt, picking up the shattered pieces of his Beyblade.
"Dranzer is now mine," I heard myself say. Desperately, I tried to regain control of myself. I watched in horror as my arm rose and pointed Kuro at Dranzer, and the brilliant red light was absorbed into the blade.
'You can't do this,' a new voice cried, surprisingly female. 'You can't take me from Kai!'
'I believe she just did,' Kuro remarked smugly. My body walked back and sat down with the Demolition team and the blanket over my mind vanished. Determined, I stood up.
"Boris," I called, "Dranzer is mine, right? To do with as I see fit?"
"That is correct, why do you ask?" he replied.
"Good." I looked towards the Bladebreakers and held up my Beyblade. "Dranzer," I ordered, "return to Kai!"
I watched in satisfaction as three things happened. As the red light flew joyfully back to Kai, Boris watched me in horror, Kai watched Dranzer returning in shock, and Kuro started raging.
'You cannot do this!' he shouted in my head, at the same time Boris yelled the exact same thing out loud.
"I believe," I said to both, "I just did."
Before I knew it, I was being manhandled out of the stadium and into the van that brought us here. Boris drove us back to the Abbey in record time, breaking every speed limit there was. Honestly, he was so mad I wondered why he didn't just knock me out, take Kuro, and leave me to my fate.
I was roughly shoved down halls and into my room, where Boris held out his hand.
"Give me Black Dranzer. You are not fit to wield it." I looked at him incredulously.
"No," I said simply. "He's mine." Boris sputtered before slamming the door in my face. "Bite me, old man," I said to the silence. Then, I made a split second decision. Gathering the few things of value I had there, I shoved them into a bag and opened the window. Looking at the ground from the second story, I swallowed hard and began to rethink my 'plan'.
'Jump…' Kuro suggested.
"Right," I said out loud. "Thanks, but no, I like my leg bones intact." Throwing a glance around my room, I spotted the bedsheets. "Aha." The five minutes afterwards were spent using my Beyblade's sharp edges to rip the sheets into strips and tying them together, like in the movies.
I made sure the knots were tight and tossed the make-shift rope out the window, securing it on the bed-frame.
I was about half-way down the first stretch of 'rope' when I made the mistake of looking down.
"OH shit, oh shit oh shit oh SHIT," I swore. Looking everywhere but at my feet, I quickly scurried down. My feet landed with a soft pat on the concrete.
Glancing around quickly, I saw the front gate, unguarded.
'Too easy,' Kuro announced. 'It is a trap. Scale the walls to your left.'
"You want to go back into Voltaire's clutches, bird?" I asked under my breath, using a scrawny tree near the wall to climb.
'No, which is why I am helping you leave.'
"Then stop ordering me around. Why the sudden change of heart, anyways? Last I checked, you were trying to mind-control me." I was over the wall and sprinting through the ice-crusted snow to get as far from the Abbey as possible.
'You have only been recognized by one person. One person is not 'everyone'. You'll need me again.'
"I knew you had an ulterior motive."
Now I was wandering around the streets of Moscow, searching for anything vaguely familiar. Then I saw it.
"Oh thank God, the BBA," I said in relief. I hadn't taken two steps, though, before I felt something both blunt and sharp hit me in the back of the head. The last thing I registered was a brilliant red light before I lost my grasp on consciousness.
The first thing I knew when I woke up was that it was warm. My first thought was hotel, but that conflicted with the hard, wooden surface I was laying on.It was also contradicted by the chirping birds and fresh-smelling spring air. I opened my eyes to see faded, chipped blue paint on a horrifyingly familiar wooden deck.
Frantically, I sat up and looked around. Blue deck, white house, mulberry tree (because it had grown too much to be called a bush), shed, garage. Television in the house turned on with Saturday morning cartoons playing. Plastic Beydish in front of me. Plastic Beyblade in my hand.
"No," I whispered, "this can't be right, I was in Moscow, I was in the Tournament, I had Black Dranzer…"
I was home again.
It sucked ass.
