What is Beyblading?
If you asked a hundred different people, you would get a hundred different answers. To the kids battling in the local parks, it is a game. To someone like Valt Aoi, it is a bridge ,a way to connect with the world, a fiery passion that pushes past physical limits to forge unbreakable bonds. To a king like Lui Shirasagijo, it is a hunting ground, a chaotic arena designed to crush the weak and assert absolute dominance.
For the longest time, Ryu O'Hara would have answered that it was simply a game.
But for the man walking beside him, Beyblading was none of those things. To Theodore Glass, it was a weapon.
The heavy, industrial drone of the Snake Pit was a stark contrast to the lively, brightly lit gyms of the WBBA. There was no cheering here. No friendly banter. There was only the sharp, repetitive crack of bey and the heavy, ragged breathing of bladers pushing themselves far beyond their natural limits.
Ryu walked with his hands tucked loosely into the pockets of his dark jacket. His expression was a mask of mild, quiet observation. He stepped in sync with Ashtem, moving along an elevated steel walkway that encircled the primary underground training ward.
Below them, dozens of masked bladers were running through brutal, synchronized launch drills. Some were visibly shaking from muscle fatigue. Others pushed through the pain, their eyes fixed blankly on the plastic stadiums in front of them.
"Most facilities rely on human passion," Ashtem said, his voice smooth and conversational as they walked. He adjusted his glasses, looking down at his trainees like a proud architect viewing a foundation. "They coddle their bladers. They tell them to bond with their Beys, to trust their feelings. It's a volatile metric. Passion burns out. It makes mistakes."
Ryu stopped at the railing. He looked down at a young blader who had just collapsed to one knee, clutching a violently trembling shoulder, only for a supervisor to immediately force him back to his feet.
Ryu observed, his voice completely flat. He didn't sound disgusted, merely factual. "You isolate them, strip away their identities, and force them into high-stress physiological states. Quite an unorthodox way of training .
"I am refining them," Ashtem corrected seamlessly, stepping up to the railing beside Ryu. "To forge the ultimate Bey, you must first forge a flawless Blader. A vessel completely stripped of hesitation, fear, or the need for validation. Only then can true power be extracted."
Ashtem turned his gaze away from the floor and looked directly at Ryu.
"Which is exactly why you belong here, Ryu," Ashtem continued, his tone dropping into something far more predatory and precise. " You don't suffer from the friction of emotion. You dismantled the reigning champion with absolute perfection. You operate on a baseline that these children are currently breaking their bones trying to reach."
Ashtem spread his hands slightly, offering the entire underground empire to the boy standing next to him. "With the Snake Pit's resources and your inherent architecture, we wouldn't just rule the World League. We would redefine the sport entirely."
Ryu stood perfectly still. He felt the heavy, silent weight of abyss Nidhogg resting in his pocket.
Ashtem thought he understood him. The man had looked at the broadcast and seen a cold, unfeeling machine. He hadn't seen the smile. He hadn't felt the heavy, thrumming heartbeat of the dragon waking up. Ashtem was offering him a return to the sterile, emptiness of his island, just with a different coat of paint.
Ryu looked away from Ashtem, his eyes scanning the concrete walls of the underground facility.
"Your methodology is flawed," Ryu said, turning his back on the railing and the training ward below. " It isn't sustainable."
He took three steps toward the heavy steel doors leading back to the surface tunnels. He had accepted the invitation to the Mexican jungle merely out of curiosity, to see what the underground had to offer the world stage. He had seen enough.
"I'm not interested in your resources, Ashtem," Ryu stated, not bothering to look back. "And I'm not interested in being a benchmark for your assembly line."
Ashtem didn't chase him. He didn't raise his voice or sound the least bit offended by the rejection. He just stood by the railing, his hands clasped neatly behind his back.
"I wouldn't expect you to be," Ashtem said, his voice echoing cleanly across the metal walkway. "You're far too intelligent to be a test subject. But I thought you might want to know what actually happened to Miguel O'Hara."
Ryu stopped.
His sneakers froze on the steel grating. He didn't turn around. He didn't gasp or drop his posture.
But the noise of the facility , the cracking plastic, the heavy breathing, the drone of the ventilation fans seemed to instantly vanish, leaving behind a suffocating silence.
Miguel. It was a name Ryu hadn't let surface in his mind for nearly a decade. The official story had been a complex, tragic suicide. It was a closed file. It was the reason Ryu had been left with nothing but a private island and an endless stream of research funding. He had accepted the end of it and walked away.
Ashtem let the silence stretch, fully aware of the massive psychological weight he had just dropped, waiting for the boy to turn around.
Slowly, Ryu reached out. His hand closed around the cold steel handle of the door. The emptiness that usually shielded his mind felt like it had suddenly cracked, letting in a sharp, blinding draft. The urge to turn around, to demand the data Ashtem was holding hostage, burned in the back of his throat.
But he forced his physical reaction to remain completely, flawlessly still. Ashtem wanted leverage. Ryu refused to give him a fulcrum.
"I'm not interested," Ryu said.
His voice was perfectly level. It didn't waver even a fraction of an inch. Without looking over his shoulder, he pushed the heavy door open, stepped through the threshold, and let it click definitively shut behind him.
Left alone on the walkway, Ashtem turned back to look down at the training ward. He watched a masked blader shatter an opponent's Bey, the sound sharp and violent in the cavernous room.
***
Thousands of miles away, in a room completely devoid of light, a bank of high-resolution monitors cast a pale, flickering glow over the walls.
The room was silent, save for the quiet hum of heavy-duty servers processing massive amounts of video data.
A figure sat in a leather chair, entirely obscured by the darkness. Their attention was fixed on the center screen.
The monitor was playing a recorded broadcast of the WBBA National Grand Final. It showed the exact moment Lui Shirosagi ripped his launcher cord, his feral blue aura exploding over the center stage.
The video paused.
A pale hand reached out from the darkness. A finger tapped a key on a specialized editing console.
The video zoomed in. It bypassed Lui's roaring face. It bypassed the shattered stadium walls. It zoomed entirely onto the Beyblade spinning in the center of the arena.
The image enhanced, sharpening the jagged, white metal dragon heads of Lost Longinus. The left-spinning rotation was clearly highlighted by the software's tracking overlay.
The hand pulled back from the keyboard.
"Left spin," a voice whispered from the shadows. It was a calm, melodic voice, carrying an eerie, absolute certainty.
The figure leaned slightly forward, the pale blue light of the monitor illuminating a pair of sharp, dangerously narrow eyes.
"Found it."
********
Hey how's it going!!! It's your fav author , how long has it been maybe 2 months hahaha i know you guys are angry and i well deserve it but well life has been kinda down you know crazy down, the sudden depression and i was even diagnosed with ADHD can you believe that!!!!.
All worst things hit me in these two months like my girlfriend breaking up with me (yes you heard it right a web novel author can have a girlfriend ) she said i wasn't paying attention to our relationship and it isn't working , i was so devastated we both liked beyblade and i really thought she was the ONE!!! But alas reality is a bitch so i was quite down during these months and lost all motivation to right anything
BUTT!!! the love and support you guys showed genuinely made my cry , my girlfriend left me but you guys didn't .
So here i am trying to be better and thank you for all the love you guys have shown for this fanfic so , i guess you can expect to get updates like old days now though i will try to remain consistent. Again thank you for everything so LET IT RIPPPP!!!!