Chapter 4 — The Storm That Answers
(Ryuga's Awakening)
Ryuga had been alone for a long time.
Not the kind of alone where no one was around—but the kind where even the noise of the world felt distant, muffled, unreal. He drifted through days without direction, hands empty, launcher untouched. People stopped asking him why he quit. They stopped asking anything at all.
That suited him.
At least, that's what he told himself.
He had always believed one thing.
As long as I trust my Bey, I can accomplish anything.
It wasn't arrogance. It wasn't ignorance.
It was faith.
Faith that had carried him through losses, through pain, through battles that should have broken him long before they did. Faith that told him to push harder when logic said stop. Faith that said spin again.
And then came Lui Shirosagi.
One strike.
One moment.
One sound that would never leave him—the sharp, final crack of his Bey shattering beneath Longinus's fangs.
That sound didn't just destroy plastic and metal.
It destroyed certainty.
Ryuga began to realize something that terrified him.
Part of him had admired Lui.
Not his cruelty—but his clarity.
Lui never doubted.Never hesitated.Never trusted anything except power.
There was no fear in domination. No heartbreak. No loss—because nothing was allowed to survive long enough to threaten you.
Ryuga hated that thought.
And yet… it lingered.
At night, when the city was quiet, Ryuga would clench his fists and imagine what it would feel like to stand above everyone else—to never watch something precious break in front of him again.
Then fear would surge up and drown it out.
What if it happens again?What if I trust… and lose everything?
The thought paralyzed him.
Trust had failed him once.
He didn't know if he could survive it failing again.
The storm came on the night of the full moon.
It wasn't sudden.It didn't roar.
It called.
Ryuga was walking without purpose when the wind changed—sharp, electric, alive. Clouds churned unnaturally fast, circling the moon instead of hiding it. Thunder rolled low and constant, not violent, but commanding.
And beneath it all—
A pull.
Not a voice.Not a dragon's roar.
A storm, asking to be answered.
Ryuga didn't think.
He followed.
The path led him into the mountains, up stone steps worn smooth by centuries of footsteps. Rain began to fall, but it never touched him—spiraling around his body as if the wind itself refused to let him be soaked.
At the summit stood an ancient shrine.
A Japanese temple long forgotten by time.
Its gates were carved with a dragon—not wild, not enraged, but vast and coiled, its body forming the eye of a storm. Clouds swirled around it, yet its gaze was calm. Absolute.
This dragon did not rage against the storm.
It commanded it.
Ryuga's breath caught.
"This… is it," he whispered.
At the center of the shrine, half-buried beneath stone and dust, lay a Bey.
Its metal gleamed faintly under moonlight, etched with swirling patterns like wind currents frozen in steel.
Storm Dragoon.
And within it—
Storm Dragon.
When Ryuga reached for it, the wind exploded outward.
Memories flooded him.
Running forward without hesitation.Watching Shu's back as he fled.Standing alone in the stadium as the world watched him fall.The fear.The anger.The obsession.
And then—
Calm.
A presence rose—not oppressive, not devouring.
You fear destruction, it said without words.And you fear restraint.
The storm surged—but did not consume him.
You are neither domination nor denial.
Ryuga understood.
Lui ruled the storm until it destroyed everything else.Shu chained the storm until it destroyed him.
But a true storm?
It knows when to devastate.
And when to pass harmlessly overhead.
Ryuga stood.
The wind howled around him, hair whipping, eyes sharp and alive for the first time in years. He lifted Storm Dragoon, feeling its weight—perfectly balanced, humming with restrained fury.
"I don't need to become a tyrant," Ryuga said quietly.
Lightning flashed.
"I don't need to cage myself either."
The storm answered.
"I am the storm."
Not wild.Not restrained.
Balanced.
When Ryuga launched Storm Dragoon for the first time, the shrine shook—not from destruction, but from resonance. The Bey spun smoothly, power folding in on itself, strength flowing without tearing itself apart.
Storm Dragon had awakened.
And so had Ryuga.
Far away, under the same moon:
Shu felt something tighten in his chest.
Lui smiled, fangs bared, without knowing why.
The storm had chosen its master.
And Ryuga began walking a path unseen before—
A path that would not end with survival.
But with supremacy.