Rantaro dropped his launcher twice in the changing room, and the second time I picked it up for him and held onto it.
"Rantaro, calm down, man."
"I am calm, man, it is just, I have been sitting on the bench and now in the final you want to use me to open, of all things..."
"Hey, man, calm down, I said it is all gonna be fine. You are the expert in stamina types, so you got this."
"Okay.I am calm. But still, the other person of that team is also a stamina type expert, so that advantage is not there anymore."
"Then win it without the advantage. You've outlasted me in our club room more times than I've admitted to anyone. One more long battle, that's all this is."
"...You really believe that."
"Shu wrote the card. Ask him if he put you first to be nice."
"I didn't," Shu said from the lockers, without opening his eyes.
Nobody laughed, but the room settled a little. Valt was lacing his shoes for the third time, and Wakiya stood at the mirror fixing a collar that was already straight. Finale day. Nobody was saying the word.
Rantaro looked at the launcher in his hands. Then he stood up, clipped it to his belt, and pulled a fresh lollipop out of his bag.
"Okay," he said. "Let's go be in a final."
---
The arena was the biggest one the sport has, and it was full to the roof. We came out of the tunnel into a wall of sound and walked to our bench through it, and I kept my eyes on the far side the whole way.
Lui was already there. He sat in the middle of his bench with two teammates next to him, and he watched me cross the entire floor. I sat down and looked back at him until the referee started the announcements. He didn't look away. Neither did I.
The teammate on his left was big, older, sitting with a grey Bey on his knee. The one on his right was small and young and sat with his arms crossed the exact way Lui sat with his arms crossed.
"The big one is Iwao," Shu said next to me. "Tundra Tortoise. Stamina type, wins long. He's been in that club four years and I've never once seen him burst early. Rantaro can't out-hit him, so he'll have to out-spin him."
"And the small one?"
"Raiga. Jagged, attack type. There's barely any footage of him." Shu paused. "That club doesn't post anything. All I really know is that people go there to train, and most of them quit inside a month."
The screens switched over to the first matchup, Rantaro's name on one side and Iwao's on the other.
Rantaro stood up and blew out a long breath.
"Hey, Rantaro," Valt said. "Bring us the first one."
"Obviously."
---
Iwao took his position without a word and loaded the grey Bey. Low, wide layer, white edging. Even his launcher was grey.
"So," Rantaro said, loading Roktavor. "I watched all your matches this tournament. You won four battles and you never celebrated once. None of you did."
"We register five names because the form wants five names." Iwao raised his launcher. "You talk a lot. Talk after."
"Oh, I'm going to talk SO much after."
"BLADERS, READY? SET..."
"LET IT RIP!"
Tortoise dropped straight into the center of the stadium and sat there. No laps, no positioning. It went to the deepest point of the curve and spun in place, low and flat, and waited.
Roktavor came around the bank once and dove in. The hit landed clean on the layer and slid off, and Roktavor bounced back up the slope with sparks trailing.
"Whoa. Okay. Heavy guy." Rantaro shifted his grip. "Roktavor, hit him lower!"
Lower slid off too. A third hit, angled in from the side, moved Tortoise maybe a centimeter, and it drifted straight back to the deepest point and settled again.
"Stop," Iwao said. "You're spending spin and I'm not. Do the math."
"I did the math before I launched, buddy."
Roktavor peeled off and climbed to a wide orbit near the rim, and the battle went quiet. Two Beys turning, one high, one low. On our bench Valt leaned over to me.
"Can he win this? Iwao's got the center. In a pure spin-off the center wins, right?"
"Usually. The center is cheaper, every lap up high costs Rantaro more." I watched Roktavor circle. "But look where he put his orbit. Right at the top of the bank, where the slope carries the Bey. He's paying rent, but less than Iwao thinks. This is going to come down to one moment, and Rantaro's better at finding one moment than anyone I've ever spun against."
"You sound really sure."
"I told him the same thing in the changing room. I meant every word of it."
Down at the stadium, Rantaro had gone quiet. That was the part Iwao didn't know about him. The jokes stop when the counting starts.
A minute passed. Roktavor's orbit sank half a step down the bank. On the far bench, Raiga said something to Lui. Lui didn't answer him. Lui wasn't watching the battle at all. He was still watching me.
Iwao spread his stance.
"TORTOISE! FROZEN ORBIT!"
He called it, and ice-grey light rose up out of the stadium. The avatar came with it, a huge tortoise with a ridged shell like pack ice, and the same grey light settled over Iwao's shoulders and arms. Tortoise dropped lower, tightened its spin, and locked into the center harder than before. Roktavor's next lap dipped toward the middle, touched the edge of that spin, and got thrown back up the slope.
"That's it," Iwao said. "Now nothing reaches me. Fall down whenever you're ready."
Rantaro didn't answer him. He was watching Tortoise, only Tortoise, and his lollipop stick had stopped moving.
"He's not even talking back," Wakiya said. "That's how I know it's serious."
Tortoise spun. Roktavor circled. The big screen put a timer up, and the crowd noise sank low and impatient, and then, three minutes in, it happened. Tortoise's spin came down another notch, and its perfect center drifted. A finger-width off the deepest point. Maybe less.
Rantaro moved before I finished seeing it.
"ROKTAVOR ZONE!"
Yellow-gold light stood up out of the stadium. The avatar rose inside it, a broad warrior with a long axe over one shoulder, and the gold rolled down over Rantaro and lit up his whole stance. Roktavor dropped off the top of the bank with three minutes of slope-speed underneath it and hit Tortoise square in the flank, at the one spot it had drifted onto, at the one second it was there.
Tortoise went up the slope backwards. It fought for grip halfway, found nothing left in its own tired spin, rolled over the rim, and landed in the gutter.
Ring-out. Battle one, ours.
Rantaro screamed. No words, just volume, both fists in the air, and our whole bench was on its feet screaming back at him.
Across the stadium, Iwao climbed down and picked Tortoise out of the gutter. He looked at it for a second, closed his hand around it, and walked back to his own bench without a word to Rantaro or anyone else. He sat down and set the Bey on his knee, exactly the way he'd been sitting before the battle. Lui didn't look at him. Neither did Raiga.
Rantaro watched him go, opened his mouth, and for once decided against it. Then he turned around to our bench and the grin came back full size.
He came up the steps and disappeared into the middle of the team. Valt was hanging off his neck, Wakiya was hitting his shoulder, and over Valt's head Rantaro found me and pointed at me with the lollipop.
"One moment," he said. "You said it up here, didn't you. I could FEEL you saying it."
"I said it. You found it faster than I predicted."
"Best on the team, right? Say the whole thing."
"Best stamina blader on the team. And today, in this stadium, that's the only compliment that matters."
"I'm putting it on a shirt."
The screens wiped to the standings. 1-0. The crowd noise picked back up, then dropped away almost to nothing, because the board was changing to battle two, my name on one side and Lui's on the other.
Across the floor, Lui stood up.
Valt's hand landed on my shoulder. Shu said my name, just my name, nothing after it. I stood, took Drago out of my pocket, and walked down the steps. Lui came down his side at the same time.
We met at the stadium.
"Your district final," he said. "I've watched it more times than you have."
"Then you know everything I was back then." I loaded Drago onto the launcher. The layer was warm under my fingers. "You know nothing about now. Nobody does. We've been saving it for you."
"Good," Lui said, and raised his launcher. "Then stop saving."
"BLADERS, READY?"
"YES."
"YES."
"SET..."
"LET IT RIP!"