Notes: I'm staying relatively consistent with using the Japanese names, but the characters' ages are more in line with the English dub version. This fic takes place two years after the end of G-Revolution, so Kai and Julia are approaching 19. Thanks for reading!
Chapter 1: A Tempest Provoked
Julia Fernandez had a look of hunger in her eyes that Kai had seen in many of his past opponents. She stood straight, her shoulders evenly squared, and her unblinking stare at her adversary showed no doubt of whether or not she was really going to win this. She simply knew that she would bring her brother and herself to the finals of the BBA World Tournament.
Max and Rei had faced Julia and Raul respectively before this match, coming out with a loss against Julia and a win against Raul. Both matches were close, and Raul's loss in particular had been so narrow, yet his level of confidence was miles behind his sister's. No matter how adamantly both twins insisted that Raul could perform the same without Julia, it was clear to Kai that he was facing the stronger player, and even she knew it. This wouldn't be the first time she carried them to victory.
Hitoshi approached Kai from the bench and lay a hand on his shoulder. Kai didn't quite acknowledge him, but Hitoshi had his attention. "Max's defensive strategy did a great job wearing her down, even if she isn't showing it. You're coming in fresh, so use that to your advantage and be very aggressive."
Kai had less of a chip on his shoulder these days to say he was already ahead of Hitoshi, but he admittedly was still thinking it. "Just don't underestimate her, Kai," Hitoshi continued, as if he could sense what Kai was thinking. "She's come out on top in these situations before, and it's usually because her opponents get complacent. You have to want the win more than she does, and she wants it pretty bad." With that final thought, he headed back to the bench with the rest of the team.
As he observed Julia take direction from Romero, Kai contemplated whether or not it was possible for her to want to win more than he did, if she would ever drag her mind and body through hell like he did to get to the top. Her normally flamboyant coach wore an unusual apprehension in his expression over this match in particular, probably because he knew what Kai was willing to do to himself to win. He wondered if Romero was worried because she might go just as far in her resolve.
After Romero returned to his post beside Raul, Blader DJ took to the mic. "Alllllll-right folks, this is the match that will determine which team makes it to the finals and compete against Neoborg! F-Sangre has chosen Julia to compete for the tiebreaker, and Kai Hiwatari is representing BBA Revolution! Who is going to win it tonight? Let's give it up!"
The stadium cheered, though it was undiscernible for whom. Both players were fan favorites in this year's competition. Julia soaked in the applause with a heartfelt smile; what was just noise to Kai was fuel for her competitive energy. And that smile was directed at him.
Beautiful. He shook the thought as quickly as he'd had it.
"Three! Two! One!" Blader DJ counted, and Kai braced his launcher. "Go shoot!"
Dranzer and Thunder Pegasus collided in the dish and ricocheted off each other, and Kai sacrificed a small part of a stable recovery to quickly pursue Julia's beyblade. Dranzer stabilized in chase, and Thunder Pegasus weaved about the obstacles in fluid motion. With Dranzer closing in on Thunder Pegasus so quickly, Julia had little time to strategize, but she appeared unfazed.
The beydish emulated the city of Venice, with narrow canals in between buildings of uneven height, so there was seldom a solid surface that was also consistently flat. Their beyblades even used the miniature boats to bounce off of, and they found short-lived respite in Saint Mark's Square. No matter what, the topography of the dish would change soon enough to suit them or not; the structural integrity of the map could support the static and sparks blazing from their beyblades for only so long, and the city was already steadily on its way to ruins.
Julia had found a way to turn the attack onto Kai so that neither of them were in clear pursuit of the other. They were both throwing punches that would hit punishingly hard. They both doubled down on their attack strength and maneuvered in ways to bait out each other's special attacks when they knew they had a safe escape route.
Inevitably, one of their beyblades was battered enough to begin wobbling at the edge of water, and that was Thunder Pegasus. Julia reignited its spin by unleashing her anticipated Toda la Fuerza, and only then did Dranzer create space from its opponent to find safety in between Venetian walls. Despite its swift escape, Thunder Pegasus was able to catch up and ensnare Dranzer in its electric grasp, stunning the other beyblade into almost a dead stop.
"Blazing Gigs!" Kai called at just the right moment, and his beyblade regained its spin as blue fire engulfed it. The flames took the shape of a phoenix and arched upwards. While Thunder Pegasus found shelter beneath the Bridge of Rialto, spinning upside-down along its bottom surface, Dranzer came crashing into it and crumbled the structure. Thunder Pegasus was barely able to leap out of the way of the destruction in time.
"Bring it home, Kai!" Takao yelled from the bench.
"Yeah, get her!" Daichi echoed. Kai was used to Takao's yelling, but he wasn't sure that he would ever get used to Daichi's sandpaper screech.
