Dark Skies

Serpentine Wisdom

Warnings: Mentions of violence, death, torture andand child abuse

Disclaimer: I don't own Beyblade or any of its characters.

Hush, little baby, don't say a word
And never mind that noise you heard
It's just the beasts under your bed
In your closet, in your head

– Enter Sandman, Metallica

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.
– Virginia Woolf

Chapter Two: S-2841

"You did it Kai, you won over Sergei!" Max's annoyingly excited voice was the first to greet Kai after he returned from the final round of his match. It never ceased to amaze Kai how Max always could sound so cheerful and happy no matter what happened. Must be a defense mechanism, if everyone believed your were happy then you must really be happy. Or something else fake like that.

Fake. Just like Kai himself in a way. As much as he pretended to, he wasn't the Kai everyone thought they knew. He wasn't the grumpy sourpuss of the Team BBA. He wasn't Kai young, genius beyblader. He wasn't even Kai, human teenager. What he was was a genetically engineered soldier – someone, no, something designed for the sole purpose of killing.

He was S-2841, a thing, a possession at most.

"I can hardly believe it, for a second I thought you were a goner."

/Thank you very much Rei, really your faith in me is quite touching. /

"Way to go Kai! I knew you could beat that creep!" Ah, Takao always did have a way with words. If you compared him to whores and hoodlums, that is.

He could hear Kyoujyu's squeaky voice make some equally unimportant comment about the match but Kai blocked out his teammates' voices as he always did and sat down quietly on the bench. That match was so very obviously set-up; the outcome had been decided before either of them had stepped out to the beyblade dish. Kai was glad he had decided to close his eyes the moment he sat down, glad he wouldn't have to watch Takao's ugly mug grin down at him or see the light flash off of Kyoujyu's round glasses.

In the first round Sergei, or NE-1951 as Kai remembered him as, had seemed to want to make an example out of Kai, a warning to all who would try and stand against Biovolt and he had smugly taunted Kai about his nearly impending doom. At that time Kai knew he'd lose. It didn't, however, mean that he had to accept it lying down. That had never been his style. But when Sergei returned for the second round he was different. His face was grim and his posture stiffer than usual, he was deliberately ignoring several openings and neglecting to exploit the slight mistakes that Kai made deliberately after a while to test him. He would never do so voluntarily. Someone else might have over-looked it but Kai was no fool, he knew what Sergei was doing.

He was letting Kai win.

And that bothered Kai more than anything else Sergei could have done, never before had anyone have had to let Kai win. Never before had he been so insulted. If Biovolt had wanted to throw the first match just so there would be more of a contrast for the audience when it was Boris' and Yuriy's turns, that was fine. But they had made it so painfully obvious that Sergei had only lost because he was ordered to, only giving Sergei himself the orders after the first round. They were mocking him, not that Kai's dimwit teammates had caught on.

He cast a quick glance at the other side of the stadium where Sergei stood rigidly, his hands clenched into fists by his sides, seeming to be in a one-sided argument with Yuriy –S-2521, he remembered– who in turn was watching him dispassionately. They were too far away for Kai to hear what they were saying but it wasn't hard to guess that Sergei wasn't pleased with his last-minute orders. No doubt he wouldn't have brought it up if any other Biovolt or Abbey personnel had been present by the benches.

Voltaire and Balkov, the ones in charge of Biovolt, were so sure of their future success that they thought they could afford to throw the first game. They had humiliated him so easily and it burned in his chest and he had to stop himself from baring his teeth and snarling like an animal. He hated being made a fool of more than anything else.

But though the anger burned inside him like a wildfire, a small nagging voice in his said that maybe if he had stayed after the Black Dranzer incident, maybe he would have been just as strong as the Neoborgs. Not that he envied their beyblading talents but in contests, any contest, he could feel his opponent's energy and, to a degree, their skill level and Sergei's skill was better than his at the moment even though Kai was easily stronger in the energy department. And without a doubt Boris and Yuriy were much stronger and much more skilled than Sergei was.

