REPLIES TO REVIEWERS ARE AFTER THE FIC
Ooh, damn. I think that I wrote 'invested' instead of 'vested' in the little intro thing for the first chapter. How airhead can you get? I'm actually really embarrassed about it. It's not like me to make that sort of mistake. Usually the only three subjects I don't fail are my languages.
Look, in general, Chapter One really wasn't my best. I had less than two hours in which to speed-write it, and I didn't even edit it at all. I'm actually considering redoing it. It also wasn't very Kai-like, unless he is a closet poet who writes weird epithets to rain clouds. This, however, is from Tyson's PoV, and he's a bit easier to keep IC. He's more relaxed and ordinary in his writing than Kai, so expect a major change in the writing style.
What else? Oh, yeah. Guys hit on guys, and Beyblade is not mine. Capice?
Sorry. Always wanted to use that word.
"Brownies! Brownies! Brownies!"
"Hilary, Tyson found the brownies."
"So I heard."
"Hey, I like chocolate, OK?" I protested, my mouth full: the way I like it to be. "Eating isn't against the law."
"I found a frog!" Daichi yelled. "Over here in the stream!"
"Cute!" Maxie said. "Ah, cool! It's all slimy!"
"Poor little guy," I said, sneaking another brownie and lying back on the blanket, feeling the grass and the acorns and the small rocks dig into my back through the cloth. "He's probably just wet. You don't have to call him names, you know."
"Heh, then I guess the only slimeball round here is you, Tyson," Daichi snickered.
"What?" I exclaimed, sitting up again and looking around wildly. "You little moron! You're going to get it this time!"
Coward that he is, he hid behind Hilary, who looked at me through narrowed eyes.
"This," she said, "is a peaceful day of rest and relaxation. Beating up Daichi is not on the list of things to do. Got it?"
"Yeah, yeah," I said, lying down again and concentrating on my brownie. Very few things are as scary as Hilary in a bad mood.
It was a pretty cool place, I guess. We'd taken the bus for most of the way, and then walked for a little bit to get here: a huge stretch of open country beyond the outskirts of town, with these tall, beautiful trees and pretty little streams everywhere. OK, I was freezing my butt off. OK, everything was wet. OK, Daichi was being a brainless idiot. Apart from all that, though, it had been a seriously nice day so far. You know that really clean, misty smell that comes when it's been raining? Like mint and roses and water and earth and everything all mixed up together? Yeah. I was lying on a blanket in the middle of nowhere with my best friends in the whole universe, eating brownies and drinking hot chocolate.
Pretty good life, when you think about it.
Then I remembered that the others were leaving tomorrow, and suddenly didn't feel as happy.
We figured, way back after the whole BEGA thing ended, that every summer we could have a Bladebreakers reunion. That way we could stick together and train against each other as well as our other teams. It had worked great. It was like old times again, only even better. I mean, I'd really missed the guys when they left. Maxie is just about my best friend ever, and Rei is so kind and funny and helpful, and Kai is…Kai is Kai, and that's the best thing he could be.
I know now that it was for the best, and I'm cool with how things have turned out – but that didn't mean I wasn't going to miss them.
The Chief sneezed. "Guys, it's getting kind of late," he informed us.
"How late?" Maxie asked.
"It's just four. I was under the impression that the bus came at half-past, so…"
"We're going to be late!" Hilary shrieked. "I knew this would happen! We're going to have to run! Come on, help pack up, quick!"
I got up, chomping down the last of the brownie, and helped Rei gather all the stuff into the two baskets, except for the last flask of coffee, which I had decided deserved special attention. It was while we were packing up that I realised that Kai had disappeared, as usual.
"Uh, guys, where's Kai?" I asked, straightening up and slinging a basket onto my back.
"He went off a little while ago," Daichi said. "I didn't see where he was going."
"Oh, great!" Hilary growled. "Typical Kai."
