Chapter Text
When Shu was a child, he got home from school one day to see a box sitting on top of his bed. He didn’t know where it came from. Even ten years later, he still didn’t know.
But it was burnt amber and gold and covered in twisting emblems of flames and fire. Without even realizing he was doing it, he crossed over to the other side of the room. The pillows deflated as he sat down on his bed, reaching out a hand to open the box. It smelled like wood and the same acidic type of metal as when you put jewelry in your mouth.
Inside, was a bey, sitting atop a black velvet cushion. Red, so very red, with emblems of black and all framed in silver. The singular yellow eye seemed to glow at him. Beckoning him forward as it sparkled in the light.
Without questioning why it was here, how it got here, or if he should try and find who it might belong with, Shu gripped the bey in his hand.
There was no vertigo. There was no flash of fire or heat. No sudden voice calling out to him. Just the feeling of something settling in his chest. Digging into his heart like a jagged arrowhead made to go in and not come out. It didn’t hurt. Not in the slightest. There was just a shifting feeling as his soul made room for this link to something else.
It felt warm, even as spikes seemed to dig in his veins. Maybe the warmth was something unique to the bey he somehow knew was named Storm Spryzen. But, if he was being sentimental, Shu would tell you it came from the presence suddenly twisted around, outside, and through him. He wasn’t alone anymore. Not in his room, not in his mind, and not evermore.
Twenty minutes later, he met Valt at the park. And he found another side to himself. Something intense, and so passionate it was almost angry. But, also, he felt more alive than he ever had before. It was like he could suddenly breathe, suddenly see color. All his senses linked to someone else.
When he got into the District Tournament, he told himself not to get his hopes up. But he’d practiced and practiced until his hands were red and raw. Until he found himself falling asleep just to the side of the bey stadium. And it was hard not to feel excited. To feel like it had to be him that would succeed, even against all of these other bladers, so much more practiced.
The thing that had settled in his heart didn’t feel foreign anymore. It never had, really. But he’d gotten used to the weight of it. Gotten used to how, when he was lying half-asleep in bed, something else seemed to watch his dreams.
Spryzen was asleep. Tired. Restoring itself. And slowly waking up.
When he knelt down across from some blader, the name and face didn’t matter. He couldn’t even remember anything about them other than their bey anymore, Shu saw energy. Glowing orange and brown around his opponent. It was small, barely taller than the hairs on their arms, but it was there.
The ref counted them off. They launched. Spryzen blew right through Otius like it was a sheet of paper. Shu had won before he even had a moment to wonder about strategy. He remembered breathing heavily, chalking it up to stress at the time.
Later that night, when his heart had stopped pumping blood at three times the normal speed, and after he and Valt had celebrated with ice cream, Shu found himself in front of the mirror. It was mostly dark in the bathroom, and the house was quiet. His family didn’t talk to each other much, look at each other much. Not since Ren had disappeared.
So here he was. Alone. And when he crossed his eyes just the right way, tilted his head to the side, he caught a glimpse. Of himself, eyes glowing even redder than normal and surrounded by his own energy, flowing around him. It was beautiful, and addicting.
Over his shoulder hovered the fuzzy outline of something he couldn't quite name. It was large. It was powerful. Its claws hovered near his hands, its eyes near his eyes. But any details evaded Shu, at least for now.
He didn’t speak to Spryzen. Spryzen didn’t speak to him. It wasn’t time for that yet.
Weeks later, Wakiya presented the first real challenge he would ever face. For just a moment, Shu thought he might lose.
But then:
It wasn’t in words yet, with a conscious understanding of what he was doing, that Shu drew on Spryzen’s energy. That Spryzen drew on Shu’s soul. They just worked together. Pouring emotions that they both rarely faced into battle, pushing their fire brighter and hotter until it drove Wyvern back in fear and shame and defeat.
It took a moment for the wind to die down.
Valt cheered for him as he gave a short speech. Didn’t stop cheering until they parted ways for the night, with a hug instead of a high-five.
