*Shu*
"Okay, Shu, you got this. Me and Spryzen got this." I had to say it to myself, to calm myself down. I walked up the stairs, and there he stood. Xander. Big grin, even though this is a final match, whoever wins here gets to the finals, but still. Arms crossed, big grin. I stopped at the other end of the stadium.
"Shu! It has been some time. Two or three years, I think, since we last fought. So I expect some new things from you. But I also expect you to fight at 100 percent. I'm not here for nothing, you got that?"
I stood there, taking in the crowd and Xander's words. Ten thousand people, and somewhere behind me four teammates, and none of that was what made my hands feel light. He was. He always has been.
"You got that right. And I expect you to do the same thing, because I haven't waited this long for this fight to be over in one minute."
That got an even bigger grin out of him. "I like this already. Okay. I say we begin this match of ours."
"You remember what you wrote on my gym wall?" I asked, loading Spryzen.
"You and me, Nationals, for real." He laughed. "In marker. My grandfather made me scrub it off. Took me two hours."
"You spelled Nationals wrong."
"I was seven!" He raised his launcher. "One condition, Shu. Everything. If you hold back even one percent, I'll know."
"I wasn't planning to."
"Then let's go."
I set my feet. My heart was going harder than it has in years, and for once I didn't mind it.
"BLADERS READY?"
"YES!" His voice boomed off the roof.
"YES!" Mine went right after it.
"LET IT RIP!"
---
*Ryo*
They met in the middle before either Bey finished a full lap, and the first contact cracked all the way up to the top rows. No probing from either side. Xcalius hammered in, again, again, every hit at full weight, and Spryzen took them at an angle, slid out, came back cutting.
"There it is!" Xander shouted. "You cut left off my third swing! You've done that since you were EIGHT!"
Xcalius was already waiting on the left. Spryzen had to fight its way out of the trap with sparks coming off both layers.
On our bench, Valt had both hands in his hair. "He knows everything Shu does. Ryo, he KNOWS everything, they've battled a thousand times..."
"Shu knows everything Xander does too," I said. "Knowing isn't the problem. Stopping it is."
Spryzen switched to the rubber tip. Counter Break, the snap direction-change that had finished half of Shu's opponents this tournament. Spryzen cut back hard against its own line and drove in at Xcalius's flank.
Xcalius turned into it. Took the counter on the thickest part of its blade and shoved back, and Spryzen bounced off with nothing to show for it.
"Counter Break on the fourth exchange! I called it at breakfast this morning!" Xander dropped his stance. "You promised me everything, Shu, so where is it? XCALIUS! DUAL SABERS!"
Silver-blue light came up out of the stadium. The knight rose inside it, both hands on its greatsword, and the light rolled down over Xander's shoulders and arms. Xcalius's layer shifted, the blade-tip locking in line with the point of its disc, and then it came down the bank with everything behind one edge.
Spryzen had nowhere to go and met it head-on.
The hit lifted Spryzen clean off the stadium floor. It landed on its rim, staggered up the slope, touched the lip of the ring, and something inside it went CLICK.
One click loose. Our whole bench was standing.
Spryzen wobbled back down the slope, still turning.
"STILL STANDING!" Xander sounded delighted. "Of course you are!"
Shu hadn't said a word since the launch. He watched Xcalius the way he watches everything, tracking, filing, and none of it was helping, because Xander wasn't running patterns. He was just coming, over and over, faster than the answers.
Spryzen circled wide. Shu drew Xcalius toward the center, let the slope build under his Bey, and dropped into the stance I'd seen finish a hundred battles.
"SPRYZEN! UPPER LAUNCH!"
Crimson light. Spriggan rose over the stadium with both blades spread, the aura poured down over Shu, and Spryzen came up the slope from underneath, the strike that gets below any guard in the country.
"I was THERE when you invented that!"
Xcalius stepped inside the rising line and met Spryzen at the top of its own climb. Blade against blades, half a second of grinding, and the heavier Bey won. Spryzen went backwards down the bank and the second CLICK was loud enough to hear over the crowd.
Two clicks. One more hit and Spryzen would burst.
Wakiya had gone white next to me. Rantaro had bitten his lollipop stick clean through. And Valt stood up.
"SHU!" His voice cracked halfway across the arena and kept going anyway. "STOP READING HIM! REMEMBER WHAT YOU TOLD ME LAST BATTLE? NO PLAN, NOTHING AT ALL! SO DO NOTHING! DO NOTHING AS HARD AS YOU CAN!"
Shu's shoulders came down.
He closed his eyes for one second, maybe two. When they opened he wasn't tracking anymore. He crouched, lower than his launch stance ever goes, launcher angled down at a slope no coach would ever teach.
"What is he doing," Wakiya said. "That angle buries it. That's not a launch, that's a crash."
I didn't answer, because I didn't know either, and neither did the one person in the building who'd seen everything Shu had ever done.
"SPRYZEN! ULTRA UPPER LAUNCH!"
The crimson light tripled. Spriggan came up over the stadium with both blades drawn back, the aura hit Shu hard enough to throw his scarf straight out behind him, and Spryzen dropped down the impossible slope, dug in at the very bottom of the curve, and came up.
Straight up.
Not a rising strike. A vertical one, under Xcalius's blade, under its guard, under eleven years of everything Xander had ever seen from him, and it caught the seam of the layer from directly below.
The sound wasn't a click.
Xeno Xcalius burst against the arena lights, three pieces, and they came down one by one across the stadium while ten thousand people screamed themselves hoarse.
Burst finish. Battle three. Match, Beigoma. We were in the final.
The bench emptied. Valt hit Shu at a full sprint and nearly carried them both into the stadium, Rantaro and Wakiya landed on top a second later, and somewhere under the pile Shu was laughing. Actually laughing, out loud, where people could hear it.
Xander picked the three pieces of Xcalius out of the stadium, looked at them for a moment, and then threw his head back and roared. It took the arena a second to catch on. It was joy.
"ELEVEN YEARS!" He came around the stadium and pulled Shu up out of the pile with one hand. "Eleven years I've been asking for that, and today you finally brought it! Where was it hiding? No. Don't tell me. I don't want it in a sentence. I want it in a rematch."
"You'll have to get in line," Shu said. "I hear it's getting long."
"I'll hold the front open." Xander set him down. For a moment the volume went out of him. "You know what's waiting in the final. Both of you know. Give it everything. All of you. Anything less..."
"...and you'll be insulted," half our team said at the same time.
He grabbed Valt with one arm and Shu with the other and lifted them both clean off the ground, and above all of it the big screen turned over to the bracket and put our name next to the last one left.