He assumed that once they defeated BEGA and Boris and all the stupid mothertruckers that thought they could win against them, he would finally get a chance to relax for the first time in his life and actually enjoy what the city had to offer. He thought that beating Brooklyn meant that he would no longer desire to utterly demolish Tyson or prove his superiority to all of his friends, enemies and everyone in between. He believed that this would be the end, all this nonsense, and he'd finally get to live a normal life.

How wrong he was.

The whole BEGA debacle didn't end once Tyson defeated Brooklyn and Boris was trampled to submission. There were so many court cases that Kai lost count (the legality of many of BEGA's actions was questionable at best, and when put to the test, ultimately failed), and so many reshuffle-ings of ownerships and responsible parties and custodies and shareholders and property rights that by the time the new BBA was up and functional again, all he really wanted to do was desert. At the moment of the official dissolution of BEGA and the renewal of the BBA licenses, he was 18 years old. His birthday was 28 days ago. His ident said 19, but he felt much older. This seemed to be a consensus among those who were heavily involved in the beyblade community in the past year, especially his fellow teammates (he wondered why he suddenly started thinking of members of the team as emteammates/em, when they'd been on a team together for the past four years and the thought had never occurred to him). Ray was his year in school, but hadn't graduated yet due to his dreadful attendance (Kai just decided to enroll in summer classes to retrieve his secondary school credits rather than be subjected to remedial homeschooling, which Tyson, Max, and Ray decided on to officially graduate the following year, and Kenny somehow managed to keep up with his schoolwork well enough to move to the next grade unimpeded). Hilary seemed to be suffering the effects of either post-traumatic stress disorder or PMS - one, Kai thought, was more likely than the other, especially given its cyclical nature. Surprisingly, Kai found himself displaying similar symptoms as Hilary, and he was pretty sure it wasn't PMS. Of course, the interrupted sleep was nothing new, and the recurrent tension headaches were just following from that. The sudden surges of excitement - or rather, as he knew it was, anxiety - were new, as well as the random spells of dizziness and inability to sustain attention to anything that he didn't find exceptionally interesting. And lately, nothing really seemed to interest him greatly.

Because Kai was legally an adult, he had no obligation to the BBA anymore, unlike when he was technically a minor and considered a ward of the court and emtechnically/em under the care of one Stanley H. Dickinson. But because so many of those affected by what transpired at BEGA were still minors, he found that he couldn't quite bring himself to leave. Instead, he rented a house just outside of Metal City with his and the Bladebreakers' earnings from the first world championship, and allowed wayward bladers, those displaced by the previous tournament, and pretty much anyone he thought was "up to snuff" to stay. His former teammates from the Blitzkrieg Boys were some of the first to make themselves at home (no longer having the Abbey as a home base and having no liquid assets to speak of), but eventually, bladers from other teams based in Japan came filtering through, some even from teams he'd never heard of. There were some basic rules (if you came, you would clean up after yourself and when you left, you would leave it exactly how you found it), but Kai found that he didn't much care whether they were followed or not. He didn't enforce them himself. Ray, Max, and Spencer took care of it most of the time.

Mr. Dickinson told Kai he could call him Stan but Kai called him Mr. Dickinson. He didn't want them to be close. He didn't even want Ray or Tala to be close but he didn't have much of a say in that matter. Ray was too empathetic and Tala was about as damaged as he was. Fortunately, both of them agreed to not allow Bryan in the community house (how he hated calling it that) on that basis that Bryan Was Crazy. Bryan was worse than Tala on matters of principle because Tala was only taught to be heartless; Bryan was a goddamn psychopath.

"You should really look into these group therapy sessions, they're supposed to be really helpful," spoke Ray, veraciously, as if he thought Kai had any reason to doubt their efficacy and Ray's expertise on the matter.

"No," he said.

"Why not? It's not like you're busy doing anything for the next few weeks. And it can't hurt, really," he replied, undeterred.

"It's stupid."

"It's not."

"It's stupid, and I don't want to," Kai added.

"Come on, you need to work this through with someone who will understand you. I can't pretend I know how you feel forever," Ray stressed. Kai frowned.

"What do you mean, pretend?"

"Oh, come off it, Hiwatari, don't act surprised," a mass of red hair appeared from around the corner of the kitchen, "it's not Kon's fault he can't read your mind."

Kai rolled his eyes. "Alright, Ivanov, I'll take Kon's advice and go. But so are you." Tala blinked.

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes."

"No. It's stupid and I don't want to."

Ray fell back in his seat. "You have got to be kidding me," the two Russian bladers turned to look at him at the same time, "you are both completely insufferable." They glanced at each other. "And, consequently, you are both going to group therapy."

"No way-"

"Yes way. I'll get a court order if I have to," Ray persisted.

"You wouldn't. You couldn't. You're not even technically a resident yet," Tala pointed out. "And I doubt a court would ever issue something mandating us to go to therapy for something it can't even prove happened."

Kai rolled his eyes again, ignoring the slight headache it produced. "Are you dim? He's obviously not going to court over this," he narrowed his eyes, "he's going to Mr. Dickinson." He raised an eyebrow. "Am I right about this?"

Ray grinned, amused. "Well, I wasn't going to…"

"Yes, you were."

"Yeah I was. But now I am. Unless you agree to at least try it," he chuckled. Ray looked to Kai and Kai looked to Tala and Tala looked at the ceiling. It was embossed.

"Fine," he spat.

"Looks like we're going," Kai declared, the edges of his mouth turned up a bit.

"Fantastic."