//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3 - A Battle Between Leaders 
// Story: Beyblade: Metal Masters - New Harmony 
// by Mkchief34 
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As the members of Team New Harmony settled into a viewing booth on the top floor of the Stadium to watch the selection tournament's many participants prepare, they suddenly heard a wailing cry of disbelief, followed by some muffled conversation, coming from the booth next to theirs.

"What was that?" Fluttershy asked. "Did someone get hurt?"

"I think that was Gingka, actually." Twilight said as she poked her head out the door. "Also, I think the only thing that got hurt…was his ego."
 
"How can you tell?" Applejack asked her friend, as she polished Burn Atlas's Fusion Wheel with a cloth. Her question was immediately answered as Gingka sulked into the room, and collapsed on a nearby couch.

"I take it Director Hagane told you that you've already earned a spot on Team Gan-Gan Galaxy as the team leader?" Twilight said. 

"It's so unfair, I wanted to battle too!" Gingka moaned in response, looking down at Galaxy Pegasus, and then outside to the Beyblade DJ, who was going over the tournament rules. "I guess I can't do anything about it, and I am glad that I'm on the team…it's just…"

"You got so worked up, it's hard to come down?" Shining Armor nodded. "Trust me, Gingka, I kinda know the feeling. Twilight, when she was younger, would study so much, it was the only thing she could focus on at times. It got so bad, she would try to study at dinner by hiding her textbooks under the table and would try to read them while she ate."


Gingka laughed at that, and Twilight blushed quite fervently at that embarrassing memory from her childhood, and that sight made everyone else present begin laughing as well.

“That’s so funny.” Rainbow Dash guffawed. “And totally like you, Twilight.”

“Oh, really?” Twilight smirked suddenly. “I remember when Shining wanted to surprise Cadance for their anniversary by cooking dinner for them both. That’s his wife, by the way.” She added when she saw Gingka’s confused expression. “And when he tried to take the garlic bread he spent a good amount of time on preparing, into the oven…he slipped on some bread dough that had fallen on the floor…and then made the house look like a blizzard had happened inside with a stray bag of flour, instead of snow.” 

This time, it was Shining who blushed in embarrassment, and everyone else laughed even more. Eventually, the conversation turned into each person present telling an embarrassing or humorous story, while occasionally checking on the progress of the Tournament below.

And when a blast of a horn sounded through the air, the group stopped to look outside.  The tournament clock had run down, and the DJ was proclaiming the names of the Bladers who had made it to the next round. To no one's surprise, Masamune and Yu came in third and fourth, and next was Tsubasa in second. Twilight did feel a little sad at seeing that neither Benkei or Kenta made it into the next round, but she was soon surprised to hear the name of the Blader who stood on top.

"Kyoya came in first?" Fluttershy spoke up."You must be happy for him, Gingka."

"I am!" Gingka replied as everyone stood up to rejoin Hikaru and Ryo. "And I know that I'll still have plenty of time to train with Galaxy Pegasus before the tournament begins!"

"Speaking of that…" Twilight said. "I think I need to do some training myself. Shall we find an open stadium, Gingka?"

GIngka nodded with an eager smile, accepting Twilight's implied challenge. They both took off towards the stairwell that led outside, leaving the rest of the Equestrian Team behind.

"Huh, I didn't see that one coming." Shining said, mystified at Twilight's challenge. "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's see how this goes!"

====

It didn't take long to find a vacant Beystadium outside the arena, and as Twilight and Gingka both readied their respective Beys and took up stances to launch, the Equestrian team stood nearby to watch. 

"3…2…1…Let it rip!" they called out simultaneously, as both Galaxy Pegasus and Arcane Alicorn flew forward to hit the stadium, and the battle began. Gingka soon called for Pegasus to charge forward, and his Bey did so, racing towards Alicorn at an incredible speed.

"Stand fast, Alicorn!" Twilight responded, and as Pegasus impacted against her Bey, Alicorn tilted against Pegasus using its Around Sharp Performance tip, which deflected the incoming stream of attacks.

"Not bad!" Gingka called out with a smile. "You're off to a good start, Twilight!"

"Thanks, Gingka! But save the compliments for after the battle!" Twilight responded, ordering a counter-attack. Alicorn executed a smashing blow against Pegasus, who reeled backwards from the sudden strike.

