Someone foolishly gave me half a second too long and all of a sudden I had this on my hands. For Raton (who is of course welcome to make their own story to go with the adorable art, I just got hit by a plot bunny. Plot fish. Whatever.)

It is not my best work ever, but I enjoyed writing it and I hope you enjoy reading it.

Leokampus

"I would like you to know that this is definitely your fault."

If Ryuga had been anyone but Ryuga, he probably would have fallen off the pier he was sat on straight into the waves below.

"What are you talking about?" he asked, looking down over the edge into bright sea-blue eyes.

"I," said Kyouya Tategami in a voice bordering on the furious, "am a fish. You will fix this. Now."

Kyouya was demonstrably not a fish. From what Ryuga could see of him, half out of the water, he was as human as he'd ever been, green hair still defying gravity and arms folded angrily.

"How exactly are you a fish?" Ryuga asked, leaning over the side of the pier. "You look-"

Of all the things he had expected, none of them had been that Kyouya would take a flying leap out of the water and grab the mooring post with one arm, hoisting himself out of the sea and twisting to sit on the pier next to Ryuga in one movement.

"How do you think?" he asked, sarcasm dripping from his voice like the water dripping off his tail.

Kyouya Tategami was a merman.

From the waist down, his legs had vanished into a tail a few shades lighter than his hair. It was almost twice the length of his torso, counting the trailing fins at the end. Now that Ryuga was rather closer, he could also see the faint stripes of gills on side of his neck, and the dorsal ridge running down Kyouya's spine, as well as the vestigial fins on his arms.

"Okay," Ryuga said very carefully. "Fish. I get that bit. But how this is my fault?"

"It's always your fault when something weird happens to us," Kyouya growled.

"Excuse me?" That was a ridiculous accusation.

"Battle Bladers, the Dark Power, Hades City, the Star Fragment, whatever it was that happened with Kenta because there's no way that ordinary training did that to him…" Kyouya counted them off on his fingers – webbed fingers, Ryuga could now see. "Would you like me to continue?"

Ryuga stared, nearly speechless. "And how exactly were any of those my fault? If anything, blame Gingka. He's usually the one who gets in trouble, I just come and fix everything when you can't deal with the mess he's caused."

"I would blame Gingka," Kyouya said through gritted teeth, "except that he's a fish too."

Just as Ryuga thought. Gingka had got himself mixed up in something horrendously complicated and now Ryuga was going to have to do what he kept promising himself he wouldn't do and go to help.

"When did this happen?"

"About three days ago?" Kyouya flipped back into the water and scowled up at Ryuga. "So how are you going to fix this?"

Ryuga tried valiantly to resist the temptation to roll his eyes. "As this had nothing to do with me, I don't know what you want me to do to fix it." He stood up. "Find someone else to clean up your mess." And with that he started walking back down the pier to the shore.

"Kenta's been turned into a jellyfish."

That shouldn't have made him stop. It really shouldn't have made him turn around. He had made his peace with Kenta a long time ago, and they had gone their separate ways. But they were still linked in many ways that Ryuga himself didn't fully understand.

"Fine. Talk."

Kyouya shook his head. "It's easier to show you. Come with me." He flicked his tail up and vanished under the waves for a second before reappearing. "They're all on an island a few miles away, you'll have to follow me to find it."

Ryuga looked at him in disgust. "You know, for someone who is very insistent that, even though it had nothing to do with me, I fix the fact that they've been turned into a mermaid-"

"Merman."

"Whatever – you're pretty keen on the whole swimming thing."

Kyouya's grin had far too many teeth that were far too sharp. "That's because you can't swim as fast as I can now."

There were some days when Ryuga regretted the day he'd ever met Kyouya Tategami. Today looked like one of those. "So? I can walk on land." He paused, then grinned. "Which means I can beyblade and you can't."

Kyouya spluttered something that might have been very rude if the wave behind him hadn't rolled over his head and drowned the words. "Low blow, Ryuga," he spat when he bobbed back to the surface. "Fine. There's a boat at the other end of the beach. You can row, can't you?"

.

"Ryuga! Ryuga! WATCH WHERE YOU'RE STEPPING!"