It was, of course, them that Biovolt really wanted to show off. Sending in Sergei before them was like sending in a lap dog before releasing the wolves. Sergei was the calm before the real storm hit, someone that was being used to lull the Team BBA into a false sense of security. And since the Team BBA were the clever and perceptive people they were they fell for it. Even Boris, who was probably still duped up on whatever drug Biovolt had him on at the moment, would have been able to see through such a rouse.

Boris was the first of the Neoborgs he had become reacquainted with when he had returned to the Abbey locking for answers and power. They hadn't spoken a word to each other, just passed by one another in the halls. Boris was being led to his cell and Kai being guided to Voltaire. But that one moment they had passed each other something struck a chord in his memories. He knew this guy, he was as certain of it as he was certain the sun would rise each morning, and not just as a teammate but also as someone he knew to the core of his soul.

However, Boris was, without question, completely and utterly insane. There was something in his eyes that was… wrong. Considering that, it wasn't hard to figure out why he wasn't with the other Neoborgs watching the matches. His mind was too volatile and unpredictable and his nature too ruthless and malicious for them to trust him to behave himself. Ironically, those were the exact qualities that they wanted him to show off. Because if there was something Boris was good at, it was inspiring fear. But still, it was a risky move, Boris was as stated highly unpredictable. He could chose to throw the game on his own just to spite Biovolt or he could let his temper get the better of him and lose his cool.

At the same time that Kai wanted Boris to lose the match so that Biovolt would lose their opportunity to gather more bit-beasts something in him felt a sort of kinship with Boris and wanted him to win. Not that this was something he'd ever share with the world and if anyone asked he'd lie through his teeth. But all the same there was something tiring about lying all the time and for brief moments he sometimes contemplated telling the truth. Such as letting the Team BBA know what they were really up against – if for nothing else then to see the look on their faces.

That was a thought he was quick to discard, however. Sharing was overrated anyway and lies and half-truths were an old habit of his that not even amnesia could shake. The doctrines of the Abbey had followed him from childhood to adolescence without him even realizing it. The irony of it was almost too much. He hated the Abbey, he hated Balkov, he hated Voltaire, he hated every single person and thing connected to the Abbey in any kind of way with the Neoborgs as a sole exception and he was practically the Abbey's poster boy.

Grudgingly though he could admit that it was the harsh training in the Abbey, something his body remembered when his mind failed to, that had kept him alive on the streets of Russia. The truth was that Kai had spent his entire life in Russia and only come to Japan a month before he met Takao for the first time. Team BBA believed that Voltaire raised him in Japan even though he had never said anything to assert to their assumptions. Hard to believe almost but Kai had a –somewhat– natural gift for languages that had helped him pull of the scam. Hell, he was better at Japanese grammar than Takao was. Kai wasn't entirely sure how they had done it, but the Abbey's scientist had figured out some way to manipulate the human brain to make it better suited to, for example, learning languages. So practically all of the more valuable Abbey soldiers were multi-lingual.

Of course he'd lied about what he had seen in the Abbey as well. That anyone could believe that Biovolt would do something as pathetic as tricking children into joining with the promise of becoming great beybladers, as if Biovolt would ever bother to trick them like that. What Biovolt wanted it took without regard to anyone's personal wishes. Just like Kai.

Kai wasn't the type to kill only for thrills, though he did that too, he usually had a motive – in his own mind, at least. Killing, it was something he couldn't escape even if he wanted to. It was his only reason for existence just like a weapon's. The desire to kill had been carved into every little strand of his DNA he couldn't simply not kill. He couldn't. It had been easy in Russia. He had known where to go to find those pitiful souls that no one would miss, those who he could kill without drawing too much attention to himself. Of course he made sure to change his style several times just in case – there was no use in letting the police see a pattern.

