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"Rei, have you seen Max?" Tyson bounced into the kitchen, nearly upsetting the steaming pot that Rei was lowering onto the table. The radio was babbling in the background, nearly buried under the selection of pans of all shapes and sizes that were strewn all over the work surfaces; evidence of Rei's afternoon's work.

"No, I haven't seen him for a while. Come to think about it, I haven't seen him all day." Rei looked as if he was trying to remember something. "Wasn't he gone all day last Saturday, too?"

"Hmm?" His friend had been distracted by the great smells wafting from the table. "Probably. Is dinner nearly ready?"

"Not quite, go and lay the table, will you?" Rei rolled his eyes as Tyson ignored him and ran off, calling to Kenny and Kai that the food was ready. The two aforementioned boys soon appeared in the doorway; Kenny grabbing the cutlery while Kai sat silently at the head of the table, apparently listening to a news bulletin on the radio.

"…and finally, the amount of graffiti in the area has risen by nearly five percent in recent weeks. Obscene phrases, painted in green, have been appearing on buildings dotted around the town centre. Police suspect it is the work of an organised gang. Our reporter went to find out more…"

Rei flicked the switch off as he passed, and laid the last of the food on the table. Just then, the front door slammed and Max wandered through the door.

"At last! Where've you been, buddy?" asked Tyson, shovelling food onto his plate. "Hey…what happened to you?" Max had several cuts on his right cheek, a bruise blooming on his jaw and his brightly coloured clothes were covered in equally brightly coloured paint.

"Nothing." He looked away and started to walk back towards the stairs, calling something about changing his clothes over his shoulder.

His team looked at each other. They each knew that the others had spotted what they had – the paint was green. Tyson shook his head in disbelief, "It couldn't be Maxie doing the graffiti, he wouldn't do something like that!"

"It said on the radio that the police think it's a gang doing it." Kenny piped up.

"Exactly!" Tyson said in relieved triumph, "It couldn't be him."

"I hate to burst your bubble," Kai said quietly, "But he has been hanging around with some strange people recently."

"What?" The other three turned to look at their captain.

"I saw him the other day – he was with a pony-tailed man in motorbike leathers who looked like some sort of weird 'Hell's Angel', only without the tattoos," Kenny groaned quietly at the thought. "And a women who was dressed in a sparkly dress and what looked like a cape." he continued.

"You're not serious?" Rei asked, aghast, "It sounds like he's involved in a cult!"

"I don't think I'd take it that far," Kai smiled wryly, "But something is definitely not right."

"This still doesn't mean he's graffiti-ing the town, though." Tyson argued.

"I agree, we need more evidence before we can accuse him of something like this."

"What are you expecting us to do, search his room?" Rei shrugged.

"It seems our best option."

Saturday had rolled around again, and once more Max had left early in the morning, presumably to be gone the whole day, as before. Now was the time to act, if they wanted to discover any incriminating evidence. Rei had drawn the short straw, so it was his mission to venture into the depths of Max's room to see what he could find.

The room was dark and messy, the curtains still closed and the bed unmade. Rei switched on the light and gingerly stepped over some random pieces of clothing on the floor, making his way over to the large wooden chest of drawers by the bed. As he opened the first drawer and felt around amongst the t-shirts and shorts that lay vaguely folded in there, he gasped. He had felt a suspicious lump that just might be a can of paint. Uncovering it slowly, he smiled in realisation. So, this is where he's been hiding his launcher, ever since Tyson 'borrowed' it without his permission and accidentally damaged it, he thought. Instead of confronting Tyson, he's simply making it difficult for him to get it again – typical Max, he always did hate confrontations.

His thoughts were interrupted by footsteps on the stairs. Rei froze, looking towards the door. It would be just his luck if this was the one Saturday that Max returned home early. The footsteps kept thundering towards the room where Rei was desperately looking for somewhere to hide, and thinking of an excuse of why he happened to be there. The footsteps were so close now, he expected the door to open any minute, yet they were… fading away? Rei breathed a sigh of relief. It must have been Tyson going to his room next door, he thought, turning back to the job in hand, his heart beating quickly.

After searching through all of the drawers and finding nothing but items of clothing, Rei turned his attention towards the cupboard on the other side of the room. He weaved his way in between the beyblade parts lying in front of it and started to search the bottom shelf, his heart sinking. Lying there in a heap were several bottles and cans of paint – not just green but several other colours. Rei's heart sank further when he saw what was also there.

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Making his way downstairs, he found the rest of the team together once more, waiting in anticipation for his verdict. All talk immediately ceased as he entered the living room.

"Uh, guys?" he started uncertainly, "When I was looking in his room, I didn't only found paint - I found these." He held up several bottles of glue. "I think our problem is bigger than we thought."

"You don't mean…" Kenny breathed, "Max…drugs?"

"Don't jump to conclusions." said Kai gruffly.

"You're right," said Kenny quickly, "There's probably a perfectly reasonable explanation."

"I hope so." Rei muttered, under his breath.

"Even so, this could be really serious." said Tyson worriedly, "We need to do something!"

"Ok, so what do you propose we do?" Rei queried.

"Follow him." Everyone looked up at Kai, surprise registering on their faces. "It's the best way to get to the bottom of this without confronting him to his face. In my experience, directness doesn't tend to make the person in question inclined to talk – it's a last resort only." The others nodded, resigned to what they had to do. Tyson and Rei looked determined and Kenny looked worried as they stared back at Kai, whose face remained in its usual emotionless state, although they could tell that he was concerned behind his cold mask.

