Authors Note:

Made revisions on 12/19/22

I do not own Bayblade Burst. Please support the official release.

I watched the clock ticked by, every minute dragging on. I tried turning on my side. Still awake. Count to 100. 1, 2, 3, 4, skip a few and 100! Still nothing. Sighing, I slipped on a dark blue nylon t-shirt and black leggings, I opened the window and crawled onto the fire escape. Taking a deep breath, I felt much calmer and relaxed, but I had a weird feeling in the back of my brain. It was probably nothing, but I wanted to be sure that I was just hallucinating.

Tiptoeing my way across the platform, I eventually found myself in front of the same window that I had discovered the first day. I know this was super stalkerish, but let's not daly on the details!

Peering through the window, I found…nothing. I didn't see Free there. Normally, I wouldn't have been as surprised, but all of the sheets were jumbled up, and the desk had been overturned. Oh no. I tried lifting the window, but it wasn't budging. So I opted to kick in the glass pane to get inside instead. When I climbed through the door, I was careful to avoid the broken glass.

There were many more small details alluding to a fight in the room, like a bloodied pencil lying by the door, or the crumpled pillow. Then I noticed the wide open door with a trail of blood leading outside. I quietly moved through the room, careful to avoid the blood and sharp objects, before peeking out into the hallway to see the stairwell door swinging shut.

Oh no, you don't! I ran through the hallway at lightning speed, pushing the door open, finding the bloody trail had lessened to just drips. It was still clear where they were going, the bottom floor. Jumping over the railing, I managed to land a few floors down, catching and releasing handlebars as I went, but I barely noticed all of this. My ears were pounding, and my adrenaline was rushing.

When I finally landed on the ground, I noticed that the blood had entirely disappeared, but opening the door revealed that the back door was pushed open, with a sliver of a truck peeking through the entrance. I quietly moved to the door frame and scanned the area. The surrounding area was a small parking lot, with a dumpster pushed against the building. Multiple trucks were lined up in front of the opening I was peeking out, with the roll-up doors open, inside contained stacks of crates labeled with food, cleaning supplies, and other materials. I tiptoed towards one of the trucks and moved towards the driver compartment.

"...complaining about this assignment man!" one of the drivers said.

"I can't really see why the boss wants us to kidnap Free de la fucking Hoya," he sighed, "If anyone finds out about this..."

"They won't!" his partner exclaimed. "The boss has us covered, and besides, he's giving us that huge bonus if we do this. Didn't you want to take Emilia to that Italian restaurant?" Before I could overhear anything else, I heard someone coming around the corner from one of the other trucks. Backtracking, I jumped into the back of the truck, scrambling behind a stack of crates.

"Did you hear that?" one of them asked, their voices muffled.

"I'll go check it out," I heard footsteps circle around to the back and stopped. A light shined into the truck, slowly circling around towards me. Panicking, I looked around and ducked and curled into a ball behind an especially tall crate of metal bars. After many agonizing seconds, the light disappeared.

"Eh, false alarm," he said while pulling down the door.

"The boss told us to get going by the way," his partner alerted. Soon, the truck lurched backward, almost causing me to hit my head on the crates. Shit! I scrambled to the side just as the truck came to a stop. I really needed to find a better sitting spot.

Still, I took out my phone and opened the notes app. I began typing down all of the things I had heard. Free was on one of these trucks, I was sure of it. One of the drivers had even had a bit of hesitation about going through with the deed. Clearly, their "boss" had to be someone influential to get delivery drivers to kidnap the world's most famous blader. The question is: who? There would be probably many reasons to kidnap Free, but only a select few would have the power or logistics to attempt that.

"Squeak!" something from the crate next to me said. I nearly jumped out of my skin. "Squeak!" I slowly peeked into the crate. A mouse was scratching at the wood, trying to get out. I was about to put the lid back on, when the truck screeched to a halt, almost causing me to throw the lid against the wall. Instead, I managed to slam it back down so hard that I accidentally cracked the wood.

"You heard that?"

"Geez, man. I'm starting to think you're going delirious. What did you take today?"

"No, I really heard something break!" As they began to argue, I quietly pulled up the roll-up door and slipped out. Immediately, the salty air hit my nose, making me cringe slightly. Why were we at the dock? I took in the scene. A large cargo ship was docked in the harbor, with a nondescript paint coating. Huh. Weird.

"Move it guys! We gotta get everything loaded onto the ship before four!" I heard someone call. Turning around, I saw a shadow of a woman along the asphalt. Dashing away from the very open space I had occupied, I dived behind one of the support posts. Her shadow slowly moved away.

At least that's what I thought before she made a 180 and began walking in my direction, right for me. I frantically looked around. There! I took a deep breath before sliding down the wooden support beam, scratching my legs with mussels and barnacles, jumping onto another beam, and skimming the water with my shoe. The moment I landed, the creaking wood could be heard in the direction of where I had been just previously.

"What is it? We have to hurry and load Free onto the ship!" One of the drivers asked.

goo The opposite person stayed silent for a moment, before answering. "Must have been a false alarm. Sorry." After the voices began to fade away, I scurried up the beam before realizing it. I would have to get on that ship and stay on it until we got to the destination. For an unknown amount of time, where I could get killed for smuggling myself onto the boat.