Ryuga froze, looking around for the source of the voice. "Down here," it piped up after a second, and Ryuga took one long step backwards to see a small rock pool that he had been about to walk straight through. In the middle of the pool was a sight that would have disturbed him a lot more if he hadn't already seen crab-Yuki.

(that had been deeply disturbing. Ryuga didn't like crabs much at the best of times; seeing a Japanese spider crab with a two metre leg-span scuttling across the beach with Yuki's head where the mouth and eyes should have been had very nearly made him turn his boat around and abandon the entire mess. Only the knowledge that Kyouya was right behind him and would see him leave stopped him. He was still vaguely regretting that decision.)

"Kenta?"

The jellyfish with Kenta's head for a body waved a tentacle at him sadly. "Hi. Nice to see you again. I didn't think you'd come but Kyouya insisted you were the only one who would be able to help."

Ryuga crouched down by the pool to make it easier to talk. "You really are a jellyfish. I thought he'd made that up." He rubbed at his eyes. "I'm still not convinced I'm not dreaming."

"Me neither," Kenta sighed. "Thank you for coming. I'm sure you can think of some way to help."

"How many people have been… affected by this?"

"Nine? I think? Me, Gingka, Kyouya, Madoka, Yuki, Benkei, Yuu, Tsubasa, Hikaru. Er. I think that's nine. I can't count on tentacles."

Ryuga recognised maybe half of those names. "Oh good. No-one important, then."

"Ryuga!" But Kenta knew him too well to think that he was being serious. "Look, just go and talk to Gingka. He's on the other side of the rock pools, he'll be able to tell you more than I can. Oh, and look out for Yuu – he got turned into a starfish and he can't move much so he's sulking at the bottom of one of the pools but I don't know which one."

At least Kenta was giving him workable information. "Fine. When's high tide coming back through?"

"Oh, not for ages, you'll be able to make it over before then."

That wasn't quite what he'd meant. "No, I mean – do these pools dry out?" He wasn't concerned about a bunch of fish. He wasn't.

"Yeah, it's fine! We've been here a couple of days now, the pools don't dry out even when low tide is in the middle of the day." Kenta waved his tentacles. "You don't need to worry about me."

Vaguely concerned that Kenta had seen right through him so easily, Ryuga straightened up and headed off in the direction the jellyfish had indicated.

.

The next person he ran into wasn't quite as disturbing. On the other hand, it wasn't Yuu either, and Ryuga had secretly been hoping to at least spot the tiny blonde starfish. But no. Instead he got -

"Tsubasa."

The man that Ryuga usually associated with the sky looked surprisingly happy in his wide, shallow pool, long hair floating in the water around him as he relaxed. "Ryuga," he said, almost politely. "So Kyouya did go and get you."

"You got a tail too."

Tsubasa shrugged. "Five of us did. We don't know why it wasn't all of us." He shifted so that the sunlight flashed off the silvery scales and the strange extra set of fins near his hips, much longer than the vestigial ones Kyouya had. "We're all different, though." He looked down at himself. "I appear to be a flying fish. We're pretty sure Hikaru's a marlin. No idea what Madoka is, she's pink."

"Kyouya's green."

"Yeah, but we're fairly certain he's a weird sort of shark."

"He's got scales."

Tsubasa frowned. "That's a good point. I don't know many ocean fish." He looked back up at Ryuga. "You know, Kyouya was the one who suggested getting you when we realised this wasn't wearing off. He put a lot of faith in your abilities, which for someone like Kyouya is very unusual."

Ryuga felt a surge of automatic irritation. "Does anyone else know?"

"Gingka's father. We had to tell him something when none of us came back from the beach. He's been trying to get the WBBA databases to look up whether something like this has ever happened before, but he's not much use without Hikaru and Madoka there."

That didn't surprise Ryuga at all. He didn't exactly know Ryo Hagane, but what little he'd picked up from Kenta had suggested a man with all the enthusiasm and passion and only about half of the skills needed to run a world-wide blading association.

"Anyone else?"

"Not yet. But if you can't fix us then we'll probably have to bring some more people on board."

Ryuga tried very hard not to growl. "Why am I fixing this when it wasn't me who got you into the mess in the first place?"

"Because you're the only person on this earth powerful enough to fix the messes that Gingka causes when he doesn't think," Tsubasa said blandly.

Oh.

Well that changed things.

Just a little bit. But it changed things.