It was 8 o'clock in the morning, and Tyson was up a lot earlier than usual. It was the day for following Max, and currently all the team, minus Max, were grouped in his room, waiting for Max to leave as usual. The atmosphere was tense as they all sat on the bed, or flopped on the floor in some fashion. Only Kai seemed in any way relaxed, leaning against the bed with his eyes fixed on the ceiling in contemplation. Everyone jumped when the sound of the front door slamming reached their ears, and Tyson immediately jumped up.

Kai pulled him down with a hissed "Idiot, if we go now, he'll know we're following him! Give it a couple of minutes." The following minutes were torturously slow as everyone's eyes followed the hands of the clock as they clicked round. Presently Kai gave a short nod and rose to his feet, the others following suit.

As they slipped out of the door, glancing around furtively, they spotted Max at the top of the road, wandering along at a leisurely pace, swinging a bag. He turned a corner and left their sight. Kenny craned over a hedge to see where he'd gone, noting in a whisper "It looks like he's heading for the park… that's the only place I can think of in that direction." He frowned in puzzlement. "Why would he be going there? It's full of small children and their mothers on a Saturday; any illegal doings would be seen…" He tailed off as they reached the park and dashed in to hide behind trees.

Max was striding purposefully towards a table that had been set up with various colourful objects on it, which were difficult to see at that distance. By it stood a man with a ponytail, a woman in a sparkly dress and a cape, a man in tails and a top hat and… a lot of young children running amok? As Max approached them, the children flocked towards him with yells of "Yay! Maxie!" as they clung to his hands and legs. The quartet hiding behind the trees looked at each other in amazement as he smiled at them and continued on his way to the table, the kids in toe.

"Hi guys, sorry I'm late!" he said to the strangely dressed adults, "I brought the stuff for the craft." Out of the bag he produced the paint and the glue and plonked them on the table. His team felt like kicking themselves. All that suspicion for nothing! There had been a reasonable explanation after all. But why did he feel the need to hide what he was doing?

Tyson came out of his hiding place and walked over to the group, the rest of the team following.

"Hi everyone, what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be asleep, Tyson?" Max teased as he set the children off on their task. It seemed to involve cardboard masks, plus lots of paint and glitter, thus equalling a big mess!

"We were wondering where you'd been disappearing to every Saturday for the last few weeks; we thought you'd been getting into trouble!" said Rei.

Max looked confused, "Um, why?" he questioned.

"Well, you'd been coming back bruised and cut…" said Kenny sheepishly.

"So you thought I'd been getting into fights?" smiled Max in understanding, "And I suppose because I was covered in paint, you thought I was the person graffiti-ing the town, is that it?"

Kenny went red and mumbled something that sounded like an affirmative. Max laughed and patted him on the shoulder, "Don't worry about it. I guess I probably did seem a bit suspicious."

"But why did you keep it a secret from us? It's not like it's a crime or anything." Rei wondered out loud.

"Well… I sort of thought that maybe Kai would say I was wasting my time and I should be practising, so I didn't mention it at first, and then no one asked so I didn't feel the need to say anything. I guess I felt a bit embarrassed, because, I mean, it's not exactly beyblading, is it?" he shrugged.

"But you obviously enjoy it, so that shouldn't mean anything. It's good to have other interests." Max jumped – he had half-forgotten that Kai was there at all. He smiled and nodded.

"I guess you're right. Hey, since you're here, d'you want to stick around and help? C'mon, I'll introduce you to the guys!" he said suddenly, dragging them over to where the other helpers were bending over the table, helping with the painting and sticking. Max introduced his friends to the helpers, who looked delighted that there would be more help.

The ponytail guy shook their hands. "Hi, I'm Phil and I run this Saturday club. It's set up so that working parents have somewhere to leave their kids, and as you can see, it's pretty popular." He swept a hand across the table of about fifteen children, continuing "We do loads of activities such as arts and crafts, singing, learning about the environment and community, and running around games. Max is a complete life-saver with those, I'm not getting any younger so he does all the rough and tumble with the kids. I'm sure you've seen his impressive array of bruises!" They all laughed, and the man in tails and a top hat stepped forward.

"Hello, I'm Chris and I'm the resident magician, and this" he indicated to the woman in the sparkly dress and cape, "is Mandy, my assistant. My amateur magic act a few weeks ago proved to be so popular that I'm now teaching the children tricks, as well as helping out, hence the weird clothes. It's been pretty embarrassing wandering around town, let me tell you!"

At Chris's invitation, the whole team began get stuck in with the kids. Everything seems to have turned out ok after all, thought Max in relief. He looked up from helping a little girl to pour glitter onto her mask and grinned to see Tyson enthusiastically helping someone to paint, while even Kai was self-consciously fixing some elastic to a finished mask and placing it on a child's head. It was weird, but sharing this experience was actually more fun than doing it alone.

"That was really good!" enthused Tyson upon reaching home later on. "But I'm starving now…" He looked pleadingly at Rei, who sighed.

"Ok, I'll put the dinner on. But you're washing up!" He switched the radio on and started to get out pots and pans. He was just in time to catch the end of the news.

"…and finally, we have an update on the recent graffiti sightings around the town centre. The culprits have been caught. It appears that it was a pair of bored youths…"

"Well, that was neatly wrapped up!" joked Max cheerfully as he joined Rei chopping vegetables.

"…Tala Valkov and Bryan Kuznetsov will not be charged, but will go for a disciplinary hearing…"

The five looked at each other with their mouths open. "Maybe not." Kenny groaned.

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SapphyTheElf