Chapter 34 – Holding the Line
"Ugh, what time is it already?" I looked at my clock and saw it was 6 a.m. "Way too early. But let's get up and do some training before everyone else wakes up."
I got up, pulled on a second layer, and took Drago off the windowsill where I'd left him the night before. The metal was cold. Of course it was. But there was still that faint warmth underneath it, the one that had nothing to do with temperature, and I held him a second longer than I needed to.
"Hey, Drago. That battle yesterday with Shu, I wanted to see how far you could go with the wings open. I see now that it was the wrong way to go about it. But still, now we know." I said it in a low voice so no one else would wake up.
Then I felt the warmth from the Bey increase, until I was in a different space, and I saw Drago standing there, looking right at me.
"Ryo, you don't need to say sorry to me. I trust you with everything I have. If you decide that's the plan, then I do it. But if you want to get everything out of me, you need to trust yourself. If you don't trust yourself, or your choices, I'll never be the best I can be, because I'll hold back, or you'll hold me back."
Once he said that, I felt the space go back to normal. Outside it was cold again. I left the building, and as I walked to the stadiums I kept thinking back to the conversation I'd had with Drago. He was right. I need to trust myself more, trust that we'll win, and I need to train harder. I can't get complacent.
When I got to the stadiums, Shu was already there.
Of course he was. He had his back to me, launching, catching it, launching again. No wasted movement, like always. Storm Spryzen dropped into the bowl, held a tight little circle, and stopped dead in the center. He picked it up and did it again before the sound even faded.
I walked over and watched him for a bit. "Hey, Shu. How long have you been up already? Training?"
"Since before light." He didn't look at me. "I think better when nobody's around, so I can focus. You've ruined that now. So what do you want? Why are you up this early?"
"I woke up and wanted to warm up and train for a bit. That's all I wanted. But now that I see you, why don't we have that rematch from yesterday?"
He caught Spryzen and finally looked at me. "Can you even call it a rematch? You lost almost on purpose. You didn't even try. I felt like you kept the wings out knowing it would slow you down. I still want it, but I felt cheated. You let me win, and I don't want that. You need to fight for it. Otherwise it's like you're saying, here you go, I'm too good for you."
I looked at Shu. He didn't look sad exactly, but from his tone I could tell he was a little bothered. "But Shu, it's training, it wasn't a real match. I just wanted to know something and I used that battle for it. I get it, but you're taking it a bit too seriously. In a real match I'd never have done that. I'd have come at you with everything I've got. But for this, no. I need to know things about my Bey, you need to know things about yours, and I need to know my limits. That's why I did it."
Shu didn't say anything for a moment. He didn't like the answer, but he didn't throw it back at me either.
"Fine," he said. "Then do it properly this time. No experiments. Come at me like it actually matters." He picked Spryzen back up. "I don't get any better off a win you handed me. If you're going to fight me, then fight me for real."
"Okay," I said. "Then I'll give you a real one."
Something changed in the way he looked at me. Not softer. Sharper. Like he was actually interested now.
A door banged open behind us.
"Are you two FIGHTING without me?!"
Valt came running across the frost with his jacket half on and his hair pointing in every direction. Rantaro came after him looking like he'd been dragged out of bed, which he had. Ken came last with a puppet on each hand.
"Nobody's fighting yet," Shu said.
Valt's eyes went huge. "Wait, are you doing the rematch right now? Right now right now?"
"Yes, right now," I said.
"Okay. Okay, I'm awake. I'm so awake."
I didn't even hear Xander show up. He was just there at the edge of the trees, like he always is. He looked at us, looked at the frost, and grinned.
"Good. Cold launches, no warm-up," he said, sitting down on a rock. "That's a real Nationals morning, when your body doesn't want to work yet. Go. I want to watch this one."
We took opposite sides of the stadium.
I put Drago on the launcher. Yesterday I'd opened the wings and just left them out, no plan, running myself empty to see how long they'd hold. Now I was here to put everything I'd learned so far about myself and my Bey to the test.
The wings only come out on a perfect launch, and yesterday I'd nailed that part and wasted the rest. Today I wanted both halves right.
"Three," Shu said.
Everything went quiet. Even Valt shut up.
"Two."
The wind came down off the ridge, cold and slow, and I set my front foot against it. I lined up the angle, felt the cord, and let everything go still in my head.
"One. Let it rip!"
Both cords snapped at the same time.
I felt it the instant the cord left my fingers. Perfect. Drago hit the bowl and the wings snapped open in the same breath, gold flaring out wide before he'd even reached the center.
This was the part I'd wasted yesterday. The window. From the second the wings opened, the clock was already running.
Drago tore around the stadium, fast and low, hitting from everywhere at once. With the wings open he didn't hold a lane, he cut across all of them, slamming Spryzen from one side and then the far side before the sound of the first hit had faded. This was how Drago wanted to move all the time, when I finally let him.
Spryzen took the center and dug in.
"Counter Break."
Spryzen didn't chase. It couldn't, nothing chases Drago in this state. Shu kept it planted in the middle and turned every hit away, tilting Spryzen at the last second so the force slid off its frame instead of cracking into it. Drago came in from the left, Spryzen turned him wide. Drago came off the rim, Spryzen let him skid past. Shu was reading the angles almost as fast as Drago could throw them.
