Warnings – This is a fic based on the ending of Metal Fury Beyblade, which I am very aware is only just coming out in English. So there will be massive spoilers. Plus, some knowledge of Greek myths may be required to understand all of the references (I've used the best-known legends in the hopes that you will have heard of at least two or three of them)

Downfall

How many years did you lie in wait for me, I wonder?

You're like L-Drago, prepared to wait a thousand years and more for your final victory. Sometimes I wonder if you deliberately let yourself be rebound that first time, because you knew I was not there.

Just as L-Drago was my perfect partner, you were my perfect enemy. We fitted together like a key into a lock.

Had my pride not led me to fight Kenta like that, I would have been able to call on the full might of my constellation, my split-sky of stars that shone for me alone. We would have fought for eternity, you and I, myself and my nemesis, the Black Sun and the Dragon Emperor. Aggressor and Guardian.

But instead I broke more than one heart with my carelessness, and more than one spirit with my foolishness.

I didn't understand the true meaning of blader spirit until I felt L-Drago being torn in two by some dark, twisted reflection of himself. I thought I was dying, thought that some strange attack had hit me instead of my blade, and couldn't understand what was happening. Then L-Drago screamed in my head, and I knew.

You were so cunning. You took him and broke him down into fragments of himself to prevent me holding you down, just as that star broke to prevent you from rising up. I should have realised earlier, should have... should have realised just what you were.

You were Nemesis in more than just name. For you were my Nemesis.

Red eyes into yellow made the orange of flame that rose like hatred between us, you looking out of Rago's as L-Drago snarled through mine. Your blader's long, black hair blew behind him in the roar of our battle, a cloak that hid your true nature from the world, whilst my own hair was short and white and withstood everything that nature could throw at me. Gold glinted in his ears and around his hair, a look that screamed punk from across the cavern. I wore gold too, and despised you for trying to imitate the Emperor even as you tore the coronet from my head.

For was I not the Dragon Emperor? There were still upwards steps to take towards my throne, built of those I defeated, and I had sworn to make you the next in line to make me the greatest of them all, the only one worthy of owning and controlling the full power of the star – and of Nemesis himself.

That was my downfall.

The Greeks called it hubris, excessive pride. And, in all their plays and tales where some character fell to his own hubris of whatever sort it might be, the one to take him down was his nemesis.

You know, there were some moments when I actually wish that I'd listened properly to my tutor back in the days when I actually had one. It's all very well saying "But those are stupid old myths, they're no use in real life!" - but then it all comes back later.

When Pegasus and his brilliant Bellerophon in the form of Gingka Hagane flew down to destroy my three-headed Chimera, my Lightning L-Drago with the mane of a lion and the horns of a goat and the body of a serpent, that made me think. I should have seen it then, but once more my pride blinded me and I ignored the signs until suddenly I was walking the earth with a thousand myths and legends, fighting some and living others.

At first, I was the Trojans, deceived by the innocent gift of those two fire-based bladers they sent after me, tricked into letting them past the impenetrable gates of my heart and mind. Yuu I wasn't so bothered about, because once he had pierced the outer barriers he merely stood and gazed around in wonder. But Kenta? Kenta took flame to the inside of my ice-cold heart and tore down all my defences to let in the others.

A white-haired Icarus, I rose with flaming wings towards the Black Sun, and in the blaze of my own pride burnt away my feathers. But there is no Daedalus out looking for me on the sea. My own father is long gone.

And so then at last as Hercules I stood before you, my monumental tasks completed and a family avenged, ready to claim my kingdom as my own, only to be brought down by an enemy more cunning than I expected, one who knew my every move better than even I did. You were my Achilles' heel, your arrogance inflaming my own so that I didn't even see what you were doing.

Like some great Greek tragedy, my hubris was punished by your nemesis, and I fell to my pride.

You never defeated me. I defeated myself, and it was the easiest thing in the world.