*shows up late to her own fic with Starbucks and sunglasses on* Yo, what's crack a lackin'?

I am so sorry I went a whole three months without an update. My depression is fucking destroying me right now and wiping my motivation away for most of anything. Hopefully this long chapter with a certain plot twist I have been dying to reveal in it will make up for it. Said plot twist will be prevalent in the future, so no, I'm not just throwing it in willy-nilly.

Hope ya'll like the chapter!

"And here we are ladies and gentlemen, our potentially final battle of the day! Whoever wins this battle decides which team moves on to the next round of the World Championships!" The DJ announced over the murmurings of the crowd, "So let's give it up for Ariana and Amy! Ladies, make your way to the stage!"

"Good luck, Amy," Lucas told the girl.

"Be careful," Jasmine warned. "She beat Hikaru in one move, and she was almost on the African team. She's clearly got some sort of strength we don't have much intel about."

"Of course," Amy nodded, and flashed her teammates a reassuring smile. "I'll be fine."

I hope, she thought. She started her way down to the dish, fixing her gaze on the girl on the other side. Ariana stood, disinterestedly picking at her manicured nails. She seemed bored, outwardly, but the longer Amy looked, the easier it became to see the manic glimmer in the other girl's eye. Her thoughts circled back to the conversation she'd had with the rest of her team, when the battle order had been rearranged.

"What do we know about Ariana and her Bey?" Amy asked, straddling the chair beside Jasmine.

"Not… much, actually. It's a custom-built Bey," Jasmine replied. "Just a stamina and attack type Bey. High offensive power, if what I've seen and heard from the Bladers who've battled her is true. Basically, her Bey is the exact opposite of hers."

"Any chance Loki's stamina is greater than her Aphrodite?"

"I don't know," Jasmine admitted, as she dug her laptop out of her bag. "Ariana doesn't battle long enough to get any readings on Aphrodite. The only thing I can tell you is that every time she battles, she starts off with a strong attack to either cause her opponent a stadium out or throw them off balance long enough to deliver a brutal blow and send them out."

"Do you think Loki's defenses could match her attack power?"

"Maybe? There's a chance he could, at least," Jasmine shrugged.

Amy nodded, pulling her partner from her pocket as she did. She peered down at her copper and purple colored Bey, a plan already beginning to unfurl in the back of her mind…

"—battle started!" The DJ's voice drew Amy out of her thoughts, and she quickly readied herself for battle. She spread her feet, dug her feet in, and waited for the countdown.

"Three!"

"Two!"

"One! Let it rip!"

"Dove's Call!"

"Magic Matrix!"

Aphrodite released her signature series of shockwaves, but the Bey that they hit… wasn't Loki. In fact, it was just a trick of the light… just like every other image of Loki that could be seen in the dish.

Amy grinned at Ariana's gob smacked expression, watching as the redhead straightened up to stare narrow eyed down at the dish. She pulled her gaze back to Amy, "Cute trick."

"I think so too," Amy smirked. "Seems like your plan backfired on you. That's what happens when you become predictable, you know."

"Oh, please. Love is anything but predictable. People only care to remember the prettier side of it," Ariana sneered. "When in all honesty, love is most cutting emotion there is—people do more damage with love than they can with fear or anger. It's brutal and painful—there's nothing pretty about it. Why do you think Aphrodite was honored as a goddess off war? Even back then, people knew how painful love could be."

There it is, Amy thought. So, Kelsea was right. Ariana isn't some innocent bystander in this, not like Taylor possibly is. She's probably one of those in this game that could be in on the whole Nyx resurrection thing. Her mentality is fractured already… it's probably why she was put as the sub member of her team. It's both a security measure and a way to hide her true power… What is her true power, anyways? Guess I need to find out. If not for myself, then for whoever else will end up battling her in the future.

"Loki!" Amy called out, "Clockwork Twister!"