Three long, boring, normal years later
As the only sixteen-year-old in the hobby store Beyblade Tournament, I was like a giant among hobbits. A giant among hobbits who was kicking major ass round after round. The children around me used the plastic versions of Drigger or Dragoon, with only a few adjustments. There were a few custom-made blades, like mine, that used pieces like Wolborg's attack ring and Trygle's spring mechanism.
I was sitting in the front row watching the battle that would decide my opponent for the final round. It was tied up with two draws and hopefully this match would decide it all. The two children got ready and launched their plastic Beyblades, but something went wrong.
One of the blades flew in the wrong direction, so instead of hitting the dish, I hit me in the side of the head. The weight disk, the only metal part, hit me square in the temple, making stars explode in my vision.
"Hey, are you okay, lady?" one of the littler kids asked. I nodded, trying to clear my vision. It didn't work, and my vision got darker.
Finally, I blacked out all together.
I woke up feeling extremely cold. And wet. To my left, I heard running water, as if I were near a stream or river. I opened my eyes, only to shut them again against the glare of the cheerful springtime sun. The ground under me was what was making me cold and wet, as if it had just rained. I was about to let myself fall back into sleep, just ignoring the cold, when I heard a familiar voice.
"Hey, who are you?"
"Kenny?" I exclaimed, sitting up so fast my back cracked. My shirt stuck to my skin uncomfortably.
"How do you know my name?" he asked. He was older than I remembered, and he'd traded in his old thick glasses for more sensible wire frames. His brown eyes looked slightly out of place against his pale skin, and his hair wasn't as wild as it was when he was younger. He was still wearing his olive-colored bottoms, but instead of shorts, they were pants, and his shirt and tie were the same as before.
"Wait, if it's Kenny, then Tyson isn't far and neither is Kai," I murmured to myself. "Kenny, don't you remember me? From a few years ago in Moscow?" I asked, louder.
Kenny looked confused for a moment before recognition blossomed.
"Meg?" he ventured. I nodded hopefully. Without warning, he was directly in front of me, hauling me to my feet by my wrist with more strength than I thought he had. "I know some people who'll want to see you again." With that, he was dragging me down the street. He stopped in front of what I knew to be Tyson's place for a split second before he pulled me into the dojo.
"Look who I found!" he announced. The Bladebreakers looked up, startled. It was Rei who recovered first.
"Is that you, Meg?" he asked, grinning. Kai snapped to attention
'That's three,' I thought in the back of my mind.
"Yeah," I answered, "I'm back." The words had barely left my mouth when I was swarmed with hugs from Max and Tyson. I was bombarded with questions, and it took most of the afternoon and evening to get caught up on everything. I didn't get a single moment to myself until after sunset, when everyone was gathered in the kitchen trying to get food.
"I missed you."
Well, almost everyone.
"Did you mean what you said?" I asked. "Back then, when you said you cared."
"I think so," Kai answered, leaning against the doorframe behind me. He hadn't changed a bit on the outside, other than getting taller.
"I'm glad," I said, "because that was what saved Dranzer, I think. How is she, by the way? And have you seen Black Dranzer anywhere?"
"No, and ask her yourself," he replied, saying more now than he ever had before. He tossed Dranzer to me, and I caught the blade out of reflex.
"Hey, long time no see," I whispered.
'Welcome back,' the feminine voice replied. 'I never got to thank you for releasing me.'
"Don't worry about it," I replied. I gently handed her back to Kai. I heard a faint clink in the bushes near the house. I glanced at Kai and he shrugged. Quickly, I went over to the bushes and looked around.
In the darkness, I almost missed it, and I would have, if I hadn't pricked my finger on it. Reaching way down into the leaves, I pulled out Black Dranzer.
"Well, speak of the feathery black devil," I said.
'Did I not tell you that you still needed me?' he asked.
"That you did." I looked at Kai. "If I ever try to leave again, tie me down to something?" I requested. He nodded. On impulse, I ran to him and hugged him.
"Welcome back," he whispered.
"I know I am," I replied.
The End