"So when Kyouya came to me sulking that this was all my fault he was lying through his teeth to get me to come here for something I had absolutely nothing to do with?"

Tsubasa shrugged again. "Maybe. Gingka knows the whole story. I was there but I wasn't really paying much attention after the whirlpool caught us, I was too busy trying to stop Yuu from drowning."

"Whirlpool." No-one had mentioned a whirlpool. This was getting weirder by the second.

"Talk to Gingka," Tsubasa sighed. "I've told you all I know." When Ryuga didn't move, he pointed. "He's somewhere that way. I can't come with you, the tide's too low for me to reach the water right now."

Wishing once again that he'd found Yuu instead, Ryuga stode off, muttering to himself as he did so. Really. The indignity of all this. He wasn't at their beck and call just because he'd helped them out (unwillingly) a few times before.

He was going to find Gingka, give him a piece of his mind, and then get Gingka to fix his own blasted mess.

Just like he always did.

.

Gingka's tail was deep-ocean blue, and started under his arms, completely swallowing his torso. He looked rather more like a dolphin hybrid than a fish, with the flukes on his tail lining up horizontally instead of vertically. He also looked rather sheepish as he looked up at Ryuga from his place hanging onto a rock where the island met the sea. Kyouya was next to him, doing the merman equivalent of treading water.

Well, could it really be called treading water when he didn't have legs?

"Gingka." Ryuga fixed his eternal rival with a stare that could outglare the sun. "Explain."

"Um. It's kind of a long story?"

"Explain."

Something in his tone of voice must have suggested that his temper was getting the best of him, because Gingka didn't protest again.

"Okay so as far as I remember we were all down on the beach for a barbecue and some beach training because that's always fun, and all of a sudden there was this huge wave that picked us all up and dragged us out into the middle of the sea where this… person was waiting on an island. I… don't actually know if they were male or female? They just said they were the Sea God. Um… I fought them? I think? It all got kind of blurry right around then. I can't even remember what the stadium looked like, or their bey. I've asked the others and they can't remember either. But they were really strong. Pegasus did his best, but the… the Sea God caught us by surprise. Then there was a big flash of light and..." he spread his arms. "I was like this. So were the others. The Sea God was nowhere to be seen, and the island disappeared too. We kind of clumped together and Kyouya and Tsubasa and me got everyone here, but… we don't know what to do next."

Ryuga rubbed at his left eye, hoping that would help the stabbing headache that was rapidly forming behind it. "You challenged the Sea God to a beybattle and lost, so the Sea God turned all of you into sea creatures?"

Gingka shrugged awkwardly. "Something like that?"

Ryuga turned on Kyouya with something that might have been a victorious grin on anyone else's face. "Told you. Not my fault."

Kyouya didn't look convinced. "Technically it was. The Sea God thought Gingka was you. Apparently you stole something? They want it back."

"That's ridiculous," Ryuga began, then paused. "Wait, I didn't steal that."

"Steal what?" asked a new voice, and Ryuga looked over to see that a second mermaid – actually a mermaid this time – had joined Kyouya next to Gingka. Ryuga had absolutely no idea what her name was, but her tail was bright pink, and Ryuga frowned as he tried to remember what Tsubasa had said about the people who had been given tails. Not Gingka, Kyouya or Tsubasa, obviously. Madokami? Hikari?

"Who are you?"

She rolled her eyes. "You know who I am, Ryuga. Stop it."

"I've never fought you so I don't care," he said pragmatically. Gingka scowled at him.

"This is Madoka," he said. "And she's amazing, so remember her next time!"

So this was the Madoka he'd heard so much about from Kenta. As far as Kenta was concerned she was basically a bey-goddess, capable of fixing any damage and finding information about even the newest and most customised beys instantly with just a few taps of her keyboard, as well as coming up with viable working strategies on the fly in the middle of other people's beybattles. Ryuga had no idea if she lived up to her reputation, but he did have some level of respect for her simply for putting up with Gingka and his shenanigans for so long.

"You said "I didn't steal that,"" Madoka said, giving him a look so intense that Ryuga was momentarily taken aback. "What did you mean?"

"I didn't steal anything," Ryuga snapped. "It was just lying on the beach."

"What was?"

"I threw it back in the water. I didn't even keep it for long."