Loki glowed bronze, and shot forward towards Aphrodite, initiating a barrage attack on Aphrodite; as Amy had expected, despite the fact Aphrodite was a strong stamina type, Loki's heavy warrior and fusion wheels—mainly used for defense—provided Loki with an edge to drive the pink Bey back.

Ariana bared her teeth, "Damn you! Aphrodite, Thorn Barrage!"

Aphrodite glowed dark pink, and began to meet Loki's attacks with ones of her own. Rumbles shook the ground beneath the two Blader's feet as sparks and flares of light exploded in the air. Amy raised her hand to shield her eyes, scowling as she did.

Her attacks are strong… hopefully Loki's defenses and stamina holds out… otherwise, I'm toast.

"Something's wrong," Lucas said.

"If you mean that Amy is, for once, struggling to beat an opponent, then yes, something is wrong," King drawled.

"No, I mean—" Lucas squinted, peering across the stadium floor to look more closely at Ariana. He fell quiet, biting his lower lip as her words rang in his head.

Love is the most cutting emotion there is… more damage than fear or anger… brutal and painful… Ariana had said. She couldn't be more right about that… love could be given, and in the right circumstances, it was like a single drop of water to a thirsting man. Love, affection, any positive emotion… when someone had been shown nothing but the bad in a person, when confronted with the good, it was like a beacon of salvation.

That, or something to shy away from, Lucas thought, something sour and angry uncurling in his chest. It can be used for a mind game, too. Breaking someone down psychologically. Like Jekyll and Hyde, or—

A hand circled Luke's forearm gently, and he looked down to see ringed fingers loosely gripping his arm, a steadying weight. He brought his gaze up to meet Nero's.

"Hey," Nero murmured. "Where's your head at?"

"I'm fine," Lucas replied. "Just… ready for this match to end already."

"I get it. Now, what were you thinking earlier? About Ariana's battle style?"

"Uh," Lucas blinked, shook his head, refocused on the battle below. "It looks to me like she's holding back."

"That's holding back?" King asked, bewildered. He gesticulated wildly towards the battle, "If that's your idea of holding back, I don't want to know what your idea of going all out is!"

"Shut up, King," Nero said, harshly. He addressed Lucas, "What did she say that has you on edge, Luke? You wouldn't be so unsettled if your mind wasn't working in overdrive."

"… Aphrodite was a war goddess," Lucas' voice was quiet. "And a lot of people worshipped her as a goddess of the sea, too, even if her primary power was with love and beauty. Ariana…" Lucas swallowed, "Ariana's channeling the more brutal side of the mythology."

Below, Ariana called out another move as Loki charged forward for a new attack, and Loki rebounded off the pink Bey; Ariana was going on the defense now, switching using her stamina for offensive moves for defensive ones. Smart, but there was a glimmer in her eyes that was leaving Lucas feeling like bugs were crawling over him. Instinctively, Lucas found himself bringing his arms up, cradling them against his chest, unable to look away from her face.

Danger… threat… caution! A voice screamed in the back of his mind, You know why, you know why! Don't let Amy suffer the same fate! Stop her! Stop her before she gets hurt!

"Luke," Nero gripped Luke's arm again, spinning him around to face the blonde. "Lucas, piccolo, come on. Look at me, focus." He pulled Lucas away from the railing, towards the tunnel leading out on to the team platform, "Talk to me, tell me where your head's at."

"Nowhere good—I just—I want—this entire match to end—" Lucas choked out, fear, dark and ugly, clawing its way up his throat. It felt like an ice-cold fist was curling around his heart, "I can't. It's too much. First father, then Hunter saying what he did, and Ariana, she… she…"

"She what? Come on, tell me, is it something Amy needs to know?" Nero asked.

Lucas started to turn his head back to look at the battle, so he could observe, maybe get more information to analyze, but Nero stopped him. He cupped one hand over Luke's jaw, and brought his head back around to face Nero, "Uh-uh. Don't look. Listen. Use your memory. What do your instincts say?"