He observed Julia again, looking for hints of the exhaustion Hitoshi had been so sure of. She studied the dish with such intensity that she appeared unshaken, however her shoulders were rising and falling in visible attempts to control her breathing. Her fair skin glistened with moisture, highlighting her collarbone and her cheekbones above flushed cheeks. This year she had taken to wearing a new outfit each match, all in lighter fabrics than her uniform the previous year, and this crimson red and gold dress hugged her figure distractingly.
When Julia's eyes flickered up briefly to look at his, he felt as if he'd been caught staring. Which he had been. He couldn't have explained to himself whatever the hell just happened if he'd had time to try.
Julia came on much more aggressively compared to the minutes before, and surprisingly not at the cost of control. Kai's beyblade was steady enough to withstand an onslaught of her attacks, but she was attacking as if she were trying to whittle down the rock-hard Draciel instead of Dranzer. As such, some of her attacks missed given Dranzer's better agility. That certainly didn't discourage her.
"It looks like Julia is going on the offensive, and she isn't letting up! She's giving Kai a taste of his own medicine, but will she be able to sustain this momentum?" Not only were her attacks persistent, but they also forced Dranzer against walls that caved in under the force of their collisions. "Kai is backed up against the wall now, folks! We've never seen Julia so aggressive! Kai has to do something now or BBA Revolution can kiss the finals goodbye!"
Normally Kai's play style wasn't so reactive, but Blader DJ was right: Julia wasn't giving him a choice. "Dranzer," he called, "Blazing Gigs!"
Once again, Dranzer lit up in blue flames, and it blazed a destructive path through the city to circle back on Thunder Pegasus.
"Toda la Fuerza!" Julia countered, and Thunder Pegasus mimicked the twirl of her graceful dance as it prepared to attack. The audience was enraptured. Even Kai, for a moment he didn't really have, followed the curving lines of her form as she danced with all of her heart. Feeding off the spirit of her fans, Julia launched her beyblade in a counterattack of an electric whirlwind that extinguished the blue phoenix. The beyblades hung high in the air, and then collapsed down on Saint Mark's Square, worse for wear but still spinning.
"Finish her now, Kai!" Hitoshi called from the bench. Dranzer rushed Thunder Pegasus in a pile-drive against the walls of the Square. Julia used an arm to block the suffocating dust clouds and spitting debris from her face. Though her arm took most of the damage, pieces nicked her cheeks and cut her temple.
"That's not going to be enough, Kai!" she said, wiping away a trickle of blood from her face.
In a burst of electric energy, she used what strength she could muster to force him back against the opposite wall. Kai fought against the burst of wind and destruction wailing in his direction to maintain control of his beyblade, but the battle was beginning to take a toll on his body too.
"I've seen you fight," Julia said, "and I admire your willpower. But you will not outlast me today."
This time, each of her repeated attacks hit, carrying the weight of her passion with each strike.
Dranzer took advantage of a short window of time between attacks to slip out from the wall, which caused Thunder Pegasus to run right into it. Even so, it easily shifted direction to chase down Dranzer, which was finding relief in the free air jumping from rooftop to rooftop.
Kai couldn't fathom this girl pushing him to the same limits as Takao, but Thunder Pegasus was outliving tactics that should have shut it down again and again. As he wiped blood from his lip, he realized he was beginning to respect Julia.
"Kai!" Takao again. "Quit tooling around and finish her already! A breeze would knock her over!"
Kai didn't realize how much breath he had lost until he took note of Julia's condition. Their breathing was almost in rhythm. She glared at him with such ferocity, and that look ignited a fire within him.
"If you want to feel the real force of Dranzer, then so be it." Kai unwrapped his signature white scarf from his neck and dropped it beside him. With the weights packed in it, the accessory collapsed with an audible impact on the floor. The look of realization of what was about to happen dawned on Julia's face, and she steeled herself. "Blazing Gigs Tempest!"
The caliber of the attack was beyond anything Kai had thrown at Julia so far. As though embraced by Suzaku herself, for just a moment his world became her and her fire. Her vermilion feathers brushed his face and neck and arms and gathered an explosive power to unleash on Julia's poor Thunder Pegasus.
Those feathers rained like a storm of arrows into the dish. All it would take was one feather to pierce and destroy Julia's beyblade to end it all.
"Fuerza de Tormenta!" Julia cried in an effort to mitigate the damage. To the surprise of the stadium, she was unleashing a move that she had never revealed before. Thunder Pegasus' wild spirit formed so clearly beside Julia. An electric storm in full force sparked as heavily around Julia as it did her Pegasus, and in a ground-shaking charge her beyblade railed against the descending feathers and through a dilapidated Venice, driving straight towards Dranzer in a final attack.
Kai's end of the dish roared in an explosion of fire and lightning, the collision forcing his body back. He managed to remain on his feet, and he advanced forward as soon as he was able to witness the result of their mutual aggression. The dust was too thick to see through, but as it gradually dissipated, his opponent was the first thing he could make out in front of him. She stood still, her chest heaving to catch her breath, but the rest of her body was devoid of any more fight.
It was over.
