And yes, I have changed the title from
How to Survive Without a Heart to Merciless. Many, many thanks to one of my very best friends (who I badgered into signing up for this site as Boadiccea) for sitting with me for many hours and forcing me to think up new stuff for this story (including the new title and summary)! A lot of this has spawned from her great wisdom and new ideas. Again, thank you, Boadicceaaaa :D Your encouragement is always welcome, and always has been since the very beginning of Merciless! Without you, this story probably wouldn't have gotten past the first chapter.
Thank you for reading – but if you are reading and not leaving a review, SSSHTOPPIT! Just click the review button, please? :(
Disclaimer: Kinomiya Takao (Tyson Granger) and Hiwatari Kai and all likeness of Beyblade is © HUDSON SOFT/TAKARA/HASBRO, BEYBLADE PROJECT, TV TOKYO, Nelvana.
FOREWARNINGS: TYKA (duh). Overdose of swearing (duh). Mature themes, mentions of rape, violence. Not for the young (hence the rating of M)! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Don't blame me for any scarring! It's YOUR choice to read this!
Kai yelled out in frustration like a captured beast, pulling as hard as he could against the bars. The handcuffs' metallic edges cut into his wrists. He watched a slightly brighter light flood into the room from around the silhouette of the man he hated as he opened the door. Kai turned his head, left temple against the cold, rusty bars, catching a glimpse of Boris unlocking the cell door.
There were two creaks.
One from the door sealing Voltaire out, one from the door sealing Boris in.
Merciless
Chapter V
Merciless
"Just like old times, isn't it, Kai?" Kai shuddered, inhaling shakily as cold breath from behind him ghosted over the back of his sweat-and-blood-slicked neck and jaw.
A tongue flicked out to lick a drop of blood from his shoulder. Kai wasn't sure if the rattling from the handcuffs was caused by some passing wind, or rather his very own shivering. "I'm glad you're back. I've missed you so."
The slimy muscle made a longer route this time, leaving an invisible track behind it like a snail. It meandered up the back of Kai's neck, abruptly stopping a couple centimeters from the dark blue hairline. Kai stared into the darkness pass the bars, eyes unblinking, form shaking uncontrollably. He was unaware of the panicked pants escaping from between his whitened, bloody lips.
"I would love to continue our little drama," his deep, manipulative voice murmured directly into Kai's ear, "but I'm afraid my break time is over. I have more… pressing," Kai wanted to vomit as he felt Boris press against his back again, "matters to attend to. I must go talk to Tyson, you see."
The weight forcing him against the wall removed itself slowly. The handcuffs chinked against the metal bars as Kai slightly collapsed, half relying on the captive devices to keep him conscious and upright.
"You…" Kai whispered with a hoarse voice he didn't know he owned.
The metal gate to the cell opened and closed again, more metallic chains rattling.
"You…"
Footsteps telling Kai that Boris was prowling around the cage in the shadows.
"You…"
"Spit it out. I don't have all day." The voice echoed from somewhere, but Kai was too delirious to comprehend the direction.
"If you… touch him…" Kai panted, irises expanding and contracting as his vision slipped in and out – or was it pure madness? "I… I'll…"
"You'll what?" The voice was louder. Boris was hovering right next to Kai's chained hands, mocking him right in his own face. "Cry," his breath was rancid, "the next time I fuck ya?"
'No.' Kai's mouth refused to listen to him anymore, refused to make any more sound; but the thought burned vividly behind his crimson eyes.
Boris laughed, reaching in to grab a handful of Kai's hair. He yanked the younger male's head up again to get a better glimpse at the traumatized face that stared off into nothingness – damage assessment.
'But I…'
The hand quickly withdrew, clearly well educated from its last close encounter with Kai's teeth.
'…I swear…'
The door closed, leaving Kai in almost total darkness.
'I will KILL you.'
The room was an office. Wooden, shining as if it was just cleaned with wax an hour before his arrival.
"You will go to jail first," the purple-haired, older man spoke, "and we will break you out after enough time has passed. We don't want the public suspicious."
Tyson banged his fist on the table, causing the body guards stationed in the corners of the room to circle in closer and cock their guns.
"I thought you said you would take me to Kai!" the World Champion shouted, a vein pulsing in his temple. "I did your broadcast! I agreed to come with you, I did come with you! Here I am! Where is he?!"