"I—"

"They've been telling you something since the very first minute, because you've been closing yourself off since then. What is it? Why does she disturb you so much?"

"Because she—I—" Lucas choked, before gasping out, "She reminds me of my dad."

"Why?"

"The look in her eye—it's unhinged. The way she's acting now—the calm before the storm—" Lucas gasped.

Nero turned away, striding back towards the railing, "Amy! You need to end this battle now! She's gearing up to something big!"

"Clockwork Trickster!" Amy shouted in response, and a burst of copper and purple-blue energy filled the air as Loki collided hard with Aphrodite.

An explosion of light filled the air, causing the ground to shake beneath their feet. A hush fell over the crowd as the dust began to clear, before slowly, the results of the battle were shown.

"And there it is, ladies and gentlemen!" DJ shouted, "The winner of this battle is Amy Cosmina! Team Rinascinta moves on to the next round!"

As the crowd erupted into cheers, King, Jasmine, and Amy among them, Nero turned back to look at Lucas… and felt his heart twist painfully in his chest at the sight of his best friend standing at the entrance to the tunnel. Luke's pallor was paler than normal, nearly a sickly shade of gray, and there was a haunted, glazed look in his eyes. Even from the distance, Nero could see the way Lucas was shaking, clearly rattled by way this match had turned out.

Even with the crowd cheering around them in excitement, Nero couldn't count this as a win. Not with the way Lucas looked like he would rather be anywhere but here.

Following Rinascinta's win, Kelsea found the two EU teams sitting by the hotel's outdoor pool, basking in both the sun and the excitement of moving on to the third round. Smiling lightly, she pulled a chair up to the table that Klaus, Amy, and Julian were seated at, "Well, congrats on moving on, I suppose."

"Sorry about kicking you from the tournament," Amy said with a wicked smile.

"Ah, but we still have a chance to come back thanks to the Wild Card," Kelsea shook her finger at the other girl. "Besides, the third round is where the EU team lost last time, so don't get too cocky."

"Ha, ha," Julian deadpanned and looked over at his friend. "Klaus, your cousin is truly hilarious."

"She has weird humor, but she's got a point," Klaus shrugged, then paused. "Wait, Kelsea, Jack is the mechanic on your team. How have you not—"

"Who's to say I haven't?" Kelsea smirked, canines flashing.

"…"

"…"

"I'm kidding!" Kelsea finally laughed, "Jeez, lighten up! No, Jack and I talked our issues out and we're actually pretty good friends, now!" Her smile faded, replaced by a frown, "Actually, he would have gone for the American team again, but he was transferred to the Australian team at the last minute."

"That a fact?" Julian mused, "I wonder why."

"Eh, who knows anything about what the WBBA board does," Klaus waved a hand and sat back in his chair.

"They do work in mysterious ways," Amy mused, sharing a glance with Kelsea.

"But he doesn't trust Ariana," Kelsea tapped her fingers over the glass table, and perched her chin in the palm of her other hand. "Which… when I first joined this team, I was wary of Hunter."

"For good reason," Julian muttered. "But what changed your mind?"

"Damian swings by or calls every so often," Kelsea shrugged. "He's working on getting his feet under him, in America. Of all things, he's a bartender out in California, I think? Or maybe it's Florida—one of the sunnier states on the coast. Anyways, he's also Hunter's legal guardian and I've learned that Hunter's personality… as rude and arrogant as he can be, he's just a kid. He's got some maturing and learning to do, and I have a feeling that battle with Nero yesterday was the wake-up call he needed."

"Speaking of Nero…" Sophie said, looking around the pool area, "He and Lucas are strangely absent from this little get together. Anyone know where they are?"

Rinascinta fell oddly quiet, exchanging glances among themselves.

"What?" Wales asked, eyes narrowed, "What happened?"