Her beyblade lay in pieces beneath those vermilion feathers. Dranzer was still spinning.
"And the team that's going to the finals is," Blader DJ paused for effect, "the BBA Revolution! Give it up for Kai and Julia for a great show tonight!"
Kai's team wasted no time flooding over to capture him in a group hug. Perhaps one day he would just let it happen, but this time, like any other time, he slipped away so that their hugs piled onto themselves. He retrieved Dranzer from the dish, and after a moment's hesitation, collected the pieces of Thunder Pegasus as well. He walked over to where Julia and Raul were waving their gratitude and farewells to their fans; up close, he could tell Julia was smiling through her tears.
"Julia," he said, and he'd never actually said her name before. It made him feel something, a certain uneasiness. When he held out his palm to show Thunder Pegasus, she sniffled and cupped both of hers to take the pieces. For all of her vivacity, her hands were unexpectedly delicate.
"Thank you." Julia, not for the first time that day, captured his gaze with her big eyes that were a more vibrant green than he had noticed earlier, and she seemed to be seeing something in him that he wasn't aware of.
In his discomfort, Kai walked away without saying anything else and rejoined his elated team.
The stars were scarcely visible from the backyard of BBA Revolution's temporary home in Los Angeles, which Max's mother had graciously provided. Nevertheless, the grass was cool and the air was relatively quiet, a nice break from the commotion in the stadium and inside the house. In personal times like this, he liked to either observe his surroundings or just close his eyes, but either way think about nothing.
That wasn't happening for him this time.
It was almost as if Kai had never seen a pretty girl before. Julia Fernandez wasn't someone who could easily be ignored in the beyblading scene over the past three years, either; she commanded attention, and her fans and the media adored her. Despite that, he hadn't given her a second thought up until today, when her relentless fervor provoked the tempest in him. He continued to feel her passion pour over him, and though he'd had enough of it, his mind kept going back for more.
When he realized he wasn't going to get the peace of mind he sought outside, he opted for annoyance as a distraction instead and went inside. His team lounged in the living room with boxes of pizza on the floor and coffee table, and it was mostly Takao, Max, and Daichi who vocally relived Kai's match.
"Kai!" Max exclaimed. "I think that's the quickest catnap I've ever seen you take. Still jazzed up from your match?"
"A jazzed-up Kai, now that's an image." Takao swallowed his mouthful of pepperoni pizza and gestured at him. "Seriously, you really had us worried for a second! I mean, not that I stopped believing in you or anything, but that went on forever."
"Julia's a lot tougher than she looks," Rei said, "and she's already intimidating."
Kyoujyu nodded his head in agreement, though he didn't look up from whatever he was typing on his laptop. "Rei's right. There's a reason we almost recruited her to fight BEGA. She was practically the second-best possibility for the fifth spot to… well, Kai, actually."
"Come to think of it, we hadn't seen your Blazing Gigs Tempest move in a really-really long time, Kai." Daichi pulled his finger out of his nose and examined it. "I mean, that says something about her skill, right?"
Kai rubbed his temples when he sat down on the couch. This conversation had to end eventually, and then he could just listen to whatever inane topic they landed on next. On the floor next to him, Rei opened the lid of a pizza box to offer up a slice, but Kai declined and settled his eyes on the television.
You've got to be kidding.
"Hey, speak of the devil! She's on!" Max grabbed the remote control and turned up the volume. It was a replay of Julia's post-game interview.
"You looked crushed after it became clear that you lost to Kai. Were you expecting to win that matchup today?" Blader DJ asked her. Julia, ever the showman, paused to smile for the flashing cameras before responding.
"I figured going into it that we would be facing up against either Takao or Kai today. And since Kai and I had never actually faced each other one-on-one before, I had a feeling it'd be him for the tiebreaker." She looked down for a brief second, smiling privately to herself before facing Blader DJ again. "I really thought we were going to win, but Rei and Kai were just the better players today. We'll get them next year, though."
"I didn't realize you've never faced Kai until you just mentioned it. I can't believe it took this long!"
"I think it just worked out that he was always against Raul when we did fight, and I was assigned to face Yuri or Takao, depending on the team. But I'm glad we finally got a chance to battle, even though I'm disappointed by the outcome."
"Sounds like we're witnessing a new rivalry here." Blader DJ grinned at the camera, as if proud of establishing a new contentious relationship in the BBA. Kai's teammates all glanced over at him, as if asking for a confirmation, and he quietly scoffed at that. "You have the losers' finals coming up to compete for third place against the Majestics. How do you feel about that?"
"Very confident," Julia said simply, and her grin stated she was going to leave it at that.
Kai left the room before Blader DJ concluded the interview. He shut his bedroom door unintentionally hard behind him and fell into bed after getting changed.
She's everywhere. He pulled his pillow over his face, then turned onto his side when that got old. He saw her again and heard her voice say his name again when he shut his eyes, and he just hoped a good night's sleep would absolve him of this unwanted fixation.