Disclaimer: I take no credit whatsoever for any element of this piece pertaining to Beyblade: including characters, setting, etc, etc… It belongs, and rightfully so, to its creator – Aoki Takao. But I might keep the tattoo guy – He's kinda cool.

Liberation

By: Dixon Oriole

The door didn't have a bell, but one of those electrical chimes. It went on and went off in a moment, and he reflected on a clockwork life – he had at one time been used to bells. To rise, to rest, to stand at attention, to eat and train in time with bells. It was good to know, to feel certain, that they were finally confined to doors. It was good to see that they were being replaced by electrical chimes… Felt like the world could move on. So why not he?

Inside, slowly allowing the screen to rest with his heel in order to avoid a too-loud bang, a furtive glance was cast about the haphazard layout of the shop he'd chosen for his purposes, absorbing the details hungrily, warily. That was one habit that didn't go away, refused to go away since – well it must have been always. He had done it those days on the streets, with his gang, and before that, alone… He must have learned it in that memory, the one with the bells. He must have learned a lot of things there, like paranoid memorization of the surroundings.

But there really wasn't any reason to be worried. He had staked out this place some time ago, in preparation, and such preparations had turned him into a methodical customer. So many times reviewing what would happen here – how he'd go about it, what he'd not do – had smoothed the boy into a serene, stoic young man. He would suffer no fools, said the contemplative poker face and the squared shoulders; he would not be taken advantage of, said the tightened jaw and proud tilt of the chin; and he would not be underestimated, declared the gracefully muscular body and spirited glint in garnet eyes.

He approached the counter carefully, not a further look spared the examples, artwork plastered all over the dark-painted walls, showcased by white lighting that made him appear paler than usual. The people frequenting the parlor weren't in any position to judge, regardless. And he knew what he wanted from them.

That self-assured air was perhaps the only reason he wasn't greeted with: "Aren't you a little young to be in here?" And though he was apologetically asked to produce an ID, a steady glower solved the lack of one. "Right, kid, I could get into a lot of trouble for this – but you look pretty old so let's just say you faked one, kay? God knows that happens all the time 'round here. Anyhow, I'm not in the mood to lose my license over some delinquent straight off the…" the man behind the counter trailed off, casting the subject at hand another look.

He'd been recognized, but this artist was too good natured to say anything about it. Which was probably in his best interests. And so amiable afternoon silence reined as younger followed heavily tattooed elder out of the main room and into a back, standing suspiciously by a chair and observing the owner as he prepared. "I don't usually do this crap myself, but my assistant got sick or something – frickin' sluts and their STDs…"

Abruptly he was rounded on by the stranger and took a habitual step backwards, frowning, but – the seedy man was just smiling and nodding at the chair. "Sit down and chill out, you're making me nervous. Anyway, what'll it be? Gang sign, right? Goddamn punks…"

He was awarded with a vague, quizzical smirk from the teenager, glaring imperiously from behind a fray of slate bangs. "These," he said in the usual calm monotone, bringing a calloused hand slowly to the blue triangles along his jaw that the owner had assumed were already tattooed there, however bad a job they appeared to be. The boy stared into the dumbfounded face pleasantly. "Got it?" he asked.

There was a thoughtful nod. He thoughtfully nodded back and turned to a mirror situated against one wall, glancing at the fins once more before carefully wetting a rag at the sink and removing the paint. When he confronted this other again, not looking at the naked reflection of his jaw, the artist had already prepared a like shade of blue ink in an appropriate needle. He eased into the chair, straight-backed and proud, red gaze sliding shut.

"Face stuff hurts, you know, so no screaming and messing me up… This is gonna take a while, lotta money." The needle began to buzz, coming alive as the tattooist rolled a chair alongside his.

"I know."

"Right, well, you want them exactly like that, before? I could make em', I donno, more threatening for you."

His eyes flickered open, regarding the poised needle in the skilled hand of the parlor's owner. He had never thought of looking any more threatening, but… The stranger he was entrusting his face to took the silence somewhat badly, wondering what emotion boiled under that expressionless exterior. "Like, make the edges more defined – bring them a little higher under your eyes. It'll be a pain in the ass for you, but it'll look cool, alright," he went on, searching for some kind of a reaction.

"Hn," the teen in his clutches eventually agreed, closing his eyes again and drawing in a deep breath, "Just don't mess up."

There was a bark of incredulous laughter from the owner as he gleefully brought the whirring tool down onto the smooth skin of the insulting teenager's cheek. The man worked steadily, outlining the four fins, elongated and sharpened considerably from their previous form,patting the extra ink away with a cloth… At the same time he watched for telltale signs of pain, signs of being told to stop. He hated when they told him to stop. But for some reason, it didn't seem likely in this case – the kid was no wuss.

He appeared to be taking the pain in stride, willing his jaw not to clench and risk screwing up the artwork being scrawled. There was not a tear to be seen pooling beneath the thick fringe of dark eyelashes, and the slight furrow of his brow could have been purely coincidental, byproduct of a usual frown. The truth was, he was used to this kind of thing. Not necessarily the blinding sting of being branded, but pain in general, if the white scars crisscrossing his forearms were any evidence. His heart had already felt more pain than it should have.

