Hey all readers. I think it's obvious that the names of the Bladebreakers in this story are not mine. However, Sam Coredori and her bitbeast Drazema. Along with the team the Carnivora Catz and their bitbeasts are all mine so please don't take them without my position. Thanks bb4564
Chapter 15 - Training and Tempers!
They reached their hotel twenty minutes later and quickly headed inside to escape the cold. Mr. Dickenson had managed to book three rooms side by side on the second floor, and going by the crowded lobby, it was just as well they had pre-booked. With the championships coming up, all the hotels in Germany were completely booked.
As they made their way to the elevators, Mr. Dickenson explained the arrangements. "Each room is a double, so there will be two team mates to a room." All eyes flickered towards Sam nervously. Sam rolled her eyes. "Oh, don't worry, I don't have cooties or anything." Mr. Dickenson nodded his appreciation as he continued. "I will be staying at the BBA headquarters here in Germany. If you need me here's the number were you can reach me." He handed Kai a small card, which he placed in his pocket.
By now they had reached the elevator and were waiting for it to arrive. "As for the sleeping arrangements, I'll leave it to you guys to arrange that." Just then the elevator dinged announcing it's arrival and the doors slid open. "I had best take my leave now. Good luck with your training and I shall see you all at the championships." With that he headed out through the crowd, leaving the Bladebreakers, standing in the elevator and looking at each other, wondering which one would be sharing with Sam.
Sam smiled and reached into her pocket. Pulling out a coin, she looked at each boy in turn. "Heads or tails?" After a few flips the sleeping arrangements went like this: Max and Ray, Kenny and Tyson, and –yes, you guessed it – Sam and Kai. Upon this outcome Sam groaned loudly and headed towards her room. "Of all the rotten luck." The rest of the Bladebreakers smiled, except Kai, who was also thinking about his awful luck – but in his head!
Everyone went to their designated rooms, and to save time I shall briefly describe one of them as they all looked pretty much the same. The rooms were more like miniature apartments: a kitchen/dining room was in the very center, with the lounge/ entertainment room to the left and to the right two separate bedrooms side by side and a bathroom opposite them. Sam claimed the first room and went straight in to unpack. There was a double bed (have I mentioned that this is a very expensive and posh hotel?!), walk in robe, two chests of drawers and a small cable TV in both rooms. There was also a window, which overlooked a small park.
Once Sam had finished unpacking she went and explored the rest of the room. It was really quite large. The bathroom held a shower, bath/spa and vanity. The toilet was in a separate room beside the bathroom. The lounge/entertainment room had two sofas, which could fit two people comfortably, and an entertainment system including a large cable TV, a built in sound system and a DVD player. Sam whistled appreciatively and went into the kitchen. Kai stood there looking out the window at the park.
Unsure of what to say, Sam was relieved when a knock suddenly sounded at the front door. Walking over, she saw the rest of her team standing there. Tyson was the first to speak. "Did you know we get free room service?" Sam smiled and shook her head, stepping aside and letting them all in. Kai by this time had stepped away from the window and was now looking at a small map of the hotel on the wall of the hotel. "There is a large training room at the bottom of the hotel, on the floor beneath the lobby. We will all meet there at 0600 tomorrow to start training." Tyson raised his hand. Kai glanced at him. "Just for those of us who don't speak G-I-JO…is that 6 o'clock…in the morning?" Kai smirked.
"Problem?" Tyson nearly fainted.
"But that's so early. No one will be awake then!"
Kai nodded. "Which means the training room will be empty, making it easier to train." Everyone else nodded at the logic, except Tyson who was groaning loudly to exclaim his protest. Sam smiled. These next few months were sure to be interesting…
Interesting – as Sam later discovered – wasn't the right word for it. Excruciatingly irritating would have been far closer to the truth. Kai was relentless in his training. Insisting on 6 o'clock starts everyday. Excluding weekends, when the training began at 8, to give then a chance to sleep in and relax for a few hours. Training would then run until 7p.m with a one-hour break at 12, when they got to have lunch.
