The scratch on Eclipse Nidhogg's white polycarbonate layer was barely a millimeter long. To anyone else in the stadium, it was completely invisible. To Ryu O'Hara, it was the loudest thing in the room.
He ran his thumb over the faint groove. It wasn't a compromise. It wouldn't affect the aerodynamics or the weight distribution. But it was proof. Proof that his ideal wasn't absolute. Proof that a boy with a cracked piece of plastic and a fundamental misunderstanding of basics had managed to breach his baseline.
Ryu looked across the stadium. Valt Aoi was bouncing on his heels, his face flushed, slapping his cheeks with both hands to keep his adrenaline spiking.
"Alright! One point down! But we're just getting warmed up!" Valt yelled, locking Valkyrie onto his carbon-fiber grip.
Up in the stands, the Beigoma BeyClub was in a state of absolute shock.
"Did you see that?" Rantaro whispered, his paper fan sitting forgotten on the concrete steps next to him. "He didn't burst. Valt actually survived a direct counter-attack from that monster."
Daigo leaned against the railing, his eyes narrowed as he analyzed the arena. "It's not just survival. He pushed Ryu backward. He forced Nidhogg to move before the counter. If Valt can recreate that downward angle..."
"He won't."
Shu Kurenai's voice cut through their conversation. He was standing perfectly still, his red eyes locked not on Valt, but on Ryu.
"Look at his feet," Shu said quietly.
Rantaro and Daigo looked down at the main stage.
For the entirety of the District Qualifiers, Ryu had launched from a casual, upright posture. He hadn't bent his knees, he hadn't widened his stance, and he hadn't braced for recoil. He simply dropped his Bey into the stadium and let it do the work.
But right now, Ryu was moving.
He stepped back with his right foot, planting his sneaker firmly against the floor. He dropped his hips, lowering his center of gravity. He gripped his heavy, custom-machined launcher with both hands, pulling it tight against his chest.
The casual boredom was gone. His slate grey and pale pink eyes were entirely focused, tracking the exact curvature of the stadium slope.
"No way," Rantaro breathed, his eyes widening. "He's actually taking a stance."
"He's bracing himself," Shu confirmed, a heavy tension settling over his shoulders. "Whatever he's about to do, he knows the recoil is going to be massive."
Down on the stage, Senor Hanami was practically vibrating out of his suit. "Tokyo, I don't believe my eyes! The unmoving wall of Block C has dropped into a launch position! The temperature in this room just spiked! This is it! The second battle of the semi-finals!"
The referee stepped up to the edge of the plastic, raising his hand high.
"Second Battle! Ready... Set!"
Valt gripped his launcher, his knuckles turning white. He didn't let Ryu's shift in posture intimidate him. He fed on it. "I'm coming right through the front door, Ryu!"
"Three!" Valt roared.
"Two," Ryu said, his voice dropping an octave, losing its flat tone.
"One!"
"Go Shoot!"
Valt ripped his cord with everything he had. His core twisted, his feet locked into the concrete, and Valkyrie was ejected from the prongs with a deafening *crack*.
Ryu didn't just pull his ripcord. He completely unloaded.
He snapped his arm back with a violent, explosive torque that engaged his entire upper body. The heavy metal gears inside his custom launcher shrieked. The mechanical whine echoed through the arena microphones, a sharp, aggressive sound that made the front row of the audience instinctively flinch.
Eclipse Nidhogg hit the stadium floor.
It didn't drop into the center. Ryu had angled the launch by precisely twelve degrees. Nidhogg hit the mid-slope, the jagged rubber edge of its Phantom driver biting into the plastic with a sickening screech.
The dark violet Bey roared.
"Rush Shoot!" Valt commanded, throwing his fist forward as Valkyrie hit the opposite ridge.
Valkyrie banked hard, dropping down the slope in its signature high-speed star pattern, aiming directly for where Nidhogg should have been sitting.
But Nidhogg wasn't there.