"Hey, he's allowed to go where he wants," Rei said, fairly.
"Not when he's going to make the rest of us miss the bus!" she raged.
"Relax," I told her, dropping the basket to the ground and finding one of the raincoats we'd packed. Hey, I was not about to get soaked to the skin just because Kai felt like doing a runner. "I'll find him. It's not like he'll have gone too far."
"Just hurry, OK?" the Chief called after me. "Oh, great, it's already raining!"
The path was muddy, and all the little plants along the edge were wet, their leaves shining this deep, green-grey colour. The sky was overcast, and the trees had already lost almost all of their leaves, so their branches stood out stark and stiff against the clouds. Everything was pale, from the little starry flowers hidden in the leafy darkness, their petals all bruised and brown with damp, to the drained, bleached sky, to the droplets of rain clinging to the thin, white twigs. It was like the whole world had been painted silver, apart from the path, which was rich and dark. The rain, which was still a soft, misty little drizzle, floated around me like these teeny tiny feathers. It was kind of pretty, I guess. Yeah, it had been a great day. It was the thought of tomorrow that was upsetting me.
OK, you want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the stupid, embarrassing and potentially life-ruining truth, right?
Right.
You got it.
Kai is…look, he means a lot to me, alright? There was a time when he annoyed me like crazy, and in a way he still does. He's so stuck-up and grouchy and mean half the time. He barely talks to us at all. I guess, though, that that's just how he is. That's what makes him Kai. If he went around giving everyone hugs and kisses and chocolate cookies, then he wouldn't be Kai, which would seriously suck.
And after you get through the fact that he seems to enjoy making me mad, there is that other very unimportant little fact that I actually admire him more than anything. I mean, he's the best blader I know, no question about that. He's dedicated, he's gifted, he's focused, he's disciplined – heh, he's got everything. I know it seems like I can't stand him, and mostly I can't, but he's just so special to me that I can't help but look up to him.
I didn't say that.
I think it was about then that I tripped over a root.
"Nice one," a voice said from above.
I got up off my hands and knees, retrieving the flask of coffee. Luckily, it had been closed when I dropped it and so hadn't spilt. Shivering, drawing the coat around me to keep out the rain, which was now falling hard and fast, I turned and saw Kai.
The path had divided into three narrow, muddy routes, and alongside one of these ran a deep ditch full of dark, wet stones and a few ferns. A little stream, black beneath the spindly shadows of the trees, ruffled white where the light caught it, slipped across the stones. Kai, seated on an old, mossy tree-stump, his chin resting on his drawn-up knees, was following the motion of the water with his eyes, his hair plastered to his face by the rain. He was soaking wet. I think he likes freezing half to death.
"It's your fault," I told him, getting mad again. "I got sent out here to look for you. Apparently the great Kai needs a babysitter." He just grunted and hunched his shoulders. It was only then that I saw that as well as being wet through, his clothes were dirtied, and torn in a couple of places. He had these huge grazes all down his arms: pale blotches of red that glistened in the rain, like some of the skin had been scraped off. "Kai," I said, frowning, forgetting that I had been cross. "What happened?"
"I fell," he said, shortly. "Why are you here?"
"Fell?" I stammered. "Dude, are you OK?"
"Why are you here?" he asked again.
"We're leaving," I said. If he didn't want help, fine. "Hilary was getting freaked about missing the bus. We'd better go."
He said nothing, but slid off the stump and began to walk off in the direction that I had come from. It was raining really hard now, and the path was just a long trail of mud. If you are a normal person, when you are caught out in the rain, you run as fast as you can to get out of it. This prevents you from catching pneumonia and dying. Kai, however, is not normal. He just kept trudging on and on down the track, this little dark blur in the middle of the silver forest, his hands stuffed into his pockets, his eyes fixed ahead of him. Shivering, my eyes streaming, I drew the hood of the raincoat over my head and dashed after him.