"You're avoiding the question, Ryuga."

But even as Ryuga opened his mouth to reply, Kyouya, Gingka and Madoka suddenly found themselves on dry land as the water around the island retreated in an enormous rush. Far out in the ocean, about halfway to the horizon, a swell of dark water began to grow.

"Uh-oh," said Gingka in a very small voice. "I think they might have found us."

The water was rushing towards them now in a huge wave more than fifteen metres high. The water was as black as the depths of space, and in the centre was a figure so enormous that Ryuga's brain could only just comprehend it.

"LITTLE THIEF." The voice boomed like the roar of storm-waves and Ryuga flinched without meaning to. "YOU STOLE MY CROWN."

"I did not," Ryuga objected.

"WHERE IS MY CROWN?"

"I threw it back!"

"LIAR!"

The word hit with all the force of a breaking wave and Ryuga staggered. "I am not lying!" he roared back, suddenly angry. "I picked it up, tried it on, and threw it back because it didn't fit!"

"THEN WHERE IS IT?"

"I DON'T KNOW! You're the Sea God, why don't you look for it in the sea?"

"Why is Ryuga arguing with a god?" he heard Gingka mumble to Madoka in the most horrified voice he had ever heard.

"It's kind of Ryuga's thing, I think?" she hissed back. "Don't you remember him arguing with Rago about who was the strongest? And I'm pretty sure he fought Death itself to come back after that."

"LITTLE THIEF. YOU WILL TELL ME THE TRUTH OR I WILL MAKE YOU INTO ONE OF MY SUBJECTS JUST AS I DID WITH THESE ONES."

"I am telling you the truth. I saw something blue and shiny on the beach, and picked it up. I saw it was a crown, so I tried it on. But it was too big, so I tossed it back in the water. That's all." Ryuga frowned. "Hang on. Did you turn all of these guys into mermaids just because they didn't know where your crown was?"

"ALL OF YOU HAVE TOUCHED IT. ITS POWER IS ON YOUR SKIN."

"Then why are you calling me the thief?"

"ITS POWER IS GREATEST ON YOU. YOU HAVE HELD IT RECENTLY. YOU KNOW WHERE IT IS."

"I know where it was," Ryuga snarled, fed up with this circular argument. What kind of god first of all lost their crown and then couldn't find it in the sea they were meant to be ruling? Honestly.

But the Sea God still wasn't listening, clearly. "YOU ARE ONE CHOSEN BY THE STARS. WE SHALL DO BATTLE WITHIN THE WAVES AND THE SEA SHALL FIND THE TRUTH OF THE HEAVENS."

That was more like it. "You want to fight me? Okay. Where?"

If he had been paying slightly more attention to his surroundings and to the people – er, fish – he was close to, even he might have hesitated to ask that question. But he was Ryuga, and he was confident no matter where he was, and certain of his own abilities.

At least, until the enormous wave broke open and began to spin around on itself like some inverted beyblade.

"WE WILL BATTLE HERE."

If Ryuga had been able to spare enough attention to bother, he might have thought the tone of the voice was smug. But he was staring at the largest whirlpool he'd ever seen with just one thought in his head.

What kind of a stadium is THAT?

"BEGIN."

"What?"

"WE WILL COMPETE. YOU WILL LAUNCH YOUR STAR-BEY INTO THE VORTEX OF THE SEA. WHEN YOUR BEY STOPS YOU WILL LOSE AND BECOME ONE OF MY SUBJECTS, RULED BY THE SEA INSTEAD OF THE STARS."

A bey against a whirlpool. Well, there was a first time for everything.

Ryuga managed to find his voice. "You said when. That's a bit arrogant, isn't it? What about when I win?"

The figure actually looked slightly taken aback. "IF YOU SOMEHOW OUTLAST THE WHIRLPOOL, I WILL ACCEPT THE WORD OF THE STARS AS TRUTH AND RELEASE YOU FROM MY COMMAND."

Okay. He could do this.

"Be careful Ryuga!" That was Gingka. "It's much more dangerous than it looks! Stay near the top or you'll never escape!"

Escape? That didn't sound like him at all. Ryuga grinned, raising his left arm up so that the gauntlet was level with his face. "Shut up, Gingka. If you weren't so pathetic I wouldn't be here, now would I? Let's go, L-Drago!"