"My and Ariana's battle left Lucas… shaky," Amy explained. "He was shutting down… said he didn't want to be a Debbie Downer on the celebrations. Nero decided to stay with him, not leave him alone."

Julian sighed, "That boy… I swear, I wish I knew why he hasn't just told Lucas how he feels yet!"

"If this tournament keeps going the way it is," Klaus said. "The last thing Lucas will need the distraction of figuring out a romantic relationship. I think Nero knows that, Julian, and for now, he's contenting himself with just being there for Lucas as a friend."

"So… you're saying that maybe after the championships…" King trailed off, raising a meaningful eyebrow.

Klaus shrugged, "Wouldn't surprise me that they finally get their act together, once things calm down and all the drama with this tournament and Nyx passes. Until then, we just need to have some patience."

Some days, I really hate my life, Ian thought, bitterly. Why didn't I ever break from Argo when I had the chance?

Sitting back in his chair, Ian crossed his arms and glared at his computer screens, silently wishing that he didn't have to see what they were showing him.

When Andrea Clarke had called with a request from Caspian McKandless, Ian had only said yes because he had thought he wouldn't find anything about the Konzern family. After all, Julian may have been blackmailed by Ziggurat after the World Championships, but that had been the only dark spot that was on the Konzern heir's record. As far as Ian knew, and he knew business and politics like he knew science and math, Rosario Konzern had inherited the Konzern business from his father, and had been the one to build it up to the empire it was today.

It turned out Ian was wrong.

"Hey," A voice murmured, and Ian's head lolled back to meet the teal gaze of one Helios Solace. "You've been locked up in here nearly all day. You should take a break."

"I'm done anyways," Ian sighed, and grabbed the coke out of Helios' hand. "Thanks for that. I was getting thirsty."

"That was—" Helios began, before huffing, "Yeah, fine, you're welcome." He grabbed a second rolling chair and pulled it up beside Ian, straddling over it backwards to peer at the screens, "Tell me what I'm looking at here."

Ian finished off his drink and set the half empty can on the table, away from his keyboards, "Right. Well, you know that Konzern is getting in the way of Caspian, right?"

"Word travels, and I've heard you say more than a time or two about how you'll dance on Caspian's grave when he inevitably gets what's coming to him," Helios shrugged, loosely.

"Right, well, Caspian might actually stand a chance to get Konzern's lawyers to back off with what I've found," Ian sighed. "Now, Julian and Nero, they're both clean, relatively speaking. Only dark mark in Julian's history is the fact that he worked with Ziggurat, but then again, that was just straight up blackmail too."

Helios nodded.

"And Rosario is clean too, but it's his late wife, Bianca diAngelo, that… well," Ian leaned forward and typed a few things, pulling up an image of a dark-haired Italian woman. "She left home when she was eighteen and became a well-known model for fashion and make up lines, before she met and married Rosario when she was twenty-six. By the time she was twenty-eight, Julian had been born, and four years later, Nero, and four years after that, she passed away from unknown illness."

"That's…" Helios blinked, "Suspicious."

"Yeah, and I'm just about going to bet my life's savings that her death has to do with the reason she left home as soon as she turned eighteen," Ian sighed, and brought up another series of images on his screens, and was silent as Helios took the new information in.

"I… Is this for real? The diAngelo's have ties to the Italian mafia?!"

Ian stayed quiet.

"Wait, Bianca split from the family when she was eighteen. My guess is she didn't want to be a part of the criminal life?" Helios asked.

"Yep. It was a big to-do in the criminal world. A big falling out between Bianca and the rest of her family. Her younger sister, Carmen, ended up taking over the family business, and guess what?"

"What?"

"Carmen's made a name for herself. The Black Widow—has had three husbands in the last ten years who've all died under mysterious circumstances and has two kids from them. Of course, because she's in the mafia she's well protected and either the cops are being paid off or are just too stupid to realize she's the common link between them," Ian huffed.

