Chapter 32 – What the Mountain Teaches
The broken stadium stayed where it was.
Xander didn't move it, didn't apologize for it, and showed no interest in replacing it before anything else happened. It sat near the center of the clearing with a jagged crack through the stone bowl and fragments scattered around the rim.
Valt kept glancing at it. Rantaro had already made his verdict.
"It's still insane," he muttered. "You don't just arrive somewhere and break part of the mountain."
Keru lifted one small arm. "Apparently some people do."
Beus turned toward me with great solemnity. "They are known as bad guests."
"I said I was sorry," I said.
"You absolutely did not," Rantaro said.
Xander laughed from across the clearing. He was crouched beside one of the intact stadiums, examining the rim with that same wide grin he seemed to wear for almost everything.
"Save the apologies for when someone actually loses," he called. "That was a good opening."
Shu spoke for the first time since the battle ended.
"It stopped being an opening when the stadium started cracking."
Xander looked up at him. "And?"
"And that's exactly the kind of thing that gets bladers hurt when they forget they're training."
Xander rose to his feet and rested his launcher across his shoulder.
"You think I don't know the difference?" he asked.
"I think you enjoy that difference disappearing."
That got a bigger grin instead of the argument it probably should have. Shu didn't react to it.
I watched both of them, Drago still warm in my hand. The clearing felt sharper than before the battle, like it had settled into what it actually was.
Valt broke it first.
"So what do we actually do now?"
Xander's grin shifted into something more focused. "Now I see how bad your foundations are."
Rantaro stared. "That feels rude."
"It's honest." Xander pointed toward the trail. "Everything starts there. Footing, lungs, rhythm, balance. If your body gives out before your launch does, your Beyblade won't save you."
Valt blinked. "Wait, you mean more climbing?"
"I mean all of it. Run the trail. Then launch drills. Then movement drills. Then carrying water from the spring below the ridge. Then battles if you've earned them."
Rantaro looked genuinely offended. "That's not training. That's manual labor."
"That's mountain training."
Beus nodded gravely. "The mountain continues to be unreasonable."
Valt looked almost inspired. "This is gonna be awesome."
"No," Rantaro said. "It's going to be terrible. You just have a problem."
Xander clapped his hands once. "Good. You can complain while you move. First run to the lower ridge and back. No Beys. No launchers. Just legs."
Valt was already moving before the words landed.
I put Drago in his case and tightened the strap. My wrist still held the memory of the battle in a low hum of tension, and the last few collisions with Xcalibur sat somewhere in my chest that breathing hadn't fully cleared yet. Xander's eyes flicked toward me once.
"Still standing?" he asked.
"Yeah."
"Good." He turned toward the trail.
I followed.
---
Going down fast enough to count as training and then forcing your legs back up again was not the same as the first climb.
The path punished every mistake. Bad footing on the descent meant a scramble to recover. Breaking rhythm on the way up meant your lungs reminded you about it for the next three minutes. Valt attacked the trail like it had said something about him. Shu kept his breathing controlled and never wasted a step. Rantaro complained the whole way down and then somehow stayed ahead of Ken, which only seemed to irritate him more.
I kept my pace steady and paid attention to the ground.
By the time we climbed back into the clearing, Valt was breathing hard, Rantaro looked like he wanted to challenge the mountain to a rematch, and even Ken was moving slower.
Xander looked delighted.
"Terrible," he said. "That means it's working."
Rantaro bent over, hands on his knees. "I hate your mountain."
"My mountain doesn't care."
Keru lifted an arm weakly. "We also hate the mountain."
"Noted."
---
The launch drills were different from anything we did on the rooftop.
Xander didn't start with power or special moves. He started with feet. Shoulder line. When weight transferred too early and when a launcher arm opened too wide. He corrected Valt by physically moving him half a step left. He made Rantaro repeat the same entry line until the complaints turned into focus. He adjusted Ken's wrist angle and then made him do it again until Keru and Beus both looked personally offended.
When he got to me, he watched the first launch without saying anything.
Then the second.
"Again," he said.
I launched again.
"Again."
By the sixth launch, he spoke.
"You trust your release too much."
"What does that mean exactly?" I asked.
"It means your launch is clean enough that your body gets lazy after it."