Despite his intentions of staying hidden in the shadows he became somewhat of a legend among the homeless. They called him Demon because they didn't know either his name or his features, all they had were rumors of a dark shadow in the shape of a man with glowing purple eyes and like all legends his was greatly exaggerated and still quite true. The eyes were easily explained, they were really glowing per say. He had a pair of extra, see-through eyelids underneath his more human looking ones that were purple in color and that slid sideways like the eyelids of a bird. They covered his eyes automatically whenever he became agitated or intended to fight someone. He had never checked but he assumed they had some substance in them that made them look like they glowed.

Sometimes he could still smell the blood of his victims clinging to him, could still feel its cool slickness caressing his skin when there was none there. Did he imagine it or was he not in complete control of his actions? He didn't know and he didn't particularly care. It was the way things were and if someone died at his hands it was their own fault for being too weak. If you are weak you do not deserve to live. If you are weak you are lower than vermin. That was the truth he lived by.

Day after day living on the streets alone save for Dranzer and lacking a reason to continue. He had nothing to live for, no ambitions or dreams, but he kept on going because somewhere in the back of his head he knew he was a weapon and weapons are supposed to carry on until they cease to function. A weapon has no choice on whether it exists or not, that is up to the one holding it.

He couldn't stop killing. He couldn't stop existing. He couldn't stop running. He was ruled by the instincts the Abbey had forced upon him and he couldn't stop himself. It was nothing special. He could endure it he had no choice. But as he spent more time away from the Abbey and Biovolt and their experiments… he found a voice inside him screaming: I want to be free.

He didn't know where it came from. He didn't even know what he wanted to be free from. Watching and observing other people he tried to understand what freedom was. He heard the word, he knew its definition but he could not grasp its concept. It was useless to even try, he thought. The humans didn't understand it any better than he did. He gave up.

Moving from town to town he never stayed in the same place for long. Something was tracking him, had been for years. Dark shapes lingering in shadows. Footsteps so soft no human ear could detect them… they were always chasing after him: the Damned, hunters in the dark with eyes like his own. Their legend was up to par with his own as they supposedly drank their victims' blood like a vampire and only ate human flesh, the guardians of Hell that came to earth to torment the living and steal their souls. It was said that if you ever saw the face of a Damned your body would rot around your still living, still conscious soul.

The horror stories about them were endless and never ceased to incite his disgust, fairy-tales and children's' stories. He never quite understood where they got it all from though to be fair he never tried to find out, but still he thought it was a little bit too melodramatic. Sometimes they would come to cities or village and take some of the younger homeless or neglected children with them, anyone over the age of thirteen was killed immediately if they saw something that they weren't supposed to see. No one ever knew where they would strike or when, they only knew they never came to places with a lot of people – if they were the kind of people that would be missed. There wasn't really any use in hiding for the children. If they wanted to find you there was no place that was safe. Only the older kids and the adults had anything to gain by hiding. If you hid than you couldn't see anything important and maybe you'd live another day.

No one ever saw those that were taken alive again but on rare cases Kai would find the rotting corpses of children he knew the Damned had stolen away. Sometimes he couldn't recognize their bodies as those of a humanoid creature. He had even seen the carcass of a boy that was more dog-like than human with only a few little anatomic differences. But the human-animal hybrids were never thrown into some dingy alley to rot. He had followed the damned a few times on a disposal rounds and found out that they took the bodies to be cremated at the local morgue if they looked too inhuman to be taken as something else as a freak of nature. It was only those that were deemed worthless within the first week that were left carelessly left for dead without being destroyed because the medications and surgical experiments didn't start until after the first trial week.

Throughout the thirty years that this had been going on there had only been ten reports about it to the police and that had been in the first year since it started. After that people realized that it was useless. The government protected the damned and their superiors and anyone who brought too much attention to them or started snooping disappeared at either the hands of the secret police or the damned themselves. It wasn't common knowledge even among the ones initiated but it had been Stalin who had initially thought up the idea only he had died before they had the right technology for his notion to come true. Instead it had been Voltaire Hiwatari, a prominent member of the communist party and personal "friend" of Stalin who had continued his vision.

