"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" Announcer's voice boomed through crackling speakers. "Do we have a SPECIAL EVENT for you tonight!"
The crowd noise swelled. People pushed closer to the railings. Beypoints changed hands at the betting windows in a sudden rush.
"Three months ago, a monster walked into my arena." The boss spread his arms wide. "Forty-seven consecutive victories. Forty-seven destroyed beyblades. Then he vanished into thin air."
Spotlights swiveled across the arena floor and locked onto Kai standing alone in the center.
"But tonight, he has returned!" The boss leaned over the railing, eyes gleaming with greed. "And you beautiful, bloodthirsty bastards pooled your points for one simple question—can the Bladebreaker bleed?"
The crowd roared. This was what they came for. Violence. Destruction. The chance to see something break.
Kai pulled his launcher from his coat. Black Dranzer settled into place with a click that felt final.
Around the arena floor, bladers emerged from the crowd. Ten. Twenty. Fifty. They kept coming until Kai counted over a hundred bodies forming a wall of launchers and desperate eyes.
The boss raised his hand. "Total pot—ONE HUNDRED AND TEN THOUSAND BEYPOINTS! Last bey spinning takes everything!"
The crowd screamed approval. Fists pounded railings. Someone started chanting and others picked it up until the whole arena shook with noise.
The boss's hand dropped.
"BEGIN!"
One hundred and seventeen launchers fired as one.
***
Four days ago,
Morning light crept through thin curtains and found Kai sprawled across a mattress on the floor.
Something wet and rough dragged across his cheek insistently .
He opened his eyes to find Gumball sitting on his chest, whiskers twitching with obvious displeasure.
Kai groaned. His body was whole again—ribs healed, shoulder reset, cuts sealed without even leaving scars. Resonance with Black Dranzer burned through injuries faster than any human should heal. It just did nothing for the exhaustion that sat in his bones like lead weight.
The kitten mewed demanding.
Right food.
Kai forced himself upright. Gumball tumbled into his lap with an indignant squeak before immediately starting to climb back up his shirt.
The house around him was barely furnished. A mattress. A kitchen he rarely used. Empty rooms that echoed when he walked through them. Three months of absence had left a layer of dust on everything except the path between his bed and the door.
He walked to the bathroom followed by Gumball and splashed cold water on his face until the world sharpened into something manageable.
In the mirror he saw dark grey bangs hanging across his forehead. His face had hardened somewhere between the Dark Nebula training. The eyes looking back at him were sunken, ringed with shadows that sleep would not fix.
He looked away.
The kitchen cabinets revealed the damage of three months. Spoiled food. Empty containers. But the instant ramen was still good and canned food lasted forever.
Kai opened a can for Gumball and set it on the floor. The kitten attacked it immediately, purring between bites.
While water boiled for his own meal, Kai pulled Black Dranzer from his pocket and set it on the counter. The fusion wheel caught the light wrong. Two fractures crossed over the phoenix emblem like a target. One more serious battle and the entire structure would collapse.
He needed a professional mechanic.
Madoka's workshop flickered through his mind. She could fix Black Dranzer in her sleep. She would probably refuse payment. She would just ask him questions he could not answer and look at him with eyes that expected better than what he had become.
No. The underground circuit had mechanics who worked for beypoints and kept their mouths shut. That was where he needed to go.
But not yet.
Kai ate his ramen slowly, watching Gumball finish the canned food and immediately start grooming. The kitten's routine was methodical—paws first, then face, then ears in careful order.
The rest of the day stretched ahead with nothing to fill it. No training scheduled. No battles planned. Just empty hours in an empty house.
Gumball looked up at him with amber eyes and chirped.
Kai set down his bowl. He reached out and the kitten headbutted his palm, purring so hard his whole body vibrated.
When was the last time he had just sat still? Just existed without calculating his next move or pushing his body past its limits?
He could not remember.
Kai picked up Gumball and carried him to the mattress. The kitten immediately curled against his chest, kneading his shirt with tiny claws. The purring was loud enough to feel through his ribs.
Outside, the sun climbed higher. Inside, Kai lay on his back with a kitten on his chest and let the exhaustion finally catch up to him. Gumball's warmth was a small anchor to something that was not violence or darkness or the phoenix's endless hunger.
He closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, the room was dark and Gumball was batting at his face.
***
Midnight found Kai standing outside the rusted door in an alley that smelled like piss and rotting garbage. Bass thumped through metal—music and violence and the crack of beyblades dying.
He pulled the door open and descended into artificial light and controlled chaos.
The arena had not changed. Oil-stained concrete. Caged lights. Betting windows where desperate people traded beypoints for slips of paper that might make them rich or bankrupt.
Kai walked through the crowd. Conversations died. Eyes followed.
Some recognized him. Others just moved out of his way.
He was almost to the maintenance entrance when a voice stopped him.
"You're back."
Near the maintenance entrance, a woman with cyan hair and yellow streaks leaned against the wall. Grey jacket with white fur collar. Dark red dress. Red lipstick. Light brown eyes without pupils that tracked him like a hawk watching prey.
