CHAPTER 24: NOTHING TO SOMETHING
GINGKA POV
The first hit doesn't sound like metal. It sounds like a car wreck.
Pegasus slams into Leone and the floor doesn't just crack—it shatters. Deep, jagged fissures scream out toward the edge of the crater, and the shockwave hits my chest hard enough to knock the air straight out of my lungs. My ears start ringing—that high, sharp pitch that makes the rest of the world feel miles away.
I don't care.
"Again! Pegasus—SMASH HIM!"
My throat is raw, but Pegasus doesn't hesitate. It rebounds and charges right back into the meat of the collision. Stone chips spray everywhere, stinging my face like hot needles. I barely feel them.
Something is wrong with the noise, though. Every impact is too heavy, more like a lead pipe hitting a car hood than two beys spinning. The rhythm is off. It's a violent, grinding screech that makes my stomach turn even as I scream for more.
Why was the scroll empty?
Another hit. Then another. It's still not enough.
I need more power.
My shoulder jerks with every strike. The launcher kickback is brutal, and my thumb is going numb against the overheated plastic, but I keep attacking.
No strategy. No technique. None of the things Dad spent years trying to teach me. I'm just swinging a club.
Each hit vibrates through my teeth. My vision shakes. Across the dust, Kyoya isn't even breaking a sweat. He barely even moves, sidestepping every reckless charge with a flick of his wrist. It makes my jaw clench so hard I taste copper.
I've bitten my tongue. I didn't even notice.
"Pathetic."
His voice cuts right through the grinding metal.
I look up. Kyoya is standing there with his arms crossed, that green aura crackling around him like live wire. He's looking at me with pure disgust—the way you look at something dead on the side of the road.
"You're swinging that bey like a hammer, Hagane," he spits. "Just hoping to break something. You've got that look in your eyes—the look of a loser looking for a shortcut."
The words hit harder than the recoil.
"Shut—"
"Look at yourself." He squints through the haze, and his face twists. "You're pouring all that rage into your bey, but you're just suffocating your own partner."
Through the ringing in my ears, a muffled scream breaks through.
"Gingka, stop! The friction—you're going to melt the—"
Madoka. I tune her out. I tune all of them out. Their voices are just distractions. They don't understand. They weren't on that mountain. They didn't see the blank paper.
My hands are shaking. I can feel the heat of the launcher blistering my skin, the flesh raw and bubbling under my grip.
The air is getting heavy. Sick. Like trying to breathe through a wet rag. My aura—that steady, reliable blue—is boiling. The edges are turning a jagged, sickly orange. It smells like burnt ozone and melting plastic, a thick, oily scent that coats the back of my throat.
I can hear Pegasus screaming.
The fusion wheel is warping. I can feel the metal groaning under my skin. My partner is begging me to stop, sending desperate, frantic pulses through our connection—and I'm choosing to ignore them.
"MORE!"
Pegasus lunges with a weight that shouldn't be possible, but the move is sloppy. Obvious.
Kyoya moves an inch to the left, and Pegasus hammers directly into the stone wall. The impact wrenches my arm back so hard my vision goes black for a second. When it clears, I'm still standing. Still gripping the launcher. Still refusing to see what I'm doing.
Ryuga is out there and I have nothing—nothing—
"You want power, Hagane?" Kyoya's knuckles go white as he grips his launcher. "Then I'll show you what it actually looks like."
Leone's spirit erupts behind him, massive and solid, washing the crater in a blinding green light.
Three tornadoes snap into place like the jaws of a trap. They aren't wild; they're a cage. A wall of wind that slams Pegasus from one side to the next. My bey is being tossed around like a ragdoll, ricocheting with zero control.
"Pegasus!" My voice is a strangled wreck. "Use Starblast—"
The words die. My throat just... shuts. The connection between my brain and my mouth severs like a cut wire. I try to shout again, but nothing comes out but a ragged gasp.
Pegasus won't manifest. The bit-beast stays buried in the metal, silent and hidden. It won't answer me.
Why won't you—
The world stops.
It isn't a fade-to-black. It's a snap. One second, I'm screaming until my vision spots, the wind is a jagged roar, and the metal is shrieking in a way that should have made me vomit.
The next second? Silence.