Biovolt was everywhere, in the post office, in the supermarkets, in the police, in the government, anywhere and everywhere. But they didn't know where he was and he had intended to keep it that way. That was why he moved so often and tried to avoid catching the attention of the police. Because he never stayed long and what he was, he never talked much but sometimes he would overhear conversations about himself or the Damned. Rumors were rarely true but they were even more rarely built only on lies and Kai had needed every single piece of information he could get.

The kind of people that had the information he was looking for were the kind that were willing to do anything to survive, the kind that had learned early on that life was not kind and never fair. Tired and desperate, the perfect material for future Abbey soldiers and the most sought after. They weren't preferred because they had exceptional skill or intelligence, that the Abbey could give them if they lacked, but because they were already defeated; weak and easy to break.

Without even thinking twice about it Kai had searched for those typical, almost unnoticeable, tell-tale signs of Abbey material. He did it to everyone he met automatically but his perspective changed over the years and he found himself comparing everyone to the finished product instead of the raw material. It was why he despised Team BBA. He had taken one look at them and found them lacking. Reveling in their weaknesses, joking and laughing like a bunch of fools. They would never have been able to survive the Abbey; they had too much too lose.

Normally when anyone was brought to the Abbey they didn't have much to lose, no family and few friends, not even a home. Team BBA had families, they had friends and they had homes. They had been allowed to be children their entire lives. So when going through the Abbey training they would have had something to miss, something to compare this hellish life to, and it would be too much to bear. It irritated him that they could have so much without even realizing it and still demand more.

But above all other reasons, was the fact that Kai admired power and strength. He always had. Team BBA had powerful bit-beasts all right, but that was all they had. Their mental strength was, in Kai's opinion close to nil. It couldn't be anything else. Team BBA had been raised to be weak, lazy and overly friendly in situations when they should be hard as iron. They even made the mistake of thinking of Kai as their friend. He barely knew them and they didn't know anything about him worth knowing so what made them come to that conclusion he didn't know. The only ones he could maybe, hesitantly, call friends were the Neoborgs.

Kai had never known why he had the strange urge to run as fast as he could to get away from the Damned. Running away was never something that had agreed with him and somehow… he felt like… like he belonged with them. It was a strange feeling for someone who was always completely and utterly alone. At times when he had been close to being captured he wondered if that was not exactly what he wanted; to be back with those he belonged with. It was only a little voice in the back of his head that warned him that no matter what, he could never go back. And he had listened to it.

Until the world championships in Moscow.

With the walls separating him from his memories crumbling around him he was strangely vulnerable. To know his past in its entirety was a passion that consumed him and turned into obsession. It was the first real passion he had ever had, he would recall later. He had left Team BBA not for the promise of power, though that was a factor as well, but for the sake of retrieving the lost pieces of himself that he knew could only be found within the cold, foreboding walls of the Abbey.

He found what he was looking for in the Neoborgs. They were the ones he belonged with. They were a set of weapons, the ones he always expected to be by his side that were never there. Their movements and gestures were imprinted in his mind and he knew they were the most important parts in his life, were he anyone else he would have called them his precious people. The only ones he would not lift his hand against with murderous intent.

Now that his memories had begun to return at a more rapid pace –in fact, ever since he'd got Black Dranzer for the first time memories just seemed to be welling in– Kai could remember them quite clearly. Especially Yuriy and Boris who were both exactly the same age as he, with not even as much as a second's difference, and both as inhuman as he. Artificial creatures with strength and speed that no other humanoid being could ever dream of. They were his brothers in a sense beyond mere blood ties.

Boris had shared a cell with him in their early years before the Abbey… changed him. They were always made to fight each other in training but instead of breeding animosity as had been expected it brought them closer. They were young and not quite as broken yet back then and they found a kindred spirit in one another. After all, they were two vicious, ferocious weapons with very many in commons besides that.

But Biovolt took Boris away for his special training and when he came back he was shattered, broken. A shade built of nightmares, suffering and hate. No one was quite on the clear on what had happened to him and no one liked to think about it; Biovolt's scientists had tampered them all with and they knew that monsters like Boris were not easily created.

