The Man Who Was Russia – Part 1
"You want Kai Hiwatari? Who's calling?"
"This is for me to deal with, Tyson." Kai's voice was sharp as he strode out of the kitchen. "Go back to training."
"But Kai, it sounded like a government person! A Russian!"
"All the more reason for you to stick your nose out of my business." Kai snatched the phone from Tyson's surprised grip and made a shooing motion with his other hand. Grumbling to himself, Tyson disappeared into the kitchen. Kai waited until he heard the wielder of Dragoon open the back door before setting the phone to his ear.
"Kai Hiwatari speaking," he said in Russian.
"Mr Hiwatari, this is to inform you that you are required at the Special Offices. It is a very... private matter."
He knew the code by now. "I understand. I would be honoured to meet with him."
"We are to expect your full co-operation in this matter?"
"Of course." He wasn't sure why they always asked this question, particularly as someone who wasn't going to fully co-operate would surely lie. But it seemed it was procedure, and so he went along with it. "I will need a week to arrange transport to Moscow."
"That will not be necessary," the official informed him. "Transport and accommodation has already been organised. You are expected at the airport tomorrow morning for a seven am flight. A car will meet you in Moscow. Do not be late."
"Understood." That, apparently, was all the signal that the official needed, as the phone at the other end clicked down.
Kai stood there staring at the wall for a long while, fingering the soft scarf wrapped around his neck. In his short lifetime he had received three calls, including that one, from the Special Offices in Moscow. All three times he had been required to come up to join them as soon as humanly possible, and normally sooner. And now here was this new call, meaning he would have to find some sort of excuse at dinner that night as to why he was going to be disappearing for some time. Or, alternatively, he could just disappear, which he was very good at. But it didn't quite feel right, abandoning the only friends he had in the world like that. After all, they had been very accepting of him after his return, and he felt like he owed them, in a way, especially as he would be heading back to the very country he had betrayed them for before.
Just then, Ray walked in through the door. "Hey, Kai," he smiled. "You gonna miss me?"
"What?"
"Oh, I'm off tonight, back home to my village."
"Really?"
Ray frowned. "I did tell you three days ago, Kai. Then again, you were fighting over the ketchup with Tyson at the time, so I guess you weren't paying much attention. Who was on the phone?"
Kai shrugged, as he quite honestly had no idea who the official was. "I'm going back to Russia."
"Now that really is the first I've heard of that," Ray commented, looking concerned. "Why? Is it... something to do with Boris and your grandfather?"
"In a way." That was all Kai was willing to say. "But I'm leaving early tomorrow."
"So it's just going to be Tyson and Kenny, then?" Ray gave a short sigh. "Ah well. After going all around the world together, maybe it's for the best that we all go back to our own countries for a while. I miss China."
Privately, Kai wondered what the representative of China looked like, but all he could come up with was an image of Ray, maybe wearing red just to make it luckier, with Driger looming behind him. It wasn't very convincing.
"Hmph."
.
Tyson was less easy to convince than Ray, to the extent that Kai was beginning to regret telling him at all. He seemed to be totally convinced that if Kai went anywhere near the land where he had grown up, he would be kidnapped by someone working for Boris and taken away for interrogation. Kai rubbed at his head and said nothing until Tyson ran out of things to say, which took a very long time.
"I will not be kidnapped by anyone working for Boris or my grandfather," he said at last. "If you must know, there's someone meeting me at the airport to take me to where I have to go."
"When'll you be back?" Max asked. Kai shrugged. If he managed to disappear into the white snows of Russia, at least he wouldn't have to babysit a certain pair of bladers who were sitting in front of him. Well, one of them at least – Max, too, was returning to his homeland of America in two days, and Kai had been privately dreading having to live with Tyson and his grandfather.
"That's Kai for you," Tyson said grumpily. "Well, don't forget to write."
Kai raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
"So this is the end of the Blade-breakers, huh?" Ray mused. "It's been fun, guys."
"Yeah..."
They were getting nostalgic, something that Kai didn't think was possible after only being together for three months or so. He left the room as silently as only he could, and went out to the porch of the dojo. Once there, he sat down, looking up at the cloudy grey sky.
It had been an odd few weeks since the championships. Suddenly remembering where he had been trained for half of his life had been a bit of a shock, but he was mostly over that. Being a celebrity was something he was less certain about, especially as his own battle in the finals hadn't been the most stunning display of his abilities. Tyson and Max were lapping the attention up, whilst Ray just serenely smiled his way through it, as pleased as the others but just slightly better at hiding it.
Black Dranzer had been a bit of a shock too.
Kai sighed. The worst thing about all this was that he had been in his own country. Russia, hiding a beating heart and an occasional tendency to be violent (the Demolition Boys had been the perfect examples of that) under a mask of snow, suited him better than Japan. He should have been at his strongest there, where he was trained and brought up, where the very country itself was supporting him. Instead, the captain had gone down in his own private ship, unable to prevent the attack on Max before the finals, nor the vicious assault Ray had endured at the hands of Bryan, nor the block of ice that had imprisoned Tyson in the finals. It hurt to realise that he had been a more supportive team captain when he'd been planning to steal everyone's bit-beasts than when he was finally their friend.
The worst shock of all, though, had been seeing him in the crowds, watching. Observing. Judging.
The clouds over his head swirled in the freshening wind. The sky would be that colour in Moscow at the moment as the city strode through winter. The colour that promised rain. The colour of old, dirty, end-of-the-year snow that had been churned up and run down by thousands of feet and wheels.
The colour of the hair of a tall man with a strange, frightening smile on his open face, and eyes that could see into your heart. The man who was Russia.