This was bad, but this was nothing.

His foot twitched in time with some unheard beat beneath the hum and burn, hands curled into fists on the arm rests. He was still, perfectly controlled. He was perfect, at that moment. And he was free. Those fins on his face – he'd grown so used, after all those years, he'd grown so used to painting them himself every morning. It was thoughtless habit after a while, he was professional. He was a professional at looking unapproachable, being terrible, acting in ways nobody understood.

He was a god of ambiguity.

His grandfather had shifted continually between hating the markings and loving them. He loved that his descendant appeared strong in them – was strong, was mean and cold and fearless. Sometimes he loved what those shark's fins, those claw marks represented: harshness, superiority. When the little boy had first approached him, scowling, that face messily done – he'd just smiled a darkling smile and told him to go back to the mirror and do it again and over again, as long as it took, until he'd gotten it right.

He hated that his descendant was untamed in them. He hated the untouchable sense, the flashiness, the attention it drew; he hated that they made him look and feel as though he was above a grandfather's absolute authority. Usually he'd let the little things his young relative did slide as long as he was mindful and obedient and strong – but at times he'd told the boy to remove the paint. It was usually when somebody's reputation was on the line… his reputation. When he couldn't look like he was grooming a freak as his protégé.

As a rule, the markings were not voluntarily removed. If his grandfather hadn't had certain methods of… persuasion, they never would have been. The boy liked, had always liked, to look as some sort of wild animal. He had to be untouched, untamed. He had needed that power in his life, and who knew a little blue paint could be so empowering. He'd done the best he could, but now it was time to go a step further.

This was a private celebration. A moment just for him to be calm and be happy. An act only for himself, because he was well aware that the majority of people that knew him were dying to see the warrior unmasked. Those that already had, well, they'd forget after this. After the permanence was made clear. After they had no doubt left in their hearts that this was him, messed up, emotionally inept – no masks.

The fins, the updated, tattooed fins, were the truth.

His grandfather would never be able to change him to fit a mood or party or some silly school dress code again. His grandfather wouldn't be doing a lot of things anymore – his grandson would never have to experience a lot of things… No more "Master Kai", "Master Hiwatari", "Young Kai", "Young Master", no more ultimatums or threats or favors or colorful bruises from the slap of a rosewood cane, encouraging, nauseating words from a heavily accented, nerve-wracking voice, and best of all, no more bells.

He had moved on. He was so far on that he was out of his mad relative's clutches for good – he was free of that man's tyranny and all the suffering that came with it. This job was an act of defiance, of warfare. His grandfather had given him the paint when he was very young, unwittingly motivating what Kai would become through it. He had not wanted what his grandson would become – he'd wanted more, better, always perfection. He'd never been able to accept, to have enough. He had hated Kai's markings as much as he'd loved them. Kai neither loved nor hated them, they were just what he was, and he was in that chair, having them perpetuated.

'Fuck you, sir,' the teenager thought, stifling the urge to smile bitterly. The pain, the pain that radiated clear down to his shoulders was continual, soothing. He did not flinch. He had not flinched when stubbornly facing down the therapist, the questions, his own monster of a grandfather – he had not flinched when gazing at a stack of fine-print documents or calling on the chairman of the BBA and his friend's father to serve as character witnesses. He'd not recoiled when saying his last goodbye to that man, emotions already well protected behind a wall of blue face paint.

So this would be a lesson to him in the future, if the grandfather ever thought the grandson could be taken advantage of again. It would be an example of embracing life's worst and feeding off of the hurt, the rage that came with it.

The hum ceased and a ruby pair of eyes blinked open, meeting the satisfied face of an artist who'd just done something he'd liked – without making any mistakes. He couldn't have hoped for a cleaner, steadier living canvas. The man spent a few moments tactfully dabbing excess ink from the pale cheeks around the markings and then tilted his head to the side to consider the final result. Finally, he gestured a blue-stained hand at the mirror, rolling away in his seat to a medical wastebasket where he discarded the needle and another into which the small blue bottle fell. He obviously wanted to say something, but was swallowing it in wait for the boy's verdict.

Kai lazily dragged himself from the chair, careful not to look immediately at his reflection and risk surprise. Instead, he approached it curiously, secretively – and stared with an eye-narrowed interest, heavy brows knit contemplatively. They were different… but not in a bad way. They did actually look more frightening. The tattooist had been right when he'd said they could be. The ink gave an incredibly sharp, geometric line, impossible for him to achieve with paint regardless of his skill or the accuracy of the brush.

The markings were bright against angry red skin, sore to the touch, but he'd felt worse. Turning his face gingerly, peering from the different angles, ignoring the pensive quiet of the man responsible for this, Kai felt, to his shock, a sudden wave of joy. That emotion he could not feed on and so held no stock in. But it was there all the same. The teenager smiled before a sterner thought could prevent it and faced the artist, bowing his aching head slightly, respectfully.

"Ah, don't do that, kid. I mean its great work alright, but you're embarrassing me – man, you look more grown up than before. Maybe the next stop is to get a real fake ID so my excuse for doing you will be legitimized, eh?" the owner of the shop all at once babbled, uncertain why, exactly, he wished to have this boy, this kid accept him.