"Patience, young Beyblader."
"No, I will NOT have patience you son-of-a"
"They could shoot you dead right now, as soon as I give the word."
"Would it let me see him if they did?"
"What do you mean?"
"Did you… kill him?"
"No, not yet. Although I'm starting to wonder how long he's going to survive."
"What exactly have you been doing to him?!"
"You'll see for yourself. The sooner you hold your trial and go to jail, the bigger the chance he has of surviving." Boris let out a twisted smile – his attempt at sweet was like a candy apple gone horribly rotten.
Tyson's fist shook with the pressure he exerted on his own fingers. He could hardly keep himself from running over and beating the man across the table. But he remembered that getting shot in the process would mean death, and that would spell out death for Kai.
He couldn't have that.
"Give me the earliest you can give me. Everyone around the world already thinks I murdered him."
"Tomorrow, then."
"Wha- doesn't it take months for the federal-"
"We pre-booked one. If you had declined our offer, we would have killed him tomorrow."
Tyson felt a shiver go up his spine.
'They plotted this so long ago. The Bladebreakers… Kai was in so much danger for this long...?'
The room was decorated in the same fashion as the office Tyson was in yesterday. Gods, he was sick of these official-looking rooms. He felt trapped, like the only real human in the entire place, despite all of the other bodies surrounding him.
"Tyson Kinomiya," said a darker-skinned woman sitting at a high podium, face stiff as stone, "how do you plead?"
The shuffling of shoes and clothes, the sounds of breathing, they all seemed to fade away in order to hear Tyson's response loud and clear.
"Guilty."
Stormy eyes shifted nervously from side to side, trying to see 360 degrees at once. He felt so insecure, so unsafe here… but he knew you weren't supposed to feel safe in a prison. He would have laughed at the words 'safe' and 'prison' being in the same sentence if he wasn't on the edge of a mental breakdown.
Tyson thought his heart was gonna pop out of his chest, it was hammering so hard. Either that or he was gonna puke it up with the fear in the pit of his stomach.
How could this have happened to him?
Once he was a happy-go-lucky kid that beybladed for fun. And now here he was, walking straight into a jail that he could possibly be trapped in for the rest of his life for a crime he didn't even commit.
'I've got to be strong. I have to do this for Kai… Even if he totally hates my guts…'
He was roughly shoved into a room after his handcuffs had been unlocked by a security guard.
"Welcome home."
The door was slammed and locked.
There was silence.
Tyson scanned the room quickly, afraid to make eye contact with the other inmates; his nerves were screaming at him to get the hell out of there. He found the floor mildly interesting as he stood still, afraid to go deeper in the room.
They were on break time, in the "break room". There was a small, old square TV that hardly even worked sitting behind a thick wall of glass. Its screen was a dome, the opposite of a flat-screen, which gave the impression that it must've been at least a couple of years old. Tyson thought those types of TVs were extinct by now.
There were a couple of broken chairs tossed in front of it. The seats were so grimy that if you sat on them, the layers of bacteria would cause you to slide off. But apparently, some of the prisoners had found a way to stick themselves to the chairs without duct tape, and watched the only electronic in the room with mild indifference.
The floor – well, there wasn't much to say about the floor other than it direly needed to meet a mop, and possibly a repair man. The walls and ceiling were in the same condition. The lights overhead flickered and were spotted with dead bugs half-melted onto the cylindrical bulbs.
And the inmates.
Tyson knew he didn't belong here, and was afraid to even move a muscle.
From what Tyson was able to see in his two-second scan, most of them were burly, giant oafs that were older than him by a couple of years. They were aged to about twenty, from what Tyson could guess. Many of them had scars… and some of them looked fresh.
A voice to Tyson's left spoke in a Persian accent. "Hey look, Fox. It's that World Champ guy."
Tyson's physical body was already frozen; the permafrost extended to freeze his insides as well.
"Yeah, Axe. Didn't I tell you we'd be the lucky ones to get'im in our prison?"
"I know, boss. You were right."
Tyson's eyes flicked up for a second to see what was going on.
All of the prisoners were trained on him with their hard eyes, immobile. The way they were perched on their seats, against the wall, sitting on the floor – just the way they were – it intimidated him. Even if he was standing and they were sitting, it was like they loomed over him with some kind of dominance. Like they were threatening him, like something was going to happen to him no matter what he did.