Kujaku.
She had been there three months ago when Kai almost killed a blader in the ring. When Dark Resonance had consumed him so completely that only she was brave enough—had pulled him back from murder.
Kai stopped five feet away. Close enough to talk. Far enough to move if needed.
"I need something."
"Everyone who comes here needs something." Her eyes studied his face like she was looking for cracks in a mask.
"A professional mechanic who can repair beys. No questions asked."
Kujaku was quiet for three seconds. Her gaze dropped to his empty hands.
"You're disappeared," she said softly. "People said you were dead. Others said worse things."
"I am here now."
"Yes." Her gaze stayed on him. "You are. And your bey is damaged."
"Can you help or not?"
Kujaku studied him for five more seconds. Whatever she saw in his face made her decision.
"I know someone. She's expensive. Very good. Doesn't care where your bey came from or what you've done with it." A pause. "But nothing's free down here."
"Name your price."
"A favor." Kujaku's expression did not change. "I'll take you to her. You get your bey repaired. And when I come to collect what you owe me—you don't refuse."
Kai weighed the risk. Unknown debt. Unknown timeline. Unknown cost.
But Black Dranzer was cracking and he had no other options.
"Deal."
Kujaku turned toward the maintenance tunnels. "Follow me."
***
The mechanic's workshop was buried three levels below the main arena. The door was marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY in faded stencil paint.
Kujaku knocked three times. Paused. Knocked twice more.
The woman who opened the door had blonde hair pulled back with a purple sweatband. Blue eyes that assessed Kai in half a second. White lab coat over a lavender shirt and purple dress. A coaching headset hung around her neck.
"Kujaku." Her voice was professionally neutral. "Client?"
"Yes. Kai, this is Judy Hopps."Kujaku stepped aside. "Judy, he needs your particular expertise."
Kai's eyebrow raised slightly. Her name is probably fake and he didn't care enough to ask for her the real one.
Kai pulled Black Dranzer from his pocket and held it out without speaking.
Judy took it carefully. She turned it under harsh fluorescent light. The twin fractures caught the glow, crossing over the phoenix emblem like crosshairs.
She was quiet for ten seconds. Then she set the bey on her workbench with more care than Kai expected.
"You've been running this past every structural limit." Her tone was flat. Clinical. "The fusion wheel has stress fractures in multiple locations. The bit-chip housing is warped from heat exposure. Whatever you did to generate these scorch patterns should not be physically possible."
"Can you fix it?"
"I can fix it." Judy met his eyes. "The question is whether you can afford it."
"Name your price."
"Fifty thousand beypoints." She crossed her arms. "Structural repair and basic maintenance. No illegal modifications. No performance enhancers. No questions about what you've done or what you plan to do."
Kujaku inhaled sharply but said nothing.
Kai did not blink. "Timeline?"
"One day. Maybe two if the internal mechanisms are worse than they look." Judy pulled out a beypoint scanner. "Ten percent upfront. The rest when it's finished."
Kai studied her. Looking for deception. Finding only professional self-preservation and genuine skill.
He pressed his pointer against the scanner.
-5,000 BEYPOINTS
REMAINING: 59,800
Judy pocketed the scanner and turned back to Black Dranzer on her workbench.
"I'll message Kujaku when it's ready. Don't come back early. Don't send someone to check on progress. Don't make me regret taking this job."
Kai looked at Black Dranzer under the surgical lights. For three months it had never left his side. Through isolation. Through training. Through battles that should have killed him.
Now he was leaving it with a stranger whose real name he did not even know.
His hand moved toward it. Stopped halfway.
"If you try to keep it," he said quietly, "you won't live long enough to regret it."
Judy picked up Black Dranzer and examined it under magnification. Her smile was thin. "I figured as much. Get out of my workshop."
Kai turned and walked to the door. Kujaku followed.
Behind them, Judy's voice carried through the closing gap. "Fascinating fracture patterns. Haven't seen anything like this since—"
The door shut.
***
[DAY 4 - MIDNIGHT]
The wall of spinning metal screamed toward the center like a steel tsunami.
Black Dranzer sat motionless on the arena floor. Waiting.
The first wave hit from every direction at once. Twenty beys. Coordinated strikes targeting the same point with enough combined force to shatter concrete.
Black Dranzer pulsed once.
A ripple of black and violet light expanded outward from the fusion wheel. Where the light touched attacking beys, their rotation bled away like water circling a drain.
They shuddered, slowed, and then stopped.
One by one they clattered to the floor, dead metal with no spirit left to drive them.
Soul Drain.
The crowd's roar intensified. They had paid for violence. Now they were getting annihilation.
"Regroup!" someone screamed. "Hit him together!"
The second wave came harder. Fifty beys this time, attacking in perfect synchronization. The impact echoed through the arena like thunder.
Black Dranzer absorbed it all and spun faster.
A blader in the front row watched his beyblade lose rotation until it could barely move. His face went pale. "It's not working! He's just getting STRONGER!"