The dragon pushed forwards like a storm surge as he launched, fire against water and lightning in the heart of the sea. For a few heart-stopping seconds, his bey slipped out of his control, whipping around the top edge of the whirlpool with terrifying velocity. But he was Ryuga. He was the Dragon Emperor.

A little water wouldn't scare him.

"L-Drago!"

His dragon roared a challenge and the blade began to slow its stuttering descent until it finally halted almost directly opposite him. Ryuga took a breath, doing his best not to show the (pathetic) others around him how much effort this was actually going to cost him -

- and forced the blade half in to the water.

The foam that whipped up where the edge of the blade sliced through the wall of the whirlpool was instantly pulled away into a long, downwards spiral that sank out of sight towards the bottom of the ocean, and with a howl L-Drago followed it down, spinning just as fast as the water around him.

"How is he doing that?" Kyouya spluttered. "That's not possible!"

"Wait, of course!" Madoka's eyes went wide. "L-Drago spins left! The whirlpool is going the other way, so it's not slowing him down, it's just keeping him going!" Then her face fell into something closer to horror. "Is… is he trying to spin-steal a whirlpool?"

Okay, she was good. There weren't many who would have figured out his plan so quickly, even with foreknowledge of how he liked to fight. Ryuga grudgingly revised his opinion of the girl even as the top edge of the whirlpool began to noticeably slow. L-Drago began to move faster in response, twisting round and round in the heart of the whirling water.

"Oh," Gingka said, rather quieter than usual. "Oh, he's doing what he did to the Spiral Force generator when it went out of control. Okay, that's… not what I thought he'd do."

There really wasn't any need for them to commentate on his battles. He knew what he was doing, after all. L-Drago was coiled tight near the bottom of the whirlpool now, head chasing his tail eternally as he wound himself into a smaller and smaller spiral. The bey itself held fast against the wall of water, draining the speed and energy out of it into the bottomless maw that was the desire for power within the blade. This wasn't the power Ryuga had been looking for all this time – it was different somehow, not so sharp and clear – but it was still power.

Maybe this time he would managed to take the full power of a god.

Or perhaps not. As L-Drago finally spun down to touch the ocean floor, the Sea God lifted a hand and the sides of the whirlpool collapsed with a roar. L-Drago rocketed upwards from the very centre of the vortex like a star rising into the heavens even as the whirlpool vanished completely. As the surface of the sea settled, the dragon turned earthwards again and looped back to Ryuga, winding around him protectively. His shining eye came to rest near Ryuga's left hand, and suddenly flared out as he disappeared from their sight, leaving the soaked, battered bey he lived in behind in Ryuga's hand.

For a long, long time, the only sound was the wind over the waves. Then, finally:

"TELL ME WHERE YOU SAW IT LAST. I WILL ACCEPT YOUR WORD, CHILD OF THE STARS."

It was less of a shout now, but still a storm-loud roar. Ryuga shook the water out of L-Drago and returned it to the gauntlet with a grimace. That was going to take a lot of cleaning. "I found it on the beach to the north of the lighthouse just outside Metal City."

Beside him, Gingka jolted and looked rather alarmed. "To the north of the lighthouse?" he asked. "Are you sure?"

Ryuga rounded on him. Was everyone except him (and possibly Kenta) going to be an idiot today? "Yes. I know where I was."

"Um… it's just that… that's where we were when all this started," Madoka said. "We were on that beach."

"And did you see a large blue circlet about the same colour as Gingka's headband but about the size of a dinner plate lying around there?"

"No..." she began.

"See?" Ryuga turned back to the Sea God. "I told you I threw it back."

"Actually," Gingka said in a rather strangled voice. "I saw something like that. I thought it was my headband so I grabbed it. That's when the Sea God pulled us off to wherever it was."

"YOU LIE! I WOULD HAVE FELT ITS PRESENCE IN YOUR HAND IF YOU HELD MY CROWN!"

"Well, I kind of dropped it when you grabbed us, sir. Um, ma'am. Um. Your… Majesty?"

The figure turned on Ryuga, eyes as black as the ocean depths. "YOU WILL SHOW ME."

Ryuga gritted his teeth. "Gingka said he dropped it, so how am I meant to know where it is now? I wasn't there."

