Another week, another chapter. Yeah. Something like that.

Was trapped underground for some two hours because of a chemical fire that 'levelled' one of the train stations that I frequent on my journey to and from home, and am not in the most pleasant of moods. Nevertheless, I managed to finish this little bit of writing without injury (to my own person, or to anybody anywhere near me). Applause and stuffed animals will be graciously accepted at this point in time.

chapitre deux

He swore the Computer was mocking him.

Listen to it.

Listen to the busy whirring that surrounds the mass of plastic and wire, enveloping it and cloaking it with a façade of competence. As if there's something wrong with you, rather than the machine, and that the Computer itself is working just fine, thank you very much; you're the problem, not it.

Look at it.

Look at it, with its glowing blue screen and annoyingly flashy white type. The words appear and disappear at intervals that every regular Computer user has confirmed were carefully timed so as to catch attention at the most inopportune moments, only to dismiss it as if the unfortunate victim were nothing.

Yes, Tala Ivanov was convinced that his Computer (it, like its fellow spawns of the Pit, deserved a capital for its evil treachery) was mocking him. And now his mood, which had been swinging relatively harmlessly between just plain sullen pissed-off-ness and frustration, had taken a definite turn for the worse.

Tala Ivanov was now in 'enraged-mother-bear-whose-cubs-have-been-poached' mode.

It was thus a very fortunate roll of the dice for the soon- to-be-crushed-into-itty-bitty-pieces-Computer that brought about the sudden ringing of the cell phone lying haphazardly atop its little castle of discarded paper. The sudden interruption to his rather violent musings effectively bought Tala's ancient laptop some time to perform the machine equivalent to writing its will as the redhead, still grumbling Russian obscenities, leaned across the cluttered imitation oak table to snatch up the boxy black electronic.

A pale finger, its pad calloused from years of keyboard wear, pressed the rubbery grey translucent button marked with the simple pictogram of a raised receiver.

And then all Hell broke loose.

The eruption of noise on the other line wouldn't have been out of place in a war movie. Screaming could be heard in the background, the words lost to Tala's ears, though the twenty-year-old wasn't sure he wanted to know what the furious voices were screeching.

There were the sounds of various photocopiers and printers being physically kicked into gear, and cubicle walls being slammed against with the heads of those who didn't have that many brain cells left to lose. An occasional snapping that Tala hoped fervently was a stapler or a hole-puncher drifted through the five little holes arranged vertically on the cell phone's face that served to convey sound from one side of the nation to the other.

It was enough to make the redhead wish he were still on his early- morning trip to West Potomac Park.

Just above the din, a grizzled old voice tinted with Scottish inflections could be barely made out. The tone suggested that this was a man (for no woman could ever hope to be that raspy, even after swallowing sandpaper and chain-smoking cheap cigars for thirty years) who was used to giving and ignoring orders, and whose current disposition made Tala's look like something out of one of AA Milne's picture books.

"Eh? Eh? Shutcher traps, you, an' git back ta work! Ivanov! Ya gotta deadloine fer Frideh! Tomo'ow, boy, tomo'ow! Where's thah blasted article?! Ya know tha one, the Iraqeh pris'ner aboose!"

A wince crossed Tala's features, and he immediately relocated the phone from its usual position between the redhead's shoulder and his ear to a distance where the editor of the Daily Inquiry's voice and whatever it was that was going on around him wasn't quite as unbearable. His tired brain slowly clicked and matched the speaker's heavily accented words with its English counterpart, and produced this translation: 'Gawd, I need coffee. Now.'

Whoops, wrong one.

Tala's tired brain slowly clicked and matched the words with its counterpart and decided that it needed a holiday, before declaring the Scot to have said that the editor wanted Tala's article on the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, and wanted it now.

"Yes, sir, it's, uh, almost done..." A glance and a glare in the Computer's direction. "I'll have a copy sent and on its way by, uh..."

"Ne'er mind, ne'er mind, lad. I've got ano'er job for ya, rookeh."

Ignoring the demeaning nickname his boss had used in place of 'intern,' Tala plastered a sucking-up-to-the-Man (note how that last word also possesses a capital letter) smile upon his face, even as his newly-awoken brain informed him that the editor couldn't actually see it. "Yes, sir?"

"Dun gimme that tone, boy."

"What tone?"

"That tone. I'm not some 'ick mor'on, rookeh; I know when yer tryin' ta play up ta meh."

"Oh." The asinine grin slipped off Tala's lips, and when he spoke again, it was without the fake saccharine. "Is this better?"

"Yeah. Now--" A hacking wheeze interrupted Mr. Jenkins' sentence as years of doing only God knows what caught up with him and forced the man to pause and recollect his wits before restarting. "Now, we're gonna let Mr. Parkeh take this one; he's got experriehnce, see?" And though he didn't elaborate, Tala knew that his employer really meant, 'The Company doesn't trust you with this, so we're giving you some crap-ass assignment and pretending that it's better, okay? And don't dare argue, or we'll burn your paycheck.'