And no matter what, he had no where to run.
He was a kitten trapped in a lion's den full of vicious beasts that hadn't eaten in a week.
Fox and Axe's conversation continued on.
"Looks like I won the bet. He's mine," said the voice of the Fox guy.
Tyson's heart hadn't slowed down, but only sped up with Fox's choice of words.
Tyson felt something change around him, and looked up, only to be face-to-face with Fox.
Fox loomed over him, staring him down with dark eyes that were hard as metal. Tyson was trapped in that gaze like a fish caught in a net, being reeled back in to the fisherman's boat. Fox's gaze… it was… feral. Like he was a starved fox, staring at a bloody slab of meat dangling in front of him with an 'all-you-can-eat free buffet' sign attached.
"Hullo."
A second figure came up beside Fox, and now two males were hovering over him. Tyson's back was flat against the cracked, gray bricks behind him. He was so uncomfortable with how close they were getting to him. He didn't know when Fox's extremely tanned, sinewy, tattooed arm had been placed over his head, against the wall.
The Persian guy, Axe, spoke again. "Hey, Fox, can I get some action too? I mean, you did mention in the bet that I-"
A giant fist collided with Axe's jaw.
"Do you want your position back? I kindly offered to pass it on to this wimp, but I can make you both share the title," snapped Fox, turning his feral gaze for one second towards Axe, his right hand still clenched.
Axe's somewhat sun-kissed face blanched, skin contrasting against the trail of blood that now ran out the corner of his mouth, suddenly seeming sickened. "N-no, boss, never mind, you can have him, he's all yours," and with that, the younger-than-Fox male took a couple of steps back.
"Good."
Tyson was terrified.
"Aw look, bitch, you're shivering."
Tyson's eyes were wide, they were watering, they couldn't escape Fox, they couldn't see.
Fox brought his face closer to the shorter male's.
"You know what we do to guys that cry?" He smiled sadistically. "Well, it's going to happen to you either way, whether you cry or not."
"W-we need to think up a nickname for him," stuttered Axe, wiping at the blood with his dirty jumpsuit's orange sleeve.
"Don't tell me what to do, ex-bitch." The way that Fox didn't even take his eyes off of Tyson when talking to Axe made Tyson think that Fox didn't hear what Axe had said – he was inspecting the fresh carcass that lay before him. Fox licked his lips quickly, his head subtly cocking to one side. Did he even have eyelids?
"So. How'd you kill'im." That deep voice rattled Tyson's insides.
"I…" Tyson stuttered, nearly forgetting to reply, his voice coming out small. "I… didn't… kill… him…"
Fox's lips peeled back to let out a loud, barking laugh, revealing teeth that looked sharper than any regular person's. But maybe that was just because Tyson was scared to death?
"That's what they all say." His other large hand placed itself against the wall awfully close to the World Champ's head. Now Tyson was completely trapped, barricaded by this big, burly prisoner.
"Tell me how you killed him. Or I'll kill you."
Tyson opened his mouth, no sound coming out.
"You'd better do what he says, kid, or he seriously will kill you," said Axe.
"Hmm. You're too pretty to kill. You have your… other uses." Fox continued. Had he even blinked once since their 'conversation' started?
"I'm called Fox 'cuz people say I resembles one," he said, a cold humor reflecting in his metallic eyes, "and plus I brutally murdered a bunch'a peep's with juss' my hands. That Persian guy, my ex-bitch, is called Axe 'cuz he split someone's head open with one. And now we gotta think of somethin' fittin' for you.
"I know. You're a beyblader right? So you'll be called Blade. Well, I'll be callin' you bitch, since that's what you're gonna be," he said, putting a finger under Tyson's chin and jerking his head up even more, "but the name's fittin'. And I bet you killed that Kai with it, somehow, since your pathetic life revolves around that gay game."
Fox pushed himself from the wall, turning around.
The whole room was silent; they had watched the entire scene. They were ready to listen carefully to whatever Fox had to say. Apparently, Fox was the leader of the pack. Everybody seemed to fear him, even if they were older than him.
"Guys, this is Blade, A.K.A. Bitch," Fox said, hissing the rest of his sentence, "But if I ever catch any of you calling him that last name, you're dead. He's mine."
