Chapter 28: Road to Battle Bladers
Gingka opens his mouth.
Every screen in Metal Bey City ignites — simultaneous, total, like something had been holding its breath and finally decided the moment had arrived. The workshop television. The billboard three blocks down visible through the high window. The shop display across the street. Every surface that could carry an image suddenly carrying the same one.
Madoka's hand tightens on her wrench.
***
The helicopter is visible first. Then the platform beneath it — suspended, absurd, intentional — a man standing on open air above Metal Bey City like the geography of the world had simply agreed to accommodate him.
Doji.
Immaculate suit. No wind resistance, somehow, though the helicopter blades are churning the air into violence around him. One hand in his pocket. The other swirling a glass of orange juice with the particular leisure of a man who has never once adjusted his schedule for anything outside his own will.
His glasses catch the morning light and throw it back wrong.
In a second helicopter running parallel — close enough for broadcast, far enough for survival — DJ pressed against the window of the media rig with his orange bandana snapping in the downdraft and both hands gripping the door frame. His WBBA shirt is regulation blue. His expression is the expression of a man doing extremely precise calculations about his career versus his instincts.
His instincts were losing.
"YO — okay, okay, we are live, people—" DJ's voice hit the broadcast feed with his signature crack of energy, one hand snapping into his opening gesture, fingers spread wide. "Blader DJ coming at you LIVE above Metal Bey City and I am — I'm going to be honest with you right now — I am looking at something I have never seen in fifteen years of covering this sport—"
He glanced sideways at Doji's platform. Glanced back at the camera. His grin recalibrated about thirty percent.
"Mr. Doji, sir — the people watching at home, the bladers training right now in every gym and rooftop and back alley in this country — they want to know. What is this? What are we looking at today?"
Doji turned his head toward the media helicopter.
Just his head. Slowly. Like the question had traveled a long distance to reach him and he was deciding whether it deserved the rest of his attention.
"They'll know," he said, "when I tell them."
DJ laughed. It was almost convincing. "Ha — yes sir, absolutely, we will — we will wait for that—"
Doji had already looked away.
He faced the city. The cameras. The ten thousand screens carrying his image into ten thousand rooms simultaneously. He let the silence run — three seconds, four, five — with the glass still moving in slow circles and his expression carrying the particular quality of a man who had considered every possible outcome of this moment and found all of them acceptable.
"Citizens of the world."
His voice was smooth. Cultured. It came through every speaker in the city at the same register, the same unhurried cadence, the voice of someone who had never needed to raise it because the world had always gone quiet when he spoke.
"The WBBA and the Dark Nebula Organization are proud to present the ultimate competition in the history of beyblade."
The footage cut. Arena designs that made existing stadiums look like sketches. Crowds rendered at a scale that stopped feeling real. Prize money scrolling across the bottom of the frame in numbers that ceased to have meaning after the fourth zero.
Doji didn't look at the footage. He watched the city.
"We seek the strongest." The glass stopped moving. "We seek the elite. We seek those rare few whose bond with their bey has been forged in something worth witnessing." He paused. Let that settle. "To ensure only the finest warriors grace our stage — a new entry requirement has been established."
The pause this time was different. Surgical. The pause of a man who understood exactly what the next sentence would do to every person hearing it and had chosen to make them wait for it anyway.
"Fifty thousand beypoints."
***
The number landed in the workshop like something structural had given way.
Kenta made a sound that wasn't a word. Benkei's hand stopped halfway to his launcher. Gingka stood absolutely still, the way he went still when something hit deep enough that the surface didn't react yet.
On the screen Doji continued — tournament begins in three months, locations forthcoming, the WBBA extends its full institutional endorsement — but the words arrived from a distance now, muffled behind the ringing the number had left.
Fifty thousand.
Madoka had run the math before he finished the sentence. Most professional bladers never broke thirty thousand across entire careers. Tournament winners, grinding constantly, might reach forty if they were exceptional and relentless and lucky. Fifty thousand was not a high bar. Fifty thousand was a wall. A wall designed by someone who knew exactly how many people it would let through and had chosen that number on purpose.