Kai's voice cut through the chaos. "Is this it? Disappointing. For once, I wish this tournament brings in half-decent competition for me to test myself but I guess— playtime's over"
Fear rippled through the remaining bladers like a physical thing.
Kai's eyes shifted. Grey drowned in spreading crimson that swallowed the color until his irises looked like pools of fresh blood.
Around him, the temperature dropped.
"BLACK DRANZER. ATTACK! "
"Special move: Majestic Hurricane."
***
Black Dranzer's rotation spiked. The air around it began to swirl, pulled into a vortex that grew larger with each passing second.
He had seen Kyoya's technique five days ago.
Now he reshaped it—twisted it—into something that suited his own hunger.
The hurricane climbed higher. Wider. Concrete dust and metal shavings lifted off the ground. The wind picked up speed until it howled like something dying.
Then the flames ignited.
Black flames erupted along the edges of the hurricane—flames that did not burn, they consumed. They did not give off light. They swallowed it. Drank it down until the entire arena felt darker despite the emergency lights blazing overhead.
The temperature plummeted. Frost formed on the metal railings. Breath turned to fog.
Fire so cold it burns.
People in the crowd started backing away from the pit, driven by instinct older than thought.
True Lion Gale Force Wall had been wind and raw power. Kai had made it into something worse.
This was something else.
The phoenix manifested fully inside the tornado. Wings spread wide enough to touch both sides of the vortex. Beak open in a silent cry that made ears bleed and hearts stutter.
Every spinning beyblade in the arena was pulled into the black flames. They spun helplessly in the vortex, rotation draining away as Soul Drain worked on all of them simultaneously.
The cold was so intense that fusion wheels began to crack. Paint scorched. Metal melted.
One by one the beyblades broke apart.
Broken pieces scattered through the hurricane like shrapnel before falling to the ground as worthless scrap covered in frost.
The crowd had gone silent. This was not a battle. It was not even an execution.
It was a one sided massacre.
The hurricane collapsed. Black flames guttered and died. The phoenix faded back into the bey, leaving only its eyes—burning crimson, watching, hungry—visible for three more seconds before they too disappeared.
Black Dranzer spun alone in the center of the arena.
Around it, one hundred seventeen broken beyblades lay scattered like a graveyard. Frost covered everything. The concrete was cracked in a perfect circle fifty feet across.
Kai extended his hand. Black Dranzer leaped from the ground and arced through the air trailing embers.
He caught it without flinching even though the metal was so cold it burned.
The beypointer on his belt buzzed. Numbers scrolled upward in a rush as every defeated blader's points transferred to him automatically.
+110,000 BEYPOINTS
TOTAL: 169,800
The arena boss stood on his platform with his mouth open. No words came out. His gold teeth caught the light but his hands were white-knuckled on the railing.
Around the pit, one hundred seventeen bladers knelt in the wreckage of their dreams. Some were crying. Some were staring at their broken beys like they could not process what had just happened.
Some were just shaking. Unable to move. Unable to think.
"Ladies and gentlemen."The boss's voice had lost its showman energy. "Your winner."
The crowd stayed silent. They had wanted violence. They had gotten a massacre.
Kai turned toward the exit.
The crowd parted like he was infectious. No one wanted to be close to him. No one wanted to risk being next.
He was almost to the maintenance entrance when footsteps echoed behind him.
"Wait!"
***
Kujaku stood ten feet away. Her eyes were wide.
She had watched the entire thing from the crowd.
She had seen the black flames. The phoenix. The absolute control wrapped around something that should not be controlled.
"We need to talk," she said quietly. "Now."
Kai looked at her. His eyes were grey again.
"The favor," he said.
"The favor." Kujaku's voice was steady despite what she had just witnessed. "I'm collecting."
She turned and walked toward the maintenance tunnels. Deeper. Away from the crowd and the light and the safety of witnesses.
Kai followed.
They descended 5 levels.
The air grew colder. The lights fewer and farther between.
Finally, Kujaku stopped at a door that looked like it had not been opened in years. She pulled a key from her pocket and unlocked it.
Inside was a storage room. Empty shelves. Concrete walls. A single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.
She closed the door behind them. Locked it.
Turned to face him.
"My brother," she said. "Three years ago, he bonded with a bit-beast. Dark Resonance consumed him. Now he's institutionalized. Strapped to a bed. Screaming. He doesn't recognize me anymore. The doctors say it's permanent."
Her hands were shaking. She clenched them into fists.
"But I watched you fight against one hundred seventeen bladers and walk away clean. Perfect control. Not a single slip." Her eyes met his. "You've mastered it."
Kai said nothing.
"I need to know how." Her voice cracked. "I need to know if there's any way to bring him back. If there's any technique, any method, any hope that what you can do—"
She stopped. Took a breath.
"Can you teach me how?"
Kai looked at her for a long moment. "It might be too late for him. If he has already been lost for that long—"
"I have to try."
Silence filled the room like a physical thing.
[END CHAPTER 17]