The others nodded vigorously, "yeah"s and "sure, Fox"s coming from various inmates. A couple gulped in fear, some tried to hide their emotions, but failed.
A loud bell went off somewhere in the facility, and the door opened. A bunch of security guards filed in, loaded down with weapons and other things that scared the crap out of Tyson.
Finally, after most of the men had filed out, the prison guard Tyson recognized from when he first came in to the hellhole came up to him, roughly grabbing his arms behind his back and locking him up with handcuffs. Tyson was lead down several corridors and flights of stairs.
The hallway was badly lit with bug-melted-lights, and they flickered as if there wasn't enough power to go around. Thick, metallic doors lined the walls, and the guard stopped them at one of them. He opened the door, unlocked Tyson, shoved the beyblader in, and closed it.
Tyson collapsed in on himself, falling to the floor to hug his knees to his chest. He was hyperventilating. At least here, here, Fox couldn't get at him…
"Why hello again Blade A.K.A. Bitch. I forgot'ter mention that when I say you're my bitch, you're my bitch 24/7. And lucky you, we're cell buddies!"
Tyson fainted.
Blade
stood in the corner of a grimy gray-tiled room, freezing cold water shooting out of a nozzle to drip down his bare shoulders, back, and legs. He was trying to go unnoticed – well, as unnoticed as one could go when showering with a large amount of people at the same time. Well, he thought, at least Fox had been held up by some officers, so he likely wouldn't appear on the scene for a while.
He ran his tanned hands through his unusually long, dark blue locks that were sticking to his wet shoulders and back. Tyson hadn't bothered to cut his hair in quite a few months – there was just no need to. He glanced around quickly, noticing that a lot of the guys were staring at him. Maybe growing his hair out hadn't been such a good idea…
A measly number of cheap suds ran into Tyson's eyes, and he made a feeble attempt at swiping them out of his vision. But just as he did so, somebody jumped at him.
"Auuugh!" Tyson yelled, being in a harassing position for the third time that day. "Get OFF me, you goddamn perv!" he roughly began to push at the taller male's shoulders, trying to force him away. This tactic didn't work.
Teeth sunk into the side of his neck, and he let out a howl of pain. Others were coming closer, too, but probably not to help the victim.
"You're mine," a guy with a Persian accent growled against Tyson's neck, "an' that son-of-a-beech Fox ain' here, so he can't do nuthin' 'bout it!"
All of the suds were finally gone from his eyes, and he glanced through his pain at the harasser, who was none other than Axe. "Let go of me!"
Axe removed his mouth, leaving a deep bite mark. It was almost vampiric. And that sun-kissed hand atop Blade's chest began to hastily make its way down… The others were catcalling like beasts…
'This can't be happening… This can't be happening again… First Fox, now Axe… N-no… I c-can't take it… Dragoon, help me!!'
The caterwauling stopped. Bodies went flying viciously in all directions, and just as Axe was getting somewhere with his evil idea, he was ripped off of Tyson by a tanned hand that the World Champ was none too happy to see.
"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING TO MY PROPERTY," Fox roared, the more-of-a-demand-rather-than-a-question echoing back at them all at least five times. He was definitely not the answer to the beyblader's prayers. Tyson pressed himself against the wall, forgetting the grime, eyes widening in horror. The water funneling down the drain was dyed crimson red with Axe's blood.
Axe's unconscious, ragged body was strewn on the floor, and Fox's deathly crossfire-of-a-gaze landed on Tyson.
"Are you sure you're alright, Tyson? You look really peaky… and it looks like somebody's been beating you up really bad," said the Chief, leaning closer towards the glass barrier in order to better analyze his friend. Apparently, he'd forgotten that he had glasses tucked into the brown locks of his hair.
'Blade' raised his hands and waved them in front of him, a grin plastered on his face. "Geebus, what are you, my mother? Don't you worry 'bout me, Chief. I'm A-O.K.!" His eyes were smiling as he gave a thumbs up to his younger (and smarter) friend.
"Of course I'm going to worry! You're in JAIL! Probably for the rest of your life!" cried Kenny. "You'll never be able to live like a normal person!"
"Even if I got out of jail, I'd never be able to able to live normally ever again," retorted Tyson quietly, spacing out. Kenny misinterpreted his reply.
