Jasperated: Mottled; streaked with various colours

~Tsubasa's POV~

I tell myself that it will be better when I get back home, when I'm in a familiar atmosphere and able to think clearly. But as I step down the ramp of the plane, I feel nothing. My thoughts are more jasperated than ever.

Ryo has told us we will have two days to rest before the battle with Team Wild Fang. All of us can feel the tension in Gingka's character as he anticipates his battle with Kyouya; at least I am assuming he will be the one to go against him. Who else would it be?

Masamune expressed a wish to be the one who would battle the team leader; nobody supported him. You don't get in the middle of a running rivalry. It goes against the unspoken code of honour in the beyblade world.

I feel that this is the darkest recess of my mind, the place where all evil hides. It's something I've pushed away since I was conscious of the difference between right and wrong, around 8 or 9 years old. So long ago.

Sometimes my dark side speaks to me.

It was long before the battle with Kyouya; you know the voice well. It's in a constant battle with your conscience, yelling at you to take the wrong path instead of the right. Sometimes it wins.

I am able to do this sometimes, to withdraw into my own mind and find the source of my problems. Many times they lie beneath the surface and it take a bit of digging around to get to them.

I don't feel comfortable here, though. I wish I could draw the voice into the nether, the foggy portal between the stations of my soul; then I would not have to venture into the badlands. But I know it will not show itself.

The voice doesn't really have a body. It's a part of me. So when I see it in my mind, it takes the form of a crazed version of myself, red-eyed and wild-haired. Its voice is conniving and sly. It is nothing like me at all, and yet sometimes I feel like it's the only me that really exists.

I hate it.

I feel possessed when it takes over.

I can smell fear here, but it's not the voice that is afraid; it's me. I get scared walking through my own mind. I've faced many opponents, brave, powerful, and intimidating, but when it comes to facing myself I often fail.

Then I can hear it. The voice. I've come far enough to be at the place where it resides; the gateway back to the nether is a speck of light in the distance. If I go too far, I will not be able to see it. Then I may be lost here forever.

I stop. I will not go that far.

"Why are you here?" it asks. I can feel it swimming around the nape of my neck and spreading a horrifying chill down my spine.

"I came to ask you the same thing", I tell it. "I never gave you permission to make decisions."

"I don't need your permission. I am a part of you. I operate unconsciously, like breathing and heartbeats."

"No. That's not true." I know that's not true. I have a choice.

Don't I?

"You shouldn't have come here if you didn't intend to stay", it tells me. "This is my place. You don't let me in the rest of your mind, so why must you intrude on the one place that I do have?"

Why does it have to have a place at all? Must it exist? "Can't you find another place to be?"

"I can't leave your mind. I am your mind", it tells me. "Without me you would be a vegetable in a hospital somewhere. It's what happens when they try to take part of somebody away. A relative. A lover. A soul."

"I wish I could get rid of you", I tell it honestly.

"I wish I could get rid of you", it says, "But unfortunately, you own the body. So I have to cope."

I can feel my limbs getting heavier the longer I stay here. I am afraid that if I stay here too long, the voice will turn me into a part of its dark and twisted world. I turn towards the spot in the distance that signifies safety.

I can feel it following me. It makes no sound, but it is an achingly cold presence at the base of my skull. I turn back towards it, but of course I cannot see it. "Stop that. You know you're not allowed to come back with me. You have to stay here."

"Because of course, if I went back with you, I would topple your perfect little world", it says sarcastically. "I don't know why you can't see that your perfect little world isn't so perfect after all. You're bound by a set of impairing rules. You're crushed by the weight of all your responsibilities. You could just let go of all that, but NO, you banished your only chance at freedom to this lovely little prison."

Is this how psychos feel?

I know it is stalling. It knows that the longer I stay here, the weaker I become. I hightail it back to the gateway and leave it bobbing at the partition, a slight distortion in the blackness beyond the boundary. I am relieved to be surrounded once more by the million gateways, in the grand central station of my consciousness. I shut my eyes and let my mind go back to my physical body.

This ordeal has not helped me; it has scarred me and terrified me. I knew it was the voice already, and I accomplished nothing by confronting it.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm crazy. Everyone knows about the stations of the mind - the amygdala, provoking feelings; the part that knows numbers; the part that dreams.

The place where all dark things go to hide.

But can I really see these things, or am I just imagining it, distorting reality to entertain my own twisted fantasies?

I cannot tell the difference between light and dark anymore, or truth and lies. Reality and my own mind.

I am afraid.