And Yuriy…

"Hey Kai, you in there?" Takao's obnoxious voice broke through his chain of thoughts.

"What is it?" His famous Glare of Certain DeathTM still worked wonders because Takao who hadn't been expecting such hostility hesitated for a moment and looked a little bit nervous, unfortunately he quickly regained his usual carefree attitude.

Kai liked to compare him to a cockroach: it didn't matter how many times you shot him down he would always come back to bother you another day. Of course Takao had no idea of how dangerous he really was and he never would fortunately for him because he would not have survived it. Kai couldn't let anyone figure out his little secret quite yet when he had worked so hard on keeping it as it was supposed to be: secret.

Who knew what would be done with him if the world found out. Humans, though vastly inferior to him in every imaginable way, were superior in nothing else than sheer numbers but that was enough. Kill one and twenty others would take his place; there is a limit to how long a weapon can keep on fighting on autopilot without someone directing them. Kai was a weapon he was not immortal. He was strong but he was alone against the world. Humans were predictable; they wouldn't stand for the experiments done by Biovolt. Look only at how they treated the mere idea of cloning another human. Of course Kai wasn't human and neither were most other of Biovolt's projects but he looked like one and that would be enough for there to be public outrage at what had been done.

Kai wouldn't mourn Biovolt's fall should it come to pass but he admitted there were certain benefits to take part of their training. Say what you will about their characters but Biovolt's instructors were the most skilled in the world. Had he stayed under their thumb who knew how strong he would have been now? And power was always important aspect to take into consideration. However, he had no wish to reacquaint himself with some of the Abbey's more… harsh training.

He remembered all too well now the days and nights he had spent in the isolation cell when he hadn't progressed enough or the trainers felt especially sadistic. Several of the children brought in from the streets died in there. Even after going through various tests and alterations they couldn't stand the cold and the starvation as well as the artificial lab rats, as Kai's kind were called, could. He knew because he was sometimes one of those on clean-up duty when it came to removing the corpses from the isolation cells. It was a little bit tricky at times to remove all of the corpses as they tended to freeze stuck to the floor, skin to stone. It was a real bitch to get them loose without some pieces breaking off.

The guerilla warfare training had actually been thrilling, for the lab rats anyway –they always ganged up on the natural born– it was their instinct to hunt and kill prey. The mortality rates of those lessons were surprisingly low but they instead had the highest rate of serious wounds. The medical section always complained about all the almost-crippled, almost-dead "students" they were forced to take in. No one complained to being taken to the medical ward in turn but most would rather have been left to die then be dragged there. The symphonies of screams that echoed through the lower planes of the Abbey were a nagging reminder of just why everyone hated to take a little trip to the doctor.

Only the scientists were worse and even the lab rats feared them. It was a mind-breaking experience, lying on a scientist's table, screaming and pleading until your throat was too sore for a mercy that would never come. At least lab rats had the sense to stop screaming after the first few times. Of course sometimes that was only because they were choking on their own blood or fainted from the pain – the scientists never bothered to use anesthesia on the lab rats.

That was not all that happened there, far from it, but Kai rarely bothered to think about it. To put it simply it was a place where weakness meant death. In a strange way it was still home. Rather strange considering what he had gone through there but Kai wasn't a person and in his mind that was the only excuse he would ever need. There was something about the grounds of the Abbey that was important, something he couldn't quite put his finger on.

After having lived all his life in such a place as the Abbey it had been strange when he first came out on the streets. Amnesia notwithstanding he still did not behave like an ordinary child and he had been unable to adapt to the society he found there. He escaped his first, and only, orphanage after merely three days. The close contact with other people had had him on edge and he'd broken the arm of a "fellow orphan" and crushed the ribs of another for touching him on the shoulders. Immediately after his misbehavior he had left in the classic hit-and-run style he would employ when he started killing.

"Hey man, don't look at me like that. We were just congratulating you and you just zoned out completely." Kai glowered at Takao, wishing he'd shut his mouth for once, not that Takao noticed. "The second match starts in about five minutes. We are so going to kick their sorry asses all the way back to the Abbey!" He exclaimed. "Right Rei?"