"Duh, you have a criminal record now. There's no way you'll ever be able to do anything else. It's not that I'm blaming you – you just wouldn't, no – couldn't - murder Kai. But the problem is trying to prove that you didn't do it, since you yourself said that you did." Kenny banged his fist on his side of the table. "Why did you do that, again?! Please enlighten me!"
"I-it's complicated," said Tyson, eyes darting to his friend's face. "Trust me, I would tell you everything if I could… but I don't want you to get hurt. It's best if you just stopped coming to visit me."
A string of random, startled sounds burst from Kenny's nerdy mouth, specks of spit dotting the glass from the enzyme-y spray. "W-WHAT?! Are you INSANE? WE MISS YOU LIKE CRAZY! You NEED to keep in contact with us or WE'LL be the ones to suffer! We know you didn't do it! You COULDN'T'VE! Why do you want us to leave you alone?!"
"Chief, please… It's for your own good," Tyson stood from his seat, and turned to face one of the guards. Kenny was yelling at him to stop and come back while Tyson began to raise his arms for the handcuffs. He knew the procedure well enough now after three whole months of being in prison.
Several rough knocks on the glass made Tyson's eyebrows furrow in frustration. Couldn't Kenny just leave him alone?!
"Tyson, get your ass back here immediately. I need to talk to you."
Tyson's arms paused in mid-air, and he flipped back around, wide-eyed, to see a seventeen-year-old male with the same pale skin tone as Kai practically hovering over Kenny's small form. Flaming red hair, several strands falling into crystal-clear, crisp, blue-gray eyes… Yuriy.
(FYI, Yuriy is Tala's Japanese name. I think I'm going to call him Yuriy, because "Tala" reminds me of Teletubbies (I don't own that, either). Blegh. Please see the author note at the end of this chapter. Oh yeah, and now that I've got your attention… REVIEW.)
Kenny squirmed under Yuriy's intense aura, finally giving a meager wave to Tyson before disappearing from the room.
The young adult was already seated, forearms resting statically on the table. Yuriy was never a guy to joke, but Tyson couldn't recall ever seeing him look so seriously worn out and drained.
Yuriy was leaning towards the glass, jail phone in hand, his eyes glued to Tyson's face. It kind of creeped him out, how secretive the wolf-like male was acting. He leant in, too, although Yuriy's drilling stare was making him nervous. It was almost the same intensity as Kai's used to be.
"You're good at acting."
"Uhh," Tyson replied.
"Acting like everything's alright to keep from troubling your friend."
"Heh," the World Champ's tan fingers started to play with the long dark-blue ponytail hanging over his shoulder, "yeah… it's all I can do right now to keep them and myself in check…"
They stared each other down for a minute, Tyson cracking under Yuriy's constant stare. He had to avert his eyes.
"There's no way you could have killed him." Yuriy stared unblinkingly at Tyson, reading him like a book. For a second, Tyson saw Fox's ugly mug instead of the good-lookin' cold-hearted wolf beyblader, and forced himself to see through his hallucination.
"How do you know that?" Tyson asked warily, although he was screaming 'INNOCENT!' on the inside.
"Boris," Yuriy's face was hardly fazed, but hatred burned in his icy eyes and dwelled in his words. "He sent me… pictures."
"Of what?"
"Kai."
If Tyson had been drinking something, it would have been all over the glass wall like Kenny's spit. "Kai?!" Tyson exclaimed. "How is h-"
"Keep it down!" Yuriy growled into the phone threateningly. "This place is crawling with Boris' workers. Do you want them to overhear?"
"Wait… Can't they tap the lines here?" Tyson's eyes grew wide with the fear that was dwelling inside him for the past three months.
"They can, they do, but so do we."
"We who?"
"The Blitzkrieg Boys. Ian, Spencer and Bryan are on the site and are filling in a fake conversation for them to listen to while we talk privately. That's why we can't let them see our faces, or the mouthing won't match the fake track."
"Oh, I get why you're being so secretive now."
"Good job." It was always hard to tell when Yuriy was being sarcastic or not. "Look, we need to get down to it just in case we run out of time, which is highly likely."
"O.K., what's your mission, soldier?"
"Like I was saying," Yuriy continued, "we know Kai is alive. So I need to know why you voluntarily put yourself in here."