Total no-brainer. Obviously, the right move was to follow the possibly extremely dangerous group that was trying to kidnap someone. So that's exactly what I did.

It turned out to be really easy. I just calmly walked into the ship, distracting the guards by throwing a mussel I had grabbed earlier and tossed it into the water

"What was that?" One of the guards asked.

"Eh, probably a fish something," the other one said. While they were speaking, I quickly dashed past them. Whoever was kidnapping Free had been very lax about security, as there were no other watchers near the ship. Slipping inside, the whole interior was very mundane, with crates tied down with plastic sheets.

"Where the heck am I going to find Free in all of this? I muttered to myself. Then it hit me. He wouldn't be here. The fact that he was being kidnapped meant that the captors wanted him alive.

"What the hell are you doing here?" a voice asked. I spun around to see…I was hallucinating. It was Alex. The cook that I hadn't seen for weeks.

"Would you like to answer my question of why you're here first?" I asked.

"I've been promoted to Glass's personal chef," he told me. "I was sent down to check what food is being brought onto the ship. The question is, what are you doing here?"

"I got curious?" I half-lied. "Bye!" I turned around and disappeared into the maze of cargo boxes. Alex was definitely not going to believe that Free was somewhere on the ship, probably unconscious. Besides, there wasn't enough time to explain the situation to him.

Jumping over a long run, I almost ran headfirst into the sight of one of the many guards.

"Wait!" Alex tried to say. "Why are you…" his voice faded into nothingness. I stopped to catch my breath and gather my bearings. At this point, I was running on fumes of adrenaline, and the energy that had carried me to this point was quickly fading. As if god answered my prayers, there was a king-sized bed sitting between a boxed TV and a toilet of all things.

I was too tired to complain, so collapsed onto the bed. Given how big this cargo ship was, it probably would take at least a day to get to its destination. My vision soon faded to black.

Glass was annoyed. He had specifically ordered his men to not make a scene. Instead, he had been told that the window had been broken through and Free stabbed one of them in the hand. He was going to have some unsavory words with them.

Sighing, and turned to face a glowing monitor. He flickered through the scenes of bladers training in the Snake Pit. He had his eyes on a select few. He pulled up a different page. He scrolled down to the profile on Red Eye.

Mask: Red Eye

Name: Shu Kurenai

Beyblade: Legend Spriggan

Rank: Graduate Trainee

Ultimate Potential: Extremely High

Current Step: …Calculating…

Well, that was certainly odd. The computer usually didn't have any errors.

"Sir!" One of his men called. "We've arrived." Well, I guess I could ask him myself. Ashtem dawned his mask. It was time.

"Tell Gold Eye to meet me in the lab," he ordered. "Immediately."

"Yes sir," the guard replied before running off. Perhaps his second in command could report on the status of the Snake Pit. Stepping out of his private jet, he slowly walked down the ramp, leading into the main area of the training pit. Kids struggled on the gym equipment, with a select few easily lifting the heaviest weights. Ashtem was pleased with the progress of the Snake Pit. However, he was not happy enough. Things were moving too slowly with Red Eye.

"Sir, you said you would meet Gold Eye?" Silver Eye prompted. He had been supervising the training of beginners.

"Ah yes," he said. "I wanted to check your progress. Continue."

"Yes sir," he turned away, with a small smile on his face. Making his way to the control center of the facility, Ashtem passed by a small group made up of Azure Eye, Yellow Eye (who had come with him to the Snake Pit from New York), and Violet Eye. Failed experiments, as he referred to them. His original approach of using Shadow Bey's had failed to produce results, and they were the byproducts. It was obvious once they had failed to defeat their counterparts. He only kept them around as stepping stones.

"Ashtem sir!" Gold Eye bowed slightly as he entered.

"Stand," Ashtem said. "Why did you call me?"

"I have news on Red Eye that was too important to be transmitted."

"Any progress?"

"If you can call it that," Gold Eye replied with disgust. "Red Eye is gone." Ashtem waited for that to sink in.

"Did he have a reason?" Ashtem asked.

"He kept mumbling something about battling the world's top bladers."

"Then it's time to accelerate Boa's training. See that he finds his bey in two days."

"I will personally see to his progress!"

"You are dismissed." Gold Eye bowed, then started to leave. "Has Free arrived yet?"

Gold Eye spun around. "Last I checked, they had an ETA of 5 minutes. So he should be in the lab by the time you get there. And oh! Your chef detected an intruder. Said something about one of your bladers found on Free's ship." He walked off.

"I will…take it into consideration," Ashtem said impassively.

He soon found himself in the sterile white lab, the only color coming from the green liquid inside the tube, with the world's strongest blader housed within. But he was becoming increasingly frustrated. It was slowly becoming clear that recruiting someone with a close relationship with Free was not the best option if he was going to…test the machine with him. He was going to have to strengthen the security around the lab.

But hopefully, it wouldn't take too long. Ashtem managed to smile. Now he just had to wait.