Drago kept the pressure on anyway. That was the whole point of the window, spend it and find the crack before it closed. He drove Spryzen toward the slope, the stone ringing under every hit, sparks climbing off the rim in long arcs.
Then I saw it. Spryzen tilted a half-second too far coming out of a redirect, and its underside came open, a guard dropping for one breath. That was the opening. One commitment, everything Drago had left down a single line, and it was over. Drago still had the spin for it. The move was sitting right there, ready to go.
I didn't take it.
It felt like too much to drop on Shu in a training bowl at six in the morning. So I let the opening go, and Drago kept grinding instead, and Spryzen sealed back up like it had never been there.
And Drago's spin was already dropping.
I could hear it, a thin edge creeping into his hum, the speed bleeding off faster with every hit the wings powered. The window was closing. This was the exact spot where I'd burned out yesterday. The spot where part of me wanted to force the wings to stay open and tear one more pass out of a spin that didn't have it left.
Trust yourself. Trust your choices.
Not this time.
I let them fold.
Drago's wings drew back in the second I stopped fighting it, and he dropped low into the center, spin smaller now but steady. Not burned out. Just down to what was left, with both hands on it.
Shu's eyes flicked up. He'd expected the burnout. He'd expected me to do exactly what I did yesterday, and when I didn't, something in his stance changed.
"Now it's a battle," he said, almost to himself.
Spryzen came in.
This was his half of the fight. Without the wings Drago couldn't outrun Spryzen anymore, and Spryzen pressed in with that slow, grinding pressure, hunting for the redirect, trying to walk Drago out to the rim a hand's width at a time. Drago gave ground where he had to and stole it back where he could. No flash now. Just two Beys low in the bowl, reading each other.
Shu set the redirect, and I read it a beat before it landed.
"Reverse Inferno."
Drago rode the hit instead of blocking it. Spryzen's own push folded into his curve and came back at it, and for the first time all morning Spryzen was the one that slid. Not far. Just enough to make it even. Shu caught it fast, faster than almost anyone could, and then they were back in the center, neither one able to move the other.
They traded hits and counters until I lost count. The stone rang and rang. Somewhere Valt was yelling, but I couldn't hear the words anymore, just the spin and the next hit and the next.
Then Drago started to go. Not crashing, not the empty burnout from yesterday. Just running down, slow and even, and I could tell Spryzen was doing the exact same thing on the other side. They were ending together.
The last clash was almost quiet.
Both Beys wobbled, scraped the floor, and came to rest leaning into each other in the middle of the bowl. Still spinning. Barely. Both of them.
Then they stopped. At the same time.
"Draw," Xander said from his rock. He sounded way too happy about it. "Both still standing. That's a real one."
Valt made a sound like a kettle boiling over. "A DRAW?! They were both still going! Did you see that?!"
"Yes, we saw it, Valt. We're all standing right here around the stadium," Rantaro said.
Keru lifted both little arms. "A draw. How dissatisfying." Beus nodded slowly. "We were promised a winner."
I crouched and picked Drago up. Hot this time, not cold. Tired, but not the hollow, burned-out kind from yesterday. I'd spent almost everything, and what I'd held back I'd held back on purpose.
Shu picked Spryzen up off the floor and turned it over. For a moment he didn't say anything, and I let him not say it.
"That's what I wanted," he said finally. "Yesterday you handed me a win I didn't really earn. This time you made me fight for a draw." Something in his face had settled. "I can work with that." Then he looked at me harder. "But you still didn't use your best move when you could have. I lost to that at the District, and I'd have lost to it here too. It's so much power. You cracked a whole stadium fighting Xander."
He was right. I hadn't wanted to use it, so I hadn't really kept my promise to go all out. "I felt like that would've been too much," I said. "I could have used more, I know. But still, I think we had a good battle."
For once he had a smile on his face. "It's fine. We had a good battle, and you didn't let me win, so I'm happy. Let's train like this more often." The smile sharpened. "But in a real battle, don't hold back on me. If you train that move and make it stronger, I don't think anyone in this country stops you once you reach Nationals."
Now I was the one smiling. "Thanks for the compliment, and I'll work hard. But I think you're wrong. There's always someone stronger than you, and you have to work just as hard to keep up." I held out my hand. "Once you get to Nationals, you'll see a different me. I won't hold back when it counts. But you'd better be stronger by then."
He took my hand and looked me in the eye. "You got that right. I'm looking forward to it already."
Xander stood up and stretched like the whole thing had been his warm-up, which it probably was.
"Good. Now that that's settled and you two have made up, let's get some real training in." He nodded at the trail. "Both of you, run the ridge. Cold legs lose finals."
Valt groaned behind me. Rantaro said something I won't repeat. Ken lifted both puppets toward the trail like he was saying goodbye to them.
I clipped Drago into his case and started down with the others. I'd nailed the launch and spent the whole window, and when it came down to it I let the wings fold instead of forcing them out. That much I'd finally gotten right.
But Shu had seen the other thing. The hit I didn't throw. He wasn't wrong about it either. I'd held back the one move that would have ended it, because some part of me still didn't want to drop that much on a friend in a training bowl.
Nationals wouldn't leave me that choice. Out there it would be people I'd never met, people who'd use everything they had on me without thinking twice. By the time that day came, I had to be ready to do the same.
The wind came down off the ridge again, cold and steady, and I followed them down.