It really was a small world for bladers, even now. The number of participants on the whole had grown significantly in the last few years, though many were disappointed when they're tops didn't end up harnessing massive cosmic power, but the pool of top competitors was as small as ever. Even outside of tournaments there were some faces that just stood out in a crowd, and while they were there you might as well battle them.

So Ryuuga thought it was just coincidence the first few times he ran into Sora, who always seemed to come at him like a blur of blonde hair and nonsensical insults. (It was always something about being a snake, or a bad person or something, like he didn't already know that.) They fought, Sora lost, sometimes embarrassingly and sometimes coming so close to winning that it hurt even harder. It was the sixth or seventh time that Ryuuga began to expect Sora was following him, with that same dogged tenacity that he had once followed Gingka.

One night, after Ryuuga had lost count of their fights, they met in a bus stop on the side of the highway. The land stretched out endlessly around them, or maybe the dark and the rain just made it feel that way. It was so far from any place where a rumor of the "evil white haired kid with the weird laugh" could have gotten back to Sora that this must actually have been a coincidence. Ryuuga put his hand near his bey the moment Sora walked under the awning of the shelter, but Sora shook his head.

"Do you see it out there, I'm not going back in that," He said, pointing to his hair, which drooped down to his cheeks and in front of his eyes.

Ryuuga stared back at him, trying to figure out if this was a trap. Sora talked a lot about playing fair and integrity, but that didn't mean he wouldn't stoop to tricks if no one was watching. He kept his hand close to his bey, just in case.

"I'm serious, I kept following you to challenge you, but I'm not fighting you here unless I can do it from this spot," Sora said, collapsing down on the seat next to Ryuuga, a little too close, actually, since there was plenty of space for him on the other side of the bench.

"You admit it!?" Ryuuga said, he had thought he would have to approach the subject slantways to get anything near a confession, but here he was blurting it out right away. Maybe he was as much of a straight shooter as he made himself seem.

"Well, duh. I showed up in every city you were in yelling, this time I'll win for sure!" Sora tried to reach his normal volume and enthusiasm, but it just made the tiredness of his voice stand out. How long had he been walking in the rain, Ryuuga wondered.

Instead of that he asked, "Don't you have anything better to do?"

"Not really," Sora shrugged, looking into the darkness as if there was something bright in the distance, Ryuuga followed his gaze but saw nothing, "Gingka's overseas, I missed the deadlines for the big tournaments, and well, you're a pretty great person to fight."

Ryuuga thought he should be offended, being a stand-in for a lesser blader like Gingka, but Sora's voice grew closer to its normal volume when he'd said those last few words. He wasn't even close to deciding how he should feel about his directionless follower when Sora started to lean into him.

"I think that's why, at least it was at first, but know I just want to learn more about you," Sora yawned, and Ryuuga tensed as he laid his head on his shoulder, getting dark rainwater on his white coat. It would be a long time before he finally started to be glad that he hadn't shoved him off at that moment.

"You can learn a lot about a blader from a battle. Like how you depend on power over anything else, and you like to impress that crowd with flashy moves, but also don't like them to know you even see them," Sora continued, "That's pretty cool. I'm the same way."

Ryuuga looked over at Sora to find that he had his eyes closed. Maybe there had been a battle, in some way, and Ryuuga had lost and now had to bear the indignity of being a pillow.

"I don't care about them."

"Yeah?" Sora opened his eyes slightly to look up at him, "Then why do you always use your special moves, even when you're already going to win."

"Because," Ryuuga paused, he knew there was a reason, and that it had nothing to do with the crowd, but putting it into words was harder than he expected. Eventually he found the answer, and found it was really very simple, "Because L-Drago wants to."

"That's nice," was Sora's only response. Well, that and burrowing his head into Ryuuga's arm, which distracted him into silence for a moment before shouting back with, "Are you even listening!"

Sora jolted up, "Yeah, yeah, I actually get what you're saying," He took his own beyblade out of his pocket, "It's like sometimes Cyber just wants to go at full blast, so you just have to let them go. And it's nice, just being a part of something that knows what it wants."

Even Ryuuga has seen that sort of movie. When he had a few hours to kill and just wanted to go somewhere with air conditioning he'd seen that sort of movie, where the couple stares deeply into each other's eyes and kisses in the rain. Music swells and the camera pans around them and everyone cheers as he fights back the urge to puke at the sappiness of the whole thing.

This isn't like that. One moment he and Sora are talking, nearing something of a connection, but not even looking at each other, and the next Sora's mouth is on his. It's cold and shivering and he thinks he can feel Sora's nervousness pulsing through to him, but it doesn't make him want to puke, not even close. It makes him want to do it again and again, until the cold and nerves disappear.

Eventually they do, and eventually the bus comes, and eventually they can stop pretending that when they meet it's just a coincidence. All of that will take some time, but Ryuuga is fine with that, and even though Sora is miraculously quiet, he seems fine with that too.