"Eh, not all law enforcement is competent, as we well know," Helios waved a hand and settled his chin on the back of his chair, eyeing the screens. "… Are the Konzerns aware of the fact that they have ties to the mafia?"

"Nope, not that I can tell. Hell, I don't think even Rosario knew—at least, not any in any records that I've dug up," Ian shrugged. "So, I'm at least ninety percent sure that Julian and Nero are unaware of this little link."

"But if you turn it over to Caspian, even if they don't know it…"

"God, Caspian can make their lives hell," Helios groaned and let his head drop on to the back of the chair. He thumped his head a few times, "This is getting more complicated by the second. Why couldn't it have been as simple as it was with Nemesis?"

"Nemesis was simple?"

"Simpler than whatever this mess is that we've been dragged into,"

"… Fair enough," Ian shrugged, and leaned forward to type something. As it was, he startled when red screens and alarms began to flare, "Que porra e essa?"

"I'm taking it that this is bad?" Helios asked.

Ian leaned forward, typing faster and then let loose a string of half English, half Portuguese swears, "Someone had an alert on anyone who searched for Carmen diAngelo! The only reason it took so long for the alarms to sound is because my system took so long to hack—"

"Wait, what do you mean, someone had an alert for Carmen? That's not a mafia thing, is it? Don't they just kill whoever crosses them or something?"

"Hell, if I know, but I do know that whoever it is now knows our location," Ian cursed again as he began shutting his computers down. "And the way I see it, we got about fifteen hours before this place is stormed with mafia members looking to put bullets in our heads because we're putting our noses in where we don't belong."

"We? What we? I'm not the one who got told to go digging for dirt and then did it!" Helios exclaimed, already out of the room, down the hall, and in the bedroom to begin packing.

"Well, what was I supposed to do?! Say no?! Hell, I'd rather meet the mafia than work for Caspian any day!"

"The problem with that is, the mafia is gonna rip your teeth out if you don't tell them who asked you to don your black hacker hat!"

"Again—find me a way to stop working for Caspian and I'll work for the mafia any day of the week!"

"… Weren't you and your siblings a mafia anyways?"

"Oh, Christ's sake—there's a difference between a gang and a mafia! And like you were any better, you were the heir to a goddamned cult!"

Ian finally finished shutting his laptops down and pulling out chips from the mainframe—mainly the hard drives and dismantling them. Leaving anything that could be used to track himself and Helios was a death sentence that Ian did not intend to leave behind. By the time he'd finished, Helios was already back in the doorway of Ian's office—the good thing about being in a relationship with this man, Ian mused, was that he understood the importance at having to move quickly and at the drop of a hat.

Ian, personally, hated it, but he had hope that would one day change. He grabbed his jacket and pulled it on, before he swung his messenger bag full of his notebooks and with his personal laptop over his shoulder and snatched his Bey gear, "Last minute flight to Russia—what a way to start the weekend."

"I hate the cold," Helios grumbled as they made their way for the apartment door. "This is going to suck. Tsubasa is going to pay for this—"

Helios and Ian came to a dead halt as the hallway opened into the main living area and came face to face with a group of men between them and the door. On their arrival, nine of the men raised guns and aimed at the duo, while the tenth man stepped forward with a shark-like smile.

"Hello, gentlemen. Would you care to tell us what you're doing searching for Carmen diAngelo?"

"…"

"…"

"… Ian."

"What?"

"I hate you."

"Yeah, that's fair."

*sips her coffee* Like I said. This plot twist will be prevalent in the future, especially concerning Caspian's imminent demise.

Also, I was hinting at something with Ian and Helios. They've become a ship that live rent free in my head... just adding it to the list *sigh*

Also, also! Next month marks the one year anniversary of this fic! I'm hoping to get the next chapter up by said date. :D Hopefully. Wish me luck.

Hope ya'll enjoy and leave a review! Until next time, ciao!