... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...Dis...claim...er:... I... Do.... not... Own... Bey...blade... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Yes, yes. I am well aware of how long I have been away. And I don't have very long before I go back to school, so that doesn't leave me with much time for writing. (It certainly doesn't help that I have family visiting.)

Recap: Mr. D has asked our favorite chracters in the whole world to each train a team of 8 year olds during the summer. At the end, a tournament will be held to see which team is the strongest. In the last chapter, Tyson, Max, and Ray meet with their teams. If you read this before and are coming back to it, I suggest you go back now and read the first two chapters. Not that it is even slightly important for this chapter. And now, you will read about Kai and his team of kids.

Warning: I feel as if I have to put this in here as a warning. There is mention of suicide in this chapter, but it's not the angsty kind you are probably thinking of. But I did move the rating to T. What can I say? I am just not the adventurous type.

Note: If you see underlined words in the story when someone is talking, then that person is talking in a different language. In this chapter, it's going to be German.

Thankies to my reviewers! Aki no Kaze, 5namida, kailinne arami, fawks136, FlourescentBlackNightmare, Kitty Kat K.O., Cause-and-Effect, sasuke chica, 24 Demon Ice Mirrors, and last, but first to review, Letydiaz.

________________-_-_________________

Kai and his Kids

Clovis was sitting near the middle of the bus. His dark blue eyes had practically been glued to the glass of the window since the bus had left the station over four hours ago. His white blond hair was slicked forward to lay flat on his head. This boy was vastly intrigued by the foreign scenery that passed beyond the window. He had never been out of his homeland before, so the things he saw outside the world of the bus was very interesting to look at. It was almost as exciting as the whole reason he was there in the first place.

He glanced away from the window to look at his friends. His teammates. Adalric sat on a bus bench closer to the front and on the other side of the bus. He was the taller one and had brown hair that curled slightly into loose ringlets. He was the more reserved of the two. Clovis liked to think of the other boy as a river, a constant strong force that flowed with a deceptively easy pace. Almost as if he were sensing the other boy's gaze, Adalric shifted in his seat to glance back at Clovis with sharp hazel eyes, almost as if he were checking up on his younger teammate. Clovis gave the other a short wave of his hand to let him know he was fine. Satisfied, Adalric turned in his seat once again to face forward.

Sitting next to Adalric was their leader, Derica. She lay with her head resting against the window. Her eyes were closed, but Clovis knew that she was not asleep. Her dirty blond hair was short enough to almost be considered boyish. It was streaked with natural highlights, a piece of it following her jaw line to frame her face. She was about the same height as him, but when they stood together, her resolute personality gave her the appearance a being a few inches taller. If Clovis thought of Adalric as a river, then he must have seen Derica as the ocean. She had a mesmerizing, steady pull about her. She was the reason they were here right now, riding on this bus.

Next, Clovis swiveled around in his seat to look at the very last row of seats in the bus. Only one person occupied the back half of the bus. Everyone that had sat back there had instinctively left a good sized bubble around the boy. As far as Clovis could tell, he had not even twitched a muscle in the four hours they had spent on the bus. He also had his eyes closed, and, as was the case with Derica, Clovis was just as sure that he was not sleeping. He had his arms folded across his chest and he had a slight frown on his face as if he were thinking of something unpleasant. Clovis was fascinated by this person that was tempered with a healthy dose of apprehension, unease, and respect.

After his team's first encounter with the elder boy, he had barely acknowledged their existence let alone speak to them. So, after arriving on the bus, Clovis and his friends had basically been left on their own to sort themselves out. They did not even know where there final destination was going to be. Not that it would have mattered much in Clovis's opinion, as he didn't know where anything was anyway.

The other boy wore black army boots with loose, dark grey cargo pants and a black tank top. And, even though Clovis was a boy, and a young one at that, he was able to see that the tank top made him look /fit/. Clovis was most curious about the four blue fins that covered his face. He knew enough not to ask about them, but wondered if they had been tattooed on or if the boy had to paint them on himself everyday.

Clovis had been gazing absently at the elder boy when all of a sudden he felt a flood of unexplained panic jolt through his body leaving his nerves tingling. He realized that the other boy had cracked one of his eyes slightly to reveal a crimson sliver. Hastily, he spun around in his seat to face the window, though his eyes saw nothing beyond the glass. How was it that the other boy was able to command such fear in him?