"You know the guy with the long black cloak and the scythe thingy?" I asked him, my teeth chattering.
"The Grim Reaper?" he suggested, still not looking at me. I couldn't see his face, but I knew that he would be raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah, yeah, him." I pulled the folds of the waterproof plastic still lower over my face and waved the flask of coffee around. "See? Fear me! I have come to steal your soul! Do not waste your time begging, mortal! I feel no pity!"
Sometimes I don't know why I even try. The guy just kept right on walking.
"You know, if you ask me really nicely I might just let you keep your soul," I suggested. "I could spare you the tortures of the…the…um…the Coffee of Doom."
"Tyson, I hope you realise that you are not particularly intimidating."
"Oh. Um, thanks." I could have sworn that he laughed just a little after I said that, which was progress. I continued, "So, d'you want to tell me what you did to your arms?"
"I told you. I fell. The rocks are loose."
"It looks sore."
Yup, he didn't answer. I swear, he is more predictable than a clock.
"Can I see?"
"No."
"Does it still hurt?"
"No."
"Are you cold?"
"No."
"Are you ever going to give me a better answer than 'no'?"
"No."
"Kai! Do you even know how to have a proper conversation? And don't you dare say 'no'!"
He looked over his shoulder at me with a derisive glance, and said, "No."
"Kai! What is your problem?" I was jogging alongside him to keep up with his long strides. I could feel the small, warm puffs of his breath on my face. "Would it kill you to talk to someone for more than a minute? Kai! Just answer the question, dude!"
"Have you ever noticed that more than ninety per cent of our conversations involve you shouting and me walking away?"
"What kind of answer is that?" I yelled.
I was expecting more silence, or some stupid, mocking answer. What I was not expecting was to see him stop dead in the middle of the path.
"Can we move?" I asked, exasperated. "It's raining. I'm cold. Kai, I'm cold…oh." I found myself staring at exactly the same tree stump that I had seen less the five minutes ago. "Great. Just great. Hilary's going to kill us. We've probably already missed the bus. Which is the right way?"
Like I said before, there were three paths. We were standing in the middle of one of them. He stood still for a long, long while, just looking at the other two, swinging his head slowly from one to the other like a snake's, while I got colder and colder. "I don't know," he said at last. "I thought that this way was right, but apparently it wasn't. We'll try the other two."
"You don't know?" I practically shrieked.
"Now who needs a babysitter?' he muttered. "You don't happen to know which direction we should be heading in?"
"I don't even know how many directions there are!" I told him, aghast. This sort of thing was not supposed to happen. "Just flip a coin or something and pick one. It's cold!"
"So I've heard," he said under his breath, and strode towards the left-hand path.
I hurried after him, saying, "You know, we could just have taken a wrong turn on the other path."
"If neither of these two leads us out, we'll try the first one again," he said, calmly.
It didn't sound like such a good plan to me. This path would probably get us even more lost. Hang on…lost? "Um, Kai…we're not lost, are we?"
"Yes, we are," he said.
"We're going to die!" I wailed. "What now?'
"Now we find our way out," he replied, smoothly. "Look, you cannot get too seriously lost within a radius of less than four kilometres. It'll just take some time."
"Some time? We'll be stuck here for the next billion years! How can you be so calm? We're doomed!"
"Grow up," he snapped. We had come to a fork in the road; without hesitation, he chose the left-hand one.
"Are you sure that's the way?" I asked. "Damn, it's cold."
"Tyson, I know it's cold. I noticed that before you began shouting it at me every other second. There is nothing I can do about it, so stop whining!"
Another fork. This time he chose the right-hand path, as it was wider. The left hand way was not much more than a wisp of trodden-down earth. Mutinously, I followed him, sipping the warm coffee and glaring at the back of his head. It suddenly occurred to me that he was way wetter than I was. He didn't even have a raincoat, and he wasn't complaining. If I looked closely – yeah, his shoulders were shaking. The hair on his arms had risen up, and his fingers were turning a pink-purple colour at the tips. I suddenly felt kind of bad, and doubled my pace to catch up with him.