"...Yes. Sir." The honorific was added as an afterthought.

"Good, good. Dun worry, lad, we've got ano'er job all loined up nice an' neat. How does interviewin' that teenager kid from Russia sound? Tha one they're callin' tha youngest 'ead of a multi-million dollar corp'ration. Biovolt, wasn't it?" A muffed shuffling of papers and a mysterious metallic clanging wafted through the speaker. "Yeah. Biovolt, that's tha one. Um... Kai 'iwehtareh. We'll floi ya over quick as ya please, Saturdeh mornin', 0600 hours, spec's in tha memo. Any questions, dun take 'em to meh, okay, boy?"

"Um, sir, I'm not an, um, I'm not a real, um, I don't know about this, sir."

"What? Speak up, boy, I cannae 'ear ya o'er 'ere!"

"I'm not an interviewer--"

"Nobody's askin' ya to be a bloody intahviewah, boy, just ask the kid some questions, eh?"

"...Yes, sir, but--"

"Good, good, an' do a job o' it, ya 'ear?!"

CLICK

The sudden absence of tortured shrieking left Tala's ears ringing and the world oddly silent. There were a few moments of quiet muttering, broken only by the hurling of a certain cellular phone across the small hotel room. Then Tala slouched further into the non- descript and scratchy felt-like fabric of the chair, exhausted, fatigued, and not entirely sure as to what he had 'agreed' to.

And then realization hit, moving faster even than Wally West himself (but not nearly as fast as Quicksilver, because Pietro Maximoff owns you all. Including that stupid red-spandex clad Flash character). There were another few seconds of silence, though these were filled with movement as the door was firmly locked and the blinds drawn shut.

And then the period of noiselessness was shattered, as it always is, by an unearthly scream of frustration, anxiety, caffeine-deprivation and, yes, fear.

"WHY ME?!?"

Now. Anybody unfamiliar with Mr. Ivanov's past will probably pause, stare, and wonder why said red-haired man would cry his sorrows to the blank, beige-ish, and, frankly, unfeeling ceiling of his hotel room. Unfortunately, Tala's history is little more than a convoluted mess of repressed memories, unresolved emotions, lies, deceptions and pain. To describe it would be like explaining the Rubik's Cube solution to a blind man: patience, calm and a good deal of time is needed.

Thankfully for you, the authoress happens to be a North American, and is thus quite fond of what she calls the 'Coles Notes' version of things. She will therefore forego the lengthy, well-written biography that more competent writers could present you and, instead, provide you with a shorter, but no less informative account (NB: Unfortunately, the authoress could not find a way to include her lovely, colourful diagrams).

Tala Ivanov was born in Moscow. That much is certain. Where, and by whom? Not so much. Perhaps he was the sole survivor of a car crash or house fire. Maybe he was abandoned on the streets, left at the mercy of whatever passerby might see him.

Whatever the path, the destination is the same: Balcov Abbey.

Do you not think it ironic how the mere name puts one in mind of habit-cloked monks and sacred hymns, how it alludes to safety and sanctuary? It is unfitting, almost ludicrously so, how statuesque and beautiful the building itself is, seeing as how it houses one of the most merciless and sadistic genetic engineering research facilities in the world. For the experiments that went on behind closed, barred and steel-enforced doors were not created with literal lab-rats in mind. Instead, human children, some as young as six-years-old, were injected with steroids, exposed to potentially deadly lasers and pushed to their physical and mental limits.

The Abbey has long since been shut down, the children returned to whatever parental guardian was willing to take them in, but even now, not even the scientists themselves are sure what the original intent was, what possible purpose there could be that justified that kind of torment. Perhaps only two men really do, and one of them is now dead (the authoress would like to interject a sneer here, and also an added comment that the many people that attended Voltaire Hiwatari's funeral did it out of morbid curiosity, familial obligation, or just to walk past the grave and spit on the coffin), and the other is in a maximum security or "special regime" correctional labor colony in Russia for abuse, sexual abuse, rape, treason, and so on and so forth.

Along with inhumane living conditions and government, the Abbey had a system.

Every resident was paired with another, and, for as long as both were still alive, they would be each other's only company. They would eat together, rest together, train together (yes, against each other). They would push each other to the brinks of nervous breakdowns.

The reasoning here is much clearer than the reasoning behind the Abbey itself: humans perform better when competing. The idea was that the two boys (for the Abbey only trained males; a remnant of an ancient and very sexist mode of thought) would either grow closer and thus form a rock-solid bond of mutual trust and respect, thus making them a team to be reckoned with, or shove each other and everybody else far, far away and erect icy barriers of emotionless cold and ruthlessness.