Tyson's face was solemn. "It was to save Kai. I was told he would be killed unless I followed Boris' orders."
Yuriy's expression didn't change when he heard about Tyson's sacrifice. "Boris sent those pictures to me because he was threatening to kill Kai unless I rejoined Biovolt. I believe Voltaire's after the most powerful bitbeasts, which explains why he's starting off with the three of us. The company's still down, but they're planning to rebuild it."
"They're trying to kill two birds with one stone," Tyson muttered, "trying to get you and me to join them with Kai as a ransom. But... Sorry, but, you don't look like the type of guy who would really give a shit about a hostage."
"I'm genetically modified to have wolf traits," Yuriy said, "and wolves are very loyal. When you're in a pack, you'll do anything for your fellow members. Kai and I weren't close but we suffered through the same things… We've been in the same pack since we were little… and… I've changed. I won't abandon him anymore. He is… my friend."
Tyson swore that he'd never heard Yuriy say so much at once, or with such… feeling. Well, there was definitely no feeling audible in Yuriy's voice, but his choice of vocabulary was different from the last time Tyson heard him speak.
"And since Kai is part of my pack, that makes you part of my pack too."
"So the rest of the Bladebreakers are also in it?"
"No."
"Huh?"
There was the slightest of smirks on Yuriy's face for a split second, and then it was gone. "I need to know everything you know."
Tyson was confused with the sudden change of topic, but continued nonetheless. "Oh, uh…" He leant in as much as he could without looking too suspicious. He whispered as quietly but as clearly as he could into the phone to avoid having to repeat the message. "Boris told me he'd break me out of jail to take me to Kai when the public's convinced that I'm in here for good."
"That should be soon. The media has pretty much moved on to other happenings."
There was an awkward silence, and Yuriy blinked twice to make sure he wasn't hallucinating. His thin red eyebrows furrowed together.
"Why are you crying."
A shiny tear rested in the middle of Tyson's cheek, a thin, glistening tail connecting it to the corner of his eye.
"I…" Tyson's voice was hardly audible, and the poor man was trying hard to keep it under control. "I'm… really sorry," his head tilted downwards to hide the tears away from Yuriy.
"You shouldn't be happy about Boris coming after you."
"I-it's just that…" Tyson glanced up through his watery vision, a look of pure misery on his face, the edge of madness visible in the reflection of his eyes. Yuriy sighed inwardly – he didn't have the time for sob stories – but he could see the intense torture that played behind Tyson's schizophrenic expression, and he knew that if they boy didn't tell somebody about it soon, he'd crack for good. He wouldn't normally – in Tyson's words, give a shit – about this in similar situations, but… Tyson was a part of his pack...
Tyson saw the raw loyalty in Yuriy's pale, vivid eyes. It was coded, impossible for the average Joe to see – but if you knew the programming language, it was decipherable.
"What is it."
"Fox…" Tyson inhaled, his breath rattling, his shoulders shivering. He spoke slowly in an attempt to keep from stuttering and breaking down completely, "and Axe… and the rest of them," such disgust and hatred drenched that word, "they have done… unimaginable things."
His tanned hand covered his eyes, several silent sobs escaping him.
"Tyson…" Yuriy sighed after a moment, glancing up at the guards. They were starting to look impatient and suspicious. Frankly, Yuriy was taken aback that they weren't bothering to listen in to their conversation personally. He deduced that they probably were not Boris' workers. The blader in question wiped at his face with the back of his free hand and looked up through bloodshot eyes, purple-y black bags decorating their underbellies. Tyson was shocked to see some sort of emotion on Yuriy's face; sympathy, understanding, and – was that anger? He spoke through his teeth.
"Kai isn't going to be happy when he hears that. The overwhelming need for revenge consumes both of us. It's very disadvantageous."
Tyson was speechless, his mouth slightly open as if to say something.
"Look… I wish… I could do something… to help you." Yuriy said his sentence slowly – he was treading on uncharted territory. Niceness was not his thing, nor volunteer service. "I might not sound like it, but I do. You shouldn't be stuck with this "Fox" and "Axe" for much longer. Just try to grin and bear it. Keep in mind that you won't have to live your life here. We're going to stay close and track Boris, so when he comes to get you, just know you won't be alone." Yuriy sighed again and furrowed his eyebrows a second time, an opaque look of remorse visible on his features. This was the only time he averted his heavenly eyes to the dirty table top. "If you end up getting abducted by Boris… Things might not change."
