Yes, this is exactly what it looks like.

After well over a year's worth of mentally beating myself up for such a lousy end to the original, occasionally getting a "What the heck?" review from people who stumble across it, I have finally decided to make an effort to redeem myself and revamp this, what I had originally hoped when I wrote it all those months ago, my crowning achievement.

For starters, the story no longer connects to Forever and Always – it now has its own timeline, its own backstory, and a whole new cast of characters.

While old characters (like Sonbre and Kasumi) return in the revamped version, others have been removed for better plot flow. In addition, new characters have come into play, replacing the need for too many extras. I'm not going to give anymore away, so you'll just have to keep reading to discover the changes.

Though I must add, as a side note, that the current outline makes this a long piece of work. I will update on my own schedule, not yours. So, bugger off.

Viper's Nest

Written by Lunare Valhart
Batuken Shoot Beyblade and all its original characters are © Aoki Takao
All unfamiliar original characters are © Lunare Valhart, and are not to be used without permission

To be completely honest, Hiromi Tatibana had no idea what was going through the American press's mind when she saw the article.

Her English teacher had assigned a current events project, forcing everyone to search the internet to look through English-speaking news sites to find an article and summarize it, in English and Japanese. Most of the class went the easy way and looked for articles on Japan, halving their work effort; Hiromi, being a more eager student, decided to simply scan all the articles for what looked interesting.

And not related to blade-tops or whatever they were called.

She knew she should've figured there would be articles on a certain loud-mouthed classmate of hers; that much was obvious by the amount of reporters soon after he returned to Japan (to her relief, they had recently tapered off). But she had no idea how close-minded the people overseas were. Until this lit up her home computer screen:

WORLD CHAMPION AND TEAM CAPTAIN: UNDERCOVER?

And an obvious candid shot of the bluenette she saw every school day of her life dragging a vaguely amused older youth by the hand. In Russia, if the architecture was anything to go by.

The article went on about how neither showed much interest in anything but each other, how the younger boy was always trying to find some excuse to be by the older one, how the older boy made a vague comment that the other boy was a lifesaver… Suddenly, she remembered why she hardly participated in her friends' gossip; this was nauseating, how utterly stupid it sounded!

"I could write a paper on this," she grumbled as the article went on with an "expert" opinion about the parallels between Japanese mythology and the boys' bit-beasts—whatever those were. "Ignorance of Americans: Why Culture Classes are a Necessity. Honestly, aren't two guy friends are allowed hold hands? And what's this nonsense about saying that their histories enforce their homosexuality? Just because this "Kai" grew up in an all-boys abbey and Tyson's family lineage goes into the feudal era with samurai?"

She rolled her eyes and went to another site, pushing all thoughts of the article out of her mind as she looked for something of more interest to her.

Tabloids… sheesh.

…

Several blocks down, another youth with the same project only smiled thoughtfully as he glanced over the item, taking more amusement out of it rather than disgust.

"If only they knew," Tyson laughed as he glanced over to the picture on his desk, the smiling faces of five young boys (some less than others) behind glass peering back at him. His bright eyes softened as he looked at one of them in particular, the youth's somewhat hesitant smile causing Tyson to sport one, as well. He shook off the somewhat sappy thoughts beginning to flood his brain and went back to goofing off on the web.

He already had his article done, and was pleased with the result. Maybe—for once—his slavedriver of a class president would finally leave him alone about his work ethics. It wasn't as if he didn't get his work done… he just saw little reason to keep nitpicking at it.

Not that he wanted to annoy her, or anything; she just had a short fuse.

A chirp from his computer caught his attention, signaling the arrival of an e-mail. Tyson started to snicker again when he saw it was from Kenny, ranting on about the very same tabloid he had been looking at moments before. The little bespectacled boy was the only other person, besides Kai and himself, who knew the truth behind that article. Actually, it was his doing. He had locked the two in the hotel room they shared on stopover to Japan, refusing to let them out until they admitted to one another. Neither were very happy with the short brunette when they finally realized his intentions.

They would've told each other on their own. Eventually.

He did agree with him on some aspects, though. Some of the things they tried to justify their argument with were just plain ridiculous. Honestly, using Victorian matchmaking methods just because their eyes were complementing colors and their personalities were so different? Either some people were looking too much into it or they weren't in the best mental state when they wrote the thing.

Yes, he did think fondly of the older boy, as Kai did with him. But they both knew they were still too young to be sure it was that…

No matter how much it seemed like it. No matter how badly that hidden part of him wanted to embrace it.

…

Far on the other side of the globe, another cried.