Track for this chapter:
The red aspens, by Jennifer Thomas, from the album Key of Sea
Ryo awoke the next morning with with a firm resolve to go back to Beaumont.
"Alright everybody, we're getting back on that plane! Tsubasa needs us more than the New Yorkians do right now!"
But at the prospect of getting on another plane, Kyouya all but threw a temper tantrum.
He stomped a leather-clad foot down on the carpet and refused to get on another plane for the rest of his life.
7 people turned and stared from the confines of the hotel room and Kyouya turned on his heel and, with a lionish scowl, marched away. For once Benkei dared not follow.
"Maybe the reason people don't come in here is because they'll get food poisoning", Tsubasa suggested to Ethan.
"Yeah, yeah. You're sure cranky this morning." Ethan was swift to bite back.
"Maybe it's cause I spent the entire night on the bench outside this building FREEZING MY HEAD OFF."
"Easy with the bite, snake-boy." Cindy walked in, red hair swinging around her like a tangerine storm cloud. She plopped a backpack on the counter and glared at them both.
"Be quiet. Homeless Boy, you go organise the...doughnuts. Ethan, go in ta kitchen an' try not ta kill yerself in ta process."
Ethan moped back behind the swinging doors to the kitchen and Cindy turned.
"What? Ah told ya to go make yerself useful."
Tsubasa crossed his arms. "I organised the doughnuts yesterday."
"They needs fixin' again."
"Three times. I organised them yesterday THREE TIMES."
"Nah who is ta assis'nt man'ger here?"
"I am!"
"Okay, so manage somet'in!"
"I'm managing YOU. YOU go organise the doughnuts. I get to work the counter today." Tsubasa took Les's signature move and slammed his hands threateningly on the counter. Cindy smacked him in the face with a dishrag and headed towards the doughnuts.
Nobody seemed to be in a very good mood this morning.
3 hours passed uneventfully and Ethan pulled out a brown paper bag from beneath the counter. It was about 11:30 now, and CIndy peeked over his shoulder eagerly to see what gruesome concoction he's brought with him today. "Ethan cooks his own lunch", she informed Tsubasa helpfully.
Tsubasa wrinkled his nose and turned away.
"Ethan, izzat PICKLES on yer peanut butter!?"
"Yeh, ain't ya never heard of it before?"
"Course I have. I was jus' teasin' ya."
Tsubasa seriously considered eating his lunch outside today.
"You should see it when 'e makes ice cream outta it", Cindy said, noticing his longing glances towards the doors. Tsubasa stood and hightailed it out.
Kyouya stood before an endless sea, staring out as the waves crashed up on the rocks, holding immense power in such a trivial element as water.
One would think that an element showing more brute strength would be earth, while fire would hold a free spirit and a wild tendency to get out of hand. Air held the characteristics of freedom and spirituality.
Yet water seemed to capture the essence of all the elements in one, showing crushing strength on a stormy day such as this, wild fury and unpredictable motions like earth and fire; and yet it also contained freedom in its gleeful spray and spirituality in its calming ripples.
Water was unpredictable, and it was one of the reasons Kyouya did not like it.
Yet the honking cries of the passing boats in the harbour near the rock on which he stood gazing out to the sea held a strange alluring feel to them, like they were calling.
Kyouya didn't aver remember staying in one place for very long; he'd never seen the point of anchoring oneself to a certain thing and forsaking the great adventure and treasure you might be missing whilst you tarried.
Every once in awhile, Kyouya would hear a voice in his head and a sound in his heart, tugging him towards the fastest method of transportation. While Tsubasa went looking for home, all he ever did was leave it. And yet he never had a home to leave at all. Home was where the heart was, and his heart rested with Leone; wherever he went, Leone went also.
A lion's wild free spirit extends to all corners of the earth, you know, and sometimes the cry of the pack is stronger than the cry for adventure; other times the need to run free and unhindered outweighed them all.
Time to go, Kyouya.
And so he went.
Tsubasa stood beneath a red tree in the park in Beaumont, wondering if running off had really been worth it.
It was day two, and so far no great realisation had come to him; Beaumont, Texas, seemed to be only another place, another person, and another small town, like all the other places he'd been to in his life.
Get a job, go undercover. Root up the biggest beyblading conspiracy in the town, expose it, fix it.
Move on.
Only now that he wasn't undercover, he didn't know who he was.
He sighed and leaned against the trunk, watching the last three leaves on the branches - clinging from fall - flutter in the cold, cold wind.
He opened the book that Les and Andre had given him with. It fell open to a page he'd not seen before.
We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.
-Joseph Campbell
He slammed the cover shut, frustrated. How did that help him? It was circled in red several times. He tried flipping to other pages, but today he couldn't seem to locate a circled quote he'd not read before.
He folded up his lunch bag, tossed in in a garbage can, and went back the way he had come.
The position on the floor was familiar to him, his standard for stowaway travel; cross-legged underneath a glowing porthole Kyouya remained safely hidden behind six barrels of fish bound for Indonesia, in no need of a passport or a ticket. This was the way to hightail it.
His canvas bag lay beside him on the floor, sad and lumpy with the years of carrying the odd objects - notebook, rock, extra shirt; pencils, gum, popped balloons.
He lay back against the cold, curved hull of the ship and shut his eyes quietly.
He remembered the first time he'd run away from home. It had been many summers ago; there had been a little orphanage nestled in a valley.
It hadn't been that he hadn't liked it, or that he'd been scared, or that he was bad. He had just seen an advertisement for a tournament on TV and wanted to go.
As he drifted off to sleep, dreams mingled with memory, and he was watching the hills play out before him once again.
He had clutched his beyblade and looked up to the stars, where he knew the constellation of Leone shone bright somewhere, even though it was daytime here. And then he had skipped off down the path.
He remembered thinking about how Miss Noelle had told them never, never to run away from the orphanage; and that if they ever got lost, somebody would come and find them.
But, he had told himself, he was not running away; he was taking a vacation, like Miss Harmony had last year when she had her baby.
And he had sung himself a song to remember it by, that no matter how far he ran, he'd always return:
Five little ducks went out one day
Over the hills, and far away;
Mother duck said, 'quack, quack, quack, quack';
But only four of the ducks came back.
Four little ducks went out one day, over the hills and
far away...
The song went on like this until no ducks were left. Mother Duck went out by herself and then all of her babies returned. He had told himself that, in this manner, so would he, once the tournament was over.
And then he'd forgotten which way was home again.
He smiled to himself in his sleep.
Five little ducks went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Everyone has a place to stay
But some bear a wand'ring home.