"CHILD." The word alone was as threatening as a storm. But Ryuga had L-Drago humming through his veins and he wasn't afraid of the ocean.

"I said I wasn't there. The beach is that way. Go find it yourself if it's so important." L-Drago reared up behind him, huge and red and so, so bright, and the water scattered the light into rainbow prisms. "I have a crown already. I don't need yours."

For a moment, the Sea God paused. "YOU ARE SOMETHING DIFFERENT. YOU DO NOT FEAR DEATH, AND IT HAS NO HOLD ON YOU."

Ryuga shrugged, keeping his head high and hiding everything except his pride. "I've fought the God of Destruction and he couldn't destroy me. Why should I be afraid of death?"

"Yep, that's our Ryuga," he heard Madoka sigh from behind him, but the sound was swallowed up in what could only be described as a laugh from the Sea God. It sounded like waves surging at the mouth of a cave, but it was definitely a laugh.

"YOU ARE BOLD, YOUNG ONE. THE WATER WILL CARRY YOU FAR, BUT THE FIRE WILL CARRY YOU FARTHER." That sounded suspiciously like a blessing that Ryuga didn't want (it was never a good idea to be indebted to any power except his own for any reason), but the Sea God turned away before he could object. The waves sank, and the figure began to descend below the surface, apparently heading in the direction of the beach. Well, that would give some holidaymakers a nasty surprise.

"Hey!" Kyouya shouted. "Are you going to turn us back or what? You're getting your crown back, so why are we still fish?"

Oh yeah. That was why they'd come to Ryuga in the first place. He'd forgotten that. They were far less irritating as sea creatures.

The Sea God didn't answer, just waved a hand and the water crashed back over the island, soaking even Ryuga to the skin. When he managed to blink the salt from his eyes, he was met with the sight of Gingka, Madoka and Kyouya all sitting on the rocks, fully human and thankfully fully clothed.

"Yes!" Gingka cheered, kicking his legs. "I've got legs again!"

"KYOUYA BUDDY!"

"Benkei! Hang on!"

Kyouya and Madoka both reached down to the water at the same time and hauled someone Ryuga didn't recognise out of the sea.

"Whew!" the newcomer said, shaking water out of his hair. "Thanks for that, I thought I was a goner! Wait, is that Ryuga?"

"What does it look like?" Kyouya said tiredly. "He was the only one we could think of who might have been able to fix this."

"Oh, that's why I'm not a squid any more. Thank goodness, that's all I'm going to say, b-b-b-bull!"

Ryuga opened his mouth to protest that it was not his fault and that he had never intended to help them, but the words died on his tongue because really, they were never going to listen to him. Behind him, there was a clatter of rocks, and he turned to see Yuu, Kenta, Tsubasa and Yuki clambering down towards them, human again at last. He didn't think he could have handled another meeting with crab-Yuki.

"Thanks, Ryuga!" Kenta grinned as they got close enough. "I couldn't see everything, but you must have fought the Sea God, right? You're as amazing as ever."

"Just one question," Gingka said, looking around. "If we're not fish any more, we can't swim. How are we going to get back to the shore?"

Ryuga sighed. "I have a boat," he said reluctantly. "That's how I got here."

"Had," Kyouya said in a strangely strangled voice. "Had a boat." And he pointed to the driftwood planks bobbing past them in the water. "Guess the whirlpool caught it."

Enough was enough. "Then use the planks to paddle back to shore. Or call the mainland, I'm sure Gingka's father will send out a helicopter like he usually does to rescue you when you get stuck in the middle of the ocean." Ryuga turned on his heel and strode away from the motley group.

"Hey!" Yuu shouted after him. "Where are you going?"

"And all the planks are on this side of the island," Kenta added.

Ryuga looked at them with something that might have been pity if he ever felt an emotion even remotely like that. "I have a dragon," he said. "He's quite capable of getting me out of here. And next time you accidentally or deliberately enrage an ancient natural power, I will set him on you. Don't expect me to fix your problems all the time."

And with that, he summoned the last fraction of his power and stepped into lightning.

He was going to go and sleep on the top of the highest mountain he could find, just so they couldn't find him. He had had quite enough of tidying up Gingka's messes.

And he wasn't going to go near the beach for at least a decade. He didn't think he was ever going to be able to look at seafood in the same way ever again.