"The tournament begins in three months," Doji continues. His voice carries this mocking edge now. Like he knows exactly how impossible this is. "We look forward to seeing who rises to the challenge."
On the screen Doji offered a small, precise bow. The helicopter banked. The platform swung wide over the city and then the feed cut back to DJ.
He filled the frame. Both hands up — the full broadcast stance, fingers moving through the rapid-fire signing that his regular viewers could read like punctuation — but something underneath it was different. Running rawer than his usual frequency.
"Aight." He exhaled through his nose. Touched the bandana. Looked directly into the lens. "I'm not gonna pretend. I'm not gonna come at you with the hype right now because you're not stupid and neither am I and we both just heard the same number."
His hands dropped. Came back up slower.
"Fifty thousand points. Three months. And the Dark Nebula sitting at the table like they own it." He shook his head once. "That's not a tournament, fam. I don't know exactly what it is yet. But I know what it isn't."
He straightened.
Something shifted in his face — not performance, something underneath performance, something that had been doing this long enough to mean it.
"But here's what I also know." His voice found its footing. "Right now. This second. Every real blader who just heard that number isn't doing math. They're not calculating odds. They're not looking up the calendar." He leaned into the camera. "They're already moving. Already training. Already figuring out who they gotta beat and what they gotta become to stand in that arena."
His hand came up. Index finger pointed at the lens.
"Become number one. Everything else — figure it out on the way. Blader DJ, signing off."
Every screen in Metal Bey City went dark simultaneously.
***
The silence in the workshop is deafening.
Then—
"Fifty thousand points?!" Kenta's voice cracks. "That's impossible! We'd have to win every tournament from here to the coast!"
"I don't care about the points."
Kyoya's voice cuts through the panic like a blade.
He's still staring at the now-dark TV. His expression carved from stone.
"I'm wondering why the Dark Nebula is suddenly playing nice with the WBBA. The Dark Nebula doesn't co-sponsor."
Kyoya's voice came from the window. He hadn't moved. Hadn't reached for his beypointer. Hadn't reacted to the number at all, visibly, which was its own kind of reaction.
"They don't share institutional power with organizations they could just crush or simply absorb." He turned from the window. His eyes moved across the room without hurry, landing on each face in sequence. . "So ask the correct question. Not what Battle Bladers is. What it's *for*."
Gingka's jaw tightened. "Kyoya—"
"Fifty thousand points is a filter." Kyoya's voice didn't rise. Didn't need to. "It passes maybe twenty bladers in this country. Twenty bladers means twenty of the strongest beys. Twenty of the most developed resonance bonds. Twenty of the highest concentrations of bit-beast power in existence." He paused. "All gathered. One location. One arena."
Benkei's hand had gone very still.
Kenta had stopped breathing with his mouth slightly open.
"L-Drago feeds on the strength of its opponents," Kyoya continued. "On resonance. On everything that makes a bey worth fighting. Doji isn't running a competition." The word landed flat and final. "He's running a harvest. Ryuga walks through twenty of the best bladers alive, absorbs everything they've built, everything their beys carry — and walks out the other side of something that was never meant to be survived."
Gingka's face drains of color. "You mean—"
"It's a buffet for Ryuga."
The workshop held the sentence.
Madoka set her wrench down. Quietly. Her hands were steady and she intended to keep them that way.
"There'll be nothing left to oppose them," she said. Not a question.
Kyoya nodded and crossed his arms. "And once he's done? Once we're all empty husks with shattered beys and broken spirits? There's no one left to stop them. The world's strongest bladers eliminated in one efficient sweep."
The implications hit like a freight train.
Battle Bladers isn't a tournament.
It's a trap.
"Nothing." Kyoya looked at Gingka. "That's the design."
Gingka grips the counter edge. His knuckles go white. I can see the muscles in his jaw working.
Gingka stared at the dark screen.
His hands were at his sides. Perfectly still. The particular stillness of someone who has landed somewhere below argument, below calculation, in the place where a person's actual character lives — and found out what it's made of.