"I don't care if you say you're not cold, you look dead," I told him. "Here." I slipped the raincoat half off and draped part of it over his shoulders so that it covered us both.
"Thanks," he said, but it was totally emotionless: just a word, meaning nothing, said only for the sake of politeness. He had stiffened, and was walking kind of awkwardly, like he didn't want to touch me more than necessary. That's Kai alright: he doesn't like touching anyone. I've never known whether it was cause of the stuff they did to him at that Abbey place, or whether he was always a loner. I mean, being treated like that for years can do things to you: make you mistrust people, teach you to rely on yourself and no one else. Part of me often wonders what would have happened if Kai had grown up normally. Would he be like the rest of us, friendly and happy and smiling? Or would he still just naturally keep to himself? It's hard to tell. I don't think it matters what happened back then, though, because it's over. He's with us, now, and he has Tala to stand by him, too.
"Want some Coffee of Doom?" I asked, a bit too brightly. Hey, thinking of the Abbey gives me the creeps, OK? It reminds me of the whole Black Dranzer thing, and that is not something I want to think about.
"No," he said.
I caught his arm and made him stop. "Drink," I said, doing my best Hilary impersonation and shoving the flask in his face.
"I don't want to," he said, looking away.
"Oh, come on! You haven't eaten a thing the whole day! You didn't even have breakfast! No one can go that long without food. I mean, just thinking about it scares me. Have some coffee, dude. It's not like I poisoned it."
We were being squeezed closely together by the raincoat, and both of us were still shivering. I could feel the goosebumps on his arms where our skin touched. It was kind of nice, feeling him so close against me. He was solid and reassuring and, best of all, our combined body temperature began to create a little more warmth. Instinctively (OK, and because I like…being around him…) I moved just the littlest bit closer. He was still looking down and away to the side, as though he were afraid to look at me. I pressed the flask against his chest, and his fingers closed around it grudgingly. He let out an exasperated sigh, and lifted it up to his lips, taking a few sullen mouthfuls.
"You hardly drank any of it," I protested. "Kai, don't make me hurt you."
He gave a very sceptical laugh that really made me want to punch his head in. Before I could do so, though, he said, quietly, matter-of-factly, "I think we should save that coffee."
"Why?" I asked. "Drink it now, while it's hot!"
"We might be out here longer than expected," he said.
I looked around. We were surrounded by trees. They were rustling and shaking beneath the onslaught of pelting rain. The path was nowhere to be seen.
Well, that's a wrap. It was definitely better than Chapter One, I think. I got this up sooner than expected, but you will have to wait a while for the next exciting instalment, because the winter holidays end next week. Ain't school a blast?
Anyway, this is the bit where I bow down and worship all those wonderful souls who reviewed Chapter One:
Destruction Devil: Thank you! It means a lot to me. Nice name, BTW.
takuya: Hey! Glad you liked it (does freaky little dance of happiness) Thanks so much for reviewing.
still-trying-to-get-a-life: Hope you liked this chapter. No screaming is necessary, although you can if you really want to. Expressing your emotions is a positive outlet of negative energy, or whatever it is the guidance teacher tells us. I wouldn't know: I prefer to spend most of Health Ed. asleep.
spirtfox: It was good? It was good? Woohoo! Sorry. I am on a review-high over here. Thanks!
luvyagal: Heh, always nice to know that I can count on someone to help me crush Boris into a million billion ugly little itty-bitty pieces. It is, after all, doing the world a huge service.
FeelinGlayish: Thank you! I was a bit edgy about my characterisation of Kai, so thanks for the morale boosting!
TechnoRanma: Thank you, thank you very much. Hope you liked this one, too!
That's it for now. I'll probably work on this at school and try to have it typed up before next weekend. Wish me luck!