I'M SOOO SORRY FOR THE DELAY! I've been working on an art history project and I had to make 3 pieces and write an essay, not to mention put together a presentation, and it has been taking up pretty much all my time. Luckily, I turned my paper and did my presentation today so it's all over! Yay! If you are interested, I put copies of them on deviantart. You can go to riotstate . deviantart . com, and they are the three most recent deviations.

Just so you know, "this" is talking in English(or Japanese if you prefer) "—this—" is talking in Russian.

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything except for what is mine.

Of the Eternal and The Undying

By British-Persian Pride

Chapter Four

"Here we go people!" DJ Jazzman yelled into his microphone. The crowd wasn't all too big, since the stadium was so small; most of the people in the stands were the other competitors and their friends. But then again, there were a lot of teams competing, as Kenny noticed when he counted 32 teams on the list. "This is how it's going to work: The first round of 16 randomly selected matches will be the preliminary round. Meaning, if you don't make it through this first match- your team won't be blading in the actual tournament. You already know that the 4 other rounds will be played with your two pairs and one single blader. Keep in mind that you can't change your lineup once the preliminary rounds start.

"The preliminary rounds, however, aren't going to work that way," DJ Jazzman continued. "There will be a coin toss for every match. The winning team chooses one of four options: Let the other team pick their competing blader first, have the other team pick someone from the winning team to compete against whoever the winning team picked from the other team, or vice versa of either of those options. Only one blader from each team will compete in their match. The order of teams will be announced shortly. Good luck!"

The Bladebreakers, with the exception of Kai and Dimitri, stood in one of the rooms for the bladers, just down the hallway from the stadium. The four of them were very frustrated at the fact that they hadn't been able to get an answer out of the two older bladers, concerning Niya, Brandon, and every other weird thing that had happened during the past day.

Interrupting their thoughts, the door opened, and the White Tigers stepped in, bringing fond memories and also adding another mystery to the ever-rising stack. With the White Tigers, entered a girl barely older than Rei, with raven-black hair, nearly black eyes, and wearing tan colored jeans and a blue tank top. But, yet again, she had tattoos on her forearms exactly like Brandon's, except hers were the same blue as Kai's were.

"How are you guys?" Lee greeted his friends warmly, while Mariah gave Rei a hug.

"Good, who's your friend?" Max replied, smiling towards the dark-haired girl.

"Oh, this is Hera. We needed another blader and we found her in Hong Kong," answered Kevin.

"The Bladebreakers right?" Hera asked, receiving nods from the bladers. "I've heard about you," she looked around the room before continuing. "I saw you compete at Worlds… Where is your captain? His name is Kai Hiwatari, correct?"

Kenny answered her, "Yeah, but we don't actually know where he is at the moment…" Kenny looked shyly at the ground, laughing nervously.

As if on cue, the door opened again; this time Kai, Dimitri, and the dirty-blonde haired girl that Dimitri had been talking to the day before came in, and were deep in conversation. They were speaking in Russian, leaving everyone else out yet again.

"Hey KAI," Tyson yelled to get his captain's attention, and he got it. Kai stopped in mid-sentence and shot Tyson a nasty look.

"What?" he asked impatiently. "If you didn't notice, we are in the middle of a conversation that happens to have some importance."

"Che... Maybe if you guys weren't speaking Russian," Tyson muttered under his breath.

"Whoa! Kai has friends!" Mariah balked, staring disbelievingly at the two Russians. The White Tigers laughed at Mariah's statement; only Hera didn't laugh. In fact, she didn't see how that was funny.

"What? Are you mad he doesn't want to be your friend, Mariah?"

Kai smirked and asked, "Hera Chang, right?"

"I'm flattered you remember my name!" She smiled broadly, walking forward toward the three.

"You seem to know a lot of people here, Kai," Rei stated, looking towards the Russian girl.

"My name is Tatyana, and I am not exactly an old acquaintance of Kai's," she said, speaking with an even stronger Russian accent than Dimitri's.

"Yeah, more like Dimitri's," Kai added with a smirk. "She's blading with the Majestics for this tournament. And speaking of this tournament, they should have the lineup down any minute now." The four of them walked into a corner and continued to converse in Russian.

The other bladers looked at them disbelievingly. The next few minutes were silent, with the exception of the four older bladers. The silence was broken by DJ Jazzman's voice on the PA system. "All right everyone! We have the official competition order for you! It's displayed on all the screens so go take a look when your team will be blading. We want to finish the preliminary rounds today, so please check and be on time! And a heads up to the teams Pink Poison and Cold Fire, you guys are up first in 5 minutes! Good luck to all the teams!"

And sure enough, the big screen in the room showed the list of teams in pairs and in the blading order. Kai looked through it quickly and spoke first to the White Tigers. "You guys are fifth and against a team called Lost and Found." Next he turned to Tatyana, "The Majestics are eighth and against the Classics." Tatyana nodded as Kai turned to his own team. "We are eleventh, and up against the All Stars."

"Wow! That was fast," Max said, startled at the prospect at facing his mother's team in just the preliminaries.

"Yeah, I didn't think we'd have to blade such a tough team in the prelims," Tyson added.

Kai rolled his eyes, "All the teams here are good Tyson. He then added under his breath, "or have at least one good blader…" Kai sighed and looked back at the list. "I think it would be a good idea if we watch some of these other matches. Kenny, were you able to get a list of the competitors?"

Kenny opened his laptop and replied, "Yeah, but it was difficult at first because there are a number of teams that added another blader or two in order to make it so they had 5 bladers. But I went to talk with one of the registration staff, and found out the lineups for each team."

"Can you search through those names?"

"Um, hold on let me check… Yes, I can. Any name in particular you want me to check?"

Kai glanced over to Dimitri before saying, "Raven LeRen."

"Alright, is that R-a-v-e-n L-e-r-e-n?" Kai nodded as Kenny typed. "Got a match. She's the captain of a team called Honest Army."

Kai looked over at the list of teams on the screen. "So they're fourth… How about the rest of her team?"

"The others bladers on her team are… Anna Korinov, Vadim Malsky, Zoya Arinov, and Sebastian Noral. The pairs are Anna and Zoya, and Vadim and Sebastian; Raven is their single. That's all I have."

"Alright, thanks. Let's go take a look, shall we?"

"I would like to know how this whole thing is actually going to work," Tatyana said thoughtfully, bringing her hand up to put her bangs behind her ear. This action revealed the back of her hand, where two green triangles were tattooed. Yet the surprise was a good deal less, since the Bladebreakers had already seen four others with similar tattoos. The only connection they could find between the teens was Kai himself.

A.N.: I was planning to make it longer than this, but the next part is going to be quite long, since I didn't want to split it.

review, flame, whatever -- just tell me what's on your mind.

Even if it has nothing to do with my fic...

until next time

the british-scottish-irish-persian-russian