Because Ryu had launched with maximum rotational velocity and an angled trajectory, Nidhogg was already moving. The sheer weight of the Bey, combined with the extreme speed, turned it into a dark blur. It tore around the lower ridge, perfectly matching Valkyrie's speed.
Valt's eyes went wide. "What?! It's moving from the start?!"
"It is a Balance type," Ryu's voice cut through the noise of the stadium. "It does not need to be hit to awaken."
Nidhogg didn't run. It intercepted.
As Valkyrie crossed the center of the stadium, Nidhogg cut the angle sharply, dropping from the mid-slope and slamming directly into Valkyrie's side.
The collision was horrific.
Sparks sprayed across the stadium floor. The kinetic impact was so severe that a visible shockwave of displaced air rippled outward, blowing the referee's striped tie over his shoulder.
Valkyrie was violently deflected, thrown wildly off its Rush Shoot trajectory. It slammed against the stadium wall, the plastic groaning under the pressure.
"Hold on, Valkyrie!" Valt screamed. "Bounce back!"
Valkyrie used the wall to absorb the shock, rebounding back toward the center. But Ryu had already calculated the rebound angle.
Nidhogg was already there.
*Clash.*
Another massive collision. Valkyrie was thrown backward again.
Ryu stood firmly in his stance, his eyes tracking the micro-movements of the Beys. He wasn't playing defense anymore. He was dismantling Valt's momentum by meeting every single strike with overwhelming, preemptive force.
"He's not letting Valt build any speed," Shu muttered in the stands, his hands gripping the railing. "Every time Valkyrie rebounds, Nidhogg is already in its path. Ryu is suffocating him."
"Push through!" Valt yelled, his voice cracking. He refused to back down. "Give it everything! Flash Shoot!"
Valkyrie hit the upper slope, its stamina draining rapidly from the repeated, brutal interceptions. Just like the first round, Valt used the decay to his advantage. Valkyrie slipped downward, catching the steep lower groove, and accelerated with a jagged, unnatural burst of speed directly toward Nidhogg.
It was the exact same maneuver that had nearly toppled Ryu minutes ago.
Ryu watched the blue Bey drop into the groove. He didn't blink.
"A surprise loses its value when it becomes a pattern," Ryu stated.
As Valkyrie rocketed forward, aiming for Nidhogg's exposed underside, Ryu finally made his move.
"Eclipse Sever."
Nidhogg didn't try to dodge, and it didn't brace for impact. The heavy internal weights of the hollow layer snapped outward. But instead of using the rubber driver to grip the floor, Nidhogg used the sudden shift in its center of gravity to intentionally throw itself off balance.
Nidhogg tilted violently, completely exposing its heavy metal forge disc, and dropped directly onto Valkyrie from above, matching the downward angle of the Flash Shoot perfectly.
Valt gasped.
The two Beys collided in the lower groove.
Because Nidhogg had dropped its weight directly onto Valkyrie's contact points, the blue Bey's upward momentum was entirely crushed. The jagged metal of Nidhogg's layer caught Valkyrie's polycarbonate edge.
There was no bounce. There was no rebound.
All of the kinetic energy from both Beys was forced into a single, microscopic point of friction.
*Burst.*
The sound was absolute. Valkyrie's locking mechanism gave way under the catastrophic pressure. The blue Bey exploded into three pieces.
The energy layer, forge disc, and performance , they were launched out of the stadium entirely. The heavy metal disc hit the padded safety barrier in front of the referee with a heavy thud, while the blue layer clattered against the concrete floor right at Valt's feet.
In the stadium, Nidhogg righted itself, the weights snapping back to the center, and spun smoothly in the dead center of the arena.
The entire WBBA National Stadium was dead silent. The sheer violence of the final clash had stunned the crowd into complete paralysis.
The referee swallowed hard, his hand shaking slightly as he raised it toward Ryu.