The kind of silence that happens when you're underwater. The stadium colors bleed out into a grey, stagnant wash, the stone floor dissolving into nothing. The air doesn't just get cold—it gets empty. Every breath I take feels like I'm swallowing dry ice.
Then, there's only the dark. I'm standing on nothing. My feet don't feel the ground, but I'm stuck here anyway, shivering in a void that smells like old dust and ozone.
"Hello?"
My voice sounds tiny. Like a child's. A flicker of light catches my eye. It's not Pegasus. It's a memory.
I see a younger version of myself—seven, maybe eight years old—running through the tall grass of Koma Village. He's laughing, that loud, obnoxious, genuine laugh I haven't heard in years.
He's with Hyoma and the others, their beys clashing against an old wooden bucket. There's no "world at stake." There's no "L-Drago." There's just the sun on his neck and the pure, stupid joy of watching a piece of metal spin.
He looks so happy it physically hurts to watch.
I want to reach out and warn him. I want to tell him that one day, he's going to lose everything. That the game he loves is going to become a cage. That he's going to get so tired of being "the only hope" that he'll start to rot from the inside out.
The memory ripples and turns sour. The little Gingka looks up, his eyes meeting mine, and his smile just... dies. He looks at my shaking, blistered hands—at the orange, jagged aura clinging to me like a disease—and he drops his beyblade. The sound of that plastic hitting the grass is the only noise in the void. He's terrified of me.
"I'm sorry," I whisper, and the memory shatters like glass.
In its place, a pillar of oily, black-red fire erupts.
Pegasus is trapped inside it. He's not a god. He's not a bit-beast. He's a partner who has been beaten into submission. His wings are scorched, feathers flaking off like ash. He's whimpering. A low, broken sound that vibrates in my own marrow.
"No."
I'm running, but it feels like I'm moving through molasses.
"No, no—Pegasus, please—" I reach the pillar and slam my hands against the flames. They don't burn hot. They're freezing. It's a biting, chemical frost that eats into my palms, bubbling the skin instantly.
"I did this."
The realization is a physical weight, like someone dropped a mountain on my shoulders. Since Ryuga broke me, I haven't been "fighting." I've been grieving. I've been so depressed, so hollowed out by that loss, that I tried to fill the hole with hate.
I look at the empty scroll in my mind—that blank piece of paper that felt like a slap in the face. It wasn't empty because the mountain failed me. It was empty because I had nothing left to give. I was a burnt-out shell trying to command a legend.
"I'm the monster," I choke out. "I'm the one hurting you."
The dark feels heavier. I see them all in the shadows—Kenta, Madoka, Benkei. They aren't cheering. They're staring at me with the same horror they had for Ryuga. I've become the thing that killed my father.
Then, a hand settles on my shoulder. I freeze. I know that touch.
I turn around, and the breath leaves my lungs in a jagged sob.
"Dad?"
He's standing there, solid and warm, looking at me with that quiet, heartbreaking patience. He smells like home—woodsmoke and mountain air—but as I reach for him, I realize he's shimmering. I'm hugging a ghost, and the cold of the void is already bleeding through him.
"Dad, I failed," I gasp, the tears finally breaking through. I'm not a hero. I'm just a kid who's tired and scared and wants to go home. "I lost Pegasus. I lost everything. I tried to be strong like you, but I'm just... I'm so angry. I'm so tired."
He doesn't tell me to "be a man." He just draws me into a hug that feels like it's the only thing keeping me from dissolving.
"A beyblade isn't a weapon for your grief, Gingka," he whispers into my hair. "It's a mirror. Look at what you're showing the world."
He gestures to the burning pillar. To the suffering I've forced on my best friend.
"Is that who you want to be? A shadow of Ryuga? Or are you the boy who used to laugh in the grass?"
I can't even speak. I just cling to his shirt, crying into his chest like the world is ending. Because for a year, it has been.
"The scroll showed you the truth, Gingka," he says softly, stepping back. "You brought nothing to this mountain because you'd already given up on yourself. You were waiting for a miracle to fix your heart. But a miracle won't fix a bond you're actively breaking."
His light starts to grow, blinding and soft.
"Don't apologize to me," he says, his voice echoing as he fades. "He's the one who's been carrying you. Tell him."
Then he's gone. I'm alone with the cold fire.