"Fine. If that's the game he wants to play—we'll play it."
He looks up to meets his friends eyes. And there's something in his expression.
Just... determination.
"I'm entering Battle Bladers."
"Gingka." Madoka kept her voice level."Did you not hear what Kyoya just said? It's a trap. Ryuga will be there. Kai will probably be there. Every dangerous blader in the country will be gunning for you and you're walking in with a bey that's one good hit away from shattering completely—"
"I know."
"Did you hear what he—"
"Madoka." He looked at her. "I know."
The simplicity of it closed the argument before it opened. Not dismissal or recklessness. Just a person who had already been to the place where the fear lives and come back having made the decision anyway.
"There's no version where I don't go. There's no version where I get stronger by staying somewhere safe while Ryuga—" He stopped. Started again. "The scroll was empty. I know that now. There's no secret. There's no technique waiting for me somewhere. There's just me and Pegasus and whatever we're willing to become before that arena." He looked at the case on the workbench. "So we become it."
The room was quiet for three full seconds.
CRACK.
Kyoya's knuckle against the windowframe.
"Listen to me."
Kenta's shoulders lifted slightly.
Kyoya let that sit for exactly one second.
"The only one who's going to defeat you is me, Hagane."
Kyoya's voice cuts in. Hard-edged but there's something else underneath. Something almost protective.
"And I'll beat Ryuga too. Then kai as well. For you. For me. For everyone that bastard's ever crushed."
Madoka opened her mouth. Close it. These two stubborn idiots are actually going to do this.
Benkei's fist hit his palm. THWAM.
"THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT—"
"We're going too." Kenta stepped forward. Voice high, hands not quite steady, chin absolutely up. "All of us. Whatever it takes."
"Obviously," Benkei said, launcher already in hand. "Bull and I aren't letting you fight alone! We're coming with!"
Gingka nodded once.
"Right." Madoka picked up her wrench. The weight of it settled her hands. "Inspiring. Genuinely just one question."
She looked at them.
"Do any of you actually have fifty thousand points."
***
The beypointers came out.
Kenta checked his. His face did something complicated and then resolved into determination that was doing a lot of work. "Forty thousand short."
"Twenty thousand for me." Benkei's expression didn't waver. "Month of solid grinding, easy—"
"Benkei."
"Okay but statistically—"
"It is not statistically possible in a month."
"I feel like you're underestimating Bull's—"
"I am not."
Gingka checked his. Read the number. "Ten thousand short." He said it the way he said most impossible things — like it was already handled, like ten thousand beypoints was a minor detail he'd sort out between now and lunch.
They all looked at Kyoya.
He was still at the window. Hadn't moved toward his beypointer. The room waited.
"Kyoya." Gingka's voice landed careful. "How many points do you have?"
The pause stretched long enough that the fluorescent lights became audible. The faint electrical hum of the magnification lamp. The distant sound of the city outside reassembling itself after the announcement.
Kyoya reached into his jacket. Pulled out the beypointer without ceremony. Held it up.
The display read: BEYPOINTS: 1,340
Thud — Benkei sat down on a supply crate. Just sat down. Like his legs had made a unilateral decision.
Kenta's mouth opened. Closed.
"Kai took everything when Leone stopped spinning," Kyoya said. The flatness of his voice was not absence of feeling. It was feeling compressed into something load-bearing. He lowered the beypointer. "What's there now is what I took from Hagane on the mountain."
1,340 points.
From Gingka Hagane. The boy who had more beypoints than anyone in their generation. The battle that should have put Kyoya back in contention.
1,340.
The number sat in the room like an accusation aimed at the entire system. Kyoya — who had terrorized the regional circuit, who had pushed Gingka to his absolute limit twice, who was by any honest accounting the second most dangerous blader in the country — standing in a workshop with thirteen hundred beypoints and forty-eight thousand, six hundred and sixty to climb before he could even walk through the door.
"Zero points or thirteen hundred." His voice hadn't changed. "I'm going."
Kyoya..." Gingka starts.