It didn't really matter; in both scenarios, Hiwatari and Balcov got what they wanted: soldiers.

Soldiers that would follow orders, soldiers that would be used, soldiers that would be stepping stones to eventual world domination. And between Balcov's scientific genius and Hiwatari's cunning and financial resources (Biovolt, his company and perhaps the only of his children that he had ever cared for, was, and still is, a multibillion dollar corporation), it seemed they were certain to ultimately succeed.

But they never took Voltaire's own grandson into consideration.

The boy, born of Voltaire's son and his wife, was orphaned at an early age. The newspapers reported an electrical fire in their St. Petersburg home, but some still argue that the accident was staged by Voltaire's little soldiers.

Kai Hiwatari, as he was called, was partnered with Tala Ivanov, and they hated each other right off the bat.

The one with the two-toned blue hair couldn't stand the redhead's apathy, and the blue-eyed boy despised the crimson-eyed one's lack of respect for authority and rules. The close proximity in which they were forced to live in only heightened their rivalry, to the point where an entire afternoon of training was called off because the two had launched their 'Blades at each other from opposite sides of the mess hall.

But just as they were being given their punishment (fifty lashes on the back with a cat o' nines), Kai did something nobody will ever know the thinking behind: he stepped up and took the blame. Tala, not quite sure what to think of this new development and perhaps a little grateful, too, began to spend more and more time with the bluenette. And, eventually, they fell into something akin to love.

But all good things come to an end, and this particular relationship was severed quite messily, by a black phoenix born of darkness and evil, and the intoxicating power she offered. So Kai, having no choice, left the smoking ruins of the Abbey behind, to live with his grandfather in Japan, a distraught Tala watching his departure with eyes that just barely suppressed their pain and distress.

Ivanov sought to put his sorrow to rest in the only way he knew how: burying himself in his training and striving to become faster, better, stronger and smarter. Within six months of being reassigned as partners to Bryan Kuznetsov, the redhead had leapt to the top of the rankings.

But it wasn't enough, as he learned when Kai, against all expectations, returned to the team that had been formed of the Abbey's greatest Beybladers, to fight in the World Championships.

That was six years ago. Tala was fourteen then, and is now twenty, an intern at the Daily Inquiry, a roving newspaper that changed bases as often as it changed its name, focus and editor. Kai was thirteen, and so should be nineteen. With the death of his grandfather, Kai is now the last remaining Hiwatari, and has taken up the mantle of CEO at Biovolt in Russia, becoming, at once, the youngest head of a multibillion dollar firm to ever grace the front page of the Wall Street Journal and the one of the most sought after bachelors in the world.

They haven't met since, but they will now. Funny how things work out, eh?

to be continued

Short, probably not sweet. Just the way I like it. Maybe not the way you like it, but I'm dead-tired right now, and I have yet to memorize the phases of mitosis. Go me.

You may notice how the first section of this chapter (that is, up until "WHY ME?!?") was written entirely differently from the second. I personally blame the music. I was listening to American Hi-Fi while writing the former. Then I took a break for two days or so, then picked up the proverbial pencil to pen the latter. With Smile Empty Soul blaring in the background. Maybe you have no idea what those bands are, or what their styles are, but believe me when I say they differ greatly.

Right, then. On to the thanks.

whistles Wow. 12 reviews. For such a short piece? I might just weep with joy.

The blessings of the Timbit Faery fly on glitter glued wings to:

MasterFranny (Really? You really think so? I was sort of playing by ear)
Fire of Phoenix (I'm a lazy git, my friend. A lazy git. And thanks)
Midnight Insanity (Welcome back, I was just starting to miss your insane ramblings. Who doesn't love TalaKai?!)
Dancing Wolf (Heehee. Your pseudonym makes me chuckle, and please, stop with the praise, my ears are red enough from sunburn as it is)
Disengage (Hola! Nice to 'see' you again. The effect of a story is wasted if one reads every other sentence, ya know. Tsk tsk)
Vampyre Neko (Holy shizz, I love that song)
Kitsune (Got it in one)
Hiwatari-gurl (Watch out for walls, there)
Kiina (Bug-eyes to ya, too!)
DragonBlade (Believe it or not, yes, it is. Go figure. I hope you're reviewing the right story, I would hate to have to give up one of my precious comments!)
Svart Mirai (Does your name mean something in another language? It sounds cool. Suspense is fun to write, even if I have yet to master its subtleties. Review my next chapter? Coo'. See ya there, then)
Kylvern and Silverjustice (That is a little... weird. Maybe your family is just really, really into mythology? Deletion looms for all of my works. I have approximately ten completed but discarded stories on this computer, and several more floppies)