When Shu walked inside his apartment, there was a sticky-note sitting at his seat at the table. It read: be careful in a surprisingly messy scrawl. Perhaps he should have given it more thought. But he was tired, and it was easy to chalk it up to his mother warning him about burning himself on the stove while she rushed out of the house to work. He wasn’t worried about that, it hadn’t happened in months. So, he closed the open window and made himself pasta.
Three months later, Shu was bleeding.
Three months of training later, training like beyblade was the only thing important to him in this world anymore, and this happened. Three months of stillness, of keeping quiet as he focused. Three months of talking strategy with Valt, of ignoring his teachers concerns, and he was bleeding.
He couldn’t bring himself to care about his eye. It hurt like hell itself, and there was a lot of blood, but he just couldn’t care. He wasn’t crying, some part of his brain noted in that detached way of his. He wasn’t even sure he was sad or disappointed.
Lui was laughing at him.
Shu wanted to scream.
He wanted to shout that he was worth something. That one loss in his entire career a weakling did not make. All the things that were true that he wasn’t sure he believed. He couldn’t really bring himself to talk though, as his good eye stared at Spryzen, lying on the floor with a new shade of red splattered around it.
The bey was fully awake now. Shu with it.
They were mad. They were furious. They were going to win next time, break this dragon into a million little pieces for daring to suggest that they were worthless. That this thing that had become their lives, their whole selves, was too much for them. That they were not to each other as Lui and Luinor were.
Shu reached down and picked up his partner with one hand. He felt the ball inside of his heart grow warmer as the ghostly impression of the bey coddled the wound. The bleeding stopped, and the rage only got stronger.
It was only two days later, when he jumped out of his skin as Valt surprised him, that he realized he couldn’t see out of his right eye anymore.
When Valt beat Honcho, Shu felt pride, pride and a bit of understanding. Because he knew, he’d known ever since that first day of Nationals last year, that he was not normal. That he and Spryzen made up a small percentage of bladers and beys. That the energy around them was stronger than maybe was healthy. Valt was like him. He could see that now, see all of the clues he’d missed over the last year and a half.
If he knew then what he knew now, he would have felt pity and fear for his best friend. But what’s done is done, and Shu knew there was nothing he could have done to stop it anyway.
His shoulder was a problem.
But he couldn’t bring himself to stop. Stop training, stop battling, it would be the same as stopping living. Throughout the appointment, there was always Spryzen in the corner. Watching. Not egging him on, it didn’t have to. Shu wasn’t even sure it would want to.
It cared about him. Maybe not in the same way a person would. But not in a selfish way either. Yet it couldn’t stop blading anymore than he could. But it helped to take some of his pain as he twisted the muscles in his arm beyond what was kind to himself. Just like the twinge of knowledge or warning when someone came up to his right.
Battling Valt was the most fun he ever had. He knew his friend was sad. But he also knew Valt wasn’t going to stop, just like Shu wouldn’t. So he relaxed with a job well done, and decided to go see Xander’s grandfather. Try to heal. Maybe it was too little too late, but he never believed that for a second.
He talked to Spryzen now. Not much. He doubted it would ever be something he needed in the same way Valt did. Emotions that wrapped around each other worked more than well enough. But the sounding board was nice, at times.
For a moment, all Shu could feel was anger towards Diago. He had dared to cheat ? But he knew pressure, he knew fear. And even if he would never be able to bring himself to commit a crime that felt like murder, he knew why Valt’s friend had. So he gave some advice, brought Diago closer to Doomscizor, and lied his mouth off to Ryota while the kid was too excited to meet one of his blading heroes.
It was strange being on a team. He and Spryzen felt so close in each moment he wasn’t sure what to do when there were others to rely on. Apparently, what to do included “Rescue Wakiya and Valt’s siblings from a rainstorm while your bey feeds strength into your hands.”
But, at the end of the day, his team was made up of friends. They had each other’s backs in each and every moment. He was glad, too, that Valt was the captain. He could have done it, he knew that much. But he had learned by now that he tilted to the left when blading, showing those emotions he rarely did. He wasn’t sure he could be kind while in charge, and wouldn't make everyone else feel unwelcome. He wasn’t sure they wouldn’t realize how different he was.