"Don't." Kyoya cuts him off. "Don't get sentimental, Hagane. The only one allowed to beat you is me. I'm not letting some overgrown lizard or bird take my prize."
Gingka looked at Kyoya.
Something passed between them that didn't need language. The particular understanding of two people who have stood across from each other at full strength and know exactly what the other is made of — and have decided that's the person they want at their back.
Kyoya didn't look away.
There's affection buried under the harsh words. These two impossible boys who communicate entirely through battle and insults and stubborn refusal to admit they care about each other.
Nobody argued or offered comfort. The room understood, collectively and without discussion, that Kyoya did not want either thing.
What he got instead was Benkei standing back up. Kenta straightening his shoulders. Gingka looking at him with the expression that wasn't pity — that respected too much to be pity — and then looking away before it became a moment.
Madoka picked up her wrench again.
Okay, she thought. Okay.
Four bladers. Three months. A combined deficit of roughly a hundred and ten thousand beypoints. Beys in states ranging from critical to catastrophic. And an arena at the end of it designed by a man who swirled orange juice on a helicopter platform and bowed like he was closing a business transaction.
She had work to do.
"Kyoya."
He looked at her.
She kept her voice professional. "You want me to forge new parts. You're ready to let Rock Leone evolve into something... colder." She held his gaze. "Something built for war instead of sport."
A beat.
"Yes or no."
Kyoya looked at her for a long moment. The expression on his face was hard to read.
"Yes."
She nodded. Turned.
"Gingka."
He was already standing over the case. His hand hovering above the plastic — not quite landing, like contact might decide something before he was ready for it to be decided. Through the scratched surface, Storm Pegasus lay still. The blue metal dull under the workshop light. The fusion wheel fractured in ways that had no engineering reason to still be holding together.
And yet.
The bit-beast pulse was still there. Faint. Irregular. Stubborn in the specific way that Storm Pegasus had always been stubborn, which was completely and without apology.
Madoka thought about the rooftop. She thought about what Hokuto had said in Hyoma's house, the way the ancient voice had stripped of warmth when it spoke about what happens when those two powers meet at full strength. She thought about Kai — somewhere doing something she didn't know, with a bey that had been behaving in ways her instruments weren't built to measure.
She set those thoughts down.
Later.
"Gingka."
Her voice came out quiet gentle. The room arranged itself around it.
"You heard him. Kyoya wants the upgrade. He's ready to let Leone transform into something new.
She took a breath.
"What about you? Do we try to save the Pegasus you know? Spend weeks—maybe months—carefully restoring every piece? Bringing your partner back exactly as he was?"
She met his eyes.
"Or do I rebuild him for war?"
Gingka's fingers touched the case.
The plastic was cool. Through it, that faint and stubborn pulse.
Restore.
The word sat somewhere below his ribs.
He looked at Storm Pegasus — really looked, the way he hadn't let himself since the rooftop, since the moment he'd felt the bey go still under his hands and understood for the first time that some things don't come back the way they left.
Restore him. Give yourself back what you had.
Except.
He thought about the scroll. The blank parchment. Three hundred years of Hagane bladers carrying an empty promise up a mountain, and what it had cost him to understand what it meant.
There is no secret. There is no technique waiting for you somewhere. There is just the blader and the bey and whatever they're willing to become.
He thought about the mountain. About Kyoya's Leone driving him into the stone again and again until something cracked open that wasn't a bone — something deeper, something he hadn't known was sealed. About his father's voice in the grey void. Don't apologize to me. Tell him.
What you already are, his father had said.
What are we,* Gingka thought, now?
Not what they were before Ryuga. Not what they were before the rooftop, before the scroll, before every loss that had taken something he couldn't get back and replaced it with something he didn't have a name for yet.
What are we now.
Pegasus pulsed under his fingertips. Faint but real.
Something moved through the bond between them — not words, not images, just the particular feeling of being known completely and met there. The feeling that had been there since the beginning, since before he understood what any of this was, since before he knew what it meant to fight for something bigger than winning.
I know, he thought. I know what I want to say.
But if I say it—
He took a breath.
Opened his mouth.
And—
[END CHAPTER 28]