It was as though, with the appearance, the façade unfolding beneath his fingers, he'd been compelled to become some kind of fan. He knew this boy from the news – knew the sport and the popularity and never really expected to see the great Kai Hiwatari wandering around there in all his domineering glory. Some part of him protested feeling threatened by a red-faced child… maybe he'd done too good a job.

"Thanks. How much'll it be?" Kai questioned, altogether business.

The owner paused and then waved him to the front of the shop… Such a slow, quiet day out there. "I'm gonna kill that assistant of mine for bailing out like this – Christ. You're just lucky you got me, right, man? Heheh, recommend us to your friends, kay?"

They settled the deal, Kai paying in cash (part of a little going away present he'd lifted from his grandfather – as far as the grandson was concerned, it was the least he deserved for putting up with so much lunacy for longer than should have been necessary), and wordlessly accepting the designated antiseptic and preliminary bandages from the artist. He hardly heard the advice about infection, because frankly, he did not become infected, and was certain all would be healed in a short time.

The marked teenager was just leaving when the owner at his back desperately added, "Eh, hey – uh, come again, got it? We do piercing, and yeah I saw that hole you've got in your ear, damn metros… or maybe you'd want a, what, a phoenix? We do tattoos pretty well here too." He grinned.

Kai turned a moment, looking at the man appraisingly. He said nothing, leaning against the screen, stepping back as it swung out, moving onto the street. He let it slam shut and turned into the heavy summer breeze, allowing it to sting his sensitive face, unhampered. The teenager walked, aged three or four years since entering the shop and exiting it. He was not his grandfather's whipping boy, that was for sure. He wasn't going to be used, ever, ever again – wouldn't do anything other than exactly what he wanted.

That kid had been left in the family courtroom that day, that yesterday when he'd finally, after months and months of argument and ridiculous negotiation and well-meaning adults trying to figure out what he'd do with himself – left when he'd finally become emancipated. Kai wouldn't feel a definite change in lifestyle… He'd been by himself or with friends, in both cases self-sufficient. His grandfather was not the sort of man to forgive betrayals. Kai had too much pride to ask it.

He might not have felt a definite change in lifestyle, but he felt it in his blood. It was like something poisonous was being drained out, most of it soaked into the chair he'd just left in that back room. There would probably always be some left – some of that monster, some of what he'd done, but… this was a great leap in the right direction. The young man smirked a feral smirk, drawing glances as he strode casually along in the direction of his residence.

It wouldn't be long before the ache subsided and the hurtful color drained. He would wait out those days patiently, in solitude, before having a meeting with his friends. They would want a celebration of their own when he told them of the emancipation – as it stood, his character witnesses were sworn to secrecy and, for whatever reason, trusted Kai's judgment. He would allow the others to know only when he was ready. This – this they could be told. There were other things they would never be ready to hear.

Regardless, he didn't want to think about the awkwardness of future conversation or the tiring, stifling company of people that thought they loved him. He wanted to think about being free, forever free from everyone, and having this private day to celebrate in quiet triumph. He wanted to think about having become more than his grandfather could ever have fathomed him becoming, and the greatness that would follow.

He wanted to think that the shark fins, the claw marks, meant perfection. And at that moment, liberated, Kai was perfect.

- Fin -

Author's Notes: Here's the story: Kai lacked the fins, for whatever reason, in that school part of V-Force (dress code, I assume, though he was wearing that funny little earring), and so before then, they must have been temporary. The face paint so many fic authors feel obliged to believe in.

Up until the end of season one, Kai was under the thumb of his grandfather, living with him, actually. At the start of the next season, I imagine that Voltaire was fed up and sent the kid to boarding school, where he, of course, busted out and wandered around until opting to stay with Tyson, because he couldn't very well go back to that mansion of his grandfather's. At the dojo Kai stayed until the end of V-Force, taking part in his team's sacred-rock-bit-beasty-antics. It was, in my opinion, only a matter of time before the proverbial shit hit the fan between him and Voltaire.

During G-Revolution, there is no sign of everybody's favorite sociopathic grandfather and when we first see Kai, he is near Tyson and the rest of them. He either stayed at the dojo between those seasons or found his own place (I think the latter is more likely, for the sake of Kai's pride and sanity), but however it rolls, he did not go home. If he had gone home, we would have known about it somehow, and I just don't think that such a retreat is in young Kai's nature.

Therefore, I present for your scrutiny the notion that Kai became emancipated from his grandfather (which would kind of explain the idea that he does not humor education) between V-Force and G-Revolution, found his own place to hide out (like that funny little trophy/training room he had near the school, no?), and wanted to celebrate said emancipation. I would.

Now, now, humor the idea that because the fins were paint before the last season, he could celebrate by having them tattooed. He could be just weird enough to consider that a kind of party. Their change from paint to ink would also explain the difference in appearance between seasons two and three. The fins are sharper and "more threatening", and I like to consider the possibility that it's attributed to something like this rather than a mere change in show artists.

Yaaaaaay!

Does this constitute "strong coarse language"?