"Keep going, Pegasus!" Gingka called, and the Bey redirected its course, readying itself for another attack. This time, however, Twilight was ready for it. As Pegasus charged forward, Alicorn nimbly veered to the side, and Pegasus was unable to correct its course in time. It flew into the air, and Gingka called for it to keep flying. Twilight was confused for a moment, but she soon remembered something that she had forgotten
Gingka's preceding Bey, Storm Pegasus 105RF, was powerful in its own right, but had been beaten in the past by Beys that could either manipulate the environment, or were capable of defending against attacks from above. In this case, those Beys were Kyoya's Rock Leone, Tsubasa's Earth Eagle, and strangely enough, his own disguised father's Bey, Burn Fireblaze 130 MS. 

Once they got Into the air, however, Storm Pegasus and now Galaxy Pegasus were second to none in terms of the power of its aerial strikes, and Twilight had allowed it to gain that advantage by not counterattacking properly.

"Do it now, Pegasus!" Gingka called. "Special Move, Pegasus Starbooster Attack!" 

Pegasus soon became cloaked in an aura of azure blue energy, and it hurtled downwards towards Alicorn. Twilight yelled for Alicorn to dodge, but as it moved to do so, Pegasus impacted against it. The two Beys stood firm in that moment, with Alicorn's Performance Tip redirecting the force of the attack, keeping it from being knocked out.

"Just hang on, Alicorn, You can do this! Keep fighting!" Twilight cried out passionately, and in that moment, Alicorn began to glow with a lavender aura of power. As the energy enveloped her Bey, Pegasus was thrown off, and it landed safely back in bounds of the stadium.

Alicorn, now channeling this power outward, released a pillar of purple energy into the air that soon spread throughout the stadium. Before Gingka or Twilight could react, everything went white as the resulting energy blast obscured their vision.

For several minutes, the outcome was in the air. But as the dust cleared, Twilight and Gingka saw that both Pegasus and Alicorn had stopped spinning in the middle of the stadium.

"That's it! The match is a draw!" Fluttershy sounded, and as Twilight and Gingka retrieved their Beys, Twilight realized she had come up with her Bey's first Special Move in that moment, and voiced her amazement.

"That's great to hear!" Gingka nodded. "That really was some awesome power!"

"Thank you, Gingka." Twilight nodded. "So, what happens next?"

"It's getting late by the looks of it." Shining said as Ryo and Hikaru approached. "We should get some shut-eye."

"Agreed." Rainbow said, giving off a yawn. As the six of them rejoined Ryo and Hikaru, who soon led them back to the WBBA building that served as their lodgings, the sun began to set over Metal Bey City. As the sky darkened and the stars came out, the Bladers who had assembled for the Tournament could only wonder what was to come the next day, as they all drifted off to sleep. 
====

At around Ten PM that night, Jason Pryce sat on the balcony of his team's second floor hotel suite, watching the stairs flicker overhead. His Bey, Strider Zinogre, lay nearby, glistening from being recently cleaned by his sister, Caitlin.

Stargazing was one of Jason's favorite activities, and he found it helped to soothe him on nights he couldn't sleep. In the time that he came from, Beyblading was a dying art, as the God of Destruction, Nemesis, had wreaked significant havoc upon the world before being stopped by the Legendary Bladers.

But in that time, those Bladers had been given all the power of evey Bey on Earth to defeat the Black Sun…and they had barely succeeded in saving the world, at the cost of losing one of the Legendary Blader's lives.

Jason knew not how this timeline would be altered, not only from he and his team venturing back the seven and a half years, or how they intended to tell Team Gan-Gan Galaxy eventually of their mission. That wasn't the challenge at this point, he thought. 

What had complicated their mission was the revelation that another team of Bladers, also coming from seven years into the future, had come back as well. Their motives and even their identities were unknown to Jason, and his thoughts dwelled on the possibilities of these Bladers becoming their allies…or their adversaries.

"Strange isn't it, Zinogre?" Jason said, picking up his Bey and gazing at it fondly. "We come back in time to change history, and now that we're here and we have our plan…it's almost as if each day that comes brings us closer to our goal, and our original time."

"But we won't fail. I'm sure of it." he continued. "This time and this world needs our help if they intend to stop Nemesis in time. It'll all begin once the Star Fragment falls, and the first two Legendary Bladers awaken."

"But that's not going to happen until after the World Championships. Until then…we just live and take everything as it goes. We've got plenty of time." he finished, standing up and reentering the suite. "At least, I hope so."

As he collapsed into his bed, he placed Zinogre his nightstand, and was soon asleep himself. The Bey shimmered for a moment, before the room was shrouded in darkness as the night went on.