A/N:
kd: I know, I know. Shortest chapter yet. Butit's not cause I'm lazy it's cause I didn't want to leave you guys hanging and I also wanted to end with an awesome cliffy.
Masquerade: Wow, you just keep making excuses...
kd: Thanks...Masquerade...-.-
Masquerade: No problem ;)
kd: Hmmm, you seem to be in a better mood than normal.
Masquerade: Yeah, I've got to thank you, I can't wait to kick Shun's butt!
kd: Huh?
Masquerade: I'm going to kick Shun's butt...right?
kd: Ummm...yeah, sure...
Masquerade: ...
Hydranoid: You're so going to die, Masquerade =D
There was dead silence. A silence that became loud enough to overcome wailing tide. Two teenage boys glared at each other. One a glare of ice and one of fire, both extremely deadly. Even the very air seemed tense as the two stayed crouched in their starting stance. In a flash Shun came at Masquerade, long hair trailing behind him. Masquerade tried to duck from Shun's incoming fist but Shun still managed to hit Masky in the shoulder. Masquerade didn't want to lose balance so he sifted forward so that the sand behind him would take the energy as he was sent back a couple of inches, feet dragging in the sand. Shun took advantage of this position and lift him fist above his head, later to come down on Masquerade's. That's when Masky decided to do something unexpected. Just as Shun's fist was about to come down Masquerade dropped to the ground. In Shun's momentary confusion Masquerade took the opportunity to slide across the sand, in between Shun's legs. He considered the option of kicking Shun in between the legs but then he remembered that Dan had already done that for him. Instead Masquerade propped himself on his elbows and kicked Shun's back with one, hard kick. Shun fell forward into the sand just as a wave was coming in, too. Masquerade stood up and dusted the sand off of his coat while Shun got a good splash in the face to wake him up.
Shun went to all fours and looked at Masquerade from over his shoulder, "You're just full of lousy tricks, aren't you?"
Masquerade wasn't really paying attention to what Shun said but was more so mentally laughing at Shun's. He found it ironic that he was being given such a lovely view of Shun's rear end and decided to challengingly say, "Stand up or I'll kick your ass." It defiantly wasn't the way he's normally say things, he'd usually come up with something a little more clever. But right now he was in the middle of a fight and felt no reason to be verbally witty at this time; he'd rather be blunt and strait to the point than one of hidden intentions.
Shun slowly got up and turned around, "You know, you've got a lot of nerve for someone who's about to lose a fight."
"Sorry to break this to you, Shun, but I hardly ever lose." Shun was confused by the way Masquerade said this because instead of his usual voice, that was brimming with confidence and witty remarks, his voice held an odd, sad tone. As if he was stating the sad truth. "I guess you could say it's a curse of mine." said Masquerade with a wave of his hand, as if it didn't matter but Shun could tell his true attitude about it was very different. With Shun still being taken aback by what Masquerade said, Masky decided to make his move. Masquerade came at Shun and raised his fisted arm, holding back nothing. But when Masquerade brought his fist down, the sand flew up in a reverse cascading effect, he had hit the ground. Masquerade then felt a hand on his back as he realized that Shun had jumped from his former spot and was using his back as support as he completed a flip and landed gracefully on the sand behind Masquerade.
Masquerade and Shun turned to each other at the same time.
"Well, talk about lousy tricks." Masquerade said with his usual smirk.
"That was pure physical ability; it's something you'd probably never be able to do."
"You wanna bet?" Masquerade said confidently.
"Enough of this." Shun said impatiently as he charged at Masquerade again. He extended his fist strait at Masquerade's chest but Masquerade artfully dodged it by turning sideways, at the last second. Masquerade then smashed his right shoulder into Shun's chest. Shun fell onto his back. He then pushed himself on one arm and leg while trying to sweep Masquerade off his feet with the other leg. Masquerade saw this coming, though, and simply jumped over Shun's moving leg. Shun stood strait by completing the rotation of his leg and then tried to punch Masquerade in the gut. Masquerade managed to block the punch using both of his hands.
He knew he avoided what would have been a very painful punch but now he found himself at a disadvantage. Now that he had Shun's hand he could grab his arm and maybe throw him (or flip him fabia-style) but Masquerade knew all too well that he wasn't strong enough to do that. Plus, Shun had him in close range and a little more mobility than him because Masquerade had to use two hands to block only oneof his. Masquerade saw that he was extremely open to Shun's next attack so when he became aware of Shun's incoming leg for a kick he quickly took a step back. Shun had put a lot a power into the kick and so with nothing to kick at his entire body turned away from Masquerade. But when Shun turned around he couldn't see Masquerade anywhere. Shun then realized that Masquerade must have used his dimensional transporter. Shun fell to his knees and punched the sanded ground saying, "Lousy trick!" The rest of the brawlers, now that the fight was over, gathered around Shun.