Sam soon got used to blading with her new team. Drazema hadn't done anything strange during a battle since she had left Hong Kong, which she was silently grateful for. She also hadn't revealed Drazema to any of her team mates yet, or used any of her really powerful attacks. After all, where was the fun in ruining all the surprises?
Sam would have found this routine easy to stick too, if it wasn't for the nightmares, which woke her up continuously throughout the night, depriving her of much needed sleep. Ever since her run in with her old team, memories of her past had returned, memories, which she sincerely wished she could forget. However after a couple of days, she was beginning to feel the results of this lack of sleep, becoming very short in temper and extremely skittish.
Then the phone calls had started. One week after arriving and Sam started getting strange phone calls on her mobile. She would answer, but there was never an answer, just heavy breathing. As far as she knew, no one else knew about the calls. No one that is, except Kai. A couple of times, she had been in the shower when her mobile rang, and Kai would answer it. The person on the other end would laugh when Kai answered before hanging up making Kai more and more suspicious of who the caller was.
But it didn't just stop at phone calls. A couple of times, when they had been out shopping in Germany, Sam could have sworn they were being followed. Sometimes she saw a tinted black car creeping down the street or a person staring at her. But seeing as she was always with her team, they never made a move. She was sure however, that they were just waiting for a chance to get her alone…a chance she was not going to give them. The last thing she wanted was to be taken back to…that place.
All in all, the last few days were beginning to really take effect on Sam. It was on this one particular day however, that Sam really lost it. She and Kai were bickering as usual, and Sam's nerves were growing increasingly short. Finally Kai turned to face her. "You are so immature!" he said, rolling his eyes and crossing his arms over his chest. It was three weeks since they had arrived and they had just reached the training room. Today, being Saturday, meant there were quite a few teams practicing, but they still managed to find a spare training dish.
But training was the last thing on Sam's mind. "Oh yeah!" she replied, "Well at least I don't wear face paint like some three year old!" Kai glared at her. "I don't have time to continue this stupid argument. I have more important things to do."
"Like what?" Sam demanded.
"Like training." Sam pulled out her blade.
"Great," she replied, "how about we kill two birds with one stone and settle this in the dish?" Kai narrowed his eyes. "Your funeral." Sam smiled.
"Glad to see I'm starting to rub off on you. Ready? 3…2…1…LET IT RIP!!!!"
Both blades hit the dish simultaneously and began circling the dish at high speeds. Sam decided she'd make the first move and immediately charged for Kai's blade. The collision had little effect however and her blade rebounded off his easily. "Again, Drazema!" Drazema obeyed but still this had little effect on Kai's blade. Kai had his eyes closed and arms folded, keeping his face passive. After several more attempts, Kai decided he had had enough.
Without even opening his eyes he commanded his blade. "Dranzer! Attack now!" Dranzer obeyed and headed for Sam's blade. Colliding with it, Sam's blade was sent spinning towards the opposite side of the dish. As it made it's way up the rim, Sam intervened. "Drazema! Left twist and use Black Inferno!" To Sam's amusement, Kai opened his eyes and stared down at the dish, with a slight hint of interest in his eyes.
Sam glanced behind her, her eye's locking with Kenny. "You ready? Cause this is going to be over quick!" Kenny nodded and began typing furiously away on his laptop. Dizzi's voice could be heard begging him to ease up before she blew a circuit. Meanwhile Sam blade, Drazema, was whizzing in a zigzag motion across one half of the dish at such amazing speed that Kai was barely able to see it. Kai was a little surprised that it had such agility and yet could remain in such control. He drew his mind back to the battle at hand and watched as Sam's blade continued to move across the dish.
He soon noticed black flames rising from the dish. As they grew in intensity Sam's voice seemed to rise with them. "Ok Draz, time to come out and play!" On her words, there was a loud howl and a blinding silver light shot from the blade, followed a second later by Drazema. Everyone stared in shock at the sight of Sam's bitbeast. The black panther looked magnificent and powerful, with the silver eagle wings protruding from its shoulders and its sapphire blue eyes that instantly focused on Kai's blade. Kai kept his face emotionless as Drazema suddenly started spinning in the middle of the dish, drawing the flames toward her until they formed a large pillar around her. Then she shot towards Kai's blade and collided with it, sending it out of the dish.