"B-Burst Finish! Two points! With a final score of three to zero, Ryu O'Hara advances to the finals!"
For a second, nobody moved. Then, the stadium erupted. The noise was deafening, a chaotic mix of cheers, screaming, and the frantic commentary of Senor Hanami trying to make sense of what he had just seen.
Ryu slowly stood up from his stance. He let out a long, measured breath. He could feel a faint ache in his right shoulder from the torque of the launch. He reached out, his hand hovering over the stadium. Nidhogg hopped neatly into his palm. The metal was burning hot.
He looked across the arena.
Valt was on his knees. He was staring down at the blue plastic layer of Valkyrie resting on the concrete.
Ryu felt a strange, entirely unfamiliar sensation in his chest. It wasn't the boredom of an easy win. It was a heavy, quiet realization that he had just crushed the one person who had managed to make the game interesting. He expected Valt to be crying. He expected the kid to be completely broken.
Valt picked up the blue layer. He looked at it for a long second.
Then, Valt threw his head back and laughed.
It wasn't a forced laugh. It was loud, genuine, and completely thrilled.
"Man!" Valt yelled, scrambling to his feet and grabbing the rest of his Bey's pieces from the floor. He locked Valkyrie back together with a sharp *click* and pointed it directly at Ryu. "That was incredible! I couldn't even see Nidhogg move at the end! It just dropped out of nowhere!"
Ryu stared at him, genuinely caught off guard. "You... are not upset."
"Upset? Why would I be upset?!" Valt grinned, walking around the edge of the stadium toward Ryu. "I just battled the strongest guy in the district! I made you take a stance! I made you actually attack! That means I'm getting stronger, right?"
Ryu looked at the massive smile on Valt's face. He looked at the scuff marks covering Valkyrie's layer. The logic was completely backward. Valt had lost, definitively and brutally. But he was treating the loss as a benchmark for his own evolution.
Ryu slipped Nidhogg into his pocket. He looked at Valt.
"Your launch angle was perfect," Ryu said quietly, the words feeling strange on his tongue. "Your stamina decay strategy was highly effective. If your equipment possessed a denser mass, the final collision would have been a coin toss."
Valt's eyes went wide. He practically glowed. "A coin toss?! Did you hear that, Valkyrie?! He said we almost had him!"
"I did not say almost," Ryu corrected smoothly, sidestepping as Valt looked like he was preparing for another hug. "I said the match might have shifted."
"Same thing!" Valt cheered. He held out his hand, his expression suddenly dropping into a rare look of serious respect. "Thanks for the battle, Ryu. Seriously. You're amazing."
Ryu looked at the outstretched hand. He remembered the handshake on the roof three days ago. That one had been hesitant. This one felt different.
Ryu reached out and shook Valt's hand firmly. "Fix your strike rhythm. It is still sloppy."
"I will!" Valt promised, pulling his hand back and waving to the cheering crowd as he jogged toward the tunnel. "I'll see you in the stands! You gotta watch Shu's match!"
Ryu watched him go. He turned and walked down his own tunnel, the roar of the crowd slowly fading behind him.
The waiting room was empty when he returned, save for the hum of the vending machine in the hallway. He walked over to his corner, picked up his half-empty water bottle, and sat down.
His shoulder still ached. His pulse was still elevated.
"It seems you have found a flaw " the deep, rasping voice echoed in the back of his mind.
Ryu unscrewed the cap of his water bottle. "The baseline is fine," he whispered back to the empty room. "Things are just louder than I anticipated."
"Next up!" Hanami's voice blared from the monitor. "The second semi-final match! The ice-cold prodigy, Shu Kurenai, takes on the ultimate shield, Ken Midori!"
Ryu looked up at the screen. Shu was walking onto the stage, his face cast in an impenetrable shadow. Ken was already there, his puppets raised defensively.
The finals were waiting.
Ryu took a slow sip of his water, his grey and pink eyes reflecting the glare of the monitor.
....
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