"Hey, you should have done that, like, years ago!" Dan said excitedly.
"Yeah…that guy's been getting on my nerve lately…" Shun said distantly.
"I don't blame him for running away, after all Shun isa ninja!" Runo said in a way that was meant to compliment Shun.
"There is no good reason to run away from a fight…" Shun said with a small trace of anger left in his voice. The brawlers then became aware of a small sobbing noise. "Alice?" Shun asked concerned.
"Why…" Alice tried to speak in her small, shaky voice but ended up trailing off into more sobbing, her hands covering her face. The brawlers waited for her to finish. "Why…can't we just get along?" The brawlers stayed silent. By now they were all extremely curious to why Alice always defended Masquerade. It was almost as if…they were friends. Some of the brawlers shivered at the thought. Could this be considered as betrayal? Shun then realized that Masquerade was probably this 'normal' neighbor that Alice had met. He decided he was going to get to the bottom of this so he quietly sneaked over the boarder of rocks.
At Masquerade's house…
Masquerade walked into his living room and turned to the flat screen TV expecting to return to Naga, so he flinched when he saw the ugly face of Hal-G instead. Masquerade understood what this meant so he said, "So do you have it?"
"Oh my, Masquerade. Strait to the point, today, aren't we?"
"Do you have it or not?"
"Yes, yes, I have it. But you seriously owe me; it took me forever to even find this stuff!" On the screen, next to Hal-G's face, appeared images of ancient runes. "First of all, not all 24 pieces were in the same collection, most were spread out to every part of the world!"
Masquerade quickly eyed the images flashing on the screen and said, "Alright, you've got the right ones. I would appreciate it if you faxed it to the beach house."
"By the way, Masquerade."
"Yeah?" Masquerade said with slight impatience.
"Obviously you wouldn't send me out to find this stuff unless you knew a little of what they say…"
"And?" Masquerade asked as he crossed his arms.
Hal-G got extremely annoyed by and so what he said next came out as harsh and hasty, "And, what the heck does this stuff say? Why in the world do you need this stuff. And, most importantly, how do you even know how to translate this stuff? Not even the experts can figure this junk out."
"That's for me to know and you to never find out." Masquerade said to Hal-G as his goodbye as he started to walk away from the TV. Hal-G sighed and disappeared from the screen.
Masquerade walked upstairs to the tiny office room that the house held and was satisfied to see the images he saw earlier printing from the fax machine. The images contained squiggly runes, obviously from a dead langue, and sometimes a primitive drawing of a dragon or a strange circular pattern (think 'transmutation circle' from Full Metal Alchemist) appeared. Masquerade opened a word document on the small computer and started typing away as he translated the strange scribe.
After a while Masquerade got very tired and mentally drained as he had translated an entire sheet, but with 23 pages to go. He decided to take a break and used his DT (dimensional transporter) to find bakugan brawlers to disappoint, leaving the word document open. At his swift disappearance Shun quickly climbed in through the open window. Shun looked around and saw the same images on Masquerade's desk as he saw on the TV screen when he watched Masquerade's video chat with Hal-G. Shun couldn't hear exactly what they said but he knew that the images held great importance and that Masquerade said little, which annoyed Hal-G. It wasn't must information but this office had already proven to hold many more clues. His soon noticed the document Masquerade had left open, a document titled 'Translation'. Shun almost laughed out loud at this act of stupidity. Not only had he left the window open, so that it almost seemed like an obvious invitation, he also left the extremely important document open.
Shun quickly tried to read it but found it to be quite difficult. It must have been a literal translation because some of the phrases were hard to understand what exactly it meant. For example, the first half of the page explained the relationship that white bakugan had with the rest of nature. Shun was interested that it had to do with bakugan, and white bakugan which made it all the more interesting, but he truly didn't care about the 'auras' involved or what it had to do with the rest of nature. Shun finally found something interesting when he saw that the rest contained information about a ritual used to kill a powerful white bakugan. Shun then discovered, with much disgust, that the ritual required a human sacrifice that had to trust the one performing the ritual. Shun's stomach twisted into knots as he came to the horrible realization of what Masquerade was going to do…