Grabbing his blade from mid air he let out a gasp of shock. His blade was burning hot!!! Sam smiled as she recalled her own blade, seemingly unaffected by the heat of her own blade. "Just thought I'd heat things up a bit," she taunted, "you're not afraid of a little fire are you?" With these words she simply reloaded her launcher and aimed it back at the dish. "3…2…1…LET IT RIP!!!!" This time Kai's blade hit first and he wasted no time in taking the first attack.
"Dranzer, get her now. Use fire spin!" Sam smiled. Some things never changed. She watched as Kai's blade came rapidly towards hers and collided. Her blade instantly was thrown out of the dish. "You still got beaten by that attack," Kai gloated, but Sam only smiled.
"Just wanted to make this victory more momentous!" she replied, getting ready to launch her blade. Kai cocked an eyebrow as he once again fired his blade into the dish. "Dranzer! Let's make this quick and painless. Get her now!" Dranzer instantly rammed into Sam's blade, sending her spinning towards the edge of the dish. Sam smiled. This was just what she wanted.
"Drazema, back spin!" Sam yelled as her blade hurtled towards the edge. Drazema immediately obeyed, spinning backwards and full speed and loosing momentum on the rise of the dish. "Come on…come on." Sam murmured under her breath as her blade continued to speed up the side of the dish. "Ok! Drazema now forwards spin and hard right! Let's show them what we can do!" Drazema obeyed, allowing her speed to pick up as she spun up to the edge of the dish and started circling the top rim.
By this time a crowd had gathered around them and they yelled words of surprise and awe. Sam blocked these from her mind. "Come on Drazema, let's give these people reason to cheer!" Drazema instantly flew down the center and flew past Kai's blade, missing it by mere millimetres. Kai smirked. "Obviously you can't control your blade at high speeds!" he gloated, looking up at Sam. Sam just smiled venomously at him. "Obviously, you can't control your ego!" Kai looked back down in time to see Drazema fly off the edge of the dish and come hurtling back down, doubling her momentum and she hit the dish and flew towards his blade.
With this added momentum her blade also gained more strength and the collision caused Kai's blade to fly from the dish and into Sam's hand, before she recalled her own. "And to think I didn't even need to use any special attack to beat you this time." She teased, tossing Kai back his blade as the crowds around her cheered and headed back to their own dishes. Kai looked down at his blade and back up at Sam who had moved off to practice somewhere else.
She stopped at the other side of the training arena where Max was practicing. Some cones had been placed in a zigzag pattern over a dirt floor. The idea of the training is to get your blade to go through the pattern without knocking over any cones, before returning again. This is no uneasy task for any real professional, but what makes it really tricky is the dirt surface on which the cones were placed. This surface was designed to be unstable, making control of the blade all the more difficult.
Max smiled when he saw Sam approach, before firing his blade. It hit the dirt and sped towards the first cone. It passed it easily enough, then round the second. By the third it had gained a lot more speed and skidded a little around the fourth cone before running directly into the fifth cone, toppling it over and coming to a stop. Max recalled his blade and stepped back to allow Sam a go. Sam smiled and fired her blade. Like Max her blade took the first two without any difficulty. But unlike Max, she managed to control her blade for the entire track, and it returned to her easily. Max and her laughed at some shared joke before she went on to coach Max with his blading.
Kai was impressed that Sam seemed to be able to handle it so easily and at great speed too. Mr. Dickenson had been right when he said that Sam was no amateur. Kai shook his head and went back to his own training. On their first night in Germany Kai had asked Kenny what he had found out about Sam and her blade while on the plane but Kenny just shook his head. "Nothing," he had replied. Kai had been a little shocked. But Kenny simply explained that there was absolutely nothing on record about Sam or her blade, except for a few papers about the Carnivora Catz where her name had been listed as being one of the team members. This only made Kai more curious. There was definitely a lot he had yet to learn about this mysterious new blader, and the sooner the better.