Rei, who sat next to Kai, turned his head towards them and flashed a fanged smile in their direction. He got up from the bench with sort of grace that spoke of years of martial arts training to go meet Boris who was already in place on the other side of the beyblade dish. If Boris was in a bad enough mood, which he usually was, this could very well be the last time anyone ever saw Rei alive. The Chinese blader certainly had skill in fighting, it could be seen in his posture and in the way he moved. But he was no where near a match for Boris who was the fastest of all the lab rats –so fast that at times even Kai couldn't see him move. Predictably enough Rei, though more modest than Takao, answered confidently that with Drigger, who had returned not long ago, at his side he couldn't lose

It reminded Kai of when he had thrown Dranzer away after noticing that his memories came back more quickly without it around. He would never have so much confidence in a spirit to help him out as Rei seemed to have. Oddly enough he would never throw Black Dranzer away as carelessly as its red counterpart. Black Dranzer felt like a part of himself instead of just an otherworldly spirit.

Kai frowned. "Don't underestimate Boris, Rei. He's a much stronger fighter than Sergei is, and to top it of he's completely ruthless, watch out for yourself, okay?" It was peculiar how easily the sentence slid over his tongue, a lie in itself to protect the character he was playing. Concerned but in a gruff, I'm-not-used-to-being-concerned kind of way that fit excellently with the Kai that Team BBA were familiar with.

Predictably, Rei nodded understandingly and the smile slipped of his face to be replaced with a more serious expression. He could always count on Rei to be mature when it was necessary. Though unfortunately the same could not be said for the other two active Team BBA members.

"I will, but you better get Takao to be a little bit more cautious about facing Yuriy, we don't need having him make any stupid mistakes. If the Neoborgs win this match he will have to be the one to stop Biovolt."

/Takao winning against Yuriy? You have too much faith in him Rei. Takao is weak. /

The outcome of these championships was clear: Biovolt wins again

Rei only had a very slim chance of beating Boris, and it would most likely only happen if Boris wanted to be defeated, but Takao might as well hand in the towel his fate was sealed when he picked Yuriy as his opponent. Yuriy wasn't like Boris, he wouldn't just let someone win because he felt like it or lose his composure just like that. In all likelihood he had the entire match planned out to the slightest detail already and was just waiting for his time to cause some damage.

Yuriy was standing to himself a few feet away from Sergei who was sitting with a somewhat sulky expression on his face as far away from the red haired team captain as he could. He didn't even spare the tall blonde so much as a glance; instead he was looking at Takao with his arms crossed over his chest. His face and eyes were neutral, as always, but the tension in his posture told Kai he was anything but calm. Yuriy's temper was actually worse than Boris' was but he never let it control him; he was a creature of logic and calculations.

But that was only the surface and underneath it there was a rage boiling hotter than lava and right now all that anger was directed at Takao who was too stupid to notice, at least that was Kai's theory. This was about more than just a challenge, though Kai could easily see Yuriy being offended that the snot-nosed brat thought they were in the same league, Yuriy was too angry, too hateful for that to be it all. What it was, however, Kai couldn't say. He had never tried to figure out Yuriy's mind only accepted it as it was. If Takao was Yuriy's enemy then he was Kai's enemy as well.

It didn't matter that Takao and his team had saved his life, or at least that had been their intent, in a situation where Balkov would have left him to survive on his own or die in the attempt. He felt no gratitude or companionship with them whatsoever. He only endured their presence because they were against Biovolt. On his own Kai could never go against his former superiors, it was an impossibility. However he could let himself be used by someone else against them, a weapon didn't discriminate after all. But until his users saw the necessity of Kai's own ruthless tactics he couldn't do much so he had to make them realize just what it was like living in a world where Biovolt was god.

"I'll try. Good luck." Now all he had to do was wait for the inevitable.

Outside the skies were dark with heavy storm clouds.

To be continued…