~`*`~`*`~`*`~`*`~`*`~`*`~`*`~`*`~`*`~

(Timeslip into the past: Kai in Mr. Dickenson's office.)

The office of Mr. Dickenson was the same as he had last seen it. The pictures still hung on the walls, the trophies still shown in the light that streamed through the picture window, the desk still held the many stacks of paper, and the carpet was still that same mind numbing beige. There were a few small differences though. First, all of the chairs had been removed from the room except for one that sat comfortably before Mr. Dickenson's desk. Although Kai had chosen to ignore the chair and instead leaned against a wall with his arms folded across his chest. Another difference was that Mr. Dickenson was not sitting behind his desk, but was instead standing with his back to the room staring unseeingly out the window at the people on the streets below.

A silence had obviously been stretching between the two for an undeterminable amount of time. And Kai was showing absolutely no signs of losing in this struggle of subtle dominance. There was a slight shift in the room's tense atmosphere that had been slowly building in the room. Mr. Dickenson closed his eyes, reaching into his breast pocket for his handkerchief. He turned to face Kai as he dabbed at the sweat that had been collecting on his forehead. He hesitated before speaking, gazing at the boy for a moment as if assessing him for a sign weakness, for a crack in his wall, that he could exploit. He found none.

"Kai," the balding man started hesitantly, "I am grateful to you for accepting this request from the BBA, but…" He let his words trail off as he thought of just how he was going to phrase his next words. "I'm afraid the BBA- No. I'm afraid I can not accept your proposal." He sighed, a heavy weight evident upon his shoulders. He walked over to his chair and sat behind his desk, the chair squeaking in small protest. The boy remained still, moving only his eyes to follow Mr. Dickenson's movements. "You present me with quite the dilemma, Kai." Mr. Dickenson resumed after a moment. "You asked to be allowed to pick your own team and you have done so. I even agreed to let you train them as you see fit. But this…. Kai. You have to see that this is going to far. I simply can not allow you to do as you please in this matter."

Kai remained silent and unmoving. After a pregnant moment, he responded to Mr. Dickenson's statement. "I have already given you my assurance that the children will be taken care of," he said slowly with a sprinkle of askance and annoyance. "I do not know what more you want from me." Crimson eyes looked at the man behind the desk levelly, waiting for a reply.

Mr. Dickenson rubbed at the bridge of his nose in an attempt to relieve some tension that had built up there. "Kai. You are talking about taking three young children into Aokigahara forest! For goodness sake, Kai! You yourself are still just a child no matter which angle you chose to look at things!"

Another silence. Another wordless face off. This time though, Kai's muscles tensed, his jaw tightened, and his eyes narrowed just a bit. Sensing the boy's displeasure, Mr. Dickenson shifted around nervously. He wondered if he had gone too far with his words.

Kai, however, was the first to give in this time. When he spoke, there was a notable frostiness to his tone. "I am more than capable of leading and taking care of three children in a forest." He emphasized the word children with derision.

Mr. Dickenson studied Kai for a moment after he said this. He asked carefully. "What do you know of the forest you are proposing of taking these children into to train them?"

"I know that it is mostly untouched land the deeper you go into the forest," he said, clipping his words with annoyance. "I know that it provides a good terrain to train in. I know that compasses and such do not work in the forest. At least not the commercially bought stuff. And I know that the BBA, and you for that matter, is being particularly ridiculous about this whole thing. I was not required to tell you where I was taking them to train." The last was almost delivered as an accusation. Kai had been driven to the limits of his diplopic patience. He was only still in the room because it was Mr. Dickenson that he was talking with. If it had been anyone else the door would still be swinging shut behind him.

Mr. Dickenson folded his hands together on top of his desk and leaned forward. "Kai, do you know anything of Aokigahara's past? It's history?"

Another silence descended upon the two of them. "Are you referring to the suicides?"

"Yes, Kai, I am. The Sea of Trees has been morbidly nicknamed with the pseudonym Suicide Forest. Fifty-nine bodies were found in the forest last year alone. I do not feel that these children or anyone should be exposed to that sort of thing. Are you able to justify it?"