I reset my stance. "My lower balance shifts late."
He tilted his head. "You already knew."
"I noticed it during the battle with you," I said. "I just didn't know what to do about it yet."
Valt, who had recovered enough to be listening, looked between us. "How do you even notice that in the middle of a fight?"
"You notice everything that's slightly off," I said. "You just don't always have time to fix it."
Shu, without looking away from his own launcher, said, "The point is to make the correction automatic. So you don't need time."
Xander snapped his fingers and pointed at Shu. "Exactly."
I reset my stance, this time staying with my own weight for a second after the release.
The launch landed harder. Same line, more structure behind it.
"There," Xander said.
I picked Drago up. "One adjustment and it changes that much."
"Tiny things decide battles," Shu said.
Rantaro sighed. "I hate it when he says useful things."
Beus nodded from Ken's hand. "It damages morale."
---
By the time the sun shifted west, the clearing had settled into a rhythm that felt nothing like the rooftop.
Up here everything connected. Running affected launches. Launches affected footwork. Footwork affected how long you could sustain clean movement under pressure. There was no comfortable wall between blader and body and Bey.
When Xander finally called a break, nobody argued.
Valt dropped onto the ground with the full weight of someone who had given everything. Rantaro sat beside him and immediately started talking about his legs. Ken adjusted both puppets in his lap as if they had also suffered physically. Shu stood looking out over the ridge toward the city below.
I moved to one of the low stones near the broken stadium and sat down.
Drago rested in my hands. One wing still felt slightly rough from the battle — not damaged, just pushed to a place it hadn't been before.
That was different from how it used to feel.
I'd trusted him before today. But the battle with Xander had cleared something away and shown me what was left when I stopped trying to keep everything neat. Drago hadn't gotten wild. He'd gotten clearer.
"You trust your release too much," Xander said, dropping onto a stone across from me. "But you trust your Bey exactly enough."
"You were watching," I said.
"Hard not to." He glanced at the broken stadium between us. "Good fight."
"It didn't finish."
"No. That's why it was good."
I turned Drago over once. "You really don't care about the stadium."
"If every stadium survives, the battles aren't intense enough."
"That's a convenient philosophy when you own the stadiums."
He laughed. "Maybe."
I looked at Drago's wing, still slightly rough at the edge. "I've never let him go that far before. I kept thinking he'd become something I couldn't read."
"Did he?"
"No," I said. "He got louder, actually. Easier to feel."
Xander nodded like that confirmed something. "Powerful Beys don't want to be managed. They want to be understood."
"Shu thinks I should have stopped earlier."
"Shu's not wrong about the stadium," Xander said. "But he's thinking about the damage. You were thinking about the battle." He leaned back. "Those are different conversations."
"I'm not sure they should be."
"They're not always," Xander said. "But in a real fight — Regionals, Nationals, whatever comes after — if you hesitate because you're worried about the floor, you lose. The time to learn where the line is, is here. Not there."
I thought about that.
"So this whole mountain is basically controlled damage," I said.
Xander grinned. "Now you're getting it."
Across the clearing, Valt had recovered enough to argue with Rantaro about whether carrying water counted as combat training. Keru had taken a position in the debate. It was getting loud.
"He's going to be a problem at Regionals," I said.
"Valt?"
"He throws himself into things before he understands them. It works until it doesn't."
"That's always been true," Xander said. "He's also beaten people who had no reason to lose."
"I know." I watched Valt gesturing at Rantaro with both arms. "That's what makes him hard to plan around. You can't predict someone who's half running on instinct."
"Can you plan around him?"
I thought about it honestly. "I don't know. I've never actually battled him."
Xander glanced at me sideways. "That sounds like something that should change."
"Probably."
He pushed himself to his feet and stretched once. "Break's over. One more set before sunset."
Valt groaned loudly. "You said break!"
"I said a break. One break. This is after it."
"That's evil."
"That's training." Xander started toward the stadiums, then glanced back at me. "And next time we finish it."
"Yeah," I said. "We do."
I stood and picked up Drago.
The mountain wind came through the clearing again, steady and cold off the ridge. Not comfortable. Not forgiving.
Good.
I followed Xander back toward the stadiums.