Tyson blinked slightly-sane eyes, his dark crazy-plus-insomnia bags seeming to be a lot darker with Yuriy's last words. "You're not telling me that Boris ra-"
"Pretend to be talking to me. I'm going to call Bryan and tell him we're done. Don't move until I nod twice." Yuriy leant in even more, moving subtly so that he was perfectly lined up with Tyson. The less chance the guards could see what he was doing, the better. Yuriy made a swift movement with his right hand up to his face, and then shifted it back while closing his eyes, giving the impression of him trying to fix his hair. It was when Yuriy quickly pushed on something attached to his ear that Tyson noticed the very small chip hanging there.
Yuriy stared straight at the World Champ while talking softly, the words almost inaudible on Tyson's side of the glass. It was Russian. Yuriy made another hair-fix move, and subtly nodded twice.
"I'll see you later, Tyson. Hopefully." Yuriy paused, counting in his head to the amount of seconds he told the others to stop the track at, and stood up from the crappy chair. "And good luck." He tried to give an encouraging smile to the other beyblader, and was only slightly successful. But Tyson understood that Yuriy wasn't able to show friendliness, and gave him a grin back.
"Thank you."
As Yuriy was walking out of the room, Tyson stood up and shouted, "COME BACK SOON!" Hey, it was a good attempt at covering their secretive conversation as a regular, friendly chat. Yuriy turned his head to deadpan at Tyson, inwardly sweat-dropping. Tyson saw the smallest of smiles on his icy features as he closed the heavy door behind him.
"Alright, wise-guy. Back to your cell."
Yuriy's momentary fixer wore off; Tyson deflated as soon as the handcuffs were on him again. He knew what was waiting for him when he got back.
At least he knew that Kai was alive.
ΩΩΩ - Time Jump: two months behind the present - ΩΩΩ
Voltaire growled, breath fogging up a small patch of glass in front of him. He narrowed his age-clouded steel eyes, glaring down at the scientists in the operating room below. The room was a part of the giant basement lab where Dranzer was being held, although she was out of view. They were surrounding a thick glass tube. In the middle of the platform sat a miniature chip with a picture of a twisting, graceful dragon on it.
"Why can't they extract the Dragoon?" Voltaire snapped at the young assistant by his side. The woman jumped at the loudness, as Voltaire had been completely silent for half an hour. "Make yourself useful and ask them what the hell they're doing."
The woman turned immediately and walked a short distance to an electronic panel on the wall. She pushed a button and spoke into a circular speaker.
"Mr. Hiwatari orders a report of your progress," she said, taking her finger off of the button. A couple of seconds later, and a crackly response came back. Frustrated voices rang in the background.
"We've tried everything to extract the bitbeast, but it is too strong. We can't obtain our objective."
"Idiots," Voltaire hissed, "I might as well just do this myself since nobody around here is competent enough to do anything right!"
"Sir, don't go down there! It's dangerous!" the assistant called, running after the aged man that had started to make his way down the stairs. She took two steps down, but hesitated, and made her way back to the observational glass dome.
Voltaire prowled through the room, shoving the scientists who tried to shoo him out to the side. He looked up, taking in the massive tube, and then glared at the chip.
His old, leathery hand grabbed a lever and pushed it all the way up fiercely, ignoring the cries of the scientists. "You'll damage the Dragoon!" A vile, fluorescent green liquid began to fill the empty space, rushing in noisily from the plumbing above it. The bitchip rose, bubbles escaping from underneath it, and it floated in the soup. There was no reaction.
"Where's the electricity supply button?" He snapped at the nearest researcher, and they pointed at one of the many identical buttons. This button was outlined with heavy black. Voltaire smashed it with his thick finger.
Purple and white branches of electricity shot through the liquid, disappearing and reappearing in the substance, its deadly crackling echoing through the glass. The rampant electricity suddenly sprung to the wires and pipes connected to the tube; the lights began to flicker. The beychip glowed with a pale blue aura.
Voltaire's eyes widened. He bolted for the stairs.
There was an explosion. Glass flew everywhere. Electric, acidic liquid flooded from the container that no longer existed, splaying out on everything in the room. The scientists screamed. The assistant jumped back as something broke through the upper observation dome.