Without pause, Kai answer, "Yes." Before he could continue, the intercom on Mr. Dickenson's desk lit up and began to buzz. Both men looked at it in annoyance.

Sighing, Mr. Dickenson pressed a button on the machine. "Yes, Stacey?"

"Sir, the children are here in the office. Would you like me to send them in?"

The man looked up at Kai before answering. "No, Stacey. We'll be right out. Show them to the waiting room please."

"Yes, Sir," she replied.

He released the button. He noted that Kai was watching him, waiting for him to make a judgment. "Alright Kai," he relented. "I will hear you out on the matter. What is your justification?"

Kai pushed himself away from the wall. He walked over to the desk and stood behind the chair. "My justification is that the suicides are mostly limited to the first kilometer of the forest. I will be taking the team in much farther than that. Beyond the first couple of kilometers, the forest is nearly untouched. They will not 'be exposed' to much more then the tape that the search parties put up after they have combed through an area."

Mr. Dickenson turned around in his chair to look out the window again. He weighed Kai's words. "Are you certain that you could not train them any other place?" he tried one last feeble time to change his mind. Kai's silence was the only answer that he expected. It was the one that he got.

Mr. Dickenson spun in his chair to face forward again. "Alright, Kai. I am going to trust you with this." He stood up from his desk. "Let us go meet your team then." He paused. "Please don't let me down, Kai."

Hn.

Mr. Dickenson held the door open for Kai to walk through. As the boy walked through, he wiped at his forehead. "Dear, oh, dear," he muttered softly to himself before following Kai out of the office.

{^~^~^~^~^~^~^}

The three kids looked to the door when it opened. Two sets of blue eyes and one of hazel watched as a large man wearing a brown hat walked through the open door. He was followed in by a boy that looked to be either thirteen or fourteen years old. At this point, they had no idea of what was in store for them.

A small blond girl with short hair stood up. She looked between the two people who had walked through the door. She focused her attention on the boy. "My name is Derica," she greeted him in German. "These are my teammates, Adalric and Clovis." She gestured to each boy in turn. "It's our pleasure to meet you, Kai."

But Kai did not appear to be listening to her. He turned instead to the man in the brown hat and spoke to him in Japanese. "I will take them from here. Tell Tyson's team to just give up and go back to wherever they came from."

Derica thought the man with the brown hat looked uneasy about something. The man wiped at his brow before answering. "Alright, Kai. Please take care of them. I will be right here if you need anything." The man turned to address the children. He bobbed his head in greeting. "I would like to welcome you to Japan. I appreciate the fact that you are willing to travel from your country and learn new things. If you have any questions or concerns that Kai can not take care of, I am always be available to you."

"Thank you sir. We will be fine." The man hesitated before leaving the room.

All of a sudden, Derica felt the other boy's attention turn to her. Something about the way he looked at her made her body tense up. She felt as if she were being watched by a hawk that was about to strike at a mouse. She could only move again after he shifted his gaze to one of her teammates.

After he had sized each of them up, he addressed them. "Hurry up. The bus is leaving in ten minutes." With that, Kai turned around and left the room.

The three kids passed around a couple of dubious looks.

"You heard him." Derica said to her team. "The bus is leaving in ten minutes. Grab up your stuff and let's go. We didn't come all this way just to miss a bus."

{_*_~_*_~_*_~_*_~_*_~_*_~_*}

(Timeslip: Back with Clovis on the bus)

Clovis sucked in his breath. He stared out the window at the view. "Wow," he breathed softly. It was still small and far in the distance, but Clovis was able to recognize Japan's famous Fuji mountain. Although he didn't know it, the bus ride was almost over; they were almost to their destination. Aokigahara forest was barely visible in the distance.

________________________^_^_______________________

End of this chapter

Alright. Whew. It took me a couple of days, but here it is. There are probably some mistakes in here, so if you see them, please point them out to me. Thanks. Oh, ya. I almost forgot. There is something that I would like for you to do. Um, if only I could remember. I think it starts with an R.... and ends with a W...... I think. Oh, well. If I think of it, I'll let ya'll know. Thanks for reading!