I walk to the edge of the pillar. I don't care about the pain. I press my raw, blistered palms back into the black flames, feeling the frost bite deep into the meat of my hands.
"I'm sorry, Pegasus."
I lean my forehead against the fire.
"I'm so sorry. I was so scared of losing again that I forgot how to love you. I'm sorry I treated you like a tool. I'm sorry I let my depression turn into this... this filth."
I close my eyes and just let the grief go. Not the anger. Just the sadness. The pure, honest realization that I need him.
"Please... come back to me. Not for the win. Just because I miss you."
The fire doesn't flicker. It just...
evaporates. Like a bad dream when you finally wake up.
Reality hits me like a car crash. The world screams back into existence. The sound of Leone's wind hits me like a physical blow, tearing the tears right off my cheeks. My ears pop so hard it tastes like iron.
The heavy, oily pressure in my chest—the weight that's made it hard to even breathe for months—just pops. I can feel the air again.
My aura smooths out. It's not a jagged, burning orange. It's a deep, quiet sapphire. Cool. Constant. My hands stop shaking.
I don't hear a storm anymore. I hear Pegasus. And he's not screaming. He's singing.
The bit-beast erupts from the metal in an explosion of pure, blinding blue light. He spreads his wings, washing the entire crater clean of the soot and the hate. He looks at me, and for the first time since Koma Village burned, I feel whole.
"Pegasus!"
My voice is clear. No rage. No desperation. Just love.
"Let's show them our soul!"
Pegasus banks off one cyclone and uses the momentum to spiral upward, picking up speed with each rotation until the bey becomes a blue streak moving too fast for eyes to properly track. The vacuum builds around Leone's triangle, pulling at loose dust and small stones.
Then the suction reverses. All that pressure releases at once, yanking Leone straight out of its defensive center and into open air.
Across the crater, Kyoya's eyes widen. Then he grins. There's blood on his lip from where a flying stone caught him. He wipes it away with his thumb.
"Finally decided to join the party?" His aura explodes in brilliant green light.
"That blue's a hell of a lot better than that ugly red trash! But don't think a change of heart makes you invincible! Leone! TRUE KING LION WIND STRIKE!"
The three tornadoes merge into one massive cyclone that fills the entire crater. Everyone watching—Kenta, Madoka, Benkei—grabs onto the rocks to avoid getting knocked flat.
I'm grinning so wide my face actually hurts. Because this—this is what blading is supposed to feel like.
"This is it, Kyoya!"
"Fine by me, Hagane!"
We roar our techniques:
"STARBLAST ATTACK!"
"TRUE KING LION WIND STRIKE!"
They meet mid-air. The collision turns the world white. For three seconds, there is no sight, no sound—just pressure. Then the shockwave releases. It flattens the grass for a hundred feet. The meteorite floor doesn't just crack; it returns to dust.
The sound comes last, a deep vibration in my bone marrow that makes my teeth ache. Then—silence. Real silence.
Dust settles. Two beys arc through the haze, trailing smoke. They skip once. Twice. Stop.
Leone stands upright, wobbling on its absolute last rotation. It teeters. Spins for one more second. Then it falls. Pegasus lies still three inches away, already stopped.
Hyoma's voice is shaking as he speaks. "Winner... Kyoya Tategami."
I walk over, kneeling to pick up Pegasus. The heat of the metal bites into my raw blisters, but I don't pull away. It's a real pain. A good one. The bey is covered in deep gouges, the paint scorched black. It's beautiful.
"That was a real battle," I say softly.
I look up at Kyoya. He's panting, his knees trembling as he tries to stay upright. His face is covered in soot, but his eyes are brighter than I've ever seen them.
"Thanks for waking me up, Kyoya."
He stumbles slightly, catching his breath before he scoffs and crosses his arms.
"Don't get mushy on me, Hagane. Next time I won't just wake you up. I'll put you right back to sleep."
But for the first time, there is real respect in his eyes.
End of chapter.
Author's Note:-
Please give me honest review on chapter 23 and 24.
They took me a lot's of time to write, suggestions are welcome for future chapter's.
I haven't decided yet but only 3 to 5 chapters left of training arc before battle bladers starts.
As always suggestions and feedback are welcome.
Thanks again for reading.
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Shhh… shhh… 🤫
Okay, top secret question…
Anyone wanna sneak peek of Battle Bladers?