Shakily, she looked up, pushing the hair that blew around wildly in the sudden wind out of her eyes, pieces of glass sticking out of her limbs in random places. Through the semi-transparent cloud of debris, two aggressively glowing eyes looked at her. A deep growl rumbled the now unified room, pieces of the ceiling shaken loose and falling. And then, the creature lowered its giant head.
Voltaire stared at the godly, massive beast, its phantom-like form astoundingly beautiful but deadly. It growled fiercely at him, its needle-like, razor-sharp teeth showing. The dragon spirit glared at the old man with a grudging hatred; if Tyson was present, the spirit would gladly be able to kill the vile man. Voltaire backed up as far as he could, acid-burned legs useless. Actual fear and astonishment reflected in the sheen of his cloudy eyes. His long gray hair whipped around his creased, shocked face.
The Dragoon reared its head to gaze farther into the laboratory at a motionless, glowing fiery spirit in a tube similar to his own and roared in anguish. Bigger chunks of the ceiling crumbled on top of the burned corpses of the scientists who were half submerged in the electric acid.
With a flash, the Dragoon disappeared back into its bitchip. It sat motionlessly on the pedestal, a metallic island in the middle of an acidic ocean.
Voltaire closed his eyes, leaning against the steps that were luckily higher than the liquid that covered the floor. Heels clacked against pavement, and two hands grabbed his arm. "Sir, allow me to help you," the assistant said. Voltaire shakily stood up, some smaller debris falling from his clothes and hair, and his employee helped him to limp from the disaster site slowly.
ΩΩΩ - Time Jump: Continued - ΩΩΩ
Boris held the blue bitchip between the fingertips of his left hand, staring first at the creature contained within, then through the gaping hole in the floor to the extensively damaged laboratory beneath. Most of the acid had evaporated through the hole in the ceiling by now. The liquid was too dangerous to touch, so the cleanup crew just left the room alone.
'Who knew such power could come from this bitbeast? Then again, it is the world's strongest.' Boris thought.
'Well… one of the strongest.' He opened his clenched right hand to look at a dark bitchip. A black phoenix stared back.
ΩΩΩ - Time Jump: Finished - ΩΩΩ
The door complained as it was opened, the creaks breaking the heavy silence inside the dark room. The light bulb hanging from the ceiling had long since blown itself out, rendering the trapped beyblader completely blind for months on end.
Boris shifted his red-and-black goggles from his forehead to place them over his eyes, scanning the room with his newly improved infrared vision. Kai was still slumped over on his side, wrists chained together. A rat skittered across the floor, but the teenager didn't budge.
Boris let himself into Kai's cell.
He kicked Kai, who responded by moving ever so slightly.
"Just checking to see if you're alive," the evil man said, "can't have you dying just before Tyson arrives."
Kai's eyes snapped open, even though he knew he wouldn't be able to see.
Boris smirked darkly. He knew that would get the younger man out of his reverie.
"We're breaking him out tomorrow. And I am going to get my chance to get acquainted with your buddy."
A flare of rage shot through Kai's previously lifeless crimson eyes. He was very weak, but his anger breathed life into his will.
And where there's a will, there's a way.
Kai slowly pushed himself up to sit with his back against the bars, speaking with a voice that hadn't been used in a very long time.
"Don't you dare touch him."
Boris knelt in front of the phoenix-less male, placing a finger under his chin and tilting his face up. He smiled evilly again. "Don't you worry, now. You'll get to see him. I'll bring a portable TV in here and set up a camera in the other room so you can see exactly what I'm gonna do."
Kai ground his teeth.
"Why are you doing this?"
"Your… passion is greater when you're pissed beyond belief."
A low growl escaped Kai. Then a memory came back to hit him full force.
He remembered Boris' ugly face hovering near the bars. His old thoughts at the time rushed back to him and took over his mind.
'I swear... I will KILL you.'
So, what'd you think of my subliminal messaging? (The review thing in the middle of the chapter). ;) Please, please review. :(
I'd like to make a poll:
Would you prefer me to switch 'Yuriy' back to 'Tala'? Send me a review with your opinion!
The next chapter is the climax, and the chapter after that should be the end, if the story continues with the mental plan I made today.
Thanks for reading. And please, PLEASE review.
Phoenix-Roar