Valt and Valtryek were kinder. Softer. They were more different from each other in a way that stopped them from being too single-minded. Just as powerful, but in a different way.
It wasn’t until the finals that Valt really saw their blading selves. When seeing Lui, with all his pride and disdain for all other bladers, caused them to let it out. To snarl with fire inside of their eyes, the difference between claws and hands getting harder to tell. They wanted a chance to rip their opponents to shreds.
But Valt had that look in his eyes too. Different. Not as angry, but just as determined. And Shu loved his friend enough that they stepped back, missed their chance, and lost again.
So, Shu made a promise, and Spryzen made a promise, and they decided that their fight in the finals would be one of friendship, not rage. It would just be for fun, as Valt always said. A sentiment that Shu knew was right, but couldn’t bring himself to feel outside of training and mock battles. There was too much of himself wrapped up in each fight.
Stepping away from the bey club wasn’t hard. He didn’t really belong there. And as much as he and Valt would always be friends, the thought of letting an opponent watch him train made his stomach turn. So they hung out and did other things. Laughed in other ways. Sometimes Valt would talk about beyblade, but Shu couldn’t respond with anything more than surface level. He was always far too aware of the deadline above his head.
It wasn’t as hard to launch with his eyes closed as everyone seemed to think. It wasn’t like he really had depth perception anymore. He’d launched hundreds of thousands of times, knew exactly how far he was from the stadium. And he had Spryzen, whose eyes saw the power of the place, the strength of his opponent, and would have been enough for him anyway.
Still though, it was hard not to smile and feel proud as Valt told him how cool he was. It was hard not to feel vengeful as he watched Valtryek demolish Nepstrius in the stadium.
Wakiya was much, much better than he had been when they first faced off. All of the bey club was, really. Closer to their partners, maybe in a different way than him, or Valt, but strong. Strong enough that, at the end of the day, Shu sat on top of the staircase, staring at the ocean. Strong enough that he found himself running his fingers along a crack in Spryzen, the pain dull but there, like a bruise. I’ll help you , he found himself saying without words, just like with my shoulder. I won’t let you break.
Lunior split apart into three pieces before their eyes and they smiled the same smile as a lion or a killer. Maybe the element of surprise was gone. But their launch was strong. And they had spent a year working day and night, literally dreaming of this battle. They were not going to lose. They were not going to let this end like last time.
They had revenge in mind. They had to prove they were good enough.
They had a promise to keep.
Then part of them ended up flying out into the stands. Where Valt, of course it was Valt, caught them. They let the referee call the time-out, and they met their friends.
Valt was concerned for Spryzen. Of course he was. But they would be fine, they would win, and they couldn’t stop now. It would be like dying. And Valt didn’t understand, they could see it in his eyes. Didn’t know this pulsing, all-consuming need to keep going, keep winning, keep breathing like they did. But he was kind. He was their friend. And he let them talk their way into returning to the court.
Lui’s laughter didn’t matter, this time.
It wasn’t pain in the same way that his eye had hurt. It was painful in the way that, all of the sudden, Shu was alone. Shu was alone and his last memory of the other half of his soul, of his life, the presence that had been with him for the last two years was screaming agony.
I’m sorry , Shu tried to say into the void where the warmth in his heart used to be. I’m sorry .
He vowed revenge, and missed the spirit who was supposed to vow it by his side.
There was a note on his pillow when he got home that night. He didn’t recognize the handwriting, he knew it wasn’t his parents. Neither of them had been there, when he walked through the door. They probably wouldn’t be back for a long time. And he wasn’t sure what he’d say to them, if they noticed something was wrong.
The words “My bey broke” wouldn't make sense as the worst thing that happened that day.
The note read: It’s not gone forever.
Shu hoped that meant what he thought it did.
One month later, he was approached by a man named Theodore Glass. They went to a craft shop, and, by the end of that day, he held Spryzen in his hands once again. He wasn’t sure what to say. There wasn’t anything to say. They were partners. Even when one was gone, even when apart, they were partners.
Next time they faced Lui, they were going to win.